[BROWTOBER] Eyes Wide Shut

It’s a mellow autumn afternoon, the floorboards creaking in time with Blue’s footsteps as he makes his way over to his desk. Through the window, glimpses of the astral oceans cling to the outside of the ship. They’re going somewhere, but Mattias has realised that he’s better off not knowing where. Paimon and Blue spend entire days deliberating over the course of the ship, sometimes raising their voices in argument, and Mattias, for once, resists his urge to control. He’s accepted that here, it’s not his place. Both on Paimon’s ship and in Blue’s life.

“I don’t know how you can stand it.” Mattias watches Blue rearrange the curious items on his desk. He watches the way one of his hands freezes in its place on a pocket watch, his fingertips lightly grazing the engraved golden shell.

“Stand what,” Blue says flatly, more of a statement than a question. They’ve both grown up, but it’s especially evident in the way that Blue’s more serious now.

Mattias shrugs, sitting up on the bed. He dissolves the knife he’d been spinning in his hands. “The halv curse.” Mattias stares into Blue’s back, tracing the muscled curves as they stiffen. “Knowing that you’re slowly losing control.”

Blue laughs a little, the stiffness bleeding out of him like an open wound. When he fully turns to face Mattias, there’s a little glint of something in his eye. Not quite hurt, not quite regret. The distance between them yawns, an open maw.

“I never had control in the first place,” Blue sighs, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t know what that’s like.” He shifts his weight from side to side.

With a thin smile, Mattias thinks that’s a little funny. Blue certainly had him curled around his very fingers years ago, sinking deeper and deeper into an obsession with no end. He also knows that’s not what Blue’s talking about right now and that were he to bring that up, it would shatter the uneasy tightrope of a truce that they’ve been walking since Mattias crashed onto Paimon’s ship with a knife and a target.

Besides, Blue probably doesn’t see it that way. That’s one thing Mattias has learned: there isn’t only one way of seeing things.

Blue furrows his brow slightly. “Kinda dark topic for a perfectly nice afternoon.” He flickers his gaze up to meet Mattias’ eyes. “What prompted this?”

Mattias can’t say what he’s thinking. That he’s always been curious about Blue’s nature as a voidtouched, from the first time he saw that blood dripping down his arm like ink in the dingy bathroom of his shitty Neon apartment. That he saw Blue just the other day, shirtless and making almost surgical cuts across his eye markings with a razor blade. His blood bubbled up to the surface, sizzling with intention, as he fell into the rhythm of stitching them back shut. Mattias had no idea what he was watching, but he knows the importance of eye symbols as well as anyone else — that they represent the eye of the universe itself, that bisecting them brings bad luck. Years ago, he dismissed it as superstition, but he’s learned a lot over a decade, including the fact that sometimes, magical superstitions carry more weight than the average cynic might assume. Why cut only to stitch?

“You know how I feel about halvs,” Mattias says instead. A nonsequitur. “How I felt. No control, no autonomy, slaves to the Abyssal Void.”

Blue bristles slightly. Some hurt doesn’t heal.

Mattias clears his throat. “Some of it was true. There were times that— well. There were times that I saw it for myself.” He’s talking around it, trying not to rile anything up in Blue. “But it’s not the same for everyone.”

Huffing slightly, Blue seats himself in the chair by his desk. Mattias takes note of the long sleeves he’s wearing, something he never thought to question before. Now, he imagines the stitches puckering the skin beneath. Maybe Blue has healed already; he always did have accelerated healing. There might not even be any scarring left.

“You were the first halv I ever met.” Not the only one, and they both know what happened to the others.

Blue blinks slowly, thinking. Then he sinks into the chair, melting against its form. He’s decided to talk.

“They used to say I had the heart of a demon,” Blue begins. “I’m not sure they were lying. I felt like it was the truth for a long time.” One hand reaches up to scratch at his arm absently. “And Lucifer—”

“We don’t have to talk about Lucifer.” Placating.

Blue’s eyes light up with something indignant at that, fire licking at his irises and burning Mattias from the inside out with shame. “And Lucifer,” he continues, “was the first one to make me feel like I wasn’t that. What other people made of me, I mean.” Blue scrubs a hand across his face tiredly. “I can talk about him sometimes, you know. It’s not— It’s not like it was before.”

Before. Mattias tries not to think about it and fails. Blue, barely coherent and tucked into the bed at Mattias’ Sun District apartment, clinging to him like a limpet. Begging for love and then casting Mattias aside, over and over again. Selfishly, he had thought that now that Lucifer was dead, he might finally have a chance. In reality, Lucifer’s death only immortalised him.

He could spit vitriol at Blue for things that happened a decade ago. Things that he has no closure on, that he’ll probably never be able to truly forget, not when the image of Blue’s tearstained smile haunts the corners of his waking mind. He doesn’t, though.

“Maybe,” Mattias says after a long pause. “But some things don’t change.”

Blue fires up again at that, the fur of his ears standing on edge. When he speaks, it’s a grating hiss of barely contained frustration. “I don’t know why I even bother with you,” he spits. “Every time I think things are different, it’s like you’re forced to remind me of what an asshole you are.”

Mattias swallows. “Maybe.” Cold as steel.

“Maybe? That’s all you’re going to say?” Blue runs one hand through the shag of his hair, blowing air out of his mouth sharply. “You start shit for no reason, Mattias. I don’t even know what prompted you to bring up any of this in the first place. And Lucifer — you always were so weird about him, you know?”

Blue glances at the window. Lightning crashes, illuminating his profile for a moment. Mattias hadn’t even noticed that it had started to rain.

“Was it insecurity?” Blue laughs sardonically. “Or something else? Control?”

His throat is dry as a desert and itching for a drink, his hands are aching for a cigarette, and his teeth are grating from how hard he’s clenching his jaw. Mattias looks at Blue, really looks at him, and watches as he twitches in anger. Anything to do with Lucifer really set him off for a time; maybe that time really has passed. Mattias inhales deeply.

“Forget about it.”

Blue scoffs. “Forget about what? You’re not entitled to anything here, Mattias. Not even answers. It’s my life.”

Mattias wrinkles his brow, then reaches for the journal he stashes by the bedside — the only space in the room that belongs to him. Everything else is Blue’s, from the threadbare carpet on the floor to the candles hovering in the air around their heads.

“Are you taking notes? What the fuck. Were you testing me or something?” Blue’s incandescent with rage like this, his hair blazing out like a wildfire behind him. His eyes glow bright, piercing beams that once made Mattias feel like he was being torn asunder. Now, it feels like they’re looking straight through him.

Mattias knows he’s pushed his luck, but there are things going on here that he doesn’t understand. Things he doesn’t know. Things that Blue won’t tell him. He wakes up feeling disoriented but shaken every morning and dread settles into the pit of his stomach every night. Blue is bisecting his eyes, and it’s only after he saw him doing so that Mattias realised there were no eye symbols in sight anywhere on the ship. Blue’s a liar. He always has been. But it’s easier to get the truth out of him when he’s angry.

Blue takes one, two steps across the room and then he’s gripping Mattias by the collar, lifting him up ever so slightly and forcing him to meet his eyes.

“I may have put up with your shit once, but I will not do it again.” It’s practically a growl, so low in his throat that it’s almost monstrous. Blue’s always known how to intimidate.

Mattias tosses his journal aside. “I think I’m the one putting up with your shit this time,” he spits back. “Or are you going to pretend there’s nothing going on with this?” In one movement, Mattias raises his hand to Blue’s arm and feels the flesh beneath with his blood magic. Just one little push of energy and he’s knitting it back together, healed as good as new.

He watches the way Blue freezes, anger morphing to shock and then — fear. Then Blue’s collapsing to the ground, clutching his forearm and screaming in pain.

Immediately, Mattias drops to his side. He doesn’t know what’s going on, doesn’t understand anything, and this is why Blue should have explained from the beginning— but no, there’s no time for that. His hand hovers over where he healed Blue and he feels blood. Quickly, he rolls up the sleeve, revealing an angry welt where there once was an eye marking. It’s bleeding, inky blackness spilling into Mattias’ palms when he tries to cover it, forcing all the energy he can into the wound, but it’s not healing. Still the blood comes and still Blue screams, his teeth elongating when he arches back. His halv form — a reaction to the pain, or is there another trigger?

“Blue. Blue, it’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.” Mattias pretends he can’t hear the shake in his voice. “What’s happening? How do I stop it?”

Blue’s gasping for breath, his eyes wide and panicked. “It burns,” he chokes out. “It’s him.”

“Who?” Mattias grips Blue tightly, squeezing him as hard as he can. “You’re not making any sense, älskling.” God, he feels something screaming in his head.

“Cut.” Blue’s clawing at Mattias’ back in either pain or desperation. “I need you to— I need—”

Mattias shushes him gently, prying himself away from Blue to find something, anything he can use. On the desk, a letter opener glints at him. He lunges for it, then bends over Blue’s arm with a grimace.

“Förlåt.”

He plunges the blade into the centre of the eye. Immediately, Blue stills, though his breath still comes heavy and harsh in his throat. His eyes slip shut slightly. It feels like hours pass before either of them speak, Mattias still holding the letter opener in a tight grip and Blue stretched out across half of him.

“I didn’t know you knew,” Blue breathes out at last, coughing and pushing himself upright with a slight shake. “It would have been better if you didn’t.”

Mattias screws up his face in something that could be apologetic, but is mostly guilty. “I didn’t really know. I just saw you once.”

Blue grins a little. “Fucking stalker.” It melts into a frown. “Well, he’s seen us now. I’ll have to tell Paimon to change our course.”

There’s an urge to push Blue’s hair out of his face that Mattias very valiantly resists. “Who’s seen us?”

A grim expression overtakes Blue’s face, the likes of which Mattias has very rarely seen. There’s a cold resignation in his eyes, normally so bright with life.

“I said it was better if you didn’t know,” Blue says, “but it’s too late for that now.”

Blue cups Mattias’ cheek in one hand, the saddest of smiles curving across his face.

“Matti,” he says with a deep sigh, “it’s your father. And he’s hunting us.”