Work Text:
Fourteen minutes exactly past the clock,
Four 'clean' windows, three mostly 'clean' windows, seven in total.
Four chairs with armrests, 3 wood, 1 metal three chairs without either, one worn leather sofa that could seat 3 people.
Two scruffy marks ingrained against the right side of the door, three mostly straight-ish impact marks on the left side. All five gouges caused minor to significant chipping in the dark grey paint of the staff room...
Matt kept his gaze on the mahogany wooden table, a slight layer of dust beginning to gather on the surface. His mind [and collection of disembodied eyes], flickering through the numbers, with the silent, efficiency of a clockwork engine... [or on some days a camera from a fnaf game...] two people in the room. Just him and frank. Nobody else, Nothing new nothing changed.
No new scratch or scuff marks lay as victim on the door. No unexpected, or undetected shifts in the furniture. Nothing had changed, not since the day before, or the day before that, or however many days deep before.
He knows its a useless, time-consuming, an achingly exhausting ritual. In the secluded world of matts mind, survival meant tracking the variables. It meant knowing the exact layout of a room so you knew how to dissappear into the corners. To sink back so deep you truly feel yourself sink into the void of the place where life is perfect. It meant noticing the moment anything changed, because in certain circumstances, change is far from good.
For now the afternoon was holding a soft, steady hum. It was the kind of gentle grey rain that usually invited the warmth of a long needed sleep into aching bones. Drumming a harmless rhythmic 'pitter-patter' against the glass windows of the staff room. The staff room smelled of roasted coffee beans and the damp wood-smoke of franks favourite incence.
Across the table, frank was entirely at peace, his large, cubic hands carefully and gently mending a torn strap on his gear. Humming a low, tuneless melody beneath his breath.
To anyone looking in through the window, it was the picture perfect of a domestic quiet. No blood. No violence. Not a hint of the heavy warnings that hung and tied deep into the story of matts mind.
It was just matt and his husband sharing a silent afternoon.
Frank looked up, his dark eyes crinkling with that familiar, easy warmth that always made matts chest ache. The 'click-clack-click' of franks cubes joints that always make matts lips curve into a smile. "Your quiet today sweetheart," frank said, his deep voice a rich grounding rumble. He reached across the table, his fingers made up of multiple upon multiple little cubes lightly brushing against matts cold wrist. "Penny for them?". Matt forced a creased smile, instinctively leaning into the touch "just watching the weather " matt said.
Franks face lit up with a smile as he went back to his sewing, fully reassured. He had no reason to doubt the calm. Frank hebden had been raised as a black boy by two fiercely loving and protective mothers who praised and celebrated every minor and major accomplishment, framing his finger-paintings and teaching him that his curse wasnt a fault to be ashamed of, but just another facet of the boy they adored. Franks childhood had been a sunlit room. He assumed rain was just rain.
But outside, the sky was bruising with darkness. The gentle grey was curdling into a heavy suffocating, burnt out charcoal. The wind was beginning to rattle the window panels.
As the light in the room continued to dim down to a heavy darkness, the shadows in the corners grew long. Matts collection of floating eyes strayed from the safety of the table, drifting towards the windowsill
Yep.
Right there.
On the ledge.
...
A small rectangular wooden box sat in the fading lights. Matt knew it was just cedar and soil - a fully harmless project frank had brought in earlier that morning to gro rosemary. A completely normal addition to the staff room...
But matts breath caught sharply in his throat. His knuckles turned white around his pink and yellow polka dot mug that frank bought for hin for their most recent wedding anniversary.
One.
His mind slammed the breaks on the random counting. The windows and the chairs faded away, leaving only the sharp wooden angles of the box. The wind lashed a heavy sheet of murky, unclean rain water against the glass sounding horribly like the rhythmic strike of metal against wet earth, and a phantom smell of fresh timber and damp, overturned fertiliser, suddenly flooded matts senses.
He knew logistically that he was safe, he knew frank loved him. But a deeply ingrained instinct - born from an upbringing that felt eleven times more like a sentencing than a childhood - whispered that a box meant a secret. A box meant a burial. A box meant a new vegetable or wildflower in the garden planters.
And if the count ever started climbing, if anyone dug too deep into the bitter soil of where he came from,
...
They wouldn't like what they uncovered...
"Mattie?"
Franks voice broke through the dark but i sounded slightly distant now, muffled by the rising wind outside. The gentle afternoon was gone. The storm has arrived, and the fist cracked of thunder shook the foundations of the school.
The booming vibration of the rippling thunder through the wooden floor boards, instantly matching the tight tremor in matts chest. For a second his eyes flickered in a frantic pace, slightly spinning in a dizzying rotation. Before he snapped back to the pink and yellow of the mug in his tight grip, the cheerful colours felt like a bitterly cruel joke, or a reality he wasnt close enough to hold onto in his shaking fist, matching the melancholy colours of outside.
"Erm.. yeah. I'm fine." Matt managed to get out, his voice barely audible over the rattle of the harsh, fast biting wind hitting the windows. He placed the polka dot mug back down, his coffee had gone cold hours ago. "The.. erm.. the thunder just caught me of guard " he said, giving frank another creased smile.
Frank didnt push, he knows not to. He nods and gives matts now less cold wrist another affectionate squeeze. Pressing a kiss to matts forehead. His joints clicking in that same click-clack-click. Before tidying away his newly mended gear. He assumed the storm is just a storm, just a bit of bad, usual English weather. He didnt know about the rain smelling like timber and fertiliser.
Matt didnt notice the passage of time. At some point, the quiet hum of the afternoon... well it was just... gone... dissolved. He didnt notice the lights fading from the room almost completely in a heavy pitch black shroud. His mind had pulled him so deep into the sinking of the void of the darkness missed perfection of his thoughts... and in matts head... he wasnt there...
He was a boy again...
Just a young boy trapped in the suffocating silence and chilling eerie presence of the garden. He wasnt at the mahogany table. He was watching a heavy shovel repeatedly striking and digging deep into the wet ground, going deeper and deeper beneath the soil. His eyes stopped scanning ages ago... he still stared, entirely frozen, looking in fear at the wooden box housing the rosemary plant... the memories of bag after bag, after bag of soil being emptied. It was overpowering. The weight of his parents bigoted whispers, the immense weight of their hatred.
He was so deeply untethered from reality that he completely missed many, many shifts in the environment of the staff room. The suddenly harsh buzz-flicker of the overhead, overly bright, loud fluorescent lights didnt just break through the darkness - it shattered his entire perception of where he was. Matt gasped violently, his chest heaving as his disembodied eyes snapped open and spun frantically, like a wild, disorganised and disorientated camera feed trying to process a massive. Overwhelming glitch. Matthew hinks was not alone. He hadnt been alone for a while.
The quiet, once empty staff room was suddenly full of load, protective chaos. The reality of his colleagues slamming into his senses all at once like a physical blow.
"If anyone touches my medical kit with wet hands again, I am locking it in a military grade safe and throwing the key in the nearest river" nurse lenny was saying, his voice cutting sharply through the room. Matt blinked sharply, his focus finally locking onto lenny, who was already out of the schools small kitchenette and aggressively wiping his hands on a dish towel.
Lenny flicked a sharp clinical look towards the doorway, where sergeant kerry lewis was currently shaking out her heavy raincoat, sending a spray of murky rainwater across the linoleum. Matts heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. How long had they been here?? How did he misd them walking in??.
Panic flared and rose in his throat - the terrifying fear of being discovered screaming at him because he had let his guard down. He had stopped tracking the variables. He hadnt been watching the doors.
"Calm down, lenny, its just a bit of character building weather" kerry rumbled, her deep voice carrying its usual unshakeable ex-royal marine authority. She hung her coat on a peg and adjusted her grey beret, her sharp eyes instantly scanning the room to take stock of her squad. She paused for a second on matts overly pale face, before turning away. "Ranjit, did the roof in the east wing hold up? I dont want the classrooms flooding"
Hexmaster Ranjit Singh didnt look up from the ancient, leather-bound ledger he had spread across the mahogany table, right over the thin layer of of dust had been disturbed. He merely adjusted his spectacles, his fingers tracing complex line of scripts. "The wards are holding, sergeant. The schools physical structure however, is centuries old, entirely indifferent to my efforts. Expect puddles by midnight."
Matt slowly let his breath out through his teeth, trying to stop his hands from shaking. He forced his floating eyes to resume their exhausting, clockwork routine, desperately trying to control the room.
Five people. Three wooden chairs. One metal seven windows in total. 4 clean, 3 mostly clean. Five gouges in the dark grey paint of the door. And then, his gaze involuntarily drifted past kerry's shoulder, right back to ghe kitchen window sill...
The small rectangular cedar box sat deep in the shadows...
One
"Hey," a soft rumble right beside his ear. Frank sank onto the worn leather sofa beside him, his massive cubic frame radiating a steady, physical heat that instantly cut through the chill in mstts bones. He must have seen the tail-end of matts panic, but he didnt ask any awkward questions in front of the team. Instead he just leaned his shoulder heavily against matts, a solid, grounding weight. He reached down , his dark, cubic fingers gently intertwining with matts.
"Kerry brought back those meat pies you like from the bakery down the road," frank said softly, his thumb tracing a soothing circle on the back of matts hand, hid joints clicking faintly. "Lennys just heating them up. You should eat something sweetheart."
Matt opened his mouth to reply, to force out a response... to mask his panic... but he couldnt.. he couldn't get any sound past his lips.
The door swung open, in walks elliot kelly, his curved goats horns practically dripping, the exact same as his dark, wavy hair and hoofs. As he began to remove his overly damp hoodie, ready to jump in and add to lenny and kerrys chaotic banter, that was tossing and turning across the room. His gaze swept across to a figure on the sofa.. looking particularly small... he froze.. the intent of a casual greeting [since casual might all well be his middle name at this point] instantly perished on his tongue.
To lenny and kerry, matt was just being his usual quiet self. But elliot knows all too well what a body looks like once the premises have been mentally vacated the body. He instantly recognises the dull, chilling silence that has overtaken and consumed the steward of understanding.
Matts eyes.. they just looked wrong. The ones in his sockets and the ones having above matrs head, they were glossy and almost lifeless, full of hidden pain and sorrow.
Matts eyes were staring through the room, almost like an xray machine, or as if matt knew the room was there, but no longer able to tell if he was there. Matts face was so pale he looked bloodless and sickly, his chest only just moving in a strained, shallow rhythm, almost as if matt was a ghost...
Matt was there. Elliot could tell that far. But his head.. it was miles upon miles away. Suffocating in silence from fear of a memory they did not know.
Elliot didnt bother taking off his damp hoodie. He quietly walked past the banter of lenny and kerry, it took elliot about 9 wide steps to get to the table, he crouched low in front of matts ghostly face.
"Matt, mate, look at me," elliot murmured, his voice dropping low past his usual, sharp amused edge, kept low as to not carry across the room. He kept his warm hands open and visible. "Matt... Matthew. Can you hear me? Matt?? Your at the school. It's just a tad bit of English rain"
Frank looked up, a sudden spike of worry tightening his blocky features as he realised what elliot was doing. He looked from the angle of elliots tense shoulder to matts pale face, really looking at him this time. The easy warmth in franks eyes shattered into pure panic. "Mattie?, are you okay my love?.... - elliot, what's - ...whats wrong with him?" Franks voice hitched, his joints going off in a frantic, rapid click-click-clack. "Mattie, baby, please look at me. Sweetheart breath " frank pleaded.
But matt didnt blink. He didnt flinch. And he certainly didn't provide a creased smile. Matthew hinks was completely untethered, staring blankly at the space where the box used to be. His disembodied eyes now spinning in a fast, frightfully quick 360° rotation.
The suddenly distress in franks voice was what finally broke the bubble of the peace in the room, across the room, the casual chaos of instantly evaporated. Lenny frozen where he stood beside the kitchenette, the dish towel falling limp in his hands. Kerry paused mid-sentence, her sharp eyes snapping towards the sofa as her ex-royal marine instincts activated and kicked in. Her posture locking into an immediate protective alert. Even ranjits pen stopped scratching against his ledger, his spectacles sliding slightly off his nose as his gaze locked onto matts hollow, bloodless face.
The entire room went dead silent. The whole group was finally looking, and the pure horror of that they were seeing settled heavily over them all.