Work Text:
The lights in Will’s apartment flickered, just enough to make his breath catch the way it always did. Darkness gathered in the corners, not violently like it had when he was a kid, but slowly and deliberately. Softly.
That terrified him more.
Will pressed his palms to the edge of the table, grounding himself as the air shifted. “You never warn me,” he whispered.
“I always warn you,” Henry’s voice answered, soft as falling ash. “You simply pretend not to hear me.”
Will opened his eyes.
Henry stood by the window, moonlight threading through him like it wasn’t sure what he was made of. Human shape, inhuman stillness. A man wearing the memory of a monster.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Will said. It was the closest he could come to please don’t leave.
Henry tilted his head in amusement. “And yet you’re the one who keeps the door unlocked.”
Will swallowed. “I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.” His voice cracked in the middle. “I’m tired of being afraid of you. Of wanting you. Of hating myself for both.”
Something shifted in Henry’s expression. It was barely perceptible, and almost…tender. Almost as if he’d been waiting years just to hear that.
“Will,” Henry murmured, stepping closer, “I never wanted your fear.”
Will let out a thin, bitter laugh. “You built an entire world out of it.”
“And yet,” Henry said, “you survived it. You shaped yourself around the pain and still found room for desire. That was never something I intended. But it belongs to you now. Not me.”
He was close enough that Will could feel it—the pull that wasn’t supernatural at all, just him. The gravity of someone who had once lived inside every corner of his mind.
Will turned away, but Henry’s presence followed like a shadow slipping back into place. “I know what you want from me,” Will whispered.
“No.” Henry’s voice gentled, almost devastating in its sincerity. “What I want is irrelevant. I want you to stop tearing yourself apart over what you feel.”
Will’s breath shuddered. The honesty hurt more than cruelty ever had.
“I shouldn’t want you,” he said, barely audible.
“But you do.” Henry lifted a hand slowly, offering rather than taking. “And wanting doesn’t make you weak.”
Will looked at that hand. At the man who had once been every nightmare and now, somehow, was something far more dangerous: familiar. Almost comforting.
“If I take your hand,” Will murmured, “I’m not fighting anymore.”
Henry’s gaze softened in a way that made Will’s chest ache. “Then let me be gentle with what’s left.”
Will hesitated, a sigh escaping his lips. One last flicker of resistance. Already knowing he was going to give in.
Then he reached out, touching Henry like stepping into a dream he’d sworn he’d outgrown. And the darkness settled around them, wrapping them up in its gentle embrace.