Chapter Text
In the recent few weeks, the slightest ambient noise in Heelshire Mansion had you ready to jump out of your skin. The emptiness of the house often felt foreboding and any creak or groan from the old pipes and floorboards often had you hurrying through the halls, seeking refuge in a more well-lit portion of the house. It was rare that you went anywhere without a flashlight, even in the middle of the day, you seemed to feel safer with it in your hands. You never seemed to relax these days, and as of a week ago, you began to sleep with the lights on.
While accustomed to the usual dimness of his catacombs, Brahms was beginning to feel mildly annoyed that you kept the house constantly bright. When he looked through his various peepholes, he was often accosted by blinding light that hurt his eyes whenever he wanted to take a look at you. He imagined that keeping the lights on might’ve been frowned upon by his mother and father... but no one was around to scold you. You were alone in the manor as far as you knew, and yet, you seemed to believe you weren’t.
Your cleverness was intriguing, your curiosity was endearing. Brahms enjoyed the way you seemed to be fascinated by the old house’s little details. For all your observation, you were still blissfully unaware of what lurked between the walls. He once watched you trail your fingers against the carved moulding of the sitting room wall’s baseboards as if fascinated by the things carved in it. He’d lived in this house for his entire life and he’d never cared to touch the flowers and vines of the baseboards as if to learn them with his fingers.
A few days ago, he watched you carefully untangle a lampshade’s tassel-like trimming, excitedly finishing up your restorations on the antique you found dusty and forgotten in a closet. You’d spent a few days fixing the old thing up, you painted over some of the chipped old designs and you carefully re-affixed its pull to the inside of the lighting structure. You plugged it in only for your face to fall in frustration when it didn’t turn on. Rather than simply give up, you dug through closet after closet looking for a replacement bulb. Brahms so badly wanted to tell you where you might’ve found one. He followed as you hunted through the house, stepping quietly and watching you through the hidden places in the walls when he could. The venture felt as if he was looking right along with you, standing just a few feet away.
He wondered if you might’ve smiled if he found the lightbulb for you. It’d been an eternity since he saw you smile. He missed it.
When you were first hired as a live-in nanny for the doll, you took to your new duties with an odd sense of pride. You seemed glad to go about your daily duties. You seemed to like the old house despite the crypt-like empty rooms and the general sense of lifelessness that the dark halls and dusty corners embodied.
You played music out loud as the rules dictated, using speakers you brought that rattled the walls Brahms crept in. The songs were never anything he’d heard before and he liked listening to them while piecing together the person you were. You tended to his doll dutifully as you were paid for, and in the first few weeks of your employment, you brought new life into this place that had for so long only known death and misery.
Everything you did was fascinating. You once ironed the clothes of his doll and told it that it looked handsome while all dressed up. After that, Brahms couldn’t help but obsess over you. He often woke before you did, watching you rouse from sleep was his favorite part of the day. He liked the way you stood at your dresser each morning, while half asleep and rubbing your eyes you always put on something so uniquely you.
Your things were new and interesting, with the rest of the manor washed in muted lifelessness, your wardrobe; your room and the things you littered about in there were entirely too tempting. He wanted to see what else was in your drawers, he wanted to touch your sheets with his hands and see if they smelled like you. Obsessing over you was a welcomed change and watching you day in and day out kept his boredom and loneliness at bay.
While cleaning out the rat traps one day, you found one that survived. You kept the little thing in a shoebox for weeks, feeding it with a syringe. Brahms hated the rats that lived in the walls and hidden places of his home. They skittered and made things smell, they chewed up a sweater he’d stolen from you, tearing holes in the body of it and making the knitting fray… he wanted the rats gone and dead- yet you kept one. You offered it kindness because it was little and because it was innocent. Its little squeaking noises were grating to his ears but you smiled at it in a way you never smiled at his doll.
Your whispered words to the rat made Brahms feel warm in ways he’d never felt before. You called it baby and little one, you cooed all sorts of quiet nonsense while you tended to it. Brahms was sure that no one had ever looked at him like that, no one had ever offered him such kindness. You took in this vile little creature and decided to love it. The jealousy he felt over the way you loved a rat was a ferocious thing.
He allowed your infatuation with the thing if only to hear you fuss over it, but after you forgot to give his doll a goodnight kiss one night in favor of attending to the rat- he snuck out of hiding to move his doll to just outside your bedroom door. He wanted to remind you who you were supposed to pay such attention to. You were supposed to love him, he wanted you to call him sweet little nonsensical pet names.
You woke up that morning and screamed. Forcing him awake with the noise. At first, he found it funny that his prank had been executed well enough for you to scream like a schoolgirl, but looking back, he wished he hadn’t played the prank on you after what became of it.
Your hands shook while you cared for the doll after that. You didn’t let it out of your sight in the waking hours of the day and you were constantly looking over your shoulder as if seeing movement out of the corner of your eyes. You began to keep to only a few rooms of the mansion that you deemed “safe”, and all of your fascination with the old house simmered to nothing after being killed by his prank.
He just wanted to play with you. He wanted you to think of him as a friend. He wanted you to talk to him, he wanted you to smile. He wanted to be good for you. He knew that he misbehaved by scaring you and he hated that he frightened you just by a single action that he thought was harmless fun. He hadn’t intended for the little prank to scare you as it did. After all that he’d done… taking your clothes, moving your things to entirely different places just to see the adorable confusion on your face, he worried that he stepped too far by moving the doll.
For years, he coped with the loneliness by taking whatever liberties he could… sometimes it was fun to scare, sometimes it was even fun to hurt- but he didn’t want to scare you. He’d never hurt you. You took care of little nasty unloved things because you were nice and surely you’d open up to him eventually as well.
When your little rat finally stopped its squeaking one day, Brahms tried to find another one before you could realize that it’d passed in the night. He once hated the squeaking, but its silence was worse than the noise itself.
You cried when you opened the shoebox in the morning. Silent tears ran down your face and your shoulders shook despite your best efforts to remain composed. Brahms had never seen you cry and he wished he could’ve helped in some way. The thought of touching you, of putting his arms around you was- a lot. Would you hug him back? Maybe burrow into his chest as if to hide from everything that hurt?
Over the next few days, he hunted tirelessly in the walls for a suitable replacement for your pet. Enough rats were hiding in their nasty little nests, encroaching on his spaces, he knew exactly where to go to fill a box with as many as he could shove in there. Brahms delivered the box to the kitchen table for you to find and he even found a scrap of fabric to use as a bow.
Unfortunately, you didn’t appreciate his gift of the box of rats. You didn’t even open it. You walked into the room, opened a cabinet to retrieve a mug, and slowly he watched realization dawn on your face as you came face to face with the box on the table that hadn’t been there the previous night. The empty mug in your hands dropped to the floor and you didn’t react to it shattering to pieces. Your face paled, you backed into a counter and the noise of the ceramic mug shattering caused the rats in the box to shriek. Tears welled in your eyes, your body shook with genuine terror and you rushed out of the room as if you’d seen a ghost.
Brahms used to like making girls cry. As a boy, he’d go out of his way to make them miserable. He’d pull on pigtails, push them into the mud to ruin their dresses… but the tears in your eyes had a sense of shame that he didn't know he was capable of feeling creeping into his mind.
Didn’t you realize that he worked so hard to find you new pets? It took him days to amass all of them and a few of them even managed to bite him! He hadn’t made a noise while he flung them into the box for you. Surely one of them had to be good enough as a replacement for the little one who passed. These rats seemed more lively than the baby you kept in the shoebox. These would likely survive without weaning off of their mother, but you seemed terrified of the box without even opening it!
You didn’t read his doll a bedtime story that night after ignoring his gift as if to punish him and Brams wanted to bang on the walls and demand one. How was it fair he was being punished when he was trying to be nice?
No matter what he did to fix things, you were growing more and more scared. He rearranged candles to keep the shadows you were afraid of at bay. He opened curtains so you wouldn’t constantly look behind them as if there was someone there. These days, you held a wild look in your eyes and he knew that you were barely sleeping. You’d taken to sitting cross-legged across from his doll which you’d often set in a chair. You’d stare and stare as if waiting for it to move.
Every light in the house was kept on and when a lamp refused to turn on once again, you pushed it off of the side table it sat on with a frustrated huff of breath. It crashed on the ground, making Brahms involuntarily flinch away from the peephole he watched you from. With a defeated whine, you picked up a broken piece of the lamp only to cut yourself on the edge of it. You sucked a breath between your teeth while watching blood drip from your finger.
Brahms once suffered a slap to the cheek when he pushed over one of his mother’s vases as a child. He remembered the sting well. He remembered how good it felt when he terrorized the maid afterward by throwing dish after dish onto the floor. She begged him to stop, she threatened him with his mother’s rage. Her threats didn’t at all compare to the euphoria of breaking those dishes. It felt good to break things. He stomped on all of the broken pieces laughing as he did, cackling madly whilst the maid worked around his destruction, muttering to him that he deserved a spanking. You didn’t seem as enthused by breaking the lamp. You picked up the pieces and threw them away, seeming almost ashamed of what you did.
The old wiring of the house often caused the lights to flicker, likely having them all on wasn’t the wisest of decisions. You’d even turned on the light above the stove in a desperate attempt to extinguish every shadow in the house. Old lamps sometimes turned off and on simply because they were antiques. Despite this, you seemed determined to think that the lighting acting strangely was because of less plausible reasons. You set up fairy lights in the halls, you lit candles and set them on every available surface. You liked to sit in his father’s old office that you’d claimed as your sanctuary, preferring smaller spaces without any windows. In your little haven, you even set up a play area for his doll; abiding by the rules that the doll was never to be left alone.
When a lamp near you shut off, you scrambled to sit back against a wall. Your eyes were full of terror while you swallowed back a scream that wanted to come out. You looked pretty while washed in the golden glow of the room despite the way you trembled, wildly looking around to catch a glimpse of the ghosts you thought haunted you. The shadow that crawled off of you reached toward where he stood behind the wall. Candles dripped wax onto the surfaces you set them and your shadow seemed to waver despite all of the lights that you adorned the room with. You raised a hand, stretching your fingers wide to observe your shadow as if to make sure that it was listening to your command. Brahms raised a hand as well, setting it gently against where your shadow touched on the other side of the wall.
If only you knew he’d do anything for you. If only you knew that he’d never let anything or anyone touch a hair on your head. Shadows were the least of your worries. You were entirely his as far as he was concerned. He only allowed your pet into your life because it made you smile. How dare the stupid little thing die and take your smile with it? Brahms caused quite a few deaths, but none of them seemed to matter in the long run of things. Somehow the death of a rat was the one death that was affecting him the most.
Brahms was so used to death being a means to an end, he partly enjoyed the power that came with killing. Bad people didn’t deserve to live. Bad, mean nannies who abandoned him in the empty and lonely house deserved to die. He’d kill for you if you needed him to. Maybe you’d be less scared if you knew that he’d hurt anyone who hurt you. He’d be more than happy to show you. Give him someone to hate and he’d put an end to them with a smile. He’d protect you… he’d love you in ways the stupid rat couldn’t. He’d killed to protect someone else once and the sting of that had still yet to leave him, but you wouldn’t run from him. You wouldn’t be angry, right? You liked living here... You took care of his doll and you took in broken little things to love them. Wasn’t that why you stayed here? The house was old and empty, his doll’s cracked face was lifeless as the manor was and yet you treated both like they weren’t.
You trembled while another lamp dimmed and you reached toward your flashlight, clicking it on to direct it at the flickering lamp as if to tell it that you’d caught it in the act. Anyone who made you upset, he’d make them hurt. It was difficult to consider that the only person he had to blame for your hurt and your manic state of being was a dead rat and then himself. Such realities were beyond frustrating and his almost glimpse at self-blame had him reaching to run a hand through his hair only to hate the feel of it between his fingers. He hated the reminder of his humanity and he hated the self-consciousness that came with the understanding.
You eventually retired to your bedroom after putting his doll to bed. While you fitfully slept, the lights lingered like the ghosts you feared. Brahms was unable to rest his eyes as well. Too many thoughts ran through his head. He watched you shiver in your bed, tossing and turning. Your eyes moved rapidly behind your lids and the door to your room was sealed shut with the addition of a chair under the doorknob. He wished he could touch you and soothe away all of the fear.
A sudden creak from his footstep caused you to bolt upright, fully awake as if you were pretending to sleep and you reached to your bedside table for a bookend you kept there that you thought might serve as a weapon. After scrambling out of bed, you looked every which way, brandishing the bookend in front of yourself. When you seemed to slump after seeing nothing, Brahms’s chest ached with the frustration of it all.
You slipped your feet into your fluffy slippers and you clutched onto the bookend with it raised to strike.
“Who’s fucking there?” You roared with your voice trembling only a little.
Me. He wanted to say. Your favorite ghost. Your favorite person. The only person you’ll ever need for the rest of your days. I’m here.
Your stomps were angry as you rushed out of the room. You held a flashlight in one hand and the bookend in the other. Your buttoned old flannel brushed against bare thighs and Brahms watched your upset march throughout the hall while wondering what your skin might feel like against his fingers. You checked every room in the hall and turned on lights that had since been turned off, you re-lit candles whilst yelling to the empty rooms that you were unafraid and if someone was there they should show themselves.
Eventually, you happened upon the doll’s bedroom. The only room you were considerate enough to leave dark. You took a deep breath, turning the knob with a shaking hand. His doll laid obediently in bed and you breathed a sigh of relief whilst finding it undisturbed.
“Did I wake you?” You whispered as if you might’ve woken the doll up. “No boogeymen in here?” You gave the room a cursory scan with your flashlight and Brahms endured the offensive light that speared through his peephole while you crept into the room.
Your flashlight caused an creeping shadow to grow from the doll. Despite this, you stepped inside the room and inspected that nothing was out of place. You straightened a teddy bear and with a sigh of relief, you set your bookend on the ground next to the bed. Brahms’s heart leapt to his throat as he watched you sit on the edge of the mattress to gently nudge the doll to the side. You lifted the covers and crawled under them after kicking your slippers off.
“Were you looking for me? Is that why you wander?” Your voice trembled, but exhaustion ate at your words. You stared at the blank eyes of the doll for a long moment as if waiting for an answer. Brahms pressed his face so close to his peephole that he worried you might be able to see the white of his eye if you were to shine your flashlight at just the right angle. You lifted your arm to pull the doll close, positioning it to stare at the room's open door. You settled its head beneath your chin while your arm crept over its side.
“We’ll keep each other safe.” A yawn cut off your words and you rubbed at your eyes, your head settled on his pillow before you whispered once again, “We’ll be okay. Just you and me.”
Brahms watched sleep claim you as if it finally won your game of hide and seek. He wished more than anything that he laid in place of his doll. He wished he could feel your arms around him while promising him you’d keep him safe.