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What were the odds that as soon as he voiced his desire for an artistic collaborator one simply appeared out of the ether? On second thought, incredibly high. Maybe Casper had more creative potential than he had been giving himself credit for. But that that collaborator would come in such a package was something that he could never have anticipated.
Casper was so excited that he had almost forgotten to take his equipment with him. He ran back just in time, finding the broadcast having self-terminated due to a disruption in the signal, and fetched it before he could lose his way back to the corner of this dimension that had been his home for nearly two years. Tom was patient with him, then helped him to carry it all back to a tall building with a sign proclaiming it as the Oceanview Hotel. Similar to the Oceanview Motel & Spa that served as an intermediary for certain firebreaks and sectors in the Oldest House, but wholly different in appearance and quality by about three star ratings, if similarly dated in style.
Casper was eager to explore it and see if it shared more with the motel than just its name, but that would have to wait. Tom led him into the elevator and took him to the sixth floor. Tom’s room was right across from the elevator, room 665. Curious. Another factor in Tom’s mystical appearance at the exact moment that Casper needed his insight?
When they got inside the room—a large suite that was, well…well lived-in to put it kindly—Tom began setting down the equipment in a mostly clutter free corner of what amounted to his living space. He took things from Casper’s hands, helping him stack it all neatly to one side, then strode through a threshold in a flurry of fabric.
“Sorry for the mess. Perkele , I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Oh, no worries,” Casper chuckled. “You should see my office.”
He followed Tom and found him puttering over a bar cart at the foot of a messily made bed. Glasses and bottles clinked together as he poured fresh drinks. Tom was wearing a black blazer, open to show his bare chest, and wrinkled leather pants. He had that unkempt rocker bedhead look going for him that Casper didn’t associate with most film directors, but then Thomas Seine was no ordinary film director. Casper didn’t know whether he wanted to collaborate with the man or study him.
Tom straightened up holding two glasses of dark amber liquor, each with a thin orange slice perched on its rim. The presence of the orange was more startling than the booze, somehow. Casper couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.
“Thank you,” he said, accepting one of the glasses from his host.
Tom knocked the butt of his own drink into Casper’s. “ Kippis .”
“ Kippis ,” Casper repeated. He found himself wishing he had asked Ahti the janitor for Finnish lessons, if only to impress his enigmatic new acquaintance.
Tom took a large sip, then set his glass back on the bar cart. He took a step closer to Casper. “I must say, your voice sounds entirely different coming from these sweet lips of yours,” he said, eyes locking on Casper’s mouth. Tom raised a hand to hover beside Casper’s cheek, thumb teasing an inch over a lip just recently wet with bourbon.
Casper swallowed nervously, demurring at the forward advance. But oh, was it a welcome one. He was a man of science, and a research partner was what he had asked the universe for, but Casper was not immune to carnal temptation either. It had been so long since he’d spoken to another person. Tom’s hands were the first to touch him in years. The last was long before he started counting the days.
A question needled at Casper’s mind, distracting him from the heated offer presented a breath away. Tom had heard his voice somewhere before they met. Had he picked up the broadcast? Followed it to Casper himself? That was the only explanation that made sense. It was one of the reasons he’d been sending it after all. There was some film equipment in Tom’s apartment, maybe it could have–
Tom seized Casper’s jaw and planted a kiss on him, firm and confident but not forceful or rushed. Casper leaned into him, letting his lips part in an invitation that was immediately accepted. Tom tasted of bourbon and oranges and cigarette smoke. He smelled unshowered in a way that made Casper’s cock stir. It was not the bitter tang of exertion but the unadulterated, accumulated musk of a man. It made him feel more real than anything else Casper had encountered in this dimension, even his equipment.
Tom’s free hand gripped Casper’s waist, slipping between his lab coat and his shirt. Gently, he pulled Casper into him. Casper couldn’t help the brief moan that escaped him at the feeling of another man’s body pressed against his. He felt Tom smile.
The kissing became a little more heated as Tom helped Casper out of his lab coat. It fell to the floor with a sound that made Casper shiver, evidence that they were about to consummate their partnership. He followed Tom’s lead, slowly pulling his blazer back from his shoulders until Tom lowered his arms and let it drop to their feet. They undressed this way, piece by piece, mouths never parting for more than a breath. The room was quiet but for the sound of each breath and the soft collapse of fabric onto the floorboards.
Tom had no underwear beneath his leather. He sat down on the bed, bringing his face even with Casper’s plain boxer shorts. Tom smiled, his lips slightly reddened by their kissing. His eyes were wide and bright as they looked up at Casper. He hooked his thumbs under the waistband of Casper’s boxers and pulled the elastic forward, then slowly dragged it down, exposing his cock.
Casper focused on his breathing, trying not to embarrass himself by letting Tom see how affected he was. Not that there was much to question with Casper’s full erection in his face. Seemingly pleased with what he found, Tom pressed parted lips to Casper’s shaft as he pulled the boxers down to his ankles. Casper swayed forward slightly, placing a hand on Tom's shoulder to steady himself since his feet were tied up in half discarded clothing.
“Easy there, doctor,” Tom chuckled, warm breath ghosting over Casper’s sensitive skin. “Let’s get you outta these shoes, eh?”
“Please,” Casper breathed back gratefully, trying to match his companion’s casual tone.
Tom leaned down to untie Casper’s shoes and helped him step out of the mess, one foot at a time. Then, in one fluid motion, Tom sat up, took Casper by the hips, and flung him down onto the bed, climbing atop him. Casper’s gasp of surprise turned into a delighted laugh. He reached for Tom and found his fingers sinking into messy dark waves as they’re mouths met once more.
This time, Casper was overwhelmed by the sensation of Tom’s skin against his from head to toe. He was swept up in a wave of everything Tom, ready to let it carry him through the whole ocean as far as Tom willed. He gripped Tom’s waist, thrilling at the soft, warm, tangibility of him. Reality was far more subjective than most people cared to believe, everything Casper learned only continued to prove that, and perhaps that was why he clung to Tom so tightly.
Tom’s kisses grew messier as he ground Casper down into the mattress. He dragged his open mouth along Casper’s jaw, teeth grazing skin. Every touch was electric, as invigorating as if it were Casper’s first time sharing his body with anyone else. He wanted to give in equal measure to show Tom the same gifts. Who knew how long it had been since the filmmaker had last touched another person either. No one deserved to go as long as they had without real human contact. Guiltily, it did soothe some of Casper’s nerves to think about. Whatever hair trigger he might be on, Tom was likely not far behind.
Tom moaned, pressing his hips firmly into Casper’s. He arched, his eyes closed in ecstasy and bottom lip pinned under his teeth. He was exquisite.
“ Perkele, shit, okay. I need you on top of me,” Tom told him, rolling off and scrambling towards the head of the bed on all fours.
“Okay,” Casper rasped.
He rolled onto his side and waited for Tom to settle. Tom laid back against a small pile of silver cased pillows, his cock standing proudly and temptingly from his hips. Casper crawled towards him. He grasped Tom’s shaft gently and brought his lips to his flushed cockhead. Tom hummed, eyes going glassy as Casper’s tongue circled him. He pushed Casper’s hair back from his face and smiled.
“Well, aren’t you a pretty picture?” he praised. “Fetch the lube, my pretty little nörtti .”
Casper followed where Tom pointed to a drawer at his bedside table. He paused to take off his glasses and set them aside reluctantly. He would have to settle for a fuzzier view of Tom’s magnificence for the time being. He fetched an old fashioned looking metal tube of the stuff labeled in Finnish and unscrewed the cap. The liquid inside was thick and greasy, but Casper was undeterred. Some primal part of him enjoyed the vulgar feeling of it against his skin as he slicked up Tom’s cock.
Tom lay his head back on the pillows as Casper prepared him, arms spread wide. Casper did more than just the perfunctory task required of him to move things forward. He dragged his fist over Tom’s cock in slow, luxurious pulls, savoring the sight of his cock head appearing and disappearing within his foreskin. Every rich groan and needy thrust of Tom’s hips poured more pride, satisfaction, and fresh hunger into Casper. After so long with so little of anything, this was a feast. When he could no longer drag that out without driving himself mad with unsatisfied lust, Casper put another dollop of lube on his fingertips and reached behind himself to ready his entrance.
Tom lifted his head and watched him, lips parted and chest heaving. “What a treat it is to meet someone who knows what they’re doing,” he told Casper as he set the lube aside, cap on, and straddled Tom’s hips.
Casper gave him an amused—and hopefully alluring—grin as he lined himself up. “What luck it is that the first person I meet in over two years is as perfect as you are,” he returned.
Tom beamed up at him, delighted by the praise. He reached for Casper’s head and pulled him into a searing kiss as their bodies joined, steadying him with his other arm.
The protrusion of Tom’s cock inside of him felt like so much more than a simple embrace of flesh. Casper was not a particularly poetic man, but the sensation felt profound somehow. He wasn’t sure if it was the Dark Place itself, his recent lack of human contact, or something about Thomas Zane, auteur filmmaker, poet, and parautilitarian, being the one beneath him.
Casper braced himself on Tom’s chest, allowing himself to squeeze and dig his nails in a little as he began to ride Tom properly. He found his rhythm quickly, like riding a bike, hips rolling down to press Tom’s cock right where he wanted it. Casper tossed his head back and moaned, then laughed at himself, high on life.
“ Hnngh , perkele ,” Tom cursed, hands falling down to Casper’s hips. “ Jumalauta , you feel incredible !”
“Tha–anks,” Casper panted, “so do you.”
“ Ah! Perkele! ”
Tom’s nails bit into Casper’s hips. He didn’t think of himself as someone who liked things rough in the bedroom, but the slight bit of pain made him feel almost alarmingly alive. How thrilling that this unplanned expedition was teaching him about himself on top of everything else!
“Ke–ep that up, doctor, and I’m gonna e–embarrass myself,” Tom panted, gritting his teeth as if clinging onto the edge for dear life.
Casper beamed down at him, a dry laugh forcing its way out between heaving, shallow breaths. They were perfectly matched. He picked up his pace, bouncing more than rolling now, hands on Tom’s shoulders for balance. It wasn’t too difficult to keep the angle just right for Tom’s cock to slam into his prostate every time he let himself crash down.
Tom fumbled for Casper’s cock, but once he got a hold of it he didn’t need to do much else. Casper fucked into Toms’ fist automatically as he rode him harder. Tom’s other hand reached upward, grabbing Casper's pectoral firmly, nails biting in again.
He mumbled something in Finnish, curses peppered throughout, then the word ‘swol’ caught Casper’s ear. A moment later, his dick seemed to slip through Tom’s fist a little more smoothly. Tom’s thumb rubbed circles over his cockhead, no doubt spreading his precum for all it was worth. His other hand braced Casper’s hip, encouraging him to fuck himself on Tom’s dick even harder.
Casper looked down and found Tom’s eyes shut tight and his teeth bared in a grimace, almost as if in pain. His hips rocked up to meet Casper, a small, desperate attempt to take part in some way as Casper sent him careening over the edge. Tom’s fist squeezed his cock like a vice, making him cry out, though Casper surprised himself with how much he enjoyed it.
Casper put all his energy into bouncing between the exquisite glide of Tom’s cock over his prostate and the sturdy grip of his hand. He was distantly aware of making some sort of noise with every downward thrust of his hips but had no guess as to how loud he was being. Hopefully the hotel wasn’t full of other guests somehow.
The moment that the pleasure reached its precipice, Casper’s cry caught in his throat. His mouth hung open as his body spasmed, spilling over Tom’s fist and bobbing up and down only as an effect of his uncontrolled thrashing.
“ Perkele! ” Tom cursed. It sounded breathy and reverent this time.
His hands scrambled for purchase on Casper’s body, which had begun to sag in its fatigue. Tom lifted him up by his ribs, fucking up into him from beneath with far more leverage than he’d had only moments before. Absent-mindedly, glowing in the remnants of the best orgasm he’d had in years, Casper leaned some of his weight into Tom’s shoulders so that he could more easily chase his release.
It only took a moment. Nasally sounds almost like whining terminated in a loud grunt. Tom’s hips stilled, then rocked into him as he panted in Casper’s ear. A divine sound if he had ever heard one.
When the force of it left him, Tom eased Casper down to one side. He rolled onto his back, trying to catch his breath. Neither of them did anything to mind the mess or each other. They lay beside each other, legs knocking together in the center of the mattress, the sound of their panting filling the quiet hotel suite.
“Not bad, doctor,” Tom rasped, his tone warm and genuine. “Not bad at all.”
Casper chuckled, too tired to open his eyes. “You’re perfect,” he mumbled, already drifting away.
Casper stirred, blinking his eyes open. “Did I fall asleep?”
Tom replied with a wry laugh, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Not for long, don’t worry.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Casper pushed himself upright, pulling the sheet with him. He was still naked and a little stiff. It seemed that even in this bizarre dreamscape universe his joints insisted on reminding him of his age.
Tom was sitting up on the other side of the mattress, uncovered but for a patterned robe which he hadn’t bothered to tie closed. He was studying the read out of the device Casper had configured to research this place. As Casper settled, Tom picked up a pack of cigarettes from his bedside table and shook it towards Casper.
“Uh, no thank you,” he replied. “Have any water?”
“Just the bathroom tap,” Tom shrugged. “Glasses on the bar.”
Casper hesitated, then climbed out of bed despite his nakedness. He had nothing to be ashamed of; Tom just had this quasi judgmental air about him. He was an auteur after all. Casper found a glass and his underwear, then took his water back to bed. Tom was still focused on the machine readout.
“Are you, uh, a man of science, then?” he asked, nervously hopeful.
Tom didn’t look up. “Hmm? Not in the slightest. Not sure what I’m looking for here. Anything anomalous, really.”
Casper laughed. “Anomalous?! This whole place is anomalous. This isn’t even an AWE; we’re not on Earth at all! Who’s to say what’s anomalous here?”
“Any change in the pattern, then,” Tom said, unmoved and unphased by everything Casper had said.
“Say, how long was it you said you’ve been here? Where I’m from, you went missing ages ago. I don’t remember the specifics.”
Tom put the paper down and turned to look at him with a sigh. “Time here…isn’t. Last person I met from the outside came in from 2010. What year was it where you came from?”
“Year? Uh, 2019,” Casper answered, his curiosity growing.
“Well, no way of knowing how long it’s been since then, but… I got sucked in here in 1970. So nearly 50 years. Fuck.”
Casper blinked. That was a lot to take in.
“But hey,” Tom grinned and opened his arms wide, “I look pretty good for a man in his eighties, eh?” He laughed and took another drag of his cigarette.
Casper laughed along with him. “By my own subjective estimations, I’ve been here for 665 days. Not quite two years, perhaps. Seeing you…” he gestured helplessly to Tom’s remarkably middle aged physique. “I don’t know whether to be horrified or relieved!”
“Oh, horrified,” Tom told him frankly. “Definitely horrified. Especially because you’re no artist. I’m not even sure how you got here, to be honest. The Dark Presence won’t care at all about you!”
“Well, that sounds like a good thing,” he replied nervously.
“Probably. Who knows.”
“The Dark Presence, that’s what you call The Shadow?”
Tom frowned back at him pointedly.
“Sorry,” Casper chuckled. “Of course you wouldn’t know the Bureau name for it. They’re both awful names anyhow.”
Tom set the read out aside and turned to face Casper properly. “I think I finally did it. We finally did it,” he said, smiling with an almost manic relief.
Casper’s mind raced with everything they had done. “Finally” wasn’t the word he would have used, having only met Tom a few hours…a day?...ago, but he shared the other man’s enthusiasm for whatever this was.
“What do you mean?” he blurted, leaning closer to Tom.
“Alan. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” Tom said, only confusing Casper further. “The missing ingredient. No amount of art, even amplified by The Dark Place, can bring an entire person into being. It manipulates things that already exist. It doesn’t create , not really. It needs people for that.”
Casper frowned. He had been losing the thread more with every word.
“Wait. What are you saying? What did you and Alan Wake create?”
“Me an’ him?” Tom asked, his smile returning. “No, nothing. Well, he wrote a book called Return , that was meant to work together with Yötön Yö , but it didn’t work.” He waved his hand as if to push away the thought and then took Casper by the shoulders, staring into his eyes. “I was talking about me and you ! We just made Alan!”
Casper’s brow wrinkled as his frown deepened. “What?!”
“Think about it. The Dark Place is bound by physics, or some of physics, perkele , I dunno, you would know better. It can’t make people. Only other people can do that. If I’d thought of it in time, I might have tried with Barbara, but…” Tom caressed Casper’s jaw. “It was your voice that gave me the idea. Maybe that is why I’m still here. I had to be here to make Alan with you before Return and Nightless Night could pull me out…” His eyes faded somewhere past Casper, growing wilder.
“Are…” Casper blinked, searching the shimmering genius in Tom Zane’s intelligent gaze. “Are you saying that we… We just conceived Alan Wake?”
“I believe so, Darling,” he laughed.
Casper frowned, trying to grok what Tom was saying from a scientific perspective. He followed the reasoning about not being able to create a corporeal being by the Shadow’s powers alone, but two men conceiving a child in some third party surrogate? How could that be? Who was this poor woman, and what did she think of the experience? The ordinary rules of reality did not apply here. He would need to run a lot more tests.
“I need something else to call you,” Tom barreled on. “How about angel? Hmm? You landed here as a guardian angel, pekele !”
Casper felt himself blushing. “Flatterer,” he said shyly. “But, I have so many questions. Alan was born years ago! He–he has a mother, doesn’t he? Are you implying that we—both of us—inseminated her in the past?! Not to suggest that that’s impossible. I have always been curious about the true nature of time.”
Tom leaned back with a shrug and a smirk. “Insemination? Maybe. Or maybe The Dark Presence used my films and our lovemaking to transform a child she was already pregnant with in our image! Imagine it! My face and your voice! The missing ingredients!”
Casper shook his head. No wonder Tom’s face had felt familiar the first time he saw it. It was also Alan Wake’s face, which he had seen in the Bureau’s records about him and when his widow sent over her photography. “This is insane.”
“Come now, doctor,” Tom said, his grin unwavering as he tilted his head like a coy entreaty. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic! Arthur Clarke! If anyone can figure out how the trick is done, I bet it’ll be you.”
Casper couldn’t stop smiling. “I dunno about that,” he demurred. “At least not with my rudimentary equipment.”
“Well, I can help you with that! Or Alan can. Easier to write a few pages than scrape together a film in this place. We’ll write you some equipment!” Tom declared excitedly.
“You can do that?” he asked, amazed more with the willingness than the ability.
Tom had walked right into Casper’s life like some deus ex machina in an aging rockstar’s clothing. Not that that look didn’t suit Tom; it was very much doing it for Casper.
“Oh, yes, my angel. Inanimate objects are easy. They are no more than set dressings. I can drum up a screenplay if I could just find a bit of paper to write on… perkele .”
Casper watched him climb out of bed, the open robe flapping about his taut legs. He missed Tom’s warmth beside him immediately. This place was just a bit too chilly all of the time. He watched the filmmaker rifle around in the clutter of his hotel room with a hint of longing tinging his scientific curiosity. Sleeping with a research subject was completely unethical and would almost certainly skew his data, but Casper was in too deep to prevent that now. Thomas Zane was the longest known survivor of the Bright Falls AWE and the Shadow. They could learn so much from him; Casper couldn’t just leave all that data unrecorded.
“Would you let me study you too?” he asked his new companion. “We knew about your disappearance at the Bureau. I read all about it, but our understanding of the situation and the Shadow was limited. I had a team stationed at Cauldron Lake running experiments of their own design, but my own research took me in a different direction. I’m afraid I did little more than read the reports. I had no idea that studying Hedron and resonance based entities would lead me back around to the Bright Falls AWE.”
Tom spun around, his robe flying in a spiral behind him. “You’re sexy when you talk science, you know that?” he asked with a charming laugh. He clutched some wrinkled paper and a fountain pen in either hand. Tom started stepping around the mess of the room back towards the bed. “Can’t say I understand all of what you just said, but hey! That’s what makes a good collaboration! What matters is that we…” Stopping at the side of the bed, Tom’s eyes raked up Casper’s naked body with obvious implications. “... yhtyä .”
No one had ever looked at him with the kind of hunger that Tom did. Others had called his mind exceptional for ages, but his body? Casper could have sworn it was nothing to write home about. Whatever was passing through the filmmaker’s mind, the effect on Casper was arousing, intellectually and sexually. He was of two minds, wanting to dive into research and into Tom.
Casper reached for the offered writing implements, but Tom snatched them away at the last minute. He set them on the bedside table and crawled onto the mattress towards Casper. The scientist observed that he was not the only one whose body was interested in a second round. He tried to meet Tom’s biting energy in kind, pulling him down to feel that delicious slide of skin on skin.
“The research can wait, right?” Casper asked nervously against his lips.
What if Tom had only fucked him to make Alan Wake real? What was he to Tom? Maybe just a warm body in a dark, lonely place he had been trapped in for fifty years. Casper guarded his heart. There was no reason he couldn’t also indulge in a way to pass the indeterminable hours in this dimension, even if that’s all it ever was. He would simply have to resist the charms of the enigmatic filmmaker, at least when it came to his emotions.
“Mmm. We aren’t going anywhere,” Tom purred. “And tonight I am finding that fortunate for a change.”
Casper smiled, pressing his hips up into Tom’s, separated by only a corner of the sheet. Tom wanted him. Everything else could wait.