Chapter Text
“Hiya, Mummy, just got home from work. It. Was. Amazing. Oh my days, I’ll have to call you later when I’m not about to drop from exhaustion but it was everything I talked about and more. I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow. Oh! I… met someone; he’s really nice and sweet. And no, before you start, he’s just a friend! We’re sort of working together so I don’t want to make things awkward by pushing for romance but if he makes a move… I don’t know, he seems too good to be true and I don’t want to get my heart broken like last time.” Steven yawned. “Alright, good night, Mum, love you. Laters, gators.”
Ending the call, Steven shouldered open her front door in a daze, tossing her keys at the kitchen table and distantly hearing them slid off onto the floor with a metallic thump. Her bag followed as she dropped it directly down and tugged her clothes off, leaving it in a trail as she approached the shower. She would pick it all up later.
What a day, she thought, cranking on the tap and flinching away from the icy burst of water. She adjusted the temperature, waited, and then sighed, leaning against the wall as the near boiling stream of water pounded against her sore muscles. She slumped against the porcelain tiles until they matched her body temperature then forced herself to wash off her makeup and scrub her body.
Stepping out into the humid bathroom, she toweled off the damp from her skin and pulled on her night clothes. She wiped a hand across the mirror to remove all of the condensation, watching her tired face as she brushed her teeth. She hated when mirrors were obscured in any way, it made her nervous for a reason she could not define. After her nightly skin routine, she trudged to the kitchen to grab a glass of water to bring to bed. There would be no reading tonight and she was not hungry; it was straight to sleep so that she could stay awake during tomorrow’s shift.
Shivering, Steven hurried to her beckoning bed, clicking on her heated blanket and burrowing under the multiple covers. It was unseasonably cold for the beginning of fall, she wondered if that meant the city would receive a lot of snow this year. She hoped not, it made commuting such a hassle. On the other hand, there was something to be said about how pretty the snow could be during the holidays. If there was enough, she could build tiny snowmen on her windowsill and line them up like little guards.
She shook and curled up to hug her knees to her chest, her teeth chattering until the blanket finally kicked on high. The wiring was getting old; she needed to buy another. Thanks to her new paycheck, she could. Pleased, she uncurled with hum, peeking her head out from under the blankets to breathe in fresh air that nipped at her aching throat.
It was dark in her flat, only the glow of the fish tank providing light. The new moon had the windows looking like dark portholes to a vast sea. In her mind’s eye, the room became the interior of a massive boat; she could envision the sound of crashing waves and the creaking of the ship. It made her eyes heavier but sleep eluded her and she groaned.
“I thought I was done with this,” she whined, pressing her face into her silk pillow. Rolling over, she tried a different position and focused on her boat fantasy.
It was a big wooden boat, long and gilded with golden hieroglyphics, the boat of a god or pharaoh. It sailed on a stormy purple ocean, the water was rough but the hull cut through it like a knife. Interior lamps swayed above her, glowing and lit with oil as they would have in ancient Egypt. The flames flickered warm yellows and oranges, swaying with the rocking of the boat.
Her body melted into her deliciously comfortable bed, drifting away into her dream.
She wandered the bright, nearly white halls, practicing walking with her sea legs and giggling as she slid about as the boat was rocked. There were windowed doors lining the walls but she did not bother to open them. They were of no interest to her. She was searching for something else, she was always searching it seemed. She turned a corner and found a set of intricately carved wooden doors.
Bingo.
They were heavy, meant for someone much bigger than her but she got them open and gasped as she stepped out onto the multi-leveled deck. The sky above was a thick, undulating blanket of purple, vivid yellows peeking through like glimpses into a greater beyond. The ocean was not an ocean, but dunes of sand, dark and endless. The hiss of it across the hull was like that of waves but the air smelled of incense and ash, not sea salt. She past rows of decorated pillars on each side of the small platform she arrived to, descending the dual set of stairs to wander further into the open air of the deck. There was an odd lack of breeze despite the speed at which the boat traveled.
Dark shapes dotted the bizarre landscape and she approached the railing to get a better look, leaning and squinting. She caught glimpses of strange rocks, warped and carved by time. The oddest idea crossed her mind, of people crawling and frozen in a perpetual struggle to escape the smothering, cold sand. The longer she stared at the passing lonely dark figures, the more panic began to creep up and squeeze her heart.
It hurts, the ice crawling up my legs, my stomach, my chest, I can’t move, can’t breathe, I-
Steven forced her eyes away and left the railing to examine the deck further.
In the middle appeared a large set of golden scales, looming high above. She had not noticed it upon setting foot on the deck. Her skin prickled into goose bumps as she neared it, that same disquiet ballooning in her chest again.
This dream did not feel safe anymore, bordering on the edge of nightmarish. The scales creaked into motion without any interaction, a feather sat on one scale and nothing on the other. It shifted up and down, up and down, over and over. The scales never balanced.
The wooden floor beneath her bare feet melted, silty grains of cold sand shifting and sliding against her skin, rising between her toes higher and higher and higher.
They have to balance. They have to. We need to make them; if we can’t then-
Steven gasped awake, a strangled whimper on her lips. She kicked out feebly against heavy blankets, the sensation of being trapped stifling. An arm around her waist stopped her struggles, pulling her weakly writhing body back into a firm embrace.
Her brain felt like soup and thoughts bubbled up, thick and sluggish.
Something’s wrong, was what she could put together, mouth slack and brows furrowed.
Steven tucked her chin into her chest as best she could to stare at the densely muscled arm cradling her waist. The presence behind her radiated heat like a furnace and the hairs on the back of her neck stirred with rhythmic gusts. Relaxed and solid, they clutched her close like a pillow, like they belonged there.
Who?
Steven’s eyelids weighted a ton each; the strength it took to crack them back open for a miniscule glance was unfathomable. She could feel the press of legs against the backs of her thighs, a knee slipped between them. They were hopelessly tangled up together; another arm was cushioning her head. Their chests moved in sync, in and out, and if she focused she swore she felt their heartbeats matching. It was comfortable and familiar.
Familiar?
The arms moved, pulling her closer and removing the non-existent space between them, attempting to merge them into one. A deep sigh followed.
A man? That’s not… I don’t have a..?
Fear wanted to surface, it simmered in the soup of her mind but could not break into a boil. She forced her body to move, exerting every piece of conscious willpower she had to clasp the hand at her waist. It was calloused and dry, but warm. All she felt was warmth; her heated blanket struggled to last four hours before turning itself off so this was pure body heat. She fought to remember why that was a bad thing when it felt so good.
She pressed back into the body behind her, gripping the hand and releasing a sigh of her own.
The man tightened his hold, tensing up until she felt like she was being embraced by a statue. Then their fingers were being interlaced and her body rolled onto her back, her head landed facing the other person in her bed. This roused her enough that she gathered the power to take another peek. The shadows of the room concealed any details but she could make out the silhouette of hair, short and vaguely curled. He was watching her; she felt the intensity of it, the same as she was watching him.
A hand slid up and down her side, a soothing motion that she was perturbed worked. It stopped above her chest, right over the slow, heavy beating of her heart. Sleep was swiftly overtaking her, luring her back into unconsciousness like the sweetest of lullabies.
No, I want to see.
The shape grew larger, closer. A hot exhale washed across her face and the barest hint of pressure pushed against her lax mouth. Her internal struggles vanished, replaced with a single mystified thought then the void of sleep.
A kiss?
Steven woke up, rubbing a palm deep into her eye socket, and shut off her deafening phone alarm. She smiled groggily into a stretch, thinking about her new job and the puns she could relay onto her newest groups. Her morning routine went much the same as the previous day, chatting animatedly to her fish companion all the while. She opted for black trousers, a white collared button-up, and a tan cashmere jumper. She slipped on the flat oxfords, the aching of her feet serving as a reminder of the importance of comfort over fashion. Lastly, she pinned on her name-tag and prepared to leave, remembering to grab a heavy coat at the last second.
Sipping her steaming cuppa, she looked for her keys. They should have been on the kitchen floor, if her muddled recollection of last night was accurate. Instead, she found them in a bowl by her front door, where her keys were supposed to go but never managed to reach.
With a frown, Steven inspected the rest of the flat. Her trail of clothes leading to the bathroom was gone. She checked her laundry hamper and there they were, put away to wash later. Was I sleep-cleaning? Have I developed an advanced form of sleep-walking? Is that even a thing? She scratched her head, working on a puzzle with only half the pieces. I don’t remember doing any of this?
She pocketed her keys with a bemused shrug. It was not as if a thief would break into her flat to clean it for her, so obviously she must have done it at some point in her fatigued state.
Turning back to the front door, she leaned down to one-handly adjust her shoe and caught a glint of gold in her peripheral. She froze.
Steven slowly set down her bag, coat sliding off her shoulder from where she had paused midway in putting it on, and blindly put her cuppa down. She numbly lurched forward, the sounds of her steps not reaching her deafened ears. The old floorboards dipped under her weight when she dropped to her knees and crouched low, stretching her arm to reach under one of her many bookshelves. Her fingers scrabbled desperately against the edges of the book until she got a decent grip and yanked it free. It was a miracle she had even seen it, without just the right angle, the impossibly specific lighting, it would have stayed hidden forever.
“A Compendium of Ancient Egypt,” Steven read aloud the golden gilded title, her hands clutching the heavy hardback so tightly it was bending the ornate cover. “This is the book I was reading the night- th-the ni…” She felt faint, the room was starting to spin and she sat heavily back, letting the book slip from her weak grasp to slam onto the wooden floor. Cradling her head, she fought down the rising need to vomit. “Oh, God…”
It was coming back to her in pieces, bits of feelings and images that belonged in a horror movie, not her safe, cozy flat. The most prominent feeling was sheer primal terror. The gut churning sensation of being watched, hunted, caught.
“Oh, God.”
An image burned within her. It was there when she closed her eyes and her skin prickled as her hair stood on end. She remembered now, in disbelief of how she had forgotten in the first place.
A white figure, looming in the dark.