Roommates [Closed]

[wereperrito]

Who: Jack, John, and Serph
What: Just some softness before the next event.
When: Three days after the moon warp, evening
Where: John's room in the Convoy
Warnings: Just three men ignoring, or unaware of, social norms. A bit of blood smell on somebody.


For the three nights after spending a big chunk of the post-warp day sharing John's bed, Jack goes back to his van. It had been nice, but John doesn't explicitly invite him to stay, and he hasn't kept himself alive this long by overstaying his welcome places.

And the he sleeps terribly each night. The first night he assumes it's because he slept most of the day. The second night that excuse is wearing a little thin. The third night, he resigns himself to his brain having decided he needs a warm body next to him again. And, well, it's not like John seemed to mind. He'd woken up to being half sprawled across the man and having his hair petted. That's not usually the reaction of someone who is put out by having a bedmate, platonic or otherwise. Maybe he won't mind again.

Only way to find out is to ask.

So he locks up the van and heads into the convoy once the sun sets, has his dinner, and then finds his way to John's room and knocks. He wonders if there will be rusty shears in his future again.

Comments

early march, before the wings

[thetatters]

Then comes the night John slinks in, embarrassed, reeking of fear and sweat and blood.

He'd hoped to join Jack and Serph once they were already asleep, and thus avoid notice or questions. He has changed into clean clothing— another faded, oversized T-shirt and threadbare athletic shorts— except for the yellow cowl. It's... a mess. Badly bloodstained, then washed inexpertly in a Convoy shower, scrubbed with their sad industrial hand soap. John clearly has no idea how to get blood out of clothing, because the result is a still-damp, still-stained wrap that hides his head and neck.

He doesn't take it off to sleep, as he normally might. Instead John sets down his bag in the corner, struggles out of his shoes, and resolutely pretends nothing is wrong.

Re: early march, before the wings

[wereperrito]

Jack is not asleep. He is not, in fact, even laying down. He'd been sitting up on the bed, hugging his knees, debating hunting John down himself, and hang the danger of being out at night. Serph is often back late, doing his patrols of whatever he does, but John is never this late. Something must have gone wrong.

So John coming in smelling strongly of blood-- his own blood, even-- means Jack is already climbing off the bed and approaching, not quickly, not wanting to startle him, but definitely like he's aiming to put a hand on him. "John? What happened?"

No pretending allowed here, sorry buddy.

[thetatters]

John does not startle: he tightens, instead, head ducked and gaze turned away. There is a clumsy, ginger quality to his movements, as though he's off-balance and trying to compensate for it. His next breath shudders with exhaustion.

But he does not move away from the touch, should Jack set a hand on him. Instead, John leans in to that warm point of contact.

"Nothing. Just... a brief encounter with a monster." There are other scents beneath the blood: mud, motor oil, the acrid tang of gunpowder. And Blake, where she'd licked the blood up from his throat. "I'm alright. Go back to sleep, Jack."

[wereperrito]

Jack does touch him, putting his hand on his shoulder, frowning and turning him a little to face him. "I wasn't asleep. You're never this late, so I was worried." He gives John a fairly thorough once-over with his eyes, looking for any remaining sources of blood, or stains on hos clothing. "Will you tell me what happened?"

[thetatters]

"Worried?" John blinks up at him then, startled into eye contact. Openly touched.

The movement reveals bandages beneath his damp and bloodsoaked cowl. He struggled into a fresh shirt and shorts, but he hasn't bathed since the attack. John knows their body well enough to know they'd certainly pass out in the shower. The wrappings are smeared and spotted with blood. He has been wounded at carotid and jugular: it's frankly impossible that he is standing upright.

Even these few seconds of standing unsupported have pressed those limits. He sways more heavily into Jack, listing against his arm and onto his shoulder.

"I..." He clasps Jack on the shoulder for stability and tries stubbornly to regain his feet. John hesitates, then confesses: "It was one of us. She had gone mad. Like what happens to you."

[wereperrito]

Jack ducks under John's arm, aiming to support him and lead him to the bed, but the confession makes him go still a moment. He shuts his eyes, breathes in and out once to shove the emotion down, then says briskly, "Sit down. I will clean you up. Whoever bandaged that did a terrible job of it, and they definitely got blood everywhere. This will all need to be cleaned. I should probably start it soaking tonight."

He needs to fuss or he might do something more embarrassing like go on a rant in Spanish, or cry. He never wanted that for anyone else. It's bad enough for a moon warp, or a full moon, for one night out of a month, but at any time? Randomly? Thanks, he hates this.

[thetatters]

John has never been carried like this before. Nor has Arthur, except perhaps that one blurry, terrible evening of the coma— John's first night alone, thinking he was to be trapped in a corpse. He grips weakly at Jack, then finds the rhythm of walking together, and lets that tension drop.

"It's perfectly clean." He's grumbling, defensive. "You try bandaging something when you've lost all your goddamn blood."

[wereperrito]

"I suppose the one who bit you wasn't in any state to help," Jack huffs, and sets about stripping off any actually bloody clothing and carting it to the bathroom next door to dump in the sink to soak. He comes back a moment later with a damp rag to clean anything left on John's skin.

He's careful about it. His first aid kit is in his van, so he has to use the same bandage. He doesn't even remove it, lest he tear a growing scab and make the bleeding start again. He just holds it in place and adjusts the tape to make it more secure, cleaning around it gently.

He does a bit of muttering in Spanish, though given the translation effect, John probably gets the gist. Lots of under-the-breath complaining about how none of this is remotely fair and he'd like to have a good talking to with whoever caused it all to begin with.

[thetatters]

John gives a long-suffering sigh and bows his head to allow Jack access to his cowl. With it unwound, he looks particularly rumpled and pathetic. There is no resistance to Jack's gentle spot-cleaning: he holds himself patiently, carefully still, as though practiced at this.

It's how he spent the first month of life, after all. Lilly cared for them while Arthur slept.

"She was alright by the end. She... returned to herself." He gives Jack a careful, sidelong look: there's something hopeful to it, almost shy. "She survived."

That outcome was far from certain. Lowering the gun went against his every instinct, except those he willfully decided to practice. He is quietly, fiercely proud.

[wereperrito]

Jack heaves a little sigh, patting the edge of the bandage, now more securely taped down. "Good. That's very good. We should not be trying to kill each other. We're all we have, out here." Ugh, he ought to get John something to drink, to help him replace that lost blood, but he doesn't have anything with actual calories in it to offer. Nor a glass to offer it in, even if he just went to get some water from the bathroom tap.

He looks up at John, instead. "She is okay, too? Not just alive, but okay?"

[thetatters]

John remains pliant and polite, head tipped away to bare his throat. He smiles at the question before he means to, and before he meets Jack's eyes.

"She... Yes. She, uh." He hesitates, caught between embarrassment and pride, and then says all in a rush: "Do you know Evanescence? The music. We listened to a C-D." He says CD with the careful precision of someone who has no idea what it means. And, immediately defensive: "It's very good music."

Perhaps it's foolish that he keeps treating new and violent monsters as friends. Were Arthur the one making these choices, John would certainly have words of caution for him, and more likely words of reproach. But... well, Jack is sometimes a monster, yet he touches John as gently as Lilly ever did.

[wereperrito]

"The one with the dark haired lead singer? Big voice? Lots of songs about death and depression?" Jack has heard of the band, though it's not really his type of music. He can appreciate Amy Lee's vocal talent without wanting to listen to it all the time. And he remembers a time when you could barely turn on the radio without hearing her wailing about wanting to die. (This may be one reason why it's not his kind of music.)

He shakes his head a bit, and agrees enough to say, "Yes, that band was very popular for a while. You sat down with someone who attacked you and listened to music after?" Which... does suggest she's okay, he supposes.

He should not be surprised. John invited him to share the bed after a night of babysitting the wolf. This may just be the way John is. Jack has some tendencies that direction, himself, if just in the compassion sense.

[thetatters]

John grumbles something noncommittal: he doesn't know what the singer looks like. But at least they agree her voice is powerful, which is obviously a good trait for any singer to have.

"The music came on while we were fighting." Defensive again, but it's all bluster. There is no real bite to his voice. "But yes, I suppose we took a moment in the aftermath to listen. Would you rather I'd shot her?"

Shot her again. He'll neglect to mention that part.

[wereperrito]

"No," Jack says, shaking his head a little, and putting his now-bloody cleaning cloths aside on the bedside table. Better that than the carpet, anyway. "It just isn't what most people would do, that's all. It's better that you forgave her for it. Like you forgave me. You know."

He considers, then adds, mostly teasing and clearly so, "You aren't going to invite her to sleep in here too, are you? We may run out of room if you do." Admittedly, that part's true. It's tight enough as it is.

[thetatters]

"Well, it wasn't your fault." John sounds deeply pleased, all the same. For a man who seems to have no concept of 'appropriate levels of eye contact,' he actually casts his gaze away and smiles at the blank wall.

At that, he gives a huff of amusement. A bit wry, a bit embarrassed, but there's no sign he takes the joke as anything but literal.

"Jack, if I were to offer my bed to everyone who has tried to kill me, we would quickly lose sight of the bed."

[wereperrito]

"Oh, good, because these beds are not meant for more than what we already have." They're not really meant for three, but Jack likes it and happily does what he can to make it work.

A pause. Then a blink up at John's face. "Wait, who else has tried to kill you?" Jack knows the wolf did, and now this person, is there someone else??

[thetatters]

Ah. Regret immediately crosses John's face: he'd never meant to raise the topic of Jayce, or Faith, or that uneasy standoff with Viktor.

"I meant back home! I have had a few... tense moments, perhaps, with those among our number. But nothing like this." He gestures to his bandaged neck. "But I suppose more is to be expected, if we all continue to... ah..."

He has no delicate way to say turn into monsters.

[wereperrito]

"Change," Jack suggests to finish the statement. "And you are right." He sighs. "And apparently not just during the moon warps, it seems, like it has been with me so far. We will have to be careful. And try not to hurt each other." He finally picks himself up off the floor to sit next to John on the bed. "I am glad you are okay. Or mostly okay."

[thetatters]

"Change," he agrees. It's a remarkably neutral word for what has been happening to them, but he is not in the mood to argue with a scrap of comfort.

Especially not when it wins him statements like that one. The sort of thing Arthur might have said to him, or he to Arthur, after surviving something particularly dire. John cannot help but smile.

"Thank you, Jack." He says it with utterly genuine warmth. "Yes. I'm okay."

[wereperrito]

"You are drained of blood and woozy," Jack counters. "Which I only count as mostly okay, personally. And now that you are cleaned up, you should sleep." He eyes John, and adds, "I ought to make you drink something, but that means having to find a cup, and that sounds too tiring." He kind of half-expects after a trek to the dining trailer, John would have passed out anyway, so there's not much point. "Just make sure you drink something in the morning."

[thetatters]

"Right. Of course." Humans can last a reasonably long time without water, he wants to tell Jack. He and Arthur have lost blood like this before. He'll be fine, just as every time before. But that would sound rather too much like arguing when he is trying to be gracious.

Even if he isn't on death's door, the fussing feels... nice.

He folds down onto the bed with the finality of a tree going over. John curls down to pluck blearily at his shoelaces, cheek pressed to the comforter with a sigh of relief.

"I'll sleep."

[wereperrito]

Jack swats gently at John's hands to make him stop, and sets about getting his shoes off for him instead. "Good. You will probably wake with a headache, but we will fix that when it happens." That's what the water was supposed to be for. Ah, well.