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“He’s been like this all morning,” John says as he leads Noel to the door of their bedroom. “He won’t get up, no matter what I say.” Despite his annoyed tone, Noel can see the anxiety lining his features, the uncertain way that he holds himself.
Noel pats his arm, taking a hold of the door handle. “Don’t worry, alright? Let me have a chat with him; we’ll see how things go.”
He opens the door, heading into the darkened bedroom. Despite the still drawn curtains, angles of light filtered through the gaps, making it light enough to see the curled up person laying on the bed, covered head to toe. Noel wanders over slowly, lowering himself down onto the edge of the bed with a cautious ease. Gently, he eases the covers back to reveal a gloomy looking Arthur staring straight forward, still unseeing. “Hey there, kid.”
“What.” Arthur mutters, in an empty, desolate tone. Noel catches the way John rubs at his arm nervously out of the corner of his eye.
“A little birdie told me you’re having a tough day.”
“That birdie can fuck off,” Arthur replies, with no real malice. John, who stands at the end of the bed, scowls at him all the same. “He should have left well enough alone.”
“Well you aren’t ‘well enough’, are ya.” Noel replies, reaching out to run a hand through Arthur’s tangled strawberry blonde curls. Despite his ambivalence, he leans back into the touch and closes his eyes, even the gentlest touch enough to relieve him momentarily of his ennui. “So what’s goin’ on?”
Arthur sighs so deeply it seems to rattle his whole body. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He says, in a tired, quiet voice.
Noel nods, before remembering - not for the first time - Arthur couldn’t see that. “That’s alright. We don’t gotta talk. I can get out of your hair if you’d rather deal with this yourself.” He pauses, gently rubbing Arthur’s scalp, and watching the way he keens for it. “Or I could stay. We could both stay.”
Arthur’s eyes slide open, unseeing but still forlorn. “Stay,” he murmurs. “Please.”
“Alright.” Noel says smoothly, before tugging his shoes and coat off and placing them on a nearby chair. John watches curiously as he walks around the bed, slipping on and up behind Arthur. When Noel slides an arm around his waist, Arthur wastes no time in curling his hand around his, holding on tightly. His breaths get deeper as Noel situates comfortably behind him, the heat and pressure of his body a soothing presence. “How’s that?” Noel asks, softly.
“Good,” Arthur says through a sigh.
“John?” Noel says, inquisitively. John stays stuck in place, hesitating. “Are you coming over or what?”
“I…” John starts, still uncertain of the situation in front of him. “I’m not sure he wants me to.”
“Just come here you idiot,” Arthur mumbles, which is more than enough for John to spring into action. He crawls up the bed to Arthur’s front and tucks himself under Arthur’s chin, wrapping a mirroring arm around his waist. “Sorry.” Arthur whispers, pressing a light kiss to the crown of John’s jet black hair as he wraps his spare arm around John in turn.
“It’s fine,” John mumbles into his chest. “I just don’t understand what’s happening with you, Arthur. You’re acting like you’re sick, but you don’t look sick - you just seem… lifeless.”
Arthur takes a shaky breath in and out. He supposed there was no point in letting it bounce around his head all day and leaving them in the dark about why he was behaving in such a way. “It’s… it’s Faroe’s birthday today.” His grip around the two of them gets tighter. “Every year, it’s like my body just knows - without having to know the date, it just… everything feels worse, somehow.”
Noel nestles against the back of Arthur’s neck and rubs soothing circles into his palm. “I get that. Birthdays of those we love are tough; it just reminds us of how long they’ve been gone.”
“And who they could have been,” Arthur chokes up, the dam finally breaking. “She would have been eight. She would be in school, playing with her friends, making up songs and games to pass the time. She should have - she should have had so much -” The sobs wrack his entire body, but Noel and John hold him tight, protecting him from everything outside of them. Here, among the two people who knew him the best, he could be vulnerable. He could allow himself to cry and grieve and ache under their watchful gazes, never able to see their expressions, but knowing they understand . He keeps talking through the sobs, talking about the things she should have done, the things he took from her, the life he took from her. The things he would do to get her back, to undo that day, to fix the worst mistake of his entire existence. Through it all, Noel and John lay there quietly wrapped around him, a comforting tomb for him to rest within.
When his words die out to a sore throat and his sobs finally begin to lessen, he feels John shift from beneath his chin. Arthur hadn’t realised how wet he’d managed to make the top of John’s head from all his crying, though he supposed there was no point in apologising for it now. He feels John’s hand slip from his waist as they move to cup his face, gently wiping away the remaining tears that stained his cheeks. He slowly leans forward, pressing a soft kiss beneath each eye.
That’s more than enough for Arthur to start crying again, this time wrapping his arms around John with all the strength he had left. He feels as Noel begins to stroke his hair again, and as John rubs gentle wide circles into his back he realises he hasn’t been comforted this way in a very long time. Far too long.
He’s not sure when he falls asleep; but he wakes to the sound of Noel and John murmuring quietly to one another, still wrapped around him in a toasty embrace. He keeps his eyes shut for a few moments longer, listening to them speak without his presence known.
“I’m just sayin’, Roosevelt ain’t the worst president we’ve had. Now Hoover, he was a piece of work -”
“What makes this guy any better? You told me all politicians are corrupt.”
“Yeah, they are. Most people in power are pieces of shit - comes with the territory of having more money than you know what to do with and control of the entire country at your fingertips.”
“So why would I vote at all? If everyone is corrupt -”
“You can’t just vote for no-one!” Noel says, before hushing to a whisper, realising his volume. “Sometimes you gotta pick the lesser of two evils, you know.”
“So there’s really no good option.” John replies, in a sour tone.
“That’s the two-party system for ya.”
“That’s not exactly surprising.” John mutters. “But I suppose I hoped at least one of you humans knew what you were doing.”
“Oh, they know what they’re doing. They just don’t give a shit about how it affects other people. Or they do, and they want those people to suffer.”
“Can you two stop debating politics?” Arthur mumbles sleepily. “It’s not exactly helping my mood improve.”
“Shit,” Noel blanches. “Sorry. I didn’t realise you were awake. I’m just trying to educate your boy over here.”
Arthur snorts. “My boy, is he?”
“What, you rather our boy?”
“Maybe.” Arthur says through a yawn. “How long was I asleep?”
John shifts a little in his grip, looking over his shoulder. “About forty minutes.”
“Oh,” Arthur says, his eyes jammed with sleep soot. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to drift off.”
“It’s fine, Arthur. If you hadn’t, John would still be woefully ignorant of this country’s politics.”
“I wish I was,” John mutters. He looks down at Arthur’s weary expression. “Do you feel any better for it?”
Arthur thinks for a moment. The deep pit of dread and guilt and grief still remained in his gut, and had no intention of shifting - but he did find that it was quieter than it had been before, as if placed in a see-through box where only the filtered sound could squeeze its way through. “Sort of,” he settles on for an answer. “I just feel as though my exhaustion may never leave me, at this rate.”
“Hey, we got no place to be.” Noel says, pressing a kiss to the back of his head. “You take your time, sweetheart.”
“The mountains grow unnoticed,” John starts, pulling Arthur’s gaze in his direction. “Their purple figures rise, without attemption, exhaustion, assistance or applause.” He cups Arthur’s face and watches with endearment as Arthur leans into it. “In their eternal faces,” he continues, staring into the golden eyes that matched his own. “The sun, with just delight, looks long and last and golden, for fellowship at night.” He presses a soft kiss to Arthur’s forehead.
“You’ve been reading Dickenson again, haven’t you?” Arthur says with a smile.
“I like her poems. She says a lot with little words.”
“Tell me another one,” Arthur says, letting his eyes slide shut. Noel grins at John from the other side of him, before he lays his head back down beside Arthur’s, and curls his arm tighter around his waist once more.
John hums, traipsing through his mind for the right poem. “A lane of yellow led the eye,” he begins. “Unto a purple wood. Whose soft inhabitants to be surpasses solitude. If bird the silence contradict - or flower presume to show, in that low summer of the west, impossible to know.”
“Hmm,” Arthur murmurs. “Reminds me of the Dreamlands.”
“I thought the same.”
“Not a part I ever saw.” Noel says, trying to keep any contempt out of his tone. “You got any more? Maybe one that’s more… cheery?”
“Uhh,” John looks through his mental notebook of favourite poems he’d read recently, reaching for whatever he could find. “A little madness in the spring, is wholesome even for the King. But God be with the clown, who ponders this tremendous scene, this whole experiment of green - as if it were his own.”
“Was that cheery?” Noel asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Her definition of cheery varies.” John huffs. “I like it.”
“I like it too,” Arthur says, letting out a deep sigh of comfort. “More, John.”
“Really?” John frowns, but the small smile on Arthur’s face makes him falter. “A-alright, fine. I don’t have an endless supply though,” he grumbles.
“You can always go get the book,” Arthur offers. John goes to move, but Arthur tightens his grip before he can. “In a moment. Not yet.”
With a roll of his eyes he knows Arthur can’t see, John huddles up closer to him, and tries to recite what few other poems he can remember, gently brushing his fingers across Arthur’s face, tracing the shapes of exhaustion, age and injury that litter his relaxed expression. By the time John’s run out, Arthur’s reeling off a few from his own memory, stumbling over a word or two and chuckling as he does. When he finally releases John to get the book, his stomach starts to rumble.
“Want me to whip some food up for you?” Noel asks from where he’s huddled up behind Arthur, lazily tracing patterns onto his arm.
“No,” Arthur murmurs.
“You gotta eat, doll. Don’t think I didn’t just hear the beast in your belly.”
Arthur huffs out a laugh. “Alright. I’ll come with you.”
“You sure?” Noel asks, surprised.
“I could do with stretching my legs.” Arthur reasons, before he’s gently tugged onto his back, Noel’s lips pressing against his, in a soft, slow kiss. “Or I could stay here…” Arthur murmurs.
Noel chuckles. “Let’s get you some food first, how about that?”
“I was the one who suggested it,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes. “You’re the one distracting me.”
“Present and accounted for.” Noel says, pressing another brief kiss to his lips, before finally letting go and slipping off the bed. He wanders around it as Arthur slowly puts his legs over the side, pausing where he sits. The thoughts begin to loom threateningly outside of his bubble of warmth and comfort. Noel gently takes a hold of his hand. “Come on,” he says, softly. “We’ve got you.”
Arthur takes a deep breath, and holds on tightly, letting Noel tug him into standing. Though his head felt full of cotton wool, and was soon to be troubled by the stormy depths of his own past mistakes once more, he was grateful to be where he was; in a safe home with the people he loved. In their eternal faces, he looks for fellowship at night.