dream a little dream of me

who: open to all!

One night. He needed one fucking night where he could forget who he was and what he'd lost. His magic was still on the fritz -- ha -- which meant he had some time before it might seep out of it again. Or maybe it would never fully come back. It had barely been there to begin with.

"A shot of your finest alcohol, kind sir!" TJ smiled widely at the bartender, waiting patiently for him to put a glass and a lime in front of him. TJ wasn't used to this -- partying. But he could pretend he was. He sucked on the lime first, thinking that's what he was supposed to do, and then downed the shot.

Where have you been, TJ?

Somewhere beneath this endless winter they all found themselves trapped inside.

"Is this their finest alcohol, do you think?" he asked, lifting his glass slightly. There was undoubtedly more an Astor could afford. Riven could never compare to the size of those golden titans, although he had once been treated no less than one, he had always known exactly where he stood.

And yet it was he who held power now, it rushed beneath his skin, magic humming at the tips of his fingers with enough force to split the world apart if he so desired. A hand came up from behind TJ, fingers curling loosely around his wrist as Riven's gaze drifted toward the glittering watch resting there. "A bit past your bedtime, isn't it, Astor?"

It isn't an elder's hands that fleece him, or drag nails across his skin. But an almost familiarity — not enough of a warning to stop him, and not enough to see him kneel.

AJ instead has a silhouette to purge. The fear of madness melts away in a golden puddle at his feet. You want to be great, don't you? An alchemist beyond his name. A birthright stolen from him, ripped up and made anew. His. Yours. A mind that felt violated, with every step closer her took. Something other. Not the shadowy fingers of a God, but something else. Is this where you fall?

"No." An utteration so vehement, he sounded like the man he always came second to.

A hand surges forward, but it's met with only smoke.

They want his trepidations and his exposed parts. Have at them. The raw, reddened vulnerabilities beneath the skin, marrow deep, pulled and torn; a chewing sound of intagibility devoured echoes in AJ's ears. Slow, methodical teeth over and over — and he'd realised that something flowed inside him, and chomped down on more than flesh and bone. He no longer owned all the pieces of himself; he'd given them over, painfully, the same way he'd handed a God his legacy to be written in their image.

He knows its name.

And in the gnawed-at gaps, a thread weaves its way inside, knotting and lacing his limbs. He fought, like he'd fought at a weakness laid bare only moments before.

When he turned to find Riven, he found fear absent and electricity vibrating through his fingertips, faster than any gold, or element ever did. The darkness capes him, as he seeks out a friend in the abyss. A fog that is not their friend, or their ally, but instead their irrevocable ambition personified. There's no going back.

Maybe none of this was real. Maybe AJ wasn’t here at all. Perhaps this was only a memory, one waiting to be taken. A jewel set behind museum glass, gleaming patiently for the right thief. And who would dare step into his mausoleum and steal what was his? A God.

Gods had that right, didn’t they? To take and claim whatever they wanted. They took and took and took. Riven wanted to take, too. He wanted to swallow power like water, like a parched man collapsing at a well, gulping until it drowned the voices, until nothing could ever reach inside him again.

But his hand squeezed the hand between his finger until he knew it would bruise. This was it. He could feel it. If they just held on a little longer this would end. The cracking dark beneath them spread wider, splintering into nothing as fog rolled in, thick and swallowing. It wrapped around them both. Somewhere beyond it, laughter rang out.

An almighty being tugging at invisible strings. They were marionettes in his show, limbs jerking on command, anguish and devotion choreographed for an audience of one. And at the end of it all, perhaps they’d be granted a golden star. For suffering through this.

Their eyes meet — his, Riven's, and the omnipotent dark. Always a price. The wealth of knowledge and comprehension is nothing more than another currency. What would you give up? What if you were stripped bare?

The gleam of a golden crown is blinding in the abyss. A glance of potential, and what could be torn away by clawed, hungrier fingers.

Being accompanied by shadows is no comfort. Even if one is Victors. The other manifestations of faceless cloaks stand, staring. Each new movement draws his gaze in that direction. He's aware that the air tastes dry and cold. Salted like the Mediterranean. Yet, Gods do not quake, even if he is drowning, and Astor would deem himself fearless in the face of it all, shedding it to gather at his feet.

He's pushing back against the voice's will; it's devouring their sacrifice and prying to take more. They have to give, give, that message had been clear. The roar of silence could not smother the ears playing tricks; footsteps that scuttle in one direction, impossibly quick in the next. AJ cannot see Riven, just faintly establish a shrouded shape in the darkness, kneeling — a muffled voice, before AJ feels the weight of something lodge sharply in his throat. It's not physical, but the collection of everything he fears, real and not gathered to suffocate him.

Unmistakeably, the image of a man, clad in gold crosses the distance. Imposing, quick-footed and able to make magic out of nothing —

Fear isn't so easily handed over. It has to be fought; only then can they be free.

AJ grounds his feet; there is nowhere to run. It is nothing but madness made real. The figure; the shadow AJ has always lived in, has a face; it is severe — grim in disappointment. And behind a gold-flecked gaze, there is laughter. Fight. You want to be a God, don't you? Voices that clash, talking over one another, until AJ's taking steps forward to meet the monster. Because the assault on his senses and the uprooting of vulnerabilities will not stop this. They've come too far to lose.

He stood where she once had. She’d been here before, laying down delicious offerings at a God’s feet, bargaining for power. To be more than a witch. To be a God.

AJ was no different. A man who would stop at nothing to sit on a throne that wasn't his fathers. He moved forward while Riven’s knees were still rooted in the dirt.

AJ, wait— AJ!

The cry tore through a vast consciousness, echoing back at him distorted and cruel. They were taking from him. He could feel shadowy tendrils rummaging through his memories, prying open drawers he hadn’t touched in years, where faces blurred and names turned to nothing. They were searching for something.

No, don’t touch him, he wanted to scream. What have I done to deserve this? Leave me this one thing, he begged silently. He would trade them something better: his heart, his soul—

But he is your heart and your soul, isn’t he, boy?

The voice stilled him, because it was the truth. He couldn’t let this be. Riven’s hands clawed into the ground, fingers digging deep as the darkness beneath them began to crack, as if they were standing on thin ice. Power surged up through his palms. Not enough to strike down a God, but enough to cheat one. And what was Riven, if not clever? They wanted his love, the last soft, human thing in him. So he hid it.

He reached inward and plucked the memory of the man he loved and folded it away before they could touch it. He buried it somewhere no one could find it. Inside AJ.

He sees the woman. A shroud, hunched in the depths of nothingness, wrapped in a gilded cape of fingers that could carve her up and break her down to everything that makes her whole.

Behind him, the voice that has haunted him far more successfully than the abyss has.

Under his feet, even in the suspension of the dark, he knows there is a floor. Rivers of gold that rip a path, and tear a woman asunder. First, at the ankle, and then, a snake that creeps up her calf and burrows into the tendons. Separating blood from bone like a surgeon's hand, squeezing the life from every muscle, inch by inch.

AJ writes his name in gold, up the length of her marrow.

The voice says slower, so death can know madness.

She cannot run, because one of them has grasp of the mind. Shapes of languid limbs, oversized and misshapen crawl out of the darkest corners — it is less mist, in the gleam of gold, and made real in the silent understanding. What would he give in pursuit of more? In power that looked like this, without aid, and an invisible hand.

Imagine alchemy, if he could make mercury and carbon his own. Touch has always been a power and a weakness; an equaliser in the alchemical game.

AJ only knows how to sit in the realm of Gods. He'd figured out how to make a God and then let it sink its teeth in, until it burned hotter than any element he has power over. He understands the desire that comes with the necessity to tear a woman into pieces, and walking Riven's world, he thinks that his friend desires it too.

When the first drop of blood spills, Astor feels the violence of an impossible wind steal his breath. Knees threaten to crumble when the figurations take form, and the smiles are of those who make warm blood run cold.

What had he expected? A divine kiss to the forehead? A blessing instead of judgment? The creature’s gaze dropped to the woman lying in red and gold. Shadowy hands wrapped her bended body in dark mist. It looked like she was floating, slowly being eaten by darkness, swallowed whole. Smoke parted where the god’s mouth should have been, and with it came a clarity that flooded back sense into a mind that had been burning itself hollow. He wanted something more. What the God demanded was something greater. Something that had roots.

Something severed from the witch that would leave him crippled, the way tearing a hand from a mortal man leaves him forever incomplete. Riven had rarely felt whole, but when he had, it was almost always when in love.

The instructions were unmistakable now. He turned to Astor, watching the familiar lines of his face crease with thought. What is the price you are willing to pay? The question lay buried in Riven’s mind, but it rang like church bells through the hollow chambers of Astor’s. They didn’t need to speak. They were one, standing before a God who could unmake them just as easily as he could crown them.

Neither of them would fall to their knees easily, and the almighty being had enough of their pride and resistence. This was not a childhood game of hide and seek through the Astor mansion’s endless hallways. Riven remembered doors upon doors, a secret behind each one, waiting to be cracked open. Boys pretending they weren’t afraid. Boys who would grow into men. Men who would dare Gods. The creature’s eyes burned with flame. Riven stared too long, and his vision blistered at the edges.

What is the price you are willing to pay? The question hovered unanswered. Write your name on the dotted line, Riven. Hadn’t he already? Hadn’t he given everything worth carving out of himself? Pain split his mind open and he dropped to his knees with a growl.

What is the price you are willing to pay?

It was louder now. He laid out on a surgical table, as a scalpel cut into his brain, slicing away memories. Trying to hide the last remnants of a man with olive skin, peppering kisses down his shoulder blades.

Tomás' mouth opens and closes, like a fish trying to grab a hook it shouldn't. "There's a guy on your floor, Riv — I mean—"

Is Riven inside his head, manufacturing a world in which Tomás needs to write down? Is any of this real? Maybe he's playing a stupid game because he upset him at the gala with his investigations. Tomás suddenly shakes his head, as if he might be able to watch the world wobbly, and displace back into one he knows better. To the one where his boyfriend doesn't walk away from him, or act like he's nothing but some fly in need of swatting in his apartment. "— I didn't ask if you had—"

He's never been so lost for words as he has now. Tears that burn hot in his eyes, made of confusion and heartache. A cold, sick feeling in his stomach that coffee can't fix.

Riv's been busy. That's nothing new. Between the octopi monsters, his kingdom and the killer squids. Tomás has never expected to own every shred of his boyfriend's attentions; they work, and they have passions beyond each other. But he'd found out that the spark he saved for RIven is one that he puts above the rest of them. He'd walked away from a mystery that could have changed history, at the gala, for him. He'd quietened his voice and his news, for him, because he'd not wanted to see the man so twisted up about it. It made him safer and less of a target, Riv had said. He could've spoken out more about juju events and those that might know something, so they could understand they were not alone in their truths. He hasn't published a paper in months, because there hasn't been the momentum to write about, between his boyfriend ignoring him, the endless worry for the man and his family rewriting their history and legacy.

Tomás had told Riven about why he searches and investigates the moonshifters, the juju and the nightchildren — he'd voiced the pain woven behind the smile to the person who could've helped him; the person he cared for more than himself, sometimes. He'd told him about his family in snippets; his grandfather and his stories, the vineyard that always survived the disasters. He'd said about the tragedy that split the Priestleys apart; Hanna sleeping in a Floridian hospital. Told the man who could dance in minds like it was the chords of an instrument. And Tomás' lack of trust had been the trembling thread that meant he wouldn't put those pieces together too early.

Riven doesn't have time for him now. Deadlines. Work.

Tomás — who hasn't seen or heard from his boyfriend in weeks — is just simply in the way of that. He wants to look back at the still body in the lounge, and know what he knows. Maybe he'll tell him more about who this man in the kitchen with him is, than Tom gets from the source.

"Time for... what? Me?" He eventually asks, softer. Mouth twisted into something sad, and hurt. Brows dipped, and lines creasing his features. "— time to talk to me? I just — I wanted to see you, make sure you were okay, you know like —" like they always did? Like decent, good partners did. He blinks the wet away, and attempts to take a step closer, as if the distance was the problem between them. There's something dark splotched on Riv's collar. Concern nestles between fear and a fracturing heart. Something's wrong, so very wrong. None of this is right. Not the staggered steps, or the cold. Not the mismatched eyes that refuse to meet his. Is he dreaming?

A lazy smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that much. Riven didn’t have to walk the cobblestoned paths of Tomás’s thoughts to find it waiting there. He loved him, didn’t he? Loved the monster Riven was, not despite it. That feeling had made a home inside him and jealousy was the mold creeping up the walls. "You were thinking I’ve been fucking him instead of texting you back.” A beat, “Am I right?”

He was.

If he turned and looked at him, the answer would be written all over those puppy eyes. Tomás followed him like a dog, wagging his tail and waiting to be petted. A hand came out without warning. Riven caught it mid reach, fingers closing tight enough to bruise the olive skin beneath. It was a reminder that he was hurting the pup, making him yelp.

He let go before it went too far. Before those wet eyes could drill another hole straight through him. Riven had thought he’d gotten rid of a guilty conscience. Apparently, it had just learned how to hide.

"Stop asking me questions, T." His voice was a tedious thing, worn thin to the point of irritation. You’re going to drive me insane, he thought. Still refusing to meet his eyes, Riven walked past him and took his coffee to the work desk, now buried under manuscripts. His left hand came up to wipe at the blood beneath his ear. It was still fresh.

The voices pressed in, murmuring at the edges of his thoughts, crowding a mind that needed silence more than anything else. He couldn't fight them any longer. Riven felt weak to a power that fed on those fragile, human pieces of him. The care and love he still carried for the man who kissed him gently. He could still feel the wet trace of those kisses on his cheek, along his neck, lingering like a memory that refused to fade.

Grooves along a gilded mind struck with lightning, electrifying new desires and feeding older, forgotten ones with power reborn. There is strength in reclaimed knowledge; his uncle would crave to pluck apart the elements that AJ has found in the wreckage of Gods, new and old. Awakened with a solution that has massacred the lives of a single, insignificant town and birthed power that Astor has never thought to touch.

Not until now.

It creeps up on him like a laugh he cannot hold in, far more potent than any lingering hands that a father has; more gripping than the golden clutches of an eagle severing his name and his birthright in one swooping dive. It's arrogance that has him grinning when a hand clasps Riven's.

The same cloudy hands that had turned his head in broken sleep force his gaze. A voice unlike any he has known is driving him towards a submission that forces him to admit the intrusive, maddening thoughts of recent months are not of his own doing. It's something else; Astor denies he is tangled in it; instead, he is merely another Godly limb that acts as the shaping hands of a deity yet to write its legacy. Who guides whom? An entity that calls to them like there is nothing but their mercy and their perverse, twisted version of cities that rise and fall, with them at the helm.

Astor blinks away the scenes of fabricated artistry.

It has a name, too.

It does more than speak in tongues. It calls and encourages violent impulses. It bleeds to take, take, take. To drive a witch forward into the chaos of their creation. It offers all it is, in exchange for all they are. And what is Astor, if not a God vying for new worship, away from the shadow of the elders?

The gold flakes in his eyes skirt beyond Riven, to the woman who wanders in amongst the rivulets of power she cannot see.

AJ's plenty aware of what it wants.

When Riven turned to meet the woman beside them, she glowed in purple light. Somehow, he had opened the door and let the other inside his mind, and now AJ saw what he saw. Felt what he felt. It was a shared vision, and in every version of it, the woman died. A sacrificial lamb laid out on cold ground, where ancient rites revived in the marrow. Blood spilled to feed hungry gods. And the gods were starving.

They called for an answer.

Riven could still hear the voice, only ouder now, clearer, almost jubilant. The woman’s frightened, wide eyes blinked in the dark like a guiding star.

Lids fluttered shut, for he always saw better in darkness. The pit, he called it, where shadows dripped like tar. A version of him stood there now, in the center of it, joined by his friend. In utter darkness was where his power hid. He reached for it, grabbed it by the throat and squeezed until it bled into him like the red spill from the lamb they were tearing apart. Magic pulsed hot through his veins and burst out of him, coiling around the woman in a shroud of purple mist, muffling her cry for help into a strangled whimper.

What AJ could do was far worse. If Riven could torment her mind, AJ could torment her body. Shut down every organ one by one, and turn her flesh to precious stone. A jewel for his collection. Just as her nightmares were something Riven could bottle and keep. He saw inside her head, her deepest fears clinging like spiderwebs in the corners of her skull. Crawlings that should’ve scattered when the light hit them, but instead they screeched, writhed, and died slowly.

"Riv — hang on—" Please. Slow down. He's not seen him in weeks, and before he's even seen his face or known his mouth. Riv's walking away again, like a firefly that keeps evading Tomás' net. He just wants a little bit of a guiding light. Not to be so lost in the confusion of what's going on in Riven's mind. Tomás needs to hear it; he can't just juju his way into things like minds and souls and know it all. "It's not that early, I mean, it's almost eleven..."

Tomás is chasing the man through the corridor. Fears about a sleeping man are yet to outweigh the ones about his boyfriend. Riven's an early riser, anyway. He's usually the one dragging Tomás out from beneath the covers.

Did Riven go to bed with... the sleeping man?

Can Tomás even ask that? Is he stupid to walk in here like everything might be okay again? Is this why Riv hasn't called in weeks? Ignored all his texts. He's still practically pretending he doesn't exist in real life. Sunken eyes that lack their individual sparks, a fire and ice blend that T likes to get sucked into. It's not like Riv to look so worn and beaten down.

Tomás has so many questions and concerns that he doesn't know where to start. This isn't an interview; there's no pen and paper out. Just raw, emotional fear. He's more afraid of this than he is facing off with any upset moonshifter or nightchild. Heart hammering in his chest, sweat beading at his hairline and in his palms. The words get caught in his throat as he quietly walks through the kitchen, seeking to comfort a boyfriend who won't get too close.

He's scared to get close now, too.

"What's going on Riven? Who is that out there?" That's how he starts, fingers curling in and out of a fist; nerves. "You haven't picked up the phone in weeks. I know — I know I got down in the dumps about stuff at the gala, but we can — could've talked about that. We can talk now." It just didn't seem like his boyfriend wanted to.

Swallowing, once-excited eyes dim to solemn and sad. "You're shutting me out, aren't you?" Riven won't tell him what's happening. Maybe he's scared, too.

It didn't matter what time it was, he barely slept anymore, not really. Night and day had bled together, pooling into one long, dim stretch of consciousness where everything felt both real and not.

His hand found the coffee machine by habit, fingers pressing the button before his mind caught up. It beeped in protest and blinked red. No water in the tank. Of course. He stared at it the blinking light for a moment. Tomás could’ve made himself useful. Instead, he hovered behind him, showering him with questions. He had a key, didn’t he? That made him more than a guest here.

So why did he still act like one?

"What does it matter who he is? It’s Chinese, T." Riven’s tone was flat and bored. The man lying in the hallway was a casualty, nothing more. He’d ordered Chinese last night, this was the guy who brought it up. "If you’re asking if I’ve fucked him, I haven’t." A pause. Though, for a fleeting second, the thought had crossed his mind; to slide his hand down south, but that wouldn’t have been very gentlemanly of him, would it? So he stopped. Got a hand in his head instead, scratching at the dull ache pulsing beneath his skull.

The coffee machine beeped again. A hot black stream poured out, spilling over the counter when he was too slow to put a cup beneath it. He didn’t ask Tomás if he wanted any. Didn’t even look at him.

"I’ve been busy, T. Crazy deadlines. They drive me nuts. I don’t have time for this right now."

It's been a toy he's been tinkering with in his mind for months. Calculating the same way he would craft a formula in the lab. Crystallising, metamorphosing until he knows no other pathway; it's ambition in which no other alchemist, not his father, not his uncle and not his grandmother has ever reached. A peak on a mountaintop where the fall is unlike any mortal has ever faced. His father has craved immortality, and there's nothing more satisfying for AJ to think that he could achieve a version of it, long before anyone else might come up with a solution. Immortalised in scripture to be read for millennia to come. AJ would kill to stand before Levinon and ask how infuriating it is to know the disappointing son has done what you could not?

He does not want to hear that Levi is proud. They were always an empire built on taking, and AJ has learned from the very best of them. Astor would like to take Levinon's precious life, which he is desperate to keep.

But that is not why it took him so long to decide. It is not that bloodied, vengeful ambition that drives him to do it.

It's that he wants to be the first; to have the same thrill he had solving a puzzle that no other has ever done, not in a thousand years. His hands are dipped in more blood than most know. He did not pull the trigger, but he wrote the blueprints that gave them the weapon to do it. Tens of thousands, gone overnight.

He still, after months, hasn't really felt the weight of that.

But it does feel as though his luxurious drive has gone off-course, and he has to regain control. The exchange of the bind is not as great as the ascension, but there is always a cost; a price to power. And what AJ has not aired to another soul, is that in his sleep — night after night, he sees a phantom that he plans to face on his terms.

A voice echoes from another room, and AJ's head snaps upwards from his boiling concoction. A housekeeper mills around — and he's forgotten she's there at all, so close to being a witness. Instead, she can be a feature of the spell, now that he is so very close. The smile says that he is tempted to play with power that could be the end of him, for the second time.

But where he had not been ready in the first, he will be this time.

They weren’t brothers by blood, but they carried the same burden — to please their parents, and outshine them, become something greater than what raised them.

Riven had long let his mother’s ambitions coil around him (what he’d once sworn to resist), tentacles tightening at his throat. And now Mefistophel breathed himself into Riven, quiet and unseen, like smoke, through his nostrils and ears, until he was a man possessed.

Madness passed down like inheritance.

His mind felt rotten with it. How else could he explain the voice whispering in his skull? His mother used to say the same thing when he was small, that the cuckoos had gotten inside, nesting where thoughts should be. His father called her crazy. But there had always been something inside her head, far beyond a witch’s magic.

He’d reached for AJ, with one hand outstretched, purple mist coiling around his fingers like silk. A veil that hummed with static, vibrant enough to raise gooseflesh. Getting through a gilded consciousness locked tight was difficult and unnecessary, really, when all Riven wanted was to show him. To make him see what had been haunting him.

The image burned behind his eyelids, fever bright.

Feet took him closer to his friend, where mismatched eyes gleamed with something unstable. "He’s been speaking to me," Riven said, "And I think—" he stopped, breath hitching on the edge of a laugh, "—I think I finally know what he wants."

It felt like drinking from a goblet of ambrosia wine. He was drunk, trembling for another taste but for once, everything was clear.

Threatening. Not succeeding. If they had to claw through this cove alone, they would do it. They didn’t need him, it would only make it easier and simpler for her to have someone to focus on, a hum of magic that was more predictable and constant than this arrhythmic magic of the cove. 

“Nor the most pleasant to catch a witch mid-ritual. One might find himself a component, if he's rude.” They retorted, not retracting their outstretched hand, metallic joints throwing moonlight as they flexed their fingers. “A hand, if you don’t mind. Non-intervention, if you do mind.”

Mischief flickered in his mismatched eyes. He had no idea what sort of ritual she was tangled in, but he wanted to find out. Her magic had a funny taste, and he was drawn to it at once, prompting him to close the distance until their hands met.

It tickled, that current running through her fingers. Soft and silken, like a veil slipping from her skin to his, winding over him in invisible threads. Riven pulled her upright, then stepped back, allowing her more space to move, and breath. "You’ll tell me your name now," he said, eyeing the woman, "or am I asking for too much?”

AJ ASTOR & RIVEN VICTORS FRIENDSHIP; a moodboard.

There was something eerie about picking through the dark in a place that Arc knew they had been before. The magic in the air hummed with a familiar tune, the whole cove practically singing with the reminder, but the ground itself had changed. Tourists, other witches, and anyone out for a day at the beach had picked over the rocks and stones, shifted the sand. The sea had worn down stones that had been rough to the touch a century ago, that constant humming sound blurring the time into nothing. 

It was too close. It was disorienting, taking steps with the expectation of their foot falling on a stone that had been removed decades ago (a souvenir, the empty space added to the melody, a child who wanted a reminder of the only time she’d see the sea), stumbling forwards to catch themself from falling against a rock that hadn’t been taken. 

Focus. Don’t listen to the songs of the past, don’t listen to any of it. Use your eyes. 

They got their bearings, straightening and adjusting their unwieldy bag, glass jars clinking against each other as they shifted within. Choosing such an echoey place for a ritual site the last time they had done this was a mistake, linking this part of their network to a place they’d known would only get louder and louder. 

It had been a nuisance getting through it the last time. This time, it was borderline impossible. Once again, Arc was finding themselves in need of a hand. 

Speak of the devil and he might not appear, but whoever shows up might be suspiciously devil-shaped. The person that they saw might be that helping hand, or they might make it so much worse. 

It wasn’t like they had much of a choice. The hum would only get louder and louder the longer they pushed this off, and they needed to get further into the cove to finish their work. They reached out a hand to the person, still shrouded by the shadows from the clouds sliding across the not-yet-full moon. “Excuse me? Would you mind helping me out for a moment?” 

What was Riven, if not the friendliest of creatures? She asked, and of course he would oblige. If only to touch her magic. To test if it might be of use to him. If it could hush the voices.

There it was again, the sudden urge to dig a nail into his ear and claw the noise out. Instead, he pressed his ear to the pointy tip of his shoulder. Then a small, polite smile twitched at his lips as his eyes traced the open palm she offered. "And what is it that you need help with?"

She could feel the magic on him, he was certain of it. It clung to him like a toxic fragrance, something acrid scratching at the nostrils. Stronger now, too since he's become infected by something strange.

He loomed above her like a shadow torn from the corners of her imagination and slipped into her reality, the light in his single blue eye bright as moonlight.

"Not the most pleasant place to be caught asking for aid, witch."

Riven's not been answering the phone. Calls. Texts. Voice memos. Tomás noticed it more since the gala. That night ended on him stomping on Priestley's excitement, and instead of concern, Riv had been clouded by something else. It'd been the same kind of mist that he's seen in fleeting moments since. Sometimes, when Riv read and simply didn't hear anything when Tomás asked him something. It's not bad, it's just not him. Riv notices everything; when there's a mayo stain on Tomás' hoodie, or if he's trimmed his nails, or his beard a little differently. They'd shared a bed, or a sofa, and it's almost like his boyfriend is a different man; a cross between something more violent, and someone who doesn't want to be there at all. It's not like Riv to be so out of focus that he's almost in a world outside of theirs.

Tomás' version of fear is this. It's not tiptoeing into crime scenes, or abandoned houses for the next big story. It's being left behind or ignored by those who were supposed to listen. Above all, he's worried something's going on, and Riv won't let him in. He's afraid for him and everything that's going on in his mind, between juju and something else, maybe Tomás hasn't been attentive enough. Caught up in his own life that's crumbling at the edges. Maybe Riv's finally bored of him, like he seems to be with so many others.

Just be okay, Riv.

That's all Tomás needs when he lets himself through the front door of his boyfriend's apartment. The key unlocks without issue, and the door opens into a familiar scene. He has a gentle smile on his face, expecting to find him somewhere in the kitchen or in bed. It's quiet, it's a little unkempt, but perhaps Riv's been busy. Tomás follows the familiar sight of the corridor, bathroom, storage, body, front room— wait—

A person is lying still on the living room floor at the end of the corridor. It's not Riven, which only gives him a bit of heartless relief as he surges forward to check on them.

"Hey! — Mister, can you hear me?"

Still, he could hear it — the scratching on the walls, as if someone imprisoned, had been counting the passing days by marking the drywall with a nail.

And that sound… it made him do things. Awful, cruel things. He had tried to kill it, the hissing inside his ear, like some insect trapped in the hollow of his skull. But his fingers never reached far enough. He’d drawn blood trying, more than once. Even while he slept (when he did), he scratched himself. He woke up with a bloody stain on his pillow.

There were pieces missing in his memories, like white splashes across a canvas. He couldn’t recall what he had done last night. His phone was buzzing somewhere under the pile of clothes on the floor. Probably his boyfriend (If he could still call him that), worried sick. The last time they’d spoken was two weeks ago, and Riven hadn’t seen his face since. Tomás always had something to occupy him. If he missed his boyfriend, he knew where to find him.

He splashed his face in the sink, fingers pressing against the soft spot beneath his ear until the red river washed away. His throat burned dry. He turned toward the kitchen for water when he heard the soft click of the lock, then the shut of the door.

He froze, water still dripping from his chin.

Was this real? Or was he still dreaming?

Slow steps carried him down the hallway, where he saw two spindly chicken legs bent beside two very still ones. Mismatched hues traced over the two men, taking in the way frantic fingers slapped at a slack face, trying to wake a man sunk deep a comatose state.

Would he believe it, if Riven said the stranger was only passed out? That he’d had too much to drink? No, Riven rarely drank, and Tomás knew it. He came up behind his boyfriend, "He’s fine. He’s— resting." A lie, that was a little too obvious, but necessary. He couldn’t just admit to being a murderer, in the middle of his hallway, while his boyfriend had his hands on a dead guy. What would that do to them?