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When the door slammed, he was laying not asleep but not awake on the too-hard mattress, staring blankly at the dim wall over the empty half of the bed.
As unceremonious as his entrance, Bernard began to shuffle about the room. Now fully awake, Hooky said nothing and simply grabbed the blankets, curling in on himself. The glass-yellow glow of the ugly streetlamp outside the window filled the room indiscriminately, ugly on all four walls and harshly ghoulish on Bernard in a way pure nighttime was not. It added nothing to real visibility in its scream for attention.
Bernard's ministrations became indistinguishable out of Hooky's line of sight. Back to staring at the wall, he pulled the blankets in further.
And so, on to the dance they had perfected. Precisely choreographed avoidance until the very last moment. Bernard moved about the room doing god knows what, prolonging the process of getting into bed, moving along the edge of a spiral that would eventually drop him off under the covers. Hooky was awake, and knew that Bernard knew he was awake, and just as each step dictated they kept on pretending otherwise and that they might just wake up tomorrow already without having to go through the motions. In here, no matter where they were, no matter what here meant, they found themselves doing it over and over, procrastinating on intimacy then doing nothing until eventually it was done with.
It went silent, Bernard presumably standing about thinking of something more to do before giving in and lying down. A car drove by outside. Two headlights through the window did more than the streetlamp ever could, and for a moment the deep night was cast away, a bit of normalcy rushed in like the day and maybe everything would be fine—then just as quickly dark flooded back in. The car was gone and had thrown away what it brought with it.
Trapped again deep in an endless night, the last steps of the spiral dance started again.
The rustling of clothes as Bernard changed brought the last sounds of life into the room. He got into bed, finally approaching the center of the spiral, and Hooky shut his eyes as he did. Without moving, he relinquished some of the blankets. The room fell silent, only the muffled sound of Hooky's own heart and blood ringing inside his head accompanied the dip in the mattress before him. Bernard sighed.
In the last step of the dance, sleep would take them and the last remnants of such an awful admission of closeness would leave them until the next night.
No sleep came.
After some time of forcing his eyes shut, Hooky allowed the ugly streetlamp's glow to pry them open. Now all he could see was Bernard. Facing him, the streetlamp couldn't reach his face, and he looked like he should again. As though something tangible, a twinge of colored bliss washing away the light that haunted his features while awake. Not ghoulish anymore. Long lashes rested on pale cheeks like the hands of a broken clock, unmoving and unaware as time dragged straight on.
It would never drag them out of this endless night. The pitch black behind the streetlamp was eternal, nothing behind it, nothing else real but the room they were in, and Bernard, graced by sleep, wouldn't know it.
For him, it could already be tomorrow.
For Hooky, all he could do was lay here and stare.
Unconsciousness was not a luxury he was given tonight, and there was nothing to keep him from his thoughts, nothing to keep his eyes from Bernard before him. Hooky blinked. Ugly night didn't detract from how lovely he could be, and it made his stomach flip.
He didn't stop himself from letting his eyes fall to Bernard's lips, his neck, his collarbone, as far as the blankets would let him. Tepid covers had turned warm with him there. He wanted to reach out, confirm the reality before his eyes, have it tell him that closeness could be togetherness. Bernard's steady breathing lead him along, and with no thought to it a warm hand cupped his cool face, soft under his touch- then his eyes opened, his heart skipped a beat- looking right at him- shit-
"What?"
He had been awake. Bernard now stared back, searching his face, not maliciously, but Hooky felt stupid, was probably making a stupid surprised face too, and Bernard kept looking. His lead tongue did nothing to answer the question.
The spiral dance unfurled itself, warped remains scattered about the floor like ribbons, never touching the bed, unable to reach them.
Bernard gently nudged away Hooky's hand, fingertips lingering on his wrist for just a moment before mirroring the touch, hand cupping Hooky's face. His face heated and Bernard kept fucking looking, thumb heavy on his cheek drew his heart to his throat, hot blood to his mouth. Dark room, dark bed, all they could do was look—caught in a stasis like a spider's web, lifting the bed from the flow of time. Just outside of it, there was little to gain, but equally little to lose. Bernard was first to move, encasing him with the tangle of their legs, his hand following as it adjusted against his face, the other joining, and pulled him in by the back of the neck. Hooky's arms wrapped themselves around him, how easy, as he found himself relieved of sight, what little there was lost in the way his forehead pressed to Barney's collar. The hands on him simply ran through his hair, nails gentle on his scalp as they circled the crown of his head, melting him, oh how easy. Fingers came to a still, lost in glass-yellow, loving and loved somewhere secret.
A kiss to the top of his head dispelled any sentience, and when a soft voice murmured, "Go to sleep, will you," he couldn't help but listen.