These Paper Pages

RED [jarlo]

More mafia!Jarlo bc I can't help myself. I've been obsessing over mafia au lately. This set a few years before et je m'envole.
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John wakes within a dream.

His feet pads against the soft soil as he darts across the field of spider lilies blooming blood red beneath a sky of monochrome. In the distance, standing beneath the horizon where the sun is nothing but a muted grey of light imposed on by the red flowers, John’s gaze falls on the pale yellow of Arlo’s hair. He thinks it’s rather poetic, or maybe ironic, the shade of yellow enveloped in red and grey as if slowly, piece by piece, the yellow that is sunlight and happiness is being eaten away. He’s much younger, so much younger. The face staring back at him couldn’t be older than eight years old judging from stature alone.

He’s so small.

John thinks to himself as he runs, closing the distance between them till he collides with the smaller body.

John wakes within a dream, but he is not in control.

He tries to fight against it, tries to fight against the burning rage pumping in his veins as he wraps his hands around Arlo's neck. He presses hard, fingernails digging into the skin. John can hear himself talk, but the sound of his voice is distant, muddled, as if he was listening to an old recorder with ears stuffed with cotton. His eyes are burning, tears rolling down his cheek as he talks and talks, and the world around them blooms in brilliant crimson, drowning them in its wake.

But even as they drown in the madder shades of red, beneath the monochrome skies, his hands wrapped around his neck and a dull ache in his chest as he speaks words he cannot decipher in the haze of crimson, John loses himself in the blues of Arlo's eyes. Brilliant and beautiful. It reminds him of summer skies and the still ocean waters; a cooling shade of blue contrasting with the burning madness eating at them as they stay the way they are.

Arlo says nothing, merely watches, impassive and quiet and thoughtful. His fingers don't stop clawing into the child's throat, no matter how much he wants to. It feels so, so real. It felt like reliving the moment when he was young and much, much more foolish—

Arlo's eyes are brighter and clearer in his dreams. Much more clearer, as if the raging storm of grey and ice and lightning had waned and left behind a sky so beautifully blue that he couldn't help but stare and marvel. He wonders if this is truly the colour of his eyes back when he was young and innocent. It's hard to imagine it, Arlo being small and naive and helpless against a world whose lifeblood is violence and bloodshed. Hard to imagine.

—and angry and brash. He has every right to be, he knows that; Arlo had taken away everything from him without any hint of remorse, without a passing thought. Arlo built him a kingdom and shackled him to its dungeon and left him to rot in there with the phantoms of the people he has killed for the sake of achieving their agenda. He was angry, and that anger burned and burned till it left nothing but a sea of smoldering cinder and smoke that plunged him deeper in the depths of insanity and despair. But then Arlo, in all his apathy and indifference and subtle beauty, slowly took it away. Piece by piece, he took his guilty conscience away, shouldering the burden for him.

"You need me." He says, voice calm and collected even with John's hand curling around his throat, itching to strangle him. "Who else are you going to blame for everything you have done?"

He feels the calluses of Arlo's hand as he presses them against his cheek, thumb brushing away his tears. "You can blame it all on me."

Just the memory of it makes him shudder.

John's hands fall limp by his side, he's vaguely aware of it, too engrossed in his own rapid torrent of thoughts that when Arlo speaks, it startles him.

"I'll never let you go." The child beneath him was no longer a child, it was his Arlo; cold and cunning and beautifully cruel in a way he has grown to love and hate simultaneously. John shudders, breath hitching as Arlo grabs him by the collar and kisses him harshly, teeth clinking together and copper on his tongue.

The ground beneath them disappears and they're falling, falling in the sea of red and grey, streaks of colours that floats past their bodies as they breathe each other in and—

John wakes to the darkness of his room, a warm body pressed against his side. Angling his body so he's facing Arlo, he reaches in, fingers curling around his hair and forehead pressed against his. Arlo's steady breath grounds him, keeps him tethered.

"What are you doing?" Arlo shifts, his voice muffled and quiet against the sheets.

"Making sure I'm awake, I had a dream. You were in it." He says, brushing the strands of blond hair away from his eyes. His hand strays down to his neck, fingers pressing to the side to feel the blood pumping beneath his skin. Arlo says nothing as he gazes at him through half-lidded eyes, the haze of sleep slowly edging away.

"Go back to sleep." Arlo eventually mutters, pulling away from him, rolling to his side. He doesn't question, not that John minds, they never ask too many questions, it's simply how it works for them. It has become instinctual, to follow and to fall together, fingers intertwined; even if they would never admit it.

Once upon a time, John's anger burned and ravaged and scorched till everything around him is reduced to nothing but cinder and ash. Then he grew tired of being angry, he grew tired of despairing every life he took. When the fires die down and he's left standing in the centre of the rubble, Arlo offers his hand. Years ago, he refused it, years ago he did not understand. Years ago, he was a child plunged into the heart of violence. He's no longer that person. He takes his hand and finally he understands.

Arlo needed him as much as he needed him; the moon and the ocean, the sun and planet. They gravitate around each other, always in each other's orbit regardless the distance—they'll pull each other in anyway.

It's love, he thinks ( knows, really ). However, it's not a slow-burning kind of love, not an encompassing warmth, rather it's raging, blue flames burning fast, intense heat drowning them in the madness of something they can't quite put a finger on. John learns not to mind it, or perhaps he really doesn't mind but stubbornly refuses to admit it because he is proud as he is stubborn, a mountain who will never bow to the storm. Arlo is the same, too proud with too many walls and safeguards around him, even if he does relent and confess, Arlo never will.

John doesn't have any will to change it, and in the end, it becomes a norm for them to dance around their blatant attraction to each other. It's frustrating, but neither of them have done anything easy. In the end, as time moves and shifts, John finds that he wouldn't have it any other way.