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When Jay woke up, the first thing he noticed was the heat. He slept with the window closed, locked, barred even- not with anything fancy, just a rather sturdy stick he had found on the way home from one of his escapades that served as a suitable stopper that kept his window from being opened. There was no circulation in his room. It was stuffy, and, despite his illness, he could smell the air, smell the warm sickness in it. It was nauseating, but thankfully, after a few days of no appetite, Jay had nothing left in his stomach to regurgitate.
The second thing he noticed was the fact that he wasn’t alone. At first he had been staring at the ceiling, gaze blurry and unfocused, but when he felt the presence by his side, turned his vague eyes onto the figure.
It was... it. Him. Maybe even a bulky and particularly butch she? Jay swallowed the thick saliva in his mouth, drawing in a breath that sounded more like a croak. Surely it was just a strange vision. A trick of the eye. totheark wasn’t actually standing in his room, staring down at him through the eyeholes of that mask. At least Jay thought he saw eyes behind the holes. It was too dark, really, even with the white light on his nightstand casting a strange illumination about the room.
Jay closed his eyes, turning his head slightly and trying to lift himself up off the bed. He was thirsty, his mouth dry and his throat even drier. He needed water, but he couldn’t will his arms and legs to move. It wasn’t like a sleep paralysis (something he experienced at least twice in the past few months), it just hurt too much, and he was too exhausted. He hadn’t eaten anything, and there was a bone-deep ache all throughout his body, not throbbing or thrumming, but just there like the blanket he usually slept with (but had now been kicked off to the side in his heated state).
When he turned to look back at the masked figure, he was still there. Still standing. Still watching silently, stoic and stern as a statute. The only thing that indicated it... he... was even alive was the slow rise and fall of his shoulders that hinted towards something as human as breathing. There was no sound. All that filled the room was the smell of illness and sweat and the sound of Jay’s ragged mouth-breathing.
He closed his eyes.
He opened his eyes.
There was a hand reaching out for him, the pale skin of an ungloved hand reaching for him, wiry hairs poking out from underneath the jacket he’d seen a few times before. He focused on the way his skin caught the light, before he realized that he was going for his face. Jay couldn’t jerk away, couldn’t even react with the sluggish heat pressing down on his brain.
At first he thought that totheark was going to strangle him. His eyelids fluttered closed and he drew in a shaky breath, as if to prepare for the coming lack of oxygen.
And yet, instead, he felt the almost tender brush of calloused fingertips against his wet forehead, light as a feather at first, just barely ghosting over the skin, before the masked figure made another pass, this time with more contact, more tactile sensation, and pushed the hair off his forehead.
Jay finally managed to get his body to respond to his hazy commands, and with the co-ordination of a newborn, he reached up, grabbing the other man’s wrist. His grip was weak, so weak, but he relished in the contact. The skin was warm, something he hadn’t quite been expecting but should have. Not as warm as his own skin, but definitely what felt like the coolest thing in the stuffy room. His eyes opened again, half-lidded, mouth gaping open to breath easier, and he stared up at the mask. Tried to find his eyes behind the... plastic? porcelain? plaster? What exactly was the material? It was hard to tell, shiny and white with marker scrawlings on top to mimic crude vaudevillian facial features.
They held each other’s gaze for what felt like minutes that dragged by, with Jay slowly blinking, breath rattling in and out of his lungs, and totheark didn’t move. Still breathing, still the subtle shift of his chest, still the steady thrum of a human heartbeat beneath Jay’s trembling fingertips.
It was the first time someone had touched either of them in years.
As Jay closed his eyes again, his grip still holding as strong as he could with his ailment, trusting, trusting, the masked figure drew in a sharp breath, off-sync, breaking the tension. totheark very briefly considered the consequences of just lifting the man up and stuffing him into the trunk of his car and driving away, so far away from all this. Take him away from the tapes and the budding manipulating future paths that spread out like a river with many distributaries. So many different roads for Jay to go down... and the way he took the brunt of just a few encounters, just a few tapes...
He wanted to protect Jay.
He wanted to lay beside him, hold his shivering body close, and leech all the fever heat from him.
totheark was brought back to his senses as Jay’s hand slipped away, his mouth open and gaping and he was coughing, and oh... that must have been why he was awake. It finally dawned on the masked figure, and he was glad that Jay had looked away because a strange sort of benevolence came to his own eyes, lower lids pressed up with what could be only assumed an expression of an endeared smile.
He knew the apartment well enough, knew it like the back of his hand. There was so much time to explore and familiarize himself with every nook and cranny, both when Jay wasn’t at home, and when he was. totheark drifted to the kitchen, retrieved a glass from the cupboard he knew it would be located, and filled it with some water from the tap.
By the time he returned to Jay’s room, he had already fallen back asleep again, body half curled in on itself and facing him, mouth still open and breath still dry. He didn’t want to disturb such a perfect moment by waking Jay, so he didn’t. He was, however, going to get at least one of his wishes tonight.
So he went over to the bed, starting at the foot of it and crawling carefully over the damp mattress, until he sat in the curve of Jay’s legs. He reached out, and gently placed his hands on top of the other man’s calf and thigh respectively, feeling the intense heat seeping easily out of the pajamas and into the palms of his hands. He was so warm, melting inside his clothes. There was a slight compelling thought in the back of totheark’s mind to remove the pajamas but... it didn’t feel like his right to do so.
Three hours passed of sitting like that so peacefully, so reverent and observant. Taking in every sound, every twitch, every gasp and coughing fit that didn’t wake Jay.
And when dawn finally broke and Jay woke up again, breathing much easier, he found the window cracked open.