Disorder Ch. 18

Things were, at least, a little better now that Donnie knew that John was okay. Well, that was if a demon could ever be considered to be "okay", though that was a strange enough thing to get his head around in the first place. Sure, it was a good thing that John wasn't completely dead in the sense that Donnie could never, ever, not even the once, ever see his brother again but neither was it a good thing as he was, still, regardless of anything else, very much dead. And that he'd sacrificed himself for Donnie was something that neither of them had addressed as yet, much to their detriment, most likely, but it was as it was.

Grunting, Donnie swung back and forth in his computer chair, the tall one that had made him feel more imposing than he was in reality. It had always been John who'd had that commanding, driving presence about him, towering easily with a smirk on his face. He'd come into his own, truly, in the building of their empire but it was a foolish notion indeed to expect himself to simply be John when there was so much in the business that only John could do. Turning a blind eye one-hundred-percent of the time was one of those things.

"You've got to keep on them," John had said last time he'd come to the mortal world of Donnie and other beings (as John supposedly laughingly liked to call it). "They need to be controlled, need to be kept on track. You think those idiots will know what to do without being told? Those peons think they can take power at any turn too..." His frown had deepened. "Watch them. Always watch them."

In the end, it had turned out that John had been looking in an entirely different direction, his death coming from elsewhere than within. They still didn't quite know whether John was gone or not as it had not been put out there, though there were always rumours. Sometimes Charles could pose well enough as John but there was a bit of a height difference in that one for those that knew better or when there was not the shadow of nightfall beneath the street lights to be taken into account too. Ruses were best undertaken with the lies of darkness to cover up the truth, although it was sure that, sooner or later, the truth would come out on that matter. And then Donnie would have to be more prepared than he had ever been to stand up and take the helm with the steel in his eye that John too had boasted. Some could say that he'd been practising. Others would say that he wasn't quite there yet.

Of course, he had not told Charles about all of that as yet but, well, it didn't seem like the sort of thing that he needed to know, even though it was sure enough that John was going to reveal himself at some point. Donnie frowned. The bastard had already flashed his enemies, those that were lurking and lingering after his death, seeking to get a hold on what he still very much saw as "his" empire.

"Why does he even care?"

Although he knew the technical answer to that question as he sat bolt upright in bed in the dead of the night, sweeping his fingers back through hair that was a little greasier than he may have wanted it to be, it still didn't make sense. That was the problem with questions and answers like that: the results of them didn't have to make sense to still be classed as answers and, well, that was just something that people had to deal with. He'd had an answer so why did he care about other things so much when it was there, all answered, nice and neat and oh so easy to take in?

"Oh, fuck it..."

He grunted in the back of his throat and was on his feet before he realised it, his body knowing better what he needed to do than his mind. He did not "use" for the purposes of desperation all that often but, sometimes, the lure was too great.

Just a break, a little break. He wasn't addicted, not by any means, though not even Donnie could explain why that was. Maybe he was just around it so much and changed drugs so much that things were "okay" in that regard, though there were other potential explanations too that even someone like him could not acknowledge at that time. Namely, John's demonhood, if that could even have all that much of an explanation to it.

No. Not now. Not then. Donnie fumbled in his stash, the night blurring. Had he been drinking? It was hard to remember, hard to load up the drug into the syringe, a different way of taking it to what he was used to. Meth was a drug of choice for so many but he baulked from the needles, usually needing John to do it for him, though even demon John had acquiesced to the task from time to time. It was all prepared, all ready, just needing to be injected, and he guessed at the dose as the room dipped and swayed around him. Was that his kitchen? It could have been. But it could have been the living room too?

Nothing made sense, reality shifting around him, the lines of it blurring in a way that he could hardly understand. Things didn't look right, nothing at all, lights flashing and blurring, euphoria coursing through him. The spent syringe fell to the floor, a trickle of fluid at the tip, and he blinked at it dully. Had he used that? Or was it left there, accidentally, from another time?

Down, down, down... He wanted to move but could not, times changing too quickly around him, snarling and howling, ripping him up and away from the world he knew. His eyes were closed and yet he saw everything, everything that had ever happened, the drug sending him back through his memories, tearing and roaring. There was nothing to cling to even as he thought he was laughing out loud, the ecstasy driving him to claw and scramble, searching for...something. Something, yes, he was searching for something, but just what that something was he did not know. His chest hurt, making him think that he was laughing or something else, something else, something else, something...else...

It was not blacking out but something different, a screeching like a train grinding to a halt at the end of the tracks, off the tracks, lost and gone for so much else. He tried to cry out but there was no sound anymore, no sound that he could make, the world black and white and every shade of colour in the world all at the same time.

And then it stopped, abruptly, casting him out of the whirlwind, staggering and swearing, though his head was clearer than ever. He caught himself, though there didn't seem to be any walls where he was either, the nausea that usually accompanied the come-down from a drug high not even roiling in his stomach anymore. What was up with that?

He stood up, however shakily it came to him, shoulder blades pushing back. Was he taller? That didn't make sense. But where was he? What was happening? One question after the other chased through his mind as he touched his face, the bridge of his nose, his lips. It did not ground him as he'd hoped, a disconcerting sense of something not being "right" twisting in his gut, almost as if gravity had changed. And yet his feet were still firmly rooted into whatever the ground was at that very moment, though he could not have said quite what that was.

Donnie peered closer, the ground seeming to rise to him rather than him bend down towards the ground. Mud? Stone? It seemed to change consistency, a strange sort of pliable, malleable gloop that clung to the soles of his shoes without dragging him back. His clothes were, at least, normal, jeans and a slouchy T-shirt without any stains on it, which was something at least. There was nothing worse than waking up somewhere after a drug-high or alcohol-induced binge-bender in dirty, soiled clothes.

"Fuck..."

Donnie swept both hands through his hair, pushing it back from his face, though he saw more clearly than ever before too. That had to have been it. He'd taken too much, been on his own, fucked off somewhere and gone on a little joy ride or whatnot, woken up in a gutter somewhere. Yet the street did not look familiar, the blurry edges taking form and shape in the lines of a city that was foreign to him, sirens blaring in the distance, broken neon signs flickering and buzzing. Grime coated the ground, however it clung to him, but he shook whatever it was that meant off the best he could. Fuck that. He didn't have to think about that.

"Now, how the fuck am I going to get out of here..."

But, wait, that didn't make sense if he'd just taken too much and buggered off somewhere else - how the hell would he have gotten out of his city if that was the case? He'd been in John's penthouse, the old penthouse, he was sure of it, the spot that John had loved so much, even though he'd not exactly wanted to own up to that out loud. John didn't like to say when he liked anything, letting his actions speak for themselves and woe betide everyone who dared say anything.

What was he doing again? Donnie swayed, leaning against a wheelie bin, though it did not shift under his weight, although it didn't seem full either. Someone staggered down the street ahead of him, the air oddly quiet around him, every sound seeming stark and glaring, as if it was perfectly deliberate. If he'd been more with his senses, maybe he would have heard more, or maybe he would have realised that there were no other noises out there to actually be heard.

"Watch it there..."

The staggering drunk with a twisted, gnarled expression shoved him aside and Donnie blinked. How'd he gotten there? How'd he moved that quickly? Shit, he must really have been out of it.

He didn't seem to be getting anywhere as he took step after step, each one heavier than the next, working his way through the lightest quicksand of all, dragged back and yet forced on at the same time. Nothing seemed right but that was alright, as long as he kept walking and walking.

Was he underground? He peered up, blinking as a crowd appeared around him, grunting souls that seemed to have somewhere to be and nowhere to go both at the same time. How that worked he could not tell but it did not matter, nothing mattered, the hordes whimpering and murmuring, coarser language cutting through.

"Fucking money..."

"When you gonna get it to me..."

"Saul doesn't know what's coming to him..."

"The game's rigged, rigged, I tell you..."

"I shouldn't even fucking be down here..."

Huh. That was weird. Where was "here"? Donnie laughed out loud stopping dead in his tracks.

Of course... It all made so much more sense now. He wasn't drugged up somewhere else or coming down from a high... He was still in the high! Everything the crowd said as they muttered and shuffled in around him, their gaping, ghastly mouths grumbling and yawning with obscenities, was just a drug-fuelled dream. No wonder it felt so lucid!

With that in mind, Donnie grinned and looked around, eager to see just what the dream had in store for him. Sure, he sometimes remembered lucid dreams after they happened or when he emerged, subdued and groggy, from a drug-fuelled sleep, crashing out at the point that he couldn't handle it anymore...but nothing like that ever before. It was strange, though maybe all dreams were like that, the sort of thing that felt real and then, on waking, was lost and gone with the memory of sleep. Until he woke though...he was going to see what was up and where he could go.

It seemed like he was in a street underground, though he cared less about the grimy gloop clinging to his shoes and even up his jeans to his calves as long as he knew it was a dream. To have rock walls arching overhead and, for all intents and purposes, a city around him, was strange, though the streets did not expand in the expected way with the rock walls to cut them off. It was as if it expanded straight into the rock through an underpass, though Donnie did not yet adventure down them to see just what lay on the other side. He would have time for that, he was sure, the space lending a sense that there was nowhere to go, no rush to be worried about even then.

Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. What did it even matter anymore?

Donnie frowned as someone stopped in front of him. They shoved their hands into their pockets but, even though they were taller than him, he couldn't see their face in the shadows of their hood. He was sure though that there were harsh lines in the scope of their face, however, cutting and flaring, lips half in view and turned down in a tight-lipped grimace.

"Where you going?"

Donnie all but rolled his eyes. Just who did he think he was?

"Oh, go do one..."

It was not real, he was sure, nothing there could be real, and he pushed on with his chest thrust out, a smirk on his lips, however lopsided it ended up making his face look. Let them say anything, let them do whatever they wanted. Nothing down there, in the dream, could hurt him and he was, at the very least, entertained, even if a part of him was wondering just how long the dream was going to last. Never mind all that though, he'd keep on, keep looking, keep searching, his hunt barely over as he wondered too just what he thought he was searching for down there.

"Donnie?"

Huh? Did someone know his name? Of course, that was not all that strange, after all, considering it all was a lucid dream, a figment of his imagination that had no bearing in the real world. He looked around but saw no one familiar, even though he was sure that his name could have come from anyone at all.

"Donnie! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Oh, wait, that sounded a bit closer and he grunted as he was grabbed by his shoulder and spun about, slammed back into a wall, pain searing through him from the point of impact. Blinking dully, Donnie's jaw fell slack, though it didn't make sense that John was right there before him, looming and bearing down on his shoulders, the worn, broken brick of the building he was half-crushed against digging into his back.

Languidly, lopsided at best, Donnie smiled.

"Fancy seeing you here..."

He drawled and slurred, though he was not sure why his words came out that badly when he didn't think, not right then, that he was intoxicated at all, chest heaving, rising and falling sharply, his brother right there before him. The lines in his face seemed darker in the shade of the building, though all light there was artificial, no stars to be seen. His brother had his demon horns on show too, though no wings, and Donnie laughed out loud, though it was more of a giggle, a bubble of spittle frothing up at the corner of his lips.

"Are you high or something?" John shook him, blocking his view of the street with his body. "Are you fucking crazy? Of course, you must have been high, something must have gone wrong... Shit, you're not fucking dead, are you?"

Donnie only laughed at that. Dead? That was stupid, that was really stupid... John was the one who was dead, not him. How stupid of him to say that. Stupid, so very stupid... His dream was really fucking stupid.

"No... No..." John frowned, though there was no sense of rationality in his expression, brow furrowed, eyebrows doing their very best to knot together. "You can't be dead, I would have known. Fuck, Donnie, what have you gone and gotten yourself into without me up there?"

Aw, he was so cute when he was concerned about him? Yet, even in the dream, Donnie was at least smart enough to hold his tongue on that count. He would have had a fist to the jaw, he was sure, if he dared say that and he'd seen his brother go off the rails more than once even though it was not all that obvious as to what would set him off at any given time. John turned his head back and forth, from side to side, his jaws moving, lips following suit, yet Donnie was too far gone to even realise just what he was saying, trying to follow, read his lips, though humour burbled in his gut.

"You don't look right..."

John blinked and rocked back on his heels, cheeks puffing out.

"What? What the fuck are you on about? Are you going to tell me what you took or not?"

What he'd taken? He hadn't taken anything, what a stupid question. Donnie laughed again, giddy and delirious as if he was high but, well, he didn't remember taking anything. Did that mean he hadn't actually dosed up on anything or that he had dosed up on something so fucking good that he didn't remember because of that? There was no way to tell and, floating high above everything while that slimy gloop kept him locked to the ground, gritty and unrelenting, something rising within him. He clung to that, diving deep, losing track of what was before him, what was happening around him, the world that he was in making it so very easy to forget that things were changing, groaning lightly in the back of his throat.

It was John... John, right there with him. What else could he do but what John wanted him to do practically every time he came back to the human world, the mortal world, just to see what was going on? Ruling over his empire was surely something that he had been so focused on of late that not even Donnie wanted to know where he was getting his rocks off, though that was part of their relationship that they had not discussed all that much?

"Donnie?"

He didn't listen, perhaps for one of the first times in his life. In a dream, nothing mattered and he sank to his knees, fumbling with John's belt. His fingers felt fat and thick and clumsy but he managed it even as his brother cursed, swatting at his fingers and trying to knock him away, though, of course, he didn't bother glancing around to wonder at them getting caught. There was no feature of "getting caught" in a dream that didn't end up kinky as shit and Donnie laughed, his brother's cock hardening in his hand. John wanted it, he wanted it: so which of them was going to fucking complain when they both wanted it? No one, of course!

He dropped a stone, not caring that his knees pressed down into the hard ground, grit and grime grinding into his kneecaps. It was all as it was meant to be and it went without saying that John was not going to push him away, Donnie laughing even then as he suckled the head of his cock into his mouth. It belonged there, even half-hard, and there was nothing quite like feeling his brother's dick harden up where it belonged, sealing him in the moment, right up in reality. He had to stay there, relax there, breathing evenly and deeply (well, as much as possible) moving his head even then, his brother taking no time at all to get hard. Leaning back onto his heels, John managed to balance there, exhaling in a rush of breath.

"Fuck, Donnie..."

Yes, well, that was the point of it, right? That was what he meant to do, what was the right thing for him, bobbing his head, taking that hard cock right up into the back of his throat. He didn't expect to find that as difficult in the dream as it was, his chest contorting and tightening a little as he gagged, but that was alright, he could draw back just enough for everything to be comfortable again. Losing himself in the moment, Donnie ignored the rest of the world around him, the buzzing, flickering neon, the world shifting around him without his knowledge as John, a little more "with it" than Donnie was even in that moment, shifted them to an alleyway, although they were not all that far down away from the main bustle of death down there either.

Donnie didn't care. It would have taken far, far more than that to make him care, the skin of John's cock pulling back with the bob of his head. Even his brother's hip rocked and rolled as he got into it, the moment not something to be passed by, even then. Donnie's heart surged. He'd known he could win him over, get him to the point that he couldn't resist, though even he could not have quite said how things usually went in a dream, not when he could not usually remember them. Things were to continue just as he needed them to, however, a lightly musky smell crowded his nostrils. Lingering sweat could not be helped, though it was a strange thing to notice in a dream, he thought to himself, not that something so light was about to stop him in his tracks. Although, he had to say that it was just a little bit weird...