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He gazes out into the gloaming's dark and endless mire, and something which is not quite human stares back at him.
The door to Detective Jan Suk's apartment sits ajar, ushering in a chill which lances through his flesh to his core. Rain falls in heavy sheets against the apartment's windows, its steady and persistent rhythm echoing the language of the clouds above like the beat of a drum. The Antichrist looms in the doorway, poised and quiet; the streetlights of the city behind him set the white-blonde hair which crowns his head ablaze like a golden halo. Suk does not meet his eyes, for he fears how much of himself he might see in them.
"Won't you invite me in, Detective?" Johan asks in that soft, lilting voice of his, and Suk feels something unwelcome curl in the pit of his stomach. "I got caught in the rain, and it's so terribly cold out here."
Suk remains still and silent, the afterimage of an empty hospital bed haunting the corners of his mind. He's had this dream a dozen times before. He knows how it ends, knows there is still room for the Devil within the barren walls of his heart. He wishes demolishing that hallowed space was a simpler task.
When Suk does not respond, Johan whispers, " Please ," and the word comes out miserable and wretched, a single atrophied syllable barely audible above the rain's rhythmic chorus.
"Come on," Suk relents with a weary sigh, guilt tugging at his insides, "you're going to catch a cold. This weather isn't good for anyone to be out in so late at night, least of all someone fresh out of the hospital."
At the invitation, Johan stalks wordlessly through the threshold of Suk's apartment, movements feline and impossibly graceful in their execution. In the dim light, Suk sees a gentle smile grace Johan's features, and he is alarmed at how readily he welcomes the warmth that pools within him as a result. This feeling is not like the muted hum of warmth he experiences in his dreams, not so watery and dilute; it is more palpable, spreads through his veins all the way to the terminals of his fingertips. He drinks it up with a greed that terrifies him, wishes with a hopeless ardency that he could bottle it and store it away for safekeeping.
"Thank you, Detective," Johan says, and closes the door behind him. The rain's droning dirge fades into the background, a muffled afterthought. “I was afraid you’d grown more callous since the last time I saw you.”
Suk furrows his brows, hyper aware of how his body sits in the midst of the space surrounding him. “It’s only been a few months.” He pauses, shifting in place in a desperate attempt to feel more at home in his own dwelling. “You’re not that wet. Do you want a towel?”
Johan shakes his head. Though his fringe is damp and sticks to his forehead, his clothes—a black turtleneck, with a brown blazer and slacks—are miraculously dry. “I’m alright.” He takes a seat on Suk’s couch, crossing his legs and resting a pair of folded hands on his thighs. Compelled by something he isn’t quite able to comprehend, Suk takes a seat in the chair across from him, the two of them separated by the mundane barrier of Suk’s coffee table. “How was work today?”
The playful imitation of intimacy and domesticity causes his stomach to turn over on itself. “Stressful,” Suk responds, thinking of the dark circles that have started to stain the skin beneath his eyes; he sometimes fixates on them when he stares at himself in the mirror, sometimes rubs them until his eyes water like that will make them go away. He’s still dressed in the clothes he wore to work, not having had the time to change out of them. “It’s always stressful, but it’s been worse than usual lately. They still don’t think I’m well enough to start doing field work again.” Despite the fact that they have since scarred over, his bullet wounds ache. Three of them: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A dull memory prods the back of his mind: once again, he is writhing on the floor in a pool of his own blood, screaming his throat raw as a dead man tries desperately to save his life.
“In my own way, I’m glad you’re still alive,” says Johan, quietly, easily, and Suk can’t quite bring himself to doubt his words. “Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anything else for me to come back to. There would be no part of me left in Prague, and I would be alone here.” Johan smiles to himself; the blatant selfishness of his words melts away, and, despite his best judgement, Suk feels adored. Suk’s heart is weak and traitorous, and, like the hearts of so many others have been, it is hopelessly enamored with the man sitting before him.
“You’re here to kill me,” Suk says with a cold certainty, casting his gaze down to his feet. “You want to erase the last bit of yourself left in this city.” A terrible and frigid dread tempers the craven carcass of his flesh; artificial flames, radiant and orange, tongue the edges of his vision with their synthetic glow. “Are you going to burn down my apartment, too?” This would be the third time Johan had done such a thing: the library, the Red Rose Mansion, and now, his apartment. Again, three wounds. Just like the Trinity.
Johan’s smile doesn’t fade, just continues to gently adorn his features. “Is that what you think?”
“There are people here that care about me,” Suk continues, voice wavering despite his futile attempts to maintain his composure. “They’ll come looking for me, and they’ll know it was you. You can’t just make me disappear like you wanted to do with yourself. I’m not fictional. I’m real.” Idly, Suk wonders who it is he’s trying to convince more: Johan, or himself?
“I’m not here to kill you, Detective,” Johan says, speaking in the same tone one would use to comfort a wild animal. He peers up at Suk through the shutters of his eyelashes, wispy and blonde and delicate. “I wanted to disappear completely for years, but I don’t think something like that’s possible anymore. After making it my reason for living for so long, I’ve given up on that dream.” After pausing for a moment, Johan gives an amused hum, and the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. “It’s a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? I did all that, and I still didn’t die. I did all that, and I have to keep existing anyway.”
Johan makes killing hundreds sound like the most casual thing in the world, like a regretful afterthought of his existence best forgotten. An emptiness gives way within Suk’s chest as he imagines how terribly alone Johan must be, how miserable and withered the parts of him that were once human must have become. “If you’re not here to kill me, then what do you want? You have to want something . I find it hard to believe otherwise.”
Johan’s expression shifts to one of feigned woundedness, but his ever-present and catlike simper deliberately and tactically betrays its fabrication. “Is it not enough for you and I to be here in the same room, together again? Maybe I just wanted to visit you.” He leans forward in his seat, pale and unblinking blue eyes meeting Suk’s. It is difficult not to crumble in the face of Johan’s gaze. “In any case, you’re a detective, aren’t you? I’m sure you’ll be able to uncover my motives, if I have any. You’re much smarter than your inexperience lets on, you know.”
Though he wants to, it’s impossible for Suk to take offense to the appraisal; his annoyance is quelled just as quickly as it appears, drowned by a wave of self-indulgent pride at the backhanded compliment. “I think you find me amusing,” Suk guesses, tone laced with caution. “You want to see what I’ll do. Then, once you get bored of me, you’ll leave, and I’ll wonder what I could have done differently to keep you interested.” I won’t be able to stop thinking about you for the rest of my life, he thinks to himself with a certain melancholy bitterness, though he is certain Johan can hear the unspoken words just the same as if he had said them aloud.
“You think I’m that monstrous,” Johan replies, and it is not a question, but a statement, delivered with a degree of finality that causes an awful and gnarled pity to rise up within Suk. “Something less than human that looks exactly like one.”
“Yes,” says Suk, “but it’s not your fault. It’s wrong for anyone to call you a monster without hating the people who turned you into one.” Suk lets the statement hang in the air between them, taking a moment to drink in all of Johan; he follows the delicate curve of his cheekbones, loses himself in Johan’s serene, half-lidded expression. He is so, so beautiful, like Lucifer before his fall. Johan meets his eyes once more, and Mary’s Seven Sorrows lance Suk’s heart with their empyrean steel.
“So forgiving, Detective,” Johan chides. “You should be more careful about who you choose to extend your compassion towards.”
“I should,” agrees Suk, and for a long while, he does not speak again.
Suk allows himself to dissolve in the face of Johan’s radiance, lets himself adore this stranger as freely and wholly as he wishes to despite his best judgement. Suk traces the straight slope of Johan’s nose down to his shallow cupid’s bow, rests his eyes on the pink, floral stain of his lips; they look so soft, so pliable, and oh, how miserably Suk wants to part them open with the pad of his thumb, how desperately Suk wants to press them to his own. There is a coldness that Johan carries within his flesh, Suk knows, like an albatross around his neck; Suk wants to catch him in a tight embrace, to share with him his own warmth as Johan makes himself small against Suk’s chest. He wants to run his fingers through Johan’s white-blonde hair as one would the cold current of a curving river, to submerge himself in Johan’s pelagic depths. He finds himself dizzy in Johan’s presence, as drunk on it as he was the alcohol they’d shared together when Johan was still Anna. This is Johan’s strange sorcery, and it is what makes him so terrifying.
Johan is the one to break the silence. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asks innocently enough, though only a fool would assume he didn’t know more than he was letting on. His eyelids still hang heavy beneath his fine-haired brows, the artful and translucent stitchwork of his eyelashes casting shadows across the apples of his cheeks.
Suk lets out a sigh, and he sounds so, so weary. “You don’t have to be a detective to figure that out.”
Pantomiming a state of contemplation, Johan presses a hooked finger to his bottom lip. “You want to sleep with me,” he says finally, speaking in a tone so matter-of-fact that Suk has to bite back the laugh that teases at his lips.
Suk wrinkles his nose. “And you’ve never heard of something called tact.”
The curve of Johan’s smile deepens, and he rises from his seat on Suk’s couch, crossing over to the front door. Without taking his eyes off Suk, he shrugs out of his blazer and hangs it up on Suk’s coat rack. Far from the fluidity Suk is used to when it comes to Johan, the movement is drawn out and calculated, performed in a manner that is for Suk’s eyes only. It is not quite awkward—nothing about Johan could be considered so unpolished—but it seems rehearsed and unnatural, as though there is effort behind it. An attempt at something is being made here, Suk is sure.
As Johan stalks over to him, crouching down and resting a hand on his shoulder, a soft glow of warmth rises to Suk’s cheeks. “You know, you’re beautiful, Detective,” he says into Suk’s ear, lowering his voice so that it nearly disappears into the rain. “ Jan . So very lovely.” Johan gives a low hum, presses his forehead to Suk’s temple.
“Johan,” he starts, “what is this?”
“I’d let you fuck me like you would a woman, you know,” Johan continues, easily; casually. “I’d be soft and pliant underneath you so you could pretend. I’d wear a dress for you, even keep it on the whole time. And I’d let you come inside me, let you make me yours.”
Suk tries to ignore the burning arousal that curls in his lower abdomen, tries to ignore the agonizing slowness with which it snakes through him. “You don’t have to do that for me,” says Suk, unable to keep himself from leaning into Johan’s touch. “I like you . The way you are now, I mean. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re a man or a woman.”
“Is that so?” Johan says with a soft laugh. “Well then, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.” He smiles against the shell of Suk’s ear, and a tremor runs through him. “What is it that you want, Jan?”
“ You ,” he says, and the answer comes effortlessly.
Johan moves until he is positioned in front of Suk, then drops to his knees, running a hand up Suk’s thigh. “I could suck you off, let you fuck my mouth, and you could bury your fingers in my hair,” he says, smiling to himself. Slowly, Johan guides Suk’s right hand to the crown of his head, and Suk stares back down at him, curling his fingers. “I’d let you pull as hard as you wanted, and I’d look up at you, just like this.” Pointedly, Johan casts his gaze upwards, meeting Suk’s from beneath the blonde canopy of his eyelashes.
“Oh,” says Suk in a voice that is too small for his body, because he does not know what else to say. Johan keeps smiling his angelic smile, and Suk cannot help but feel as though something is terribly wrong with the man kneeling before him. Something awful is screaming inside Johan, Suk is sure of it, like an injured animal wailing to be put out of its misery. Sitting here in his cheap imitation of heaven’s throne, Suk holds the killing rock in his hands, trembling with the power to crush the poor animal’s skull.
Johan rises, and returns to Suk’s side. “You can take me from behind,” he whispers, his voice curiously even, “and fuck me like the miserable, pathetic creature you think I am. Like something pretending to be human. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Suk’s throat tightens like a vice, and tears prick the corners of his eyes. He swallows them down, and carefully, he stands until he is face to face with Johan. “I know why you’re here,” he says, and it is the most certain of anything he’s been the entire night.
“Oh?” Johan quirks an eyebrow. “Why’s that, Detective?”
Suk takes a deep breath, and takes Johan’s hand in his own. He’s afraid the touch will be rejected, but Johan lets him. The other’s fingers are pale and cold against Suk’s; blue veins stick out from beneath the skin of Johan’s wrist, ghostly, like the legs of a spider. “There’s an abandoned church in the city,” he begins, rubbing careful circles into the top side of Johan’s hand with his thumb. “I pass by it every day on the way to and from work.”
Johan grows still as death, quiet, and casts his gaze to the floor. His silence is a wordless invitation for Suk to keep speaking.
“I’ve been inside it before,” Suk continues. “The aisles are empty now; no one’s gone there to pray since the eighties. It smells like dust and mildew, and the façade is cracked and crumbling. Weeds grow up and down the walls, and cobwebs cover every corner.”
Experimentally, Suk reaches over with his free hand and tucks a strand of Johan’s hair behind his ear, fingertips lingering over the swell of Johan’s cheek as he pulls away. “I think about it a lot: about how warm and bright it must have been on the inside when it was in service, and about how everyone’s voices must have sounded together as they sang their hymns.” He lets out an amused hum, barely audible above the sound of the rain. “Sometimes, I wish I could have been there to see the way the light streamed through the windows, to see if it really felt like God was in the room there with you.”
“It’s dark and lonely in there,” Suk goes on after a short pause. “It’s completely grey; the only color comes from the broken, stained glass windows inside. I can’t stay inside there for more than five minutes without feeling like I can’t breathe anymore.” Suk’s bottom lip quivers slightly, and he forces himself to smile through it. “All those people, left without a home. It’s impossible for me not to think about them, about whether or not they ever saw each other again after the place closed down. I think, maybe, it was the only thing keeping some of them together.”
Suk’s breathing lulls itself into a steady rhythm as he swipes his thumb back and forth over Johan’s bruised and scabbed knuckles. “The other day, though, I saw something. It was almost like I imagined it, but I saw it all the same.” At Suk’s words, Johan raises his head to meet his gaze. “It was a man, dressed in grey coveralls. I saw him pulling weeds out from the cracks in the stone, sweeping away the dead leaves that had been piling up in front of the doors for months. Somehow, I know that man was the first human being to touch the place like that in decades.”
Suk lets out a shaky breath. “I think there’s something inside you a little bit like that church,” he finishes, “and that you came here to find someone to pull the weeds out. I think there are a few pieces missing from your stained glass windows, but it’s okay. It will be okay, Johan.”
He kisses Johan, gets tangled in his limbs, and the world around him rings. Something strange and warm flowers in Suk’s chest as he cups Johan’s face in his hands, cards his fingers through his hair; it comes easy, and Johan gives beneath his touch like clay. They kiss as though neither can breathe without the other.
Suk pulls away, still warm, and the sound of the rain fills his ears. “You don’t need to have sex with me to get me to do that for you,” he says, taking Johan’s hand in his once more.
“But you want to.” Johan’s expression shifts to one of muted bemusement, like Suk has just said something he cannot fathom.
“I do,” says Suk, “but I would still try my hardest to make you whole again even if I didn’t want you like that.”
Johan stays silent for a long moment after that, letting the rain’s ever-present song fill the empty space between them. When he does finally speak, he does so quietly, as though he is afraid of his own voice, and offers a simple, “Thank you.”
“Let’s go to bed,” Suk suggests. “You can finally rest for a while. I’ll be here in the morning.”