Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was dark. The wind was howling, but beyond that, there was utter silence. The old house didn't even creak under the onslaught, a welcomed yet still unnerving respite. It was strange. He never thought he would hate the quiet like he did now. The quiet was oppressive. The quiet was a weapon. The quiet was a prison, and he the lone prisoner with his jail cell bars made of rotting luxuries.

A clap of thunder so loud his bones rattled shook the house, and he flinched so hard he dropped his mug. It shattered on the aged kitchen tile like a gunshot, his ears ringing from both sudden and sharp onslaughts. Drawing a deep, shaky breath and shutting his eyes against the tears that pricked at the corners of them, he crouched down, picking up the shards of ceramic. His hands shook as bad as his breath, but he didn't care. Not even when he cut himself, his blood black in the dark and quiet.

He hated it. He wanted to go out. He wanted to see people. He wanted to have friends again, he wanted to go to parties again, he wanted to socialized, to date, to kiss, to fuck -- anything but the relentless, suffocating quiet. He couldn't remember the last time another pair of hands touched him. Couldn't remember the feeling of lips against his own. Couldn't remember even the desire for lust, let alone the actual sensation of it. He was alone.

It was hard to remember if his isolation was self-imposed or forced upon him. It had been forced at first -- at least, he thought so. He would never have wanted to choose this. Who would want to choose this? This life of comfortable, suffocating, unbearable quiet. He'd tried to speak at first, to talk aloud, to himself, to the birds and insects and rodents in his garden, but it just... it made the quiet all that starker. So he stopped, drifting into his own silence. He hardly spoke anymore. What did his voice even sound like? He couldn't remember.

He supposed that was where the line was, then. He had been forced into this isolation, but the walls that kept him here had crumbled long ago, and by then... he was used to the silence. It had already been so long since he'd actually spoken to another living, breathing human being, and thought of being able to do so scared him. It scared him far more than he desired the contact. So he built his own walls. Walls made from brick baked out of the clay of his own flesh. Walls that pulsed with his own heartbeat. Walls that were him.

That was the funny thing, wasn't it. He didn't even remember why he'd been confined here, to this dark, stately house, haunted by the memory of his own humanity. He remembered anger. No... anger didn't cut it. He remembered a rage that boiled him from the inside out at an intensity that would make the core of the Earth seem cold. He remembered deep gouges. He didn't remember if they were physical or mental. He didn't remember much of anything these days. And he wasn't angry anymore. He was just... silent. Just silent. Silent, and cold, and painfully, jarringly lonely.

The thunder came again, snapping him out of whatever reverie he'd been in. His hand throbbed. His other hand, too, now that he thought about it. Looking down, he saw that he was still clutching the broken mug, hard enough that the jagged edges had pierced his skin and made him bleed anew. But... the blood was dry, now. And his feet ached something awful. Every joint felt stiff and jerky as he slowly moved towards the trash can, and gently opening his hand to drop the ceramic sharps elicited a small, pained cry, but that soft sound made his ears ring more than any thunder. His voice sounded raw. It was so hard to think...

The water from the sink was cold against his bloody hands. The water didn't get hot in this house, at least -- not up to a temperature that would be considered "warm". Showers always left him shivering, and there was no luxury in a lukewarm bath. He was quick to rinse his hands, and he listlessly drifted out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the third floor, to his bedroom and the en suite where he kept the bandages. Why didn't he keep some on the lower levels? Wouldn't that be practical? Thought left his mind almost as quickly as it'd came. It didn't matter. It was only him in the house, and inconveniencing himself was hardly and inconvenience at all. 

As he stuck the Bandaids to his hands, he happened to glance up and catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He didn't recognize the person he saw at all. The image of himself he remembered was a man full of love and life and joy, colored in sepia fondness with a bright smile and a twinkle in his eyes. The man he saw in that reflection was haggard, dark bags under his dull eyes, unkempt and unshaven, and hardly even filling out his clothes that used to be so comfortable. He tried to smile, just to try, but the muscles were stiff, and it just looked like a painful grimace.

He was tired... that was all he could think about, as the thunder boomed and startled another flinch from him. When had the rain started? He hadn't noticed before, but now all he could hear was the driving pound of the weather against the roof, the windows, the walls. The cold and damp wanted in, but at least his prison kept that out. At least, in here, it was cold and dry.

He crawled into bed. It was less of a decision, and more of just... an action. That was what he was supposed to do. His mug was broken, startling him out of his ability to drink... was it coffee? Or was it tea? He couldn't remember which he preferred, but it didn't matter. The point was, he had nothing else to do. So he slept.

He didn't dream. He could pretend to escape the loneliness and the bitter lack of human contact in a dream. So he didn't. There was no use for pretend in this place, anyway.

He didn't know why he awoke at first. It was still raining, and the sky was darker now with night, so some time had passed. Why was he awake? There was no point in being awake. He wasn't hungry, though he couldn't say when it was he'd last eaten. Besides, his mug was broken, so there was no --

There. There it was. A sound, beyond the driving rain and his own circling, miserable, self-loathing thoughts.

A knock.

His brow furrowed in confusion, a look he hadn't worn in a long time, though the creases in his skin still remembered it. Slowly, he slid out of bed, the cold of the hardwood against his bare feet almost enough to have him change his mind, but then the knock came again, and he pushed onward. The knocking was persistent, rhythmic, and getting louder as he drifted through the house and down to the front door. He stared at it, as the knock came again.

Knock knock knock.

Who was it? Why were they here? What was happening? He'd never gotten visitors before, and the peephole of the front door was so clouded and discolored from disuse, there was no point trying to use it. He had to open the door. But did he? Maybe he could leave it. Maybe whoever it was, they would go away, and he never had to face his own diseased and atrophied longing to see who it was. He wouldn't have to see. And he could go back to his silence.

"Damien? Damien, are you there?"

That voice. That voice.

Without thinking, he flung open the door, the hinges creaking from weeks, months, years, decades of being unused. He stared at his visitor, and his visitor stared back, apparently shocked that the door had actually opened.

It was silent. 

"Good heavens, Damien! What has happened to you?"

The question -- accompanied by a heavy, warm, human hand on his shoulder -- was enough to nearly make his knees buckle. His visitor was soaked through with rain, his skin clammy, but there was a warmth that burned through the chill that made him want to cry. He opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out, and he closed it slowly, continuing just to stare.

His visitor smiled. It was a sad smile, knowing, pitying, but something about it was a hot compress to his frost bitten soul. He could already tell that thaw would be agonizing, and he almost wanted to shut the door again, rather than face that process. Instead, he stepped aside, and his visitor took the invitation to enter.

"...Hello, Wil." Was that his voice? That dry, horrible, grating sound like shifting sandpaper that made his throat hurt? He winced.

"Hello, Damien." Wil smiled again, brighter this time. His hand stayed on his shoulder. It burned. "Long time, no see."

They stayed there. Neither moved. Wil just looked at him, like that, and he... he still couldn't decide if this was worth it. If he should hug the man before him and welcome him completely, or throw him out, back into the rain.

"...Why are you here?" The words surprised even him, with how soft they came out. They still clawed and scratched at his throat, but... they almost sounded like his voice. 

Wil looked surprised, too, his eyes going wide for a moment, before he lifted his hand to scratch at his chin. The absence of his warmth from his shoulder nearly made him cry. "I... don't know, really. I just thought of you. I always think of you. And it's been a long time, hasn't it? The years are hard to keep track of, these days. Have you really been locked up in this old house this entire time?"

He didn't know how to answer that. He didn't know if he should answer that. He didn't want to answer that. He just stared at Wil's face, taking in the lines of it, how much older he looked, despite his candy-colored mustache and bright smile. He looked tired. He looked confused. He looked...

He didn't know when the tears came. One moment, they were standing in silence in the empty foyer, and the next, silent tears were trailing down his face, and Wil was pulling him into a crushing, burning bear hug that seemed to envelope him completely. He didn't return the hug, not at first. Neither spoke as he quietly sobbed in a house that both amplified and deadened the echo.

"I'm so sorry, Damien..." Wil's voice was so soft, so gentle, it was hard to believe it was his. One of his hands rubbed his back until it settled at the small of it, spreading that warmth up his spine and making it so hard to pull away, to maintain that distance. "I wish I'd come sooner."

"You're here now." His voice cracked, and, finally, he clung to Wil in return, burying his face in his shoulder. "And that's all I need."