When John awoke he was offered two tokens of reality, two reminders that his dreams had been anything but tame. The first was something he wished not to describe. It was an after effect of watching a beautiful young man contort onto the bed, the concaves of his jutting bones being washed in his own blood. Perhaps this was not something to find so appealing, yet John knew it was nothing more than a vision, nothing more than a created fantasy in which his unconscious mind wished to torture him in. He thought nothing of it, nothing more than throwing an excess of blankets across his legs and getting his breathing to a controllable, relaxed level. He listened to his heart rate for a moment, waiting for it to settle within his chest. Blinking away the images of those eyes, those which seemed to transcend from his brain only to stare at him from the ceiling of his own room.
The second token was realized only later, a small clang of metal as he pawed along his bedside table for his phone. His alarm still had yet to go off, it was dark within the room, though by the lights of his clock John could see that he only had about six more minutes to spare until the ringing bore into his ears and disrupted his quiet, lulling darkness. Something had fallen off of the table, something which had been precariously set at the edge of the wood as if with the intention of being thrown. John snatched his phone, turning on the flashlight and searching the floor for the missing object. His worst fear would be his retainer. That metal bar had no business under the bed, collecting the dust that had accumulated over the years. Though the light caught something much different. Something hauntingly familiar.
John cast his arm over the side of his bed, feeling through the darkness until his fingers clenched upon a small metal key. A familiar shape, a familiar design, though something he had never seen in the material world. John sat up in bed, blinking as his eyes tried to adjust to the harsh light of the flashlight. He held his phone closer, keeping the key in the palm as his hand in an excess of caution. It was strangely similar to the one which had fallen from the door in his dream. So similar, in fact, that John would swear they were one in the same. The design was the same, the twisted metal arranged in a pattern of triangles. The metal was cold and lightweight, a small enough thing to fit comfortably on a keychain even before the keys were made of practical metal. Had he picked this up somewhere, accidentally integrating it within his dream world? Or had something followed him home, something other than a strange feeling of passion? He remembered the older Victor's promise, 'I'll leave you the key', though the key to what? And how could a dream possibly hold up its promises?
Squinting, John was the most vulnerable to a surprise. Therefore, when the screen of his phone suddenly lit up, vibrating madly in his hand as it announced six thirty, well John almost lost both the phone and the key in his flight. He flung himself back onto the bed, shaking with such a violent jolt of energy that he nearly cracked through his bedframe all together. He screamed just a bit, just enough to summon the rest of the house, though he kept his fingers clenched around his new treasure. Even as his mother came to turn on the lights, John knew he had to keep hold. He would keep holding onto that key until his fingers bled. Keep holding until his bones shone through. For some reason this key had followed him all the way from his unconscious mind. For some reason, John knew this key would open something very special. 

  John fastened the new key to his keychain, swinging it in his spare time with his car and house key along the decorated lanyard. He knew he had to keep it close; a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that the key was essential to a component of his life he had not yet recognized. The mysterious key would open a mysterious lock, and who knew just when that lock would show itself? Perhaps John had dreamed himself some sort of special inheritance, a box of some value that would be unearthed in the soccer fields after practice? Or perhaps there was a safety deposit box somewhere in the post office, one with a key hole that did not match the rest, an ancient thing, containing a pile of golden coins or a treasure map to something much more ancient. Or, more realistically, the key could have been left there by his mother while she was cleaning. Despite its weight, apparently being made of iron or a similar metal, it may very well unlock the chest in the basement that held their fine China. Or it could have come along with the plastic handcuffs John had played with in fourth grade, in his effort to practice his career in law enforcement. The key could be important, or it could be nothing. Though its relation to the dream could not be understated. It could not be set aside, decided upon as a trivial thing in a fantasy world.

John would have been happy to discredit his dreams. He would have been happy to look back on those thirteen years and laugh at the terrified child he was, afraid of a house, afraid of a dream, afraid of the dark. When he was a child it couldn't have meant something. Though now, looking towards it from a much more narrow window, looking at it from the experienced eyes of a teenager and the time gap of about two hours, John suddenly realized that there was something much more important lingering within his unconsciousness. Why would he continually go back to a world he had created inside of his head? A world his childhood self supposedly thought up, before he knew what violence really was, or what sex was at all? Before he knew the connotation of a naked man strutting throughout the halls? As John reconsidered his dreams from a more adult approach he realized that it was more likely the world had been created for him, not by him. And its return was not random. It was timed perfectly.
No one had ever been in his dream world until now. No one except the faceless man, the one who sat content on the living room sofa, bleeding out in front of the crackling fireplace. The only companion for the faceless man was the bleeding man, the naked man, the man who seemed to constantly be both alive and dead. The wounded martyr and the lustful wanderer, the beautiful thing who seemed to offer emotions up on a plate, either frightening or exciting his captives as he saw fit. The dream world may very well be his. Was John just an invited guest into this house of horrors? Was this some sort of delusion, set inside of his own mind, that was being controlled by an external source?
Victor's arrival meant something different. It meant that he had left the real world and entered into something much more convoluted. Victor was no longer a present, physical figure in John's life. Now he was seen as an old relic, a more experienced man, though a lustful and passionate one. Did that make Victor nothing more than an imagined hallucination? Was that what this house did, collect the lost souls that John would never meet again in the flesh? Or was Victor always a part of this, was Victor dreaming of the same house, of the same two men? Or was this just a dream after all? A dream that could be manipulated by the last thing John had been thinking about as he fell to sleep?
It was becoming maddening, this process of question and answer. The anger stemmed most prominently from the issue that the answers were not coming as easily as John wanted them to. As a school student he was used to even rhetorical question having answers. The world worked in a process of answering; there was always someone who knew more than you, and someone who knew more than them. You simply climbed higher on the ladder of knowledge to find what you were searching for. If the internet didn't hold the answer, perhaps his teachers did. Perhaps the library did. But this? This world of dreams, this violent and intimate unconscious landscape? He was hopeless to solve it by himself. The major drawback of that was that no one else was in the position to help him, either. He was, by all accounts, all alone in this endeavor.
What John realized primarily was that he was alone. This did not come as much of a surprise, for as the weeks droned on Victor's absence became more of a hole in his heart than a hole in his life. He was thankful for the familiar surroundings, the backup friends, the sports teams. He was thankful that he could fall back to the secondary choices, those which had seemed less desirable when Victor offered an alternative. John could settle rather easily back into a life he chose not to live. It was the secondary option, though it was not some version of purgatory. He was happy enough; at least he forced others to perceive him as such. In reality there was something deep inside of him that was missing. He realized it when the dreams returned. There was a stability inside of himself that had gone away with Victor, like some strange counterbalance that had ensured he did not spin off course. Victor, despite his rebellious nature, had been something of a compass. Not a moral compass, but a purposeful one. When John was with Victor he felt that at least one part of his destiny had been fulfilled. Now, with that significance absent, John felt as if he was a boat floating aimlessly in the ocean. He was at the mercy of other whims, able to be shifted into the wrong course by a mere gust of wind. Parental suggestions, college searches, sports teams...each of which seemed so puny when compared to the destiny he had imagined for himself. And yet that destiny, as potent as it felt in his mind, was unheard of. Lost to who knows where, if it was ever present at all. John felt as if his destiny had been imagined with Victor in the forefront, and now that they were separated, all that he was left with were dreams.
John spent his free time lost in thought. It was a strange pastime for him, considering he was usually moving too fast to slow down and think. Though today, and every day since Victor's departure, John had a lot of free time to spare. He had a lot of preoccupations, spanned not only from his current experiences, but from his suspicions about what was going on overseas. Some part of him felt left out. As if there was a predetermined destiny for him and Victor, though only one half was able to experience it. Were their fates aligned with England after all? Rubbing his thumb against the silver key only worsened his anxiety. Touching a part of a dreamland, an imagined landscape, how could he pass this over as a mere coincidence? Would he someday be met with a door that needed to be unlocked, a door with his stranger behind it?
"John, what are you doing moping around?" Mrs. Watson emerged from the kitchen to find her son bent over the kitchen table, one finger tapping anxiously against the table cloth while the others fingered the key that was smooth and cold upon his skin. John took a deep sigh, feeling as if that was answer enough.
"Haven't got anything better to do," John admitted mournfully. "Have you seen this before?" quickly he raised the key to his mother's face, intercepting her march towards the front door with a rather violent display of his lanyard and its contents. Mrs. Watson squinted, taking a step back to aid her aging eyes in seeing the key for all it was. Evidentially it didn't excite her, as her expression never shifted away from that bothered grimace.
"Never seen that. Did you find it at school? Rather pretty thing," Mrs. Watson commented, passing along the table and continuing her process of getting the mail. John was silent; he felt no need to explain himself and his newfound possessions. Instead he slunk farther into his chair, his back bending at an unhealthy level as he let out a moan of painful contemplation.
"Why don't we offer Victor the spare bedroom?" John complained, shouting at the open door as his mother trekked back inside from her journey to the mailbox. In her hands was a bunch of newspapers and bills, nothing of importance judging by the disgusted look on her face.
"You know that's impossible. His parents made their choice, it's not our place to intervene," Mrs. Watson complained, shutting the door with a swipe of her foot and dropping the mail into an unceremonious pile upon the kitchen table.
"But if he runs away, will you let him in?"
"Sounds like someone's plotting," she insisted, arching her eyebrows in that motherly disapproval. John shrugged, shifting in his seat and trying to play the role of innocence.
"I'm not plotting anything. I'm just hinting that Victor might be thinking more than we give him credit for," John pointed out. Mrs. Watson huffed, shaking her head and lingering near the edge of the table.
"I know it's hard to accept that he's gone, but friends come and go. It's just how life works, unfortunately. You'll find a new best friend. Besides, you're so close to graduation. When college comes around you'll be ready to move on," Mrs. Watson insisted. John doubted that. He doubted that so heavily that he didn't feel the need to respond.
"We've been friends since preschool, Mom," John debated at last. "What makes you so sure I'll find another friend like that?"
"Maybe you won't. But I'm sure you won't be moping around the kitchen table for the rest of your life. It gets better, even if it's never exactly the same."
"Ever the optimist," John grumbled.
"An optimist never made good decisions. Especially not as a parent. Realism gets you places in this world. Realism helps get your pining son out into the world, instead of moping around over his car keys!"
"It's not my car key!" John defended with an exasperated sigh. He held the key close to his chest, as if in defense, feeling from it a strange and radiant energy. As if the metal itself was vibrating, pulsing out a code in Morse for him to follow. Mrs. Watson gave a disgruntled sigh, as if she was not prepared to have an argument that had not even been defined yet. This didn't seem to be a battle about John's social life; it seemed to be bigger than that. It had to do with destiny. The destiny John was missing out on by spending the remainder of his life in this kitchen chair, pondering. The destiny that Victor was well on his way towards, if he wasn't already there.
John turned back towards the mail, wondering if Victor might have written him a letter. He was always better in writing; his words flowed a lot more convincingly through a pen than over his tongue. Shuffling through, John hoped to see the postmark of the Royal Mail. Newspapers, bills, thin cardboard coupons. Shuffling through, John saw nothing of promise. Though at the bottom of the pile there was a strange, coincidental omen. An advertisement for airfare rates, some sort of mileage program that was supposedly best promoted through the mail. A large, sky-blue post card with a picture of a plane. White letters, boxed and taking up most of the page, reading Travel to England.  

Victor POV: After seeing the way Rosie downed two bottles of beer in the back alley of the school, Victor was hesitant to get into a car with her. Nevertheless, it seemed as though his weekend would only improve if he managed to get into a major car crash. At least then he would have something to do rather than sit in his room. A hospital bed seemed preferable to the same withering blankets on his bed, the sheets which were so stained with his sweat that they moved in a bunching mass instead of like regular fabric. It was Friday night, and in England it appeared that the moment the school bell rang the festivities were set to begin. The schoolyard smelled like cigarette smoke, and from her bag Rosie produced enough alcohol to make any weekend trip worth it. Though as they loaded into the car, with the drunken girl at the wheel, Victor made a point to strap his seatbelt very tightly around his waist, keeping his schoolbag positioned on his lap as an extra barrier of protection between himself and the dashboard.
Rosie turned on the engine, though it seemed as though she intended to sit and idle the vehicle for some time longer, only turning the ignition to get the radio started on close to maximum volume. Victor hesitated, wondering if he should start breaking into his new data plan on his phone to let his parents know he might not be home until the evening, or in fact might not be home at all. Should he start writing his will in the notes app, listening to death metal sung with an English accent as he smoldered in the hot, sticky leather seats of Rosie's ancient car?
"Where are we going?" Victor asked at last, realizing after a moment that 'nowhere' seemed to be the only obvious answer. While there were some lingering cars in the lot it seemed that most of the students had either walked home or disappeared towards their determined destinations. All of the remaining vehicles must belong to staff who lived too far away to justify a bicycle.
"We're waiting for Sherlock," Rosie admitted, craning her neck around the headrest so that she could stare from the squat rear window, one streaked with lines of pollen and neglect. This car must have been ancient, perhaps belonging to her father before he went away. Dead, or absent? Victor never had the bravery to ask.
"Sherlock?" Victor clarified with a little gulp. "That boy who caused my migraine?"
"That was correlation, not causation," Rosie sighed. "He just happened to come by while your hormones were out of whack."
"Either way, I don't trust him."
"Well that's for you to decide. But he's got the best stuff, and he knows where to smoke it," Rosie sighed. "So we need him, despite your hesitation."
"I don't think I agreed to smoke anything!" Victor defended, writhing in his seat with this sudden suggestion. What did Rosie think he was?
"Aw, the poor American. This is how we have fun in England, didn't they tell you? Unless you'd like to go wallow in a bog," Rosie snapped.
"If my parents catch me..."
"They won't catch you," Rosie insisted. "That's why you don't do it in the neighborhoods."
"How far are we planning to go?" Victor asked in a little protest, envisioning an intoxicated Rosie Watson speeding down the freeway while straddling both lanes with the ancient car.
"Sherlock will tell us when he gets here," Rosie predicted. "He said he found somewhere new."
"Is this what he was 'inviting' you to?" Victor presumed, remembering an invitation being passed over his head that day in the lunch room. Victor still hadn't seen this elusive Sherlock, though he imagined him to be rather intimidating due to the octave of his baritone.
"That's just the price sheet," Rosie chuckled. "He charges his friends."
"As he should," Victor sighed. "That's not much different from America." ide mirror. Rosie made a noise of excitement, as if she had spotted the boy of interest, and as promised the small silhouette of an approaching student began to approach the car. From this inverted angle, Victor could only make out small details about the figure. His height, for one, seemed to be much underestimated through the reflection. Just as an approaching car seems to be a pinprick in the glass, so too did this appropriately monstrous boy. It was only when he clambered inside, bent nearly in half, that Victor realized just how tall Sherlock was. He was an anomaly of sorts, for what he lacked in girth he made up entirely in height. And he was graceful, unfairly so, for even as Victor wrenched himself around the seat to get a better look, already Sherlock seemed to have struck a pose. He sat in the middle seat, as if he intended to get thrown from the windshield, and neglected to put on his seatbelt. Instead he tossed his backpack to the side, extended a long arm to pull the door shut behind him, and leaned forward upon spread knees. Victor clenched his lips, feeling as if he was obligated to stare.