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Before the Creature opened his eyes, his hand had shot to his patchwork chest. A fast drumming thundered beneath his ribs as he awoke in the dead of night.
The rhythm fell but soared when the same low and guttural growl swept over him again. The Creature strained his ears at the sound of it. It sounded tortured and he would have felt sorry for the beast if it hadn’t been for the frightening loud burst that followed.
He pulled his blanket so high up to his nose that he could feel the cold air nip at his toes. He was so tall that his feet stuck out from his bed, but at least Victor had sewn on an extra piece of fabric to keep them warm.
The Creature’s dark twinkling eyes darted around the room in awe.
Was this the monster people spoke of? He’d heard men utter that word and figured it was a bad thing by the way Victor had shown them the door.
Did that mean Victor feared it like he did?
Protectiveness ignited in him like a flickering flame and he slowly reached for the blanket. His toes curled up when he lowered his feet onto the cold tiles.
A thin strip of light was visible underneath the bathroom door and the Creature cocked his head.
His fingers lingered on its copper door handle, only flinching back when he heard another bark on the other side of the door.
“Victor…?” the Creature whimpered softly, throwing a look down the hallway. His eyes widened at finding Victor’s door ajar, revealing an unmade bed bathing in the pale moonlight.
Whereas his heart had been thumping at first, it now seemed to cease beating at all, and in an instant, he pushed the handle down and swung open the bathroom door.
“Victor?” the Creature asked, astonished to see his Creator clutching the porcelain bowl that was definitely meant for another body part.
A shock went through Victor’s slumped shoulders and he whipped his head around. “Oh… fuck,” he groaned at seeing the gigantic silhouette in the door way.
Yellow chunks were clinging to his stubble and his cheeks were redder than the Creature had ever seen them. Still, a faint smile broke through on Victor’s tears-streaked face as he looked up at his creation.
“Go back to bed, Adam,” he slurred.
“Victor…” the Creature repeated and the man shook his head, before running a hand over his clammy face.
It was rather tiring to hear his own name parroted back to him, but if he could believe the psychiatrists in his field, the mirroring phase was bound to end soon. After all, Adam had been with him for almost six months now.
“No,” he told his creation, before pointing his finger at himself once again. “I’m Victor.” He turned his finger around. “You are Adam.”
“Victor…”
“Adam,” Victor snickered, feeling unusually giddy. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the blood was fizzing in his veins from how much champagne he had consumed.
He wasn’t a big drinker, mostly because his father had always denounced it as an unhealthy habit, but perhaps that was exactly the reason he’d drank so much tonight.
The party held by the faculty to celebrate his triumph over death had felt like a marvelous middle-finger to his late father. Indulging in the many wines and liquors offered to him had felt like the cherry on top.
He watched the Creature’s lips move as his own name formed on his tongue. “A…A-dam…” he muttered at last.
“That’s it,” Victor mumbled, his eyelids falling shut to a spinning darkness. “Ugh, fuck me,” he groaned, immediately getting to his knees again.
His knuckles blanched as he clutched the toilet. Behind him, Adam winced at the violent sounds that followed.
Once the last wave of nausea had subsided, Victor looked over his shoulder. At seeing the way Adam was wringing his hands, he swallowed and spoke hoarsely: “It’s alright, Adam.”
He swore he saw the broad and bulky shoulders fall at his words of reassurance and he shakily wiped his chin with the back of his gloved hand. “Go back to bed. I’ll live.”
That was a word that Adam truly knew the meaning of and he hummed a low sound of approval.
“No…dead?” he murmured and Victor grinned.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” he told the hunched Creature, “Sleep now.”
It was indeed time for Victor’s heart to drop the next morning, when his eyes opened to Adam’s gigantic silhouette, towering over the end of his bed.
A panicked yelp escaped him as he kicked his legs free from the tangled duvet, only to fall back into the cushions with a sigh.
“Jesus Christ,” he panted, when a splitting headache descended on him.
“Victor?”
The doctor dropped his hands, which he’d been pressing into his pounding eye sockets and groaned. “Adam.”
“Life?”
“Barely.”
Adam clumsily shifted on his feet before hopping over to the window. With a happy gruff of determination, he yanked back the curtain.
Victor shielded his poor eyes from the blazing sun with a cry of agony that made Adam jump. His wide eyes darted from his disheveled Creator writhing on the bed to the bright ball of light he had been introduced to on his first morning.
In all of his haste to expel the morning light, he tore the velvet curtain from its hooks. A cloud of dust swirled through the air, turning Victor’s raven-black curls to an ashy shade.
“Bravo,” Victor grinned, squinting up at him. “That was an excellent demonstration of Murphy’s law.”
“Mur…phy.”
Victor snorted and rolled his eyes. “Fuck me.”
He hauled himself up to a seat and choked back a gag with his fist. The Creature frowned at the sound and Victor gave him a weak smile. “It’s good. It’s what the body does when you drink.”
Adam slowly nodded as Victor reached for the glass of water on his nightstand.
“I’m never drinking ag-” The rest of the sentence caught in his throat when Adam slammed the glass out his hand with a look of indignation.
“…alcohol again,” Victor corrected himself, looking at the shards of glass and his huffing creation.
When Adam returned a slow blink, Victor scooched down the bed’s end and pulled open a drawer.
“Here,” he said, uncorking a bottle and holding it below Adam’s nose.
His facial scars scrunched up when the smell penetrated his nostrils and he staggered back.
“Right?” Victor said, sorry to be agreeing with his father for once but pouring it out in the wash basin nonetheless.
When he caught a whiff of the cheap vodka, he clutched his stomach, trying not to bend double.
Adam followed his hand and mirrored his movement. “Eat?” he asked.
Victor sank down on his bed again and held his pounding head in his hands. "Go… Eat,” he commanded, “I’ll be down in a bit.”
Once Adam finally disappeared through the doorway, carefully ducking his head as he went, Victor laid back down. His grin slowly fell as sleep took mercy on his aching head.
Half an hour later, the sound of stumbling awoke him just in time to pull his face away from the plate of food Adam shoved underneath his nose.
The pungent, fishy smell was still enough to make his stomach turn, but at least he could keep it inside at the sight of two slices of toast, next to a pile of… were those anchovies?
“T-thank you, Adam,” Victor stuttered at the beaming Creature next to his bed. He tore off a small piece of dry toast and stuck it in his mouth.
He’d conquer the fish later. Preferably never.
They sat there for what felt like an eternity, with Victor munching on minuscule bites of bread while Adam basked in the pleasant warmth of the sunlight.
Victor’s eyes softened at the sight of it and he carefully set the plate down as far from his nose as possible. “Shall I read to you?” he asked, lifting up one of the leather-bound books on his nightstand.
The flow of words had always soothed the Creature, even when he didn’t understand all of them. He made a low sound that Victor could only compare to a horse whickering and carefully curled up.
Once Adam’s eyelids started to droop, Victor lowered his voice. His dark hair sparked softly with static as he sank further down his cushioned headboard, the book becoming heavier in his hands by the second.
By the time the moon shone upon the dusty sheets, it found both the Creator and his Creature sound asleep.