Chapter Text
Damien stared up at the flickering neon glow of the yellow vacancy sign, trying very hard not to glance over for the dozenth time at the life-altering decision sitting in his passenger seat.
Just be cool. The background noise of his own internal monologue, usually the only sound in the car aside from the radio, took a break from asking what the hell he was supposed to do now to offer that bit of unhelpful advice.
“So,” Damien gave in and looked over to the man who had been dozing on and off for the last few miles as he blinked awake. “How do you feel about taking a nap in an actual bed?”
Mark stared at him for a few seconds, shafts of parking lot darkness and neon light sliding over his face as he sat up. With a wry smile tugging up one corner of his mouth, he replied in a voice heavy with sleep, “Honestly? Mixed feelings given how I spent the last couple years.”
Right.
Damien elected to blame that one on his own exhaustion. The combined weight of breaking into some shady government lab, waking up a coma patient, dragging said patient out to a car as planned—only to deviate from the original plan and spend hours driving blindly in one direction without any clear plan was starting to settle. Twice he’d found himself drifting over the blurring lines on the road before he decided it was time to pull over.
It had been a very, very long twenty-four hours.
If he had been on his own, Damien would have simply pulled over and slept for a few hours in the back seat. But he was trying to make a good impression. Or a decent one at least. Ideally, this attempt would land somewhere above feigned disinterest and below the jittery excitement he’d been feeling since discovering what it was Mark could do.
Normally he could count on his ability to give that impression without trying, but there was just too much going on in his head. Too many conflicting desires, too much noise. There was no such thing as control when it came to what he could do, which unfortunately meant that if there was a way to make it any less messy, he hadn’t found it. Sometimes it would take something in the opposite direction of what Damien swore he actually wanted. Other times it seemed to know before he did. Dr. B had said something about the subconscious that he hadn’t cared to follow.
Unfortunately, it also meant situations like this. Where wants conflicted, turning the inside of his mind into radio static, achieving nothing.
“Although sleeping somewhere that isn’t a lab does have its appeal,” Mark amended, thankfully breaking the painful silence of the car broken only by the sound of rain against the windshield.
Damien watched as he shifted in his seat a little, gently knocking his head against the window to get a better look at the world outside. In all the moments Damien had glanced over at him since their great escape, he’d been staring up at the sky.
“Been a while since you’ve seen it, huh?” he asked, scrambling for what exactly you were supposed to say to people when trying to make casual small talk. Damien hadn’t exactly considered himself socially gifted even before his ability made it impossible to learn how normal people functioned. Thinking about how to fill up awkward pauses in conversation was never a concern. Whenever discomfort started prickling at him and he started wishing the other person would fill the quiet, they did.
He was really hoping his ability would sort itself out soon in that department.
“Yeah,” Mark replied, smiling a little. “I mean—since I’ve seen our sky. You wouldn’t think they look different separated by a couple of decades, but it really does.”
Damien wanted to ask about that. It sounded interesting, but his wants were still too scrambled and he wasn’t sure how to ask that sort of question without it sounding painfully lame, so instead he remarked, “Well. Here’s to light pollution for making a difference.”
Mark laughed. Rather; he gave a little huff of air and the corner of his mouth raised a little more than it had been, but Damien didn’t care. That little sliver of something hadn’t been caused by his ability. He’d made a stupid joke that was hardly a joke, and Mark laughed. It seemed like as good a sign as any that he’d made the right call.
Mark was like him. Or, maybe—probably, he could be. He was here, touching the real world for the first time in years, and in that moment Damien felt as if he was too. A finger-brush moment of genuine human connection.
“You sit tight and enjoy the view,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt with a zip and metallic clank, climbing out into the parking lot. Little droplets of rain plopped on the back of his hair, rolling cold down the neck of his black sweatshirt. The air smelled like pine trees and dust from the road and the faint sweetness of gasoline. “I’ll be right back.”
Mark raised a tired thumbs-up that Damien mirrored without thinking. At least it seemed to make him happy. He did that thing where he smiled just a little more for a half-second, and Damien was positive it was an expression he would be seeing a lot more in the near future. He liked it too much. He tried very hard not to let that thought sit and spoil in the back of his mind, deciding instead to try and commit to memory the instances where it had been genuine. It would be like seeing ghosts whenever it slid across Mark’s face, but Damien was used to that sort of company.
It was easy to get the receptionist to give him a keycard. Once he left Mark behind in the car, his wants narrowed to a razor-focused edge. She had it halfway out of the desk the moment he pushed through the glass doors into the lobby. He took it, waving as he walked backwards down the first hallway, feeling lighter than he had in ages.
Or, he thought, maybe that was just adrenaline. A sort of manic energy did tend to come from making insane decisions.
The thin plastic card beeped when he swiped it in the door, revealing the sort of room that he’d seen countless times all across the country. One comfort Damien could always count on was that no matter how shitty or how fancy; hotel rooms stayed mostly the same.
This one was smaller, as expected of a small town. There were two beds, a brown carpet and orange blankets. The walls were paneled, dark wood and some yellow globelike lamps hung on the walls, bathing everything in a buttery light. It should have looked cramped, but the effect was pretty cozy.
Much better than a lab.
Mark seemed to think so too, once Damien propped open the door that led out into the parking lot and helped him limp the short distance from the car to the closest bed. Poor guy was panting with exhaustion by the time he collapsed onto the slightly dusty comforter, his narrow ribcage expanding then caving in under the thin scrub top he’d been wearing that still bore the logo for the AM over the breast pocket.
“Ugh,” Mark sighed, pushing himself into a sitting position on arms hardly substantial enough to hold him, glancing down at the borrowed clothes. “I should probably change, right?”
Shit. No. Abort that.
Damien realized he’d been worrying too much about the logo, thinking of how they would need to ditch it as soon as possible. There was no way of knowing who might recognize it.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as if that could uncross whatever wires were insisting that a man who couldn’t even stand on his own needed to get changed right this minute. “No—you should sleep. We can worry about the rest in the morning.”
Mark flopped back onto the bed. He looked so…delicate wasn’t the right word. Frail, maybe. Frail the way sick people are. The way that makes you wince every time they move too quickly or jostle around too much. It was easy to tell that his current build wasn’t natural: Mark looked like the sort of person who was made to have soft edges. He looked sharp and starved and hollow.
Years in a coma being fed through a tube will probably do that to a person.
“I’m guessing they weren’t too worried about me getting exercise,” Mark said.
Damien blinked, realizing he’d been watching him silently, resting his chin on the knuckles of his folded hands. He’d naturally found a seat on the opposite bed and had just been…watching. Apparently his curiosity was running away without him.
“You’d think they’d at least put me in some kind of machine to flex my muscles or whatever,” he continued, probably oblivious as to why, one hand raised to the warm light as he stared at the back of his own arm where the tendons stood out like violin strings. “Isn’t that what they do in movies? The AM can have a whole creepy underground lab but can’t help the guy in a coma do a few sit-ups?”
He needs rest. Damien told himself—tried. To tell himself.
Dr. B always told him he was a terrible listener. She was right about that.
“Sounds like a ripoff,” he said.
“You’re telling me,” Mark sighed. He dropped his hand. It thumped against the sunset orange blanket. It looked like it hurt. “I should eat something.”
Shit.
“I can get you something later,” Damien said, hissing at his own brain to be quiet, wishing it worked like that. Or, rather, wishing he had found a way to make it work like that. It was just hard to watch him and not feel the desire to see him put on some weight. To make it so it didn’t look like the lightest touch was at risk of bruising. “I can find something decent while you’re knocked out.”
He would, Damien decided. It was a small town, but there had to be something decent nearby. Places like this usually had a monopoly on the best greasy breakfast foods you could find. Wait—could someone in Mark’s condition handle that kind of food? He had no idea. Hell, Damien realized he had no idea if someone in Mark’s condition should even be sleeping in a normal bed. He had a lot of googling to do.
“You should—” Damien looked up to find he was already asleep. It startled him. Mark shifted, raising a hand to offer a garbled assurance that he was still alive before dropping back off again.
Right.
Looks like his ability was back to making solid choices again. Damien stood up, rummaging in his pocket for his phone to start looking up what sort of diet a recent coma patient should be consuming. The glossy screen with twin spiderweb cracks at the opposite corners showed that he had decent battery life. A hell of a surprise after the day he’d had.
“Hey.”
Mark’s sleepy question made him glance up. He had his head lifted off the bed and was wearing that little smile from back at the car. The one Damien committed to memory. Only this time, the shiny golden-brown eyes above it had the same vacant sheen the receptionist had had as she handed over the room’s keycard. Damien felt his stomach flip uneasily.
“You don’t go too far, right?”
Don’t leave me. Of course, that particular want was already running over its boarders. From a sad little ache in Damien’s chest to a thing with teeth spilling over, sinking its hooks into the man sat beside him separated by a few feet of worn carpet and dusty bedding.
Not nearly far enough.
“I won’t,” Damien promised, knowing full well he wasn’t reassuring anyone but himself. If he really did walk out of here, far enough to spare him from the range of his ability, Mark probably wouldn’t miss him at all. “I’ll keep watch. Knight in shining armor and all that, remember?”
Mark laughed. His little smile inched wider. Damien wished it was real, but that was the one kind of wanting he could do that never seemed to matter.
“You’re so lame.”
The tone was teasing. Familiar. Exactly what he wanted.
“You really should get some sleep,” Damien said.
This time, it worked the way it should have. Mark laid his head down, shifting just enough to get himself under some proper blankets. It didn’t feel right to actually tuck someone in: that felt too intimate and awkward so his ability smoothed things over the way it always did. Turning the desired outcome into a smooth action nobody would think twice about.
Damien watched him for a minute. Five. Long enough that he became self-aware that it was weird and got to his feet, tucking his phone away in favor of his sometimes habit of smoking. The half-crumpled carton of cigarettes in his sweatshirt pocket fit easily against his palm as he stepped out of the room’s back door onto the narrow strip of sidewalk littered with other cigarette butts, shielded from the misting rain by a slight overhang of the roof.
He lit his first cigarette, probably the only one of the night. Just enough to clear his head. Enough to buy time.
Eventually, Damien knew, he would have to tell him. He would have to explain to Mark what it was he could be.
Just like me.
Something different from other people. Special.
Damien took a tobacco-ladened breath, reveling in the way it warmed his insides. He wished often that he was the sort of person who could take up the habit seriously. That he could count on regular intervals at which he could feel like more than he was. Perhaps he would feel that way once Mark had found himself and his own ability again and they could be the same kind of monster.
How to tell him?
Damien felt his mind poke at that rough edge. How would he explain to Mark what he was? What he himself could become? How could he best explain what he had done and why he had done it in a way that would help him understand the why of it all?
Damien took a drag from his cigarette. The smoke curled white against the fluorescent light overhead, buzzing softly, drawing in translucent-winged insects that hadn’t been scared off by the rain.
Letters, maybe? He wondered.
Something human. Something tangible and real. That might be better after so many years spent trapped apart from real people. Hell: Damien wondered if that might even help him too. Putting words to paper was always easier than making the snap decision of what to say in a given moment.
Letters then. Letters for the terrible decision currently sleeping—truly sleeping—for the first time in too long in the room behind him.
“Dear Mark,” Damien thought, deciding that that was as good a place to start as any. “I’m trying to think of something more fucked up than this.”