they say you're getting better, but you don't feel any better [closed]

[johnny_truant]

He dreams more and more of the house, more like the days before the rift when it haunted him almost every night and he stopped knowing the difference between sleep and hallucination. Sometimes he doesn't know they're dreams; often he does, and he knows there's help to be summoned if he wants it, but he doesn't want it. He deserves this. It's drawing him in, growing larger and larger at the back of his head, fed by too much probing and rearranging, fed by his own unwillingness to escape.

Tonight he knows. He stands in a massive, almost decadent foyer, never what Zampanò described, this would never be the house that Will Navidson and Karen Green moved their children into, but it doesn't matter, because the house can look like whatever it wants.

He stands for a moment, noting the stairways and the halls feeding into other rooms, and the various choices of doors. Just stands and observes, calmly, impassively, like he's memorizing it for something.

He has to pick a direction. He has to go somewhere.

His body tilts gently and pivots him to his left, toward the door that should be a coat closet, and he knows is not.

He opens it and steps through, letting himself cross into the belly of the beast, the true house interior, where everything is dark and ashen and quiet and cold. He moves forward, dread weighing him down heavily but not enough to pull him back, afraid but not enough to run. He moves like he's in a trance, like he has no choice (and he doesn't). The house is pulling him in, like it always does, it wants so heavily, so hungrily, and for whatever fucking reason it wants him.

He walks into the darkening, narrowing passage until he finds stairs, and then he descends.

Comments

[endless_epithumia]

They expected some measure of aggression, but this is not territorial as Desire would have thought. He's afraid, and isn't that interesting. They keep hold of his hand easily, running their thumb over the soft ridges of bone and tendon. However vast this presence may be, Johnny is but a human, small and fragile, and easy enough for Desire to overpower. He will be their point of ingress.

"I'm only curious," they murmur, leaning into him. "You can tell me, I assure you I'll understand."

[johnny_truant]

"That isn't really-" he stammers as he backs up into the wall, "-what worries me."

He swallows heavily, staring up at them. "It's just a house," he lies again. "It's just - just this house I - I dream about." He presses his free hand back against the wall behind him, finding ironic comfort in it; a possible exit, as well as a trap.

"It's not for you," he says softly.

[endless_epithumia]

Johnny has no way of knowing how wrong that assertion is, but Desire smiles all the same. He'll learn soon enough.
"Not for me?" they echo, with a tilt of the head. "Is that so."

They lean in until they make contact, brushing their chest up against him, one hand on the (pleasantly cold) wall beside Johnny's head, the other still gripping his hand. "Well," the murmur, their lips ghosting over his neck. "What about you, then?"

the dub con train is leaving the station all aboard the dub con train

[johnny_truant]

He sucks in a quick, sharp breath between his teeth as they move in against him, oh god, he shivers involuntarily and his eyes flutter shut when feels their breath on his neck. "I - I'm-" he murmurs, still pulling his hand back - no longer trying to tug it free, just shifting, drawing their hand along. Like he wants them to snag his wrist and pin it to the wall. He does want that. They're powerful, whatever they are; luxuriant, intoxicating, completely overwhelming, and he wants to be overwhelmed. He always does.

And it's such an obvious ploy, using this to get at him, using him to get at the house, and there's a part of him that wants to resist, push them away, run, but the urge is dulled, whether by something they've done to him or by his own weak will he can't tell.

Does it matter?

"That's negotiable," he says, and hates himself for it.