Work Text:
You peel your eyes open against the harsh morning sun pouring through your bedroom window. Your head pounds with hours unslept and work unfinished and yet, the light sears your vision relentlessly.
What a disgusting day to be alive.
Luckily, you have today off, and the familiar rage in your heart is quelled when you roll over to your side.
There he is, like he’s been every day for the past several months, breathing softly in his sleep.
You push closer to Mr. Crawling, threading your limbs through his, a well rehearsed choreography. The skin of his chest against your cheek cools you, offering you respite smelling of moss and deep lakes. His breath fans across you like the rush of a waterfall.
That other world may not have been yours to stay in, but you’d have been damned before leaving without taking a piece of it with you.
Because on your clearest days, the ones when everything makes perfect sense, you know your soul belonged to that place long before you ever stepped foot in it.
The day you fell…
You comb your fingers through Crawling’s hair, the inky strands slipping past with the sensation of ice water. You look down out of habit, but your hands are completely dry.
The day you fell shouldn’t have been a surprise to you.
Of course an monstrous heart would seek out another like it.
Crawling’s awake now; you can tell by the way his usual smile spreads questioningly across his face.
“Hello,” you greet him.
“Hello.” Noticing your hands in his hair, he nuzzles closer. “Pet? Why pet?”
He knows the answer.
You know he knows the answer.
You say it anyway.
“Me like you.”
“Me like you!”
His arms slither around you, and he pulls you close. The oppressive weight of the summer heat is but a distant memory as he trails a cool finger down your cheek.
“Need consume? I get?”
His fine motor skills have been a work in progress. After all, you didn’t need much to kill or be killed.
The oven is too much for him still, even standing, but you figure he means a bowl of cereal.
You smile at him. “Yes.”
He squeezes you tight before dropping down to the ground.
As a series of clinking and pouring (spilling?) sounds starts up from your kitchen, you ignore the urge to check on him and instead change out of your pajamas. He gets all pouty if you try to help him do things for you (“Me one! Me one!”), and although it’s cute, you decide to respect his desire for independence.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be a little nervous.
“You can come!” he calls excitedly.
You enter your kitchen, where he sits on the floor, looking very pleased with himself.
“Thank you,” you say as you give him an affectionate pat.
“You not look!” he complains, though he leans into your touch.
“I know I haven’t seen it yet, but thank you anyway.”
You take the seat he’s pulled out for you and appraise his work.
He’s managed to get an appropriate amount of cereal and milk into the bowl, and on top of it, he’s laid out both a spoon and fork in the shape of an X. Balanced along the utensils are individual pieces of cereal, equally spaced out.
Did he…decorate it for you?
“You like?” He asks hopefully, making his way to your knee. “Me pretty this! Machine teach me.”
So he does watch the TV shows you’ve been leaving on before you head to work. You’d been wondering.
“Me like! Much pretty. Me like this.”
The red hue across his missing eyes seems to creep lower and he throws his arms around your waist.
You peer down at him as he lays his head in your lap, hindering your movement.
“Me cannot consume…” Your hands find themselves in his hair again, somehow.
“You can consume! Can!” Crawling points out, refusing to release you.
Oh well.
You manage to eat your breakfast despite your companion’s cloying grip.
Mr. Crawling is clingy. It was an objective fact. You know this. You even like it.
But after you finish off the glass of orange juice he prepared for you, his face is still buried in your lap.
You gently lift his chin. “You okay? Hurt? Sad?”
His cheeks are still painted a faint pink.
Does he have a fever? Can ghosts even get fevers?
“Me…” He starts playing with your hair. “Me afraid…”
“What, why?” You take his hands in your own.
“Little afraid! Little!” he assures you.
“Why?” you repeat, rubbing small circles into his palms with your thumbs.
“Machine teach me…another thing…!” He pulls away, fidgeting with the hem of the clothes you made him. “Two human…them much like…”
“Like me like you?” you ask.
“Yes!” He nods, like you taught him to. “Them much like…them mouth touch together, yes?”
You stare at the eight foot tall monster kneeling in front of you, smiling hopefully and nervously twisting his hair through his fingers.
Ah, nervous. He was nervous. “Little afraid.”
And now he’s asking you about…
“Mouth touch is called kissing.”
You enunciate the word well, so he can remember it, but you have a feeling he’s not really listening.
“Crawling,” you say, and he looks up with a smile. You cradle his face in your palms. "You want…mouth touch…?”
He nods enthusiastically. “Together you. Me want together you.”
You look down at his pale lips, dancing cool and smooth as he speaks.
It would be a lie to say you haven’t been wondering what they taste like.
Apparently, you took too long to answer, because he mirrors you, taking your face into his hands. “You want, we will. You not want, we will not.”
“Why you want?” You ask, half out of curiosity, half out of a sheer desire to tease him.
“Why?” His face is looking unusually warm. “Me like you. Me like talk you. You cute. You fun. You take care of me. Me want…”
He pauses, tongue practicing the sound before he says it.
“Me want kiss.”
How could anyone resist?
You pull him up to you, your lips just a breath apart.
A huge grin splits his face and you laugh, squishing his cheeks together.
“How am I supposed to kiss you like that?”
Whether he understood you or not, he seems to remember what he’s seen on TV and focuses on pursing his lips.
When’d he learn to change the channel? And to romcoms, no less. What a sap.
You kiss him.
It’s sweet and slow, like winter making way for the spring. You manage to think “cold” and “soft”, and then, your mind is swimming with him. He pulls you toward him, and soon you’re kneeling on the floor too, forgetting how to breathe.
You throw your arms around his neck, not caring whether you keep your balance because his hands are there, at your waist, strong and safe. He would never let you fall.
Well.
It was a little too late for that now, isn’t it?
Like you have done to so many feelings before, you give in, indulging the temptation and sneaking a taste of his bottom lip.
He makes a sound of surprise before returning the gesture, ice candy melting on your tongue.
You’re not sure when your hands got into his hair, but you use them to anchor him closer to you, and you both lose your balance, and soon you’re giggling, and he’s giggling, palm beneath your head as you pitch sideways.
“Me like you. Me like you.” He alternates these three words with frenzied kisses on your cheeks, eyes, forehead, chin, anywhere he can reach.
“Mr. Crawling!” You laugh. “What would I do without you?”
He pulls you back up, and it almost strikes you as funny, cuddling on your kitchen floor with a ghost.
Well, what does it matter in the end, if you--
Oh.
When did that happen?
It might’ve been that first morning you woke up next to him after your return, or maybe the moment you two entered that magical elevator together.
Hell, it could’ve been from that very first step you took away from him: the one that he matched to ensure you would never be alone again.
“Hey, Crawling?” You tap his nose.
“Yes?” He nuzzles into your cheek.
“Me teach you language?”
“Yes.”
“Much like…”
“Much like…Me know! Me know!”
Does he?
He bumps his nose into yours.
“Me love you.”
“Really?”
“Me love you much! Much!”
It wasn’t perfect, but God knows fates have been sealed with fewer words than these.
“I love you, too.”