John's body— Arthur's body, their body— subsides to sleep, breathing gone gentle and slow. John himself has come to find these times soothing, meditative. He has spent hundreds of hours this way. With Arthur lying still and the world around them gone quiet, he has time to dwell on all that has happened during the day and what it might mean.

He does not know what this closeness means. He is not the man Jack thinks he is; he is closer to the thing of yellow light and tentacles that had wanted to dominate the wolf. Jack's monstrousness may be a sort of lapse in personhood, a span of time outside his memory and control, but John has no clean separation from his worst self. He has nothing more than a single friend and a chosen name.

When Jack snuffles and butts up against him, John exhales a sharp little ah of surprise, then quiets. He does not want to wake the man. Distantly, through the tingling weight of sleep, he can feel every warm puff of Jack's breath against the bare skin of his waist. Their waist. Arthur's waist?

The next shift puts Jack's stubbled cheek against his belly, and John chokes back a stammered protest. His— his?— heartbeat kicks up, and he does not know what that means, either. But when he nudges his hand closer, those fingers still feel like his own. He can set his fingertips to the soft, shower-damp mess of Jack's hair. Something in his chest curls sweet and warm.

He and Jack are not the same sort of monster, but perhaps Jack will understand, someday. Perhaps he has more than one friend.