The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Picture a house. Actually, picture two houses. They're (almost) identical structures that share an uneasy coexistence, tangled together on a quantum level. One of the houses is Good: bright, cheerful, full of comfortable furniture and a pervasive feeling of safety. The other house is Evil: dingy, dilapidated, and haunted by the dreamers' greatest fears.

The good news - and bad news - is that travel from one house to the other is as simple as passing through a door. All a dreamer has to do is walk through a doorway, any doorway, and they'll find themselves in whichever house they weren't in before they crossed the threshold. Perhaps they'll step out of a beautiful library and find themselves in a threatening hallway - or perhaps they'll flee a menacing kitchen and find themselves in a perfectly safe dining room. That is the nature of the houses' entanglement: every door is a portal between the two.

There are, of course, complications. Dreamers in one house can't perceive the other; if you're in the Good house and looking through a doorway, the space beyond will look as nice and inviting as the space you're in now (until you step through that doorway, of course). Dreamers also can't really perceive one another if they're in the same room, but in different houses, though they might see a flash of movement out of the corner of their eye, or think they heard something.

Perhaps the greatest complications are the houses themselves. They have rather strong personalities, and they aren't very fond of one another. Each house will want to keep you if it can (keep you safe, in the case of the Good house, or keep you for itself, in the case of the Evil one). Dreamers may attempt to cross a hall and find the door that looked open and inviting a moment ago is now barred shut, leaving them trapped in the hall - or have doors suddenly close in their faces before they can end up anywhere unpleasant. Still, there's only so much either house can do, and even a locked door can be jimmied open or busted down.

Escape from the houses is possible, but the formal gardens beyond are similarly entangled, with neatly trimmed lawns and expertly plotted flower beds becoming overgrown tangles of nettles and algae-choked reflecting pools. An archway is as good as a door, as far as the gardens are concerned, and there are plenty of arbors and arches over the paths. Of course, dreamers may find that a sound arbor in the Good garden has collapsed in the Evil one… and heaven help anyone who dares to explore the hedge maze.





[ooc: y'all know the drill. ALL characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.

Also, this dream party marks the aforementioned calendar freeze. For the next three weeks, the IG date will sit on July 3rd. Posts dated July 3rd or earlier are allowed and encouraged. The calendar will resume forward motion at a 4:1 ratio on Saturday, July 26th.]

Comments

[johnny_truant]

Johnny shifts his weight. He feels the draw of that voice, soft and almost growling, coaxing him in. He resists it with a kneejerk display of reluctance, sullen and uneasy.

"Why?" he says, not quite petulant.

[yfeltihtend]

'Why?' he echoes, like he's not entirely clear on the meaning of the word.

'Why, a man might begin to feel insulted, you all the way over there like I were some kind of monster.' He pauses for a little huff of laughter, amusement at a private joke. 'I shan't bite.'

One corner of his mouth twitches up briefly to bare a canine.

[johnny_truant]

Not exactly comforting. Johnny frowns tightly and averts his eyes just a little, gazing, unfocused, at the doctor's right shoulder instead of meeting his stare.

Still, though. He finds himself moving, stepping forward, just inching really. He comes just barely within the length of Niall's arm and no closer, standing there, expectant - though of what, he is reluctant to guess.

[yfeltihtend]

'You want to know what that was.'

It's not a question, just an observation, and he jerks his head faintly back towards the room on the other side of the door he's leaning against to indicate what he means by that. His banishment of the shadow-creature. He can still taste something faintly ashy in the back of his throat, like saying the words had scorched him from the inside.

[johnny_truant]

"Yeah." Johnny fidgets, still looking not quite at the doctor, heart pounding a little more heavily than seems reasonable. The room is emanating a warm, safe feeling, the noise and smell of crackling fire a homey comfort, the light gentle and soothing. But he still feels so very on edge. Nowhere to run - the hallway's the only option here, and it will still be the same dangerous place; nowhere to hide here, Niall's eyes tracing his every move.

[yfeltihtend]

'I told you I've made a study of many things,' Unthank says, letting the words fall, one by one, into the fragrant air of the room. 'Many things, many ~secrets. Arts thought lost to man, knowledge from pre-Christian times. I can walk through your dreams and banish your demons, Mr. Truant.'

He pauses, one eyebrow twitching up, lips pursing into a fleeting moue. 'I could teach you to do the same, if you cared. I imagine that might be some comfort, not to have to jump at every shadow in a strange room, lest it be that, ah, beastie of yours.'

He doesn't know enough about Johnny really to guess whether he's the kind of man to be drawn in by such an offer. But the odds seem fair; after all, he'd been intrigued enough to make a study of that manuscript even when he'd known, down in his bones and bowels, that it might kill him.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny blinks and meets his eyes again, startled into it by the unexpected benevolence of the offer. It's tantalizing, the idea that he could protect himself, wouldn't need others (so many others, too many) to look after him all the time, to put themselves in danger and poison their lives with his madness. It's a seductive offer, and a terrifying one, implying so much. He's not so naive as to think it wouldn't alter him, deconstruct and reshape him every bit as much as the book did. And Lude was right, of course, that he couldn't quite turn away. There is always a part of him that can't turn away - or that looks when he shouldn't, which is in some ways the very same thing.

"How?" he murmurs almost without thinking it, like the word formed itself and left him without his consent.

[yfeltihtend]

Unthank smiles, a small, secret smile, and pushes himself off the door with a roll of his shoulderblades, moving in the beginnings of a circuit around Johnny where he stands.

'Mm, it would be not be quick, nor easy; and it would require... sacrifice.' His voice drops on the word sacrifice, shadows fleeing across his face as he moves through the firelight. 'But sacrifice is always necessary for power, even of the mundane variety; CEOs, celebrities, politicians. Power of a sort, but scratchings to what I could teach.'

At the apex of his circle, he doesn't continue it, but pivots on his heel instead to walk Johnny slowly back towards the wall. 'I suspect it's been a long time since you've had any power at all. Has it not?'

[johnny_truant]

A deal with a devil, then. Johnny should have guessed as much. He's not sure what he's willing to give - rather, what he even has to give. But he can only step back, staring up at this tall, intimidating man who's so gently insinuated himself into first Johnny's dream, then his trust, and now - what? His story?

He reaches the wall and presses back against it, wishing he could sink through it. "I can - I have a little," he says, his voice breathy and uneven. "I can... do things. Like what the house does."

But he can't do it now, and what's more he doesn't want it.

"It doesn't protect me," he admits. "It keeps me here. Or keeps all this... here, in me." His fingers flex, the beginnings of a possible motion, but it never completes itself. His muscles ache with the hollow feeling of helplessness. He's so, so trapped.

[yfeltihtend]

'Ohhhh,' Unthank hums, pleased and surprised. He'd not expected that, but it is fascinating, and his interest shows plainly in his face, no effort made to hide it. 'Can you indeed?'

Johnny's up against the wall, nowhere left for him to retreat, but Unthank takes another step forward that leaves them a scant foot apart, Johnny pressed against the wood with the fire, rather pleasingly, casting Unthank's shadow flickeringly over him. He lifts one hand in a thoughtful, deliberate motion, fingers spread, thumb held out in a delicate gesture as though he were about to conduct an orchestra, or sketch something invisible in midair.

Instead, he lets it fall again to Johnny's neck, fingertips describing a line just above his collarbone, dragging in the hollow of his throat. The pulse there drums wildly.

'What sort of things can you do, pray tell?'

CW: EXTREME DUB CON AND D/S, FOR THE DURATION OF THE THREAD

[johnny_truant]

"I - I can-" Johnny swallows heavily, his adam's apple bobbing lightly against Niall's fingertips. His pulse quickens even more, but he's not quite afraid, afraid isn't the word he wants, he's - uneasy, yes, tense, certainly, but also, he realizes with some distant revulsion, he wants. The hand on his throat is not threatening so much as suggesting, and Johnny does not resist it. Not yet.

"I can reshape houses," he says, his voice trembling. "Their insides. I can't do it here. The dream won't let me. But out there, it's... The house is still part of me."

He speaks this in monotone, like a recitation, almost, even as wavering and hesitant as it is. He breathes out, and his breath shudders in his body's place.

Re: CW: EXTREME DUB CON AND D/S, FOR THE DURATION OF THE THREAD

[yfeltihtend]

'Now that is a neat trick.'

It's clear that Johnny hates the power, is afraid of it, thinks of it not as something he can do but something he's afflicted with. But that's merely a problem of mindset, and mindset is so very easily altered. And that is a skill that could be useful to him.

'You know,' he murmurs, low and gravelled, 'you could change that. Go back, stop that friend of yours from ever showing you the book.'

His fingertips are still limning the span of Johnny's throat; now he lets them trail up, index and middle fingers smearing up over his jaw, brushing his earlobe. The shift settles his thumb comfortably in the concavity between Johnny's clavicles, and Unthank presses up. Contemplative, fascinated. Not hard enough to choke, but enough to smooth his thumb up, over the bobbing Adam's apple and to Johnny's chin, tilting his face up.

'You could make yourself someone entirely new, someone who had never even heard of Zampanò, had never been... touched by the house. Or,' he runs his thumb down Johnny's throat again, and chuckles, 'well. That's only one of many options.'

[johnny_truant]

Johnny can barely even mark the words. Niall's fingers are in constant motion, feeling him out, tracing him obsessively like Hamlet over Ophelia, a reference weighted with fearful innuendo, that this might be exactly what it appears to be, and that it will end with Johnny drowned.

He stiffens and gasps softly when the pressure increases; his breath coming quick and shallow, tinged now with faint sounds, little plaintive murmurs.

The option he's been offered terrifies him more than anything, and he'd be hard-pressed to answer why. Most days he'd give anything to have never known about the house or the book or Zampanò. But when presented with the real, tangible possibility, he darts back, recoiling from it. Without the house, without all that torture and fear and loss of time and self, without the nightmares, what would be left? Who would he even be?

"No," he whispers, and falls silent with a strained inhalation as Niall's thumb courses back down the column of his throat.

[yfeltihtend]

Unthank feels like a sculptor, and Johnny the most breathtakingly exquisite clay under his fingers. The boy seems almost custom-made for him; catching breaths, the little whines and snagging gasps, swamped between desire and terror. His own breath threatens to catch once-- just once-- when Johnny speaks.

No.

'Oh, good,' he murmurs. 'Not so cowardly, then. I'm pleased to hear it.' His lips curl up just enough to bare a sliver of teeth, and he bends down slightly as if to impart a secret. 'Between you and me, the other option's the better one, anyway.'

It's an invitation for Johnny to ask-- or better yet to imagine.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny can't possibly imagine. He can barely think at all. His palms flatten back against the wall like the ears of a cat; he coils tight at the slight increase in the doctor's proximity, muscles tensed, innards knotted in trepidation. Still the instinct to fight seems strangely quelled; still, his palms cannot imprint the wall behind him, no matter how hard he wishes for a way out.

"What's the other option?" he asks, his voice cracking wherever it climbs above a whisper.

[yfeltihtend]

His face is close enough that Johnny will be able to feel the little puff of air when he laughs, a rolling baritone chuckle. 'Power, dear boy,' he says, like it should be obvious. 'What on earth would be the point in having power over the world,' his hand tightens briefly on Johnny's throat in emphasis, 'without power over oneself?'

The words give way to the ambient noise of the room for a moment, and Unthank inhales once, deeply and slowly, before straightening again, drawing himself back to his full height. His bright eyes study Johnny as if he were a bug on a pin.

'You learn enough, and you can take that house that's still a part of you and use or discard it as you please. You'd have no need to fear it. The things in the dark, the crawling, impossible horrors that drive men mad; you've known madness; you could have them cowering at your feet. Or ignore them altogether,' he adds lightly, 'if that's your pleasure.'

Tilting his head to one side, he releases his hold on Johnny's throat, bringing his hands up to lace his fingers together across his chest.

'What do you want, Johnny? Hmm?'

[johnny_truant]

He gasps and moans so softly when the grip tightens, and again when he's released.

"You'd make me the minotaur," says Johnny in a hush, almost to himself now. He shakes his head slowly, finally tearing his eyes away, looking down at his feet, at the incredibly narrow gap of hardwood floor between them.

"I don't want that," he says. "I don't want to be a monster. To be the thing I fear."

Not an answer, not really. He looks back up, finding the doctor's eyes, because he knows on some level that he has no choice. "I don't know," he admits.

[yfeltihtend]

Unthank exhales a shuddering little breath. 'Ah, but you would have the choice. You could make of yourself whatever you wished, monster or no. Then again,' he adds with a chuckle, 'perhaps not. Perhaps you've acquired a taste for being someone else's puppet, hmm?'

His eyes drop to Johnny's throat and linger, as if he were imagining tearing it open with his teeth. That moan had been rather telling.

'What is it?' he ruminates aloud, running his hand-- the same hand he'd had at Johnny's neck-- down his skinny, heaving chest until he finds a nipple, and then twisting, almost pulling the boy towards him. 'Obeying? Or having no choice but to? Both are... fine qualities in a student.'

[johnny_truant]

This time Johnny's soft, restrained gasping resolves into a startled yelp, ramping up quickly and dying almost as fast, leaving him shaky and breathless, quivering under the pinch of thumb and forefinger. It is this that undoes him; he arches toward his would-be tutor in sharp surprise, his breathing ragged and his fingers digging uselessly against the immutable wall.

"Oh, god," he whispers, the words slipping carelessly out, regretting it immediately, that he's given that, that acknowledgment, that - concession. But it hardly matters. Niall's got him taken well apart by now. Knows what he craves, and that he craves it enough that now what he wants is to press forward, not pull away; or if he wants to fight back, he wants to be overcome.

[yfeltihtend]

'Mmhmmm,' he murmurs, a smugly wordless, Oh, you don't have to call me God.

Unthank can see it in Johnny's eyes, the too-late realisation of a man who's just signed a contract and not read the fine print, and there is something uniquely piquant about that. It's all well and good to force a man into something against his will, but to lead him there, to make him want his own undoing until the moment he's left scattered and ruined, that is a most particular pleasure. Of course, Johnny Truant is already more than half scattered and ruined, but even so. It's the little moments.

He keeps firm his grip on Johnny's nipple, slowly, slowly increasing the pressure, digging in with his thumbnail through the thin fabric of Johnny's t-shirt. A sharp pain, he knows, but the persistence of it will eventually make it seem not a focussed sensation, not limited to the flesh between his fingers but felt in a hot, numb throb all around it.

Craning down to put his mouth right next to Johnny's ear, he gives a little tug to his nipple to draw him closer. 'Now,' he murmurs, 'why don't you tell me about that fascinating thing I rescued you from?'

He punctuates his request, very deliberately, with a single soft, bristly kiss under Johnny's ear, wet with tongue and suction. Like he's sampling him to see if the taste is to his fancy.

[johnny_truant]

"F-ffuck," Johnny hisses, squirming now like the undignified little mess he is, every merciless twist and pull on his nipple sending jolts of arousal straight to his cock, god he had no idea he was this fucking easy, has he always been like this? - Niall draws him in with it, and Johnny finds himself so eager, desperate to do this with someone he never would have come close to considering before Gabe had awakened this curiosity in him, in ways he's always considered without ever having done. He feels vile and disgusting, but with that an intense desire to be compressed and unmade, blotted out even for a few moments. He presses willingly against the tall stranger's body, cock already hard against the cruelly tight denim of his jeans, and he whines softly when the request is made, punctuated with that mouth.

"Ah-" he groans, startled by the sting of facial hair. "It - I-"

It's not fair. How does Niall expect him to talk in this state? He rolls his hips forward, a little dare, testing the waters. How much will he be allowed? How badly does this man want his answer, and what will he do to get it?

[yfeltihtend]

Johnny tastes of fear-sweat and salt under Unthank's tongue, the pulse tangible, and it is all too easy to imagine the ozone richness of iron beneath the skin. Maybe later. For now, Johnny's squirming and hissing are quite sufficient to send heat blooming beneath his own skin, and he smiles sharply against his neck; Johnny will be able to feel the press of teeth.

He soon draws back, though, as Johnny bucks up against him, managing no more than a few stuttered syllables in answer. There's no violence about the motion, but with smooth suddenness, a moment later he's got Johnny pinned up against the wall with his hips, one thigh shoved roughly between Johnny's. His eyes on him are cold, but his voice stays mild as ever.

'Tch, impatient. I asked a question, boy, and, ah, heh. You did see what sorts of things I can do when I've a mind.'

[johnny_truant]

Of course, like clockwork, he's pushed back, pinned by Niall's hips and his leg, oh god, pressing hard between his thighs, he can't help but rub himself against it even as he shudders under the cold stare and the stern voice.

"It's part of the house," he says, syllables falling between faltering breaths. "The monstrosity of it. The monster. The part of it that wants to devour. That's all I know, and it's just a guess."

He looks up, meeting Niall's eyes, at once fearful and defiant, always a contradiction with him. He can't speak, still breathing so raw and uneven as he rocks up and down, nice and slow; but it doesn't matter, he suspects. He's breaking the rules enough without unnecessary chatter.

[yfeltihtend]

'Devour...' he repeats the word thoughtfully, like he likes the taste of it. And there is something-- intriguing, in the notion that there's something in Johnny's house, which is itself all houses, that wants to consume. The antithesis of that which a house is built to be. Unheimlich, in the words of several entertaining madmen centuries after his time.

'Tell me,' Doctor Unthank whispers, the sound hanging in the air, catching and clinging like so much cobweb, 'do you ever dream of that? Of being devoured?' He presses further against Johnny's hips, pinning him against the wall with his sheer height and bulk. 'Of being... swamped, pressed down upon and consumed. There's something visceral about it, isn't there?' His eyes flash briefly wide, sharp with appreciation. 'Nothing so... cerebral, metaphysical as an, mm, an unmaking, not simply the ceasing of existence of death, but to be smothered by the warm dark...'

He exhales a shivery little breath, and lifts a long finger to trail over Johnny's lips, parted and damp with his own unsteady breath. It catches against the skin.

'Do you ever wake up ~hard?' He drives forward and up with his thigh to punctuate the word hard, his own lips parted and eyes on Johnny in fascination.

[johnny_truant]

"Hgh-" The abortive syllable twists its way out of him when Niall presses him harder against the wall, too caught between fear and grotesque exhilaration now to struggle at all. His lips part a little wider, almost inviting, not quite tonguing at the doctor's finger. He's been so effortlessly wrecked upon this, this lighthouse of a man, how did he get here?

"I," he breathes, stuttering again, all too easily. He does, of course he does, he dreams about it obsessively, sometimes in terror, sometimes in this messed up cocktail that he's feeling now. And yes, he wakes up hard, he always does, who doesn't, but even after those dreams, even then, especially then.

"Yes," he gasps, finally, looking up, pleading, begging, who knows what for. "Yes."