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Chapter Text

───⋆｡°✩Her Return✩°｡⋆───

Your heart hammers as your brother Malcolm drives past the gates of the Hellshire estate, it's been more than a decade since you last sat foot on the grounds and two decades since... you lost your best friend. You recently came back from the States where your mother moved after a messy divorce with your father back when you were in year eight. Your mother had taken you and your father had stayed back to work for the Heelshires with your older brother Malcolm, and you haven't set foot in the place since. You thought after all this time it would hurt less to see the imposing building, that the memories of who it used to house would fade or at least the emotion attached to them would, and while it did to an extent, the ghosts of things you just barely forgot bleed in at the edges of your mind as the car stops.

Malcolm says something to you but you're too focused on the scorched stone on the fourth floor. You snap out of it when he shoves your shoulder lightly. You glare at him and he laughs getting out of the car. You sigh, get out, and grab your bag, Malcolm already having grabbed your suitcase and begun up the stairs. You can't help but look up in something like shock, it was somehow so much bigger and smaller than you remembered. It was a fairytale castle as a kid, then after him it was so fantastically empty it reminded you of crypt, elaborate and sky-high like the pyramids but cold, grey, and jagged like a toppled headstone. You take a deep breath and head in, gathering yourself before you have to see the Heelshires in person again.

When you get into the foyer your breath stops in your chest and you look around with wide eyes, you're shocked at how quickly you are overwhelmed by a flurry of mixed and confused emotions, mostly acidic guilt. You drop your bag by where Malcolm set your suitcase at the base of the stairs and only have time to smooth down your hoodie before you hear the clack of Mrs. Heelshire and the accompanying thuds of Mr. Heelshire. You turn to them and smile, nervous at how they will react to seeing you after so long but also a bit reassured by the fact that they hired you to look after the house while they go away on an extended trip, and surely they must still care for you if they trust you so much?

You are immediately pulled into a hug by Mrs. Heelshire who then holds you at arm's length and looks you over fondly, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"Oh dear y/n, darling girl, it's been far too long!" she says to you with a curiously sad smile.

You smile back, relieved at the warm welcome.

"I'm glad to be back Mrs. Heelshire, thanks so much for the opportunity, I doubt I would be back at all if you hadn't asked me to come,' you pause and pull her into another hug and whisper, 'Thank you, truly."

Mrs. Heelshire stiffens against you and you hear her mutter poor girl as she pulls back and pats your shoulders. You write it off as referencing all the drama with your family, and you're just happy she hasn't yet directly spoken about that shit show. Mr. Heelshire nods at you with a smile and a look in his eyes you can't decipher. Mrs. Heelshire starts to lead the three of you into the library where you see tea set out for two.

"Come dear, I have to explain the responsibilities, I suppose there's no need for a tour given... well anyways, we've had your usual room made up for you, Daddy will be finalizing the last bits of our luggage for the trip while I set you up, then we'll be leaving you to it."

You're surprised at how quickly they will be leaving but also a little relieved, there's history enough in the walls and the scuffs on the floors, you're not sure how long you could take the two of them as far as reminders go, and having to deal with the poshness you've never quite adopted no matter how much time you spent there growing up. Mr. Heelshire turns to you.

"I had every confidence you would grow up into a wonderful woman y/n and somehow you've surpassed every expectation. I wish we didn't...' he sighs and pauses looking almost regretful and even a bit scared, he leans in as if to hug you and whispers, 'I wish it didn't have to be you." He pulls away and gives you a sad look before nodding at his wife and leaving the room.

You have no idea what to think but they've always been more than a little bit odd, especially after Brahms' death so you shake it off and plaster a smile on your face as Mrs. Heelshire gestures for you to sit in front of one of the steaming cups of tea. She sits across from you and takes her tea with the precision and calculated gracefulness of a countess and takes a sip, making eye contact with you before speaking.

"You'll be in charge of the general upkeep of the house, I've taken that responsibility up until now and you know how much we detest strange people coming into our estate, even hired help of any kind. Malcolm will be bringing grocery deliveries every Monday as per the usual schedule, I'm sure you have a vein of communication to notify him of the odds and ends you'll be needing during your stay here."

You nod and sip your tea, your favorite, your heart warms at the fact they've remembered. Your brother comes into the room and leans against one of the many ceiling-high bookcases. Mrs. Heelshire nods to acknowledge his entrance and then continues.

"Then there's Brahms, I'm sure you are excited to see him after so long, he's up in his room at the moment, he's a bit nervous to see you after all this time, and while I know you will take utmost care of him there are a few specific rules Daddy and I have outlined to make sure all goes smoothly in our absence."

You barely stop yourself from spitting out your tea, you school your features quickly and smile at Mrs. Heelshire before widening your eyes at your brother who looks only partly apologetic about not having mentioned that Brahms wasn't also going on the trip. You can't really refuse, you need the job and honestly, you have a big soft spot in your heart for the eccentric couple, despite Brahms the doll. You couldn't really judge their coping mechanisms given the way you spent your youth trying to forget in all the wrong ways. You clear your throat.

"Of course Mrs. Heelshire. And what are these rules?"

"You're a dear y/n,' she produces a paper with typed writing on it and slides it over to you, you pick it up and scan it as she continues, 'Nothing too difficult to be assured, just some objectives to keep in mind. You'll do wonderfully, of that I'm sure, after all... we're counting on you."

Mrs. Heelshire seems as if she wants to say more but Mr. Heelshire comes into the room and stoops over his wife, whispering into her ear. Mrs. Heelshire takes a shaky breath as if to calm herself and then fixes you with a smile that doesn't reach her now glassy eyes.

"Well dear, it looks as if Daddy and I are ready to depart, we're going to go say our goodbyes to Brahmsy."

"Of course," you reply.

The couple both nod at you as they leave the room and head up the stairs. After you are sure they're far enough not to hear you, you turn to your brother with a glare. He flinches as you get up out of your seat and right before you lunge at him for keeping the fact you'll be in charge of the doll effigy of the little boy who had been your best friend since birth until his untimely death, you hear a creak and stop short, glancing around you to identify the source.

"Y/n, don't get mad! I thought you would have known or at least guessed they would leave Brahms to you."

You huff and look back at your brother exasperated.

"No dickhead I didn't think that so it would have been nice to know that I would be babysitting the Brahms doll for months while the Heelshires are away. Like the fuck Malcolm?"

"Oy! Language y/n! You've developed quite the mouth in the States, tone it down before Mummy and Daddy Heelshire sack you for being a bad influence on Brahmsy boy," he says mockingly.

You can't help but crack a smile at the absurdity and the whole weird Mummy and Daddy thing the Heelshires have going on.

"Whatever... wanker." you say as you roll your eyes and push past your laughing brother.

You sling your backpack onto your shoulder and Malcolm gets your suitcase and follows you up the stairs. In the hallway between your room and the room that used to be Brahms, but is practically a shrine to the dead boy now, you hear the Heelshires whispering which stops when your steps make the wood creak. You open your door to your room and head in with Malcolm who still has a shit-eating grin on his face you're very tempted to slap off. You only have time to grab your phone and plug it in and empty your jeans pockets of random stuff like a scrunchy and a stray piece of charcoal from the art set you carry around religiously before the Heelshires knock on your already partially opened door. You and Malcolm who has taken a seat on the foot of your bed turn to them.

"We'll have to bid you farewell here y/n, Malcolm, the house keys are in the dining room, you know where to find everything else, I can't stress though y/n, the rules are there for a reason and you'd do good to follow them."

You chuckle good-naturedly.

"I understand Mrs. Heelshire, I'll do my very best to not let you down."

"I know you will y/n... we wish you the very best." Mr. Heelshire says.

You follow them down and hug them both briefly before they disappear down the winding driveway. You stand there content to be in nothingness for a moment before you hear your brother yell a whiny 'y/n!', no doubt bored and expecting you to remedy it. You sigh and close the door softly, turning to the staircase with a feeling of overwhelming nostalgia, misplaced and foreign because you can't quite remember any of the things flitting about in your mind. You know that when Malcolm finally leaves you'll need some dedicated silent space out time to try and untangle all the threads. You jog up the steps and paint a smile on before you step back into your room, seeing Malcolm now reposing on the bed like a southern belle. You laugh and he shoots you a look of fake offense.

"So how do you feel, dear sister, to be back? Fun times and all.." Malcolm says watching you closely from where he has propped himself up on his elbows.

You roll your eyes and plop down on the bed next to him, sending you both up and back down with a soft sigh from the bed.

"I feel about what you'd expect, fucked in the head, but I think it'll be good... all the space and quiet, for my art and, well, whatever."

"Quiet? If you are anything like you were when we were young, that will not be lasting long."

You can feel all the unspoken history in the spaces between his words. You were strangers in the bodies of siblings, not quite sure how to joke as you did back when you still lived in England, a family. You hum.

"True enough, that hasn't changed at the very least. I don't understand how you do it though,' you turn to him and he meets your eyes with a look of a certain type of happiness of reunion and sadness for the time lost, ' living without music constantly playing, I mean Jesus, don't you want a soundtrack at least sometimes?"

"I enjoy the radio as much as the next man y/n, but you are an addict, the fact you haven't gone deaf from your headphones is no small miracle."

You give him an unamused look. You both look at each other in silence for a moment. You shift on your bed and then shove him off violently, cackling at the thump he makes as he hits the floor and the half-amused and half-annoyed grumbling coming from him. You look over the side of the bed at him as he play-glares up at you.

"Want to go exploring?" you ask.

"I suppose I can spare the time." He replies.

You offer a hand and pull him up. You both pause in the hallway and look at each other before going into Brahms' old room. It's just as stuffy and vintage as it ever was, neat and devoid of any dust, eerily like a museum. At the center of it all is the bed with the red bedspread and the Brahms doll sat almost shyly in the middle, the doll's hands in his lap. Malcolm walks over and then catches your eye before tipping the Brahms doll over.

"Oy! You're such an ass sometimes Malcolm," you say, feeling weirdly protective of the object.

"Oh please y/n, are you really going to spend the next couple of months lugging around that cement brick like it's a real boy?"

You ignore him and step further into the room, brushing your finger lightly over the surfaces and the few nicknacks, quite a few of them having come from you to the boy . You don't remember giving them really, but since they don't look like toys that belonged to Henry VIII you assume it was from your family and since they were kept, they must have been from you.

"How much do you remember?" Malcolm asks abruptly, making you think he's been wanting to ask that question for a while.

"Remember what? This place? That day?' you turn to Malcolm and gesture to the doll, 'Of him?"

Malcolms watches you silently, not elaborating as you fiddle with the globe, deep in thought, trying to grasp at shadows.

"Not much of any of it to be honest. It's been years and years, and at some point, it all became a dream, and then not even that...wish I could remember more, but...well maybe it's best not to. It's just, I don't know, it's odd but I don't think I would remember anything at all if it wasn't for that doll."

"Why the doll?"

You hum, still thinking of how to explain yourself. You're a bit annoyed at the melancholic vibe permeating the house and the conversation, your natural disposition was more toward laughing through the tears rather than thinking about what caused them in the first place.

"He's a constant reminder of the past so I can kind of conjure up the shape of things, glances of memories and whatnot, but never much permanent. I'm sure the longer I stay the more I'll remember, and we'll have to see if that's a good thing."

Malcolm nods and puts down a trinket he was fiddling with. He goes to say something but is cut off by his phone ringing, he looks at it and sighs.

"I'll have to be going, obviously call me whenever you need to, and you know I'll be up here every week on Mondays, just text me if you have any special requests.' He begins to walk out of the room and down the stairs with you following, "I'd stick around and hang out with you more but I've got to go take care of this. You're all good, right?"

You snort at his obvious nervousness, you've taken care of yourself up until now and are confident in the few things you've been asked to do by the Heelshires. When you both reach the foyer Malcolm turns to you with worried eyes that dart around. You abruptly grab his shoulders, startling him.

"I've got it, it should be a piece of cake babysitting a doll and emptying the odd mouse trap or two. You've got nothing to worry about."

You open the door for him and he goes to leave but then turns back to you. He ruffles your hair and opens his mouth undoubtedly to worry some more so you start to close the door on him with a laugh.

"Bye Malcolm!" you say with a smile growing on your face, excited about being all alone in such a big house. You hear a muffled Malcolm through the door and then a minute later the clatter of rocks being displaced as he drives away. A silence descends on you for a moment before your grin widens even more and you give a whoop which faintly echoes.

"Freedom!" you yell.

You laugh to yourself as you sprint up the stairs and into your room where you run and leap onto the bed. You jump up and down for a couple of moments before you drop down on your back, your cheeks flushed and your eyes wide in inexplicable excitement. You jump up and rifle through your bag pulling out your headphones and connecting them to your phone. Thank god for the wifi the Heelshires hooked up in preparation for you. You scroll on Spotify and land on a song that matches your giddy mood and start to sing it out loud as you dump your backpack on the floor and rifle through it for the little bag of complimentary cookies you got on the flight over.

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Brahms hadn't let himself believe his parents when they spoke to him of their plans. He couldn't let himself believe she was coming back, it would be an unnecessary heartbreak at dashed hopes when she inevitably failed to materialize but there she was, walking through the front door with her bright smile he hadn't seen in more than a decade. His heart had stopped, stilled so completely in his chest he thought he had died for a moment.

He had followed her closely through the walls as his parents spoke to her and his mother sat her down in the library. He trembled as y/n glanced over the rules and couldn't help himself from pressing up against the wall in a futile attempt at being closer to her when she stood. When she paused at the noise he had accidentally made and looked blindly towards him, obviously not knowing who was watching her from behind the books, his eyes teared up. She was really there! She had come back to him and was staying, right there, close enough for him to touch, his, alone together, the two of them. It was too much, it was everything he had been dreaming of, drowning in every night since she left.

After his parents left and Malcolm took her attention he had to restrain himself, choke down his jealousy. He wanted to be there, really there with y/n, laughing with her, asking her the thousands of questions that have filled his mind of her in her absence. Pretty y/n. His pretty y/n, she'd come back and now she wouldn't be leaving him again. He wouldn't let her. But she wouldn't dare, not his y/n.

Brahms startles from his thoughts as y/n screams 'Freedom!' and bolts up the stairs after annoying Malcolm finally leaves. Brahms scrambles through the maze of passages and steps behind the walls, running to keep y/n in his line of sight, after so many years without her he could barely bear to blink let alone be in a different room from her. When he slips into the space between her closet and bathroom, he heaves a sigh of relief and looks through the thin crack in the wall. It's the perfect vantage point, at an angle where he can see her bed, the door to the hallway, and the mirror which conveniently sits at an angle where he can also see the bathroom door which lays beside him.

He watches y/n jump around and then rifle in her things, his cheeks flushed in joy and his heart beating almost painfully against his ribs. His y/n is so happy, smiling with stars in her eyes as she sings rather decently along to a song he's never heard but is his new favorite because it comes from her. He observes her, so familiar but so frustratingly foreign, a wonder.

Even after the incident with Emily and he'd been sequestered in the walls he was able to see y/n, even though it had hurt him to lie and hide from her, it had hurt him much deeper than the fire had. He'd watched her breakdown at being told he'd died, watched her come by frequently in the year or so after making excuses to stay longer even though there was nothing for her to do but sit in his room alone and cry. Then later when it wasn't so fresh, wander around the house they used to explore together with Brahms following along when the spaces in the walls would allow, his heart hemorrhaging as she came less and less.

He'd watched her, drinking her in whenever she came to the house, desperate for any acknowledgment of his existence, of the time they had known each other, until her mother had taken her. She was thirteen the last time he saw her and he'd just turned fifteen. Thirteen years later she's an enigma he's thrilled beyond words to have been given the chance to unravel. He hasn't spoken to her in twenty years but at least when she visited when they were still young he could see her and be tided over by the light and sound she'd bring, pretend that he was still a part of her life, but in her absence, he had truly felt dead and even wished to be at times. He'd been desperately lonely, a voyeur without the promise of eventual inclusion, half-forgotten and half-despised. But that was no more, she was back and she was singing for him.

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You can feel the burst of energy dissipate as you eat your cookies on the floor and so you recline on your pile of belongings and listlessly listen to the next song to come on, Born Under a Bad Sign by Richard Hawley. It soothes you, it's so quietly romantic you find your eyes growing heavy and soon enough you fall asleep on the floor using your upturned backpack as a pillow, still clutching the partially eaten cookies in your hand.

Chapter Text

You wake up on your floor, tangled in your clothes and dusted with the pulverized package of cookies. You groan and sit up, rubbing your eyes as you free yourself. You stand up and stretch, slide your headphones off, throw them on the bed, and massage your pinched ears. You grumble to yourself about your bad habit of falling asleep while listening to music. You grab a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt to change into and take a shower. You let your hair air dry as you neaten up a bit, shaking the crumbs off your clothes and throwing everything onto the bed so you can vacuum away the chunks of Biscoff cookie. You leave your room to look for the vacuum, your bare feet creaking on the old wood floors.

In the hall you pass Brahms' room and double back to grab the doll remembering rule two, to never leave Brahms alone. You step into the room, glancing around, feeling conflicted. The complete stillness of the house should make you feel lonely or a bit creeped out but for some reason, you don't feel alone at all. You shake the feeling of inexplicable comfort and pick the Brahms doll up gently and carry him on your hip like a small child or a laundry basket. You hum as you wander the halls with Brahms in your arms, finally locating the vacuum. You are faced with a dilemma, you can't carry both. You look at the vacuum cord and then at Brahms getting an idea. You tie the doll to the vacuum handle with the electrical cord and then drag the makeshift stroller/vacuum to your room.

When you see the contraption in the mirror you can't help but burst out laughing at what your life has become. You swear you hear a second voice join in on your giggling but when you stop you hear nothing so brush it off as early-onset cabin fever. You disentangle the doll and set him on the mountain of clothes on your bed.

"You're king of the hill huh Brahms?" you say looking at the doll.

He doesn't answer so you hum and nod knowingly as if he had.

"True, true. It has been quite a long time since we've played that game, but I was much better at it than you, that much I can remember," you say in an exaggerated voice, somewhat reminiscent of the Heelshire's posh accent.

"But I don't remember much..." you mutter to yourself as you plug in the vacuum.

You vacuum the floor and begin to put all of your things away as you basically treat the Brahms doll like the camera and you 'story time' a summary of your life since leaving the Heelshire estate and how you ended back up in the United Kingdom.

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Brahms had hardly slept. Whenever he tried, his mind wandered back to y/n, who was back to him, and sleeping under the very same roof he laid under. He tossed and turned all night in his secret apartment, a wild smile on his face, pulling tight on his facial burn scars. He was nervous and excited, his heart thumping in his chest hard enough to choke him, his hand pressing against it as if to keep it from breaking through.

There were a lot of logistical issues he would have to figure out and fast, like how to shower without y/n hearing the running water, how to keep y/n from ever leaving him again, how to sneak around without her noticing so he can watch her as much as possible, and how to make sure his parents don't interfere with his plans. These thoughts and a thousand more filled his mind to nearly breaking that night. His world was full of light and sound again after so long living in the quiet dark, and y/n was his savior like she always had been.

The promise of a future with the girl he had loved since before he could remember, even a future where he has to keep hidden in the shadows, was more than he had ever let himself dream and here it was almost falling into his lap. He could barely let himself be happy about it, almost too scared to smile like the universe would take it as a sign to punish him for daring to covet what he doesn't deserve. And he knows he doesn't deserve y/n, but he selfishly needs to possess her anyways.

He awoke from his fitful sleep at dawn and quietly made his way back to the spot in y/n's room's walls where he could see her easiest. When he saw her just as he left her the night before, curled up on the floor among her varicolored belongings, his hands twitched to brush her hair behind her ear as he read heroes doing in books. He bit down the urge, wanting to play it safe and hidden rather than give in to the unknown pleasure of being close enough to touch the object of his obsessive affections.

He watched her sleep for about an hour before he shamefully gave in to the temptation, sliding from the back wall and into her closet through a loose panel. He crept towards y/n in perfect silence, knowing the house so perfectly as to avoid every noisy piece of flooring, and stopped just above her, careful not to create a shadow over her eyes in case the shift in lighting might have woken her. Brahms bent down slowly, his mask less than a foot from y/n's face. Y/n sighed in her sleep and shifted, scooting imperceptibly closer to him, but he noticed how y/n, even in her sleep, sought him. He bit his tongue to not curse her family for taking her away from the Heelshire estate and him, something he could never imagine y/n wanting for herself.

Brahms knelt down at her side, leaning in, his cheeks warming as he felt her breath ruffle the ends of his hair and he smelled her sweet perfume. He gingerly and as slowly as physically possible brought his hand to her cheek, not daring to touch her, just hovering. He felt like a kid about to be caught in the candy jar and he smiled remembering the times he and y/n were just that, both having had a rebellious streak and sweet tooth as children. He gently pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, his body electrified by the contact, however minimal. His breath came out shaky, an almost whimper at being so close to his love. She shifted again so he stilled, waiting some minutes before regretfully going back to his hiding place in her walls. In his little cubby, he ran his finger that had touched her hair along the side of his blushing face, aware of how desperate and odd he was being but not being able to help it.

It was hours later when she finally woke, Brahms knew she was a natural night owl, the same as him, so wasn't miffed over the long wait. He couldn't stop the adoring look on his face as she got up and got ready for the day, it was so delightfully mundane, he felt like he and y/n were a married couple. At that thought his whole face went red and his muscles tensed up in embarrassment for thinking something like that of y/n. One of his hands covered his already masked face as if to hide himself from his desires but at the sweet feeling of that thought and the way his chest warmed and his lips twitched up, he wondered briefly if he could allow himself the fantasy if he only ever left it at that. It couldn't hurt y/n, it wasn't immoral to love someone and to want them to love you back? Right?

He was broken out of his thoughts when y/n left the room. Brahms had to stop himself from following, knowing that she must be coming back soon and not wanting to risk making noise by following her. He breathed a sigh of relief when she came back, only to have to muffle his laughter when the Brahms doll tied to the vacuum was revealed, and y/n herself cracked up at the sight of it. She extricated the doll from the contraption and set it with her things on the bed.

The sound of her voice shocked him so badly from his trance of lovingly watching her that he didn't catch much of anything she said except for what she mumbled to herself, of not remembering much. This made him frown deeply, and his eyes prick with tears he'd shed frequently over the years over his predicament and disfigurement, things he wouldn't mind if not for how they kept him from his love. He remembers everything, or at least believes himself to remember most of their childhood, however short the time they had together actually was. He grits his teeth at the possibility she can't remember him any longer and prays it's not true.

"So Brahms, we've got a lot to catch up on now, don't we? Hmm... where to start?" y/n says to the doll.

Brahms smiles at how she treats the doll effigy as if it is sentient, then forces himself to ignore the bitter taste of not being the one she was speaking to, touching, holding.

"Well I'm sure you're curious about my years in the States but honestly Brahmsy boy there's not much to say. Went to school, went home, worked at a record store for most of high school almost went to juvie when said record store turned out to be a drug front but that's a whole other story, still can't believe I didn't notice but hey the owner was my type you know, tall, scruffy, quiet... but anyways...shit, where was I?"

Y/n pauses folding her clothes and then resumes when she seemingly finds the thread of her thoughts again. Brahms clenches his teeth and hands painfully when he hears about the owner, supposedly her 'type', he may not know much of the modern world but he knows what a type is from annoying Malcolm's conversations he's eavesdropped on over the years. How was he supposed to compete with another man? Should he even think about competing in the first place? Of course not, but his imagination was running wild with thoughts of y/n, and entertaining the idea of being a man in her eyes, an alive one at that, was a favorite fantasy of his and had been since before she left.

"So anyways after the whole Michael versus William saga I went to art school in New York for undergrad, getting out of Utah thank god, but that's where I met Leon so maybe I jumped out of the frying pan of boredom and right into the hellfire of stupid himbo boyfriend bullshit. Like I don't know what the hell I was thinking dating a ceramicist, they are way too good with their fingers and are all players I swear to god. He's not my type like at all, a total gym bro in a derogatory way of course, and he had the gall to cheat?!"

At this point Brahms is so incensed at the idea of Y/n with another man and with one who seemingly didn't treat her with the devotion and love she so obviously deserved, he forgets himself for a second and hits his fist against the wall in frustration. Y/n pauses, her head shooting up and eyes looking straight at where Brahms is standing behind the wall. She slowly makes her way over to the wall and presses her ear up against it. Brahms holds his breath with body-shaking concentration, begging her mentally to write it off and to step away from his hiding place, as much as he will reminisce later on how close they are at the moment, the fear of being caught overpowers the thrill. He hears her mutter 'weird old house' as she turns away from the wall and goes back to her clothes, shooting another skeptical look towards him behind the wall. She's silent for a minute, seemingly still listening for whatever made the noise. Brahms mentally berates himself for letting his emotions overpower his control.

"Well anyways, Leon was a total dick but at least he could find the clit...' y/n pauses to look at the Brahms doll, 'Ignore that I said that I forgot you're still eight years old Brahms."

Brahms makes an amused face behind the wall and his mask, ignoring the jealousy simmering beneath his skin. It was sad but a bit funny how she still saw him as his eight-year-old self despite him being twenty-eight and in such a state he doubts y/n, as creative as she is, could imagine him. Who would imagine such a detestable creature? He fiddles with his mask as if checking if it still hid him.

"But yeah, my life since leaving hasn't been all that interesting just going from graduation to graduation and dumb boyfriend to even dumber boyfriend. That's why I'm so happy to be back Brahms, everything was magic here way back when, I think I'm chasing that high a bit, to be honest, I know I won't catch it, wouldn't be the same without you obviously, but it's nice to be close to where you once were, you know?' y/n nudges the Brahms doll who flops lifelessly to his side, 'I guess you don't get it but still."

Brahms lets out a silent but frustrated breath, wishing he could tell her he understands perfectly. He may not know much about her life outside of the Heelshire estate's walls and is simultaneously curious and angry at that fact, but he understands her relief of being reunited with the thing that symbolized the good times in one's life. For y/n it may be the estate itself and the memories she has or innocently exploring it as a child, but for Brahms, it was y/n herself, the object of his affections and many years of obsession fueled by isolation. The relief of y/n being back and tied to him, even just contractually without her full knowledge, was like breathing air after decades of being buried alive.

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After putting away that last of your clothes and arranging your wall decorations, mostly a myriad of movie and band posters, you put your hands on your hips with a satisfied sigh. You turn to the Brahms doll as your stomach growls. You check the time and see it's seven pm. You pull a face at having slept most of the day.

"Dinner time? I'm thinking of making your favorite, spaghetti carbonara. Malcolm better have gotten what I asked for.." you say as you grab the doll, your phone, and your Bluetooth speaker.

You walk downstairs and through the house to the kitchen that is quaint but feels airy with how pale everything is, from the checkered floor, grey walls, and gleaming white vintage fridge. You put the Brahms doll in a seat at the kitchen table, pushing the chair in so he doesn't fall over, and start gathering the ingredients.

You regale the Brahms doll on more stories of your borderline delinquent high school days and describe your college years. You describe your friends, the drunken adventures you've had, the many shitty professors you've had, and complain an ample amount about Leon, your ex. Leon wasn't all that bad to be honest except he was exceedingly unfunny, a mid ceramicist (you secretly think he only became one because of that one scene in Ghost), and had of course cheated on you. He fancied himself a player, despite being bitchless before you, and you caught him a week before graduation in the yarn store room on campus naked and tangled up with a mutual friend of yours, Luis. You promptly dropped his ass publicly and not long after you had been contacted by the Heelshires, leading you to where you are now. You don't dwell on Leon much in your one-sided conversation with the Brahms doll, you were over Leon the minute you caught him, and part of you couldn't be mad since you were never very invested in him or anyone else you had dated.

You finish the prep work for the meal and decide to 'educate' the Brahms doll on your favorite music. You play your 'ratatouille hours' playlist of music you like to cook to, a mashup of genres mostly new wave, alternative r&b, and eighties pop. Cooking is one of your many hobbies, you're a bit of a jack of all trades master of none with how you bounce from interest to interest and phase to phase, never sticking with any one thing long enough to learn much. You can cook very well though since you've been cooking for yourself since you were a child.

When you finish you dish up some for yourself and put the rest in a container to be frozen in accordance with commandment number three of the Heelshire codex (the list of rules they left you). You sit next to the doll and dig in, turning the music down a bit so you can comfortably talk at the four-foot effigy. You speak to yourself constantly normally and now that you had a thing to speak at specifically you were taking full advantage of it. Your incessant self-talk was the cause of many odd looks in your life and so the fact that you were completely and utterly alone in the house made you feel delightfully comfortable and led to the constant chatter.

When you finish your food you wash all of the dishes and then start to wander around the first floor with the doll held on your shoulders, part of his body slumped over your head. You got a kick out of treating the doll like an actual child and so played the part of 'cool babysitter' to pass the time. You get bored of walking around the labyrinthine estate, there's only so many creepy family portraits and dusty chandeliers you could take. You bound up the steps, the Brahms doll jostling violently, and deposit him in his room. You change him into his stiff little pair of pajamas, tuck him into his suspiciously fresh bed, and kiss him goodnight, ever the rule follower. You whisper goodnight as you close his door and then giggle to yourself as you go to your room.

For the next couple of hours, you blast Oingo Boingo and David Bowie as you tape and pin-up posters, art, tapestries, and photos to your walls. You hang fairy lights and a collection of random keychains off the push pins and at the end your room looks like a blend between the stuffy old aesthetic of the Heelshire's and the room of a 90s high school rom-com girl. You jump into your bed reading for hours before falling asleep more out of boredom than actual need.

Chapter Text

You wake up with a start, blindly reaching out to turn off the blaring alarm on your phone. You groan and rub your eyes, stretching your whole body out, almost reaching the edges of the bed. You kick your blankets off dramatically and roll out of your bed, just barely catching yourself from falling to the ground. Still half blind from sleep you fish out some clothes and step into the shower. When you're ready for the day, or as ready as you can be since your bed is still loudly calling your name, you step into Brahms' room.

You walk over to his bed and look down at him with an impassive face. You don't mind the doll much, you actually kind of enjoy its presence, but the rule you were given by the Heelshire's to 'wake' him up at seven in the morning was annoying. You silently vow that you are only waking up this early for the first day, you know for good impressions or whatever, but the rest of the next couple months you're going to play by your own rules. It's not like the doll had an opinion on the matter and the Heelshires aren't there to keep you in check.

You dress him in his signature outfit of a sweater vest, button-up shirt, and spiffy little slacks. You muse that Brahms even when he was alive had probably never touched denim let alone something so informal as a t-shirt. The two of you had been an odd pairing as kids, a little boy looking as if perpetually on his way to church and a little girl in ripped jeans, sweatshirts, and clothes always splattered in paint. You were always covered in art materials from hastily cleaned-up projects and speckled with cuts and bruises from roughhousing with Malcolm and his friends. Brahms was always as neat and stiff as a portrait, cold and clean as if he had always just come from a shower.

At least that's how he was with others, you always knew him as a puppy-like pouter with a jealous streak. That was only made worse when Emily was introduced to the two-person friend group. You flinch at the memory of her, pausing halfway down the hall. You look over at the Heelshire family portrait, remembering the little blonde girl you barely knew, and only remembered the worst of.

Emily wasn't a kind child, hell, you would describe her as the bad seed with an English accent, but she was nice to you. She was too scared of Brahms to try anything with him but she had been selfish with you which only stoked Brahms' over-the-top possessiveness. She would goad him, make him jealous and angry enough to cry and beg you to stop hanging out with her. You would have obliged but Emily wasn't your choice, she was specifically chosen as a friend for Brahms, and by extension you, by his parents who liked the boost in status they got from being associated with her historical family. The Cribbs name was famous in the posh circles they ran in and so you and Brahms were often stuck with Emily while their parents drank tea and your parents served cookies and cleaned.

His birthday isn't something you remember well. The days and weeks after were filled with tears and the phantom burn in your lungs from the smoke that took him away from you, and the nightmares of the bloody rock next to the matted blonde hair of Emily. You could only imagine what had driven Brahms to such violence but you really couldn't blame him much, she had a habit of sticking pins in her pet kittens and of yelling slurs at anyone with a tan. Her parents weren't much better and beyond accepting the lavish condolences after her death they had settled out with the Heelshires for no small sum and moved to a city in the midwestern U.S., something like Possum Town or something. You hadn't heard anything about them since...

You shake yourself out of your memories and move into the kitchen, setting the Brahms doll on the counter. You make yourself a [favorite breakfast food] and eat it intermittently as you tidy up. You chatter to the doll this time explaining in explicit detail the ins and outs of the relationships and drama of your undergrad years.

Art school had been the most volatile years of your life but you had survived, barely, and were now taking your gap year before going on to a master's at an art college in London. You have moderate success as a painter and quite a lot of extremely secret success as a not-safe-for-work slasher fan art producer. Michael Myers has unknowingly paid your bills by being railed a thousand different ways over the years and you are quite grateful for it.

You know you need to get started on one of your recent commissions later so as you wash the dishes from breakfast you make a plan for the day out loud, with the usual minimal input from the Brahms doll. First, you needed to do some housekeeping, next, you would cook lunch, and then... well... freestyle. You put the dishes in the rack and then drag the Brahms doll into the hall depositing him on a random chair. You start some music on shuffle on your Bluetooth speaker, Haim playing first off your nostalgia playlist. You grab the cleaning supplies from the kitchen and begin to clean, singing the song to yourself, half the time purposefully off-key, and the other half belting with the confidence of the worst X-factor auditionee.

You sweep and scrub all of the bits of the house you can be bothered with, or basically the dining room table and the floors in the main rooms, which takes you a couple of hours due to numerous playlist recalibrations and getting distracted texting your few friends. When you go to grab the Brahms doll you swear you had left him looking towards the front door but find him looking up the stairs towards your bedroom. You stand over the doll, a bit creeped out but reluctant to give in to what seems illogical, you were the only person for miles so either you set him down differently than you remember or he was inhabited by a demon. You choose to believe the former and move on with your day, holding the Brahms doll just a bit further from you.

You take him into the library where you walk around the shelves with him on your hip. You play your own made-up games like 'How many books on this shelf have I read, oh none...damn' and 'Why do the Heelshire's have this one?' while you pick out a small stack of books that you could bear to read out loud to the doll. The selection was slim, obviously curated by the rich and dull. You set the doll in the corner of the couch next to the collection of books you chose and then you flop down on the couch next to him dramatically.

You glance at the doll, your lips pursed, you didn't plan on getting bored so quickly. You had always been good at entertaining yourself, but something about the grandiosity of the Heelshire estate was overriding your naturally introverted tendencies leaving you weirdly lonely. You knew that some part of you was feeling that way because of the absence of a certain person, not the absence of all people, but you push the thought deep into the back of your mind. You have always wondered why you were still so stuck on the wispy memories of a little boy you haven't seen since you were six, but the absence of him was something you had grown up with, he felt like your shadow, ever-present and unknowable.

You grunt as you pull yourself up into a sitting position, bringing the books over to you so you can pick one and fulfill rule number five, read a bedtime story. The only really promising book is The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. The rest are Charles Dickens or Mark Twain and none of that sounded particularly appealing. You set your choice on the doll's lap and languidly get up, making your way over to the record player with its cabinet of vinyls beside it. You run your finger along the edges of the record albums, pulling them apart to glance at their titles. Most are classical or opera with some random jazz thrown in.

You survey the selection with distaste. Your music taste is eclectic and while you don't hate the music they have necessarily, to have such a narrow selection was unfortunate. You smile sadly looking down at the albums thinking that Brahms really never had much of a chance to join the modern world, or the world at all being the son of such peculiar old people and then having died so young. You would have liked to introduce things like modern music to him and your eyes sting at the fact that you can't.

"There's a lot more out there than this, did you know that Brahms?' your voice cracks a bit as the emotion washes over you, you look behind you at the stiff doll, 'I wish you would have survived and I could have shown it all to you, or I guess if you were always there like you would have been, we would have experienced it all together..."

You set the album down, biting your lip to keep yourself from crying. You think that it was probably overdue, feeling it all come back, and the absence of the one thing that wouldn't ever come back, your best friend. You wipe the edges of your eyes and make your way back to the Brahms doll. You sit criss-cross on the couch facing towards him. You sit stooped over with your elbows on your knees and your hands on your cheeks. You let the sadness pass as you stare at the doll suddenly incensed at its presence.

You jump up and leave the room and the doll behind. You bound up the stairs and flop onto your bed with a huff. You pout silently looking up at the ceiling before rolling over and fishing your phone out of your pants. You decide to fix the lack of modern culture in the books and music available and since the Heelshires gave you a sizable signing bonus you have the means to drop far too much at the local book and record stores. Sure you can play music on your speaker but vinyl has your little hipster heart. As for the books, the library was begging for some flavor you would happily go on a shopping spree to provide.

You call Malcolm and ask when in the week would he be able to take you to town because you want to hit up all the shops to inject some life into the big empty house. He surprises you and says that he can pick you up within the next twenty minutes because he was in the area. You excitedly make plans with him and hang up to get ready. You hurriedly throw some outside-appropriate clothes on and toss what you need for the day in your backpack. As you rush around your room you bump into furniture making a racket, the house seems to creak more loudly. You hear Malcolm hit the horn an obnoxious number of times outside so you grab your bag and practically jump down the stairs, running to get out the door.

As you pull it open you feel a blast of ghost-like chill and think you hear a heavy thump in the depths of the house but you ignore it thinking you probably knocked something loose in your rush to get ready that has only just fallen. You make a mental note to fix whatever you probably just broke later and jump down the steps two at a time which your brother rolls his eyes at. You slide into the passenger side and your brother drums his fingers on the wheel as he watches you buckle.

"Ready kid?"

"Cut it out with the kid shit, but yes."

He scoffs jokingly as he pulls the car away from the estate. You look back at the house and swear you see a curtain move in one of the windows by the door. You are just about to say something about it when Malcolm speaks again.

"You'd think you'd be more polite to your chauffeur, you know. It's not like I'm getting paid by kilometer like a proper taxi service."

"Aww but Malcolm are you saying my presence alone isn't payment enough?" you ask with a fake pout that he glances at with a smile as he drives, the window forgotten.

"How would you put it with that mouth of yours? Fuck no."

You both laugh, goofing off and catching up with each other as the ping of pebbles from the dirt road hit against the car. It's still quite early in the day when you arrive in town and while Malcolm has errands to run he forgoes them in order to follow you around for hours and comment on your selections. You buy enough albums that the cashier just gives you a couple of the cheaper ones for free and at the bookstore you leave with a milk crate full. You hit the art supplies store for some watercolor supplies, your medium of choice. As you pick out the pan watercolor set your eyes wander to the kiddie plastic versions, your artistic roots so to speak, and something you had always done with Brahms as a child. You purse your lips and look away, grabbing what looks best and checking out.

You drop your hauls off in the car and eat a late lunch with your brother. It's a sweet little cafe, delightfully vintage in the white ceramic tile and neon sign Americana way. You rock with excitement in your seat as you and Malcolm eat off each others' plates to piss each other off and discuss music, something you are trying and succeeding in educating your brother about. By the time you finish and Malcolm insists on footing the bill, you've given him a playlist to listen to written out on a napkin which he promises to listen to and text you his thoughts about. After lunch, he insists on taking you by the local ice cream place. You happily oblige, not used to being treated, and enjoying the new closeness with your brother who you've lived so long apart from.

You're walking into the ice cream shop with your brother behind you, both chattering excitedly about the newest installment of your favorite movie franchise when you bump into a person. You step back and go to apologize with already pink-dusted cheeks from embarrassment at your lack of awareness when you meet the eyes of who you bumped into. Your ex-situationship Ada! Your heart drops to your ass and your words stall in your throat. Your eyes widen, probably comically, and her eyes flash with recognition, you faintly realize it has been a few seconds of silence but your brain can't seem to process.

You hear your bother clear his throat next to you so you snap out of your surprised trance. You look between them, Malcolm has his eyebrow raised seemingly appraising Ada, and Ada has a hard-looking smirk on her face, you realize she thinks Malcolm is your boyfriend or something. She never would have seen pictures of your family and from an outsider's perspective, it probably does look like you and him are walking around on a date. You swallow down your vomit at the thought. After your dalliance with her, you stayed friends, under the guise of frenemies. Your mutual love language is being a bitch to the other. She flicks a strand of hair from her face, her sleek bob swishing almost seductively. You gulp, remembering all over again why you let her string you along for as long as she did. You see the hint of a smile in the corner of her lips.

"Y/n, it must be fate to see you here in such a,' she waves her hand around dismissively, 'sleepy little hamlet. And whose this? Not exactly your type, but neither was your last rebound and we both know how well that turned out for you..." she says.

She always reminded you of a snake, one of those black ones that flick threateningly through the water of lakes, surprising, sleek, and sharp enough to cut. But you like that, don't you? You narrow your eyes at her dig and you feel your brother tense, ready to come to your defense in any situation. Your heart warms at him but you have to respond, you suppress your smile at the continuation of your years-long game of salutary insults.

"This little hamlet is my hometown, surprised you didn't remember that with your sharp intellect, or is it declining with age? Can't be long yet before you become a full-blown pensioner. And as for him,' you nod your head to Malcolm, 'he's my brother. And fuck, let's not talk about unfortunate choices for rebounds Ada, not with your biblically long list of thrown-away toys?"

Ada hums, her eyes roving over your face before glancing at your brother who is very confused and uncomfortable with the near malevolent energy you and Ada are creating towards each other. She winks at you before responding.

"If my list of past lovers is a list of my broken toys, what does that make you?"

You can practically hear Malcolm's thoughts with how hard he is staring at you. You are about to break character and Ada knows it.

"The first toy to throw your dumbass away." You barely get your response out before laughing.

Ada laughs with you, pulling you into a tight hug. She pulls away, ruffling your hair like she knows you hate. You turn to your bother with a smile still on your face.

"Malcolm, this is Ada, my ex-something or other turned frenemy numero uno. She's a complete cunt but at least she's hot. We insult each other whenever we see each other, a tradition of sorts."

Your brother is silent for a second before shaking his head with an amused look on his face. He sticks his hand out to Ada. She takes it with a friendly smile. They shake.

"Pleasure to meet you, Ada."

"Likewise, Malcolm."

"But what are you doing here, in the middle of nowhere?" you ask, curious since the town wasn't exactly along the motorway and last you heard he had disappeared to Australia.

"My car broke down, I'm on a cross-country road trip. Doing it all on my lonesome to find some spiritual centering as I enter my thirties or some bullshit like that. Just came from the shop and thought I'd pop in for a cone. They're fixing it up but it won't be done until tomorrow... do you happen to know where the local ye olde Hilton is?"

"More like a road trip to,' you pause looking at your brother and trying to clean your words up, 'sample the country before you end up in the home."

Ada rolls her eyes with a smile. You've missed her and the bitchy banter. Your brother excuses himself having grown impatient for his ice cream.

"As for the Hilton, no such luck Ada my dear, but you could stay with me for the night if you'd like? Lord knows there's enough empty rooms where I'm staying."

She gives you a look and her tongue runs along her teeth. You give her a deadpan look.

"Fuck off Ada. Not like that, I'm offering purely to get just a bit more good karma not to fall back into old habits."

"Fair enough babe. If you really wouldn't mind?" Ada clarifies, obviously having been joking before and now not wanting to impose upon you.

"Of course! Helping you on your spiritual journey must count for quite a lot of good person points, so it'll make up for having to spend more time around methuselah."

She hums, throwing her arm around your shoulders as you make your way over to the ice cream counter. You both get some, your brother insists on paying for you all, and the three of you sit down outside the shop. For much too long, far beyond when you all finished your ice cream, you talk and share stories, Ada and Malcolm getting to know each other, and you running interference between them trying to mitigate the swapping of embarrassing stories.

When you notice how dark the sky has become you all pack into Malcolm's car and drive to the Heelshire estate. When you arrive Ada is still discussing and arguing with you about your choices in music and literature, some of which she insists couldn't be given either label, but she helped you lug it all inside. The house has a peculiar feel to it, almost like the feeling of someone having just been in the room, which you know can't be true. Malcolm leaves the two of you, wiggling his eyebrows at you when Ada isn't looking much to your lack of amusement, and you give her a brief tour sans the library to avoid the Brahms doll explanation.

When you show her to the room beside yours where she'll be spending the night she makes a comment about why she couldn't share your bed for old times sake and heat in the drafty old house. You giggle and push her through the door telling her that you'll get dinner ready soon enough, since you're both tired and want to turn in rather early. You leave her to take a shower and go to your room where you recline on your bed with one of the books you bought today.

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Brahms had tensely watched her as she hung out in the library, folding into himself when she had expressed her wish of sharing the world with him, if only he was able to grant such a forbidden pleasure. He was practically in pain at how much he was holding himself back from giving up on the plan and revealing himself to her, regardless of the implications and her inevitable horror, when she had abruptly run off leaving him shocked and then scrambling to catch up. When he got to his place in her walls she had just hung up with someone on her cell phone and was rushing around in a flurry, throwing things in her backpack and changing her clothes, which he had obviously looked away during.

As she had gathered her things, not much but enough, his anxiety spiked, was she leaving him? And when she bolted out of her room and down the stairs his greatest fear was realized so he didn't bother to be quiet as he maneuvered through the walls as fast as possible to catch up to her, no plan having time to form in his mind, only focused on keeping her with him no matter what. He was too late, only being able to see the car pull off from the window. He fell to his knees against the door, his hands pressed to the wood, white-knuckled from the pressure. He was struck down in his place from despair, on his knees like a prayer would make her come back to him.

After much more time than he could conceptualize in his state of anxiety, he stood up and dragged himself up the stairs to her room. At seeing the mess he grew frantic, his heart hammering harder and harder in his chest as he skimmed his fingers over all that she left. It was too much, too many things he knew were precious to her with how carefully she handled them, she wasn't leaving forever.

This calmed him enough to stop the tremors in his body, but the tears and sweat behind his mask were already cold. His face went blank behind it, he knew he wouldn't survive this fear again, he would die from it one way or another. As he stood over her bed and smoothed out the wrinkles in the blanket, he vowed that he would forgive her this time, but the next, if she ever dared, he would have to show her how much she hurt him. Until then, he'll be a good boy and keep quiet. 

Chapter Text

 You are interrupted from your reading by Ada bursting into your room, still damp from her shower. She jumps on your bed and flops down on you, her wet hair sticking to your skin. You grunt and push her off you, memorizing your book's page number as you close it. You turn to her with a sigh and she nudges you back with the impish smirk that everyone but you seems to fall for. She reaches out and tugs a lock of your hair, and you shake her off, rolling her eyes.

"What's on the menu babe? You've already turned down all that I offered..." she says with a fake sultry tone.

You laugh as you stand up off the bed. You reach out to pull her up and you do, your hand stays on her arm to keep her up, your chests touching. You internally cringe at the proximity but don't show it. Nothing with anyone has ever felt quite right, Ada included.

"That's because you haven't offered anything too,' you get closer and whisper in her ear, 'appetizing."

You let go of her arm and she falls back on the bed with wide eyes. You relish the role reversal. You walk to the door and turn back to Ada, she is still looking at you in shock, propped up on her elbows on your bed.

"Dinner is miso ramen you are helping to cook, and cut it out with the babe, babe," you say, throwing her pet name for you back at her with half-mocking distaste.

You walk out of your room and downstairs, hearing her scramble to catch up with you, laughing all the while. She meets you in the kitchen where you have already started laying out all the ingredients you'll need.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

When y/n came back last night he was thrilled, and practically sobbed with relief, until the devil in red and black walked in beside her. A woman, a bit older than him, and definitely more than a bit older than y/n, who seems to have some sort of history with her, and she was staying the night in their house? He was irate to say the very least and sick to the core with jealousy and hatred for the stranger. He followed them up and when Ada started to flirt, he was naive but not that naive, he wondered, however briefly, if it wasn't worth revealing himself just to get rid of the woman. The only thing that stopped him was when y/n dismissed her and went to her room to read one of the many books she had brought back with her. He followed her in, pouting, trying his best not to be petulant, or at least to do it silently.

He glares at y/n from his cubby in her walls, annoyed at himself for being so jealous. He knows it's wrong to be so irate at the life she has lived outside of the estate's walls when all he wants for himself is to do the same. The key difference is he wants a life outside of the walls with her and she has already had that life without him. It makes him bitter, and then ashamed at the feeling. He wonders just how long this charade can last, he thought it could last forever, that he could live apart from her if she was close enough to touch, but the more he thinks about the practicality the more he despairs at its implausibility. The longer he spends watching y/n the harder it is not to want to do more than just watch.

Y/n shifts, her hair tousling against the headboard she's leaning against. She pinches her lips with one hand as she reads, and his eyes follow the movement hungrily. He grits his teeth when she rolls to one side, toward his wall, and her shirt rides up just enough to catch a whisper of the skin underneath the cloth. He flushes, his body rigid at the sight. He pushes down the desire, the new and steadily rising feeling that has taken root and grown since she walked through the doors and back into his...territory.

He can feel his anxiety spike as he thinks of all these things, can he continue to hide? Will she stay here or will she leave back to her life? Is it fair to want her to abandon it all for him? He wishes he could abandon his world behind the walls for her, but he doesn't remember what ist like beyond then. His world is far less valuable than hers, and hers is so much more beautiful.

He is broken from his thoughts when the woman comes in, casually reclining on y/n's bed and flirting some more. Brahms grits his teeth when the woman touches her hair, breathing a sigh of relief when y/n rejects it. When y/n pulls her up and then close to her, Brahms flinches, not ready to see y/n with anyone else, even though he knows he has no chance with her. When she pushes the woman off her and walks away as some sort of joke he shakes from relief. He runs his fingers through his hair, now greasy from the lack of a shower for the past few days since she arrived. He is naturally very clean and neat, his parents would never have accepted less, and while he itches to bathe and curses the fact he didn't take advantage of y/n's earlier disappearance, it's a small price to pay for her.

He follows them to the kitchen where y/n directs the woman, whose name he learns is Ada, in cooking some sort of savory noodle soup dish. His mouth waters at the glimpses he gets and the smell that sits thickly in the air. He holds onto the excitement of slipping some from the leftovers y/n would have to freeze, per rule three of course. He harumphs at Ada's continued flirtation but finds solace in y/n's continued rebuffs. She is his... his friend that is. Doesn't matter, his role is to protect y/n and he feels as if Ada isn't the best influence on y/n, and is seemingly proven right when she goads y/n into breaking open one of his father's decanters of bourbon. He frowns behind his mask, watching even more diligently now that he has identified Ada as something beyond a nuisance but a full-on bad egg.

They don't drink much which he is happy about but then Ada takes the now cooled-down pot of 'miso ramen', something he will have to look up in the dictionary later, and gulps down the remnants. His eyes widen in anger, he can feel his face heat up. From the sliver of chipped wood he is looking into the kitchen he sees y/n frown, he knows she is thinking of the rule and he looks forward to her rebuking her friend for her misstep. After a second of frowning down at the empty pot y/n makes eye contact with Ada, he holds his breath selfishly excited to hear whatever harsh words would inevitably follow, but when y/n just bursts out laughing and is joined by Ada, his face twitches behind the mask. His lips screw up from displeasure and his fingers drum at his sides.

Y/n jokingly orders Ada to wash the dishes since she finished the food. He is momentarily happy about the fact that Ada is going to be busy and therefore unable to interact with y/n but then she offers to dry. They stand side by side, bumping hips and joking, but get the dishes done in short order. Y/n yawns and they go upstairs, parting ways in the hallway, he follows them silently fro within the walls. Y/n gets ready for bed and then reads from her book, falling asleep relatively quickly. He smiles at the way her face softens as she drifts to sleep.

He sees her book about to slip off the bed and he knows she hates to lose her page so he makes a split-second decision and quietly slips out of his cubby. He makes his way to her bedside, his carefully placed bare feet and many years of practice moving silently allowing him to make the journey perfectly undetected. He softly picks up her book and slips an improvised bookmark of a receipt between the pages, marking her place. He sets the book on her bedside table and then turns, feeling daring he brushes a lock of hair close to Y/n's face away but before he can remove his fingers y/n shifts, brushing his fingertips with her cheek. Brahms freezes, his body set alight by the warmth of her skin against his. His breath hitches from nerves and surprise, but y/n doesn't react to the contact at all. He breathes out shakily and daringly brushes his finger along her jawline. All he can think of the action is the word ecstasy. She twitches and turns away.

He stands there for a minute more, not wanting to risk her waking up, before making his way back into the walls. He makes his way back to his secret apartment enraptured, holding his now trembling hand out in front of him with a teary smile, not knowing how to untangle the coiled web of emotions wrapped around his aching chest. He falls into his empty bed with a muffled grunt. He knows he can make noise undetected in his space, but he feels almost reverent after the moment with y/n, despite its one-sided nature. He curls up into a cocoon in his blankets, taking off and hanging his mask on the wall beside his pillow.

He lays on the hand that touched his beloved y/n's face, feeling as if it had been divinely blessed, scared to taint it lest he never know such a pleasure again. Despite his reverence and sweet feelings towards the moment his body wasn't reacting as a good boy's should. He can feel what the contact had done to him, his body is hot, electrified all over, but he does his best to ignore the ache it's created. He shifts, turning over and back again as he squeezes his legs together to relieve the pressure building up in him. The movement sends a momentary wave of mixed pain and pleasure, making him gasp, followed by a feeling of disgust with himself for such base behavior.

His breath is ragged in a new way at the mental exertion of not scratching his itch lest he disrespect y/n by falling prey to the imagined temptations of her memory. He has felt this way many times before and indulged without thoughts of sin, but that was towards some nebulous image, a formless sensation he would lean into, but now it had solidified into the image of y/n, and he wouldn't, couldn't, think of her in such a way... but he was. He balls his other hand up at his side, but the tightness of his muscles does nothing to dampen the burn. He bites his pillow, the tears he frequently cried in the past as a reaction to the rush of a release, this time from the pain of its absence. He is so overwhelmed by the sensation of his barely held control, and the staggering intensity of his bodily reaction, that when he shifts again, brushing up against the mattress, he comes with a shudder. He stills from shock, never having done so without 'input' before.

A wave of regret, guilt, and self-revulsion washes over him and the tears that had begun to leak from his eyes grow into rivers. He hadn't anticipated the shift in his feelings towards y/n from his childhood love and possessiveness to something more dark, and so thoroughly tainted by newfound desires. He has never felt so tumultuous and torn in his life.

He knows he loves her, the thought of her, and he only ever thinks of her, makes his body warm, his stomach tie in quivering knots, and makes him purely happy like the best memory made even more beautiful by time. She feels like love and comfort to him, and he wants nothing more than to have her feel the same. But love isn't enough to absolve him of guilt, it's natural enough to desire her, he knows that much, but to give into his intense yearning for her without her knowledge was something he wouldn't allow. He holds his face in his hands as his body is wracked with his sobbing, his teeth gritted tight, a futile attempt at controlling the storm.

After some time it fades to numbness and he gets up to clean himself, his face wet from his tears and his hands are aching from where his fingernails bit into his palms. He cleans himself up silently, his eyes still leaking, he rubs them and they burn hot against his cool fingers. He gets back into bed, a bitter taste in his mouth, and a lip that starts to tremble again. He bites down to still the outpour of feelings rising anew. He tosses and turns for hours trying to find a solution to his predicament of having devised his own hellish torture, being stuck with the one thing he cannot ever have. In the end, he knows he will have to stick it out and to make it work he'll have to control himself better than he has. That is with just one concession, designed to lend him just enough satisfaction to forgo complete satiation, he wants her to follow the rules, and he will make sure she knows it.

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You wake up with a start, you brush an itch from your cheek, and look around you blearily. The sun is streaming in and you feel dried drool at the edge of your mouth which makes you cringe. You get up and get ready, not bothering to change your clothes as you have no one you need to impress and the Brahms doll was surely not going to make a fit about your lack of proper attire. At the thought of him you flinch, feeling inexplicably guilty for the way you abandoned him yesterday. You then pause feeling a bit foolish at personifying a doll, especially that doll. You shake the feelings off and shuffle out of your room and down the stairs not bothering to check that Ada's awake, she can take care of herself as far as you're concerned.

With this thought you don't expect her to be sitting peacefully at the dining room table sipping tea and reading a book with her bag packed at her feet, so you yelp at the mundane jumpscare. She looks up with wide eyes, jolting enough to spill a couple of drops of tea. She laughs and you smile embarrassed.

"Morning ba-y/n... my dear. I just got a call from the shop. They're on their way now to drop my car off. They should be here any second hence why I'm up before noon, a terrible thing truly."

"Ah it's a shame you'll be going so soon, but I'm happy they fixed it so quickly though," you say, sitting down across from her.

She nods, sipping her tea some more and setting the book down. You ask her about her cross-country trip and she explains how she felt cooped up in her job, something she has never revealed to you, and wanted a change of pace. Something like a palette cleanser before the inevitable decline and decay awaiting her in her forties. She likes to drop a decade off her age in conversation like with Malcolm the day before when she said the trip was about going into her thirties, and while her looks honestly made her look even younger than you from certain angles, you know the truth and never let her forget it like the annoying friend you are. The two of you haven't spoken long before you hear the cars pull up outside. You get up and follow her out. At the door, she stops you with a smirk.

"I almost forgot, funny prank you played this morning putting that creepy ass doll in the kitchen, gave me a fucking heart attack. I'll have to get you back for that someday," she says as she gives you a quick hug before bounding down the steps to the impatient-looking mechanic.

You have no time to react, your eyes widening.

"Tata dearest y/n, I bid you farewell and whatever the fuck!" she calls out, waving goodbye from her car and pulling out.

You stare out, open-mouthed at the street as she leaves, your mind still not quite comprehending what she just said. Not really wanting to understand. The mechanic gets in his car and as he pulls out he yells from his window. "Nice shirt!" before driving off.

You numbly look down to see why he complimented you, it's a Cure t-shirt. You nod a thanks as if he can see you before turning reluctantly back to the house, your whole body rigid with apprehension. You left everything inside, and you have yet to confirm the doll's whereabouts but still, the only explanation you can come up with for the moved doll is someone else moving him, and if you didn't do it and neither did Ada, who did and where are they now?

You cautiously step into the house, wary that you are now totally alone. Sure you had hung out with Ada earlier without being accosted by a doll-moving murderer but it could have been a safety-in-numbers thing and now that you're alone they're waiting to pounce. Your senses are on high alert as you stalk forward, cringing at every slight creak. You reach the kitchen door and peek around it, your heart dropping as you see the Brahms doll sitting at the table, a piece of paper in front of him.

You take a moment to scan your surroundings before stepping into the kitchen, strung tight enough to break. You approach the doll hesitantly treating it like it may be a threat, in your illogical state of confused fear the doll is an unknown variable, and you can't help but be wary of it at the moment. You see that he is sitting at the table with his hands out in front of him, caging in a piece of paper you recognize, the rules. You freeze in place, confused and close to being truly terrified. You approach him, poking the doll as if it will trigger an event or like he'll go full-on Pinocchio. He doesn't so you look down at it with distaste before leaving, freaked out by the display but needing to check the rest of the house, or at least make it to your room to call your brother. You fast walk through the downstairs, checking that all rooms are empty before sprinting up the stairs to your room where your phone is.

You lock the door behind you and grab your phone. You call your brother hoping he can come over and check the rest of the house and maybe help you figure out what the fuck happened. He doesn't answer and you see a text message from him that he just left on a weeklong trip to London, something about meeting with suppliers for his friend or something. You throw your phone down on your bed in frustration. You don't want to call the cops since they would take an hour at best to get there with how remote it is plus you would seem fucking crazy babbling about how a ghost moved a doll. You don't know anyone else in town's number to call and Ada isn't the type to fuck with you, at least not like that, so you decide to buck up and just canvas the house yourself.

You get dressed, lacing up your shoes as well, wanting to be able to make a quick getaway if you do encounter an intruder and not trusting your previous outfit of oversized band shirt, boxers, and bare feet to not hinder you. You grab your pocket knife and skulk out of your room, checking the rest of the rooms on the second floor before moving on to the third, the domain of the Heelshires. You do a thorough survey of the whole house, all empty and almost suspiciously clean. You don't bother with the locked attic after tugging on the rope a few times to no avail. After finishing the first canvas your wary mind prompts you to do it again, and then a third time. The house creaks as you walk, you stick to the walls and shadows just in case.

When you finally feel confident in the house's emptiness, besides you, of course, you make your way back to the kitchen. The doll is still there and so is the paper. You sit down across from him, your arms crossed in front of you, and jaw set. No one was in the house, neither you nor Ada moved the doll, and he has already moved seemingly on his own, just yesterday. You are not superstitious in the least, but you can't help but let your mind run wild with possibilities. You don't take any of it seriously, or not that seriously, but just like, hypothetically speaking, if the Brahms doll was haunted or something, what was he trying to tell you right now? The page of rules lies between the two of you. You look down at them, aware that in the two days you've been 'working' you haven't followed them very well at all, something you can't help but feel slightly guilty about given how much you're being paid to play pretend.

"The rules and you sitting here is that because you want me to follow them...Brahms? I haven't been the best so far so if I follow them, you won't like do something silly like kill me or anything?" you say to the silent doll.

You drum your fingers on the table before muttering out a fuck it. Might as well play along for a little while and see what happens. You can suppress your logic and flight response for the Heelshire's fat checks, and tapping out two days in doesn't sit right with you.

"I mean if you do, who is going to cook? You know what just to seal the deal, you know, me following the rules and you not eating my soul or whatever, I'll cook a feast to make up for last night's dinner and I'll read to you right now and at bedtime. How does that sound Brahms?"

The doll doesn't respond and you smile nervously before getting up and shaking his little porcelain hand to 'seal the deal'. You pick him up gingerly and you take him up to your room where your haul from yesterday is stacked. You set him on your bed before picking out a book you think the real Brahms would have liked to read, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. You sit down on the bed next to him, jokingly tucking the both of you in at the waist before reading it to him aloud. You get into the story, having been a huge fan growing up, and before long you forget how mental what you're doing is, thoroughly enjoying it.

Around lunchtime, you mark your place in the book and take the doll to the kitchen with you, now much more comfortable. You try to ignore the minuscule and illogical seed of hope that maybe ghosts are real and that he could be one, not wanting to give in to the crazy. You make yourself a [favorite sandwich]. You eat it at the dining table, the Brahms doll sitting beside you. You grab your graphics tablet and get to work on the Michael Myers commission you forgot to start working on until now. At first, you are silent, but then as time goes on and you're more and more sure of being alone you start your habitual self-talk.

You explain your art to the doll, censoring what exactly you usually depict the slasher's doing since he is technically a child. You also speak about your more formal art, your paintings. Your senior exhibition had been a hit, and quite satisfying since Leon's hadn't gone very well, but you've been focused on what's easier and more profitable hence the shibari-tied Ghost Faces and cat girl Jasons you've been drawing. You finish the sketch and start the line work before giving up for the day in favor of making good on your promise of a 'feast'. You take the doll in the kitchen with you and he watches as you whip up multiple courses of your and the real Brahms' favorite foods. You eat more than your fill before freezing the abundance of leftovers. You clean up and decide to call it a night.

You get the doll ready for bed tucking him in, and sit beside him in his room as you read more from Percy Jackson. When you read a few chapters your voice falls off and you sigh, feeling suddenly melancholic. You hate how much you wish there is something paranormal going on, the thrill of hope despite the impossibility crackles in your chest. You know you're being illogical, swayed by emotions you've never understood the intensity of, but the comfort of the idea of his presence in any form makes you secretly elated.

You've spent decades bouncing around from places to people trying to find yourself and find someone who understands you, always failing. Constant emptiness in the face of intensity, you feel as if you've lived as someone else the whole time. You hold on to the brief time before it all became so off, romanticizing your brief childhood and longing to capture even a fraction of its comfort in your life now. That's why you can't help but hope, just a little, that he's here somehow. You've only known one person who made you feel human, Brahms, and you just want to feel human again.

Chapter Text

Even the sun with its golden rays

Reaches out to you at the end of the day

To hold you in its warm embrace

And tenderly touch your beautiful face

It covers you in its shimmering glow

To caress you gently before it goes

Then falls at last upon your lips

As if to give you a good night kiss

So I tell you, I envy the sun

For all those things which it has done

While all there is for me to do

Is await the night so I can dream of you.

[Envy the Sun by Jason Silverthorne]

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It's been a few weeks since you 'struck a deal' with the Brahm's doll and you've fallen into a routine based on the rules. You love it. Everything works like clockwork, knowing exactly what you need to do every day and having the freedom to do it. It's heaven and has been very good for your art side hustle. When it comes to how it's going with the doll you haven't deviated from the rules at all meaning no other mysterious intervention. You've been cooking near daily and you've just finished the Percy Jackson series and you plan on reading Harry Potter next. You clean the house weekly and have settled in, the Heelshire estate feels something like home now.

Malcolm's deliveries are every Monday and it's something you've come to look forward to with an almost obsessive focus given it's the only human interaction you have. Sure you text friends sometimes but it's not the same. You think you would have gone completely stir-crazy by now without the Brahms doll for company, and your growing preoccupation with the delightful puzzle it seems to be weaving for you. You've noticed portions of the frozen food going missing, always from the food you remember being the real Brahms' favorite, and the doll has been subtly moving from where you place it.

You are always on alert trying to catch it in the act or for some sign of another person's presence to no avail. The food makes you think that perhaps there is someone hiding somewhere, a terrifying thought, but it's also so little going missing that you think you might be tripping. As for the doll's movement you know it's not you thanks to a handy piece of chalk. You've been taking extensive notes on its movement wanting to gather as much evidence as possible before alerting your brother as you don't feel like defending your sanity to him, plus a large part of you has grown what is probably concerningly attached to the doll now that you suspect it to be controlled by the real Brahms from the great beyond, or something similar. You don't want your brother to interfere, even though you know you're playing a potentially dangerous game.

Since you've more or less accepted that the doll is possessed by your dead childhood best friend you've really taken on the cool babysitter role with the doll. You drag him around everywhere with you keeping up a relatively constant stream of chatter oversharing about everything and discussing at length the plots of a myriad of modern media, having decided to undertake the duty of his pop culture education. You haven't heard anything from the Heelshires since they left but your pay shows up in the mailbox on time so you don't think anything of it.

Today the weather is so beautiful that you decide to have a little impromptu picnic. Your brother would be coming to deliver food later so you go all out on the food, a full cottage core Pinterest baddie spread. You spend extra time getting ready with the Brahms doll sitting at your feet as you do your minimal 'special occasion' makeup look just for the hell of it. You put on [favorite hot weather outfit] and pack up the food in a picnic basket, of course the Helshires have one that has very obviously never been used. You go out of the back door to the garden, it's rather overgrown but the lushness of the foliage sparkles jade in the golden day. You lay out a blanket in the manicured spot of grass and sit the Brahms doll on top of it followed by the food that would be too much for two people, if there was someone besides you that is, if not enough to feed a handful.

You lay on the blanket peacefully snacking with the doll at your side, book in hand and [favorite pastry] in the other, languorously kicking your feet. The air is pleasantly warm, with a soft breeze flowing over you intermittently. You lose track of time, falling asleep with your head resting on your folded arms, the cool porcelain of the Brahms doll brushing against your side.

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Brahms has been living in ecstasy for the past few weeks ever since he had daringly left his walls to leave the doll in a state that would catch his y/n's attention. It had worked marvelously and the way she seems to be truly taken with the doll thrills him. He feels almost as if they truly live together, coexisting, together, like his parents did but so much better. She's breathed life into the estate, the touch of her vibrance evident in the spread of her art from the epicenter of her room, the exotic culinary fare stacked neatly in the freezer just for him, and the comforting sound of her sweet voice as she animatedly shares her life and the world outside, unknowingly, with him.

His fantasies of living forever with y/n have grown ever stronger as had the lust he has barely kept restrained through sheer force of will and lingering shame. He feels so utterly in love and enamored with her that he could cry, and he does, both from deep and needy longing in the night and saccharine happiness at the sight of her in the day. His heart feels very close to full, the only thing that could make it sweeter is to share it with her, but he tries not to dwell too much on that impossibility.

This morning y/n spent many hours in the kitchen laughing and jumping around as she cooked, baked, and prepared a spread that could rival the most lavish he had ever seen or imagined. His mouth watered at the sight for more than one reason, and he had to muffle his laughter at her antics. His face glowed brightly behind his mask as he watched her dress up with the doll at her feet, what he wouldn't give to be in its position, and when she set down her makeup she was as beautiful as always. He follows her in the walls as she gets the picnic ready, his heart beating excitedly, his whole body thrumming with happiness, when she walks outside with it all. He instinctively goes to follow before realizing that he can't, she is now beyond the borders of his world. His face falls slowly at the realization the thrum in his body cooling, his limbs becoming heavy with disappointment and then despondency. He makes an involuntary noise of pain, his hand rubbing at his now aching chest. He can't join her but he can watch her, a small consolation.

He waits for some minutes to make sure she isn't coming back inside before cautiously coming out of the wall and making his way to a window where he can watch her in the rather untended garden. The sun bathes her skin in an almost seductive light, and the brilliance of the green foliage around her only makes her all the more striking. She sits next to his little effigy, unpacking the picturesque food, making his stomach pang with want. The doll falls over as the blanket is jostled with her movement so she lays the doll down, and then lays at its side to read. His hand moves to the sun-warmed glass, brushing it as he silently watches her. He smiles bittersweet, happy that she is happy but envious of the world outside that she embraces so easily. He read a love poem once, it said something like being envious of the sun for how it touched the poet's love and it comes to his mind as he looks on, made wretched for his want to join her in the light.

Hours go by like this before she relaxes into the blanket seemingly falling asleep in the afternoon sun. He watches her breathe, her back fluidly rising up and down like the way the sea laps softly at the shore on summer nights, he feels as if he breathes only when she does. He imagines an alternate world where he never did what he did, never had to hide in the dark from his sin, how in the decades since his face and mind perpetually has been perpetually turned to the light only for how it has allowed him to see and know her. A world where he can sit beside her, turn her pages, and wipe the crumbs from her cheek before kissing it. He aches from the bliss of what could have been, so sweet that it chokes him.

He waits for her to wake, but she doesn't stir for half an hour or more. He has a fleeting thought of going out to just observe a little closer, get a minute taste of heaven before casting himself back to his hell, and before he can think his body moves to fulfill the innocent desire. He slips out of the house, his body electrified by the now totally foreign sensations of the outside world, his feet unsteady against the grass as he approaches. He carefully avoids obstructing her sunlight, opting instead to crouch carefully behind a stone bench a yard away from her sleeping figure after gingerly snatching one of the pastries for himself. He kneels behind it content to watch, his senses alight with the sounds, smells, and the heat of the world outside the estate's walls. He quickly becomes overwhelmed by it, shoving the remainder of the pastry in his mouth before making his way back inside.

Back inside of the house, he leans against the wall, his breath ragged from exhilaration. He was just outside of the walls with y/n! He had been in the sun, green grass under his feet and he had smelled the wild roses growing, perfuming the air. The pastry had been artfully baked by y/n, perfect and delicious as if she had brought it with her from a cafe in Paris, or something equally as romantic. The taste of her work still coats his mouth. He is still musing on the experience when he hears a car pull up at the front. He momentarily panics thinking of how he'll have to reveal himself in order to defend her from the intruder, the house didn't exactly get visitors, when he remembers its Monday and the car must be her annoying brother Malcolm. This realization comes with an intermingled wave of relief and annoyance. He slips back into the wall with a sigh at how cold he feels in their darkness.

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You're shaken awake and at first, you bat away the hand before going rigid with the realization that you should be alone and therefore whoever was shaking you shouldn't be. You scream, your hair blinding you. You flail as you turn onto your back clipping the person's jaw. You hear your brother's voice mutter out a curse which makes you still, you blow your hair out of your face and catch Malcolm's amused eyes. You let out a relieved breath as he helps you up.

"Fucking hell Malcolm!" you exclaim with a growing smile.

He chuckles, flicking your forehead as you brush your hair from your face.

"You're a regular Jack Broughton with those fists, christ y/n you've a punch to ya."

You give him a look before going to ask him who the fuck Jack is. He beats you to the punch.

"He was a pioneer in boxing, like one of the founding fathers of the sport. Need help?"

He says, gesturing to the picnic set up at your feet.

You nod, stooping to gather everything, rolling your eyes at the fact that your brother still fancies himself something of a historian. He bends over to help you, his eyes on the Brahms doll.

"So... what's up with the doll? Have you gotten so lonely you've taken enough of a liking to it that you're setting up cute little dates with it?"

You grunt, not sure how to explain yourself to him.

"It's a doll so no this isn't a date wanker. I just felt like doing something today."

You both finished gathering everything, you took the doll and him the food, so the two of you walk up the stairs and into the house. You set the doll on the kitchen table, and you lean against the counter as he rifles through the food taking some.

"If it's not a date, and it so is weirdo, why are you so dressed up?" he asks.

You deadpan.

"Haha, whatever Malcolm. I put all this on for fun, the weather is just so beautiful it felt like I should do something."

He hums, taking another bite of a pastry and speaking without swallowing.

"Well me and some mates are going to Patty's later if you want to come, it'd be a shame if I left you here all dressed up with nowhere to go."

You don't really feel like it so you shrug.

"I don't know..."

"I was being polite y/n, you're coming. I'm worried you're going to go crazy out here all alone. We'll have a couple drinks and I'll bring you back tonight. No objections? Good. I have to unload all the supplies then we're off." he says, making his way from the room with a smug look on his face.

You groan but decide to comply. You throw the food in the fridge before taking the doll with you upstairs. You deposit him on his bed and then go to leave unceremoniously but then double back and tuck him in with a quick goodnight kiss on his cold forehead.

"Sorry I'm saying goodnight so early Brahms. You heard that I'm going with Malcolm for a few hours but I'll be back. I'll check on you when I get back and everything, and we'll start Harry Potter tomorrow, promise." you say, patting the doll's chest as you turn away.

You think you hear a light thump as you walk down the stairs to meet your brother which makes you pause but then you see Malcolm setting down some boxes of groceries and shake your head at your foolishness. You put everything away and then the two of you leave, joking around all the while.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms follows y/n upstairs after she agrees to hanging out at Patty's with Malcolm. He knows from eavesdropping on Malcolm before that Pattys is a local bar and so on top of his anger of Malcolm ruining the peaceful picnic, and his ability to watch it, Brahms is pissed that he is trying to take y/n into an undoubtedly dangerous situation, far away from where he can protect her. He wanted her to resolutely decline and when she didn't his heart started to pound with anxiety. What if she got hurt? What if some villain tried to take advantage of her? What if she didn't come back because she liked the outside world more?

He can feel his body start to shake from all the unknowns. Y/n tucks the doll in, apologizing and trying to placate it, or him he supposes. It doesn't work. He wants her to stay, to be with him where it's safe, where he can pretend she's chosen him over them all. She bounds down the steps and her and her brother are gone in an instant, too fast for Brahms to react.

When he makes it down the stairs and slips out of the walls he makes it to the door in time to wrench it open and see the dust of the car's wheels fly off in the opposite direction. He shouts her name, his voice broken and rough from disuse. He can feel himself spiraling with panic, his vision spotting at the edges. He barely makes it back across the door, slamming it behind him before he grips his head in his hands and silently screams in frustration. Why can't she just stay with him?

He rampages through the house, slamming doors and kicking furniture with the heels of his feet before grabbing a bottle of his father's bourbon and making his way up to his childhood room. He swigs the bottle, coughing at the burn but drinking down more, until he feels fuzzy and the tears start. He knocks the long untouched toys from his shelves, all past gifts from y/n, to the ground. He tears his bed apart, his face damp with tears of pure vexation raging at his own childishness and the full brunt of all his complicated feelings taking him over, spilling out messily.

At the end of his fit, his old room is in a state of complete disarray and he feels worse than when he started, less anxious, but numb from the shame of not controlling himself. He sinks to the floor stewing in self-hatred, spiraling in doubt, self-loathing, longing, unrequited love, and loneliness. He is still there hours later, numbly sitting against the wall when he hears Malcolm's car pull up. In his stupor of spent emotion he doesn't react very quickly, only being shocked from the haze when he hears the front door fly open and the uproarious laughter of y/n and another female voice.

He scrambles to his feet panicking. He impulsively darts into y/n's room to hide, since there was nowhere in his room, and jumps into her closet just in time for the woman in question to crawl in on all fours followed by a stranger. The strange woman is laughing with y/n and helps her up onto her bed. When y/n hugs the woman so passionately, he sees red, his envy fueled by the bourbon burning up any last bits of his sanity. Strike two was leaving with her stupid brother and this was strike three. He waits until the woman leaves and y/n stands before stepping out of the shadows.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The drive to the bar is filled with your brother making jokes about you and the doll and you're a second away from choking him out by the time you park. You jump out of the car and follow your brother inside to find his friends. Patty's is a local dive bar and it shows, but there is a countryside charm to it thanks to the old bartender and the fact that when you look outside all you see are the worn-down stone buildings the town is made from. You wonder, not for the first time, why the Heelshire estate is so out of the way.

Malcolms spots his friend and guides you over. There are two guys and a girl. One dude has curly red hair peeking out from beneath a docker cap, a fox-like grin on his face and the other has short blonde hair and a bodybuilder look. The girl is very pretty with brown hair just longer than her shoulders. Not exactly what you expect from your brother but you don't really know what to expect do you, with how long you've lived apart.

You make your introductions and the blonde one gets up to let you have his seat. You try to refuse but he insists with a sweet smile on his face. You smile back and sit down; he pulls up a chair from a neighboring table, sitting next to you. Your brother sits next to the girl who you now know is named Greta. The red-head is Steve and the blonde is Conrad. You make polite conversation with them but quickly tune it out when they start talking about work. Apparently, the two men are frequent customers of your brother's grocery store as they work in the food truck business and Greta is the part-timer your brother has been mentioning with suspicious frequency, and now you see why. It's obvious he likes her and while Greta seems a bit reluctant you can tell she likes your brother too. Their lovey-dovey vibe makes you cringe so you take a couple shots with the enigmatically silent Steve who soon sees someone else he knows and leaves.

You sip a beer and talk to Conrad, feeling the buzz already after the shots and not exactly helping it with the beer. He's a sweet guy and rather funny as he's already a bit sloshed, or at least more sloshed than you. You see that your brother is milking a rootbeer while Greta is throwing back rum with the best of them. You can tell they're nervous around each other and it's kind of cute. You turn back to Conrad. He chugs the last of his drink before turning to you with a goofy smile.

"Are you, like, related to the sun, or like another star or something? Because if you are, no wait... because you brightened my day!' he hiccups, 'you get it?" he asks, giggling to himself.

You laugh loudly, drunk enough to not be able to control your volume very well, but not truly out of it. You feel hot from the flush of alcohol on the surface of your skin, you feel yourself rock a little in your seat and you know if you're not careful you'll do something you regret with how close Conrad's face is to yours. Your brother clears his voice loudly from across the table and you look over to see his look of annoyance. He mouths 'not my friends y/n' and you shake your head at him as if to say you weren't going to. He gives you a look of disbelief and you see Greta giggle at the two of you, making you smile. She's sweet, on the shy side, but the alcohol has loosened her up a bit.

The night comes to a close comfortably but by the end you are on the other side of blasted, stumbling into your brother's car with the help of Conrad who's not in much better shape. Your brother gets in the driver's side and Great slides in next to you, a bit flushed and giggly from the alcohol. As Malcolm drives you back home you and Greta laugh at nothing and ramble to each other about music and her childhood in Montana commiserating about the experience of living in small-town America. You take selfies with Greta on her phone and since you are the only one with pockets you slip it in yours the two of you thinking in your addled state that it will get lost otherwise. Your brother sighs intermittently at your volume but mostly lets the two of you cackle and jeer, teasing him until he goes silent from embarrassment.

When he pulls up to the Heelshire estate he offers to help you in but Greta takes your arms and helps you stumble in, you both laughing at how hard it is to walk. You have two crawls on all fours up to your room, Greta following behind to make sure you don't fall back. When you reach the second floor you see that the door to Brahms' room is open revealing it in disarray as if someone had trashed it out of anger. You look at the mess still on your hands and knees and hiccup, just barely sobering up at the sight. In your state you can't really muster up a fuck to give and decide to have an intervention with the possessed Brahms doll tomorrow.

You crawl into your room ignoring Greta's questioning about the messy room, muttering some excuse about leaving the window open in the wind. She helps you onto your bed and says goodbye. You latch onto her, hugging her like a wife hugging her husband goodbye as he goes off to war, much to both of your amusements. She extricates herself and waves goodbye before leaving your room, shutting the door quietly behind her. You take a second before getting unsteadily on your feet to undress.

You stumble a bit as you start to take your clothes off, giggling at how hard it is, when you hear a creak come from behind you. Your eyes dart to the mirror and your blood freezes in an instant when you meet the eyes of a tall masked man stepping out of the dark of your closet.

Chapter Text

───⋆｡°✩His Reveal✩°｡⋆───

You whirl around, almost falling over in your drunk state and stabilizing yourself on the bedpost. The world tilts around you and not from the effects of drinking, you shouldn't be able to recognize him but somehow you do. The way he carries himself as if trying to conceal his height, he was tall even as a child, the subtle wildness of his dark hair that as a kid could never be smoothed down enough to please his mother, and the way his green and hazel eyes stare at you intensely. You remember in an instant what it was like to have those eyes on you and it steals your breath away. You instinctively step back and he follows your movement silently, inching forward.

As he moves, the moonlight shines on his face and you finally notice the porcelain mask. It startles you out of your daze just in time to hear the steps outside your door. You bolt forward and shove him back into your closet, shutting the door just as yours opens revealing a flushed-face Greta. She giggles and stumbles towards you.

"Y/n! My new best friend forever and ever, I forgot my phone with you!" she says through a fit of giggles.

You nod trying your best to rein in your spiraling mind to not give away the fact you just shoved your childhood best friend you thought was dead for the past two decades into your closet. You fish the phone out of your pocket and give it to her with a laugh. You say goodbye and hug before she leaves. You follow her into the hallway to watch as she leaves and when you hear the car start and drive off you bolt back into your room.

Brahms is standing in the middle of your room shaking in the shadows and holding the part of your outfit you took off. You stand in the doorway, your heart in your throat and eyes pricking with tears, only sobered up enough by the shock of seeing him again to kind of function. Brahms' head shoots up when he sees the light shift as you stand in the doorway. He takes a couple of steps, stumbling a bit but he doesn't get far before you speak.

"Brahms?" you ask, your voice ragged with your unshed tears.

He freezes in place before looking at you, his head tipping like it always did when he was confused or amused. After a second he nods and begins to move forward but you meet him before he can move, launching yourself into his arms. You throw your arms around his neck sobbing into his shoulder and pulling him down to your level. You are most definitely still inebriated if the outpouring of emotion is any indicator.

Brahms goes rigid at the contact but you can't bring yourself to let him go as you're terrified he will disappear, a figment borne of alcohol and loneliness, or that you will fall over as the world spins. After a minute he relaxes and you go to pull away but he reacts by tightening his arms around you. You feel your neck become wet and his thin frame shake and you realize he is crying too, albeit silently. You tighten your arms around him.

The two of you cry for a few minutes before the tears start slowing. You pull away from the reluctant man, his hands firm on your arms much to your gratitude. You look up at his masked face in disbelief. He reluctantly, almost too softly to register, reaches up and wipes the tears from your wet cheeks. You tighten your hold on him, trying to ground yourself in the face of an impossibility.

"Are you real? You couldn't really be here...right, Brahms?" you ask him, your voice a breathy whisper.

You move your hand to touch him but he flinches away from you, rigid again. You stop immediately before looking him over to figure out what his reaction means. His eyes communicate fear and you, in your drunken state, only just now start to think of the implications of the mask. You realize that his face is something he means to keep hidden and the way your hand was going towards his face must have made him think you meant to interfere with his mask.

You reach your hand up this time very slowly so as not to startle him and brush some of the hair from the face of his mask. He hesitantly leans into you and you cradle the side of his head in your hand, feeling the soft locks of his hair between your fingers.

"I'm really here, I've never left y/n. Why did you leave me y/n?" he says in a voice eerily like his in childhood, still a little bit wet from crying.

You raise your eyebrow at him not even registering his words because of how his weird voice has completely thrown your inebriated self into a loop. His body is very obviously a man's, something you can't help but feel warm at the realization of, especially with it pressed against yours.

He is taller than you standing a couple inches above six foot and he is incredibly lean but you can feel how sturdy his frame and musculature is as it's wrapped around you. The evidence of a beard peeks out at the bottom of his mask and his chest is covered in a down of hair, something you would not find attractive on anyone but him. You realize you've been staring but don't bother to be embarrassed at the fact given the situation. He stares back down at you, subtly rubbing his head into your hand. You glance at the movement before meeting his questioning eyes.

"What's up with the voice Brahms? I mean if that's how you talk I don't like mean anything by it, but like... is it a bit?"

Brahms even in his masked and shadowed state is visibly taken aback by the question. His eyes widen and when you drop your hand that he had been pressing his head into, they go dark. He huffs before answering in the same voice.

"What do you mean y/n? Do you not like how I sound? I've been waiting for you for so long..." he goes on to continue but you cut him off.

"No I don't like it!" you say with a giggle, tapping your fingers on the mouth part of the mask startling him.

"I'd rather just hear you as you are now, you don't have to act like a kid Brahms, I know you're not the doll and I don't want you to be the doll anyways. You're a boy, the boy, or man rather," you say.

You go to gesture to the doll but realize as you look around that it's not in the room with the two of you. You continue to drunkenly scan the room for the doll before Brahms taps on the side of your head to get your attention. You hum as you turn back to him, swaying a bit on your feet and noticing that he is doing the same. Brahms doesn't speak, simply looks at you. You look back trying to win the staring contest. You lose so you laugh, which doesn't seem to please him.

"Y/n, what are you laughing at? Why did you go with that stupid Malcolm? Don't go with him again or I'll be very cross," he says, still in his childlike voice.

You pout at him, pushing him away from you with a finger on his mask's forehead. He stumbles back a bit, almost falling on your bed. He was always very agile compared to you so you narrow your eyes at him.

"I'm laughing at the dumb voice, just talk normal! I bet your real voice is like super sexy too so just speak like that Brahms. And I'll go with Malcolm whenever I want and I'll stay here if I don't want, not because you said!" you exclaim, your finger pointed at him.

He grunts and looks away from you. He's just like he was when the two of you were kids, a pouty puppy. You can't help but find it cute. You step closer to him and grab the sides of his masked face leaning in. Your lips are almost brushing the masks. You sniff and you smell bourbon making you raise your eyebrow.

"You've been a bad boy, haven't you? Tsk tsk, Brahms, what am I going to do with you? Drinking is bad!" you say, leaning back enough to look him in the eye.

His eyes narrow and he leans in closer to you, regaining your previous closeness, his face against yours.

"You drank too y/n, so we're both bad aren't we?" he says in what must be his natural voice.

Your eyes widen at the heat behind his voice, it's rough with disuse, and his accent has only grown stronger with time. You go silent, your cheeks flushing and your chest constricting at his voice and the way the mask rests against your cheek. You gasp lightly and he flinches at the sound, pulling away from you.

"I guess we are..." you respond, half breathless.

He tilts his head at you and nods once, his body rigid. He shifts on his feet, you feel weirdly vulnerable so you clear your throat and try to get a handle on yourself, willing sobriety as you sway on your feet. You try to remember all you drank but you can't, you feel more clear than before but now the fuzz in your mind bothers you, the fact that you can't clear it in an instant and focus completely on him makes frustrated tears spring to your eyes. You're so confused, all your buzzing thoughts are muddled, and the more you digest that this is really happening the more you can feel yourself spiraling into yourself.

Brahms notices your emotions shift and comes closer without touching you. You rub at your eyes holding in the tears the best you can after already sobbing into his shoulder earlier. You manage to get a semblance of a grasp of yourself and look up into his eyes, always concentrating so intensely on you.

"How are you here now? If you didn't die back then, where have you been living since?" you ask, sniffling.

Brahms doesn't answer immediately instead he runs his fingers through his hair obviously agitated, wrestling with his thoughts. You glance towards your closet where he appeared from in the first place. You walk towards it, kicking your shoes off in the process. You get to the door frame before you feel a tug on the back of your clothes. You hiccup as you turn around. Brahms has a hold on your clothes. You look up at home confused?

"I said earlier I never left y/n, I... I have been here since that day. In the walls of the house, waiting for you to come back to me. For a chance to step back out into the light."

You just look at him blankly trying to process even five percent of what's happening. What's next? Is he going to say that he's been following you around from within the walls? That thought puts you over the edge of what you can take. Your brain is short-circuiting so you just shake your head and walk around him, climbing into your bed. You've officially hit your limit. He whines at you ignoring him and follows you, standing at the edge of your bed looking down.

You glance at him from where you've face planted into your pillows and pat the bed at your side. He doesn't move so you pat it more aggressively, turning away to get more comfortable. After a silent minute, your bed dips and he settles in next to you, laying on top of the blankets. You grunt and toss a blanket from the headboard at him and he catches it, looking at you in shock.

"Just get comfortable Brahms, you can sleep with me for tonight, we did it a million times as kids plus it's better than the walls, probably..." you mumble into your pillow before passing out.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms can't believe she just shoved him back into her closet. He can hear her and that annoying woman speaking so he stays hidden. This stranger is even worse than the last one and more annoying than Malcolm which shouldn't be possible. She just tainted his grand reentrance into y/n's life and it makes him tear up angrily.

When he hears them leave the room he steps back out, his heart going crazy and his head spinning from drinking. He grabs the part of y/n's outfit she left behind and holds it to him not understanding why she's left him again, and for some stupid American woman! He shakes from his crazed emotions, barely staying upright after how much he drank.

When she comes back he is overjoyed, forgiving his silly y/n in an instant when she holds him and cries. He cries too, his cheeks flushed with happiness and pleasure that she was crying over him, and touching him of her own volition. The way her body feels up against his is an ecstasy that he suppresses the acknowledgment of.

It's obvious she has had just as much to drink as him, which is far too much, when she unthinking says his real voice is probably sexy. He doesn't really know why he uses the child voice except for the fact his mother frowns when she hears his real one through the walls, only looking content when he's returned to his high-pitched imitation of his younger self. He rarely speaks, and even less so in his natural tone, but the fact that y/n could find it desirable makes him shiver. He uses it, just to placate her he thinks, but truly because he likes her reaction to it.

When she asks him about what happened and where he's been all this time he panics, almost starts crying again but the alcohol allows him to spit it out. He tells her that he's been in the walls this whole time and he sees her face go blank, making him internally panic all the more. When she walks past him he can't help the whine of fear that escapes him and he follows her as she unsteadily crawls into her blankets on her bed.

When she pats the bed beside her his breath stops, surely she didn't mean what he thinks she means? But she repeats the action and he obliges, tingling with pleasure at how easily she had seemingly accepted the situation, mask and all. She tosses him a blanket, it smells sweetly of her making his stomach flutter, and he lies down at her side a respectful distance from her body.

He covers himself in the blanket and watches her sleep, tired himself only made worse by the only just barely lifted fog of the alcohol, but unbelieving of his luck and afraid to blink. To be so close, to be invited to be at her side, God it's rapturous. He watches her, as stiff as a board and nervous enough to be sick before falling asleep just as the sky begins to lighten outside.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

For the first time since arriving at the Heelshire estate, you wake up warm instead of chilled. You sigh in contentment, snuggling deeper into your bed towards the source of the warmth. Your nose bumps into a chest and you go to apologize before your eyes shoot open from fear. You live alone! You see the man snuggled up next to you and your mouth hangs open in shock.

The events of last night filter back into your mind, fragmented but enough to understand that your whole world has shifted. Enough to remember that the masked man with his arms wrapped around you is the inexplicably alive childhood best friend you were told burned to death two decades ago.

You lay there frozen for a couple of minutes, just studying him and trying to get your thoughts in order. You notice the subtle cracks in the porcelain, how the mask is tied to him with a black ribbon that camouflages into his dark hair, and the way his eyelashes brush the edges of the eyeholes. He breathes silently, peacefully, and you wish you could see his face. You would never take his mask off without his permission, sure it was odd, but fucking hell in this situation you might as well just let that slide and question him about it once you get the last twenty years out of the way.

You like how it feels to lay next to him, the loneliness you hadn't been fully aware of until now disappearing. You decide to wake him up.

"Brahms?" you say softly.

He doesn't stir.

"Brahms?" you try again, slightly louder.

His hold on you tightens slightly but he doesn't wake.

"Damn it Heelshire, wake up!" you say in full volume next to his ear.

He startles awake, his arms tightening almost painfully making you yelp. He relaxes his hold immediately, letting you go and scooting back almost fearfully. You try to backtrack and not freak him out. He was buzzed too from what you remember, and the stale scent of liquor clinging to the both of you attests to that.

"Oy, Brahms it's okay, I didn't mean to startle you! Sorry about that, I tried to wake you up a couple times before that though," you say, an apologetic smile on your lips.

He's silent as he looks at you, his eyes wide open and flashing with emotions you can't quite place without the input of facial expressions. He reaches up and brushes his fingers at the edge of his mask, seemingly to check that it was still there and relaxing when he finds that it is.

His breaths are heavy and erratic, you can tell that he is panicking so you very slowly offer your hand. It's something you always did as a child when Brahms would have anxiety attacks, a frequent occurrence. He looks down at it and then up at you, his eyes wet and eyelashes matted with the tears that can't seem to fall properly due to the mask, before putting his hand in yours. His hand is rough, nicked in places like he's a chef or something, and a bit clammy but you lace your fingers through his with a smile you think he returns for how the skin around his eyes crinkle.

"Are you okay now Brahms?"

He nods silently.

"Aren't you going to say good morning or something? You did sleep in my bed after all." You say teasing him.

He jokingly huffs.

"Good morning y/n." He says, his morning voice shooting straight to your stomach, tightening your muscles.

Fuck, he has no business having a voice like that and I have no business reacting to it like this you think to yourself. You blink and ignore your thoughts and instincts, letting go of his hand which is only amplifying them.

"Good morning Brahms," You respond, getting out of bed and stretching, your outfit crumpled and pulled in all kinds of weird directions.

Brahms doesn't move, just watches you. You yawn and go to your dresser grabbing some clothes. You turn to him.

"I'm going to go take a shower, you can take one after," you say, trying to subtly hint that he needs one, and good God does he.

He's not smelly really, just greasy looking and his clothes need a wash like a fish needs water. You need a shower to think, to try and make sense of what the fuck is happening. He nods at you slowly and watches silently as you walk into your bathroom and shut the door.

You take your sweet time in the shower scrubbing everything two times over just to get more thinking time. You try to mentally organize all of the questions you have for him and make a game plan for asking them. Something tells you he's going to be reluctant to share but obviously, he has more than a little going on to question.

You're unbelievably happy at his being alive, as much as it raises a thousand questions, but you don't know how to react to his reintroduction into your life. You muse as you wash your hair. What do you do when someone you thought was dead climbs out of your closet after two decades? Throw a surprise party? Your reaction so far was drunk crying before passing out and then acting like this was all normal when you woke up, but you know it's not and you can't just leave it at that, unspoken.

You get out, dry off, and dress. You do the rest of your morning routine and then stand in front of the mirror psyching yourself up for the day for the mindfuck awaiting you. You open the bathroom door coming face to chest with Brahms who looks down at you, his eyes intense as usual. You yelp in surprise.

"Fucking hell Brahms you scared me! What are you doing so close to the door?"

He tilts his head.

"Waiting."

You look at him with a deadpan look before chuckling and pushing on his chest playfully.

"You want to shower in here?"

He nods before you even finish your question.

"Um...want to go get some clothes? I can wash those for you."

Brahms looks down at himself before looking back up at you, his eyes conflicted.

"I'll still be here when you get back..." you say, trying to reassure him, understanding his separation anxiety because you're feeling it a bit too.

He nods still reluctant before leaving, glancing back at you continuously as he goes. It's less than a minute later when he bursts into your room, clothes in hand, chest heaving. You look up at him from where you were sitting on your bed, laughing. He stands there in the doorway looking both relieved to see you and hesitant.

"I trust you know how to work the shower?"

He nods and walks into the bathroom, looking at you as he closes the door. You smile at his dorkiness. You lay back on your bed, your feet still on the ground and sigh. You bite your lip as you stare at the ceiling. You don't know if you should tell anyone, at least for the moment. This is for two reasons, you don't think Brahms is ready to be introduced to the world and two, you selfishly don't want to share him yet especially when you haven't gotten an explanation from him.

Once you tell your brother the whole world will know and nothing will be quiet again, the media will come for him and by proxy you. It would be the story of the century, a man sequestered in the walls for two decades only to reveal himself to his parent's house sitter slash nanny of a doll made to look like him. That's a career maker for sure and you don't think it will serve Brahms at all at this point. Yet then again that's up to him and you believe it's your responsibility to support him regardless,even if a not-so-small part of you wishes you could just enjoy getting to know him again, even for just a little while before the story breaks. The most selfish part of you, deep in the recesses of your manicured mind wants to keep him just yours, but you berate yourself for even the thought.

You put your arms behind your head as you think, kicking your feet out. How do you broach the subject of what's next for the two of you, or really, him? Should you even? Is it wrong not to let him know all the options he has? Should you have already called the police? Is it a consensual wall living situation? If so, that puts everything into a new perspective. Fuck, you think, why can't it be so simple as two friends meeting again after years apart? Like do you really have to do anything beyond what the Heelshires pay you to do, take care of Brahms and secondly, the house?

You bite your lip just a bit too hard as you think, making you suck in your breath. Fuck it you decide, there's no point in thinking about this on your own, you're going to have to get Brahms to speak, like really speak, and you can tell it's going to take a while.

Chapter Text

You are still spacing out on your bed when Brahms walks out of the bathroom, clothed in what are obviously hand-me-downs from his father, his hair dripping wet. He rushes out of the bathroom which he hasn’t been in for very long at all. You look over at him amused, not bothering to sit up from the bed. He stands there, towel held in his knotted hands, just looking at you. You watch as water drips from his hair onto his shirt, soaking his collar.

“Do you want some help with your hair?” you ask, still reclining on your bed.

His eyes widen and he nods slowly. You push up off the bed and shake your hair out before approaching him. You slowly reach your hand toward his damp locks, taking one in between your fingers. It’s obvious he hasn't had a proper shower in a while from the tangles. You make eye contact with him and smile softly. 

“If you sit on the floor, back against the bed, I'll dry it and comb it out for you. It's like the olden days, back when I’d pay you two lemon candies to let me put your hair up in ponytails,” you say, a teasing look on your face.

His eyes seem to shine.

“You remember,” he murmurs.

“Not much, but some. I only just remembered that, to be honest. I have no idea how I could ever forget a sight like that though and I don’t know how the hell you could stand me as a kid.”

His eyes dull when you say that you don’t remember much. You step away and into the bathroom to get your hair supplies. You hear him move around behind you as you grab everything you need. When you walk back into the room he is sitting obediently where you suggested. 

You giggle for no reason in particular and sit behind him on the bed after plugging in a hairdryer you found in the bathroom cabinet. You start to comb out his hair and he leans into you, his back against your legs, his head nearly thrown back into your lap with how much he is pushing himself closer to you. You laugh and push his head forward gently, detangling his hair slowly. He makes a noise of contentment that you pause at, he notices and goes to turn to you but you continue to brush his hair with a vengeance. You don’t know what to make of his proximity and how intensely aware you are of it. 

He relaxes into you completely, his hands fiddling with the towel in his lap. Water runs down his neck dampening his shirt enough to make the top of it see-through, giving you a glimpse at his collarbones and the planes of his chest. You swallow thickly, your grip on the brush handle tightening. You have never felt more like a middle school kid with a crush. At that thought you become aware of how odd this whole thing is, and how inappropriate your response to it and him is. He lets out something like a soft moan as the brush bristles run along his scalp, he’s putty in your hands an you feel as if it’s mutual. You think this is as good a time as any to ask him to elaborate on the barest minimum of information he’s given you so far.

“So…like…um. Uh, what’s up with the whole living-in-the-walls thing? And you know, the whole secretly being alive for twenty years thing.” you ask, preemptively cringing at what you know will likely be a less than enthused reaction from Brahms.

He tenses up instantly, his back twitching. Over his head you can see the grip he has on the towel tighten until his knuckles are white, you very briefly are alarmed at the intensity of his reaction before remembering that it's Brahms , and he would never hurt you.

He is silent for a while, long enough you almost give up and plan to ask again later when he speaks.

"I didn’t die that day, the fire was started so I could hide, fake my death and be absolved ad absentia. I couldn't be free after… I’ve been here in the walls ever since. If I lived in the house normally it would have raised suspicion at some point. I couldn't leave and the longer I stayed hidden the more necessary it became."

You are silent. You don't remember much beyond silly anecdotes, and that day you remember almost not at all, except for the aftermath. You have never been able to see the tragedy in Emily's death, beyond the fact a child could be made so evil by their parents or nature. You still have a scar on your hip from when she stabbed you with a plastic knife at a picnic, something you hid from Brahms at the time to keep the peace. It was what you couldn't hide that started this all, Emily went too far with you, and Brahms dealt with it the only way he knew how, totally. You flinch as he continues, having been so lost in memories that you are startled by his voice, still a bit gruff.

"The fire spread too fast and I was burned terribly so the mask was necessitated."

You wait for him to elaborate and he doesn't. You muse that he still speaks overly formally with an almost poetic cadence as he did as a child. He was raised on classic literature by two old posh people and you suppose the way it affected his speech has only strengthened through his long isolation. 

"And your parents? They obviously were in on it, but why was this their solution to what happened?

He doesn't answer. You don't think he has one. The more you think about the role his parents must have played in his isolation, the more angry you become. How was any of this the acts of sane people and supposedly loving parents at that? You could understand wanting to sequester him away rather than lose him to the authorities for his crime, but to have him live alone in the walls in a world that believes him to be dead and long buried? What fate is that beyond the consequences of the rashness of selfish adults forgetting children are not as simple as dolls.

"Did they lock you away because of what happened or because they didn't want their reputation to be tarnished further?" you ask, not expecting an answer but your anger guiding your tongue.

He visibly flinches, his head going back slightly, tapping against your body. You feel bad, you aren't meaning to attack anyone, just understand what likely can't be.

"Who all knows?" You ask, your voice much softer now.

"Just my parents, no one else. It would put all of us at risk."

You nod, biting your lip as you try to digest all that you are learning, what he says and what he doesn't.

"I want to help you Brahms, I could never leave you alone like this, but what do you want me to do?"

He trembles for a second, still facing away from you on the floor. His hair moves with him, the waves swaying softly.

"Stay here," he says, his voice a croak. 

You wonder if he is losing his voice or if the weight of two decades has started to settle itself on his chest, as it has yours. You can feel a panic rise, a wave of terrible anger at the waste of his hidden youth, and all the years you lost together. Every moment with him reminds you of why you have never been able to truly forget him, why such a short time in your life shaped all the rest. It’s been hours together again and yet you feel as if it was impossible that you lived all those intermediary years without him, it's the swell of unexpected emotions talking, you know it, but you can’t help but want to be dragged out by the tide.

"How am I supposed to stay with you? What am I supposed to do? What should I say to my brother?" you ask, your voice cracking with profound emotion that you are barely keeping at bay.

Brahms turns to look at you, his eyes wide, over-pouring with emotion. He sits on his knees before you, his eyes and body conveying how he is pleading as he speaks.

"Nothing! You don’t have to do anything but what you already are! Just please don't tell Malcolm, y/n, I'm not ready! I can't, it's been too long all alone, just be with me, for a little while…I'll be good, I'll learn, I won’t cause problems. I promise." He rushes out, eyes wide and body shaking.

His panic unnerves you. You put your hand on his shoulders to steady him. He reacts to your touch, stilling and looking up at you. He reminds you of a puppy yet again, this time in the way he begs wet-eyed. Your heart palpitates at his earnestness, from his want of you. You bite your lip almost to bleeding, your eyes tear up involuntarily. Brahms notices, making a noise of concern.

"Why can't I tell Malcolm, he can help you I'm sure," you say, reigning in your emotions just enough to speak.

"I’m scared y/n, it’s been just mother and father in my world for so many years, I need time to… become reacclimated. I don’t want to speak to him or any of them yet, just you. Please?” he says, the last sentence and his question being said in his mimicked child voice.

You frown at its use. You know that he is using it on purpose, trying to pull on your heartstrings. You know something is off about the way he pleads, but that dark selfish part of you that wants to accept him and this situation without question wins.

You must take too long to respond because he puts his hands on yours in your lap. He gently holds your hands, looking at you earnestly. You brush some locks from the eyeholes of his mask and he follows the movement like your fingers are magnetized.

"Have you been happy living like this?"

He is silent for a tense moment.

"Never," he says, his voice dark.

"Then have you ever thought of leaving? Of joining the world out there? Maybe not as Brahms Heelshire but someone else, one who's alive and free of a criminal history?"

"No!" He practically shouts, his hands tightening around yours.

"I could never, my place is here, not out there. I want to stay here , with you."

"But you don't even like living like this!" You exclaim, nearly matching his volume.

You need a reason to stop yourself from giving in to what feels like a sin.

"I didn't say I would never be happy living like this! That was before you came back, now I'm happy because you're here, it's all worth it to be with you."

You're taken aback by his words, you don't know what to make of them. You hate how much you understand his sentiment, you hadn't realized just how fucking hollow you had been before yesterday night, before having him back in your life again. You are scared of losing that feeling.

"Brahms…"

He cuts you off, getting closer to you.

"Y/n please don't think ill of me, I am paying for my sins, so please don't cast me out of your heart as well… All I ask is that you remember me as I was when you knew me last, not as this, and to stay with me here for just a little while, please ."

The way his rough voice breaks on the last word makes your heart squeeze painfully. You deliberate for a moment before hesitantly nodding. Brahms' eyes light up. He seems to realize how close he has come to you and rocks back onto his haunches to give you some space. You sigh as you run your fingers through your hair, looking at his mask rather than his eyes.

"Just for a little while, ok Brahms? Just long enough to reintroduce you to the world. I don't want you to have to hide for the rest of your life."

His eyes darken but he nods enthusiastically. You watch the movement, feeling as if you’ve signed a document without reading it.

"Ok, well…are you hungry?"

"Yes."

You smile bittersweetly, he’s back to the one-word answers. You stand up, offering your arm to him, he takes it and you pull him up with some difficulty. He is tall but obviously underweight, probably from sneaking the bare minimum of food for the past few weeks.

"Come on, there are leftovers from my picnic yesterday in the kitchen, but you already know that don't you?"

He has the decency to avert his eyes as he follows you down. You sit with him at the kitchen table as the two of you rifle through the food you prepared yesterday. He sits across from you. As you dole the food out to each other, a childhood habit of treating your food communally, you notice how he gives you all of the best food, the biggest pieces, and the most delicious-looking options. His thoughtfulness makes your face heat. 

He waits for you to have the first bite before picking up his food, making you roll your eyes at how adorable it is that the habits he had as a kid are still intact. He turns around so you can only see his back when he eats, resettling his mask and turning back to you continually. You are still curious about everything that has happened in the years, how could you not be? You want to ask him a thousand questions and you can tell with the way his eyes follow your movements that he has a lot he wants to ask as well.

"How about this, we're both curious as hell about the other so why don't we take turns asking questions? I'll ask one and then you'll ask one, and we can skip if we don't want to answer."

Brahms fiddles with a pastry on his plate before looking up almost shyly at you.

"Ok y/n, I'll play."

You nod with a smile and decide to play nice with the first couple of questions at least.

"Well, is your favorite book still Alice in Wonderland?” you ask.

His eyes beam at your remembrance. He nods and then puts his pastry down to ask you one back. 

“Is your favorite book still The Secret Garden?”

You smile widely, he remembers too. His favorite book was one of the few things you remembered about him, but that list had steadily grown longer since you came back and is expanding even faster from reconnecting with Brahms. He sits and watches you silently. You chew your food and reach over, flicking some of his hair out of his ‘face’. 

“What’s your favorite record to listen to?”

He tips his head to the side.

“Anything by Erik Satie or Rachmaninoff.” 

You nod, not surprised by his pics. His parents are self-titled music collectors with a decided bent toward classical music as evidenced by the selection in the library.

“Who was that woman who stayed the night? You shouldn’t have let her.”

Your eyes widen at his question, he’s not pulling his punches so you decide not to either from now on. You ignore his second sentence. 

“An old friend. We had a thing for a minute.”

His eyes narrow, dark and flashing. The food lies forgotten between you.

“What does a thing mean y/n?” his voice is dark, his hands tightened into fists.

You notice how aggravated he is and you scrutinize him, he must know what you mean by his reaction. Its dark intensity is reminiscent of his overbearing jealousy as a child. 

“We didn’t really date per se, just kind of fooled around when we first met. It was a long time ago, we’re just friends now.”

You don’t know why you feel like you have to explain your relationship with Ada to him, but you do. You feel almost chastised, guilty. It makes your skin itch. Before he goes on you ask your question.

“How much have you been watching me since I got here? And how? I know you must have been.”

Brahms goes still, you can practically see his frown below the mask with the way his body displays his displeasure. He looks away, not answering.

“The game won’t work if I play all by myself, Brahms.”

He glances at you before looking away again.

“Most of the time. Through the walls, they’re hollow and have a lot of holes.”

You don’t react to his response, you already figured as much. You aren’t overly creeped out because you think that he would never go too far with watching you, he wouldn’t do anything a friend wouldn’t do. You think the watching is weird but you guess he couldn’t really do much else. You secretly like that he had been watching you, that you hadn’t been as alone as you thought, but the idea of anyone but him watching you makes your skin crawl. 

“Did you miss me y/n? I missed you,” he says, his child voice bleeding into his natural tone.

You think he must use that voice when he’s upset, or trying to get something out of you. You’ll have to teach him better than to use it.

“Of course I did, Brahms. Always.”

He nods softly, evidently pleased. You finish your pastry and take the dishes to the sink. Brahms follows you, standing at your side, his hands on the counter and eyes on you.

"So then, if you've had all of this time to yourself, what have you done with it?'

Brahms looks down, his fingers tangling together. He glances over at you bashfully. You would assume it would be hard to read his emotions without all of the input of a face but his eyes are so intense and expressive you almost don't even need to ask him to know his thoughts.

"I’ve undergone a simulacrum of a normal education as guided by my parents. Beyond this, I keep myself occupied through the arts, specifically metal work and attempts at poetry." 

He says this avoiding your eyes, formal to the point of hollowness. He fidgets and you think that perhaps he is feeling odd or in need of proving himself to you. He should feel at least a little bit peculiar given the circumstances but not in a bad way. You could never see him as anything but your friend, regardless of his past and its inconceivability.

You reach over and pull him into a hug that he reciprocates instantly. His now soft hair brushes your cheek and the scent of your soap on him makes your face heat. You are thankful that his face is turned away so he can’t see your reaction to the contact. You bask in the hug for a moment before pulling away. 

“You don’t have to feel cautious around me Brahms, I’m not going to judge you. I think I've proven I can take shit in stride when I need to, so don’t feel bad or like you need to hide from me,” you say, washing the dishes.

He reaches into the sink and takes them from you, washing them himself. He nods at your words silently, and leans into your side as you dry the dishes he washes. You work in tandem and reminisce together. You continue playing the question game, both of you silently agreeing to stick to easy questions. You have never felt more at peace than with him at your side, laughing quietly as you regale him with stories from all the years apart. 

You eventually migrate up to your room sitting on the bed together. You discuss your purchases from the other day with him, acting like a storytime youtuber as you take him on a ‘tour’ of your room. You spend the rest of the day like this, playing him music, discussing books, and lying about telling him stories. He doesn’t give much of a picture of his past with his input, but even so, by the time dinner rolls around it's like you never left and nothing else has ever felt so right. 

You cook dinner together, playing music softly as the sky outside darkens. He is always as close to you as possible, almost on top of you but you don’t mind. The way the hair on your arms almost stand on end with every brush against him, your heart skipping beats when his eyes find yours, you subconsciously lean in. He is quite touchy-feely but you like it because it's him. As you eat he does his odd routine of looking away to eat and turning back as if to make sure you are still there. You decide not to question it, enjoying the current bubble of contentment too much. You clean up together. After everything is put away you turn to him.

“What do you want to do?” you ask.

He fiddles with the hem of his shirt before looking at you through his lashes.

“Could you read me a bedtime story?”

You giggle at his phrasing. He chuffs in response but you nod, taking his hand unthinkingly as you walk back upstairs. You grab the first Harry Potter book from your nightstand and go to walk over to his room when you feel his hand on your arm. You turn and look at him questioningly.

“Where are you going?” he asks you.

“Your room?”

He tips his head to the side.

“Why?”

“So I can read to you? If you want to go to bed after, it would make more sense to do it in your room.”

“Why not here?”

“What…do you want to sleep with me?”

He nods enthusiastically. You sigh dramatically as if displeased but you can’t stop the smile spreading on your face.

“Fine but only for tonight, tomorrow you go back to your room,” you say.

You go to walk over to your bed before you realize something, he hasn’t been in his room at all in years, only the walls, so where the hell does he sleep if not in a room? You turn to him quickly and he startles.

“Where do you live then? The walls, sure, but like where in them? Where do you sleep?”

“There’s a room, like an apartment hidden within the walls that I reside in.”

He fidgets where he stands. He’s nervous.

“Can I see it? I want to see all the passageways too! It’ll be fun!” you say, getting more and more excited as you speak.

He shakes his head making your smile fall. You pout.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to take you in there. I want to be out here with you.”

You give him a deadpan look. He avoids your eyes. You get closer to him, he twitches. You stand in front of him, inches from his chest that expands and contracts just a bit too fast. You lean in, your cheek against his warm chest, and look up at him with wide pleading eyes and a pout on your lips. You can hear the way his heart is racing as he looks back down at you, his eyes wide. Your heart beats faster in your chest but you try not to show the nerves, instead focusing on convincing him to show you.

“Please Brahms? I want to be with you anywhere, not just out here, but in there too. I want to see your world…” you say, leaning into him.

His heart beats faster and faster against your face but he stays silent. You decide to bring out the big guns, remembering how you used to always get your way with him in the same way you are now, touch. You bring your arms up and loop them around his neck. You bat your eyelashes and lightly rub your face into his chest, keeping eye contact. He lets out a strangled noise and extricates himself from your hold, turning away with a gruff ‘fine’. You celebrate by dancing around as he keeps his back to you.

You grab some pajamas after a moment of celebrating your successful manipulation and walk into your bathroom, Brahms looking away from you the whole time. You get ready for bed giggling to yourself, giddy for no reason in particular. When you come back out Brahms is already under his blanket, laying on top of your blankets to keep the two of you separate in the night. 

You flop down and grab the book, turning to a silent Brahms. You feel a little bad about getting him to change his mind so you sit up and sit at his side. You lean against him, your head on his shoulder as you crack open the book. He puts his arm around your shoulder, both of you reposing on your pillows.

You read to him for hours, doing voices for the characters you think deserve them, explaining the lore, and discussing what Harry Potter houses you think the people the both of you know would be in. You agree that you would be in [your harry potter house] and he would be in Ravenclaw. You say Malcolm would probably be Gryffindor and Brahms mumbles that he would be too stupid to get in at all. You crack up, falling into his lap as you shake from your laughter which he joins in with, his laugh a bit husky like his voice.

You wipe your eyes from your laughter-induced tears and continue the story. He absently plays with your hair as you read and you feel yourself grow tired, lulled by his body heat against you and the way his fingers feel in your hair. You start to doze against him and barely register when he takes the book from your hand, marks its place and sets off to the side of the bed. You mumble against him, scooching to get closer as he shifts until you are both lying all the way down. You yawn and reach an arm out blindly, holding him against you. You feel him pull the blanket up and under your chin just how you like it. You hum in contentment.

“You don’t have to show me if you really don’t want to, I was just joking,” you murmur into his chest, barely awake.

“I can show you, y/n. I just don’t want you to think of me differently.”

“I could never Brahms. I love you,” you say, sleep pulling you under.

Chapter Text

You wake up expecting the sun to be shining on you, burning your eyes as usual, but when you open them you come face to face with Brahms. The nose of his mask is almost touching your nose and his eyes are open, he was very obviously watching you sleep up close. You screech from surprise and accidentally launch yourself off the bed but your legs are tangled in your blankets so you end up hanging off the bed, half on the floor. Your ass is in the air which is especially convenient as you are wearing your booty shorts with the word ‘babygirl’ printed across the butt which you swear you only wear ironically.

Brahms makes a strangled noise of surprise and rushes to help you back onto the bed. You aren’t much help as you are cracking up making you both start to slide off the bed more. Brahms struggles with you, only getting himself more entangled. He tries to extricate himself but as he tries to push himself up his hands slide and he loses his balance basically flopping onto you. 

Now you are bent over the side of the bed, legs made immobile by your blankets and the weight of Brahms who is now in the very same predicament, his front to your back and your front to the bed. For a second after he falls on you the both of you go silent from shock and then you burst out laughing, shaking against him. After a moment you hear his husky laughter from behind you and only now are you aware of just how close he is pressed to you, and what you can feel against you. You go silent from the sudden awareness and he notices your abrupt change in mood, also going quiet.

“I’m going to try and slide out now, push yourself up so the blankets can get loose,” you say.

“Ok,” he says, his voice even rougher after having just woken up.

You can feel what he’s doing to you and you want to instinctively cross your legs at the heat building where it shouldn’t be but the blankets and his body in between them stop you. You use your arms to gain purchase on the floor and basically military crawl out of your self-made blanket trap, your legs getting loose and helping to free Brahms. 

You lay on the ground giggling as you hear Brahms behind you. You turn around just in time to see him subtly adjust the front of his pants. You turn away quickly and stand up, pretending that you hadn’t seen that or felt the same way. It's probably just because it's morning anyways you think. You clear your throat as you gather clothes to change into. You check the time, your eyes going wide at how late it is.

“We can make a late breakfast, brunch I guess. I have some work I need to do like asap so after we eat I need to get on that…is there anything you want to eat or do today in particular?” you ask.

He is silent, watching you as he sits on your bed, his hands and half of your blanket in his lap. He is still wearing his father’s old clothes, a button-up shirt and some much too big slacks. You hum at his silence and at his outfit. You turn around and bend down, rifling through your clothes, finding some of your more oversized clothing, and therefore something more appropriate for Brahms who is taller than you. You take the clothes you guess might fit and throw them at him. He isn’t paying attention so they hit him square in the face making you smile. He grunts as he pulls them off his head. The mask shifted up slightly and you see the very end of his chin, a sliver of cheek before he hurriedly fixes it. He looks at you, his eyes communicating both amusement and annoyance.

“What is asap?” he asks, ignoring the clothes in his hands.

You look at him confused for a second before you realize that he isn’t fucking with you, he really doesn’t know what asap means. It makes sense, the only people he’s spoken to since he was eight were his parents who wouldn’t be caught dead using slang.

“Asap, it means as soon as possible, so basically I need to do my work like, as soon as possible,” you explain.

He cocks his head.

“But your work is me.”

You go silent. You don’t think he’s picked up on the fact that by saying that he is implying you need to do him as soon as possible. You shake the thought off, not wanting your face to heat, matching your lower stomach which flutters.

“I mean, yes but also no. I have a side hustle, or a second job, where I draw what people pay me to draw. I’m behind on those so I need to work on that after we eat.”

He nods slowly, you can tell he wants to say more but he doesn’t. He looks down at the clothes you threw at him. A pair of joggers and a large band tee, Iron Maiden. He looks back up at you, questioning silently.

“For you, so you don’t have to wear your father’s old stuffy things. Should be more comfortable for the moment.”

You mentally make a note of the fact you need to ask Malcolm to take you into town so you can sneak off to the clothing store and update Brahms’ wardrobe. He runs his fingers along the bundle of fabric, almost looking like he is petting your clothes. You let him have his weird little moment.

“Thank you y/n,” he says.

You nod and grab your clothes going to the bathroom to get ready. When you get out you catch the tail end of Brahms putting on your shirt, catching a glimpse of his lower back. You bite your lip, mentally screaming, begging yourself to get a handle on your raging hormones before you slip up. When he turns and makes eye contact you release your lip, your cheeks heating despite your mental war. You can see how he follows the movement with his eyes and it makes your chest still. You can feel the tension between you, it's been there crackling in the air since he stepped out of the shadows that night, but now you can almost feel him from across the room.

You look away, fiddling with your clothes. After a second you snap yourself out of your inexplicably horny stupor and speak.

“Well since you don’t seem to have an opinion on breakfast we're going to have [favorite breakfast food]. You can pick tomorrow.”

He nods. You walk over to the door and out of your room and he follows close behind. You like the way his footsteps sound behind you, so quiet you might not notice but still there, letting you know that you are not alone.

In the kitchen, he immediately goes around getting the ingredients for [favorite breakfast food]. He goes fast enough that you just stand there watching him. After he collects everything he looks over at you. He gestures to them.

“I can do it. You can work,” he says with an air of finality.

Your eyes go wide at his thoughtfulness, you can feel the heat return to your face.

“You sure?” you ask, not wanting him to feel obligated to you for any reason.

“Of course, I want to please you,” he says before turning back to the ingredients and getting to work.

You stand shocked yet again by the fact he doesn’t seem to catch the double entendres in his words. You hum a thank you and grab your drawing tablet getting to work. You aren’t as focused as you normally would be, too distracted by Brahms to get completely into the creative headspace. You like the way your shirt hangs off his lean frame and the way the joggers end inches above his ankles but are loose at his narrow hips. You bite your lip as you draw, looking up every few seconds to appreciate the view as he cooks. 

You don’t know why you are feeling this way and you know you really really shouldn’t be but something about him has you going feral a lot quicker than you’d like to admit. You figure it doesn’t harm anyone if you look as long as you never touch. The very thought of giving in to the temptation thrills you but is drowned instantly in a tidal wave of guilt and apprehension. He’s Brahms , you can’t think of him like that. 

He is your childhood best friend, which is not a roadblock or cockblock in itself but he has been locked in a house for twenty years and you think it would be foolish to assume he knows much about adult relationships and all the things that come with them. Even if he does, you feel like there would be an inherent power imbalance between the two of you and you don’t want to go there. You would feel like you were robbing the proverbial cradle despite him being older, or at least that's what you tell yourself as you lick your lips and watch him move about the kitchen.

By the time the food is done, you have a very rough sketch for your most recent commission and are in the midst of an existential crisis at your burgeoning want for Brahms. You set your tablet to the side with a smile as Brahms hands you a dish of [favorite breakfast food] before sitting down with his own. He waits until you try it, telling him how good it is, because shockingly it really is, before he turns around and takes a bite of his own food. 

As the two of you eat you interrogate him on the movies he’s watched. He explains that he has a small tv and vhs player in his secret apartment. He lists the five movies he has, the only ones he’s watched since he was eight years old and his fake death stopped your weekly movie nights at your house, the one excursion he was allowed by the Heelshires. The five are The Secret Garden, The Princess Bride, Sword in the Stone, The Last Unicorn, and The Shining. 

You almost choke on your food at the last one and he embarrassedly explains how he swiped it from Malcolm’s vhs collection when you were kids. The other four you know well, all movies you had watched with him and that were his favorites for whatever reason growing up. At least you had The Secret Garden in common. You always loved the story and you can now see the parallels, you and Mary both find a friend in the walls if you think about it.  You start a list on your tablet of all the movies and T.V. shows he has to see, getting more and more excited as you think. He listens to you as you ramble and you can see the amusement in his eyes.

You make plans to watch a movie a day until you get through them all and when you say that it might take forever you notice the way his chest puffs out, seemingly pleased. After you finish eating you get up and go to clean the dishes but he beats you to it, saying that you should finish your work. You hum, wanting to argue but letting it go, finding it unbelievably sweet yet unnecessary. You wander into the library and sit on one of the couches, resting the tablet on your knees as you draw. 

After a couple of minutes, Brahms comes in and you have a feeling the only reason he hadn’t reacted much when you left the kitchen is because he somehow knew where you were going. He walks over to you and tips his head toward your tablet as if to ask if he can see. You look at your drawing of Severus Snape in bondage gear and debate with yourself for a moment, wondering if you would be corrupting him before you remember he is a 28-year-old man. You sigh, looking at him almost apologetically before turning it around so he can see it.

“I’m so sorry Brahms,” you say, trying not to laugh as you watch his eyes widen at what he is seeing.

He gingerly takes the tablet from you making your eyebrow raise, and he looks at it closer.

“It’s supposed to be Snape, you know, from Harry Potter,” you say, trying to fill up the silence that you can’t tell is good or bad.

“I see,” he says.

You don’t know what he is thinking and for the first time, you really wish his mask wasn’t there to obscure his face. You know it’s important to him, a crutch that you wouldn’t dare even want to take away from him, but you would have a far easier time understanding him if it wasn’t there. You think you are doing a pretty good job reading him so far thanks to your ever-growing bank of memories of him as a child, but you can tell you’re missing the nuance, only aware of the darker undercurrent in him rather than truly being able to see it.

“Can you draw me like that?” he asks.

You choke on your spit, coughing violently. He pats your back, trying to alleviate your coughing fit. After you recover you look up at him, mouth open.

“I mean…I guess I could in theory?” you say, not really processing what he asked or your answer.

He nods his eyes looking satisfied as he hands the tablet back to you. 

“Then that’s fine,” he says.

He walks over to the record player and starts to peruse the record collection. 

“What do you mean by then that’s fine?” you ask.

He doesn’t pause as he runs his finger along the spines of the albums, selecting one and setting it on the platter. 

“You can draw that stuff on other men if you also draw it on me,” he says as if his words are completely normal.

You narrow your eyes at him, confused, wondering if he’s fucking with you and his mask just gives him the best poker face in the business or if he’s just that different from a life in the walls. He starts the record player and turns to you. He walks towards you and you unthinkingly flinch back, completely confused. His relaxed posture tenses at your movement and he slows his approach as if you are an anxious animal and he’s trying to make sure you won’t bolt at his proximity. He gets about a foot from you before he stands still and cocks his head.

“Is it a bad thing? For you to draw me like that?” he asks.

You don’t know how to answer.

“No?” you say, unsure.

“Then why do you look as if I’ve been naughty? I promise I haven’t.”

You pause, leaning forward as you scrutinize him, trying to suss out if he is being serious. You see nothing but his usual intense earnestness. You lean back with a sigh, pursing your lips. He shuffles on his feet under your gaze.

“How about this, I draw whatever I want because I can, not because you say I can, and you do whatever you want to. People pay me to draw these things on other men,” you say, almost daring him to contradict you and hoping he’ll drop his art request.

You can see the way he tenses further at your words.

“I’ll pay you too then,” he says, you can practically hear the pout in his voice.

“No!” you say, bewildered by his insistence.

“Why? I can draw too, you know. Maybe I will draw those things of other people and get money too!” he says, his voice rising in volume.

You just look at him, not sure what the hell is going on. You tap your tablet screen when it dims from your lack of engagement. 

“Okay?” you say, not sure why he said that like it’s a threat.

He grunts at your answer and stalks off to a seat on the opposite end of the library, sitting down with a huff. He crosses his arms and looks away from you. You deadpan at his pouting figure and decide to just ignore him back. You get back to your drawing and soon you enter your creative flow, focused on the task at hand and nothing else. 

The classical music drifting from the record player isn’t bad, you recognize the song even and you hum it quietly as you draw. Intermittently you can hear Brahms shift in his seat loudly but you don’t pay him any mind. After a while you hear him move to a different seat, this one closer to you. You don’t look up, not really thinking much of it. You get so engrossed in the drawing that you barely notice when he sits at the other end of the couch you’re sitting on. 

You glance up when you feel his leg against your feet. He sits there, his hands interlaced in his lap, looking at you from the very edge of his peripheral. You give him an unimpressed look and go back to putting the finishing touches on your drawing. You can feel his eyes on you.

“Y/n? I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, I’ll be better,” he says in his childlike voice.

You set your tablet down and fold your legs until you sit crisscross looking toward him. He meets your eyes for only a moment before turning away. He reminds you of a dog when it knows it’s done something wrong, but he hasn’t really. You sigh, chewing on your lip. What the hell was he getting at earlier? 

“You didn’t do anything wrong, it's just that I don’t get it, Brahms…what do you want?” you ask.

He’s silent before mumbling. You think you hear him say ‘you’ but you ask him to repeat himself.

“I want to spend time with you. I want you to do your work so you can be with me only,” he says, still not quite looking at you.

You look at him for a second. You think that he must never have grown up, at least not all the way with how he pouts and is perhaps overly honest. It’s sort of refreshing, the honesty that is, but the pouting and the strategic use of his childlike voice need to go. You move your legs toward him, poking him in the side with your feet. He looks at you, somehow even through the mask he looks shy.

“I want to spend time with you too, but I have to get these done. It's not like I can’t be with you when I’m drawing. You can sit with me as I draw, you can help me even, you were always the better artist of the two of us anyways,” you say, not lying but still trying to appease him.

He runs his fingers through his hair before standing up so he can sit at your side. You make space for him beside you, against the armrest, and he sits down. You lean against him and turn your tablet back on.

“You were always better,” he whispers.

You involuntarily shiver at the way his breath tickles your ear, and the way its roughness has your body alight in an instant. You smother the feeling, vowing to not let what you think is just a mix of curiosity and a dry spell get to you. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you so as you lean into his body and he shuffles even closer to you, you promise yourself you won’t give in, that you’ll keep the dark part of you that want to give in to your worst inclinations, that wants him , in the shadows.

Chapter Text

Brahms has never heard anything more beautiful than y/n’s sleepy confession of her love for him. After she mumbled that she loved him into his chest as he was lying beside her, the world stopped and he froze. His body tightened to stone and his eyes widened almost painfully in the almost pitch-black room. He couldn’t let himself breathe for a few heavy seconds, almost as if his exhale would blow away her sleepy confession, like mist dissipating in the summer night. He burrowed closer to her, gently so as not to wake her. The cool porcelain of his mask pressed against his smiling lips and he let the dark take him under.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms stands at the windows by the front door, his nose pushed up against the glass as he excitedly waits for her to arrive. He brushes his short-cropped hair from his forehead, not liking how the blunt hairs tickle as he presses ever closer into the glass like it will make her get to him faster. When he sees the L/n’s car drive into the estate grounds his heart leaps and his face heats from excitement. 

He’s been anxiously looking forward to today, as he does every week because this is the day Y/n comes to his house to play. He is alone most of the week except for a couple of dry and stodgy tutors. His parents keep themselves busy and away from home as much as possible, usually entertaining their well-to-do friends. He doesn’t have to mark Saturdays down on the calendar as the day y/n comes, he has developed some sort of internal clock that is always aware of how close he is to seeing her. The terrible weight of loneliness that he exists under when she is not there is washed from him the minute he lays his eyes on her, his best friend. 

He fiddles with his tie and his hair as the car parks. He goes to the door and pulls it open with considerable difficulty as while he is quite tall for his age of seven he is rather weak. He pushes the heavy wooden door to the side, a toothy smile on his pale face. He watches as the back door of the car opens and y/n seems to jump out of the back, landing in a squat on the gravel. Her face is annoyed when she looks back at the car but when she meets his eyes her face changes in an instant, reflecting his excitement and relief back at him. 

“Y/N!” he shouts, waving so wildly his whole body seems to shake from the movement.

“Brahms!” she shouts back.

She scrambles up and dusts some dirt from her jeans, ripped as per usual, before running towards him. He meets her halfway down the steps and they hug like they haven’t seen each other in years. She giggles as he swings her around as much as he dares. He sets her down and she looks up at him with a grin, she’s smaller than him but so are most kids and the two-year age gap doesn’t help her to catch up. He giggles, just happy to be around her again. They look at each other with goofy smiles for a moment before a childish screech interrupts the moment. He can feel how she tenses at the noise, his hands still on her arms.

He turns his head to the car where the noise came from and immediately his face falls, Emily is there too. His parents had decided a couple of months ago that he needed to expand his social circle beyond y/n, the daughter of the help, and conveniently the new ‘friend’ they found was the daughter of the Cribb family, a wealthy and landed family like their own. The Cribb name is synonymous with the region’s history as they are one of the founding families along with being relatively powerful politically and while the Heelshire name isn’t quite as weighty, Brahms comes from a long line of wealth and gentry. His parents want to make sure that is known and Brahms wants to live a normal life but obliges his parents as he wants to be a good son.

He knows his parents like y/n, not that it would change his opinion if they didn’t, but the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that his parents believe in is obvious to him even as young as he is. Y/n is a good childhood friend but Brahms knows they would rather he become close to someone with status like Emily. Brahms doesn’t care for status or prestige at all, he loves y/n and has as long as he can remember. Y/n is the daughter of his parents gardener and maid, her father and mother, and Brahms has known her for her whole life as since she was born her parents would bring her to work with them. Y/n feels like a part of him, like the rest of him that was missing at birth. He can’t imagine a life without her.

Emily is a third wheel at best which he could have stomached but to be in any way a hindrance to his time with y/n was unforgivable. This along with the fact that she believes herself to be superior to all, even untouchable, just because her last name means something to a bunch of stuffy old men. He puts up with her only because y/n does and because it pleases his parents which means being rewarded for good behavior with more time with y/n.

This is one of the reasons he hates Emily so much, she is trying to come between him and y/n, though there are a multitude of other reasons to despise the girl. There is the fact she is known for her abuse of animals, she’s not allowed around cats anymore after what happened to her neighbor’s kittens, her constant use of racial slurs and attacks, her penchant for property damage when it pleases her, and of course her habit of ‘subtly’ torturing Brahms. She kicks, bites, and hits him, stabbing him with needles or pushing him to the ground whenever she can get away with it. He feels conflicted as while he would never want to subject y/n to Emily’s torture, Emily goes easier on him because she wants to keep y/n as her friend.

So far these past couple of months have been rather torturous as y/n is often accompanied by Emily, and where Emily goes pain and intense annoyance follow. It was only the second week of his new scheduled ‘friendship’ with Emily, their parents meeting up once a week to have them “socialize” when her visit coincided with a visit from y/n. This was perhaps the worst thing that has happened in his short life as Emily had immediately taken a liking to y/n and a disliking to Brahms, and he can tell she has been trying to pit the two against each other since. He won’t allow such a thing to happen, especially by such an annoying pest.

He waves politely at the fuming Emily who stands with her fist balled at the sides of her dress a couple yards away. Y/n pulls away from Brahms and he turns to her with a frown. He knows that it displeases Emily when he gets too close to y/n and usually, he pretends to care because her living with her imagined power over them is more convenient to him than her trying to gain that power. She is deluded and he figures it's better that way, less time and energy spent on her which he can save for y/n. Y/n looks down at Emily with an apprehensive face. Brahms can see a patch of red on her neck and his hands tighten to fists at his sides, he knows it came from Emily.

Emily stomps petulantly up to them, practically yanking y/n away from him. He can feel his hands twitch at his sides and his eyes narrow as he tries to quell the urge to pull y/n away from her and push Emily down the stairs so she can’t get close to y/n again. He suppresses it and schools his face when he meets Emily’s triumphant eyes, a confused looking y/n held to her side. He can hear that y/n’s father has walked off after parking the car, likely to get to work on whatever his parents have asked of him this time. Brahms huffs.

Sure it was good that he didn’t have to share y/n with her dad, and by some miracle her annoying brother Malcolm has also gone off on his own, but her father’s supervision was a barrier against Emily’s worst behavior. This means Emily has practically been given the go-ahead to do whatever it is she wants and Brahms knows that is never a good thing.

“Y/n! I told you in the car not to hug him ! He’s a dirty Heelshire and I don’t want you to get cooties from him!” Emily says, angrily pouting at a wide-eyed y/n.

“I don’t care and he’s not dirty, and even if he was dirty I wouldn’t care! You’re not being nice Emily and you promised you would be!” y/n responds.

“Yeah, but we didn’t pinky promise so it doesn’t count! I’m much better than him by the way, my house is twice as big so you should always listen to me only.”

“No you’re not better than Brahms even if your house is twenty times bigger and I don’t listen to anyone including you,” y/n says, her hands on her hips.

Emily shakes her head at y/n and pats her shoulder, a pitying look on her face.

“You don’t get it y/n. It’s because you’re poor. My dad says the poor are a drain on the nation, but you’re okay because you usually listen to me. If you keep disobeying me that won’t be the case though and you’ll have to be kicked out of the country with all of the [racial slur]s.”

Brahms gasps at her declaration, disgusted that she would say such a word. Y/n looks over at him confused by his reaction. She’s too young to know the word and Brahms only knows it from hearing his parents' friends speak at luncheons. Brahms goes to say something to her about her language but his parents appear at the door. His mother smiles down at them, not seeing the tension in the group but Brahms can tell his father realizes he’s walked in on the beginning of a schoolyard row.

“Emily, wonderful to see you! I’m so pleased that you could come to visit today. How are your parents?” his mother asks.

Emily smiles, turning on her charm, the especially potent strain only wielded by blonde and bright-eyed little girls. She giggles before answering.

“I’m always happy to visit you Mrs. Heelshire and to play with y/n and Brahms! My parents are doing well, we are all looking forward to Brahms’ birthday next weekend as right after we’ll be taking a trip to Monaco, Monte Carlo to be exact.”

Brahms can see how his mother’s eyebrow twitches at Emily’s mention of her upcoming trip and he knows she is annoyed by the Cribbs’ affluence despite it being nearly identical to their own. He wishes Emily would leave for Monaco before his birthday party, he doesn’t want to celebrate his eighth birthday with someone he despises and secretly wishes might disappear completely. 

“How wonderful Emily! I’m glad you all have the time to spare to celebrate Brahms with us. Please come in, Mrs. L/n has set some tea out for the three of you in the back garden as the weather is quite nice for late August,” his mother says, beckoning them inside next to his uninterested-looking father.

Brahms follows Emily and y/n inside, feeling quite small under the apathetic eyes of his father who towers above him as he shuts the door. He follows his mother and the girls outside, nodding his head at y/n’s mother as they pass and she gives him a small smile.

When they reach the back garden his mother sits them down and helps them to pour their tea. She plays the part of a dutiful mother and eager hostess, gesturing as she speaks.

“Mr. L/n has done absolute wonders on the landscaping back here hasn’t he Brahms? The flowers are beautiful right now, look at that row, that's a mix of aster, lilies, and goldenrod. I didn’t think it would look quite as beautiful as it does but the meanings seemed appropriate.” she says, fiddling with a doily that some biscuits sit upon.

“What are the meanings? Do all flowers have meanings?” y/n asks.

Emily nods as if she is also wondering about this. Brahms already knows, when his mother was planning the garden she had acquired a book on flower meanings and he had read it partly out of curiosity and out of wanting to give y/n flowers that would be like a poem.

“I’m glad you asked y/n, you’ve always been rather inquisitive so I shouldn’t be surprised. The aster represents wisdom, goldenrods are growth, and lilies are rebirth. It seemed fitting as the garden needed a new era of sorts.”

Y/n nods, seemingly satisfied with the answer. Emily puts a pasty on y/n’s plate and they smile at each other, the fight from earlier seemingly forgotten by y/n whose five-year-old self never can see to hold a grudge for long, and by Emily who at nine nearly ten years old you would think would be mature enough to forgive and forget easily in such situations. Brahms knows this is not the case, he can see the annoyance at the edges of Emily’s pinched eyes, and the way they dart to him as if promising to make him pay for whatever it is she has decided he must pay for. He fiddles with his napkin despondently as his mother goes on about the garden, encouraged by Emily who looks to be enjoying prolonging his wait for his inevitable retribution for his imagined sins by her hand.

Eventually, his mother leaves to take her tea with his father inside, leaving them alone. The three of them speak for a while which basically consists only of Emily keeping Brahms and y/n verbally hostage as she tells them obviously fabricated stories about all of the countries she’s traveled to and the like. After some time the conversation turns and Emily starts to pick on Brahms who takes it silently. She cycles through her usual routine of attacking his appearance, and his quiet demeanor, saying that he’s not smart because he doesn't attend the private school she does and that his parents are always gone because they don’t love him, and of course saying that he is weak. Brahms doesn’t fight back because he knows how much she hates it and because part of him agrees.

Y/n quickly grows fed up with Emily attacking him, always his protector.

“Emily you are being such a meanie! You always lie and try to make him sad but that just makes it look like you are all the things you say,” y/n says, frowning with pastry crumbs on her face.

“You’re a baby y/n you don’t know anything and I didn’t lie at all! Everyone knows Brahms is weird and even his parents don’t love him, that's why they always go on trips and leave him here and why he doesn’t go to school. He’d probably be kicked out for being too creepy and stupid,” Emily says, her nose up in the air.

“I’m not a baby and if you think all of that bad stuff about Brahms you’re the stupid one! Brahms is cooler than you, he’s smart and brave and nice ,” y/n says, obviously getting even more angry at Emily.

Emily’s face scrunches up in anger, her grip on her cup tight enough that her knuckles are white. Brahms goes to try and diffuse the situation, or at least divert Emily’s attention to him in case she gets violent as she often does, but she speaks before he can.

“Whatever! If he’s so brave I bet he can swim in the river with no problem. Right, Heelshire?” Emily taunts.

Brahms glares at her, hating that she’s brought up the river. On his parent’s estate, there is a river that flows into the surrounding forest and orchards and then into town, and where it touches their land it is almost pure rapids with a bridge built over it to get across safely. He can feel how constructed her mentioning of the river is, it’s random and he knows she’s been saving it for an occasion like this, to use it as a tool in some way. Brahms knows better than to even get near the edge of the water due to the danger of drowning let alone in it and tells her so with careful calmness. 

“You’re making up excuses Heelshire. We all know the brave one of the two of you is y/n, I bet you would get in the river right y/n? It's either you or him.”

Brahms reels back at how she is pivoting her attack to y/n. He knows in an instant where this is going, she wants to hurt him one way or the other and she’s not above using y/n as a roundabout way of doing it.

“No! Y/n is never getting in the river and neither am I, if you want to prove your bravery like that makes you better or something you get in the river yourself!” Brahms says angrily.

Emily’s eyes narrow at his words before she picks up her tea and throws the warm liquid on him. Brahms sputters and scrambles up at the same time y/n stands up in her seat and upends her own cup on Emily’s head before smashing a piece of cake in her face. Emily screams and y/n laughs at her. 

Emily wipes some cake from her face before picking up her cup and throwing it at Brahms who shouts as the thin ceramic breaks against his head, causing stars to burst at the edges of his vision and him to fall from his chair into the flowers. He can’t see anything for a second as he brushes the shards from his hair, damp with tea and blood. He can hear y/n and Emily struggling against each other in the grass so he shakes his head to clear his vision, the pain of his injury taking a backseat to making sure y/n is okay. The back garden is far away enough from the house he doubts anyone will be coming to their aid as they wouldn’t be able to hear the noise of their fighting.

When Brahms can finally see he sees Emily standing above a crying y/n who has obviously been pushed to the ground. Brahms growls as he gets to his feet and runs over to them pushing Emily over harshly. He helps y/n stand up as Emily pushes herself up off the ground, her face red and teeth bared.

“Fuck you, Heelshire! Y/n is mine, not yours, if you died it would be so much better, and then y/n wouldn’t have to pretend to like you!” Emily shouts.

Brahms reels back at her words. What does she mean that y/n pretends to like him? He can feel the panic rise in him, fear. He looks to y/n who is still at his side, shaking with biscuit crumbs covering her t-shirt and her cheeks red like she’s been slapped. She is open-mouthed at Emily’s words.

“I pretend to like you stupid! I actually like him because he’s not a psycho like you Emily!” y/n shouts, her five-year-old frame straining at the intensity of her anger.

Brahms tightens the hand he has on her, he feels reassured but also all the more apprehensive at what could happen next. When Emily isn’t allowed to win an argument she always finds a way to make it end on her terms.

“Oh yeah? You don’t know anything because you’re a dumb four-year-old and I don’t care at all because you’re both dirty [racial slur]s. I don’t want to get diseases from either of you,” Emily says, frustrated tears in her eyes.

“I’m almost six dumbass! And good then don’t ever come to play with Brahms again if you hate us so much. Stay in your stupid big house by yourself!” y/n retorts, red-faced.

“I will! But only if Brahms can prove he’s so brave and cool, then I’ll tell my parents to never take me back here until I die!”

Y/n looks over at Brahms. He can feel the blood running down the side of his face but when he sees the pink lines on y/n’s neck from where Emily seems to have scratched her and the slow drip of blood from her nose, the pain is erased and all he can feel is anger. This isn’t even close to the worst fit she’s had over y/n or whatever thing displeased her, the last one had resulted in two of her canary’s necks being crushed in her hands which she then threw at y/n and him, but something about this feels different. He looks at Emily for a moment before steeling himself for what he knows will be a mistake.

“Promise?” he asks.

Emily smiles, her teeth showing as her wet eyes leak when her cheeks are pulled tight. She sticks her hand out to shake which Brahms takes reluctantly. They shake but when he goes to let go of her hand she yanks him forward and he falls roughly to his knees, scuffing them badly. Emily laughs and takes a couple of steps toward the edge of the garden before turning back to Brahms who is being helped up by y/n.

“Come on. I got the perfect idea for you to prove that you are so brave, hurry up,” she says before taking off towards the trees.

Brahms and y/n turn to look at each other before they go to follow. They take a couple of steps before they hear a shout from the house. Brahms turns back and sees y/n’s brother Malcolm standing over the ruins of their tea. 

“Oy, y/n! We have to go home early today, Mum isn’t feeling well,” he yells at them, his face hard in displeasure that Brahms knows is aimed at him as Emily is an angel in everyone else’s eyes.

Brahms tightens his hold on y/n’s hand and looks at her with heavy eyes, he can feel himself internally quake at the fact that she has to leave and that means being left alone with his greatest tormentor. His parents wouldn’t believe or care much if he told them about Emily’s behavior and fits of violence, so he knows that he will be left to protect himself the best he can. It’s better than having y/n around Emily because at least when she is gone she can’t be hurt as well, but the emptiness he feels in her absence is magnified tenfold by Emily’s painful presence and he selfishly wishes she could never leave him regardless. 

Y/n looks at him sadly before wiping the trickle of blood from her nose and turning around to Emily and sticking out her tongue before running over to Malcolm. The pair of siblings turn to look at Brahms and the now sickly sweet and politely waving Emily. Malcolm waves back obviously uncomfortable and when he turns around to leave y/n flips off Emily who growls before smiling and waving at Brahms. She turns and leaves but not before grabbing a handful of pastries and kicking Emily’s purse on the ground.

Emily clears her throat and Brahms flinches before turning to her.

“You’re lucky I like y/n so I act good when she’s here but now she’s gone and we can finally really play,” she says, a devious smile stretching on her tear-stained face.

Brahms can feel his chest tighten from fear, he can feel the aches from his hidden cuts and pinpricks. He chokes down the tears as she steps closer, her hand hidden by the skirt of her dress.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms wakes up with a start, he can feel the chill of a sheen of sweat on his body and he can’t make out much in the darkness of the room. He checks the clock, he’s barely slept at all, as it is very early in the morning. He can feel that he is holding y/n too tightly to him so he forces himself to loosen his grip as he shakes, reeling from his memory disguised as a dream. It was the last time he was with y/n before that day and all that happened after. Old panic rises in him, making him still from the anxiety of his past constantly haunting him.

He pushes y/n’s hair from her face with trembling fingers. He stares at the planes of her face just barely visible from the light of the moon that leaks in from the window. She grounds him and he needs that now so he lays his head on her chest and bites his lip to keep himself from crying, all of the ghosts of his past injuries awakening and aching in the night.

Chapter Text

Brahms sighs, pushing his hair from his face and fastening his mask. He just ate breakfast with y/n and then disappeared to his secret apartment to shower while she got to work on some of her commissions. It’s been a few days since their mini row over her art and the night of his memory-dream and while he and y/n have fallen into a comfortable routine of togetherness, Brahms can’t help but feel like the ball is going to drop soon. So far in his life happiness was always closely followed by pain in all the worst ways, and he’s never been happier than he is now so he feels as if the pain that will come from this will be the worst of his life.

He shakes his head to get his hair to sit right over the forehead of his mask, and he rubs his chest with one hand trying to dispel the growing knot of fear. He tidies up his apartment, not because he needs to but because he is crackling with nervous energy he doesn’t know how to dispel otherwise. As he makes his bed he pauses having remembered the fact that neither he nor y/n has gone into his childhood room since he stepped out of her closet, meaning that it’s still torn up from his tantrum. He frowns behind the mask, annoyed at his past self for the destruction.

He finishes tidying up, throwing his handmade doll under his bed before going to his childhood room through the walls, hoping to avoid explaining the room’s state to y/n. When he gets there he creeps across the room and checks the hallway to make sure y/n is still downstairs and when he determines that she is, he softly closes the door again before turning to the mess. 

His bed is practically on the floor and the Brahms doll is tossed to the side looking very much like a murdered child from the odd angles of its limbs. Broken toys are strewn along the floor like glass from a broken window, drawings hang in shreds off the walls, and a decanter of his father’s bourbon sits nearly empty on the floor. Brahms shrinks into himself as he observes the aftermath of his drunken rage, something he had completely forgotten about in the overwhelming newness of being reunited with y/n and leaving his life in the walls, two things he never thought would happen.

His parents are very strict about him staying in the walls, stressing that no one must ever see him and that includes them. He has spoken to them throughout the years through the walls, requesting food or to be given some of his father’s hand-me-down clothes as he grew but always in the childlike voice his mother asked him to use. She would ignore him if he used his natural voice so he had to learn from puberty how to sound like he had before he went into the walls. 

His mother commissioned the Brahms doll not long after that day , soon enough after that he was still bedridden in the walls covered in slapdash bandages, sloppily done by his eight-year-old self when he could hear her dote on the doll through the walls. The fire had almost destroyed the right half of his face and severely injured parts of his chest on the same side. The damaged skin was pulled tight in the wrong places by not having healed correctly as he was forced by circumstance to tend to his own wounds, aided rarely by his father who would check on him every couple of days and drop off some food and water. 

Back then his apartment hadn’t existed, it was just an empty room that his parents had hurriedly shoved a child-sized bed into. For weeks after the fire he had practically wasted away on that bed, choking on the scent of his unwashed body and the smell of his own burned skin. He had almost died, he can remember the feeling of his heart starting to slow and the darkness of his room beginning to wash over him, smooth and cold, but he had thought of y/n at that moment and the darkness receded. He gasped at the feeling of warmth he got from her memory and somehow he survived that night.

He doesn’t remember much from that time beyond the constant pain, every breath would pull his wounds tight and make him cry, but he was so dehydrated no tears actually came out so he would end up just shaking in his bed, every movement agony that only led to more. He eventually healed enough to leave the bed aided by a walking stick his father had left him. He had immediately set out to clean himself of the filth of weeks of neglect, his father had cleaned him intermittently but never to the degree Brahms would have liked. His sheets were a Pollack painting of dried blood, pus, and dead skin and the sight of it made him sick. 

His father let him out of his secret room to take a shower, the warm water had been simultaneous ecstasy and torture, and when he got back to his room, water drips searing his angry scars, his bed was cleanly made. There was also a small lantern and bedpan. This was all he had beyond a couple of books he nicked from his old room for months before his parents bribed a contractor to make the room ‘livable long term’. While the contractor worked he was sent to the attic where he slept on a pile of ancient linens, always sleeping with the little bat stuffed animal y/n had given him as his last birthday present.

In the end, the room had become something like a bare apartment complete with a fridge, microwave, lighting, a small bathroom with a tight shower, and some miscellaneous furniture. His mother had taken him into the new space, her hand in his and she left him there alone after handing him the mask he wears even now. Back then it had been too big, constantly rubbing against his wounds and then scars, irritating his skin and making his eyes tear up from the pain but he got used to it over time. When he was young he would have to use a chair to reach things but he grew quickly despite likely being malnourished.

Over the two decades since the space has grown to reflect him and his interests. He’s put a considerable amount of time into making the space his own and every inch of it speaks to that. The walls are covered in egg cartons to soundproof the room for his violin practice, animal traps hang from the ceiling, and his forays into amateur taxidermy sit at his desk along with his other artistic pursuits. One of the columns in his room is plastered with sheet music and star-shaped fairy lights and plants hang from the rafters. It is a bit dingy despite his constant cleaning, an urge that stems at least partly from the forced squalor of those weeks alone, but it's the only home he’s ever really known at this point.

Brahms grunts as he observes his childhood room, a foreign monument to an almost dream-like past. He is so used to his secret apartment that the simplicity and space of his old room feels far too expansive, like the anxiety of being alone in a dark empty warehouse, the ceilings so far overhead they almost dissolve into the sky. He practically itches from the uncomfortable feeling of almost unadulterated space. He suppresses the feeling and begins to clean, extremely careful not to make noise as he doesn’t want y/n to come in.

He falls into a rhythm of cleaning, silent and somber, feeling entrenched in every memory the broken things he’s clearing hold. It's almost like every toy he broke let loose some hidden history and now they’re all hanging in the air around him, the air feels thick with everything he’s forgotten and stagnant with everything he remembers. He is so entrenched in the mindless motions of cleaning and his own thoughts that he doesn’t hear the door open. He hears y/n clear her voice behind him and he freezes, turning back slowly like he’s been caught in a crime.

“What happened here?” she asks, gesturing to the room that is still half in disarray, her eyebrow raised seemingly amused.

Brahms can feel his face heat under his mask, he tosses the toy in his hand to the side as if to absolve himself of the mess or to say “I don’t know either”. It doesn’t work though and y/n laughs, walking over to him, taping his shoulder like a question. He leans into her, silent for a moment before answering in a soft voice.

“It was before, when you went out with Malcolm, I…I panicked. I…” his voice breaks and he chokes down the urge to use his childlike voice, a habit that's been hard to break.

He can feel his hands start to tremble, his heart is racing, twisting. He can’t let y/n hate him, he couldn’t live with himself if she thought badly of him. The only way he’s ever known any type of love from his parents is through striving for perfection and masking all of his shortcomings and he can’t help but see his relationship with y/n through a similar lens of having to prove himself worthy of attention and affection.

“Huh. Ok, do you want help cleaning this all up?” she asks.

He looks at her intensely, trying to understand why she is taking his mistake in stride. Obviously, y/n isn’t quite normal if she doesn’t mind him and hasn’t turned him in to the authorities one way or the other but the idea that she could just help him rather than punish him never crossed his mind. He shudders at the thought of what his Mother would have done if she’d seen such a display of rebellion. Y/n tips her head to the side as she waits for him to respond. He slowly reaches out and takes a lock of her hair in between his fingers.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice rough, feeling overcome with the realization of y/n’s easy acceptance of him.

He can see her eyes flash with questions but she just smiles at him and nods.

“Of course,” she responds.

They get to work, Brahms moves to the bed and y/n gathers the rest of the broken and strewn-about toys into a pile. They move almost in sync, not having to speak to work together perfectly. As y/n picks up the toys she hums and turns them over in her hands. Brahms watches her out of the sides of his eyes, he has rarely not had his eyes on her since she came back. Brahms puts the bed back together and then stands over the Brahms doll frowning at it from behind his mask.

He knows it's illogical but he has always been intensely jealous of the doll and that was only compounded when y/n was hired to take care of it despite the fact that it had been his plan. His initial jealousy stemmed from the doll quite literally replacing him in his parents' eyes. He was still there, watching and breathing and alive on the other side of the walls as he saw his parents dote on the inanimate object. His mother spent a small fortune on accouterments for the doll, clothing in particular even as his clothes grew tight and threadbare. He was confined to a shadowed world with only himself for company, only free enough to observe the true freedom his parents enjoyed and conferred on a doll whose only purpose seemed to be to assuage them of their guilt. He knew they were always aware of his presence, lowering their voices inside, eyes darting to the walls as they huddled together, the porcelain effigy never far from his mother’s arms.

The plot to get y/n to come to the estate had been his and his parents had only allowed for it after the war he had waged on their other attempts at hiring help. For the last year or so his parents had been searching for a house sitter as they wanted to go on an extended trip and needed someone to unwittingly keep Brahms from starving to death. He had resisted every person they had tried out, scaring them off with noises in the night, moving their things, and whatever other ominous things he could think of, and every single one of them hadn’t been able to last more than a couple of days. His parents had raged at him but they had long ago lost their hold on him, he had stopped fearing them when he observed just how weak they were.

Eventually, they gave up and pleaded with him to let them go, promising to appease them in any way they could afford. He had smiled when they said that, the two of them standing close to the wall he stood behind, their hands out pleading and his mother’s eyes wet while his fathers were fearful. Brahms had enjoyed seeing those looks on their faces, guiltless. He used his childlike voice to explain what it is he wanted, the only thing they could give him that would be payment enough for him to set them free, y/n. His mother had gasped but his father hadn’t been surprised, he had always seen Brahsm for who he was. His mother had arranged it and y/n was at their door less than a month later. Brahms would feel more guilty if he wasn’t so full of happiness at his plan succeeding and culminating with his unexpected reunion with y/n.

He stoops down and gingerly picks up the doll, his disgust and misgivings towards it apparent in his every movement. He looks down at it in his hands, a sneer behind his mask. He wouldn’t hate it so much if he hadn't had to spend weeks watching his y/n entertain the thing, that had hurt worse than all of the years he watched his mother raise the doll instead of the child she had abandoned to the darkest parts of the house. He startles when he feels y/n’s hand on his elbow. He turns to see her standing behind him, her face concerned. He doesn’t know how to voice his thoughts, many of them thoughts he would never dare share with her lest she realize what a monster he truly is behind his mask. He looks back down at the doll, before looking into her eyes.

“I don’t like it,” he says.

Y/n looks down at the doll.

“I can see why, it doesn’t exactly do you justice,” she says, nodding her head in understanding.

Brahms’ mouth stretches into a small smile, he shakes his head at her amused.

“It doesn’t does it?”

She smiles up at him.

“Nothing could,” she responds, nudging him with her hip.

He sets the doll on the bed before turning to y/n and enveloping her in a hug. She is stiff for a second in surprise before relaxing into him. He has to keep down a noise of satisfaction at the feeling of her body melding with his. She fits perfectly into his arms and it only feeds Brahms feeling that they were always meant to be. He presses his face into her hair, taking a deep breath and sighing at the scent of her hair products. She stiffens in his arms making him frown.

“Brahms, don’t lie, did you just sniff me?” she asks.

Brahms flinches, his eyes going wide at being caught. He presses his face closer to her and he tightens his grip on her instinctively. 

“No,” he says, his voice unsure even to his ears.

Y/n leans back and they look at each other. Brahms’ eyes shift away in embarrassment.

“I..” Brahms says but pauses when y/n leans in close to his masked face.

He swallows thickly as his eyes rove over her nearing face, his hands tightening on her arms. When her head rests in the crook of his neck his heart practically siezes. He holds his breath for a second before he hears her sniff loudly before leaning back and looking at him with an amused look.

“Now we're even, weirdo,” she says before pulling away from him.

She turns away and resumes cleaning, leaving Brahms standing shell-shocked. He nervously pushes the hair from his masked forehead, his stomach tight and tingling. He can still feel the ghost of her breath on his neck and his fingers skim over the skin for a moment as he watches her. He returns to cleaning as well to keep himself from lingering too long on how her proximity had stirred up the emotions and urges he’s worked so hard to suppress. The longer he yearns for her the more intense the climax of his emotions will be, the inevitable shattering letdown of not getting what he knows he cannot have, but he can’t stop the way his heart races every time their eyes meet, or how her light touches feel like a small death, too sweet to not become addicted to.

“Hey Brahms, do you remember this? I think I do…” y/n says, holding up a toy.

Brahms looks over and balks, it's the bat she gave him for his eighth birthday. It's threadbare and faded from decades of use, and he’s not sure how it made its way to this room from its constant place on his pillow in his secret apartment. He walks over to her and crouches to her level on the floor.

“Yes, it’s my favorite…I’m not sure how it got down here…” he says, not realizing that in his confusion he’s inadvertently mentioned his secret apartment which he has been avoiding mentioning since the night she convinced him to eventually take her to.

Y/n hums as she holds the toy, her fingers trailing along the ancient looking stitching and the shining black button eyes.

“Down here huh? When am I going to see what’s up there Brhams?” she asks, obviously teasing.

Brahms frowns behind his mask. He shrugs and y/n giggles.

“I’m just fucking with you Brhams, you don’t have to show me anything at all, nothing you don’t want,” she says, patting his shoulder as she stands up.

Brahms feels like his tongue has died in his mouth, he wants to explain that he does want to show her his space, that he wants to share everything with her if she’d accept any of the broken things he has to offer her, but he’s scared that she will see the cracks and fissures and abandon him to the more perfect world outside of the estate’s walls.

Y/n brushes her jeans off and surveys the now almost spotless room. The broken things are all tossed into a box on the floor and the only things left to do are to deal with the shredded pictures on the walls and put the bottle of bourbon back in its place in the study downstairs. 

They both walk over to the wall of pinned-up papers and Brahms watches as y/n takes them in. Most of them are hers, very few his, all the art they made together as kids. Brahms spent as much time as he could at her house and in her room which was closer to an artist's studio than a bedroom, the two of them spending hours upon hours sprawled out on the floor among pots of paint, canisters of glitter, and an ocean of markers and colored pencils. 

The distinction between his art and hers is very obvious in the difference in subject and color. The few juvenile art pieces of his that are hung up are monochrome black and white with dashes of color and glitter that were no doubt y/n’s influence. His drawings are mostly of her in fantastical situations such as on a beach chair on the moon or as a princess at a ball. Her paintings are mostly of him or her family in mundane situations like washing the dishes or sitting in the garden but the simplicity of the subjects is made beautiful by her unique artistic perspective. 

He reaches out and runs his finger along the curve of one of the portraits he made of her. She looks up at him and smiles pointing to one of his drawings. 

“I told you that you were always the better artist. I’m happy most of these survived the night,” she says.

He shakes his head, he knows she’ll never take a compliment because neither will he.

“No. I might have made some art but you’re the artist.” 

She shrugs.

“Hardly but I suppose you must like my earlier work better than the stuff I’m making now, less risque and more, well, family-friendly,” she says, obviously alluding to the fit he pitched over her art a few days ago.

He looks down at her and reaches out for her hand which she allows, feeling insecure about his bad behavior. He knows that he overreacted but god how he hated and still hates the idea of y/n knowing anybody's body but his, as the only body he has ever wanted to know is hers as impossible as that is. He loves her commissioned art, perhaps too much with how he cannot ever seem to expel the images from his mind, the ropes, toys, and positions making his heart beat faster and his body ache to satiate his curiosity. But while he loves them he wasn’t lying when he said he only wants her to draw him like that, no one else. He wants her to make him like all of those flushed and crying men in her drawings, overwhelmed by the ministrations of the unseen artist but he knows better than to let himself entertain these fantasies in particular. He grunts, pouting a bit.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes yet again.

“Brahms, dude, you don’t need to apologize. It’s so over, I just couldn’t help but tease you a little bit. Besides, maybe one day you’ll make me an offer I can’t refuse and I really will give in to your request ,” she says with a giggle.

Brahms looks down at her head, turned away from him, his body ignited by the promise of even the barest chance. He hates how she teases him, not knowing that he hangs on every word desperate for her to want him like he wants her. She could never though, why would someone like her who has so much ahead of her lower herself to be with someone like him, a walking dead man with no future outside of the stone and mahogany tomb he’s wasted away in since childhood. He could never let her see what is below his mask, couldn’t let her see what would undoubtedly disgust her. He wouldn’t survive the inevitable look of revulsion in her eyes, not when he could never look at her with anything but love.

They pick out the drawings that were damaged, all his as even in his drunken despair he would never damage anything that could remind him of her. When they finish y/n grabs the box of things to go out with the trash and starts down the stairs followed by Brahms with the bottle of bourbon in his hands.

As they walk down the stairs y/n looks back at him with a smile he could only describe as radiant. When she looks at him like that he feels like a pauper blessed by a benevolent saint. She hums and sort of dances around as they walk. He looks down at her bobbing head and practically moans from want, stifling it by biting his lip. He knows he can’t deny his feelings much longer and as he walks into the study to set the bottle down, he wonders if his plan to keep y/n by his side has worked so wonderfully so far, why can’t he just make another? One to make sure she stays there forever.

Chapter Text

You are taking a shower after just having woken up and kicking Brahms out of your room to go make breakfast when you hear the racket of someone entering the house. You can hear the front door being thrown open carelessly making you pause your soaping. A second later you hear a yell of your name followed by ‘wakey-wakey bitch’ and you realize it’s your brother and not some other annoying intruder with a penchant for loud noises and expletives. 

You roll your eyes and go back to scrubbing before you realize something, Brahms is downstairs. Your eyes go wide and you choke on your spit as you rush to rinse off. You jump out of the shower, throw a towel on, and bound down the steps to meet your brother before he goes exploring or hears something or someone he shouldn’t. You are practically soaking and are dripping all over the place when you meet your brother in the foyer. You push your hair out of your face and freeze, he’s not alone.

Conrad stands next to Malcolm, wide-eyed with a box of oranges in his arms. You haven’t seen him since you went out to drink with Malcolm the night Brahms revealed himself. You and Conrad stare at each other for a moment as both of your faces heat before Malcolm clears his throat. You look over at your brother who is standing with a grocery bag at his feet, his eyes narrowed and darting in between the two of you. You shuffle awkwardly on your feet.

“Uhh y/n, what’s with the getup? Were you that eager to see your big brother? I suppose I should be flattered…” Malcolm says an eyebrow raised.

You clear your throat and look down at yourself. Water is running down your bare legs and pooling at your feet, the towel is about miniskirt length and you feel vulnerable at that realization. You look back up at your brother and Conrad and decide to try and distract them a bit in an attempt to keep them from asking more questions.

“Nah. I just like to air dry and I didn’t know you would be bringing a guest, not that I mind at all Conrad, but hell Malcolm you could warn a bitch next time,” you say, hand on your hip.

Conrad smiles at you, his ears red under his messy blonde hair. Malcolm rolls his eyes and picks up the bag to take it to the kitchen. You step in front of him smoothly. He looks down at you confused and you deadpan up at him, you can see Conrad looking confused in the background. You lean in and do all your panicked mind can come up with, you bark loudly making him flinch before your run to the kitchen. 

You find the room empty but you see the pantry door is open just a sliver and through the crack you can just barely make out Brahms’ silhouette. Malcolm walks in yelling at you playfully and explaining to a laughing Conrad that you were dropped on your head as a baby too many times to count so he should be patient. You look over at him unamused.

“Whatever Malcolm you’re just mad I like Conrad more than you and just that quick. I’m going upstairs to change, you can just leave everything on the counter and whatnot, I’m reorganizing the kitchen so I’ll put it all away later,” you say, your voice just slightly louder than normal to make sure Brahms heard you. 

Malcolm shrugs and dumps the food on the counter before patting your head like a dog as he walks by to bring the rest in. Conrad nods his head at you with a laugh before following Malcolm out. 

You give the pantry door a meaningful look before running upstairs to your room. You whip off your towel and hurriedly pull on some clothes, Brahms materializing from your closet as you stand in your bra with your shirt in your hands. You look over at him relieved, throw your shirt on, and then walk over to where he is frozen and hug him, your face in his chest. You breathe out a sigh.

“Fucking hell Brahms I was scared they were going to see you! I had no idea that Conrad was going to be there too and now I’ve made an absolute fool of myself in front of him. Poor guy,” you say, face still pressed to his chest.

You can hear his racing heart and when he speaks the rumble of his rough voice makes his chest vibrate against your cheek.

“Stupid Malcolm,” Brahms says, he tries to say more but you pinch his side at him insulting your brother.

He grunts.

“Malcolm shouldn’t have brought that stupid Christopher. We don’t need that much food anyways,” he says, emphasizing the names like they disgust him.

You giggle and pull away from him. Brahms is smart, wicked smart, and more observant than anyone could ever hope to be so you know he is purposefully getting Conrad’s name wrong.

“It’s Conrad Brahms, and Malcolm doesn’t really have a reason not to bring help when he needs it. Besides, Conrad’s a nice guy,” you say.

Brahms looks down at you, his eyes flashing darkly.

“Conor isn’t as nice as me so forget about him! Tell Malcolm he can’t come here anymore! It’s my house and I say no,” Brahms says, his voice thick with displeasure.

You give him an unimpressed look.

“Oy, you can both be nice, just because I think Conrad is a nice guy doesn’t mean I like you any less, not that it should matter, and I’m not telling Malcolm any such thing, it would be too suspicious. Now I need to get back down there before one of them comes up here looking for me,” you say.

You shake yourself from his just a bit too tight grasp and go to the door. He stands where you left him looking at you with obvious anger. You sigh.

“We’ll talk about it when they leave, okay Brahms?”

He watches you for a second, his eyes darting to your hand that rests on the handle before meeting your eyes. He nods once, reluctantly and you give him a look that is a mix of a warning and a smile before you leave him. You bound down the steps in time to meet Malcolm and Conrad on their way out.

“Hey y/n, if you’re not busy later would you want to go out drinking with me?” Conrad asks.

Malcolm grunts loudly, looking at Conrad like he’s just spit on his shoes. Conrad’s face flushes a deep red.

“I meant us! We’re all going out drinking later, so it would be all of us, not just you and me, I mean not that I would mind…or uh, well, you… ugh,” Conrad says, his voice breaking from obvious embarrassment and finally giving up at the end, putting his face in his hands.

Malcolm stands to the side looking unimpressed and for some reason you know Brahms is watching and isn’t exactly thrilled either. You know you’ve got two pouty overprotective men watching but you throw caution to the wind because you can’t help but feel bad for the mortified Conrad. You step forward and pat his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. He takes his face from his hands and looks at you, his face still red. You smile.

“I can’t today but I would totally be down to drink with everyone some other day, raincheck?” you ask.

Conrad smiles at you gratefully.

“Yeah, raincheck for sure,” he responds.

“Gross, Conrad go start the car please, it's bloody hot outside and I want the air conditioner on,” Malcolm says.

Conrad nods.

“Bye,” he says, turning to you before leaving.

“Bye Conrad,” you say, waving back.

When he’s gone Malcolm turns to you with a judgemental look on his face.

“Absolutely not y/n! Conrad and all of my friends are off-limits, especially that oaf out there. No offense but I don’t think he’d survive you…” he says.

You give him a look of disbelief.

“Oh please Malcolm I’m not gunning for him, I just felt bad! This whole interaction has been awkward as hell and I was just trying to put both of us out of my misery, it's not like going out with all of your friends is going to make me and Conrad married or something!” you say.

Malcolm puts his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, as long as we’re on the same page.”

You roll your eyes as he heads out the door but then you remember the last bit of what he said earlier.

“Hey! What do you mean he wouldn’t survive me!” you yell at his back.

He turns around with a knowing look and shrugs before walking off and getting into his car.

“Motherfucker” you say to yourself, knowing he isn’t exactly wrong but hating how he knows he’s right.

You close the front door and pout at it for a second before turning around and coming face to face with Brahms. You yelp and almost fall back but he launches forward and catches you just in time, leaving you looking up at him in his arms. Your heart skips a beat and it strikes a bolt of fear into you so you jump away from him, putting a hand to your chest to steady your nerves.

“Fuck Brahms you scared the shit out of me! Jesus…” you say, voice high from surprise.

Brahms stands there his eyes as dark as you’ve ever seen him, his whole body tense. His whole countenance screams that he is upset so you cock your head at him and wait for him to use his words. He doesn’t and you just end up looking at each other in silence for tense a minute.

“Are you going to tell me why you look about ready to murder somebody?” you ask Brahms.

He silently looks at you. You cock your head before going to walk around him but his hand shoots out and gently rests on your arm making you stop.

“Colbert. I don’t like him at all . I don’t want you to drink with him ever, no rainchecks,” he says, his voice having an air of authority that makes you want to scoff.

You sigh, feeling guilty because you know Brahms can’t go out drinking with everyone so he must be feeling left out. You reach out and pat his shoulder.

“You know you’re my best friend forever Brahms, a couple of drinks with Conrad and the rest of Malcolm’s friends isn’t going to change that. Besides, I’d honestly rather be here with you anyways. I’m very much in my hermit era,” you say with mock seriousness despite the honesty of everything you say, you truly would rather be with Brahms doing nothing than doing anything with anyone else.

“Best friends only?” Brahms asks.

You pause, not understanding the vulnerability in his voice and his intense eyes. You think he is saying that the two of you, the best friends, should hang out only, so you don’t get why he seems so hurt.

“Of course, best friends only,” you say, your voice quieter and softer than normal.

You can feel your growing guilt rearing its ugly head in the back of your mind, you know you are seeing him less and less like just a ‘best friend’ but you need to kill those feelings before you hurt the both of you. He seems to flinch from your words and a pang shoots through your heart. You can feel the gravity of the moment, of your words, but you’re floundering under the fact you don’t know why. You reach out to him and he rears back, and you flinch, you feel as if you’ve done something wrong.

“Brahms? What’s wrong?” you ask, your voice practically a whisper.

You look into his eyes and they’re wet. Your throat tightens and you don’t know what to say.

“Are you okay? Did I do something? I…” you say but stop when Brahms abruptly pulls you to his body in a hug.

His arms are vice-tight around you but not uncomfortable, just firm enough around you that you realize that he is much stronger than you would have guessed. He hides his face in the crook of your neck and as you wrap your arms around him you can feel him shake slightly. You are at a loss, you feel like you’re on the precipice of something like the cliff could break under your feet at any time. It's a few silent moments later when Brahms speaks, his voice wet and rough.

“I’m sorry y/n.”

You pat his back and nuzzle your head against his, your face scrunched up in concern.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” you say, not believing your words, feeling as if you should be begging his forgiveness for the feelings you harbor for him.

He pulls away from you, his eyes don’t meet yours. He sniffles but he can’t wipe his face with you there, you would offer to close your eyes but it doesn’t feel right.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he says.

You nod and before you can say anything he turns away and disappears into the study, no doubt to go to his secret apartment via the walls. You are left there alone in the foyer feeling fragile like you’ve broken something you didn’t know you had. You feel tied up in knots, overwhelmed as the wave of emotions you’ve been storing in yourself rushes out. 

You want to cry as you think of what impossible futures you have before you, every one sweeter and more unthinkable. You know this can’t last, it’s not right for him to be stuck here with no one but you. That, you , couldn’t be enough for him, he deserves the world even if it has forgotten him for so long.

—

Brahms barely makes it to his room before he breaks down, itching for destruction like a child without words enough to explain his pain. He doesn’t break anything though, he has too little and what he has, he has had for too long. He sits on his floor, his thin back pressed tight against the grit of the brick wall behind him. He tears his mask off, unleashing rivers of tears that had collected below it, he feels drowned in himself. 

His lips tremble and his hands hold the sides of his face. He flinches as his fingers run over the raised skin of the extensive burn scars on his right side. Bile rises in his throat and he wants to scream at the broken and scarred body he is in, wishing he could have something desirable or at least untainted to offer y/n, something worth loving, something worth her love. He pulls and scratches at his scarred skin, wanting foolishly to sand himself down like marble, smooth the lighting like scars until they turn soft, until he looks and feels human again.

He loves her, he doesn’t know anything but his love for her, and it pains him how blind she is to it. He stood on the other side of the wall as that stupid fucking Conrad looked over y/n’s nearly bare form like a snake at a broken-winged bird. He would have left the walls just to break Conrad’s neck if he could have gotten away with it, if he thought y/n could have forgiven such a sin. 

He knows that she meant well by calling him her best friend, after all, he should be thankful he can be anything to her, but the finality of the label, the history of it felt like the death toll on his ever growing feelings for her. He knows how futile it is to entertain his fantasies of living with y/n of loving her and her loving him, of being free of his mask and the dark, but the pain of what he cannot have is his favorite wound, the ache reminds him that he is alive and that everything is possible in some universe out there.

He throws his head back as his sobs start to still, his throat thick enough with tears that he feels like he is being suffocated by the intensity of his turmoil. He looks up at the ceiling through the wild strands of his hair, the black locks looking like prison bars. He is reminded of one of the songs y/n played one night, when she stared off into the moonlight darkness at her window, My Body is a Cage. He runs his fingers absently along the scars, feeling where the skin is pulled tight, no longer painful except for how he feels about them, but he can remember the ghost of the pain that branded him a monster only fit for the shadows.

He can remember the smoke filling the room and the flames flickering, beautiful from afar but quickly turning terrifying for how fast they grew and devoured the world around him. He remembers the way the smoke filled his lungs so thoroughly it felt like they had expanded just to fit more burning ash. He remembers his mother’s face as she lit the match and closed the door, but most of all he remembers as his body grew heavy and he laid on the warm wood floor how sad he was that he couldn’t play with y/n anymore.

—

You aren’t sure what you’ve done, or at least that’s what you tell yourself as you put the food away listlessly. You can feel the answers playing at the edges of your conscious mind but you don’t dare entertain the idea that Brahms could feel the same as you, especially when you aren’t sure exactly what you feel. 

You have a long history of relationships that were little more than games, distractions you created to have something to fill your empty hours with. You are terrified your selfish curiosity and urge to not be alone may be interfering with the innocent feelings you always had for Brahms. 

You are scared of what you could do to him, how you could destroy him by not being able to love him the way he deserves, the way he needs after a life like his. You feel lost in a sea of feelings you are too scared to examine and you wish that some fairy or something would appear and tell you what the fuck they meant and what you were supposed to do with that information.

You sigh and push the hair from your face as you slide the last can into its place on the pantry shelf. You bite your lip and think of what alive branch you can offer Brahms, anything to not feel like you are standing on shifting sand that only promises to swallow you whole. You eye the ingredients your brother brought and you come up with the answer, Brahms’ favorite breakfast. Surely whatever had passed and possibly broken between you earlier could be fixed that easily?

You take what you need out for french toast, his absolute favorite food. You remember the mornings Brahms spent at your house after the rare sleepovers he was allowed and how he hummed and smiled at your mother’s French toast. You laugh sadly as you remember how one time he had been caught stuffing slices into the pockets of his trousers so from then on your mother made extra for him to take home. 

You feel teary as you make it but the mindlessness of cooking something so familiar soothes you. You follow your mom’s recipe, something you know by heart, adding a special step you learned from Ada of all people where after you coat the bread in the egg wash you put some turbinado sugar on top so when it fries the sides of the bread get a creme brulee type of coating.

When you finish you can’t help but admire your cooking skills, turning the plate of french toast around like you are filming a commercial and beaming with pride. You pick up the plate to go try and find Brahms, your plan being that if you yell his name enough he’ll be forced to come out of the walls to shut you up, and that’s where you will bribe him to hang out with you with the French toast. You turn to go enact your plan but for the second time today, you come face to face with Brahms.

You startle, almost dropping your plate, but his hands find yours and steady you. You look at him silently for a second before blurting an apology and thrusting the French toast into his hands. He looks down at it with big eyes and looks back up at you.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he says, repeating your words to him earlier.

You smile at him and then hug him as he holds the plate out to the side. He hugs you back and you pretend not to notice how the collar of his shirt is still a bit damp or how his eyes are red from crying. You don’t know why but as you pull away from him you lean closer and press a fleeting kiss to his masked cheek before sitting down at the table. 

He joins you a second later and you feel as if some of the air has been cleared, but from the way your lips are still tingling from the cold of his porcelain mask and how heady you feel at the wisp of his scent you got as you hugged him, you can’t help but feel doomed to make a mistake you can see miles ahead of you.

Chapter Text

 After the unexplained tension of the morning dissipated and breakfast finished you and Brahms had drifted apart, you to do your art commissions and Brahms to do whatever Brahms does when he is alone. It’s almost night now.

You are sketching a concept for a new piece but can’t focus and lose yourself in the art like you usually do. Questions are plaguing your mind, creating cycles of curiosity and corresponding repression that you can’t seem to shake. You shift on your bed where you are sitting, pretending like getting more comfortable will fix your ever-wandering mind.

Eventually, you give up with a sigh. You grunt as you lay down, pouting at your inability to get your shit together. You roll around for a couple of minutes before you jump up, deciding to go looking for Brahms, not liking the distance from him. You leave your room and wander through the second and first floors, not finding him. You go up to the third floor and he is nowhere to be found and he hasn’t come out of the walls to end your misery. You sigh loudly knowing he is near and watching you, your mischievous and teasing side takes over.

“Ugh, I guess I’m going to have to go out with Malcolm and Conrad after all. It’s a shame because I wanted to have a movie marathon tonight…” you say loudly, exaggerating all of your words and gesturing dramatically with your arms.

The effect is instantaneous, a thump rings out from a wall near you and seconds later a disheveled-looking Brahms stumbles out of an adjacent room. He fast walks to you determinedly.

“No!” he says, his voice firm.

You roll your eyes.

“I only said that to get you to stop pouting in the walls, I don’t want to hang out with those dweebs when I have the coolest motherfucker to hang out with right here. So what are you feeling movie-wise? I’m thinking slashers,” you say with a sly smile on your face.

Brahms seems to deflate at your words, his body losing the rigidness of what you guess was anger. He looks at you with an unreadable expression before huffing.

“What is a slasher?” he mumbles.

Your smile widens and you take his cool hand, leading him downstairs.

“You’ll see,” you say with a giggle.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms lets himself be led by y/n to the library, liking the weight of her hand in his. When they get to the library she excitedly sits him down on a loveseat that is parallel to one of the few bare walls in the house. She tells him to stay and excitedly leaves the room to go get her laptop to watch movies on.

Brahms sighs as he sits back, still not quite recovered from his panic and crying earlier. In his post crying numbness he had decided to pretend he doesn’t feel anything for y/n beyond what a friend would, thinking that if he fakes romantic indifference, at some point it will be true. However, he hasn’t given up on planning to make sure y/n never leaves his side, but platonically of course. He thinks he has no chance with her otherwise so if it means keeping her with him he is willing to kill that romantic and hopeful part of him. He has survived so far, he thinks, so as long as he keeps the promise of forever in mind he shouldn’t have much trouble with the temptations of the present.

He isn’t quite sure how he is going to keep her tied to him but he has a few ideas. He doesn’t want to hurt y/n in any way so as of right now his main plan is for him to get her to realize life with him is far better than life in the outside world, and that as far as life partners go he is the most perfectly suited to her. He plans to do this by being as good of a boy as he can, listening to her, and giving her gifts. He started a gift for her earlier and he plans for it to be only one of many over the years if all goes well.

Just being in her presence is enough for him, he shouldn’t allow himself to become too greedy, he nods to himself, just possessing her is enough. Then there is the fact that if she stays with him long enough her feelings might evolve…but he can’t let himself plan for that just yet.

Y/n comes back into the library loaded down with her laptop, an armful of snacks, and a weird-looking box. She explains the box is something called a projector. He hums taking it from her and turning it over in his hands. He gives it back to her and she sets up her laptop, plugging the projector in. When a picture shines onto the wall opposite from them Brahms startles, jostling the bags of snacks she had dumped into his arms. He looks at her with wide eyes. He has never seen anything like this before, she made the wall into a tv with only the little projector box!

Y/n giggles at him making his cheeks heat under his mask. He clears his mouth in what he hopes is a manly way and sets the snacks on the table. Y/n is kneeling down fiddling with her laptop and Brahms’ eyes can’t help but follow the lines of her body appreciatively. The way she kneels, almost bouncing on the tips of her toes makes him swallow thickly. He can feel himself stirring so he hurriedly grabs a bag of chips and sets it on his lap.

“Oy Brahms! Did you hear me?” y/n says loudly, still looking at the screen of her laptop.

Brahms looks at her, he hadn’t heard her at all.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice huskier than he’d like, he hopes she doesn’t notice.

She giggles as she types before turning around to him, her eyes bright. His eyes zone in on her lips which she must have just licked as they are glistening, catching the colors from her computer screen.

“I said do you want to watch The Bride of Chucky or Scream? Both are essential parts of your modern-day education dear Brahmsy.”

Brahms licks his lips, he wasn’t listening again. He meets her eyes.

“The second one?”

“Good choice! This is one of my favorite movies of all time for two reasons, well honestly for quite a few reasons but two in particular,” she says as she turns back and pulls the movie up.

Brahms doesn’t even know what the movies she said were, just picked one so she would turn away and he wouldn’t have to be so fucking focused on her lips. He clears his throat as she turns off the light and sits down at his side, curling up against the armrest.

“What are the two reasons?” he asks.

She smiles at him deviously which he can only just see from the light from the projector. She holds up her fingers to count the reasons.

“One, Billy Loomis, and two, Stu Macher, you’ll see why soon my dear boy,” she says with a laugh, patting his shoulder.

Brahms frowns at her saying the names of other men, and this coupled with his situation under his bag of chips he begins to think his plan of forcing himself to only think of y/n as a friend isn’t going to last very long. He feels horribly guilty for the way his body reacts to her and the thoughts he has of her and him in some alternate universe where their bodies know each other intimately, but the guilt only amplifies the pleasure of coveting what he shouldn’t want.

As they watch the movie Brahms is hyper-aware of y/n and every movement and noise she makes. She burrows closer to him, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands like she is cold, and sticking her cold feet under his thigh. He shoots her a look at that but she just smiles at him and goes back to watching the movie. His situation is not being helped by the proximity of part of her to that part of him. He puts one arm on the armrest and tangles his fingers into his unruly hair, twisting and tugging a lock of hair to keep himself distracted.

The movie is actually pretty good and if y/n wasn’t so fucking enticing he would have lost himself in it fully. One thing he quickly learned to dislike about the movie is how y/n would sometimes make little noises when Billy or Stu came on screen, or the way she would bite her finger as they spoke, both of which only made his itch all the more desperate to be scratched and his hatred towards the two characters all the more violent.

Brahms stuffs a handful of chips into his mouth to distract himself and the noise makes y/n look over.

“Ooh chips!” she says as she reaches into the chip bag on his lap and takes a few.

Brahms makes a strangled noise as she does this as he can feel the weight of her hand in the bag on him. He chokes on a piece of chip and has a coughing fit as y/n munches on her chips and watches the movie, patting his back intermittently. He regains his control and takes a swig of y/n’s soda that she offers him.

His body is on fire with awareness and need only exacerbated by his growing hatred of Billy and Stu due to y/n’s obvious attraction to the two idiots. He gets more and more agitated as the movie goes on and decides to test y/n a little.

“Sidney is very pretty,” he says, watching y/n out of the corner of his eyes to see her reaction.

She nods not taking her face off the movie.

“Hell yeah, she is! So are Tatum and Gale, I mean honestly everyone in this movie is hot. Anyone one of them, all I ask is just one chance, I swear to god,” she says stuffing some candy into her mouth.

Brahms looks at her not really shocked, he knows she has had relationships with both sexes and many different types of people, but annoyed that if she has such an eclectic taste and an open mind for such things, why doesn’t it extend to him? He huffs and steals some of her candy and stuffs it into his mouth even though he has his own bag, pouting.

The bloodbath at the party starts and contrary to what Brahms would expect, y/n leans in and whistles when Billy and Stu reveal themselves to be the killers, muttering a low ‘fuck’ to herself. His hand tightens in his hair, almost pulling a chunk out in his frustration. He glares at the screen as the characters run around. He has never been so frustrated in his life and on so many levels, it’s overwhelming and his stomach is tight and aching with it.

Y/n licks her lips as Billy fills the screen again and when she unconsciously rubs her thighs together he just about explodes. He gets up and pauses the movie turning to a surprised y/n, her cheeks filled with snacks that she chews as she watches him pace agitatedly in front of the projector. Brahms tugs at his hair as she finally swallows.

“What's wrong Brhams?” y/n asks.

Brahms stills, at a loss as to how to explain all of the messy urges and feelings he is battling. He crosses his arms in front of him and hopes the dark of the room is obscuring his still-present situation south of the border.

“I want to follow the rules again! All ten of them!” he says.

This is true, but not actually what he wants to say to her. What he wants to do is ask her if she just likes him or if she like-likes him, and to tell her to delete the stupid scream movie so he never has to see Billy and Stu’s ugly faces again.

Y/n looks up at him quizically but nods slowly.

“Okay, if that’s what you want…” she says quietly, her eyes roving over him and flicking away quickly when they reach his legs.

“It is,” he says determinedly.

“Is that all you want?” she asks quietly.

He isn’t sure if he is imagining the knowing look in her eyes or not. He adjusts himself.

“Yes, of course, what else would I want?”

Y/n avoids his eyes, he wonders if her cheeks are as hot as his.

“I got it. We’ll start living by the rules again in the morning.”

Brahs shakes his head sharply.

“No. Tonight.”

If they start in the morning that means he doesn’t get the good night kiss tonight.

Y/n looks back at him confused and now a little annoyed.

“Why?” she asks, pushing the bags of snacks out of her way and standing up.

“Well, because that's your job! If you don’t follow the rules I’ll tell my mother and father!” he says, regretting it as it leaves his mouth.

Her eyes narrow at him, and his heart twists at her displeasure.

“Fine, Brahms. Good little boys go to sleep early so let's go,” she says, her voice obviously annoyed.

She walks past him and opens the door, gesturing for him to go first. He gulps, feeling guilty and chastised, and does as she tells him to do without words. He shuffles past her, his lips trembling behind his mask, regretting his inability to just say what he means rather than lashing out. As he walks up the stairs, his head hung like a guilty dog, he looks back at y/n, his eyes round and wet but she doesn’t see his sulking as she is too busy texting on her phone with a frown. Brahms wants to ask what she is doing but he knows better than that, she isn’t in the mood to satiate his curiosity.

When he gets to the hallway on the second floor in between y/n’s room and his childhood room he walks to y/n’s door and goes to open it but pauses when he hears y/n click her tongue behind him. He turns to her and cocks his head in confusion. She shakes her head in mock disappointment.

“Ah-ah-ah Brahms, you’re a big boy and big boys sleep in their own beds, don’t they? It’s time for your big boy bedtime story as you sleep in your big boy bed alone,” y/n says, emphasizing the words every time she says big boy, obviously mocking him.

Brahms’ grip on the door handle tightens until his knuckles are white and y/n notices but doesn’t seem particularly intimidated. He tensely lets go and robotically walks over to his room, pissed at her attitude and how he can’t blame her for treating him like an infant when all he can seem to do is pitch a fit like one.

He stomps over to his bed, looking back at her one last time to see if she’ll change her mind. She doesn’t. He growls but throws open the blankets and shoves the stupid doll off the bed with a loud thunk and clink before getting in, not bothering to cover himself up. He lays there with his arms crossed on his chest as y/n grunts and carelessly throws the blanket over his body, including his face, and mockingly patting it down like she is tucking him in.

She sits in the chair at his bedside as Brahms angrily pulls the blanket from his masked face and glares at her. She smiles in an annoyed way back at him as she cracks open the now long-forgotten Harry Potter book. Y/n reads a few chapters almost spitting out the words as Brahms huffs and glares at the ceiling like it has personally victimized him.

As she reads her anger seems to dissipate and her voice returns to normal. Brahms glances at her, watching her read. Her hair hangs at the sides of her face, framing her features beautifully, and he likes the way her eyes light up in recognition or excitement at certain parts. When she finishes another chapter she closes the book with a sigh and meets his eyes. Neither of them says anything. Brahms shifts guiltily under her gaze. He goes to speak, to apologize, but she speaks first.

“Goodnight Brahms,” she says as she stands up and sets the book on his nightstand.

She turns to leave but he reaches out and grabs her hand in a panic. He doesn’t want her to leave but doesn’t know how to say that. She looks down at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Yes, Brahms? Do you need something?” she asks, her voice slightly exasperated.

He lets go of her hand, and croaks out ‘goodnight kiss’. Her eyes widen, she must have forgotten that rule, it’s not like he ever asked her to adhere to it before.

“Really Brahms? Are you joking?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s rule ten, you have to follow all of the rules.”

She growls but stoops over and presses a lightening fast kiss to the forehead of the mask. It doesn’t satisfy Brahms like he thought it would, it only makes him more aware of how it wasn’t pressed to his skin by her own will. She walks away, pausing at the door, looking back at him with an unreadable expression.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To finish my movie, and to watch a bunch more. I’m the babysitter and that means the baby goes to sleep and the sitter does whatever the hell they want,” she says, her voice hard.

Brahms flinches and her face softens.

“Sorry Brahms, I’m not sure why I’m so annoyed, but if you want me to treat you like a child I will. Maybe we need a little time apart, today has been a fucking mess from start to finish. Goodnight Brahms, don’t let the bedbugs bite or whatever,” she says giving him a weak smile before flicking off the light and leaving.

He can hear her walk down the stairs and he stares at the door until he can’t hear her anymore, steeped in regret and longing.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

You sit down on the loveseat in the library with a huff, feeling guilty and annoyed. You press play just in time to see Stu get his head flattened by a T.V. which doesn’t help your mood at all. You grunt and throw your legs out in front of you like a petulant child in a supermarket who has been denied something they definitely don’t need.

You sigh and think about whether you want to think at all and decide against spending time untangling your emotions and the events of the day sober. You remember the edible marijuana gummies Ada slipped you during your impromptu sleepover. You smile, perfect for a movie marathon and snack gorge fest especially when you are feeling as low and tangled up as now.

You sneak up the stairs as quietly as possible and dig around in your dresser, finding the thick bag in between your g-strings. You smile, already giddy, as you pry open the ziplock seal and shake out the neon green gummies. You look down at them debating how high you want to get and decide to throw caution to the wind and eat one and a half or 15mg total, enough to knock you on your ass as a lightweight. You chew them and throw the bag back in your dresser before tiptoeing back down the stairs, giggling to yourself.

You walk into the library obviously not feeling anything yet and knowing you have half an hour before they hit and three hours before they peak, based on experience. You dust the loveseat off and get comfortable with a throw blanket and press play. By the time the movie ends and you start Scream Two, you could almost convince yourself they’ve kicked in. Fifteen minutes in and you feel the rising warmth from your legs and laugh, tonight is going to be fucking awesome.

Chapter Text

You wake early Tuesday to the ringing of your cell phone by your ear. You blearily stretch and grab it, wiping drool and chip dust from your face with semi-sticky fingers, and press answer. You grunt into the receiver, your eyes are still half closed and unfocused. You look around at yourself confused. You are laying on the library loveseat in a pool of snack wrappers, the Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong playing loudly on your laptop, and a completely empty bottle of Moscato nestled in your arms like a nursing baby.

“Oy! Y/n did you just wake up? It’s noon,” your brother says on the phone.

You pull the phone away to check the time, sure enough, is just a bit past twelve. You put the phone back to your ear.

“And your point is old man?” you say into the phone, your voice rough ass hell.

You smack your lips at your residual cotton mouth and reach out for an opened and half-drank bottle of soda. You chug it down, it's warm and flat but does the trick. You can hear your brother laughing into the phone as you sit up and stretch.

“Jesus y/n I was going to see if you wanted to go out with the crew on Friday but it seems like you know how to party all on your own,” Malcolm says.

“Damn straight brother dear but did you really just say ‘the crew’ to refer to your friends? And they voluntarily hang out with you?” you ask, standing up and brushing yourself off, closing your laptop in the process.

“Haha, yes they do… as far as I am aware at least, but are you up for Friday? Conrad is bothering me about it,” he says and you can hear Conrad yell out embarrassedly in the background to shut up.

You croak out a laugh as you stretch.

“Yeah I’m down for Friday, tell Conrad hi for me,” you say, looking around the room languidly.

You see a shadow in the corner and double back, Brahms is sitting at an armchair with a book in hand, obviously purposely ignoring you. You look closer at what book he is reading and you choke on your spit when you see that it’s one of your smut books. It's one of the ones that is heavier on fluff than true libertinage but still you just about cry seeing him read it, and from the ratio of pages on the left to the right, he’s deep into the story. You can hear Malcolm talking in the background and your extended silence makes Brahms look up, you swear his eyes are looking oddly mischievous.

“Ok Malcolm, I have to go, see you Friday, bye!” you say hurriedly into the phone before hanging up and tossing it behind you.

Brahms tips his head back to get a better look at you. You look down at yourself and cringe, you are in a right state with your disheveled clothes from yesterday dusted with food crumbs and your hair a messy halo around your head. You didn’t realize just how hard those gummies were going to hit you, but hell, you had a great time and you’re not about to apologize, for that at least.

“Oh hey Brahms…how are you this lovely morn-afternoon? Uh…heheh,” you go silent feeling embarrassed.

He cocks his head at you and slides a bookmark into his place before standing up and walking over to you. He is silent as he brushes crumbs and hair from your face. Your cheeks heat under his gaze. You rub the back of your neck and avoid looking at him.

“Sorry about waking up so late Brahms, I got a little…silly goofy last night that’s all. I didn’t break any rules though! At least not really…” you say, looking over at him apologetically.

He hums.

“It’s okay, but I want to be… silly goofy with you next time,” he says, and you can tell from his voice that he is smiling.

You are relieved that you and he are good after last night, you don’t feel proud of how you acted, but he wasn’t exactly a cherub either.

“Deal, next time I get silly goofy, we can be silly goofy together, as long as it's before big boy Brahms’ bedtime,” you say teasing him.

He grunts but leans forward and hugs you and you hug him back tightly.

“Deal,” he says quietly.

After a second he pulls away. He goes to start picking up your mess but you stop him.

“Oy, Brahms, I’ve got this, thank you though. If I made the mess I should clean it up. You can go back to…reading while I get this all sorted,” you say, your eyes flicking back to the book.

Brahms looks at you for a second before nodding and going back to his chair in the corner to read. You sigh in relief and look around you, retroactively annoyed at your inebriated self for being such a hot mess. You ask Brahms if he minds if you put on a record and he shakes his head no so you put on the Culture Club’s Kissing to be Clever album on and get to cleaning. It takes you much longer than you’d like because you have to vacuum a ten-foot radius around the loveseat and collect tumbleweed-like empty bags of chips and candy from all around the floor.

When you finally finish you stand proudly over the now sparkling clean area and as you survey your thorough work you catch Brahms’ eyes which are looking at you amused. You stick out your tongue. You eye the book, he’s nearly done and you see one of your most raunchy books set at his side, obviously the next in line. You blanch at the sight of it and you can tell he notices because he looks over at the book with a renewed interest.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” you say.

Brahms nods at you and waves as you leave. You hum in thought as you make your way upstairs. You play music as you take a shower, spending an unnecessarily long amount of time under the steaming hot spray as you think. What is it that you are doing with Brahms? What responsibilities do you have to him? How much longer can you spend in this little bubble with him and do you ever really want to burst it?

The selfish and dark side of you that enjoys Brahms’ apparent emotional dependence on you seems to be growing ever stronger, it feels like a black mold infecting your instinct to at least try to be good. You wonder if it truly is selfish for you to want to stay with him here in the Heelshire estate indefinitely, or at least until his parents come back and kick you out if he seems to want the same. You don’t think he feels the same way towards you or at least not quite in the same way you do, but your mutual need to be around the other as much as possible is quite apparent.

You selfishly hope his parents never come back and somehow everything is put to rights. You have a fantasy only the deepest most unconscious parts of you entertain, where Emily was never part of either of your pasts and Brahms was allowed to grow up like he should have. In those fantasies, you and Brahms always end up together, and you feel with certainty that in any other world, you and he would have, but that is not the world you are living in. Even if on the off chance he felt whatever it is you feel too, with his limited experience could he even understand it?

You groan at the turn of your thoughts as you wash your hair. All you have to do is play nice until his parents get home, you think, and then when you get the hell out of dodge you’ll find a suitably similar-looking rebound and drown your sorrows. But then you think, wait, when his parents get home that means Brahms is going to have to go back into the walls and there is no fucking way you’re going to let that happen.

You set your shampoo down with an angry thump. Brahms hasn’t told you much if anything at all about the fire and the years he spent alone but the fact that he went through either of those things is enough for you to want to curb stomp his parents and dance the fucking macarena on their graves.

You finish your shower feeling even more conflicted but at least determined on one thing, no matter what, you are going to protect Brahms, even if it’s from your own stupid fucking hormones. You can’t let yourself take advantage of the man and his naivety. You give yourself a determined look in the mirror and raise your hand in the girl scout salute, or what you think is the girl scout salute, and swear to yourself three things: to protect Brahms, to keep your horny at bay, and to make sure Brahms is never banished to the walls again and can live a normal life.

You get dressed, making plans and schemes to make due on your solemn swear before you go downstairs to the library. Brahms is where you left him but now with the second much more graphic book in hand. You eye him for a second before he looks up at you. You wish you could see his face as he reads, see if he blushes, bites his lip, anything, but you chastise yourself for wanting such a thing.

“Hello y/n,” he says, his voice betraying nothing.

You hum a greeting back and curl up in the chair nearest him after grabbing a book of your own, a poetry collection. The record you put on earlier is still playing softly in the background. The scene is intensely domestic, and you let yourself enjoy it but only a little, not wanting to get swept up so easily in fantasy when you’ve only just parceled out your goals for the remainder of your time with Brahms. The Heelshires signed you on for a three-month contract and you are about ⅓ of the way through with it. You find it a bit odd that such overbearing and nosy people haven’t checked in with you at all but you figure they must be busy on their worldwide trip.

You read silently for a while before you become aware of Brahms. He is shifting in his chair and his breath isn’t in his normal rhythm, it’s too fast. You raise your eyebrow honestly a bit amused at his obvious predicament, thinking same bro, but finding that your own body is reacting to his. You resist the urge to rub your thighs together as you watch him twitch as he reads, his head getting lower to the book like he can’t believe the words he’s reading and is checking to see if it really does say that.

“You enjoying the book?” you ask, giggling as you see him startle.

He looks over at you like he was caught watching porn and in a way, he was. He clears his throat and runs his fingers through his hair which is even more messy than usual.

“Um, yes?” he says sounding unsure of his words.

You nod, looking him over. He holds the book in his lap, obscuring it from view and you don’t let yourself wonder why. You can’t help but want to satiate your curiosity in other ways though. You keep your place in your book and look him in the eyes.

“Why? What about the book do you like?” you ask, knowing full well what you are asking him to admit.

You don’t need to see his face to know it's bright red.

“I…I don’t know. I’ve never, read anything like this, I didn’t know something like this could exist,” he says, his voice sort of hoarse and definitely a bit embarrassed.

You look at him for a moment, wondering exactly what he knows about such things. You weigh your three options, leaving it at that, plainly asking what it is he knows about sex, and beating around the bush to see what he knows. You aren’t really one for non-direct communication and you are much too curious not to ask anything so you go for option two.

“What do you know about sex?” you ask, trying to keep the rising heat of embarrassment from warming your cheeks.

You have never been embarrassed about sex before, you are rather liberated as some might say, but when it comes to Brahms you feel like a middle schooler again. Brahms lets out a strangled noise and looks at you with pure shock in his eyes.

“Hey it’s a fair question, I really doubt mummy and daddy Heelshire gave you a very thorough rundown. I mean there's nothing shameful about it, I’m just curious about what you know is all, but if you don’t want to talk about it that’s obviously fine…” you say, stumbling over your words a bit, not trying to make him any more uncomfortable than he must already be.

He looks at you silent and you wait for him to say something, anything to put both of you out of your misery. In the silence, you think briefly of your sexual awakening and who sparked it, Jason in Friday the Thirteenth and wonder what Brahms’ was. He’s too old not to have had it, but when he was stuck in the walls with just his parents, books, and a couple of kid's movies for decades you have no doubt that whatever it was that ‘awoke’ him was odd and that his proclivities would probably be a bit different in turn.

His silence, to you, signals ignorance and now you feel like the more knowledgable kid corrupting the sheltered kids at the lunch table.

“Do you know anything at all? Like beyond what’s in those books?” you ask, cringing at the possibility he knows nothing.

He is silent, his leg starts to bounce up and down and his eyes dart to and away from you.

“Brahms?” you ask but are cut off when words burst from him.

“No!” he says before setting your book to the side and jumping up.

“I’m skipping dinner, very busy,” he says facing away from you.

He leaves the room practically in a blur and you are left reeling in your seat, not sure what just happened.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms retreats to his secret apartment, coming undone at the seams. His body is on fire, every nerve ending screaming with awareness of his want and need. He wasn’t lying when he said he never knew anything like those books existed but he was lying when he shouted out no to escape y/n’s questions.

He knows all too well what sex is, or rather what it could be as he is obviously completely inexperienced. He learned from the books his parents thought they hid well, and from constructing images from his blind urges over the years. The issue was that ever since she came back into his life sex had morphed from a nebulous and foreign concept to an everpresent awareness of his instincts, of his most base desires. Ever since she came back sex was transformed into something real, and something he desperately wants.

When she asked him so innocently what he knew, his body jumped like she had asked him if she could teach him all that she knew, and he knows she knows a lot. He is jealous of her past in more ways than one, but every person who has gotten the privilege to know her so intimately makes him sick with stomach-curdling envy.

He sits on his bed, the only one he has had since he was cloistered away, still only large enough for the child he was then. When he lays down he has to lay in the fetal position in order to fit, one of the many reasons he loves the fact that y/n allows him to sleep beside her at night, or at least she did until he decided to reinstitute the rules rather than say what was too difficult.

He can feel himself aching, the images from the books and from his fantasies of y/n building up behind his eyes. He stands up with a growl, pacing for what seems to be hours as he internally wrestles with himself. He is so weak to his flesh and he is only growing weaker and weaker. His fear of losing y/n is enough to keep his romantic feelings more or less successfully repressed, but his body is not so easily manipulated and deprived as his mind.

He sits at his desk with a thump, ghosting his hands over the tools neatly in their places. He decides to continue working on his present for y/n. His mind is fractured and twisted enough that he truly believes that if he suppresses his romantic notions that by his rejection they will be assured. He learned young that to want something only pains you through never obtaining it so he thinks the opposite must be true as well, that you can only have what you supposedly do not want. He wants and loves y/n with every fiber of his being, in every way a person can love and want another, but he is willing to suppress that want if it assures its eventual release.

His gift to her is an intricately carved bracelet. He took inspiration for the design from Welsh love spoons and Celtic knots and applied what he learned in his mother’s hobbyist magazines to putting his design into action. He has made remarkable progress from when he started the project as he spends most of his free time not being with or watching y/n obsessively hunched over his workbench, keeping his hands idle so they don’t wander.

He spends the rest of the day putting the finishing touches on the present, his leg bouncing up and down as the need only seems to grow in the recesses of his mind. He feels sick with want, like a fever has come over him and he doesn’t know how to nurse himself back to health without making himself more sick.

As night falls he finishes. He inspects his handiwork with the discerning eye of someone who has spent their whole life watching the world rather than living in it. He sighs as he puts the bracelet down, feeling cast out of the heaven-like light of y/n’s presence. He feels so perfectly alone at that moment that he can’t help but seek her out, binding his desires so tightly within him that he believes foolishly that they wouldn’t unravel at the slightest touch.

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You end up spending the rest of the day drowning yourself in commission work and books. You don’t know what is going on with you or Brahms but it feels something like a second puberty and it fucking sucks. Why couldn’t this all be so simple as just being together, without your fucked up mind or the outside world tainting it?

As you get ready for bed after having eaten dinner alone and confused you hear a knock on your door.

“Come in!” you say a little too loudly.

Brahms walks in looking sheepish from the way his hands are held together in front of him.

“Yeah?” you ask, putting down the blanket that you had just been about to crawl into.

Brahms clears his throat.

“The rules…” he says, not looking at you.

You almost forgot about them. You internally sigh but you nod your head.

“Okay, are you still feeling Harry Potter?” you ask.

He nods his head. You make a resigned face and walk over to him, he doesn’t move for a second, just looking down at you before he turns and walks into his childhood room. You narrow your eyes at his back but follow him in. He’s already in his version of pajamas, a much too big pajama set that are highwaters, obviously his father’s who is much shorter than him.

He climbs into bed but doesn’t tuck himself in, instead waiting for you to do so with his hands clasped on his stomach. You think with the mask he looks weirdly like a corpse but the intensity of his eyes that look at you through the holes in the mask make it obvious just how alive Brahms is. You roll your eyes but tuck him in, absentmindedly patting his chest after you cover it with a blanket.

You sit down and begin to read. As per usual you end up becoming invested in the story despite having read it so many times as a child. You have read so much Harry Potter fanfiction since then that you honestly forgot the story they are all based on so it's almost like reading it with fresh eyes. You read a couple of chapters before you yawn, suddenly feeling tired enough to pass out. You mark the page and stand up. You decide to tease Brahms a little, just because.

You take a couple of steps towards the door like you are leaving without giving him his rule-mandated goodnight kiss but before he can make a sound of displeasure you whip around and run back, leaning over him and caging him in with your arms. You lean down so close to the side of his masked face that your breath ruffles his hair. He stops breathing, you can literally hear him suck a breath in and pause.

“You thought I forgot, didn’t you?” you whisper huskily, a smile on your face.

He doesn’t say anything but nods almost imperceptibly. You know exactly what you are doing, and that you really really shouldn’t, but you are an incurable tease and Brahms’ reactions are just so cute.

“I would never,” you say in a teasing whisper.

You place a kiss on the edge of the mask, almost touching his ear. You can feel him shiver under you and you ignore how that makes you feel. You know you are being a hypocrite, a tease who deserves to be tortured in turn, but you can feel your control slip just a bit more every time you try to tighten your grip. You’ve always been impulsive and free, and this is the first time you’ve truly tried to work against your nature.

You pull away from him and his eyes fix onto yours with a burning intensity that you hate that you can understand, you almost want to say fuck it, but you can’t. You can’t hurt him like that for just a moment of pleasure, you know what it’s like to be used by someone who isn’t sure of their feelings and you can’t do that to someone as innocent as Brahms. You don’t think you love him like that, at least not yet, and you need to make sure it stays that way, but what was a little teasing in the meantime?

You look down at him for a second before impulsively placing another kiss near the lips of the mask and then leaving the room with a laugh. You ghost a finger over the lingering cool of the porcelain on your lips as you close your bedroom door, aren’t all vows and goals meant to be started the next morning rather than the day of? The night is yours for the moment, you’ll be better when the sun comes back out but for now, you'll lean into the thrill of having been so close to him, the way he looked at you with such desire you could have drowned in it happily, and the feeling of his breath hitching against your chest.

Chapter Text

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Brahms stays in his childhood bed struck dumb and immobile by y/n’s flirtation. He stares at the ceiling as he racks his brain, what does it mean? Would he be foolish to see it as a sign that his dashed hopes for romance with y/n may not be so doomed after all? Or is he setting himself up for more emotional self-flagellation by allowing himself to see what he wants rather than the true reality of their situation? The questions he ponders the most are, does she know of his feelings towards her and does she know what she is doing to him? 

He doesn’t know what would be worse, or better, if she knows or if she is oblivious, but his body feels electric with the unknowns, thrilled in a twisted way at being forced into the purgatory between pleasure and pain. He almost doesn’t want to know her reasons for playing with him, enjoying the torture of being teased in a masochistic way that appeals to some newly uncovered part of him. He has grown to be able to live with the ache, the all-consuming want of her, and now part of the pleasure he fears chasing is made up of the pain of being denied. 

He wants to beg her, to fall to his knees and plead and lay himself out like an offering to a goddess to be devoured or cast away. He would accept any fate she decided for him as long as it was her deciding, as long as it was by her hand that he would be broken or caressed. 

He has never felt such reverence in his life as he does now, laying still in his old bed, scared to move lest his body latch on to the friction of movement and repeat his mistake from weeks prior. He lists reasons not to give into his body like remembered prayers, desperate for something strong enough to keep him untainted by his own hands and desires. 

He can practically feel the rise and fall of y/n’s sleeping body in the next room, practically feel the soft sigh of her breath against his skin. The awareness of her proximity spreads over him like the sick chill of a breeze on a humid summer day. He swallows thickly, his eyes trained on the wall that separates his room from the hallway that leads into her room. His tongue runs over his teeth as he thinks of the nights he has spent in her room with her. He looks away as if burned.

It had been a special type of punishment sleeping by her side these past few weeks. Feeling her shift against him in the night, mumbling and moaning in her sleep, the moon highlighting her features and form enough that the image of her felt branded behind his eyes. God, every night he would whimper as he looked over at her in the shadowed night, his hands itching to touch any part of her; a soft stroke could have made him come undone in an instant and he had known it so he would turn away and watch his fingers tremble until he would eventually be pulled down under into sleep. 

Every morning brought a fresh rush of revulsion at just how weak he became every night, how close he existed to the very edge of plunging forward into the forbidden. He feels sure that no one has ever wanted someone more, and that very few people could battle the impulse of giving in to their yearning to the extent he has, but there is no pride behind this, just an intense desire to forgo any pretext of being good in order to relish the feeling of being bad.

He knows he is hyper-fixating on what he cannot have, largely because he cannot have it, but he has lived nearly three decades in this house completely alone save for a few childhood years with y/n and two decades of her memory, and while he has an inkling that his feelings of obsession aren’t quite normal or healthy he doesn’t care because he loves the feeling of the illicit.

Brahms takes a deep breath and shifts to get out of bed, his whole body tense with the exertion of avoiding anything that could make his situation below the belt even more out of hand. He can feel how hard he is as he stands from the way the fabric of his pajama pants pulls tight over his pulsing cock and he can feel a slight dampness on the fabric, his cock having leaked slightly as he tried to resist the urge to lean into the throbbing feeling in his stomach and the urge to relieve his pent up need. 

He slides into the walls through a loose panel, his hands shaking as they brush the rough surface, his whole body hyper-aware and his nerves sensitive to the point every step and touch feels like an eclectic shock. He makes his way to his secret apartment slowly, gingerly, like a fast movement would unleash all that he has wrapped so tightly inside him, and break his thinning resolve to be the good boy he wants y/n to think he is.

When he gets to his secret apartment he stumbles forward, falling to his knees at his bedside, not trusting himself on the soft surface of his bed. He pushes his knees and feet into the ground where he rests on them, tensing every muscle to keep himself focused and in control. He hasn’t touched himself and yet the forced discipline feels the very same as when he would promise himself to put off the release of an orgasm and get so close to the precipice that he would give up and give in too fast. He needs to keep his resolve for once.

He pushes his masked face into the thin mattress in front of him, his hands fisted on his tensed thighs, his arms trembling and his breaths coming in and out in short spurts. He can hear nothing but how hard he is breathing and the way his shivering body jostles the metal frame of the bed. He tries to think of innocuous things that could take him out of this spiraling state but his every thought finds its way back to y/n only weakening his flimsy resolve further. He has weeks of abstaining as proof of his ability to do so now but he makes a fatal mistake that finally pushes him over the edge, he closes his legs. 

The pressure of his thighs coming together makes him moan and gasp. He shakes a bit from the unexpected pleasure and that is enough to break him. He knows what he is doing, he had known all along that he was only putting off the inevitable, and now he has finally fallen. He bites his bottom lip behind his mask and slides his long fingers under the waistband of his pajama pants. He can feel his stomach tremble under his fingers and he imagines that his fingers are y/n’s and the image makes him jump and twitch. 

He hooks his finger around the waistband and pulls them down just enough to free himself. He is harder than he ever has been, his cock angrier and more desperate than he could have imagined possible. He pauses for a second, aware that this is his last moment to stop himself, and then he goes forward anyway, not wanting to control himself any longer. 

He touches his cock gingerly, still a bit timid from the guilt of not having nearly enough guilt, but then he wraps his hand around himself anyways. The intense heat he is radiating almost burns the sensitive skin of his hands in the best way. He bites his lip harder, the pressure of his teeth is painful now but he isn’t bleeding yet so he secretly revels in the sting.

He makes an exploratory stroke, not needing to find a lubricant as he is already more than wet enough from the precum he has been leaking since y/n touched his chest so thoughtlessly earlier. His grip on himself is just a little too hard and the way the friction is slightly uncomfortable amplifies his gratification. He strokes himself slowly, drawing out his pleasure for as long as humanly possible, squeezing the base of his cock whenever he feels himself getting too close to the rush of an orgasm.

His toes curl violently against the hard ground and his breaths become shallow and a bit wet behind his mask from spit building up in his mouth that he can’t seem to swallow fast enough and from the skin of his lip finally having broken and began bleeding. He screws his eyes shut so hard that the darkness behind his eyelids becomes kaleidoscopic but the tears he always sheds when he pleasures himself break through regardless. He gasps as he feels himself coming close to the edge yet again and he moans frustratedly as he slows down, not letting himself have what he so desperately wants too quickly. 

As he touches himself he sees y/n, his mind creating a facsimile of her so realistic he can imagine the slick porcelain of his mask against his bleeding lips as y/n’s soft skin, his whimpers and gasps as coming from her mouth, and his trembling hand as her’s wrapped around him, pumping him mercilessly as he kneels before her. He cries out, a whimpered version of her name as he comes with a bone-shaking shudder and blinding orgasmic rush. His cum gathers in his palm and in between his fingers, hot and wet like the tears choking him behind his mask.

He shakes, his thighs twitching as he comes down from the most total attainment of unadulterated pleasure of his life. He licks his lips, swallowing the salty copper-tasting mixture of his spit, blood, and tears. He can feel his cum trickle down his fingers, sliding across his wrists and dripping down onto his thighs, ticklish in how slowly it moves across his sensitive skin.

The feeling of having given in after so long had created the towering cliff to throw himself off of into the unparalleled rapture he had just felt but it also had created the deep pit of loathing and disgust he falls into after he finally breaks through the waves of satisfaction, immediately casting him into the depths of total despair. He cries out, a slurred and desperate apology into the dark nothingness of his room, before his chest begins to wrack and heave from sobs.

He feels the weight of what he has done, what he has given in to, settle over his chest heavily. He is still on his knees but now it’s penitent in a way only a true sinner can be, disgusted by the fact he doesn’t feel as bad about what he did as he should. He has never prayed in his life, his parents are fashionably agnostic, but now he puts his hands together in front of his face, interlocked by his fingers and the slightly sticky substance of his cum.

He breathes in heavily through his nose as he mumbles imagined prayers and cries, breathing in the chlorine-esque scent of his cum on his fingers like it’s a punishment, a reminder of his most recent sin. He stays like this for long enough that the bottom half of his body goes from burning from the exertion of kneeling to death-like numbness. His tears dry and pull his skin tight, and his hands almost seem to fuse together as they dry, clutched so tightly that his knuckles are white and his fingers tingle like television static. 

After he feels an immense emptiness settle over him he delicately stands up on unsure legs and separates his trembling hands. His mouth is full of the acidic taste of self-loathing and the continued presence of his bleeding lower lip. 

He cleans himself up numbly in his minuscule bathroom, scrubbing his fingers and hands raw and disposing of his soiled clothes with absolute revulsion. He curls up into his bed feeling like a dog waiting for his owner to find the mess he’s made in their absence, tail tucked between his legs and eyes wide and wet, turned to the ceiling as the morning light begins to leak in from the thin slivers of window he has been allowed.

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You know better, you really do, but as you are laying in your bed and trying desperately to sleep your body seems to burn with the recent memory of the feeling of Brahms’s body against yours, and you are barely holding onto your control. You jokingly make the sign of the cross to ward away temptation but you know it has never worked for you before, in fact, the minute you acknowledge temptation you’re usually halfway to completion.

You toss and turn, feeling too hot but when you throw your blanket off you feel too exposed, too close to giving in, so you wrap yourself up in your blankets tightly and glare at the wall, pissed that you have developed enough of a sense of guilt that you are abstaining from what you would normally do without question or thought. You sigh, your things clenched closed tightly, and teeth set with determination. 

You are unbelievably turned on by Brahms, that much has been obvious practically from the moment you saw him come out of your closet, but you feel disgusted with yourself for not being sure if your feelings for him are deeper than nostalgia and a pulsing need for his cock inside you. Normally one or the other would have been enough for you to indulge in some way, either by your own hand or through someone else’s willing body as you are certainly no prude or virgin mary, but when it comes to Brahms for the first time in your life you feel the need to tread lightly so you don’t risk hurting the man. You have never been a callous lover, just aloof but upfront about it in a way that often was appealing, and while you are definitely not Brahms’ lover, you feel tender towards him in a way that you have never felt for anyone.

As you growl in frustration and hit your pillow like a petulant child denied a treat, you think briefly of your almost-forgotten ex-boyfriend Leon. He was a large part of your college experience first as a friend and then a friend with benefits turned into an exclusive relationship and while you have no feelings left towards him you wonder if his betrayal has affected you more than you want to admit. 

You know you are fucked up emotionally, commitment-shy, and rarely able to understand or admit your emotions, but you can’t quite point to any one factor as to why. You wish you could heal whatever fissure has formed in your mind or heart between what you want and what you are willing to have, but you don’t know how. All you ever know is how to give in to your instincts without nearly as much thought as you should and now that you are attempting to be careful where you have always rushed in blindly, you are more frustrated than you have ever been, in more ways than one.

You kick your feet out, laying on your bed in a starfish position and pouting at the ceiling like it will give you the answers or at least quell the heat building in your core but it doesn’t and the way your sheets brush against your skin is making you all the more aware of what you are craving. You think about it for a second. Sure, you are literally dripping from the way Brahms affects you and are therefore abstaining from rubbing one out out of respect for him but if you don’t think of him during the act surely it doesn’t count as like overstepping or anything? It would only be weird and creepy if you pictured him as you were doing it but it would be a waste of effort to ignore your situation between your thighs, right? 

You hum as you think of this, your eyes finding the wall that separates your room from the hall and therefore Brahms’ room. You can practically feel his presence, hear the way his breath sort of whistles against his mask, see how he twitches and trembles when he is embarrassed, and feel his soft hair between your fingers. Your heart leaps and you feel yourself tighten at the thought, you turn away from the wall as if it burns you. 

You grunt and narrow your eyes. You can feel how wet you are, your pussy is literally aching and clenching around nothing as you lay there thinking about things like ethics or whatever when you could be chasing an orgasm. That decides it for you, it’s fine to masturbate as long as you don’t think of Brahms. You smile to yourself at your successful philosophical debate with yourself and get out of your bed and walk over to your door, flipping the lock with an anticipatory giggle.

You are about to jump into your bed when you remember the edible gummies you have left. You look over at your dresser that they are hidden in before going over and getting the bag out. You decide on 10mg or one gummy, wanting to be high enough to alter your senses but not enough to alter your behavior. You hold it in your palm, pausing as this is the last moment before you step over the line because you know the minute the gummy digests and hits your bloodstream your need will be dialed to eleven. You press the sugar crystals it is covered with into your palm before muttering ‘fuck it we ball’ and eating it. 

You now need to kill about 45 minutes before it truly hits you so you opt for a long self-care shower. You scrub yourself with your nicest-smelling soap trailing your fingers along your slick skin, reveling in the contrasting temperatures of cool night air and hot water from your shower. You ache all the more as you draw out the process of cleaning yourself for as long as humanly possible, ghosting your fingers over your navel piercing up to your nipples and then back down again. You feel like a professional striptease as you explore your body with your sensitive fingertips, putting on a show meant for no one but yourself.

You are dangerously needy, your head fuzzy from the steam from the hot water and the beginning of the gummy hitting you when you step out of your shower, dripping. You dry off enough to not make your bed damp and walk naked into your room, enjoying the feeling of being bare as it is so rare for you to be completely naked nowadays given the fact you usually share your bed with Brahms.

You crawl onto your bed like a vixen from a music video, completely feeling yourself in the artistic lighting of your room, the moon casting blue shadows on the curves of your body that you can’t help but appreciate. 

You push your blankets to the edge of the bed with your feet, using your top sheet as a barrier between your naked body and your bottom sheet. You feel the gummy hit, warming your extremities and making your vision deepen, the colors and gradients of shadow becoming more intense. You can also feel how it amplifies your arousal, you’ve always gotten a horny high and you’ve used that to your advantage more than a few times just as you are now.

The dark almost feels like its own presence around you which only turns you on even more. You’ve never been much of an exhibitionist but the idea of someone secretly watching you pleasure yourself is a fantasy you have never shared with any partner but is a frequent scenario you think of during your not-so-lonely midnight trysts. You feel like the dark is calling out for you and that only compounds your need, your lust on fire.

You lean into the feeling of being watched, you know you aren’t or at least you assume you aren’t as you’ve already put Brahms to bed but once you think of the off chance he could be watching your pussy clenches so hard you gasp. You are immediately filled with self-loathing but you push it and him out of your mind, refusing to feel bad about doing what is only natural. 

You lean back onto your pillows spreading your legs out in front of you, enjoying the chill of the air on your still slightly damp skin. When you spread your legs further you tremble at the feeling of the cool air hitting your heated pussy, and while your body screams for you to take what you are giving yourself, you abstain, wanting to make the pleasure all the more sweet by going slower than your body is begging you to.

You ghost your hands along your body, exploring your body silently as you bite your lip, a nervous habit that in this context means you are actively trying to control your urges to give into mindless pleasure rather than allowing yourself to ride out the experience. You breathe heavily as you run your fingers closer and closer to your pussy that clenches to the thrum of your heartbeat. You brush your fingers along the insides of your thighs and you can feel the heat radiating from your pussy. 

You finally give in, not being able to take your own teasing any longer. You dip your hand between your thighs and gasp at the contact and how truly wet you are. Your fingers tremble ever so slightly as they slide up and down your folds. You keep your fingers from making direct contact with your clit as you know that when they do what little control you have over yourself will be lost. You rub up and down the warm slick flesh of your pussy, teasing the very edges of the most sensitive areas of your folds before dipping a finger into your vagina and using your palm to softly grind against.

You keep your mind’s eye purposefully vague as you conjure up the faceless image of a person and you pretend they have no basis in reality when you imagine them to be watching you from the shadowed corner of your closet. You have never been overly interested in imagining things as you masturbated, instead leaning into mindless pleasure, almost animalistic in your chase for an orgasm but for the first time you see the appeal of using your imagination coupled with your hands. You didn’t bring any toys with you to the Heelshire estate, having felt weirdly perverted at the thought when you had packed but it hardly matters as you know yourself well and your hands have never failed you.

You start pumping your finger in and out of you, biting your lip almost to bleeding to quell the sounds of your heavy breathing. You aren’t particularly vocal but for some reason as you imagine the faceless person watching you, you want to give them a show, you want to whimper and moan even if you know you shouldn’t with how hollow the walls are. 

A few moans escape as you add another finger, reveling in the feeling of being slightly stretched. Your two fingers are hardly equivalent to a cock or any dildo worth the money, but you have never needed too much to feel full with how sensitive you are. 

You have the briefest thought of how big Brahms might be given his height and lanky frame, two things you’ve known to signal a more well-endowed individual but when your walls clench around your fingers at the thought you screw up your face in disgust at yourself but enjoy the pulsing feeling regardless. You try to push the image of Brahms and your imagined image of what his cock may look like out of your mind but it's too late, the faceless person watching you from the shadows has solidified in your mind’s eye and has taken Brahms’ form. 

You could cry at how guilty you feel at how a surge of wetness leaks from you at the image of him standing over you, watching you finger yourself, but fuck is he tempting to imagine and good lord does your body respond. You gasp at the sudden rush of heady pleasure and with that you throw your flimsy resolve to not think of Brahms in such a lewd way into a metaphorical fire and lean into the dark mirage of his image. 

You moan, stifled by your bitten lip, undoubtedly bruised by how hard you are biting down on it as you chase your high. You imagine him leaning over you, completely silent but his eyes taking in your every movement, and you speed up your movements. Your toes curl at the thought of his hot breath against your breasts, in the crook of your neck, on your pussy. You moan out a fuck, your chest stuttering as your muscles start to tense and shake.

Your hips make circular motions against your palm, brushing your clit and making electric pulses shoot through your body. You can feel how close you are from how the heat seems to leach from your extremities, pooling in your lower stomach, coiled and ready to strike. Your free hand grabs onto the headboard grounding you just enough to continue your ministrations. You decide to go for the sure showstopper, you add another finger and pump into yourself almost violently and the pain of suddenly being stretched mixes with all of the pleasure, and you come with an uncontrollable cry of Brahms’ name.

You are practically blinded by the wave of euphoria, your legs shake against your hand which is barely able to continue moving to let you ride out your orgasm. You feel your eyes prick from the pleasure that has left you gasping and shaking but also from the overwhelming guilt of what you imagined to get yourself to this point. When you come down from the high of your orgasm you lay twitching in your bed and you taste the copper flavor of blood, having broken your lip during your throes of passion. 

You feel used up, exhausted, satiated on a level you aren’t sure you have ever felt, but also dirty. Not dirty from the act of pleasuring yourself, you have long ago rejected any perspective that might make you feel guilty or sinful for such a thing, but dirty for how you used the idea of Brahms in your desperation to please yourself. It feels wholly selfish, completely depraved, and you feel incredibly base for having lowered yourself so far as to imagine him without his consent. 

You realize that this is perhaps a bit of a reach, but you can’t help but feel you’ve violated him on a personal level and you want to wash it from you like a nightmare. You know people probably imagine celebrities and adult actors while they are masturbating every day without shame or thought but this is different, your imagined voyeur was your supposed best friend who was under the same roof as you and would never do something so immoral as what you just did. 

You sit up, still trembling a bit and stumble into the bathroom. You leave the lights off, not wanting to look yourself in the eyes when the guilt is still fresh and making your eyes wet. You clean yourself up in silence, putting on some pajamas before changing your sheets and climbing under your blankets. 

You lay in bed as the sun begins to rise and light up your room, feeling numb and dreadfully in the wrong. You chew on your already split lip as you wonder how you are going to look Brahms in the eye after what you did tonight, and you just hope the lust that led you to violate the sacredness of your friendship won't show itself plainly on your skin even as you feel branded by your perceived violation.

Chapter Text

You woke up this morning with a stomach ache from guilt and so you started to pace alone in your room, ignoring the fact you could sense that Brahms was waiting for you outside your door, likely confused by your sudden shift in attitude from last night to this morning. You couldn’t face him yet so you spent most of the morning doing sketches for commission drawings and listening to music on your headphones loud enough to make you wince; the pain of it felt nice in your emotional state. You had also snacked on a sad little package of crackers, feeling at the moment as if you would rather have starved than be perceived.

It’s now hours later and you feel incredibly anxious that somehow he will see your sins written on your face when you finally leave your makeshift safe haven. You bite your lip and groan, your heart pounding with anxiety at the thought of facing Brahms after what you did last night but you know the longer you put it off the more curious he’ll be. 

You briefly entertain the thought of praying for forgiveness before you leave your room but you aren’t sure who you would pray to and a large part of you wants to deny your lewd thoughts towards Brahms and praying for forgiveness would be admitting that you’ve done wrong. You decide that you will just have to take whatever karma is coming your way silently. You look up at your ceiling, imagining the universe beyond it, and hit your chest twice with your fist before throwing a piece sign up, your way of letting the universe know that you will take your coming punishment with a good attitude.

It’s a little past lunchtime when you gather enough balls to leave but you are still in your pajamas so you halfheartedly get dressed before finding yourself hesitating at your door. You are acting foolishly, you know, but you’ve never felt guilty like this in your life and you feel so incredibly animalistic in how you pleasured yourself last night, and not in a good way. 

You grit your teeth and pull open your door, half expecting a disgusted-looking Brahms on the other side with an eviction notice or something but instead, you are greeted with a [favorite sandwich] on a plate plus a little pile of lemon candies, Brahms’ favorite. You are shocked but then you smile, your eyes pricking with tears just a bit at how adorable he is. When you pick up the plate you see a folded paper under it so you grab that too before leaving your door open and sitting on your floor to eat, leaning your back on the side of your bed.

You balance the plate on your knee, sitting with folded legs as you open the paper, giggling at the contents. It’s a detailed sketch of a cute bat with its wings outstretched, holding a pile of lemon candies that are falling out of its little paws, its eyes large and shining, reminding you of Brahms. Below the bat’s feet are the words ‘To y/n from Brahms’ in an elegant script. The bat looks vaguely familiar, and as you look closer you can see stitching on its fur you realize it is meant to be a bat stuffed animal, but you don’t know why a bat in stuffed animal form seems so intensely familiar so you file that feeling away for later. 

You hum as you contemplate the drawing, taking bites intermittently of the masterfully made sandwich. When you are about half done with the sandwich you put the picture down and look up, stretching out your aching neck. You yelp when you meet eyes with Brahms who is kneeling silently in your doorway, obviously having been watching you for a while. He sits on his haunches, his feet pale against the wood floor. You briefly wonder when the last time he wore shoes was, and you imagine it was probably at his eighth birthday party. 

He doesn’t react to having been caught watching you, he’s never been one to care too much about being caught doing anything really so that’s not surprising. You decide not to react either so you go back to eating, not giving him any explanation as to why you have been pacing alone in your room with your drawing tablet since you woke up hours ago.

You take another bite of the sandwich, just watching him back. After a couple of silent seconds, he crawls forward the equivalent of a few steps but then stops again. The movement is very horror-movie-esque but also is reminiscent of when big cats prowl through tall grass as they stalk their prey. You find it a bit funny because in this situation you think you’re more predator and he’s more prey. 

The movement is so odd and unnecessary though that you just stare at him, your brain not comprehending what the actual fuck he must be on to be crawling around like that. You wait to see if he does it again and lo and behold he crawls a little bit closer again. You’re getting the ick so you speak up.

“Uhm, Brahms, are you good? Like, are you just in a silly goofy mood or…?” you ask, your eyes narrowed at him in confusion.

He is silent and instead of answering he crawls all the way over to you before kneeling down in front of you, his knees against his chest and his arms folded around his legs. You look at him like he’s crazy, because he must be to be crawling around like a Guillermo del Toro reject. You wonder briefly if he had somehow accidentally gotten into your marijuana gummy stash but he’s not acting high in that way, more high like a 7-11 meth head at night. You don't really know what to do so you hold out your sandwich to him with a wary look.

“Do you want some? Brahms, as funny as this is, like the whole crawling thing, the fact you’re not talking is creeping me out a little dude,” you say.

He looks down at your sandwich before shaking his head. You bring the sandwich to your own lips, taking another bite, feeling like you’re in the twilight zone. Oddly enough Brahms’ oddity has been enough to dispel your lingering sense of shame and though you are moderately concerned for his sanity you are also intensely relieved.

“I was worried about you y/n,” Brahms says.

You flinch a bit, your earlier panic and guilt coming back to you sharply. You avoid his eyes and pop a few lemon candies into your mouth, biting down with an audible crunch. You think for a second.

“Well, there’s nothing to worry about. I was just, like in a mood or whatever. But your being worried doesn’t explain the skinwalker crawl,” you say with a raised eyebrow.

He cocks his head.

“I crawled so we would be on the same level, that way you wouldn’t be anxious about me. That's what dogs do from what I remember. They get lower to signify that they aren’t dangerous… I read that in one of Mother’s dog training magazines once,” he says as if this is completely normal.

You can’t really argue with his reasoning so you nod your head, still not quite comprehending the situation but realizing you don’t need to.

“Fair enough I guess. I’m sorry I worried you Brahms, and I’m not anxious about you, you must have heard my pacing huh? Well, we’re all good it was just me getting in my head about things,” you say, a faint blush on your cheeks as you remember exactly what had been in your head last night.

He nods slowly, you can feel how his observant eyes rake over you, reading you like a book. Eventually, he reaches out and pats your head softly making you snort, for a second you think it's funny that he is using dog training magazines as a jump-off point for his current interaction with you before the thought sours, you realize that the reason he is using the dog magazines as a behavioral reference point is because of his utter lack of human interaction and that makes you deeply sad in an instant. 

He senses your mood shift and to compensate he slides up next to you, leaning against you softly. You smile at him, feeling relieved that he doesn’t seem to sense whatever has shifted inside of you, whatever it was that drove your thoughts last night. You lean back into him with a sigh as you chomp on the lemon candies. You offer him some and he takes them. You close your eyes so he can slide his mask up enough to pop them in his mouth and only after he taps your hand to signify he’s done, do you open your eyes.

You look up at him with a soft smile before turning back to your food and finishing it.

“Thanks, Brahms, you’re so sweet it's killing me,” you say, fiddling with the plate in your lap.

He chuffs against you and you can tell he is smiling behind his mask. He gets even closer to you, rubbing his masked cheek against your head, ruffling your hair. You giggle and playfully bat him away so he continues, you can hear a faint chuckle reverberate from within his chest. The two of you sit there silently for a while, just sucking and chewing on the lemon candies until there are none left. The day is unusually warm and now that it's past noon the temperature is almost reminiscent of a nice summer day. 

With your body pressed innocently against Brahms’, it's the type of quiet warmth that makes childhood memories rise to the surface, like bubbles in honey. You hum, absently playing with a loose thread on your jeans. So many of your memories of the Heelshire estate are fogged over, faded like a photograph left in the sun for too long, but the silent moment with Brahms like this one never fails to dredge up new snippets of a life so long ago it is mostly a dream. Familiar smells and images come back to you, unlocking your memories of being a little girl who didn’t need to know better, whose whole world was the path from her house to his. It was so simple back then, back before either of you knew wrong from right, or realized that every action has consequences far beyond your comprehension.

With Brahms, the butterfly effect feels like a trap. Any number of different decisions in the past would have prevented what has come of him, prevented his informal imprisonment, his lifelong sentence of forced obscurity, and you can’t help but dwell on all of those golden memories you have of your childhood with Brahms and lament that all of the years between then and now weren’t as beautiful as he deserved. You remember how sweet Brahms was as a child, innocent, loving, and awkward in the same charming way a fawn is unsteady on its feet. You sigh as you wish you could go back in time and prevent it all from happening, keep him safe, but you can’t so all you can do to make up for the past is fix his future even if it likely can’t include you.

After some time you clear your throat and Brahms looks over at you, his eyes evidently a bit sleepy from the way he rubs at them through the holes in the mask. You smile at how cute the action is.

“Do you want to go read in the library? I feel like if we stay up here any longer we’ll end up asleep on my floor,” you say.

He nods before standing up and offering you his hand. You make an impressed face before putting your hand in his and letting him pull you up.

“Thanks, you’re quite the gentleman, huh?” you say, not bothering to take your hand from his.

“I try,” he says, using your hand to lead you out of your room and downstairs to the library.

When you get to the library Brahms takes the plate from you and deposits it in the kitchen while you rifle through the books for something to read. He comes back with two glasses of lemonade, one with a straw and one without. You giggle as he gives you the strawless cup as you know his has a straw so he can stick it under his mask to drink. He helps you to pick from your books and the two of you decide on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett as it’s already been established to have been a childhood favorite of yours. 

You argue at first saying that you should read something new or even one of Brahms’ favorite books but he insists that you read The Secret Garden saying it’s one of his favorite books too. You roll your eyes but make him pinky promise that the next book you’re reading is Alice in Wonderland, his favorite, and he concedes.

You settle onto the loveseat and Brahms follows, reclining next to you, cuddling into you. It reminds you of how the two of you would lay side by side on the floor or bed as children, reading books to each other or drawing, just basking in each other’s presence. You sigh contentedly as you begin to read. As you read aloud, your voice soft and your mouth tasting of lemon and sugar, you feel Brahms play with your hair, winding your locks around his finger tenderly. You feel utterly content, and you don’t let that scare you, at least for now.

The two of you spend a couple of hours like that, curled up against each other as you read, only stopping when you notice the light begin to fade slightly outside the window. You hum, not wanting to move, liking how you feel almost like a cat basking in a sunny spot on the floor. You can tell Brahms is just as uninterested in moving from your current position as you are but you know you need to at some point.

“What do you want for dinner, Brahms?” you ask, playing absently with one of his hands.

He thinks for a moment.

“How about we make something simple and eat outside? Like we used to as kids,” he says, his voice sounding deeper than usual from how close you are lying to his chest.

You look up into his eyes with a smile.

“Sounds perfect, the only hard part will be actually getting to the kitchen. I’m dreading moving from this spot, I haven’t felt so comfortable in years,” you say.

He nods against you.

“I haven’t either,” he says, his voice quiet.

You look at him for a moment, feeling caught up in his presence, melancholic but hopeful. You love him, you know, but you can’t let yourself be in love with him and the way he is looking at you know, and how your heart races and aches at that look, you know you’re playing a dangerous game so you sit up with more than a little regret. You climb over him and stand up before offering him your hand.

“Come on Brahms, you’re not the only one who can be chivalrous,” you say.

He looks at you for a moment, his eyes reflecting your own regret, before he grabs your hand and you haul him up. When he’s standing he goes to let go of your hand but you stop him by holding onto his tighter. You don’t meet his questioning eyes as you walk with him to the kitchen, not knowing what you’d say if he asked you to explain yourself, just knowing that you need to be close to him for just a little longer.

Once you are in the kitchen you fish out your phone and connect it to your Bluetooth speaker which has found its permanent home on the windowsill, always ready to be used while you and Brahms cook meals. You give your phone to Brahms to choose from your massive music library as you gather the ingredients for [favorite sandwich], craving another after the one you had earlier.

As piano music begins to play you get to work making the sandwiches, both of you chuckling only a little bitter as you speak about and reminisce on the foods of your respective and shared childhoods. When you think of your childhood you think of Brahms, and when you think of Brahms you think of summers lounging around outside, falls spent in the library, winters painting in his room, and springs playing in the gardens. Always together.

You both remember how in the summer your mother who worked as the Heelshire’s maid would make [favorite type of sandwich] and [favorite summer drink] for you and Brahms and the two of you would take paper plates and eat outside on the steps, sharing a bag of [favorite potato chips] and making up stories to entertain each other. 

Thinking back you see that both of you were dreadfully lonely children, but you never realized that when you were with him, and you always tried to be at his side as a little girl. He had been your best friend but even more than that, he was your hero, a slayer of dragons, a pirate captain, a mysterious prince. He had been anything the two of you could imagine, always with you at his side, a dragon tamer, a pirate queen, a royal spy, the two of you were each other's everything, and the warmth of those years has come back to you, settling thickly over you like smoke.

As you finish the sandwiches and put them on some paper plates you found in the pantry you notice that Brahms is cutting some fruit intricately, You walk over to him as he chops, intrigued by what he’s done. He’s chopped an apple into slices but he had also cut the skin into inverted triangles and peeled it back, making the apple slices look like rabbits. He also mixed blueberries with chopped strawberries and bananas making a simple fruit salad. He notices your attention and seems to be a bit embarrassed. You giggle at how he bashfully looks away from you, fiddling with one of his apple rabbits. 

“I love them Brahms you’re quite skilled with your hands, I wish I could make food look that cute!” you say, pretending not to notice the double meaning because you know he won’t understand anyways, not that you’d want him to. 

You can see his ears turn red through his unruly hair and you smile, bumping your hip against his and laughing when he startles from the action. You help him split the fruit between your plate and his and then you take them outside while he gets your cups and grabs a bag of chips as well. 

You both sit down on the stone steps right outside the back door, looking out into the garden as the sun begins to set. The air is still warm from the day but now it has an undercurrent of night cool that feels heavy in a nice way. You and Brahms face each other, your plates on the stone between your legs, and the two of you eat, chatting silently as you both watch the sky change.

When you and Brahms speak, the decades he’s spent practically completely alone become obvious. He uses archaic words in the same sentences as the slang you’ve inadvertently taught him just by speaking. Some sentences are long and complex, and others are barely a handful of words and halting. It’s something you’ve never heard before, the way he uses language and even his voice is wholly unique. You love to listen to him speak because it makes you feel almost like an anthropologist, he’s a linguistic and psychological wet dream and you are pretty sure he is aware of it from how he never seems very sure of himself when communicating.

You pop a piece of apple into your mouth and look into the sky, thinking about the man sitting at your side. As the sky starts to go from orange to night blue the two of you finish your food and the plates are pushed out of your way. Brahms yawns.

“Are you tired?” you ask.

He shakes his head sharply and goes to say something but is stopped by another yawn. You giggle, looking over at his now sheepish form.

“Oh really? I’m tired too but I don’t want to leave, I guess you feel the same huh?” you ask.

He nods silently, fiddling with his fingers.

“Well, we can just lay down here, not sleep, just lay down. The stars will be out soon enough, it would be a shame to miss them…” you say.

Brahms meets your eyes, his own shining back at you.

“That’s true, it would be a shame to miss seeing something so beautiful,” he says.

You stop yourself from reading into his words and his glimmering eyes so you just hum, looking back up at the sky.

“Yeah,” you look over at him and he’s trying to stifle another yawn, “Here, you can lay your head on my lap while we wait.”

He hesitates, looking surprised by your offer but when you reach out and pinch his sleeve in between your fingers, tugging him towards you he leans over, laying his head in your lap carefully, looking out into the garden rather than up at you, which you are thankful for. You look down at him, knowing that if you could see yourself you might scoff at the saccharine look your face no doubt has, but as you thread your fingers through his soft hair and you feel him sigh against you, you don’t mind looking like a lovesick fool as long as it’s only you who knows how much your heart aches. 

You let yourself pretend you can love him as he deserves, pretend like you can have a normal life together, pretend that he could love you back and while the fake memories are sweet they pain you but you can’t help but think that you deserve this, a hopeless one-sided something in return for not being the good person Brahms seems to think are. As the night starts to become true, you feel memories drown you slowly, thick and sweet, but painful because memories are just that, memories.

Chapter Text

The summer air sits heavy around you, unusually humid after a summer shower in the morning, turned to a palpable dampness in the air from the midday sun. It's the very end of summer, and Brahm’s eighth birthday is in a couple of days, September third. Your parents promised that you could stay over at his house until the party so they dropped you off earlier today with a small bag of what you considered your essentials for living, mostly pots of paint, rocks, and sweets, which lays hastily discarded on the floor in Brahm’s room inside. As soon as you arrived you and Brahms excitedly gathered an impromptu picnic to eat outside, assisted by your uninterested mother who would be leaving home soon after her shift.

You sit out on the stone steps overlooking the Heelshire’s garden, fiddling with a full bowl of strawberries, looking for the perfect one to bite into. They are cool against your fingers, smooth and red in an almost waxy way. You select one, the second best, and put the first best on Brahms’ abandoned plate of food for when he comes back from the bathroom. You take your strawberry and dip it in your glass of lemonade before rolling it around on a plate of vanilla sugar, the juice making the crystals stick. You pop it in your mouth with a sigh, discarding the green top by tossing it in one of Mrs. Heelshire’s flower pots.

You chew, completely contented as the warmth of the day settles over you, the balmy air contrasting nicely with the bone chill of the stone steps below you. You lean back on your arms, kicking your legs out. You’re wearing your usual summer outfit consisting of a ratty t-shirt and torn jean cut-offs, both hand-me-downs from your older brother Malcolm, plus a pair of Converse high tops and mismatched socks that come up to mid-shin, one [favorite color] and the other moss green for Brahms’ favorite color. 

Your legs are littered with bruises and scratches from your roughhousing with Malcolm and your less-than-careful exploring with Brahms. You have a couple of mismatched bandaids plastered to you, administered by Brahms who always lectures you about being more careful and swears that this is going to be the last time he patches you up but who also always carries around a pocket-sized first aid kit just for you. As you eat a couple more strawberries and wait for Brahms you fiddle with one of the bandages on your scraped knees, smiling because everything feels so perfect for the moment and even as young as you are you can sense that life won’t always be so simple.

After a couple more minutes you hear the backdoor creak open and the sound of Brahms’ careful footfalls behind you. You turn to him with a smile, not bothering to be embarrassed by the red smears of strawberry you can feel around your lips or the sugar that sticks to your face from fruit juice. He giggles seeing your messy face and bends down, wordlessly taking a handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and wiping your face for you. You stick your tongue out at him and he shakes his head at you, his eyes bright.

“You’re such a messy eater I think you do it on purpose sometimes,” he says, finishing wiping your face.

You roll your eyes but he’s not completely wrong, you are a naturally messy eater but around him, you are even less careful because you know he’ll pretend to chastise you and then clean you up, and you not-so-secretly like it.

“No!” you say with a wide smile, you and Brahms both knowing you’re lying through your teeth.

He hums as he sits down at your side, smiling when he sees the little pile of the most delicious-looking strawberries on his plate. He looks at you with a raised eyebrow and you shrug as if you don’t know how they ended up on his plate and not yours. He smiles at you softly, and the summer sun makes the light brown accents in his hair and eyes shine almost gold. 

You think he’s pretty, and not for the first time. You have never crushed before but Malcolm told you that a crush is when you like someone more than anyone else and want to give them all of your candy. You should know better than to want to crush your best friend but if you could you would give Brahms all of the candy in the world because he is your most favorite person, so you figure that must mean you want to crush him like Malcolm said.

You tap your sneakered feet on the stone steps absentmindedly as you pluck another strawberry from the bowl, trying not to wonder if the older boy knows what a crush is and if he could want to crush you too. He follows your example as you dip your strawberries in your lemonade and then into the vanilla sugar, the both of you polishing off the bowl quickly enough that your stomach feels strained. 

The plate of sugar is streaked with pink juice, the crystals clumping in spots or melting into a syrup in others. You grab the plate and hold it between you and Brahms before taking one of your already sticky fingers and scraping some of the sugar off and sticking the sugar in your mouth. Brahms follows suit, the two of you wiping the plate clean, cheeks aching from the sweetness of the sugar and the sharpness of the strawberry and lemon juice.

“That wasn’t very healthy…” Brahms says with no conviction.

“Yeah, that's why it tastes so good,” you say, licking your fingers.

He nods, licking his fingers as well. You stretch your arms out to the sky, your body popping from being in one position for too long.

“What do you want to do Brahms?” you ask, shaking the hair out of your face as you survey the lush garden before you.

“How about we go inside and wash our hands and then we can play Victorian explorers outside,” Brahms says, gathering the plates.

You smile toothily, you love that game.

“Hell yeah!” you whoop making Brahms glare down at you with no heat.

“Language, y/n!” he says, clicking his tongue.

You laugh as you pull the backdoor open for him and walk in behind him.

“Language? Hell yeah is my favorite type of language!” you say.

He hums as the two of you walk into the kitchen and he begins rinsing the plates off as you stand behind him, watching him with a grin.

“Oh yeah? And what type of language is that?” he asks.

“Cursing! Saying things like fuck, ass, and stupid head!” you say with a snicker.

Brahms gasps at your bad language turning to look at you with his mouth open in shock. His eyes travel over your head and you wince, someone is behind you. You grit your teeth and turn around slowly meeting the unamused face of your older brother. 

Malcolm stands about two heads taller than you meaning you have to tip your head back to meet his eyes. His dark blue eyes narrow at Brahms behind you with obvious distaste before looking back down at you. He is sharp-looking in the way most pre-adolescent boys seem to be, holding himself with a false bravado you don’t yet question. You are unusually close with him as your parents are largely absent working or living their own lives separate from you, so you feel even more apprehensive at being caught being naughty by your older brother than your mother or father whom you don’t know nearly as well as you should.

“What were you just saying y/n?” he asks, obviously already knowing the answer.

You hang your head, looking down at your scuffed-up Converse and your scraped raw knees. You look back up at him shamefaced after a second, already feeling chastised. 

“Uhm…I was saying curse words…” you say quietly.

Your brother is silent, you can feel how intensely he is looking at you. He is twelve years old, six years older than you, and five more than Brahms, taller than both of you but not by much when it comes to Brahms since he is rather tall for his age. You know Malcolm isn’t Brahms’ biggest fan, in fact, he barely conceals his unexplained hatred and it makes it very awkward for you as the only two people you care much for or who seem to care much for you are Malcolm and Brahms.

You hear Brahms go to speak up behind you but Malcolm cuts him off with a grunt.

“Excuse us for a minute Chopin, I need to talk to my sister for a minute,” Malcolm says, not waiting for a response as he grabs your arms and drags you out of the kitchen and into the library.

You pout up at your brother who crosses his arms as he looks down at you. Both you and Malcolm know he is more of a parent to you than your mother and father combined, so he seems to feel it is his responsibility to teach you right from wrong like right now. He sighs before speaking, running his fingers through his choppily cut brown hair.

“Y/n, you know better than to talk like that. Did Brahmsy put you up to it?” he asks.

You shake your head. You can feel your lips begin to tremble; you hate when your brother is disappointed with you.

“No, Brahms doesn’t ever speak like that…I just thought it would be funny…” you say, your voice soft.

Your brother’s jaw ticks. He doesn’t ask you where you learned words like that because you both have heard much worse from your parent's mouths practically every day since birth.

“Well don’t speak like that, it's not proper or whatever, and if the Heelshire’s hear you talking like that they might get angry with Mom and Dad and we can’t afford that can we?” he says, parroting words you’ve heard from your parents before.

You nod and Malcolm sighs at your wet eyes. He pulls you into a hug that you return appreciatively. You aren’t a crybaby but you hate Malcolm getting mad at you more than almost anything. You want your older brother to think you are cool and getting on his nerves or acting childish makes that hard. It's already hard enough to get him to hang out with you since you are his six-year-old little sister, so you try your best to not step on his toes or annoy him because if he stopped liking you then the only person you’d have is Brahms and Brahms has his parents, sort-of.

You pull away from the hug and he ruffles your hair making you giggle. He glances over at the door that is still cracked open from when you came into the library.

“You can stop hiding Chopin , you creep, I know you followed us,” he says, mockingly towards the door that shifts a little like a person behind it was startled.

You look up at your brother confused before looking over as the door opens, slowly revealing a sheepish-looking Brahms. Brahms’ ears are red presumably from the embarrassment of being caught snooping. Malcolm makes an unimpressed noise as Brahms slinks over, looking at his feet until he stands at your side. He looks up at Malcolm and you look up at him, the top of your head only coming up to his shoulder while the top of his head is in line with Malcolm’s nose.

“ Chopin , you better take care of her. And y/n, I can’t watch you since Mom and I are leaving now, so you better behave and not let Brahmsy here make you act up. You know how you should act around the Heelshires,” Malcolm says, pining you with a knowing look.

You nod. Brahms shifts uncomfortably at your side.

“Got it, Malcolm, I’ll be good!” you say with determination.

He hums, giving you a lopsided smile and a pat on your head before he walks around you, bumping Brahms hard with his shoulder, and then leaving. You sigh as you look at the door he just left through, feeling like you’ve avoided a storm before looking up at Brahms who has an unreadable expression on his face. You feel bad that Malcolm is so mean to Brahms so you hug the boy, burying your face in his starched stiff ‘outside clothes’ which include a button-up shirt and tie. He is frozen for a second before he hugs you back, burying his face in your hair.

“I’m sorry Malcolm always calls you Chopin, Brahms. You’re a good friend, I’m sorry I was being naughty and saying bad words,” you say.

He is silent for a moment, his grip on you tightening ever so slightly.

“It’s ok, y/n,” he whispers.

You don’t feel like it is.

“You’re not a creep at all Brahms,” you say.

He is silent but when he pulls away from you a minute later his eyebrow is raised and you laugh.

“Ok, maybe a little bit of a creep but I still like you!” you say with a grin.

He snorts, shaking his head. 

“Thanks, and you’re a bad influence but I still like you,” he says.

You smile at each other for a moment before he pats your head like a dog.

“Want to go play now?” he asks.

“ Heck yeah!” you say, emphasizing your use of a non-cuss word.

He rolls his eyes but takes your hand, leading you up to his bedroom where the two of you collect the toys and supplies needed for your imaginary foray into the Victorian-era jungles, also known as the Heelshire estate’s gardens. The two of you dress up by putting on a couple of safari hats and sling binoculars and a water canteen full of lemonade around your necks. Brahms grabs your homemade explorer map, created from watercolor, glitter, and free stickers you got from the dentist's office while you strap a plastic machete to your hip with a bandana. The two of you thunder down the stairs and out of the back door, excited to play pretend among the manicured flowers and stately trees of the gardens.

The two of you pretend to be two Victorian explorers on the hunt for a pair of man-eating lions who raided the railways the evil Beelshire railroad corporation built. You camp out among the tulip beds and pour over your map that sheds red glitter on your fingers, pretending to make lion traps and ward off all of the dumb British people who ride the trains and keep getting eaten. This goes on until the sky begins to change. 

You and Brahms stop your imaginary chase of one of the lions, having killed and eaten the other in a stew hours before, when you, being accident-prone, trip and fall. Brahms rushes to help you up. He brushes the dirt from your shorts as you laugh at how you’ve gotten yet another cut.

“My god y/n, you’re positively covered in wounds! It looks as if we have actually been battling man-eating lions from what bad shape you’re in!” Brahms says, his eyes roving over you worriedly.

You look down at yourself, blood smeared from new scrapes and leaking from torn-open scabs. You wince before looking back up at a concerned-looking Brahms.

“True, but if I’m still here that must mean we won, so it's a small price to pay to beat the man-eating lions and save all the stupid British people from them and the Beelshire railroad tycoons,” you say with a satisfied nod, hands on your hips.

He sighs deeply before taking your hand and leading you over to the stone steps, sitting you down and taking his first aid kit out of his shorts pockets. He cleans your wound and patches you up with expertise and care. As he does so, you talk about nothing in particular, giggling at how you’ve created a villainous railway corporation who in your imagination sounds and looks suspiciously like the older Heelshires.

“I would never want a last name like Beelshire, it’s kind of ugly,” you say, wiggling the foot of the leg Brahms is currently working on.

He pauses and looks up at you with a glare, making you smile innocently back down at him.

“Good thing the Beelshire’s aren’t real then,” he says, going back to picking out a bandaid for a cut on your shin.

“Yeah I guess, but Heelshire isn’t much better. I guess I can’t get married to you after all,” you say with a dramatic sigh and a fake swoon.

Brahms’ jaw tightens visibly before he looks up at you, offended and his eyes dark.

“Oh yeah? Why can’t you marry me? You pinky promised that when we’re older we’d get married!” he says, a pout beginning to form on his lips.

“I did promise but that's before I realized that when you get married you get their last name. If we got married I would be Y/n Heelshire and that doesn’t sound right,” you say, picking a piece of grass off your shorts, enjoying teasing the older boy about the silly promise you made ages ago.

“It sounds right to me! Perfect even,” he says enthusiastically.

“Mmm, no,” you say deadpan.

Brahms looks down at his hands, still holding a wound-cleaning wipe streaked with your blood. He looks back up at you, his face earnest enough you almost feel bad.

“Well, what about this? When we get married I’ll take your last name instead and I’ll be Brahms L/n, that sounds okay doesn’t it?” he asks, his eyes looking up at you intensely.

You make a show of thinking about it, tapping on your chin and looking up at the sky before looking back down at him with a teasing grin.

“I think that sounds absolutely perfect! I guess I will marry you, that is if no one else asks me before then,” you say.

He narrows his eyes at you but you can see how your words please him from the pink dusting of his cheeks and ears. He holds out a hand, his pinky extended.

“Promise?” he asks.

You nod, hooking your pinky with his and shaking it.

“Promise!”

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

You are shaken out of your memories by Brahms shifting his head in your lap so that instead of looking out into the overgrown garden, he is looking up into the darkened sky above your head. You can’t decipher his feelings, the dark of the night, the shadows cast by his unruly hair, and your body obscuring his eyes making them impossible to read. The mask remains on his face, hiding the rest of his face. 

He is silent but so are you, content to be caught up in the stillness of the moment and in the forgotten warmth of the past. You wonder if he is entrenched in memories like you but you don’t ask as the silence is so calm. You sigh and lean back on your arms, and you're almost able to taste the lemonade and feel the phantom pain of childhood injuries on your legs.

The two of you stay like that for long enough that when you finally get up when you blink you can practically see the stars you had been looking at on the insides of your eyelids. You help Brahms up, and he yawns as he gets to his feet. You smile at him and your heart twists, remembering the boy he once was, and the woman you are now mourning the innocent promise that could never be fulfilled. 

You try to shake yourself out of your mood, needing to return to your usual detachment rather than fall deeper into what can only hurt you. You stoop down and grab the dishes before Brahms can, and he opens the door for you, following you inside. You wash the dishes, cracking jokes that Brahms laughs at in his near-silent way as he dries the dishes at your side. 

After the two of you finish you stumble up the stairs, a wave of exhaustion hitting you, and get ready for bed. When Brahms starts to go to his childhood room looking rather regretful you stop him and nod your head at your bed with a soft smile. He pauses, evidently shocked, before his body language seems to brighten and he walks over to your bed. He stands at its side almost like he’s scared to get in. You giggle and crawl in yourself, grabbing the random book at your bedside. He climbs in, keeping a respectful distance from you as you begin to read. 

At some point, your voice trails off and you feel Brahms take the book from your limp hands and set it off to the side. You barely notice him switch the lamp off but as you drift off into the nothingness of sleep you swear you feel a delicate kiss placed on the inside of your wrist, tucked near your head, and feel the soft tickle of breath on your cheek.

Chapter Text

Mrs. Heelshire fusses with the decorative table placements as you hum and fold cloth napkins into cranes to be set on the plates. You have been helping her decorate for Brahms’ birthday party since this morning and while you would usually lose interest in being helpful rather quickly you don’t mind in the instance as you can see how uncomfortable Brahms is with the attention but also how pleased he is that you are there helping. He is sitting at your side fiddling with the tablecloth as you fold, having been forbidden from helping by both you and Mrs. Heelshire as it's his day.

You nudge him playfully as you fold and he looks at you through his lashes, an almost shy smile on his lips. His hair is slicked back neatly and he is dressed up like a doll, the Heelshire’s wanting him to look ‘proper’ and ‘picture ready’. He is wearing a white button-up shirt, a back tie around his neck, a dark grey sweater, and grey slacks. You are dressed up too in a dress in [your favorite color] paired with matching Converse. Your legs are bare of stockings since you always rip them within a day of buying them so for the special occasion you switched out all of your mismatched bandaids for matching [favorite color] ones, something that both amused and annoyed Mrs. Heelshire.

You finally finish the last napkin crane and Brahms helps you to set them on each plate. Mrs. Heelshire observes your work with approval and dismisses you and Brahms to go play in his room with a warning to be careful and to not muss up either of your party clothes. As you and Brahms start to bolt from the room with twin giggles Mrs. Heelshire calls after the two of you saying that the Cribbs will be arriving within the hour along with the rest of their posh friends who would be making social visits for Brahms’ birthday. You call back to her that you understand, your mood a little dampened, as Brahms takes your hand and the two of you bound up the stairs.

When you reach his room you feel safe and warm because it's one of the few places you’ve ever felt loved, and Brahsm is here with you. You sit down on his floor and he follows suit, using his toybox to lean against. You look at him mischievously.

“Close your eyes Brahms,” you say.

He looks at you with fake suspicions.

“Why?” he asks.

“For your birthday surprise! Just do it!” you say with a giggle.

He smiles excitedly, his eyes lighting up in the shadows of his room. He closes his eyes and reaches out his hands. You pull a small package out of your dress pocket and set it in his hands. You can see the way his smile grows when you do this.

“You can open them now,” you say, excited to see him open your gift.

He opens his eyes instantly before looking down at the shoddily wrapped package in his hands like it's a brick of gold. Your cheeks warm at his excitement. He looks over at you for permission to open it and you nod, smiling wide enough that your cheeks ache.

He carefully unwraps the package revealing a lump of black fur. He puts the wrapping paper down and holds the small stuffed animal in his hands. It's a little black bat, its stitching a pearly color and its eyes wide and shining. It reminded you of Brahms when you saw it at the toy store so you had spent all of your saved up money on the high quality plush toy. He looks down at it silent for a minute before he launches himself at you, engulfing you in a hug. You giggle at his reaction and hug him back tightly.

“I hope you like it,” you say.

“I love it,” he says, his voice sounding a little wet.

You break the hug after a long moment and you see him try to subtly wipe his wet eyes on his sweater sleeve. You pretend not to have seen it.

“Well good, but don’t get all mushy on me Brahms,” you say, sticking out your tongue.

He grunts and pushes you lightly, smiling the whole time like you’ve hung the moon. He puts the bat in his pants pockets with extreme care. You look at each other for a comfortable second, your heart practically overflowing with love for him before you purposefully break the moment by getting on your knees and digging in his toybox to find something to do.

Brahms and you decide on a game of cards while you wait for the rest of the guests to arrive including your parents. You know your family was given a pity invite to the party, the Heelshire’s way of looking good by allowing your friendship with Brahms as well as inviting their help to social functions. You would feel ashamed if you cared what the rich people the Heelshire’s pander to, you’re not particularly close with anyone besides your brother and Brahms so beyond those two boys you really just don’t care how you are perceived.

Brahms wins just as many rounds of the card game as you, which you would find suspicious if you hadn’t made him promise to never take it easy on you a while ago when you realized he’d been throwing games in your favor. You had threatened to shove a chess piece up his nose if he ever let you win again and since then he’s kept his word and been a worthy opponent. You are dealing the cards for another round when you hear the screechy peal of Emily Cribbs’ fake laughter from all the way downstairs. You and Brhams meet each other's eyes, you pouting and his face tight with apprehension. You sigh, patting your friend’s shoulder as he gathers up the cards to put them away.

“Hey, maybe she won’t be so bad this time, since it’s your birthday and all…” you say, not convincing even to your own ears.

He gives you a deadpan look and you almost want to laugh except for the tightening knot of anxiety in your chest. Emily is always a harbinger of bad luck, she is the type of kid who can only seem to enjoy herself if everyone else isn’t and you have the sneaking suspicion that when you aren’t around to act as a buffer between Brahms and Emily she takes advantage of Brahms’ kindness and aversion to making a scene to hurt him even more. You’ve never liked her much but hurting Brahms is like Emily is begging you to kill her.

The cards get put away and the two of you stand still in the middle of his room for a second, both of you seemingly trying to gather the courage to play nice with the devil child downstairs and smile and only speak when spoken to for all of the stodgy adults likely taking their tea in the sitting room. You briefly wonder who will be serving it if not your mother, and grit your teeth at how if she is serving the smug looks Emily will be giving you. 

Brahms seems to sense your emotions so he pulls you into a hug with a tired sigh. The two of you are silent for a second before you hear Mrs. Heelshire calling for the two of you to come down and greet the guests. You snuggle your face deeper into the soft wool of his sweater, your heart beating out of your chest because for some reason you have the most unsettling feeling about what will happen if you leave the relative safety of his room. He pats your head.

“If she hurts you today I’m going to kill her, I swear it,” you mumble into his chest.

You can feel him shake his head. You can feel him smile into your hair.

“Please don’t she’s not worth you going to jail over,” he says quietly.

“Then I won’t go to jail, I’ll feed her to the man-eating lions and then take one of the Beelhire railroad company trains out of the country. They’ll never see it coming,” you say giggling into his chest.

You can feel him shake a little as he laughs.

“Well if that happens I’ll be on the train with you, I can’t have you hiding from the law all by yourself now can I?” he asks, pulling away just enough to see your face.

You nod with a smile, feeling a little comforted but still mentally aware of a darkening cloud forming over the day.

“You’re right, that would be awful lonely,” you say with a sigh.

He nods before unwrapping his arms from around you and taking your hand instead.

“Let's go down before they send her up here, I don’t want her to ever come in my room,” he says.

You nod and the two of you make your way out of his room and down the stairs. As you descend you see a small congregation of fancily dressed people at the base of the stairs, Emily sticking out among the adults in monochromatic colors with her prim pink dress and flaxen hair. Her blunt bangs swish as she turns to watch you abruptly, her blue eyes looking almost inhumanly icy, contrasting with the carefully bright smile she plasters on her face. 

You try not to flinch as everyone turns to you and Brahms. You can feel their eyes roving over your form, comparing you with Emily, the ideal little girl, an image you don’t fit in with given your scratched-up legs and your obvious class difference from the quality of your clothes. You swear the rich can sniff out a ‘lesser born’ person from just the way they walk, so you know they’ve clocked your deviation and are now making mental calculations. Brahms squeezes your hand in his and you give him a grateful look as the two of you reach the ground floor.

Emily walks over to you and hugs you, forcing you to let go of Brahms’ hand. You hug her back to be polite but it's tight enough that you know it’s meant to act as some sort of warning. You smile at her fakely when she pulls away from you, your eyes no doubt conveying your hatred for her, and you can see the way her eye twitches in irritation before she moves to hug Brahms. You watch as she does so and he reciprocates visibly uncomfortable and you don’t miss how she stomps on his foot as she pulls away from him but somehow every adult does.

“Well isn’t that wonderful, Emily is just a dear!” Mrs. Heelshire says and you wonder not for the first time whether or not she might need glasses given all she seems to be blind to.

The group of adults all make noises or little comments concurring and you bite your tongue to keep from rolling your eyes at how stupid adults can be. Emily glows from the praise, even doing a rather clumsy curtsy much to the adults’ delight. You and Brahms make faces at each other and you see Mr. Heelshire notice but he doesn’t comment on it.

“How about the three of you take your tea in the gardens like the last time you visited Emily? I’m sure the three of you would enjoy the sun and flowers much more than being cooped up with us in the study,” Mrs. Heelshire says as the adults begin to disperse, filing back into the study or wandering into the library.

You see how your parents haven’t yet arrived and you are simultaneously relieved and apprehensive about this. If they had already arrived Emily would start on her comments about the lower class filth and other such things but since they aren’t here that means Malcolm isn’t there to watch over you younger kids and make sure Emily doesn’t go too far. 

You nod politely at Mrs. Heelshire and she leads the three of you outside, the journey feeling like deja vu given the last time Emily had one of her ‘playdates’ with Brahms and you. Mrs. Heelshire guides the three of you to the garden table where she unloads the tea tray she grabbed on her way out. Brahms and you both sit down like you’ve been led to the electric chair while Emily sits down like she’s taking her tea at Buckingham Palace. You roll your eyes and Brahms snickers slightly at the sight.

When the tray is unloaded and Mrs. Heeslhire feels satisfied she leaves the three of you to ‘enjoy the day’ while the adults take their tea inside, saying that she’ll come out and gather you when they are ready for the birthday festivities to begin. You cautiously take a sip of your tea, at least feeling happy that Mrs. Heelshire poured your favorite tea for you despite the ever-growing feeling of dread that started with the very mention of Emily Cribbs.

It is only a second later that she reminds you exactly why you hate her so much, she jostles her teacup, spilling some of the hot liquid onto Brahms before she takes the cup and smashes it by throwing it at the ground at his feet. Brahms makes a noise of pain, jumping out of his seat and holding his right hand that had been splashed in the other. You jump out of your seat and go to his side while Emily cackles, shoving a cookie in her mouth. You gently touch Brahms’ arm and look up into his wet eyes, the tea must have really hurt him.

“Are you okay, Brahms?” you ask, already knowing the answer.

He shakes his head at you, his lips trembling. You can feel his body shake against your hand, and you swallow down panic. You nod acknowledging his response, concern for him overwriting your growing fury at Emily.

“Okay, how about you go inside, your mom must have stuff to treat burns, and I’ll pick up the broken cup pieces, it’ll be alright,” you say, trying to comfort him, but not wanting to leave Emily alone with the rest of the dishes fearing she may smash them all and get Brahms in trouble.

He looks down at you and over at Emily who is still scarfing down the tea cookies, watching the two of you with a dark glint in her pale eyes. He seems reluctant to leave you but you both know Emily doesn’t really bother to hurt you, especially if Brahms isn’t there to be tormented by it, so he hesitantly goes inside, glancing behind him at you all the way. When he finally goes inside the house Emily hums, tapping her fingers on the plate of cookies amused which disgusts you.

“What do you think he’ll say happened? I bet he says he spilled his own tea on himself, he’d never dare tell on me,” she says with confidence.

You want to refute her words but she’s probably right, he isn’t going to tell on her and no one is going to question Brahms because adults only ever ask questions too long after the fact because they’re not very perceptive. Adults don’t remember how complicated kids can be, or how cruel some are. 

Emily laughs at your tense silence, grabbing your cup from across the table and taking a sip, silently daring you to do what Brahms can’t, knowing that they’d never believe you. You grit your teeth to keep from leaping on her, instead, you stoop down and carefully begin to gather the broken pieces of the teacup in your hands. Emily evidently doesn’t like the silent treatment as she kicks the table to get your attention. You look up at her unimpressed.

“What Emily?” you ask, your voice dripping with disdain.

She glares down at you, cookie crumbs stuck to her hate-filled face. She would be quite cute if her face didn’t reveal a depth of anger that seems unnatural on such a young face.

“You’re my friend you know. I just have to pretend to be Heelshire’s friend because of my parents, they feel bad for his parents because they are so old and their only kid is a half-mute loser. You’re probably doing the same thing except it's the old Heelshires who feel bad for your parents,” she says, her nose up in the air.

You take a deep breath as you rise to your feet, depositing the broken pieces of cup on your abandoned teacup plate. You’re artificially calm as you walk over to her seat, standing by her, looking at her silently. She is obviously uncomfortable with your silence and close proximity as she shuffles in her seat before she opens her mouth to speak again but before she can you grab the back of her chair and push it back, causing both her and the chair to topple over into the flowerbed behind her.

She falls with a surprised shriek and you're on top of her in an instant, slapping at her wildly and speaking through gritted teeth. She doesn’t have time to think or fight back much as you’ve surprised her greatly.

“You are the worst Emily! A complete and utter stupid head! Me and Brahms pretend to like you, we hate you because you’re mean and rude, and no one likes you!” you say, still wailing on her.

She finally gets enough of her wits about her to fight back a little, slapping your hands away and pushing at your face to get you off her.

“Shut up y/n you're just a dumb baby! I’m telling my parents and then when they talk to the Heelshires your parents are gonna get fired and you’ll be even more poorer and dirty-looking than now, if it's even possible!” she says, her voice shrill.

You start punching her, weakly because of the significant age and size gap, but with enough power to piss her off even more.

“I don’t care if I'm the poorest and dirtiest kid in the whole world, you aren’t going to hurt Brahms anymore and you don't ever try to get my parents in trouble!” you yell, your face heating up with anger.

She overpowers you, pushing you off of her and to the ground. She takes the opportunity to get on top of you and pin your arms to your side with her legs, making it impossible for you to fight back. You glare up at her and she smiles down at you cruelly.

“I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna tell my parents all about how the dirty maid’s daughter attacked me because she was jealous and then they are going to make your parents be fired and then I won’t have to see your stupid face anymore and I’ll have that idiot Brahms to myself and I’ll hurt him even more than I ever have!” she says tauntingly. 

You struggle ineffectually against the larger girl, crying a little from frustration and anger which seems to please her. She pats your cheek a bit too hard.

“If you had just been my friend like I said I wouldn’t have to do this,” she says, regret heavy on her voice.

You look up at her incredulously, honestly at a loss for words at the audacity of the towheaded little girl.

“Don’t do it!” you say through your heaving sobs.

You are scared for your parents' jobs and for Brahms’ safety. You don’t regret finally fighting back at Emily but the fear of the consequences almost chokes you. Emily looks down, sickly happy at how tormented you are.

“I’ll keep quiet, say I feel out of my chair on my own if you get in the river like I said last time. If you can swim across once then I’ll do what I promised and never come back,” she says.

You think about it for a minute, barely able to breathe from the weight of her body on your chest before you finally nod once, lips trembling from emotion. You don’t see any other way out of the hell that is Emily Cribbs so you figure a quick swim isn’t so bad if it means that both you and Brahms will be free from her.

Emily smiles sickly sweet at your acceptance of her terms. She gets off of you and immediately starts walking off towards the river in the back part of the Heelshire property. You get up, your chest aching and skin hot as you dust yourself off and shoot a forlorn look at the house before following after the girl.

You and Emily are at the riverside in less than a minute and it's there that you start to realize why this is the thing she wants you to do, the river is all rapids, the water is moving fast and it shoots up and sprays where groups of rocks you can't quite see jut out of the water. Emily wants you to swim across the river because she doesn't think you’ll make it. You aren’t sure you will either, you're a very strong swimmer, but even through your naive childish confidence you know you would be lucky to get out of the river alive let alone unhurt, but unhurt isn’t part of the deal and you’re willing to take the risk.

You take a deep breath as you observe the river and try to make some sort of plan of how to cross. Emily is giggling at your side, fully aware of what she is doing and the implications of her actions but not caring. Your heart is beating so violently in your chest it almost feels like it's come to a standstill, your hands are bunched at your sides, and you can feel a chill go through you as you watch the water churn like a thousand monstrous mouths waiting to tear you apart.

“Come on now y/n, it's either this or the even poorer house, plus if you don’t do it i’ll just make Brahms do it and that sickly nerd would break in a second, you at least have a chance,” she says almost exasperated sounding.

You look over at her with a mix of complete hatred and deep fear, your cheeks already wet from tears. She almost looks regretful for a second but then she goes back to her usual cruel self.

“Well go on then crybaby!” she says harshly. 

You step closer to the riverbank, your legs shaking, your chest empty from fear. You look down at the nearly all-white water, already feeling little droplets wetting your legs. You take a deep breath and steel yourself for what is likely going to be the last mistake of your short life when you hear a fearful shout from behind you. You turn around at the same time as Emily and you both see Brahms running full speed at you. Your heart leaps in relief but you don’t have time to think before you feel Emily’s hands on you, pushing you backward into the icy water. 

You hit the water with a splash and as you start to go under you hear an extremely panicked scream you know must have been Brahms. You are barely able to do it but somehow you are able to doggy paddle up to the surface of the river that is quite literally tearing at you and when you finally break the surface you have just enough to time to take one gulp of air and make eye contact with a wild and terrified looking Brahms before you get pulled back under.

You use all of your might to fight against the current, even using the rocks you are avoiding crashing into to push yourself further across the river, and it's when you get about halfway when your shoe slips against a slimy rock and you lose your purchase, sliding deeper into the water and being dragged toward some of the most violent parts of the rapids. As you fight to stay afloat, twisting and turning, whiplashed by the power of the river, your head is smashed into a jagged rock and your vision goes black for a second.

You wake up a moment later, coughing up water, stuck against a rock big enough to qualify as a bolder, but now out of the water about three-fourths of the way across the river. You suck in lungfuls of air desperately, wiping at your eyes to get the water and now blood out of them so you can see. You can just barely hear the sounds of a violent struggle at the riverside over the sounds of the water crashing around you. You shake your head to clear your mind and you are able to see where the sounds are coming from.

At the very edge of the river, you see Brahsm and Emily rolling around in the dirt fighting tooth and nail, drawing blood, gnashing their teeth, and ripping at each other like wolves. You are so dazed and weak you can’t do much but watch as Brahms barely gets the upper hand and rips himself away from Emily trying to come to your aid in the river. You do your best to shout at him to not get in the water but you stop short when you see Emily behind him pick up a rock. You gasp and push yourself up screaming with all your might for him to watch out and turn around. 

Thankfully he hears you and does what you say, and just in time as the rock comes down where his head just was. He scrambles up and away from Emily who lunges at him the rock in hand. You aren’t able to make out much of what happens next but you see the aftermath. Brahms was able to get the upper hand and now he is sitting on her chest. He shakes as he looks down at the rock now in his hands and covered in dripping red. You can hear him scream as he falls back off of her and when his body moves allowing you to see Emily more clearly all you can see of her head is a misshapen blob, like a pumpkin left out to rot. You see how the skin and bone were smashed open by the rock, it looks almost like the grotesque version of a blooming flower and that's the last thought you have before your vision goes completely black.

Chapter Text

You startle awake, body wound tight and skin covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. You gasp in the silence of the still-dark hours of the night, swallowing down newfound panic and re-remembered fear after your dream that had just been reliving one of the worst moments in your life. You can feel the still sleeping figure of Brahms pressed against your back, curled around you almost protectively. Somehow you haven’t woken him and you really don’t want to after all that you’ve remembered.

Your childhood memories had always been rather fuzzy, clear in spots and blank in others like a mental topographical map, but you had mercifully only had wispy hints at the events of that day until now. You almost want to pretend like it was a figment of your imagination, an attempt from your mind to weave together the sparse amounts of information and memory you had on the ends of Emily and Brahms as you knew them as a child, but you can feel the truth of it in your bones. You’ve remembered what you had been thankful to have forgotten and now you are left alone to arrange all of the pieces of your present and past selves into something humanoid. 

Brahms shifts in his sleep, snuggling closer to you and his soft breath that you feel on your neck, ruffling your hair, makes you tear up. You knew he killed Emily, you had always known and had been questioning your apparently skewed moral compass since being thrust back into the world of the Heelshire estate because of your lack of empathy for the dead girl, but it hadn’t been truly real until now. You have never feared Brahms until this moment, and you feel sick with guilt. Guilt for your role in her death, for not being able to protect anyone including yourself, for fearing Brahms when you know that what had happened was an accident and the result of trying to protect you. 

Since he came out of your closet you have felt so completely guilty towards Brahms that every breath you take feels like an added weight in the growing cavern of your chest. He was forsaken by the world decades ago due to a horrible accident and you, still a child, had not known better than to question what you were told. You are now an adult and you feel the unparalleled weight of your responsibility towards Brahms. 

You shift and turn to him, your face in his chest which steadily rises and falls tantalizingly close to your lips. You look at his masked face that shines pearly in the soft moonlight, contrasting with the inky curls of his messed hair that falls over the mask’s forehead in an almost juvenile way. Your heart beats fast in your chest and you ache to hold him, to go even further than that…you wish you could break open your chest and sequester him inside for at least he’d be safe from everyone else if not from your selfish desires. He only truly has you but the deepest darkest parts of you love it.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Brahms wakes up early in the morning and his heart beats faster, warming his body like honey and electricity when he looks down at the peaceful figure of y/n curled up against him. Her face is buried in his sweater, her nose touching his chest through his shirt, it’s the smallest amount of contact yet it lights him on fire. 

Brahms shifts his hips away from y/n, not wanting her to notice the hardness between his thighs on the off chance she wakes up by the time he is rid of it. He always wakes up with an erection when he sleeps at y/n’s side and for the most part he has been able to get rid of them through mental strategies, mostly thinking about her leaving him which does the trick but also leaves him with a tight chest full of anxiety and terror, but since the world shifted two nights ago when he had broken his self-made vow and let loose his desire, he realizes that he’ll need more than just thoughts to deal with his current situation.

Thankfully Brahms is adept at sneaking around without waking even the lightest sleeper so he makes quick work of getting out of bed without disturbing y/n in the least. He stands above her for a second, not daring to touch her lest he stoke the flames of his base desires which revolt and pleasure him so totally, so he just looks down at her and yearns. 

He sighs after a moment before he lightly steps into the bathroom and closes the door as best as he can, leaving a sliver as there is no way to shut it totally without making noise. Brahms slips off his sweater and shirt, not wanting them to get soiled, and undoes his pants just enough to pull himself out. He holds his breath avoiding his eyes in the mirror as he stands by the sink and pleasures himself, his moans and gasps of pleasure muffled by his bitten lip and the porcelain of his mask though he can't help a few whimpers of her name that slip through his clenched teeth.

He grips the sink edge with one hand to ground himself, reveling in but also hating how the freezing surface keeps him from falling too deep into his gratification. His ministrations speed up from the fact that y/n is so close though he also feels rather perverted for doing something so scandalous near to her but as always the pleasure outweighs and is even aided by the sin. He can still smell her scent on his skin from having been tangled up with her as they slept and it makes him breathless. He squeezes himself just a bit too hard as he pumps, enjoying the sharp pain of too much pleasure at once. He fucks himself with his hand, hips flexing and his hand's grips pulsating.

When he finishes into his hand with a final stutter of his hips he cleans himself up, scrubbing his hands like they are marked by his sins in perpetuity. He braces himself against the side of the sink, feeling awash in a fresh wave of both self-loathing and immense enjoyment of the sinful. As he glares at himself in the mirror he thinks about why he promised himself to abstain in the first place. It wasn’t pleasuring himself that was the sin, it was the person whose image and existence he pleasures himself to that is the introduction of immorality into the natural. That being said, it's growing tiring to follow his rules.

He grits the sink edge and funnels his self-hatred into his eyes that burn behind his mask. What is he to her but a ghost, and a broken and scarred one at that? His body and heart betray him endlessly by desiring someone he can only destroy as he has destroyed himself. He shakes himself from his spiraling thoughts but not without the thought of what the point was of chivalry, of being a good boy, when he knows firsthand how fragile life is and how precarious what he has left of his is. He is getting sick of trying to be good and always failing so spectacularly, he just wishes y/n would give him a sign that he doesn’t have to try anymore. 

He sighs as he leaves the bathroom, still soft-footed and alert but he finds y/n as he left her, the picture of sleep, almost too perfect but he doesn’t question the way she seems to gasp as he slides back into the blankets or how her cheeks in the dim light seem to burn red.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

When you wake up you don’t stir, still half asleep, but you are aware enough to realize that Brahms is getting out of bed and that it wasn’t quite morning yet. He pauses above you for a moment and this makes you more alert but you stay still, wanting to know what he will do if he believes you to be asleep. After a silent minute, he moves and goes into the bathroom. You breathe a sigh of relief feeling as if you’ve averted some sort of small disaster and snuggle deeper into your blankets. 

You are about to drift back into sleep when a noise catches your attention. You hold your breath to be able to hear better and when you recognize the sound you hold your breath for a whole new reason. You can hear the muffled sounds of wet skin being manipulated and accompanying soft, almost choked, moans. 

You freeze before a familiar heat blooms within you, you lay stock still as you listen to Brahms masturbate not even ten feet from you. Your cheeks heat and you feel as if you’re being burnt alive from the inside. You try to give him some privacy by thinking about anything but what he’s doing, not wanting to deal with what's happening, but when you hear your name slip from his mouth your eyes go wide and your heart stutters. You quickly explain it away as wishful thinking or some sort of accident but when he moans your name again you know for sure that Brahms is thinking of you as he pleasures himself and while you should feel at least a little bit disgusted or violated, your heart races and your hands tense, you’ve never heard something so erotic.

Temptation overwhelms your sense so you turn over as slowly and silently as possible and catch sight of him through the cracked open door. He stands slightly bent over, shirtless, one hand gripping the bathroom sink white-knuckled and the other pumping himself which you can’t quite see from the angle, unfortunately. His pants are still up around his hips but slightly sagging from being open making it so you can see the dimples on his lower back clearly. His pale body shines in the faint light, he’s statuesque in the way his body is an interplay of long muscular planes and shadowy dips. There is an artful amount of chest hair that you can see which doesn’t shock you as Brahms is a bit on the hairy side, but how attractive you find it is a complete but not unwelcome surprise. You bite your lip as you watch being able to feel how your body reacts to the sight, almost growing heavy with want. 

After a moment you turn away and go back to your original position, schooling your face and attempting to get your breath to come out even instead of in the almost-pant it has become. You don’t want to be caught peeking. You hear when he finishes from the slightly louder moan of your name that falls from his mouth and the only thing that keeps you from a horny-induced mental breakdown is clamping your thighs against each other like your life depends on it. You pretend to be asleep when he stalks back into your room after washing his hands for an unusually long time. When he gets into the bed and curls back up against you you force yourself to relax and keep your eyes closed so you can keep up the facade of sleep because you are so not ready to process what just happened.

As you wait for the light outside to grow stronger, not able to fall back asleep, your mind races with the knowledge that you’re not the only one whose body seems to be electrified with want for the other, but you also don’t know what to do now. Your whole perception of Brahms and your relationship with him has shifted in an instant and given the heavy feelings of the past two days, if not the past few weeks, you feel a bit overwhelmed with complicated emotions you can’t quite place, or at the very least won’t name.

You sigh feeling as if you need some time alone to think and wondering how you can go about getting it. Sure, Brahms is asleep so you're basically alone and when he wakes up you could always make an excuse and get some time ‘alone’ but the whole house feels like the presence of another person. No matter where you are you feel watched and while you usually rather like that feeling right now when your internal world feels like a tangle of cords being pulled opposite ways by invisible hands, the constant feeling of being observed will set you even further on edge. 

You sneakily grab your phone from your nightstand and check the time, early morning on Thursday, meaning that tomorrow is the day you promised to go out with your brother and his ‘crew’. You don’t know if you feel relieved or not, it's an excuse to get out of the house but your asocial side isn’t looking forward to the attention or crowd. You look over at Brahms and cringe at the conversation you’re going to have to have with him about you leaving the estate but that's a Brahms breakdown you can put off for a couple hours yet. All that matters is that you’ll have some time away to think or if you're lucky get blackout drunk and not have to think about what all of this means.

You know you are running away from your feelings but you don’t care, you want to run while you still can because you know Brahms won’t allow it for long, and that secretly thrills the darker parts of you. You think idly as you lay at Brahms’ side that your mind refuses to acknowledge what your heart already seems to know and at that terrifying thought you bolt upright and jump out of bed, not caring that you’ve startled Brahms awake. 

You grab a random assortment of clothes and rush into the bathroom, slamming the door behind you with a rushed shout of an excuse. You turn the shower on, tossing your clothes to the floor as you pace frantically. You bite your lip and run your fingers through your hair as you panic at your too-accurate thought, you know that what you feel for Brahms is deeper than you’ve been letting on both to him and yourself but your heart better stay in its fucking lane and let your mind stay in control because you are so not going there right now.

You can hear Brahms moving about in your room so to separate yourself even more from the object of your current obsession you strip and jump in the scalding hot shower, not even registering the heat. You scrub yourself with singular determination even as your heart twists at what you won’t allow yourself to admit and your skin sings at any contact after the show you got earlier. You know you are playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with yourself, and that you have almost no chance but to lose but still you can’t help your instinct to bolt, you've never cared like this and you’re terror-stricken at how little control you truly have over yourself.

When the water runs cold you step out and scrub yourself dry before getting dressed. You do the rest of your morning routine, actively suppressing the flutters in your heart and stomach at the thought of the man you know is waiting just outside the door, creepy for anyone else but adorable from him. You choke on your toothpaste at thinking Brahms is adorable, something you would have thought without consequence before but now feels like an admission of something more. 

You shake your head in denial and wash your face with icy water before looking yourself in the eye in the mirror, your hands gripping the edge of the sink. You look down at the cold porcelain sink surface and flush red when you remember who was just in this very same position and what he was doing. You growl in frustration, kicking your dirty clothes into the corner where Brahm’s shirt and sweater lay and impulsively open the door and walk out into your room.

As you expected Brahms is there waiting for you, sitting on your now neatly made bed, his hands clasped in his lap in front of him, his top half still unclothed and now even more clearly on display for you to admire. He watches you like a hawk as you walk over to your closet and start looking through your hoodie collection for one that might fit the large man. 

“Y/n…” he says quietly, sounding a little unsure.

You flinch and you know he sees it, he sees everything, but he doesn’t comment on it. You don’t turn to him but you hear him get up off your bed and approach you slowly before stopping a few feet away. You can see him reach out for you in your peripheral vision and you swallow at how his muscles shift under his skin at the movement, but he pauses before he actually touches you which you are both thankful for and hate.

“I’m sorry y/n…” he says.

You turn to him at the same time as you pick a random hoodie, taking it off the hanger and holding it out in front of you. You clear your throat trying to act normal and not like you had a world-shattering realization less than an hour ago. 

"What for?" You ask, your voice sounding deceptively normal.

He doesn't respond but you can see his eyes twitch in what you guess to be confusion or frustration. He watches you as he takes the hoodie from your hands.

"For everything, anything that is bothering you… can I make you feel better?" He asks, his voice morning rough and tantalizingly sweet, a small amount of his child-like voice peeking through at the end of his words.

You internally scream at his semi-suggestive phrasing but just shake your head and jokingly punch him on the arm. 

"Nothing's wrong, sorry if I seem off this morning, I had a bad dream," you say, internally crossing your fingers that he doesn't ask you to elaborate.

Thankfully he doesn't, he just nods with eyes that seem to say that he knows what it's like to have bad dreams that bleed into the day. He slips the hoodie on and you try not to watch as his abdominal muscles flex as he does so. When he pops his head through the hood it messes his already messy bed head further and you love how his hair looks something like a dark halo above the pale white of his mask. You smile softly at the sight and it seems to relax Brahms a little, whatever it is that your face conveys. 

You don't make a move to fix his hair like you usually would, instead you walk around him, bumping his hip with yours with a quiet laugh. He hums and follows closely behind you which makes you feel protected, you wish you could drown the butterflies that have made their home in your abdomen.

You lead him downstairs, talking idly about your most recent safe-for-work commissions, deciding after last time it's probably best to not wave the not-safe-for-work art you do in his face. He seems very interested and you happily oblige when he asks you questions about them, wanting to get him in the best mood possible before you drop the party bomb.

You both decide on bowls of your favorite cereal for breakfast eaten over the beginning of a horror movie marathon. You have a lineup of the essential horror movies that he needs to watch to be certified cool namely House of a Thousand Corpses , the rest of the Scream franchise, the Crow , and the Queen of the Damned . The Crow was definitely a little self-serving but when it came down to watching it after raiding the pantry for lunch, Brahms was similarly enthralled in the movie though for very different reasons. He explained that he very much liked the movie’s aesthetic and the drama of Eric Draven’s backstory while you kept quiet that you quite liked Eric Draven’s backside and leather ensemble, and the rest of the movie’s good qualities came after.

Brahms and you watch movies from breakfast until past dinner with few breaks, both of you eating your weight in junk food from the stash you had Malcolm steadily deliver over the past few weeks and developing eye and stomach damage in the process undoubtedly. The movie binge is very purposeful on your part as sitting mindlessly in front of your projector means that you don’t have to think about Brahms jerking off and whimpering your name. You know that image and sound is going in your spank bank forever but you are very much suppressing any thoughts around it for a reason, because what is it that Brahms sees you as to do such a thing? You don’t think about it and instead, stuff yourself full of chips and candy as you watch people get murdered in creative ways.

By the end, you are both changed people, Brahms for his newfound horror movie knowledge base and you for having spent most of the movie’s runtime either thirsting after the various characters and Brahms or reordering your thoughts. You hadn’t really decided on anything mostly because you had already decided a few things and had yet to follow any of your resolutions very well but you had strategized informing Brahms of your impending temporary departure the next day, namely ripping the bandaid off at bedtime and then dipping.

The two of you clean up together after the credits roll on the last movie and get ready for bed. You start to pace as Brahms takes a shower in your bathroom. You haven’t quite abandoned your earlier resolve to just do your job and leave, avoiding acknowledging all feelings in the time it takes for the Heelshires to come back, but the most important part of this plan is making sure that Brahms can really live when you leave and you’ve been doing your research thanks to your trusty dusty laptop and a few purposefully vague calls with Ada, a former law enforcement agent.

There was never definitive proof that Brahms killed Emily, it was common knowledge that he did in town but given the subsequent fire that killed him the police never bothered to really investigate out of respect for the Heelshires meaning Brahms’ name is clean in the eyes of the law as Emily’s death was ruled a freak accident. That's the good news. The bad news is that Brahms is legally dead, and part of that is his pseudo-alibi for Emily’s death meaning that if he miraculously returns from the dead, even if you are able to keep him completely away from the limelight, there will undoubtedly be police attention on Brahms both for the reasons he’s played dead for two decades and because this, if the police are intelligent at all, will renew interest in what exactly happened that day leading to them trying to figure out what truly happened to Emily. 

If that were to happen and they realized that it wasn’t an accident but murder, Brahms would be tried as an adult for the crime he committed as a child as murder has no statute of limitations in the United Kingdom and it would be a farce to try a twenty-nine-year-old man as the eight-year-old boy he once was. In the United Kingdom all murder requires a life sentence, though there is a chance of parole, regardless of the age of the perpetrator, meaning he’d have no chance of anything but going away for life and if that was to go down Brahms would be trading one prison for another and you won’t let that happen. 

You would need to figure out a way to get him un-declared as deceased as subtly as possible, so he could rejoin society as a relatively normal adult. So far your only plan as to how you could do that is to bribe the coroner who declared him dead in the first place to rescind his judgment but the paper trail makes you nervous. Then there is the seven-year statute where a person can be declared dead if they haven’t been seen in seven years meaning Brahms could be considered dead on multiple levels.

The other option is to not do this via not-so-legal means. Ada has contacts that could falsify an identity well enough that Brahms could go out and get a job or buy property or whatever it is that he would want to do. This is a nice enough solution but under the fake name and still presumed dead, when the Heelshires die their assets will be dissolved and he will obviously not get a cent. This is something he could live without of course but you would rather avoid him losing all that is his birthright in order to just live. Who deserves what the Heelshires have hoarded more than the child they sequestered in the walls so long ago?

The last option is to find a way he can live “half out” so to speak, where he can live in the Heelshire estate but operate in the world more-or-less normally. You need to confront the Heelshires and basically force them to allow Brahms to live at least semi-normally. Brahms could easily live off of the Heelshire fortune indefinitely meaning he doesn’t need to get a job and if he was allowed to leave he would not be recognized as Brahms isn’t exactly similar looking to his childhood self and Brahms as a child wasn’t let out much so the only people left that could possibly recognize him are you, your parents, and your brother. You think this is the best option as while it doesn’t give Brahms perfect freedom and still keeps him somewhat under his parent's control, he would be as free as he likely can ever be, and that's what you want from him, the best he can get considering his unique situation.

You go through these options in your mind as you wait for Brahms to leave his shower, feeling an almost righteous conviction to save Brahms from wasting away all alone in the walls, and all you need to do is survive until you can sit the Heelshires down and more or less blackmail them into giving Brahms the freedom that shouldn’t have ever been taken from him. Even if you can’t ever let him know how you now know you feel, you can channel that into helping him, after all, if you… care about something you should let it go, right?

You are broken out of your thoughts by Brahms exiting the bathroom, his hair dripping wet as usual and clad in his father’s loose-fitting castoffs. You huff a little, amused that he never dries his hair meaning it's a daily occurrence for you to dry and comb his hair for him. You gesture for him to sit on the floor at the bedside as he usually does and you sit on the bed and get to work. 

You dry his hair gently with a towel before you comb it out, running your fingers through his silky hair intermittently and smiling at the soft sounds he lets out. You scratch his scalp lightly with your nails and he lets out something akin to a moan and you pause, remembering with a flash what you had witnessed this morning. Your face heats and Brahms goes to turn and look at you to see why you’ve stopped so you snap out of it and go back to playing with his hair. You think this might be the best time to mention your plans to go out tomorrow.

When he seems to be in an almost trance-like state from you practically petting his hair, you come out with it.

“I’m going to hang out with Malcolm tomorrow…” you say, already cringing at what you expect to be a less-than-positive response.

Brahms’ body goes taut before he turns to you with an eerie slowness. When he meets your eyes his are dark with obvious displeasure.

“Why?” he asks, his voice thick with annoyance.

You raise an eyebrow, your hand that is still buried in his hair turns his head back so he’s looking straight forward again. He follows your wordless instruction with enough resistance that you know he is signaling that he is only doing so because he wants to not because you’re making him. You roll your eyes, half smiling half gritting your teeth.

“Because I want to, I can hang out with my brother if I want to Brahms…” you say, trying to be gentle because you know he is unable to go out, that you are his only social connection and so it makes sense for him to be jealous to a point.

He huffs sarcastically.

“Your brother is one thing, but he’s not the only one is he?” he says, his voice clipped.

He’s quite the observer, you have to give him that.

“True…other people will be there but it's just a small get-together of the town dweebs, I mean if someone is friends with my brother they can only be so cool,” you say, trying to joke your way out of an argument.

He hums, seemingly unimpressed by your attempt at deflection.

“Will Colin be there?” he says, his voice angry.

You purposefully yank a little too hard on his hair as you brush it and you hear him suck in a breath from the pain, annoyed at his possessiveness but even more at how excited it makes you feel.

“Yes, Conrad will be there, but it’s not like I’m going to hang out with him,” you say, starting to let annoyance bleed into your voice.

“You might not be going for him but I’m willing to bet he’s going for you,” he says lowly.

You flinch at the truth in his words, and you impulsively say what you think, wanting to goad him even though you know better.

“What does it matter? Maybe I want him to go for me,” you say.

Brahms whirls around not even flinching at the way the hairbrush pulls his hair.

“No! You are not going! If you do I’ll kill that idiot, Christopher,” he says venomously, leaning up on his knees and getting much too close to your face for comfort.

You flinch at the intensity of his reaction and how you can see the truth of what he says in his eyes. You don’t feel scared though, it's Brahms, not some crazy stranger.

“You don’t get to decide that Brahms! I’m going and you’re not going to do shit! I don’t care about Conrad like that but his company is much nicer than yours when you start acting like a brat!” you say angrily.

You know you shouldn’t be matching his anger but you can’t help it, you’re pissed and confused, you don’t know what you are feeling but you know you feel it intensely. He growls like an angry dog which would normally ick you out but you are too pissed right now to register it.

“I can decide! You’re mine! You are supposed to take care of me not talk to stupid fuckers like that empty-headed Cromwell!” he says angrily.

You stand up and he does too. You are chest to stomach, you glaring up at him and him glaring down at you. 

“I’m not yours Brahms, not at all, now stop acting like a dick!” you say.

He pushes you back onto the bed behind you, crawling over you and boxing you in, his masked face inches from yours. You don’t bother to struggle, you know you’ll lose.

“You. Are. Mine. And you have to follow the rules, rule two never leave Brahms alone, you can’t leave or else,” he says, his voice quiet now but deadly dark.

You sneer.

“The fuck I can’t, I’ll take the fucking doll to the party that way Bramsy boy won’t be alone at all! He’ll be with me and Conrad while you can stay your ass here by yourself! If you want to follow the rules then how about rule nine, Brahms is never to leave!” you say, pushing at his masked face with your free hand.

He makes a sound of displeasure and in a move too fast you can’t really register it, pins your hands above your head with his own. You look up at him with your chest heaving from anger and the brief struggle you put up. He brings his face closer to you, the nose of his mask brushing your cheek as he whispers savagely in your ear.

“I’ll never hurt you lo-y/n but if you dare to leave for that dickhead I’ll break all of my rules and I’ll kill him, I promise you, don’t tempt me y/n because you don’t seem to see how close I am to breaking..”

His head retreats after he says this. You scoff but you know he’s not lying from the seriousness and rage in his eyes, he really will try to kill Conrad if you go tomorrow. You feel a chill go through your body at that realization and then feel sick at how your stomach heats. You push your head up to meet his gaze more strongly.

“Fuck you, Brahms,” you say with hatred.

He tenses for a moment before chuckling without humor. He brings his face back down to yours, running the nose of his mask along your face, his breath tickling your skin. He nuzzles his face into your neck and hair, you can feel the sheer power of his body as he shifts just a bit closer to you.

“Didn’t I just say not to tempt me?” he whispers, voice dark and rough.

You freeze, your breath stilled in your chest. You don’t dare move because for once he knows exactly what he said, and you are more than shocked. He breathes in heavily by your ear, shivering a bit as he pulls away.

“We’re going back to the rules and this time I’m going to be strict y/n. I’ve been too kind but spare the rod spoil the child,” he says before bringing one of his hands down to caress your face that is still frozen in shock, “and I would hate for you to be ruined so carelessly.”

You don’t react as he pulls away, getting off of you and standing at the side of your bed. You lay there and look up at him stupefied. He waits for a moment but when you make no move to get up he offers you his hand which you take instinctively. He hauls you to your feet before sharply turning away and walking to the door before turning to you.

“It’s bedtime,” he says before walking into the hallway and then into his old room.

You stand there for a moment before following in a daze.

Chapter Text

After you fulfill the rules, having read his bedtime story awkwardly and placing his goodnight kiss on the furthest part of his mask from the mask’s lips which he had accepted with quiet disdain, you return to your room in a daze. What the actual fuck is Brahms on, you wonder. You’ve never imagined he had the capacity to act like he did, flirtatious, suggestive…it was a shock and the switch in you doesn’t mind but the commitment-phobe and overly-cautious person in you is a little panicked. 

As you toss and turn in your bed, your mind going a hundred miles a minute you realize that since you were so conflicted and confused earlier that after his switch-up you hadn’t even thought of being angry at his refusal to ‘let you’ go out tomorrow. His use of your own words against you seemed to have made you temporarily brain dead but now you have enough control to remember yourself and your hard-headed nature.

You kick off your sheets and blankets indignantly, pouting at the ceiling. The audacity Brahms has to treat you like some sort of possession rather than as an adult with equal footing pisses you off. You completely understand the root of his issues but you are frustrated that you don’t know how to help him work through them. It makes sense that he is overprotective and very possessive of you as you are his sole tie to the outside world and given his history he is likely rather anxious about the possibility of losing that tie, hence his bratty behavior, but that doesn’t mean you’re going sit around and let it happen. 

The thing is, he knows that your job is temporary. Your contract is for three months specifically, and yet he acts as if you signed up to stay forever as his own personal babysitter or something. You think about the complete fucking meltdown you’re heading towards when the Heelshires finally get back from their trip which should be in six to seven weeks from now. You can only imagine his undoubtedly violent reaction when your contract is up and you leave to return to the ‘real world’ so to speak. Obviously, you’d be coming back frequently to visit since you now know that he is alive and after you confront the Heelshires about letting Brahms live at least a semi-normal life you’ll want to monitor their behavior as you don’t trust them very much.

A big part of you doesn’t want to leave, but that part of you is the delusional part that dreams of a pretty life that could have only existed in an alternative timeline, where Emily just moved away or never existed at all and you and Brahms were never separated. Where you got together and spent your free time reading poetry and making dandelion crowns or something but that isn’t the world you live in and it’s not one you can build from the broken pieces of his life or yours. 

Your thoughts drift. There are a few reasons why you jumped on the opportunity for isolation by working for the Heelshires for a couple of months, but mostly it gave you time to figure out what life you could make for yourself after graduation. It was meant to just be something to do before your graduate work starts, but given all that has happened, you’re still at a loss for what you can do after that ends. Your future has always seemed more like an abyss than a promise, and the panic and fear of that feeling is more than a little familiar. You bite your lip at the thought before rolling your eyes with a groan. Fuck three in the morning nihilistic thoughts you think with half-assed disdain.

You groan at your past self for deciding that art school was the move especially when you low-key hate kids meaning that art education is a no-go as far as you’re concerned. You once had lofty dreams of being a famous artist but you’ve since realized you don’t have the temperament for kissing rich people’s asses or selling yourself. You just hope you can find a quiet librarian job or something similarly relatively asocial after you finish. 

With a sigh, you sit up before laying back down on your bed the opposite way so your legs rest up against the headrest and your head lays flat on the sheets. You bite your lip and cross your arms over your chest. You are inexplicably upset, you can feel the thin fissure between you and Brahms widening every moment but you refuse to be the one to close the distance, your pride won’t let you. You want him to come to you instead, not that you know what you’d do if he did, but still.

Your mind is spiraling with thoughts and problems you need to resolve so you get up with a groan and rifle through the art supplies on your desk and grab your journal. You return to your bed, pencil in hand, and flip to a fresh page to get your thoughts down, something you haven’t bothered to do since Brahms appeared. You make a bulleted list of things you plan to do before you inevitably have to leave in no particular order of importance:

1. Confront/blackmail the Heelshires into letting Brahms live semi-normal. (threaten them with going to the authorities or something - need to talk to Ada more about this and maybe Malcolm for backup just in case?)
2. Somehow get Brahms to be okay with the idea of you leaving (perhaps a mix of promising to visit often and a copious amount of lemon candies??)
3. Help Brahms look less like a crusty wall man (new wardrobe? Definitely a shave)
4. Avoid thinking about the scene in the bathroom and pour all of your excess energy into your commission work (to keep the horny at bay)
5. Have a tea sesh with Ada (she’ll tell me what I should do about…

You stop writing, not wanting to continue and say what it is you are really struggling with. It's not like you to catch feelings, and you really can’t think of a worse time and place to do it. You want to continue to deny it but you know it's futile, you know you've caught feelings but that doesn't mean you'll be acting on them. There’s something that keeps you from even entertaining the idea of ever letting Brahms know of your feelings, mostly a pesky thing called your conscience. You don’t see any way where you take your relationship with Brahms beyond the bounds of friendship that won’t end in someone being hurt deeply. You wish you were some kind of bionic girl, incapable of your wires becoming so fucking mislaid and unraveled. You frown down at the list before holding up your right fist with a determined look.

“Fighting!” you say to yourself quietly.

You know you aren’t going to sleep anytime soon so you start to sketch over your list, ending up painting a colorful watercolor garden over it by the time you get bored. As you paint you think of what you’re going to do with Brahms tomorrow. 

Basically, your plan is to let the idiot sweat by ignoring him and then when he breaks because he can never take being ignored for very long, explain his shitty behaviors and work with him on giving you more freedom during the remainder of your stay. You want Brahms to treat you as an equal rather than a prized toy but you don’t really know how to fix the behavior of a petulant man. You roll your eyes at that thought. You know you are also being immature, but hey at least you plan to communicate with him after making him pay a little, right?

You eventually give up on sleeping completely and decide to go on a late-night slash early-morning walk around the garden. You throw on a sweatshirt and pull a pair of sweatpants over your pajamas. You grab your headphones and very carefully open your bedroom door. You practically hold your breath as you walk down the stairs as quietly as humanly possible. The wooden stairs creak below you despite your intense focus but you pray that Brahms isn't listening, as unlikely as that is.

You reach the foyer and creep to the backdoor after a brief pitstop in the kitchen to grab a bag of chips for a much later-than-midnight snack. You pull the back door open with a muffled click before stepping out into the relatively cool night. It's dusky but not completely dark thanks to the full moon overhead. The air is perfumed with a wisp of an unidentifiable flowery scent and you can just make out the culprit behind the fragrance from the varicolored petals that are just visible from the moonlight. 

You walk on the stone path into the more shadowed parts of the garden before settling on the ground, leaning up against a stone bench, and opening up your chips. You press play on your music and start to eat, spacing out comfortably. You muse on what your life has become recently and your earlier anger at Brahms has dissipated into something like pity. When you finish the little bag of chips you fold it, stick it in the deep pockets of your sweats, and stand up, turning around lazily and finding a wild-eyed and silent Brahms standing before you.

You squeal from surprise before slapping a hand over your mouth to instinctively muffle the sound. His eyes are accusatory, wet, and bloodshot. His body is wound tighter than you've ever seen it, still like how things moving too fast look stationary, and hunched over so that his face is closer to yours. The bright moonlight makes the edges of his inky hair silver and soft, almost nonsensically you think his hair looks like a spider's web caught in deep black water. You can hear the ragged and wet breath from behind his mask. You clock the reason for his anger immediately, he probably thought you were leaving, enacting some sort of payback for the moment of conflict earlier.

Taking off your headphones, your pants crinkling a bit from the chip bag in your pockets, you give him a reassuring half-smile. You instinctively want to reach out to him but you don't, not wanting to set him off. You take a deep breath, his eyes roving over you, the whites of his eyes almost startlingly bright.

"I just came out here for a walk, didn't do much walking as I basically immediately sat down to eat a bag of chips but still, it's the thought that counts," you say, your voice trembling ever so slightly from the nerves of being caught doing nothing.

Brahms steps even closer making you want to flinch from the sheer proximity which you ignore. His mask touches your face, cold against your skin and feather-light. You hold your breath as you feel him nuzzle slightly into you. He takes a deep long breath, you can feel it against your neck and it makes you shiver.

"Promise?" He asks, his voice black as night and sharp.

You lean back into him, sticking your face in his neck, eyes closed and mind exhausted.

"Of course," you say.

He seems to accept this from how he presses even closer to you, but only a small amount of tension is released from his body. You wrap your arms around him and he holds you, his long fingers digging into your body just a little too hard, a warning. You hate how good it feels to have him wrapped around you, how part of you almost wants to stay in his possession. 

After far longer than what is friendly you pull away, his body chasing you from how he leans in as you lean away. You meet his eyes and they are softer than before, more like the eyes of the boy you were so close to rather than the man who often feels like a stranger. You gesture to the garden.

"Want to go on a walk? I'm out of chips and we're both already out here, might as well," you say.

He looks at you silently before jerking forward, burying his masked face in your neck. Your eyes go wide in surprise but you don't rebuke the contact, you selfishly can't help but relish in any contact he gives you. He hums against you, the vibration feels bone deep.

"Okay," he says before pulling away and offering his hand.

You take his hand without hesitation and the two of you begin walking along the winding stone path. You notice that he is wearing no shoes but neither are you so you don't say anything. The ground is rather warm for the night, somehow still sun-warmed from the day. You hadn't put on shoes because you had wanted to be as silent as possible in order to avoid Brahms, obviously futility, and he doesn't seem to own a pair of shoes so you both walk carefully in the half-dark. 

The Heelshire estate has extensive grounds and gardens meaning that a walk can last for hours, a day even if you go along the river but you both silently agree not to tempt fate and stick only to the manicured paths far away from where it happened. There is a smattering of antique lanterns along the paths making it relatively easy to navigate in addition to the almost overly bright moon. The surrounding foliage and the dreamlike lighting make you feel like you're deep in the world, like one of the countless versions of Alice running after a rabbit she’s scared to catch.

Brahms holds your hand like you're a runaway child, something he needs to keep his hands on in order to keep you from bolting and you roll your eyes but secretly love it… just a little. You swing your linked arms between the two of you absently and he allows it, even seems to like it from how he does his part to keep the pendulum going. As you walk your hips bump his and you purposely knock into him a little harder than an accident but he takes it solidly, even jutting his own hip out every once in a while.

After you make a loop of the shortest path, the one meant for flower viewings and leisurely strolls for the elderly Heelshires and their equally geriatric social circle, Brahms silently guides you onto another path, seemingly not wanting to break the fragile moment and you wordlessly agree, letting him lead you further into the shadows of the night. 

There are a thousand words flitting about on the tip of your tongue, and your chest aches and pulsates from confessions you can never make so you stay silent. After some time Brahms speaks up, voice rough.

“Sorry…I, I know my reaction was inappropriate but even so, I do not want you to spend time with Malcolm’s friend. I realize that I haven't put my best foot forward, but I didn’t mean to alienate you, which I know will happen if I continue such behavior,” he says, fidgeting.

You glance over at him, internally battling yourself. You want to be petty desperately but a part of you wonders if his reaction was really so bad after all…and then you remember yourself and get slightly pissed again. You're fucking sick of the emotional whiplash that you've been jerking yourself through the past few weeks so you decide to come as clean as you can, minus treating Brahms like a confession booth, not wanting to overwhelm the poor man with your emotionally stunted bullshit.

You fidget as you walk before abruptly stopping near a ledge created by a rather tall stone planter. You avoid his eyes as you speak so you don't get psyched out, it's time to dig most of the skeletons out of your proverbial closet. You lean away from him ever so slightly and you know he notices from how he twitches in your peripheral vision. 

"We need to talk," you say.

He visibly balks. You flinch, trying and failing to order your thoughts in order to share them productively. Instead of speaking before you're ready and letting a bunch of half-baked words fall from your lips you gesture to the ledge before sitting on it yourself. Brahms follows slowly, cautiously. He sits with his hands set politely in his lap, looking like some sort of bastardized version of the Brahms doll which as far as you can remember has been wasting away in the dining room as it's one of the only main rooms you and Brahms don't bother to make much use of.

After a moment of tense silence, where you can literally feel the questions Brahms is suppressing from vocalizing slithering about on your skin, you speak.

"Ok, there's a few things we're going to have to clear up, be all adult about or whatever, basically let's just say what we have on our minds and work through it together ok? I can't deal with guesswork and miscommunication anymore," you say, not outwardly acknowledging your hand in these issues but internally berating yourself.

Brahms shifts in his seat, his side pressed up lightly against yours, almost exploratory like he expects you to shrink from the contact. You don't. He nods.

“Okay,” he whispers out.

You nod back for no particular reason before the night goes silent again. After a moment you feel his eyes on you once more and you sigh, realizing you're going to have to go first. Fuck.

"We'll…ok. First, I want to be able to spend more time with my brother since I haven't been able to for so long. Second, we need to talk about your hatred for Conrad and me leaving in general as something tells me you'd be less than happy about me meeting anyone or doing anything off the Heelshire estate. And third, we need to talk about what's going to happen when I leave in less than two months when your parents get back…" you say, your voice getting steadily more quiet as you go on, almost whispering at the end.

Brahms reacts as if you’ve punched him and honestly, you might as well have with the amount of shit you just dumped out to hang in the air between the two of you. You feel like you’re choking in his silence. He shakes and his hands travel, finding themselves clenched on the edge of the ledge until his knuckles go white and the rest of his hands go slightly red. You watch his reaction carefully, not scared of him but scared for him, you know he would never intentionally hurt you but when it comes to himself you are not so sure. You get the sense he is controlling himself the best he can. After a tense minute, he answers.

“One, I understand this, I will do better to curb my emotional reactions regarding Malcolm as you are correct that you should be able to spend time with him as he is your… family. Two… no. I will not explain my hatred for Conrad further than I already have, he is not allowed as per the rules. Ignore the first rule and the rest follow… that person introduces entropy and chaos that we cannot afford,” he says, voice tight like a rope pulled to the brink of being unraveled.

The way he says person makes it quite obvious he thinks of Conrad as less than such but you let it go, his inexplicable hatred for the man who is a near-stranger to you is the least of your worries right now. You wait for his thoughts on your last point, not wanting to interrupt his thought process. It is an eternity later when his voice breaks the silence like the crack of a dead tree finally falling.

“Do you want to leave?” he asks, voice soft enough that you don’t know if you were meant to hear him.

You look up at the sky that has begun to lighten, the near-eternal stars disappearing behind the coming light. You hate to lie to him so you don’t, not now.

“No, no I don’t,” you say, a truth that surprises you as you speak it into existence.

Brahms is hunched over, all you can see of him when you look down are his sharp pale ears, his dark curly hair, and the way the mask’s ribbon bisects his bent head like an equatorial line. His shoulders are up by his ears, his favorite sweater just barely brushing his skin that looks porcelain cold. You suppress the urge to warm him by pressing your warm hands to his pale skin. You swallow like it’ll absolve you from having to speak any of the words that you know you must say.

“But I have to Brahms, you know that…I can’t stay, but I won’t leave you like this…I have a plan. It’s not perfect but it's something, and even when I leave I'll come back often, I’ll only be in London, it's not nearly as far as before and now I have a reason to come back, and I will… come back that is,” you say, stumbling over yourself.

You look away from him sharply as you speak, you feel the twisting pain in your chest that you get when you say goodbye, and it scares you because you’re not gone yet but the promise of your departure makes it feel like at any moment you’ll disappear. 

“What if you didn’t have to leave?” he asks.

You look down at your legs and the way one of his clenched hands is close enough that if you shift even a little bit you'd brush it. You aren’t completely shocked by the question but it has still thrown you for a loop. What would you choose if you could? You know the answer, your heart thumps in your chest like it's fighting to let you have a last breath before death, desperately it hammers behind your ribs and you ignore it and the truth it batters into you below your skin.

“It doesn’t matter, I have to join the world again Brahms, even if I could stay I would never,” you say and a lie has never felt so acidic and sour on your tongue.

You hear him suck in a breath and you can hear that it’s wet. He must be crying and that makes you want to sob, beg for his forgiveness in the emerald grass below, cling to his legs, pray. You don’t do any of these things, instead, you clench your own hands and focus on how it hurts where your nails dig into your skin.

Chapter Text

Brahms stands in the middle of the main room of his secret apartment, frozen in frustration. His feet burn from the temperature change of going from hours spent outside at night to the warmth of the house and his ratty old sweater itches terribly. He left y/n just a minute ago after their walk and while their talk had soothed some of the rawness he’d grown accustomed to in the past few weeks, her words ripped the scabs from too many old wounds for him to ignore. She doesn’t want to leave but says she has to, why? Was it him? It has to be and that hurts.

He is convinced that she isn’t truly talking about the deadline for her job which ends with his parents' return when she says she has to leave. His parents are barely an annoyance and he can and will order them to let y/n stay if she desires to, which surely she knows. His parents are an excuse, she really does want to leave, to live out there where the people are, where he isn’t and can never be, he knows it.

She lied to spare his feelings which is worse because it proves that she doesn’t trust him enough to be honest and he knows she’s right, even if she doesn’t fully realize just how right she is to be cautious of him. She doesn’t trust him to be good, to not throw a fit, to not do something drastic and get away with it like only a rich boy like him can, but he doesn’t think she can imagine just how far he will go to keep her here with him. If she did she would have already left him, would have run after having realized that he’s more monster than man, if he’s even man at all.

He’s played it safe so far, been as nice as he knows how but it's not enough, he has to take away her options right in front of her. Through sleight of hand make her choose him happily, rig the game so every door leads to him, to them. She wants to leave but she has to stay, for her own good. He can protect her, take care of her, love her with the specific knowledge of a man who always pays attention, who has only ever known love for her and her alone. She is his just as he is hers, forever, she just doesn’t realize it yet.

The more he thinks about it the more he is convinced that she needs him just as much as he needs her. That one day she will thank him for deciding for her, that their inevitable happiness will absolve him of the sins he will commit to have her. He’s lived for decades on the vague and futile promise of a happy future, the dark and damp of his existence made bearable by all of the lifetimes he lived in his head with her, and now that the genesis of all the happiness he has ever known has unwittingly laid herself on his alter he’d be foolish not to accept such an offering.

He breathes deeply, feeling at peace with acknowledging his final fall from grace, unashamed of plotting to keep a creature of light tied to him in the darkness, he is a demon, disgusting and unlovable to all but her. In a twisted way it makes him feel special, like how a child fakes sick just to be held.

He knows warmth only because she has made and let him feel it, and he won’t be cast away from her again. He is selfish and he can’t hate himself more for it. It will all be okay in the end though. He knows how to manipulate her and he’s just desperate enough to do it. With that thought Brahms returns to the world, his mind twisting and warping further as he begins to go through the motions of life to fill up his time as a plan unveils in his mind.

Brahms cleans his apartment obsessively through the night memorizing the poetry he writes to her in his head as he moves about, an old habit. She made him a poet, first poetry borne from the saccharine love for her he knew as a child and then from the fungal rot of despair he knew in her absence. Now the poetry has morphed into songs and sonnets of longing. He pauses his cleaning to take out something to keep some sort of record of his amateur attempts at lyricism.

He keeps a tattered journal shoved under his mattress wrapped in the Iron Maiden shirt y/n had allowed him to borrow some time ago to keep his musings in. He pulls it out with embarrassed reverence, on his knees at his bedside, a position he is increasingly and guiltily familiar with. His literary pursuits are something he finds all the more embarrassing now that y/n is made flesh again rather than a near dream as she had been for the past two decades. He was taught about poetry as a child in the tutoring sessions he attended in lieu of typical schooling and kept up the interest during his life in the walls.

Words had saved him from going well and truly insane in his world of deficiency as they allowed him to create a fictitious life of not excess as one may expect but of contentedness. He has never been happy enough to want anything but peace, the freedom enough to be with her. He digs the notebook out and sets it on his crisply made bed to be added to after he cleans his space to his satisfaction. He wants to describe this feeling, this devotion that has sustained him for as long as he can remember because it isn’t time to tell her but he needs to have something to catch the overflow of emotion that threatens to drown him.

He hums, whispers to himself words he faintly remembers writing down in the soft pages of the notebook. He silently prays for the elation he feels at her existence to one day be mirrored in her eyes, hopes somewhere between bliss and pain for all of the things he’s dreamed of since he was locked away. He shivers and turns away from the notebook, wanting to write down his thoughts in a completely clean space with a clean body, something akin to religion shaping his want for her.

He has always been an almost excessively neat person so it has pained him to put forth such an unkempt impression for the past few weeks but at the very least he can keep the one space that is truly his up to his standard. He takes showers of course, scrubs his body raw to ensure that he smells pleasing to her, or at least not repulsive, yet the very way he moves signals an irregularity that borders on slovenly. He is aware of his constant bad posture thanks to it being one of the few things his mother pointed out about his appearance, a subject she avoided with explicit disgust. The habitual crouch from low ceilings in the walls and from wanting to hide his masked face seeming to only further develop his monstrous image in a place as solid and polished as the Heelshire Estate.

He is disgusted by how his baggy clothes fall off his lithe frame like a doll dressed in children’s clothes, how his face must be hidden to not put people off their food. He is stitched together with self-hatred, a Cronenberg monster of scars, a resuscitated dead boy turned reluctant and monstrous man. She makes him human, real, and seen. She doesn’t shy away from him, or look at his mask like it's an offensive object. She is not afraid of touching him, of being close to him. It's not only her acceptance of him that fuels his love, but it is part of the kindling in the fire that has slowly consumed him.

He takes a shower in his cramped bathroom, eyes lingering over the empty space above the sink where a mirror would normally go. He frowns, twitching at how even something as simple as a frown pulls on the scarred skin of his face in a way that borders on painful. His skin healed tight, not having been taken care of by a professional, rather by a near delirious eight-year-old as he heard the faint sounds of tea parties and his parents' laughter.

He scours his body, trying to make up for his perceived deficiencies. Not for the first time he examines himself with the thought of whether it could be pleasing to y/n. He would sell his soul for her to want him in the carnal ways he wants her. He can make her love him, he is confident in this, but he knows he can’t make her want him. Some things can be loved even if they are not made to be, but not everything is built to be wanted. He dresses with no eagerness, the ratty clothes becoming detestable for how little they do to transform him into the pretty creature he wishes he is for her sake.

Brahms gets back to work, cleaning the soot from his mind by cleaning his physical space. Every surface is scrubbed, linens folded, art supplies color-coded, and tools organized. When he catches sight of it he takes his homemade y/n doll from its place in a corner chair and throws it under his bed, feeling ashamed of its existence and how much effort he’d put into its creation over the years. Soon he’ll have the real thing all to himself and he makes note to destroy it on the off chance she ever sees the cursed thing, not wanting to have to explain himself at all when it comes to this.

It isn’t the dirty thing she might assume, it had been the result of his slow healing process where all he could do was clutch a pillow and scream all alone as his skin burned with every minute movement keeping him perpetually within the fire that had disfigured him. He grew to need to clutch something in his sleep from the potent nightmares that developed not from the event itself but the despondent and manic months he spent barely conscious from the pain and his parents' neglectful care.

The doll was a holdover from this time, the pillow morphing into a human-esque blob as he healed and grew that he could project his simple desire for closeness with another upon. It quickly became attached to y/n as she was always his comfort before the fire and there was no one else he would have rathered to be there. He didn’t imagine her taking care of his wounds, feeding him the cold soup and stale bread his father would leave at the door, or helping him take sips of the spit-warm jug of water at his bedside. No, her presence was all he wanted, he would have taken care of himself and her, gladly.

Brahms flinches at the resurfacing memories, mentally banishing them once again, not in the mood to pick at old wounds. He continues his cleaning purge, tackling his many hobby-related supplies. He has learned a thousand ways to spend his time over the years, violin, taxidermy, poetry, illustration, minor engineering, on and on but everything pales in comparison to her. He wants to breathe when she does, to only move according to her wishes, to follow along in her wake like a kicked puppy who knows no better than pain.

He sighs in a facsimile of contentment as he organizes his carving tools, looking down at the bracelet he made for y/n with critical eyes, the rising sun barely peeking through a stray and high up window adding the smallest amount of light to the room. He made the bracelet to show y/n in some way his devotion, that he thinks of her always even when he recedes back into the shadows but now he wavers on his earlier decision of giving it to her. It no longer looks good enough, it's amateur when he desperately wants to give her perfection, something he is unfamiliar with.

He picks it up, examining it further. He finds fault in the carvings, the intersecting lines not straight enough and the carved vines and flowers too blurred to invoke nature rather than childish scribblings. The wood isn’t as smooth as he would like it, wanting no chance of it irritating her skin let alone harming her. He walks over to his bed, setting it down on his poetry notebook and running a finger along its ridges contemplatively. He kneels, the movement is almost habitual now but instead of abusing himself, he contemplates his gift. She’d be grateful for it despite how it fails in every conceivable way and that only makes him feel worse, she’s too good.

Brahms picks up the bracelet and the notebook, choking down burgeoning feelings of preemptive regret. It’s already too late because he has decided, and he doesn’t want to give up the hope he’s given himself. He’s given himself permission to follow his instinct, to pretend for a little while longer only in order to never have to again. The future he desires is so tantalizingly close it feels like a piece of fruit dangling just out of reach, close enough to smell its sweetness, feel its cool skin against his as he reaches for it desperately, but for once the distance isn’t a punishment but a promise. She’s almost in reach and if he succeeds she’ll fall into his hands freely.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

You stand in the kitchen eating [your favorite type of cereal] and quietly listening for any sign of Brahms whom you haven’t seen yet this morning. The cereal tastes like nothing but you choke it down, wanting to get what needs to be done out of the way.

Surprisingly you had woken up this morning with a text from Greta asking if you were interested in coming to town earlier than when the party is set to start to hang out. You had more or less forgotten about her since the day Brahms revealed himself and you had winced as you texted her back in the affirmative, feeling guilty but also genuinely interested in getting to know her more. You are now kicking yourself at the impulse decision as you glance at the clock and see that you have less than an hour to find Brahms, convince him to let you leave for basically the entire day, and get ready.

You start to pace, not quite nervous but rather more impatient as you want to talk with Brahms. Last night he had dropped you off at your bedroom door after your walk like a respectful prom date before taking off down the hall, disappearing into the shadows as you watched in silence. It was abrupt feeling but completely in line with the boundaries you supposedly wanted to set so you couldn’t feel too put out even if you very much wanted to. Now you’re wondering what he felt as he left you, and if you’ll be feeling the same thing when you leave. Briefly, guiltily, you wish that the Heelshires won’t come home, that somehow they’ll sink into obscurity leaving Brahms with you, setting him free, more or less, but it's not that easy no matter what you’d trade to make it so.

After a minute you sigh and leave the kitchen on a search for Brahms. You don’t have to look far as you find him in the library just down the hall. He sits against a window, curled up in a chair, folded into himself with a thick book open before him, balanced precariously on his knees. His hair is gilded at the edges from the morning sunlight and his mask is obscured by the angle of the book, making it look as if when he sets the books down his face will be revealed but you know that's not true, there's too many walls that haven’t been broken down for something like that. The library smells faintly of orange spice, Brahms favorite tea, and you see a steaming cup on the floor at the base of the chair.

You look at him silently from the doorway, desperate not to break the scene. You move as slowly as possible, taking out your phone and snapping a candid picture. When you shift on your feet as you look down at your phone happily a creak sounds out and he looks up at you. You aren’t delusional enough to think he had been unaware of your presence from the start, you’ve long noticed that Brahms has an almost supernatural awareness of both you and the house, but you hadn’t wanted to disturb his peace. You hadn’t seen him so relaxed and so solitary since he revealed himself. It was sweet.

He looks up at you and you smile at him softly, leaning up against the doorframe. He looks at your phone in your hand and you hold it up, shaking it a bit.

“Want to see?” you ask.

He cocks his head as he watches you walk over to him.

“See what?” he asks.

“You.”

You tap your phone, bringing up the picture you took of him. You hand him the phone, his long fingers brushing yours. In the picture he is silhouetted by the sunlight from the window behind him, statuesque in his posture as he reads. It's one of the best pictures you’ve ever taken, or at least the one you find the most beautiful. The way his form is outlined and contrasts with the light reminds you of baroque paintings, both severe and soft at once, angelic in a tortured way.

Brahms peers down at the picture, silent. He’s so close to you that you can practically feel his every breath, feel the heat of his body. He’s warm like a fire on a winter night, it makes you want to lean in. He looks up at you after a moment and his eyes are unreadable.

“I haven’t seen a picture of myself since before going into the walls. It’s…peculiar. Not the same as the mirror at all,” he says, voice quiet, contemplative.

You hum in agreement.

“I’ve never really thought about it before but I guess you’re right. The mirror is your perspective since it's you looking, usually alone on top of that but with a picture it's someone else seeing you. Most of the time that is. I’m not sure which one feels more intimate though,” you say, voice trailing off in thought.

A moment of comfortable quiet passes before you break it.

“Do you like how I see you?” you ask, the words falling from your lips before you can examine them.

Brahms looks at you in silence for a second, you can tell he’s really thinking about it. It’s incredibly endearing how he always attempts to answer you to the best of his ability, it makes you feel heard, important enough to be acknowledged. Brahms was the first and perhaps one of the only people to make you feel that way.

“Yes, through your eyes I seem…better.”

You cock your head, turning his words over in your mind. You reach out before you can tell yourself not to, running your fingers through his hair comfortingly like you did when you were children. He leans into the contact and your chest warms, the softness of him below your fingers addictive. You’re a mess and all you can do is hope that Brahms won’t be caught up in it, he deserves so much better than what you can give him.

“Well I think your pretty great, the fucking best really, so I’m happy that translates,” you say, only half teasing.

You can feel him shiver at your words from where your fingers are still buried in his hair. You pull your hand away from him as if burned, not wanting to evaluate his reaction. To distract from it you take your phone back from him and tap at the screen a few times before turning it to him so he can see what you’ve done. The background of your phone is now the picture you took of him, all of your apps organized and lined up out of the way, his body the centerpiece.

“Now you’ll be the first thing I see when I open up my phone,” you say with a smile.

He nods slowly, eyes bright.

“I like that,” he says, voice just a bit rougher than usual.

The phone buzzes and you see a text from Greta saying that she’s twenty minutes out. You pocket your phone suddenly nervous which Brahms picks up on, also having seen the text notification, shoulders tightening as if he’s steeling himself for bad news.

“Ok Brahms, Greta, a friend, invited me over to her house today to hang out. She’s going to the party later as well and is picking me up in less than twenty minutes,” you say, rushing your words.

Brahms goes rigid, standing up with a jolt. You don’t back away from him, instead holding your hands up, pleading for his cooperation.

“Now before you say anything, just think, she’s not Conrad and will give me an excuse to avoid him all night at the party! Also by hanging out with her I am keeping up appearances of normalcy which will get Malcolm off my back and less set on getting me out of the house so less time away from you in the end, so it's a win-win… also don’t even try to say no to me going to the party we’ve already had that discussion,” you say, mentally crossing your fingers that none of this sets him off.

Brahms says nothing which isn’t out of the ordinary for him but the tension rolling off him is not. His breathing is abnormally heavy but when he finally goes to speak he surprises you.

“Ok. You are an adult, I can’t treat you as anything less but don’t stay away all night. I will be worried until you get back to me, I, I just… don’t want you to get hurt,” he says, voice laced with worry.

Your eyes widen at his concern, surprised by his candidness and that his reluctance seems to be coming from worry over you rather than childish possessiveness like you had assumed. You reach out to him, pulling him into a light hug which he melts into instantly. After a second you pull back, looking up at him.

“You don’t have to worry I promise, I’ll behave, it’s not exactly my scene out here so I’ll probably be stuck against the wall talking to Greta or reading on my phone the whole time. I’ll try to get back from the party as early as possible and I'll come and find you straight away, okay? I’ll give you the rundown of everything that happens too so you don’t miss any of the gory details,” you say, earnestly trying to comfort him but also giving in to the urge to joke around a bit.

He chuffs, eyes narrowed at you like he can tell you’re placating him, which you are but only partially. He nods with a sigh.

“Ok,” he says, voice tight but obviously artificially bright for your sake.

You snort, knocking your head against his shoulder in a teasing way. You’re immensely relieved by his apparent attitude shift, feeling like for the first time in a long time like everything will be okay, that you’ll survive until the end with only your old wounds to show for it.

“Ok, holy shit…you said ok,” you say back, an excited smile on your face.

You can barely believe your luck but you don’t want to push it so you peck his masked cheek and rush off to get ready, scrambling to throw some party-appropriate clothes in a bag and make yourself decent as fast as possible. All too soon you get a text from Greta letting you know that she’s outside.

You bound down the steps from your room taking a deep breath as you reach the front door. You look back and notice Brahms standing at the mouth of the hallway, his mask striking in the dim light. You impulsively dash over to him, hugging him tightly before letting go, walking backward excitedly, bag swinging.

“I’ll be back in no time, don’t worry!” you say, waving goodbye as you step out of the door and into the light.

Chapter Text

Greta’s apartment smells like peanut butter and jelly, you breathe it in with a snicker, taking another swig of Rosé straight from the bottle. You hand it over to Greta who sits at your side on the floor, the two of you surrounded by bread scraps and open jars of jam after having an impromptu sandwich-making competition that was really a drunken taste test of Greta’s horde of exotic jellies. Her favorite type of sandwich is apparently peanut butter and jelly and it shows. Even the candles on the mantelpiece are PB&J scented, an Etsy find she’s raved about excitedly since you arrived at her place a couple of hours ago. 

You decided to pregame the party together over a small marathon of Bridget Jones movies and more Rosé than you can remember. She’s been pressing you for information in a friendly way, obviously wanting to get closer to you. You don’t mind it but for once in your life you have a secret worth keeping so you do your best to circumvent any revealing details about your past and current life wanting to play it safe when it comes to anything that could reveal Brahms to the outside world. 

So far so good as far as your avoidance goes, but there's a scratch at the back of your mind that makes you wish you could be with Brahms with him no longer a secret. A wish that he could be making a sandwich for himself next to you in his peculiarly intentional way, the jelly spread to the very edges of the bread. He would nod along to your nonsensical conversations with Greta and sigh-laugh at the antics on the TV. He would glare at you every time one of the male leads showed up on screen, somehow supernaturally aware of when you’re thirsting after another man. The thought makes you smile and Greta smiles with you, thinking it was caused by whatever Colin Firth just did. 

Greta’s phone buzzes on the wood floor beside you and you see your brother’s name flash on the screen. You give her a knowing look as a slight blush colors her cheeks. She answers and you tune the conversation out, not wanting to seem nosy or hear your brother's attempt at flirting. You pop a piece of bread in your mouth, eating out of habit rather than appetite. You hum when she gets off the call and barely pry your eyes from Hugh Grant, an enduring and lifelong crush, to look at her for whatever the plan is.

“We’re all meeting up at Conrad’s house, the party started a while ago, we should probably get going now since it’ll take a minute to walk there. Let's bring the wine to go. We can make a bet on who will stumble on the cobblestone first,” she says with a tipsy giggle.

She pulls herself up with the aid of the couch and stumbles over to her shoes. You grab the wine as you lace up your sneakers, watching her as she struggles with her own. She bumps against the wall setting off a peal of laughter from the both of you. The both of you seem to be of the opinion pregaming should basically be a party’s worth of alcohol on its own and it's very obvious from the way neither of you are steady on your feet.

“I think I’ll bet on you going down first, what stakes though?” you say with a smile.

She nods slowly seemingly agreeing with you.

“How about…a secret? If I stay up I’ll tell you my deepest darkest secret, if you stay up you’ll have to, if we both fall we both have to spill, and if we both stay up it's null,” she says.

“Fair enough, I’ll just have to trip you,” you say with a giggle, wine-warm and not quite as sharp as you’d like. 

Greta and you shake on it before leaving for Conrads. You weave through the town’s cobblestone streets, both of you listing near-dangerously but you manage to stay up until you can see Conrad’s house at the end of the street. Greta took a tumble a couple of minutes prior, something you’ve been teasing her about since, after making sure she was okay of course. You laughed and joked the whole way and now the end of your journey is in sight. Bikes litter the lawn and a few cars are parked along the sleepy road making it obvious that a party is going on. You see the lights from the windows seeming to flicker from the way a mass of bodies shifting blocks the light intermittently. 

You raise your arms drunkenly, barely keeping on your feet, and whoop at your victory. You gallop towards the house riding your noble steed of near-empty Rosé, snickering to yourself about Rocinante and delusional and romantic men who think they are gallant knights, when your foot catches a bit of uneven sidewalk. You face plant into a bank of grass, bottle of wine held up in the air like a white flag as your immediate instinct is to save the drink rather than your face from damage. Greta rushes over to you and crouches down.

“Holy shit girl! You fell like a dead horse. Are you good?” she asks, voice more concerned than amused making her better than you were when you were when the roles were reversed a few minutes ago.

You push your face out of the grass, spitting out a couple of blades that are stuck to your skin with the wetness of what is likely a minor nosebleed.

“Feeling like a million bucks Greta, my dear, old chap, it’s elementary or…whatever that coked-up investigator dude said,” you mumble, getting up from the ground with Greta’s aid.

She laughs at your words and you feel warm at the fact you’ve made her laugh. You feel like part of the human race for once and it makes the ache for Brahms smart in your chest. You push the feeling down, leaning into the dimness of your inebriation. 

“Sherlock you mean?” Greta asks.

“Yes! The tall guy with the little doctor friend! God, that was a good show. Shame that the short one never climbed the odd-looking one like a tree but oh well. That’s what fanfic is for,” you say, jolly despite your injury.

You wipe at the blood with the sleeve of your sweatshirt and Greta fusses over you, both of you laughing at the predicament you've found yourself in. 

“Guess we're trading secrets later, huh? I expect soul-bearing could be life-destroying juicy shit so bring your A game Greta because I bet I'll have you beat!” you say, tongue loose from sheer intoxication.

She shakes her head at you fondly and for the briefest moment, you feel what it might have been like to have an older sister. The feeling makes you nostalgic for your childhood, for the time when Malcolm still felt like your brother rather than the near stranger he is now and Brahms still had his whole life ahead of him. Your smile falls with a wince but Greta attributes it to your bloody nose.

“Let's get inside and clean you up properly, it looks like we've been reenacting Carrie out here,” she says, grabbing the bottle of wine from the ground at your feet.

You sniffle a bit, finding the burn of your injury almost amusing. You follow her to the door. She knocks.

“We should just not acknowledge my nose, it would be hilarious to watch people be confused while I just act like this is normal,” you say with a giggle.

Greta laughs nodding and goes to say something but the door opens before she can get the words out. Malcolm stands in the doorway with a beer in hand, his smile at seeing Greta swiftly falling when he sees your bloody face. His eyes bug out and his mouth falls open. Conrad wanders in behind Malcolm and he gasps.

“Goddamn y/n, the fuck happened to your face?” He asks.

You stick out your tongue cheekily and hold up a peace sign.

“Lost a fight with some windmills, gained a battle wound, but the important thing is that Rocinante survived,” you say, gesturing to the Rosé in Greta’s arms.

Everyone looks at you bewildered.

“Rocinante?” Conrad and Malcolm ask at the same time.

Greta laughs.

“It's what she's been calling the wine since we left my place, something about a Spanish knight?” she says.

You look at the people around you expecting at least one of them to get the reference, but they don't. You frown, feeling the drying blood pull your skin tight in odd places along your face.

“You know, Rocinante? Don Quixote, Pancho… any of this ringing a bell?” you ask, honestly bewildered that you seem to be the only one familiar with the Cervantes book.

Brahms would know what you’re talking about instantly given his impressive knowledge of literature as someone who has been stuck inside reading for most of his life.

“No bells here kid but get inside and clean that up before people start thinking the walking dead have come to the British Isles,” Malcom says, ushering you inside.

“He would know what I'm talking about,” you mumble quietly to yourself but obviously not quiet enough as it seems everyone heard you.

“He, who?” Malcolm asks with a brotherly suspicion.

A shiver of fear racks you. You hadn’t really meant to say that aloud.

Conrad looks interested in your answer in a way that makes you wonder if Brahms was right about him on some level while Greta just looks like she's going to try to get whatever information about whoever him is that she can get out of you later. You shrug and Malcolm narrows his eyes. You roll yours.

“Dad,” you say, knowing it'll be a conversation-ender.

Malcolm flinches but nods after a moment.

“Probably…” he near whispers. 

Your father had been a very stoic man, he had an air of wasted potential about him for as long as you could remember. When you think of him you think of something you heard once, that the potential of the poor was too often a curse because of how it could never be fulfilled. 

You try not to think about him too often, feeling abandoned even if you might have abandoned him emotionally years before he struck out for London with his new family not long after you and your mother’s move to the States. He had been a reader, could have been a writer or a professor given the chance but he'd been born to serve and had been unselfish until he couldn't anymore. You haven't talked to him since a phone call when you were sixteen and you know Malcolm is likely in a similar spot with him. He is all past tense as far as you’re concerned. Same with your mother but at least she’s actually dead…probably.

You shrug, putting an end to the sobering thoughts, wanting to clean the blood off your face and get fucked up enough to forget the ache. You turn to Conrad with a polite smile.

“Where's the sink?” you ask.

Conrad smiles back at you. He towers over you and he is standing just a bit closer than friendly. He nods towards what is presumably the kitchen and holds out his hand that you take gingerly. Malcolm and Greta take that as a sign to shuffle over to the drink-laden dining table, both obviously watching the two of you for different reasons. You roll your eyes at their transparentness as you follow Conrad into the kitchen to the sink, weaving through a small crowd of people who look at your bloodied face with unconcealed interest.

Conrad helps you to clean the blood from your face and hands with a wet rag and you let him, head still fuzzy. Conrad makes polite small talk and you find yourself enjoying his You pull off your bloodied sweatshirt leaving you in a raggedy band tee. He takes your sweatshirt to throw in the laundry and you thank him as he leaves to do that before wandering back over to Greta. Malcolm stands by her almost pouting towards where Conrad has disappeared too. He juts his jaw in the direction. You notice with amusement a baseball-sized disco ball hanging from the ceiling.

“So…what's up with that? Conrad seems to have taken a special interest in you…” your brother says, obviously displeased.

You hum, getting a similar impression. You have not even the slightest inclination toward pursuing him but you think he would make a good friend and you have so few.

“And do you think I share his interest?” you ask, half curious, half wanting to stir the pot.

Malcolm’s glare deepens.

“I sure fucking hope not! You're way too good for that gym rat, he's the definition of a dumb blonde,” he says, voice full of vexation.

Your eyes widen at his venom towards his supposed friend. Greta looks faintly amused, winking at you and mouthing ‘big bro’s jealous’ with a smile. You snort and Malcolm clears his throat, apparently unsatisfied with your silence.

“Don't worry brother dearest, there's only one man for me in this world and even a fine specimen like Conrad can't make my eye stray…” you say with exaggerated drama.

“Who?!” He asks, eyes wide.

You put a serious face on and clasp your hands in front of you, speaking with intense earnesty.

“The Lord,” you say, looking up toward the ceiling with reverence.

“Oh fuck off with that, they'd never let your deviant ass in the sisterhood. I swear to god the nearest nunnery bared its doors just now,” Malcolm says, half a smile on his lips.

“Hey! I would make a great nun!” you say indignant.

He gives you a look and Greta full-out laughs. You pout, knowing they're probably right but not liking it.

“Man, you both suck!” you say, trying not to laugh.

“And you swallow!” some random guy yells out from across the party.

Malcolm immediately looks murderous and leaves you and Greta to verbally abuse whatever idiot drunkard had made the comment. You snicker at his behavior, feeling warm at how he wants to defend you. He feels like a brother. Greta nudges you and offers you a drink. You hold it up questioningly. She nods to it.

“It’s [your favorite alcoholic beverage], lucky huh? I bet Conrad got it special for you…” she says teasingly.

You aren’t sure how Greta let alone Conrad knows it’s your favorite drink but you figure Malcolm must have let it slip at some point. Humming you look around the party. You catch sight of Conrad who winks at you from where he is standing talking to Steve, the ginger dude you met the same night you met Conrad initially. You’ve basically forgotten about him but now that you see him again you wonder how you had, he has such a peculiar energy, off-putting but not in a dangerous way. You shrug to yourself and sip your drink gossiping with Greta and drinking like a fish. 

Hours go by in fast forward. It’s all a montage of cup after cup, hit after hit of joints passed to you by people whose faces blend together like grease, forgotten movements from stumbling along to music, the feeling of Greta and then Conrad leaning in to speak in your ear over the music, and the salt of chips and your own sweat on your lips. Your head pounds with your heart and is thrown back against the couch you’ve claimed.

Most people have left and now it's just you, your brother, Greta, Conrad, and a passed-out Steve who looks rather like a speed bump from where he is lying in the middle of the hallway. The conscious ones of you strewn about the front room watching a Russian nature documentary for the fuck of it and finishing off a joint. A store-bought birthday cake lies exploded on the coffee table from inebriated attempts at eating it, hands having been the utensil of choice since no one felt like going to the kitchen for forks.

Conrad is at your side and you see Malcolm look over displeased intermittently making you smile lazily. You rub your arms, a bit chilled now that the heat of the party has cooled. Conrad notices.

“Want your sweatshirt? It should be dry by now,” he says softly.

You look at him drunkenly. He is golden in every way, bronzed skin, blonde hair, light brown eyes. His teeth are bright and straight, his most American feature. You’ve learned a lot about him the past few hours in which you traded life stories (yours heavily edited of a certain masked man of course) and you made it clear you weren’t interested which he took with easy acceptance. 

He is an American transplant who basically followed his college best friend Steve to the U.K. and works in a food truck that they co-own. You’ve become fast friends and you're happy you can count him among your apparently growing social circle. You left behind most of your relationships in college thanks to Leon’s betrayal and your move back to the U.K. so your roster of friends could stand to add a few people to its ranks.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” you say, wanting to put your sweatshirt on and anticipating the heat of it straight from the dryer.

You pull yourself up off the couch with some difficulty and stumble after the huge form of Conrad down the hall, stepping over Steve as politely as possible. You make it to the laundry room in one piece and are rewarded with your sweatshirt, lavender fresh and warm like fresh bread. You bury your face in the garment and Conrad chuckles. You pull your sweatshirt on and notice the multitude of bags stacked in the room along the walls. You nod to them, curious. 

“What's up with all of the bags? Are you moving or something?” you ask.

He looks over at them as if he forgot they were there.

“Oh, it's a bunch of old clothes I need to get rid of. Bagged it all up and kind of just forgot about it all,” he says.

You cock your head at him, eyes roving over his form. He’s shorter than Brahms and far stockier but you think that their clothes sizes, at least for certain things, would be comparable.

“Would you mind if I raided them before you got rid of them? I like the oversized look,” you ask.

He nods. 

“For sure. You can come over anytime or I could even bring some of the stuff that you could probably fit to your place at some point,” he says, words punctuated by a yawn.

You smile, excited about the prospect of fleshing out Brahm’s closet a bit. You’ll probably have to lie about the source of the clothes to get Brahms to wear them but oh well, you know he’ll be grateful for it in the end because he’s got to be tired of his dad’s old clothes.

“Thanks, dude!” you say, giving him a sloppy high five. 

As you both leave and start walking back to the front room you catch sight of the sky outside through a window, complete darkness. You check the time on your phone. It’s three in the morning.

“Shit!” you say, panicking at the time, worried for Brahms.

“What is it?” Greta asks as you reach the chair she’s slumped over in. 

“I need to get back, I’m not supposed to leave the house unattended this long without notifying the Heelshires beforehand…” you say, looking about at the less-than-optimal options for a ride home.

You startle as a voice from the floor rings out and you look over at a weirdly sober-looking Steve who is still sprawled out on the floor.

“I can get you back real quick if you’d like?” he offers.

You hum, a bit confused about him in general. Conrad gestures to his friend.

“He’s the only sober one of us, he just likes laying on the floor. He’s straight edge and you could easily take him if push came to shove,” Conrad says with a smile.

You snort, looking over at Steve who is now sitting criss-crossed and looking back at you with a clown-like smile. You shrug and smile down at the mysterious man.

“That would be great, thanks!” you say, sealing the deal with a nod in his direction.

Steve jumps up and you say your goodbyes, promising Greta to hang out soon to make good on your secret bet and Malcolm says he’ll see you on the next delivery but to text him in the meantime. You give Conrad a side hug as you leave, vision hazy and body uncoordinated. Malcolm makes a split-second decision to come with you two and you feel better about taking Steve’s offer of a ride home with your brother as a chaperone.

The ride to the Heelshire estate is filled with drunken ramblings on your and Malcolm’s parts and amusement on Steve’s part. After a little while the topic of YouTube comes up and Steve mentions a video essay he watched recently on something called “born sexy yesterday”. He explains it as the trope in media where a very attractive character is naive and almost helpless in the world because of this but is made through their ignorance dependent on someone who is not naive, and how the power imbalance this creates is suspicious, to say the least. You go quiet during the conversation, listening as Malcolm and Steve discuss the idea.

“What do you think y/n? Would it be wrong to get with a hermit for example? Provided that they were hot of course,” Steve asks.

“A hermit?” Malcolm asks.

“Yeah, someone who has been shut away for decades, isn’t familiar with the world outside. You know, someone who hasn’t left the house in so long it's like they've never left it…” Steve clarifies, only making you more sick to your stomach with every word.

“Of course that would be wrong!” Malcolm says.

“Oh yeah? Well, I asked her not you Malcolm, let her answer then we can hear why you wouldn’t fuck a hermit,” Steve says with a snicker.

Malcolm huffs but turns to you from where he sits passenger side to hear your answer. You swallow thickly.

“I mean, would it really be the same thing? Like a robot built to be attractive to humans like in Artificial Intelligence or something, I don’t think that's the same as a person who has had limited interaction with the world…” you say, not quite answering.

“You’re right, the hermit would be worse. A robot could be downloaded or programmed or whatever to understand the world and its place in it. It would have knowledge enough that it would know if it's being taken advantage of but a hermit wouldn’t if it was like a pure hermit, one from like childhood. An adult hermit would be fucking old and therefore a no-go in general, so in this scenario the hermit would have to be fairly young so shut away as a kid. That would be fucked up, to get involved with someone like that. Fuck Plato’s cave and all of that…” Malcolm mumbles.

You feel like you’ve been sucker punched and Steve picks up on your distress and shamefaced look through the car mirror. You avoid his too-curious eyes feeling like he can read your thoughts and sins like they’re printed on your skin. 

The comment about Plato’s cave is an interesting tie-in coming from Malcolm and you wonder if you’ve underestimated his intelligence on some level but you understand your brother’s main point. Hermits are people who cloister themselves from the world usually or more romantically for a life of contemplation, they trade the knowledge of society one gains by being a part of it for the deep self-knowledge of being apart from society. 

If someone was locked up since they were young, like Brahms, it probably would be inherently predatory to pursue a relationship coming from the perspective of a part of society, wouldn’t it be? The hermit would not have an understanding of social interaction the way the other person would so their ability to regulate their relationships would be far stunted comparatively. You’ve thought the same thing before hence your  self-afflicted emotional torture and indecisiveness when it comes to Brahms. Morality is little more than a concept but your brother’s disgust is tangible. Not for the first time your growing feelings for Brahms sets your heart twisting about in your chest with fear. 

“That's quite the hard stance, Malcolm, do you have any particular reason to be so… passionate about this particular subject? Steve asks.

Malcolm glances at you and you see him look something like guilty or scared for a split second. It’s odd for him but you are so deep into your mental maze of shame that you don’t take note of the way his eyes look just a little bit too knowing .

“Of course not! I’m just saying, it would be worse, like morally. A bit icky…” he says.

You look out of the window, wanting to be home already. Not wanting to have heard this conversation, feeling incredibly alone and self-loathing. You haven’t really done anything yet but fuck do you wish you could, sin or not.

“That's just your opinion, Malcolm. Nothing is that black and white, the hermit has agency too and you’re just assuming they wouldn’t know shit but they could know just as much as the non-hermit, more even. They may be less experienced but should they still be condemned to isolation even after their re-entrance into the social world simply for their past lack of experience? That's like punishing them perpetually my dude,” Steve says.

Malcolm hums sharply, jaw set tight.

“It’s not about the hermit or whatever, it's just weird. If someone has been quote-unquote locked away from the world for long enough for it to affect their ability to socialize and just be a normal human in general it's probably for the best that they stay that way. They could be dangerous…” he says.

Malcolm’s voice is forceful enough that it makes you look over at him and you see that he is already looking at you. His dark blue eyes are oddly intense. You look at him vaguely annoyed, unsure of why he’s acting like he has a mild case of roid rage all of a sudden. You have the briefest thought that he might know about Brahms but dismiss it as both impossible and borne of your own anxious mind. Malcolm would have told you if Brahms had survived, provided he’d have found out before you. That you’re sure of. Right? He wouldn’t have thrown you to the sharks, surely. You stick out your tongue at your brother just as Steve parks outside the doors to the Heelshire estate. 

The light in the study is on, something you know you left off before you left. You smile at the subtle proof of Brahms, you feel warm like you’ve come home. Suddenly you are desperate to see Brahms, to feel him against you, real again rather than memory. You throw back the last of a mini shot bottle of Frangelico before saying your goodbyes and a slurred thank you to Steve who just winks as you climb out of his car.

“Oi,” Malcolm yells after you.

You stop stumbling up the steps and turn to him, itching to get inside and throw yourself at Brahms, platonically of course.

“What?” you yell back.

“Be careful…it's an old house, secrets and shit!” he yells, hanging out of the car window.

You look at him unimpressed, trying not to read into his words. Your chest is tight with anxiety and you hate it. You nod at your brother before waving goodbye and turning your back on him, more concerned with Brahms than you could ever be with your brother’s drunken ramblings. 

All of the alcohol and weed you've consumed in various ways tonight hits you like a bomb as you step into the foyer and shut the heavy door behind you. You rest against it for a moment, your legs not quite your own, head thrown back, and breathing no longer on autopilot.

“Fuck, I think I did too much…” you mumble to yourself.

All you want is Brahms and you almost want to cry at how cold you feel without him. You push off the door and cup your hands around your mouth to project your voice.

“Brahms!” you yell, almost tipping forward from the force.

Call for the devil and he’ll answer, and he does, Brahms materializing like a ghost from the study. You smile like you’ve found a well of water in the desert and quite literally bolt into his bent-over form, throwing your arms around him and holding him to you with the boldness of a drunk. His body is so solid and hot against you that you’re tempted to sink your teeth into him, an animalistic need to possess and be possessed by him rearing in your mind. You know better though, even now, so instead you bury your face in his chest and are lulled by the way it rises and falls unsteadily against your cheek. 

Brahms holds you back, pressing you almost impossibly close to his body and you can’t stop the shiver of pleasure you get from the movement.

“I missed you, Brahms, thought about you the whole time I was gone…I can’t shake it,” you mumble into his sweater.

He breathes in deeply, his breath ruffling your hair and tickling the side of your neck. You make a half groan half moan sound at the feeling, way too far gone to have much or any self-control, the delayed wave of warmth and heady confusion from the weed rolling over you all of a sudden. His breath hitches at the sound and it makes you smile slightly. You pull away from him just enough to look at his masked face. You slide your hands up the sides of his porcelain face and get on your tip-toes to place a lingering kiss on the painted mouth of his mask. Brahms has gone statue still, he lets you do what you want to him and his obedience tickles a wicked part of your mind. You sigh against him, chest to chest as he is crouching down to your level the best he can.

“I wish the mask wasn’t there sometimes, want to feel your real lips, just once…or a lot more than once,” you whisper, not conscious of the difference between your inner thoughts and what you are actually voicing.

You rub your face against the cool porcelain that separates you from him like a drugged-up cat, a lazy smile on your lips and your fingers curling into the hair at the sides of his face.

“You’re so pretty Brahms, I don’t care what anyone says, even stupid sober moralistic me, you're the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen and I love you…love you more than anything!” you murmur.

“Fuck I want you…but don’t remember that!” you say pulling away from him suddenly and holding a finger up to your lips.

“It’s a secret! Can’t let you know or I’d be irresponsible or something boring and dumb like that…” you whisper-shout, shaking your head like a waning.

You reach back up to his hair and run your fingers along the outsides of his sharp ears, feeling him shiver at the contact. His eyes are intense, deep, and dark enough to drown in. His throat bobs as he swallows thickly, you track the movement and the way the sinewy column of his throat catches the low light. You find yourself desperate for it, for him.

“I really do Brahms, it's bad, so bad, but sometimes I imagine that I could stay here with you forever…fucked up huh? I should want better for you than me but I’m selfish,” you whisper, face pushed into his neck.

The warmth of his skin heats the side of your face and you can feel the pulse of his artery racing almost dangerously fast. You give into your impulse to touch him more, tracing the underside of his jaw with your lips, traveling down his throat to his collarbones, bared to you from his ill-fitting clothes. You find that you don’t mind his scruffy facial hair as much as you had previously imagined you would, finding it oddly suiting him though it could definitely use a trim. His breath is stuttery and his hold on you is tight enough to bruise which you like much more than you’d want to admit. You hope there is some mark of him on you in the morning even though you have a faint idea that you’ll regret what you’re doing now, but that’s then.

“I need you, Brahms but I don’t want you to know that. You don’t like me the way I like you, you couldn’t. It’s probably my punishment for all of my sins or my past life or something,” you say with a sigh. 

You kiss his Adam’s apple before pulling yourself from him and turning to the stairs. You raise your fist in the air and let out a whoop.

“Bedtime!” you say much louder than you need to.

 You pitch forward as you begin your ascent but Brahms breaks your fall by holding your hips from the back. You turn to him and wink.

“Thanks, love, might need you to keep your hands there, for stability purposes and the like…” you say with a salacious smile.

You crawl up the steps with the help of Brahms who laughs quietly as you babble nonsense about how no one got your Don Quixote reference and how you knew he would. He agrees with a murmur, complimenting your Rocinante Rosé switch in particular.

“That's another reason why I love you Brahms, you get me and I get you, at least a little,” you say with a giggle.

The two of you reach the second floor and you laugh.

“Night crawling, sky falling…” you sing to yourself as Brahms hauls you up and helps you into your room.

You stand in the middle of your room and it reminds you of the night Brahms revealed himself to you. You turn to Brahms and kiss the skin where his chest and neck meet, addicted to the feeling of your lips against his skin now that you’ve had a taste. You step back from him and shed your sweatshirt. You kick off your sneakers before peeling off your socks and pants leaving you in your [favorite type of underwear] and your band tee that barely reaches the top curve of your ass.

“You’re sleeping in here tonight Brahms, I’m afraid I must insist. I simply need you in my bed one way or the other but I promise to keep my hands to myself…for the most part,” you say before jumping onto your bed. 

You crawl up your bed before getting under your covers. You turn to Brahms and wait for him to move from where he stands statuesque in the shadow of the door. He shakes his head slowly as if in disbelief before he advances, coming to a standstill when he stands above you at the side of the bed. You pat the bed next to you, comically close to your body. He cocks his head but hums.

Brahms takes his sweater off, hanging it up on the bedpost and sheds his jeans, leaving him in an ill-fitting white t-shirt and a pair of boxers that do very little to hide what looks suspiciously like an erection. You avert your eyes out of politeness but sneak peeks out of curiosity as he climbs in bed alongside you. When he settles you scooch your body into his and he wraps his arms around you from behind. You sigh contentedly and you feel rather than hear him chuckle. 

“I love you too,” Brahms murmurs into the back of your neck.

You push yourself ever closer to him.

“Good, I’d hate to be in love on my own,” you murmur.

“Will you remember any of this in the morning?” he asks.

You hum, already a little regretful but not sure about what. Your body is lead-heavy and your mind slow like honey in the cold.

“Not a chance.”