Late Night Comforts

John’s prediction turned out to be true, of course, though as he had suspected, he was the only one to really suffer through the full length of the night.

Adantia was so overconfident she insisted on a separate room and – judging by the snores that John heard only a few minutes after their separation – had fallen completely asleep almost immediately. Layla and the yet-unnamed woman by his side weren’t long behind her, likely due to the stresses of the day on both for entirely different reasons. John had considered requesting a third room so that he could move about and pace without worrying about waking the others up, but decided eventually that being able to keep an eye on them was worth the inconvenience of having to watch his noise levels. Thankfully he managed to corral Sophia, Layla, and his newest creation to bed more easily than expected.

Besides, it wasn’t all bad. It gave John a chance to do his usual upkeep, checking over his status sheet for any relevant changes. There was a new tab labeled Ascension, something that had been such an afterthought during the chaotic events of the previous day he'd nearly forgotten it, but the tab was completely grayed out. It only told him to achieve 25% for his "next reward", but didn't specify how to do that, or what that percentage was taken from.

But John still had other things to occupy his time. Before Adantia had gone to bed, John had gone back to his world and retrieved his phone for the first time in a year. It had been sitting in the chest for so long he’d nearly forgotten about it, refusing to retrieve it for one reason or another, even during his trip westward. Wanting to avoid awkward conversations, wanting to remain undetected while hunting the Albidians, wanting to avoid Moira calling to scream at him for going on a suicide mission… he’d had plenty of reasons to leave it behind. But tonight he finally had a reason to retrieve it.

John wasn’t surprised by the number of notifications, nor by the source of most of them. There were a half-dozen calls from his mother, along with a smattering of text messages. All of them were weeks apart, and none of them seemed any more concerned than the first. It seemed that John’s spell was covering his ass; still… he wasn’t happy about it, but at least she hadn’t been panicking for a year or putting a missing person report out for him.

Then there were the Abyssals. Moira, Kim, and Tricia all sent their own messages of care and concern… though each with their own tones and levels of annoyance. He even had a few messages and a couple of voicemails from a number he didn’t recognize – he had to actually open one of the voicemails before he realized it was Lord Brighton’s number.

Lord Brighton’s words were not all that dissimilar to those of John’s other friends, but the knowledge that Moira’s father had faced the very same grief that had consumed John for so much of this last year did add a great deal of weight to them. Still, John’s heart wasn’t as ready as his ears to hear the words, sincere and experienced as they might have been. John passed over the last of the messages with a sorrowful but appreciative smile on his face before typing out a quick text message to Moira.

”On my way back to Springfield. Should be there in a day and a half unless we get delayed. Things got complicated, in more ways than one, just like old times. Call me when you get this. DO NOT go to England!”

John sent the message after a few moments of deliberation, unsure how much information he could really relay over texts. He was pretty sure if he tried to write up even half of what had happened since leaving Springfield, he’d be leaving an entire essay, and Moira wouldn’t bother to get through half of it before calling him and demanding an explanation anyway. Better to deal with her annoyance at his vagueness upfront and get to the meat of the story. Besides, at this time of night she should’ve been asleep; on the off chance she called, John could just call Vallya or one of the others to take lookout in his place, then take the call in a Barrier to let everyone sleep on.

”That’s going to be a fun call tomorrow. Probably something freaking out, like… ‘Oh no, John! Are you insane, you can’t-’”

”...you can’t do this. You’re insane. Please, don’t...”

John’s train of thought left the station without him, leaving him standing at the terminal with only the echoing sound of those words in his ears. For a moment, he thought he’d been too lost in thought and had simply imagined them. Then he heard more noise, this time slightly more muffled, but clearly still from the same source.

”It’s not coming from in here… the walls?”

Though it was muffled, there was a familiar element to the sound that had John immediately suspicious, a feeling that was confirmed fairly easily. John walked to the far wall of the room, where the cabinets of the tiny, ramshackle kitchen hung, and placed his ear close to the grimy tiles of the wall. The closer he grew to the wall, the clearer the sound became; by the time he leaned near the wall, he could make out the words again, though he found they were mostly incoherent mumblings and repeated utterances of the same phrase he’d already heard.

John mentally ran over the layout of the hotel he’d seen as they made their way to their room, quickly confirming what he was already mostly sure of. Unless his memory was completely faulty, Adantia’s room had definitely been the next door over in this direction… and the longer John listened to the sounds coming through the wall, the more they brought back memories.

Memories he would’ve been more than happy not to relive.

”Wake up, Father. Please wake, it pains me to see you like this.”

John jolted awake with a start, his entire body tense. His knuckles were white, one hand throttling the blankets that had been an unseen foe only moments ago, the other gripped tightly around the frame of the bed, cracking sounds emanating from the wood as he tried to wield the wooden frame like the hilt of a blade.

“S-Sophia? I… I’m sorry, what happened?” John mumbled, glancing around the dark bedroom. He’d been coaxed to sleep by his family, despite his insistence on not needing it anymore after Gamer’s Body reached its newest level. As usual, things had not ended well. John could guess roughly what had happened, but he wanted to make at least a token effort not to admit how bad his nightmares had been this time.

”You were having nightmares, Father. I tried to move you enough to disturb your dreams without waking you entirely… but then you began screaming,” Sophia admitted, showing a **** to speak that was alarming from the overly blunt harpy. “I thought it best to shake you a bit more heftily, lest you wake the others.”

John didn’t say anything in response, but somewhere deep under the anxiety and pounding of his heart, he was grateful for Sophia’s subtle kindnesses. He knew the others would already be awake if he’d so much as let out a single terrified shout, that was an unavoidable consequence of living with as many otherworldly women as he did. Even if it wasn’t for magically enhanced abilities, the fact that all of them had so many animal characteristics alone…

”Thank you, Sophia,” John mumbled, already rolling over, trying to hide his worried expression. “I’m sorry that I woke you up. You can go back to sleep.”

“Do you want to talk to me, Father? I know I can come off as cold, but… if I can aid you in any way, you know that I-”

”I’ve never wanted to talk about it, Sophia,” John mumbled, turning his face further into the pillow.

”I’m not about to change my mind now.”

John steeled himself as he stepped away from the wall, quietly striding toward the door to their room. He idly grabbed the room’s keycard off the counter on his way out, pausing for a moment in front of the door to their room. John glanced toward the bed where Sophia, Layla, and the yet-unnamed brunette were sleeping.

”No point in waking them up over this. I think if I manipulate the air, I might be able to dampen things… well, if I have enough control at least,” John thought wryly, willing his Elemental Infusion spell into action. His recent uses of it during the infiltration of Paix, as well as the prodding from both Adantia and Vallya, had made John start considering the other ways his abilities could be used. He needed to find ways to prepare for every circumstance, and to his mind, the first step to that was using some of his more versatile abilities to their full extent.

With Elemental Infusion John held the air around the door and its hinges completely still, stopping any motion or vibration. He’d hoped that doing so would stop the vibrations of sound and the motion of the door, rendering it silent – but the air was also held still against the **** of his hand, which slipped off the handle when he failed to anticipate the full resistance.

Frowning, John watched the handle of the door jiggle silently as his air kept the sounds – and the door – from traveling further than a few inches.

”Seemingly limitless magical potential… abilities that defy even the laws of the Abyss… and I can’t even open a door silently.”

John frowned at the displeasure of the realization. As silly and minor as his current situation was, his low level of finesse and fine control was another reminder of how far he had to go in terms of preparation as well as raw power. Adantia had controlled miles and miles of cables – even further lengths than Vallya had thought she should be able to. Why couldn’t he manage a few air currents?

John spent a few minutes fine-tuning his control over the spell, working on his mental acuity. If he’d known Adantia better and was a little more concerned, he might have chosen a simpler or faster way of breaking past the door – something like entering a tiny Barrier, breaking the Barrier replica of the door, then stepping through and exiting the Barrier again. But whatever she was dealing with inside her mind was probably something she’d been fighting for decades, and John wasn’t any more invested in their relationship than Adantia seemed to be.

After his brief practice John was able to gain a clumsy sort of understanding over how holding the air still seemed to work. He could move through air he was holding still fairly easily unless he intentionally tried to block himself - something to keep in mind if he was ever trying to turn air into a solid platform. He attributed that to it being his own spell, and his physical movement holding about the same priority for the air as a mental command. But the second he tried to move something else - like the door - the spell exerted its full **** against the object, but not him. He could’ve learned to move the zone along with the door as it swung, but that would’ve been clunkier and required a finesse John was sure he wouldn’t have down yet, probably resulting in a lot of unnecessary noise.

So John stepped back and focused less on the door, and more on the noise. Knowing that he could move through the stilled air once it was created, John stilled the air in a large half-circle covering the entire arc that the door would swing through. The effect was subtle but noticeable in the same way the previous attempt had been; the noise from outside the room became even more dampened. Testing out the sturdiness of the construction, John reached forward and grabbed the door’s handle, jiggling it back and forth a few times. The door popped open and the handle bounced lightly in his grip, but no sound whatsoever came out - except the slightest bass-like sound, which John was fairly certain was what little sound travelled up his arm to the rest of his body, a sound so quiet he normally wouldn’t even have perceived it over the rest of the noise. It seemed even with his arm actively moving around in the area of the spell, it continued to function perfectly.

”Great, I’m officially capable of opening a door. Baby steps, John. Baby steps. Now let’s see if we can get Adantia the sleep she was so insistent on...” John thought, mentally grimacing as he stepped out of the grimy motel room and into the open-air walkway on the second floor exterior. As soon as he passed through the wall of still air, the sounds of nature and distant cars made their way to his ears again. John was careful not to release the spell until he had fully shut the door and was on his way down the hall, giving it a few seconds so his feet wouldn’t echo too loudly.

Only a dozen feet or so separated him from Adantia’s door, hardly enough time for John to do much more than listen to the subtle sounds of groaning and mumbling as he closed in on her door. John didn’t have the keycard for this room, which gave him the excuse to do what he’d been tempted to earlier – form a Barrier, kick the replica of the door inside the Barrier in, and then walk inside and exit the Barrier.

Of course, what John had overlooked was the possibility of Adantia waiting for him as he exited the Barrier, her hand already wrapped around his collar by the time his vision was adjusting to the jarring transition between worlds.

“We have… got to stop meeting like this,” John chortled out when he managed to get a grip on himself. Adantia was clearly annoyed, and clearly still half-asleep – the cuteness of her ruffled hair and bleary eyes was undercut by the way she was glaring daggers at him. “Sorry, I was trying not to wake you up.”

“Well, you did a piss poor job of it. Making a Barrier right into the room where I’m sleeping, and then kicking down the door… you didn’t think that would wake me up?”

“Honestly, I kind of assumed it would take a lot more,” John said, stumbling for words nervously for a moment before continuing. “I was just coming in because you were having nightmares.”

“No shit I was having nightmares, I’ve had them for- wait, how’d you figure I was having nightmares?” Adantia asked, sounding surprised. “You couldn’t even figure out how I brought down a building.”

“You weren’t really being all that subtle about it. I could hear you from the next room over. I just wanted to see if I could jostle you a little and get you out of whatever nightmare you were going through and back into a more normal dream.”

“Good fuckin’ luck with that,” Adantia said, snorting. “Haven’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since my home burned down.”

“I know a little about what that’s like,” John offered. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I would actually rather shove the entire length of one of my steel wires down my mouth and back out my asshole,” Adantia replied immediately, scowling at John.

“Do you… want some company? I doubt either of us is getting any more sleep tonight.”

“You know what? Fine, that doesn’t sound half bad actually,” Adantia said, turning back to the bed. “Honestly, there are worse ways to spend the night.”

“Oh!” John couldn’t help his exclamation of surprise, having already anticipated a rejection just as swift and blunt as the others she had given. “W-well, we’ve still got a few hours until sunrise. How do you want to spend them?”

“That depends,” Adantia said with a slightly wry grin.