So pause in writing. Going to get back on top of things with this fic.
I was never one of those people who was disoriented by strange places. I could always remember the moment between sleeping and dreaming. The moment where my body was awake but my mind was already far off, flying away, balancing on the edge of awake and dreaming. This time, however, I was disoriented. My head was not foggy or swollen, not anything that could be partnered with heavy drinking, blacking out, and remembering nothing. I was not hungover. But I heard voices and they felt far away, like something playing on the TV in another room.
I was not in my bed, the little rough mattress with stuffed animals I'd held onto since childhood. This foreign bed was huge and the air was off, it didn't smell like my books or my clothes. I felt like I was balancing on the edge again and everything I was feeling and hearing wasn't here but a dream world, spilling over into being awake. If I waited it would go away.
I kept my eyes closed and listened, there were voices.
"I can't believe you brought her here. I thought we agreed, even if we were going to take her we were going to wait. Wait until we could handle her," someone said, a woman. And she was angry, but her voice sounded like bells, dancing in the air.
There was a scoff, a laugh. A laugh so infectious and bright and cocky all at the same time it sounded almost impossible. It tickled its way through the air and over my skin, rising up goosebumps.
"The girl was digging herself into a rut, she was about to find out she couldn't dig any deeper. It was time to act," someone else said. This was a man it seemed vaguely familiar, maybe a stranger from another night's dream.
"I didn't ask you, now did I?" the woman's voice again this time, the bells of it chiming angrily through the veil of my half sleep. I'll be up soon, maybe I fell asleep on the couch, that's why it felt so wrong. The voices and the bed, it would all be gone, swallowed back into my dream. Lily will make me pancakes, and Rufio will pick on me for drinking myself into black out. It must have been a hell of a night, to do that to me, what all had I drunk?
And then I remembered the glowing green shot, the way it burned down my throat. It had been called a never shot, hadn't it? Because you never...
That's when I jumped up, when I opened my eyes. Because someone slammed open a pair of doors I saw were suddenly at the other side of my room. I saw then I hadn't been balancing on the edge of sleep but instead hardwood from top to bottom, in a massive bed and it's soft white covers. Windows slotted the top of the walls, letting in sunlight and revealing and it full of dust, all falling over furniture that was covered in notebooks and files, scattered pages here and there, candles with blackened wicks and hard wax that dripped over the sides of end tables and dressers. And there were three people at the door, one still in the hallway, who looked short and slight, I barely saw her before she turned away.
Her hips were wide and her hair was cut short, blonde and fanning just around her head. But she was down the hall before I saw more. The others, one I knew, he was the bartender from the night before. He was just the same, the face of a boy, all sweet and innocent, and the body of a man, one whose beer belly was protruding and arms were too heavy.
It's when I saw him that I was scared, when I started shaking and felt my heart pounding in every part of me. I grasped the covers and pulled them around me.
"You said I wouldn't be raped or kidnapped!" I shouted out at him, because apparently I was angry, and that's what I felt pumping through my veins. It surprised me how little my fear suppressed that anger.
"Hm, I said you wouldn't get raped, I didn't promise no kidnapping. Besides how I see it you're not a kid, so it kind of ruins that whole concept, doesn't it?" he told me and I pulled the blankets tighter. And in the moment I couldn't breath, and if I tried anything I could just hear the sound of my tight breathing, but felt no relief. But then I heard it again, the laugh.
"Did you like it, the nevershot? Kind of a stupid name when you think of it, brewed it up myself. There's no roofies or anything, just something I made very special. It puts you to sleep gently, just like a baby, and there's not a single aftereffect. A little bit of alcohol for the burn, and the rest is a trade secret. But you can't blame Toodles here for giving it to you, he was only listening to me," the voice said, and just like the laugh it seemed impossible. Deep and confident, on the edge of cocky. A voice that knew it was impressive and still drew me in.
The voice belonged to the third person, the one who just stepped into the sunlight. He was a boy, no a man. He looked like both but not like the other guy. He was at least my age, maybe a little younger or maybe a little older, dressed in jeans and a green shirt that looked soft and worn. He was tan and freckled, thin but still muscular. But it was his face that captured me, the rosy lips pulled up in a smug grin, the strong jaw but soft cheeks, hair messy and auburn. But most of all his eyes, they were like a child's big and dark green, the softest of crinkling in the corner. This guy, whoever he was, was undeniably one of the most attractive human beings I had ever seen. And my heart was still pounding only I wasn't sure if I was scared anymore.
When he moved closer I pulled myself back, pulling the cover with me and smashing myself into the pillows and headboard. I could still feel the goosebumps tingling on my arms, and my skin felt flushed, in bright patches that burned across my cheeks and chin and danced around my collarbone.
"Don't be scared Wendy Darling. I'm Peter Pan, and I want to welcome you to Neverland."
"What is this place?" I stammered out.
"Like I said, it's Neverland. The place people wanna go when they never want to come back home again," he answered, and he backed up, spinning himself around the bar of the bed and shuffling some papers off of a dresser and leaning on it. But he kept staring at me, and in the light I could see how long the lashes were that framed his eyes. I couldn't keep my eyes off him, and I didn't even notice the other man, Toodles, had left.
I was still scared, though. Scared of the person in front of me, scared of being in a place I didn't know with a massively attractive boy I didn't know. Stockholm Syndrome wasn't something I was fond of catching, and the fact that I was a lot less panicked about this than I should be kept freaking me out. It was like I had to tell myself, you should be panicking right now, you should be jumping up and screaming, but I couldn't.
"Why am I here?" I asked, tentatively, because he was still looking at me and the patches of red were blooming all around my body. It's strange thing to realize, that no one ever directly looks at you when they're speaking and you're speaking—but Peter Pan did.
"You're here because I wanted you here. I've been watching you for a while, stalking if you wanna call it that, and I thought I'd offer you a proposition. It seemed like the right time, everything is going south for you anyway, so why not ask you if you wanna run away to Neverland?" he said, hopping on top of the dresser, sitting with his legs crossed over wax and paperwork. It was a bit to take in, that he had been watching me. And that, somehow, I was unaware of it. I became suddenly aware of all the embarrassing and horrible things I had done in the last few weeks, all the times I just didn't care and looked outright terrible. But my mortification was misdirected, because instead of being scared that a stranger had been following me, I was embarrassed by how I had looked.
"What do you mean, ask?" I said, and I didn't look at him this time because he still wouldn't take his eyes off me. I pulled the blanket through my fingers shaking a little, my embarrassment burning around me like hot coals.
"I mean I just wanted to show you around the place, see if you like it. And if you do, you can stay. If not you're free to go on your merry way with you best friend that doesn't care and your bitch of a stepmother," he said, and I was more scared then because the reality that he had actually been following me set in. And somehow it set the world I was in into a more concrete place. I really was in a different place with strangers, one of which (or maybe more) who had been following me. Yet somehow, I still wasn't as scared as I should of been.
And I didn't say anything back because I didn't know what to say, only that I wanted to look at him again, to make sure he was real and certain and I wasn't still caught in some dream. That's what he looked like to me, sounded like to me. Some unreal person who was caught in the layers of my consciousness.
"I'll give you some time to think Wendy Darling," he said and with that he went out the door, I heard the click of it closing behind him. I buried myself in the covers, feeling the embarrassment cooling off and the goosebumps fading away. But a rock still rolled around in my stomach, hitting the sides, and it wouldn't let me get back to sleep, wouldn't let me pretend it still wasn't happening. When I couldn't stand it anymore I got up, because while I was here I might as well see what Neverland was.
Neverland was a building, three stories high and immaculately designed, an abandoned hotel. Somewhere on the far side of town, where I could smell the ocean but couldn't see it, but I didn't know about any of that yet. Instead I was walking out of the room and Peter Pan was leaning against the side of the door, chewing absently on the end of the cigarette and when he walked out, he held it out to me with a lighter in his other hand. His hands were big, the type that could wrap around my neck. The type, I thought, that could crush me. But they had freckles, like the rest of him, and it was that, that made me think he wasn't going to use those hands to hurt.
I shook my head, and he tossed it over his shoulder and pocketed the lighter. "I was never a fan of them myself, just figured I'd offer."
He turned and started heading down the hall, pausing just for a second, to smile back at me. "You coming Wendy Darling?"
His smile was one of those things that people would seek out for their whole lives, and you catch it every now and then in glimpses of people. But it was a rarity, a smile so natural and unburdened that it could only be found in children. And that was Peter Pan, a smile curved at each corner that lit up his whole face.
He didn't wait for an answer when he walked down the hallway and I found myself following after him, because what else could I do. There was always the moment in fiction, when the person encounters something impossible to describe, fantastical or scary, a sudden crippling thing that turns there world upside down. I always found myself annoyed and exasperated by the characters who encountered such things, because they seemed to handle the situations so easily. A few minutes of panicking and suddenly everything was okay, they had accepted their fate and the story moved own. Somehow I was convinced if it ever happened to me I wouldn't do the same, I would question everything maybe until the end. Impossible things didn't happen for me. If this was my moment, however, I was accepting it more than I could ever think. Because it was still life, and it was still time, and it tugged me along with the masses.
"Any questions you have Miss Darling, I do ask that you save for the end of the tour. For now just follow and listen, let me paint you a tale and seduce you into my story," Peter said ahead of me and somehow I could hear a smile in his voice, the way stifled laughter found its way into the vibration of a telephone call. I stayed behind him, following the patterns of his feet, but looking around at the same time as well.
We were making our way down a long hallway, wallpaper peeling and more wooden doors passing through with each step. The carpet was beige, stained by years of traveling feet, and the hallway lit by dusted over glass lights hanging on the wall. Behind some doors there was noise, nothing discernible, but giving off the bumping and breathing of life, of the people who were in the rooms.
"We are walking through the ruins of the Hotel Du Pomme, shut down and out of use many years ago, but I promise you not abandoned," he said ahead as we rounded a corner. In this one some of the lights had gone dull, the doors were fewer and far in between, and no life dusted behind them. "It's the place where me and my boys made our homes, a place that could be yours as well if you wanted. For now I'm going to show you the outside works, the parts and pieces that make it pretty. And of course, if you choose to stay, you'll see everything else, the bones and the muscles. You'll get to explore and ravage the place, and where better way to have fun than in old abandoned buildings."
There was a certain drawl to voice, dancing on the edge of his syllables. It was for show, buried beneath the layers of mirth and delight, like an actor of stage trying to make his monologue grander than it was. Like he was standing on the stage where the audience worshiped him. Then there was a swift turn and more light hit my eyes, coming in suddenly from an armada of windows, cast along in front of me. We were on a ledge, with rounded staircases on either side, dark tinted bannisters, splintered here and there, guiding their way down. A chandelier hung a little above us, finding its noose in a rounded ceiling covered in delicate gold designs, interlocked with the same dark red of the walls. The glass bulbs on the chandelier were dulled yellow and falling apart, half of its body already withered away. And below I saw the a wooden desk and furniture, sofas and tables, spilling over with books and magazines, plants alive and crawling up over posts, and other ones brown and dead. It was a lobby, a lobby to one of those hotels so fancy it announced itself in the opening. And along the front walls, the round glass doors, that spun and spun, the ones that you get trapped in as a child. And all along the front were windows too, with dark frames, a few broken and shattered. I could smell the sea through them, and the smell of the hotel, distinctly mixing along it. It was both part beautiful and ruined, I felt like I had crawled into one of the intricate rooms of the "I Spy" books I played when I was younger. I never knew I could touch that world, and I didn't know that as Peter showed me more I would only find myself buried further in it.
"It's great isn't it?" he said, and suddenly he was beside me, smiling the smile that shouldn't exist and the eyes that fixed me on point. I was leaning over the bannister, taking in the world I had stepped into. I hadn't noticed I had been leaning, and hadn't noticed Peter moving to meet beside me. He moved like a shadow, with no sound to warn me.
"Du Pomme...it means apple?" I said, a smile tickling at the corners of my mouth. It was ridiculous to smile, the way that I was, but I felt tugging inside of me.
"Yes, it does," he said and almost impossibly his smile grew bigger. "But I don't think the Frenchman who owned this place ever expected the dumb Americans to figure out."
I laughed then, a small tiny one, that came out more like a fast breath than an actual laugh.
"But Wendy," he said, spinning around and heading towards the stairs, "we have more to explore and you are not allowed anymore questions until the end."
And as silly as it sounded, I was excited.
Peter Pan showed me just enough of the Hotel Du Pomme to make me feel like I was dreaming. There was the ballroom, which seemed to stretch on and on, with two more dulled chandeliers and tables and chairs pushed against the walls. A once golden hardwood floor and portraits of people maybe famous in the past. There was a small theater, with seats half ripped up and backstage dressing and makeup rooms. The controls for it still worked, and Peter climbed in a booth in the back, flipping switches and filling the stage up with patches of blue, green, and golden lights. There was an orchestra pit a few feet down below, with knocked over music stands and a few instruments covered in rust, their once silver skin peeking through—a flute and french horn, a few tambourines and a cracked violin. More hallways and doors, hallways all painted in red. I felt life behind some doors and none behind others, and found myself tracing my fingers along the doors of an elevator he told me hadn't worked since 1932, right before the depression swept through and buried the little French man in too much debt to run a hotel.
He talked the whole time, telling me facts about the hotel, telling me random names that of which boys were in which rooms, names that bounded around like children in a rush and left my brain. And if at all I opened my mouth to speak, he shushed me with a little grin. He didn't tell me anything else, how I got here, why this place existed, or who he was beyond his name. He delivered everything like a grand monologue on stage. I was just as fascinated by him as I was by the place, by the way his legs and hair moved, all in one motion. He spun around corners, and smiled with a square jaw. At a few moments he would scoot closer, and my clustered blush would appear again, he felt like an extension of my fascination. I couldn't tell if it was minutes or hours, but I felt removed from life, and like the only thing that existed was Neverland, Peter, and me. Finally we made our way back into the lobby, the placed still bathed in gold, only shallower and darker, time had passed and I hadn't really been lost.
"So, question time Wendy?" he said, leaning back into one of the sofas, stretching his legs unto the table. He did everything without thinking, he owned this world. I had so many questions to ask, and I felt like I could never get through them all.
"You've shown me the place, but what is it for? And you keep mentioning boys but I've seen no one. Just, how can...just, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel?" I blurted, embarrassed by my awkwardness, leaning into the edge of the armrest. I couldn't sit down next to him.
He lit up, his cheeks pulling up and eyes bright like tree leaves after rain.
"Neverland's exact reason for existence can't be given right now, but I can say this, it exists for the people who don't want to exist. For the ones who want time to stop. The boys, they're my friends, the ones who needed to escape. Me and Tink, we found this place. Found it away from all the bullshit of the world, the jobs and traffic, the constant blur of people, the demand of small talk. I can't stand it out there, truth be told, I can't stand the messiness of it all. In here it's good and I'm safe, we're all safe from fucking life. That's the best thing about Neverland. You never have to deal with the bullshit that is life," he said, and unlike all the others it didn't come out like some grand monologue. It came out like he was lost and the words were his way of finding himself back.
"Shit, you're like some lost John Green novel I fell into," I said, smiling to myself. And then I saw my phone, slipping out of the pocket of my jeans as I leaned over. The battery was nearly dead, but it still shouted the time at me. The rock in my stomach shifted forward and knocked the wind out of me. I had work in an hour and an apartment back home, I had Lily and Rufio waiting for me, there but still not. I had the stuff with Mary and school coming up, more hours to beg for at work, and bills due in two days. I had all the bullshit, and no amount of exploring old hotels with strangers was going to make it go away.
"I need to go," I said, I was up, but didn't know where to run. My heart was pounding and I was scared again, scared at life beating my ass. He looked at me in confusion and then at my phone, a realization casting itself over his face.
He was still on the couch and so when he looked up at me, his face more boy than man. "You know, you could forget them all Wendy, forget it all and never go back."
But I couldn't. And whoever he was, he didn't see that.
"No, I can't. You said if I let you show me around that I could go. Well I did, so you better fucking keep your promise, okay?" I said, and somehow I was on the verge of tears. I couldn't breathe for a moment, and felt trapped, felt like I needed to launch myself into the window to get some air. But I didn't, Peter just stood up, pulled out a phone of his own, and texted someone. Peter didn't look at me, and I sat of the edge of the couch biting my nails. A few minutes later Toodles, I had remembered, showed up at the top of the stairs. The moment Toodles was in my sight, Peter disappeared up the stairs. Quicker than I could turn and watch him go and quiet as a shadow. I let the disappointment sink in, mixed with all my fear and anxiety.
Toodles walked out the door and I followed him without a word, and noticed the outside of the hotel looked just as grand as the inside. There was a single car in the parking lot, a beat contraption with a rusted roof and different color doors.
"Where are we going?" I asked, and followed him to it.
"To the train station," he said and opened the the door for me. He still looked pleasant, still looked just as boyish as he had in the bar the night before. The air surprised me outside the sun burned my eyes, it was suddenly noiser than I remembered all of the world to be, it suddenly felt louder than I could handle. As we pulled away I checked my messages with the dying life of my battery. Not a single one from Lily or Dad, not a single person to care. We moved through the town, encountering cars and loading docks, all of this life I had forgotten about. Neverland was along the bay, a few miles from the train station, and past the point of town I ever traveled to. To anyone else it looked like an abandoned hotel, and I felt struck by how strange it was to know what was going on inside.
He delivered me to the station, giving me a ticket to take back to the center of this sprawled out town, I felt like I was waking up from a dream. Every little part of me that I had felt in Neverland was fading. It had only been a few hours there, but I felt myself dulling now, I felt myself falling back into it all. By the time I was back at my house, grabbing my clothes, and running the two blocks up the road to the store, I felt like it had been a dream. Some fucked up childish dream induced by one heck of a drink.
My coworker glared at me when I walked in the door. I had been her relief and I was twenty minutes late. With a huff he untied her apron and walked out of the store, and I assumed my post behind the register.
It took fifteen minutes for someone to come up, fifteen minutes I knew because I counted them ticking away at the clock, lulling me in waves of everything happening around me. I swiped her books through, a plastered smile on my face. She handed me a coupon, one that expired yesterday.
"Excuse me mam." I said, morphing the smile into an apology. "But this coupon expired yesterday, I can't use it with this purchase."
She looked at me like I slapped her in the face. "But it's only one day, how can you do this. I'm a regular here, and you can't just let me use it."
Her voice was half anger, half begging, and there was no way I recognized her sagged face as a regular. I didn't have the energy to speak, and so shook my head.
She huffed, "This is ridiculous, I demand to see the manager."
I closed my eyes and felt it just then. I felt all the fucking bullshit.
"You know what, I'm the manager on duty. But I really don't fucking care," I said and untied my apron. I threw it off my head, took a deep breath, and left.
So fin.
Added in some lines during time jumps, to make things less confusing. My wonderful penpal has agreed to be my beta reader for this chapter and throughout the fic so hopefully grammar and typos are a little less agonizing than previously. Also, I really hope all of the little moments that are references to the original story are coming through.
Next chapter whenever :)