thearena | I Heard Him Turn as He Did Hear My Tiny Heartbeat [Closed]

WHO| Howard and Aunamee
WHAT| Howard gets kidnapped by his least favorite person.
WHERE| The labs
WHEN| Week 4
WARNINGS| Stalking and psychological abuse.

Howard's searching for food in what others would call ruins, probably accurately. Here in the labs, it looks like a horror set for a movie set in an insane asylum. Mildew bleeds down the wall like ugly ink in the hallway, blending with the shadows in the dim light. The hallway itself is worthless as anything but a passage, stripped bare of anything but broken glass and raptor shit.

Howard's more interested in the cabinets in the test rooms. He's already found five cans of food in them, although two of them are bloated with botulism. They're pretty useless for anything but barter with some ignorant sucker or some kind of horrific projectile weapon (Howard would call that chemical warfare, and he hums the Dead Kennedys song of the same name as he goes through a drawer full of vials and flasks). He makes a mental note of where they are, planning on setting them up on the roof for rainwater tonight. He's about to call this room as searched when he sees something blue wedged under an empty mini-fridge. He fishes it out.

Fucking Oreos. Double Stuf, from the faded wrapper. Howard can feel his chin trembling as he moves his fingertips over the faded blue wrapper. It's not a meal for two, but it's dessert.

He folds his hand closed over the wrapper, ignoring the ache in his stomach that ripples out in his entire abdomen. He'll share them, a perfect fifty-fifty division, with Orc. It's not as if he's honest with his best friend, but where it counts, where it really counts, he comes through. And food is a place where it really counts. He closes the cabinet door.

He turns and sees a silhouette. It could be anyone, a slim but powerful frame bent with hunger and tiredness, hands that hang with a looseness that can only bean affectation to combat clenching them into fists. It could be anyone, anyone clinging to the last semblance of pride like a tick to warm flesh.

But it's not anyone, and Howard drops the cookies to the floor.

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When the cookies drop, the plastic echoes inside Aunamee's mind (crackle crackle crssssh), his hunger transforming the world around him into something blurred and yet still greater than reality. Something more perfect.

"Oh," he breathes without even thinking about it. Perfect is the right word, isn't it? Perfect sweet Howard, here to let Aunamee save him, here to bleed for his favor. The boy doesn't look healthy (he never looks healthy), but he looks like he's been eating, drinking, surviving. This is also perfect.

Everything is perfect.

He steps forward, and although his gait is unsteady and his joints ache with every step, the ground beneath him feels like a cloud. He is Zeus, and his sleeves are filled with bolts of lightning.

"Thank goodness."

And Howard falls to his knees, but it's the exact opposite of prayer. It's the hopelessness that defies rationality, the crashing of a mind so precipitously arranged. The cement is hard under his knees, and it takes what feels like hours for him to realize he's on all fours and can barely breathe.

And Aunamee hasn't even said five words yet.

He manages to raise his eyes to Aunamee, to that figure empowered by superiority, to the one who brings terror into the room like a toxic cloud. He doesn't know what Aunamee wants. He doesn't know why Aunamee's come for him, and the ugly clump of gory memory is wrapped up with all these words that Aunamee has put in his ears like gifts.

I wish I didn't have to go so far to protect you.

He could scream for help. He could bolt now, run, tell Diana to get her knife out and Orc to start swinging. He could head into the jungle and hope the wildlife served enough of a barrier to let him get away.

But he's as mute and legless as the worm he is.

"What do you want?" he whispers between wheezes that pull the structure out of his peripheral vision with each exhale.

"I want you to pack your things."

The words are so easy, so practiced, that it feels to Aunamee has though he's been meaning to say them forever. Isn't this the only outcome? Never mind that his plan is fresher than wet paint, that until he came across Orc, Aunamee didn't even know he wanted Howard.

'Wanted' as in 'wanted to possess.' Wanted to take.

(Oh, and take he shall.)

He approaches the fallen boy and offers a chapped, scabbed hand. Elegance hasn't completely left his movements just yet. He stretches his fingers like a piano player. He smiles like a prince.

"Where are we going?"

We. Those two letters are each a jaw of the beartrap that Howard snaps around himself. As if marionetted, he reaches a hand up and closes his own calloused, rough hand in Aunamee's. The shaking runs up his wrist to Aunamee's palm like the vibrations of a tuning fork sounding a pure note, no no no no....

But he's already said yes.

He gets to his feet, mind going blank, feet dragging not to protest but merely because he doesn't trust his own balance anymore. And he starts to walk out the door and to the hallway where his scant belongings are.

He hasn't felt this good in a long time. Not since ... Not since ...

Not since his second arena when he stepped into the realm of Fantasyland (so aptly named) and could taste the future on his lips just like he was supposed to. In those four glorious days, he knew exactly what he needed to do and when he should do it, dodging fists as they tried to meet his face, weaving plans and plots and schemes that always worked, being that invincible, perfect spectator he truly deserves to be. This moment feels beautiful in the same way. Control is his high, and it's been so very long since he truly had it.

"Ah," he says softly. "Somewhere far away. You're not safe here."

He tightens his grip on Howard's hand as the boy leads him through the halls, little bubbles of energy popping on his tongue, his sinuses, the back of his neck.

"You're only safe with me."

The lie leaves his lips like a poem.

I'm not safe anywhere, says his head. But that wisp of smoke from his lungs dissipates on his tongue. Instead, tears roll down his face, tears that he can't explain and that fall in complete silence.

He's going to die. Screaming. And he can't stop his steady march to it, because the nerves and impulses that once forced survival are frozen in fear and- and awe, he realizes. Awe that someone can have such power over him, to render him so incapable of accessing his free will.

He has two knives, a gallon of water, some rope, a nearly untouched first-aid kit. A net he's fashioned into a backpack. He bundles it up and puts it over his shoulder. The weight of it nearly makes his wobbling knees go out under him.

"Where's Orc?" he asks, letting the last flicker of hope slide out of his grasp.

"Unharmed," he says, although his eyes are fixed on the makeshift bag, the weapons inside, the water. Where is the food? He works his jaw because the inside of his mouth tastes like cold plastic and dust, because whenever his joints move, they click like broken hinges and spark like tiny fires. His body is crumbling like a structure made up of loosely glued popsicle sticks.

And Howard is asking about Orc?

"You have more," he says, his control bowing like those same popsicle sticks, the smile in his voice growing thinner. "You've been eating."

He grabs at the net in Howard's hands, less like a starving man and more like a teacher confiscating a note, pride still guiding his fingertips.

Good, he whispers inside. Good that Orc is unharmed. Good that Orc won't have to see the extent of the flooding in Howard's infrastructure, the damage that has rotted away the very beams that hold him together. Good that he's not getting dragged into this.

"We can't." Howard shakes his head. "We take the food, Orc and Diana will come looking for us. We leave the food, they'll think I just stepped out."

He doesn't know why he's saying this. He wants Orc to come looking for him. He wants to be rescued. But some part of him says that making this go down easier can only help him, so he's honest about the pitfalls and the traps that could save him.

But he gestures to the cabinet where they're keeping their cans of food. Lets Aunamee make that decision. He suddenly stumbles and has to catch himself on a wall, given debilitating injury by nothing but the slow destruction of his mind.

I Heard Him Turn as He Did Hear My Tiny Heartbeat [Closed]

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