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Six hundred and sixty-five days. It was a long time, almost two years, to be alone in this place. This cold, dark abyss.
Darling had taken to talking to himself to keep himself sane, though he wasn’t sure it was working. He picked a direction and pretended that he was making one of his presentations. It was all he could do to beat away the encroaching isolation.
He had been muttering to himself for a while, musing on the nature of where he found himself.
" I feel like… I need something else. Something else entirely. Some mad, creative mindset to help me I–not a scientist, an artist… This is a place for an artist ."
The sudden sound of a door opening, a shout of alarm, and Casper found himself being blinded by the beam of a flashlight. He raised a hand to block out the light and took a step back. He carefully peered at the man who had appeared like magic.
"He-hello? I’m Dr. Darling, Casper Darling, former head of Research at the FBC. Who am I speaking to?"
The light flicked off and the man came closer. He was clad in a dark suit, blue shirt stretched slightly too tight across his chest. And from the stranger came the voice of the dreamer, Casper’s own voice.
"My name is Alan Wake. I’m a Writer."
Darling followed as Wake led him from his prison and out into the dimly lit streets of what seemed to be New York. Rain poured from the sky, and the bright neon signs stung at his eyes. He looked down at where Wake was holding onto his wrist, fingers bloodless from the cold and the tightness of his grip.
It had been so long since he had seen anyone, touched anyone. Casper felt a hysterical bubble of laughter try to escape. It had been so long . The band of warmth around his wrist was almost unbearable.
Eventually he was pulled into a hotel, the name familiar even if he couldn’t quite remember why.
"As long as we are relatively quiet, we should be alright." Wake said as they entered a room and locked the door behind them.
"And if we are not quiet?" Darling whispered.
"If we are lucky? We only catch Zane’s attention," he notably looked Casper up and down, focusing on his arms and stomach, before lingering on the bright smile on Casper’s face, "And I don’t think he’d let you go once he got his hands on you. Forget leaving the Dark Place, you would be lucky to leave his apartment."
Darling started to ask what Wake meant by that when the writer continued.
"If we are unlucky, then Scratch hears us, and we both get killed or worse." Wake stated, a bit too calm at the idea for Darling’s comfort.
"This is what you consider safe?!"
"This is safe, at least the safest you are going to find down here."
Wake shrugged his jacket off and threw it into a corner. The back of his shirt was dark in places, darker than it should be just from the rain, and when Alan took it off the fabric stuck to his skin. The writer’s skin was bloody, scarred and bruised. The sight of his injuries almost enough to make Darling ignore the way his mouth went dry as Wake stripped off.
"Don’t worry though," Wake said, "if Scratch does come, just run. He will follow me and you should be able to get away. Get up to room 665 if you can, Zane… well… you won’t be in danger from Scratch at least. He probably won’t hurt you."
"What if this ‘Scratch’ follows me instead?"
Alan huffed out a resigned laugh.
"As if I would be so lucky. He won’t, I can be sure of that."
Wake moved to the bathroom, keen to take advantage of the hot shower, while Darling flopped—fully clothed—onto the bed.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept in a real bed. He’d become awfully familiar with his office chair even before he had been brought to this place. There was nothing to go home to, nothing worth leaving his work. He'd almost forgotten what a real bed felt like.
He closed his eyes, listening to the shower, relaxing for the first time in more years than he cared to count. Casper had dozed off a little, not noticing the sound of the shower turning off or the door opening.
"You using that towel, or can I have it?" Wake asked, stepping into the room, steam trailing behind him like a ghost. Darling cracked an eye open, too comfortable to move, throwing the towel lazily to Wake.
"Do what you want," he mumbled, still half-asleep. The bed felt like a cloud, and he momentarily entertained the idea of never getting up. He could hear Wake move about the room before the bed shifted to support the other man’s weight. Casper could feel the weight of the other’s eyes on him; he turned to look at Alan. The look in the other’s eyes was curious, and then a little embarrassed.
“Sorry, it has been a while since I have seen anyone who doesn’t look like me.”
“Oh? So the others you mentioned, Scratch and Zane, they look similar to you?”
“Give me a haircut and a change of clothes, and I look identical to them. The uh, the Taken outside are mostly shadow, but I realised recently that they are copies of me as well.”
“Interesting, I wish I could make notes. Get a closer look at some of them.”
Alan made a little half-stifled laugh.
“As I said earlier, get too close to Scratch and he’ll slit your throat; get too close to Zane and you’ll be drugged up, boozed up and the ‘subject’ of one of his films.”
Darling’s own laugh was a bit nervous.
“Zane doesn’t sound too bad.”
Alan gave him a look.
“You look like a man who values his own intelligence and independence. Zane will rip that from you. Make you feel like a puppet, a toy for his amusement, even when he truly means no harm. Though maybe he will like you enough to let you keep your mind.”
“You seem to think he will like me.”
Darling could feel Wake’s gaze travel down his body like a physical touch. Alan reached out, pushing up Darling’s shirt and jumper to see the well-built abs underneath, another touch to his bicep, another to the curve of his jaw.
“Zane likes pretty things, and you — I imagine — would look stunning on camera. You’re also very… enthusiastic, he’d like that. Your science is a whole new avenue to try and escape as well. If I could think of a way to incorporate your knowledge into my own story, I’d have tried it already.”
Darling blushed at the touches.
“I mean, you don’t look so bad yourself, Wake.”
Alan huffed out another laugh, eyes still stuck on where he had pushed up Darling’s shirt. Casper, who was only half paying attention, was suddenly jolted into alertness as Alan swung his leg over Casper’s hips.
“Hey now,” Casper jokingly protested, his hands instinctively finding Alan’s waist. “What are you trying to do?”
“I feel that I could tell you anything about what could happen to you here, and you would only be curious to know more, to see it for yourself.”
“There's nothing wrong with being curious. I've built my career around it.”
“There is when it gets you hurt.”
“That's the most interesting part.”
Alan shook his head, bemused and more than a little concerned. He looked down at Casper's toned stomach, scratching his nails against tanned skin. Darling flinched, bucking up into where Wake was straddling him.
“Though I'm not sure I want the others to get their hands on you, you're one hell of a prize. If the idea of trapping someone else wasn't a nightmare, I'd try to take you back to the writer's room with me. Though that would probably do something terrible to Scratch's possessive streak.”
Darling was reining in his curiosity about whatever the hell that meant, when Wake leaned down to nip at the sparse trail that led to the waistband of Casper's boxers. Casper had so many questions; why were the other men copies of Wake? What was this place? What was the writer's room? Was there any way to escape?
He didn't even know which he was going to ask when he opened his mouth, only for Alan to slip a palm over his mouth to silence him. Endless blue eyes looked up at him, as Wake's free hand began to shuffle Casper's boxers down.
“Shh, Darling. Remember, you have to be quiet.”
About half an hour later, there was a lazy knock at the door and an almost-familiar head leaned in. The stranger had a smug grin on his face and a glass in his hand. Alan’s exasperated groan suggested to a sweaty and breathless Casper that perhaps he had not been quite quiet enough.