Gloves back on to muffle sounds of typing, and Conjure One inspires me. This ScriEdgar porn WON'T FRIGGING END and I wanna write something else. So I'm just gonna ramble about somethin else fer a bit. Who's gonna stop me, anyway? Internet police will never know! Besides, maybe I can finish the porn after I do something else fer a bit. Or maybe it's just a cute image that I can't resist and this Sleep song won't get it out of my head. I'm thinking maybe three or four paragraphs, something short and sweet, then maybe I can finish this ScriEdgar thing later.

You start to notice things.
The time clicks by, a momentary flick and the minutes change, the hours change. He can't sleep.
It's ironic, in a way.
You start to notice things at night, when sleep escapes you and the mind has nothing to focus on except sensations commonly filtered out. The overwhelming sensory bombardment, simplified and filed down to make sanity and the every day possible, becomes the only entertainment for those who find no rest. The only thing the mind can focus on. The slight shifts, the details lost in daylight.
There were memories of course, there were regrets and thoughts of the day to come and the days that passed that could also wile away the time, but that had the disadvantage of being distracting. Emotional involvement, the chance of waking up someone who he was fairly sure was sleeping, or the equivalent of such for a mental voice. He should have been awake, as it was, awake and harrassing Edgar as he always tended to do, but he had been tired lately. He had been human lately, Edgar thought, and he was sure Scriabin would approve of the assessment in a way that would involve an insult somehow.
Keeping his thoughts quiet, his conflicts far away, give himself and Scriabin some rest for now.
A time for rest. Not sleep, but rest. Slowing down the heart and the breathing, the attempt to sleep that kept failing, but that wasn't so bad.
Johnny had fallen asleep fairly quickly, or so Edgar assumed. This was all an experiment, according to Johnny, but he wasn't sure how truthful that was. Their relationship was built on flimsy hopes masking real desires, and he couldn't deny that. He couldn't deny it himself, and he certainly had no right to deny it to Johnny. Maybe this was an experiment for Johnny, maybe it was. He couldn't say it wasn't. He just found it difficult to believe that was all it was.
He agreed to it, and he knew for a fact there was more to that then he had let on to Johnny. There was some lingering questions in his mind, some raised by Scriabin and some not, that there was more to that then he let on to himself.
Didn't matter now, really.
The insomniac, cursed with unrest. Johnny had felt tired, explained a lack of sleep bordering on weeks. Feared a shift in reality, feared things changing. Depended on Edgar as his anchor, asked him to be that anchor while he rested for those few moments that he could only deny so long. Edgar agreed out of what he hoped was kindness and some charity and not the fact that there was a deep and strong desire and longing for physical contact, of any kind, with any other human being.
They laid side by side, and the sensation of Johnny's shoulder pressing against his own made it clear. It was easy to pretend you don't want something when you can't remember what it feels like.
Feelings reciprocated? He couldn't say that much. Presumptuous. Scriabin had tried to make some snarky commentary on what was going on, but he was exhausted and he didn't make a great deal of sense. Scriabin found it frustrating, and did not react well when Edgar told him to rest. Not to give it a rest, but to just rest. After something of a screaming tantrum over how he couldn't do that and how dare he even insinuate such a thing, Scriabin's voice trailed off sleepily.
He heard breathing in his mind that wasn't his own, just soft enough to hear. More and more human. Was Edgar making him that way? Had he been like that all along, and Edgar just had not noticed?
Johnny had turned over and without saying anything, had curled up against Edgar's side. Edgar moved his arm without thought when Johnny struggled to press against his ribcage, didn't move when Johnny rested his head on his chest and closed his eyes. He knew the psychological motive, he knew the justification that daylight would bring. The fear of disappearing, the deep fear of losing his grip, losing the only thing that he could really depend on. That deep and abiding fear of the unknown, and a physical link to his one anchor.
The psychological motive didn't come to Edgar until almost an hour afterward. The physical need for proximity was more obvious, and the less obscured desire for security, for comfort. Perhaps even on the most base level, for warmth.
Edgar had yet to come up with his own motivations, for why he settled his arm around Johnny's thin frame and held him just as close. He was sure that they'd appear in daylight, when sensory images got erased and the filters kicked back in.
The clawlike hand curled up near Johnny's face, his eyes closed and his breathing even. Edgar watched his head rise and fall with his own breath, the weight of his body against his own. Could feel his heartbeat, very softly.
I'm here. He wanted to appeal to that psychological side of things, the motivation that ran deeper but not necessarily more truthfully. I will stay here.
Mostly concern. The human need for touch and companionship, the earliest memories of protection in numbers.
He'd justify his feelings later, when he could block feeling again. When he could block the feeling of Johnny's dry skin beneath his fingers. When Johnny had first moved and curled up against him, he was shaking slightly. It was something that Edgar thought little about and still hadn't devoted too much thought to, but he had rubbed his back until his breathing became even. It was a repetitive motion made familiar and pleasant by its repetition and by the fact that it felt so natural. To feel the shaking slowly subside, to feel the very slight movement with his motions, the slight and quick nuzzle of his chest before sleep was total and full, it all seemed the logical conclusion. It seemed the natural conclusion and the satisfaction that came from quieting such unease could have been easy to explain, but a real explanation was not necessary. Not the kind of explanation that Edgar would later want.
Minutes went by, and he couldn't sleep. He felt Johnny's thin chest rise and fall against his own, the shift of bones beneath his hands, the occasional twitch of someone desperately trying to make up lost REM time, and in the back of his mind, he could hear the same kind of soft breathing. Maybe Scriabin could sleep, maybe he couldn't, but he was too tired to contribute. Too tired to care.
The morning would bring clarity and bring levels to what had happened, what one could remember, that were not necessary. They made things easier though, they provided a depth that people long to have and know how to deal with. Reactions, instincts, carefully justified, cultural embarassment bred long and marked indelible.
He ran his fingers gently through Johnny's hair with the thought that he would have enjoyed that being done to him, so maybe Johnny would enjoy it as well. Cautiously threading fingers through minor tangles, catches with short strands. It was touch for the sake of touching, then it was touch with the hope of pleasure, of engendering simple pleasure in the other, then it was touch for the sake of love and affection, touch for the illusion of power and control, touch for the sick and demented false relationship, touch for the illusion of health and happiness, for the illusion of normalcy, for the destruction of his beliefs, for the deep core of his inner motivations.
Touch because he wanted to know how it felt for now. Wanted to see if his hair was soft. Wanted to see how he would react. A soft sigh, another gentle nudge of his head against Edgar's chest as if he wanted to bury himself deep within.
Reassuring, soothing, and harmless. That soft, pleasant sigh was enough for him now. All the motive he needed in the dark. What he had been hoping for, and he was right.
Sleep would eventually come, when the gentle feel of air across his shirt, the heartbeat that went almost in time with his own, the thin bones pressing against his skin, all of it faded, and he let himself go.
Tomorrow would bring questions he would have to answer, deeper motivations and depth he didn't want, not just yet. Not just yet. For now, just the darkness and the instincts that all people deny on some level, justify on others.
No thoughts, no filter. Sensory information, and that was all.