You'd better keep it in check

Or you'll end up a wreck

And you'll never wake up

Wake up

The look in his eyes.

The glint of decision.

The half-second of mental and emotional change.

The flip.

The discreet motion.

The breath catching in his throat.

The shine of the blade.

''You're going to kill me..''

''There's no other way..''

''Yes there is..''

''I was right..''

''We are the same…''

You'd better keep it in check

Or you'll end up a wreck

And you'll never wake up

He's been like this for a long time now. Months actually. The doctor in the hospital had said it's kinda normal for patients like this needing to go through their trauma to find the way back. But he wasn't so sure this was the case here. Judging by the way Mal has not been reacting ever Vijay held his breath every time visiting. But he was hoping regardless.

So far months later he was still trapped in a catatonic state, all curled up on his side, sometimes with open scary eyes void of emotions that gave Vijay chills to the soul, but most often his eyes were closed and the fear then gripped Vijay's heart as he couldn't fight the deep dark thoughts.

And the fight it's been.

Ever since his own family made a mess his darkness within had been spiking it's head out into the light of day. But Mal was the one with most of it inside and he still brought more light than Vijay thought was even possible.

Back in the day that was the only thing that could hold him and keep from sinking deeper into his own demons.

That's when they connected the most and to this day this connection seemed to never cease. Even if they skipped years of actual contact. Somehow they still kept gravitating towards each other.

Which was now why he was sitting on the side of the bed Malcolm was laying on and even went as far as to hold his hand and talk for eternity, receiving only vague twitches as the only sign his beloved man was still there somewhere.

Crush and crumble under your defenses

It's not treason, it's no lie

You frame the photograph

I sit on fences

Change of season, love can die

The thing was that Mal didn't seem to get better no matter what was going on around him and that caused Vijay to sink deeper down the rabbit hole. He kept having nightmares of Malcolm being killed by his own father and the most haunting image to wake up from was that hopeful, incredibly pained, yet awfully deeply stinging gaze in those blues and for the first couple weeks he felt like trapped in his own chest of demons.

Most of them reflected his own troubled past as a child of a criminal father and all that rift that left between himself and the world around. It almost stole his childhood entirely away from him if it wasn't for Malcolm quietly returning at least some sort of semblance to their deeply affected past.

And then his nightmares turned to more sinister scenes his mind cooked up from all the stories Mal had told him in greatest detail a criminal psychologist slash forensic profiler could achieve with given knack for details of some gore.

Sure the best way to infuse best nightmares to traumatize someone for good.

But as he kept coming back, much to someone's dismay, he felt like slowly trapping himself inside Mal's nightmare and letting himself seep through the cracks and combining their shared demons.

In retrospect it was supposed to sound as an alarm bells all throughout his system about month ago. However, he fabulously skipped that part and went in for the main course.

It turned out to be the grave mistake he'd need to learn in the future as his sanity slowly slipped through the cracks left by the hand of the man that took his love of life away into the darkness. And it started to show. At first less but over the past month of especially trying times when they had to put the man on central line and feeding tube. It took a dive down in the last week when he came to see the man and there were now a heart monitor and the dreaded nose tube. It truly went down the darkest route so far and Vijay seemed to never recover from that day.

You'd better keep it in check

Or you'll end up a wreck

And you'll never wake up

Martin started to visit him in the waking world..

He hoped to keep that away, but when Mal's sister suddenly came up to hug him tightly he was shocked, but also relieved. She offered no words but the gesture went deeper than any words ever could.

It was a point he could see the sinister man lurking from the shadows until the hug. It made the dark corners of the room light up and somehow he felt okay for a moment.

And then it was over…

The glint of a shiny knife caught his eye from the corner of the room and suddenly all Vijay could see was the blood dripping off of the blade and seeping into the floor. He felt the life slipping through his hands and he blinked the tears away…

He was suddenly brought back to reality by the rush of nurses pushing him sideways as the alarm of the monitor blared holes into his eardrums. Just like that, all of a sudden it became too loud and too much for him to bear…

If we tear out the tumor

It's later, never sooner

If we tear out the tumor

It's later, never sooner

The next time he became aware was when a beeping sound next to his ear changed the pitch. Vijay had been in hospitals enough to tell this was either his own or it was Mal's. And it caused his heart spike up along with the beeping.

''No need to skyrocket that heartbeat, you're doing just fine.''

The voice of the most beautiful angel sang to his ears and suddenly he was able to open his eyes and finally see the man who was alive and well and leaning in for a kiss…

It seemed a place for us to dream

It seemed a place for us to dream