A/N: Originally written as a birthday present for Elendraug (StarWolf the Insane on ff.n), who finally gave me her blessing to unleash it unto the world. X3 A spinoff of "Ghost Town," which all of you should also read. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Silent Hill and all related characters aren't mine and never will be, and so it goes.
---
PaperIt'd been about a week already, or at least what approximately passed for a week. In truth, it was difficult to put any sort of parameter on the amount of time that had passed: could've been even longer, or could've been a day or a minute or maybe he just got here. 'Course he wasn't alone, because regardless of whether this was Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, he could think of plenty of people who belonged here a lot more than he did.
He still didn't have his damn gun. Not like he needed it, since nothing had been as bad as it'd been on that night, one month ago. Week. Whatever. None of those freaky-ass ape-men with empty sockets for eyes and no gunning through the rooftops across the street and no night. Didn't make sense for the sky to hang there, white like an infinitely stretching hospital gown over the earth, never changing— but if ever it had changed, he just couldn't remember. It almost would've been better with the monsters, because the stillness was what really got him.
Something like yesterday he'd stepped outside his room for the first time since that night, over the thin-skinned hallway floor and, somehow, out through the boarded doors. Damned if the super wasn't gonna get a piece of his mind once he got this urge to move out of his system. Or so he thought at the time, but he hadn't left his apartment once since then.
So white out there. Like fuckin' Christmas or something. He had marched across the empty street and up the nearest fire escape he could find, glowering darkly into the spindrift of violent noises that spewed out at him from somewhere beyond the washed-out edifice. They came on in strange, distorted ways, deep and grotesque like a cassette tape slowed to its extreme. A crowbar lay abandoned in a nearby junk pile. He'd taken it with him.
He glanced at the corona-stain of tea inside the cup on his coffee table before concluding that he wasn't really thirsty or in need of the gratification that going through the motions would bring. And there was that hot sting again, prickling around both his wrists as he recalled all this. Damned if he knew why, but he wished it would stop.
That Townshend guy, and Eileen Galvin with the nice ass: both had walked below at an unnatural, crawling pace, as if underwater. Eileen's shriek sounded more like a man's than anything, the sound wrung out of her and floating to him like some very fucked up molasses through the cold, bright air. Their bodies had accelerated to a normal speed just long enough for Townshend to draw his— his gun, the motherfucker.
He'd fallen once; he could jump. And he had, just as someone hit fast-forward on the two below. Then they slowed again, and when he walked around to Townshend's other side to step clear of his aim, he seemed a little… surprised to see him.
"Hey. That's my fucking gun you got there."
But then the speed returned to normal, Eileen hobbled up, and that was all she wrote. Crazy bitch beat him down with a riding crop, of all things. He'd followed them a few hours more, but they always managed to get away. It was enough to make a man feel unwanted. Wrists on fire, he gave up and went home.
But now— now he knows he was right; he's not alone. Never was. Nothing to do but stand with hands on hips in the South Ashfield Heights entryway, gazing out into the light.
"I still want my damn gun back."
"If I knew where it went, I'd give it to you," Henry replies dreamily, his back pressed flush to the outside wall. "You asked me before, remember?"
Richard doesn't remember. Instead he frowns and rummages around for a cigarette he doesn't want and doesn't have, blinking in mild surprise when a breeze begins to blow and snow drifts down from the clear silver sky. Henry colors visibly at his side.
If anything ever happens around here it's because Eileen wants it, and because Walter Sullivan can't say no. And because they've been fucking since she and Henry showed up here, and everyone knows it. Especially Henry.
Without a word, he turns and stalks back inside the dark, musty apartment building, and Richard follows after a protracted silence, a diapause of sorts. Up the stairs, the wood and walls cracked and curling because Eileen hasn't asked Walter to fix them yet, detouring prematurely into the second floor hall and not the third. Not the third, with Schreiber poking hesitantly around a pristine 302 as two murmuring voices helix one another and ooze out from under the door and through Henry's old peephole one room over. Richard hears Henry's shoe scrape over ruined tile with a gravelly sound, sending marbled, papery flecks of enamel arcing out onto the stained linoleum. That's the last thing he sees before he turns and vanishes into room 207.
It's hard to hold onto the anger he carries so close to him before it gets swallowed away— the building fury that swells up at the memory of Henry's hands on his gun and pain lancing through his body and apes without eyes. It's hard to keep it from flooding out in a sticky rush when the path of least resistance opens up, and that's just what Henry does and is with his lips crushed against Richard's and sucking in whatever ugly things pour out. His hands hit the wall overhead with a bang, gripped white-knuckled at the wrists by Richard's.
Somehow they're in his bedroom and a nebulous cloud of dust explodes from the mattress when Henry's body hits it hard, face-down and stripped to t-shirt and pants pulled down enough to bare one cotton-covered half of his ass. It collects, the dust, in tiny gray piles in the corners of the window, mirroring the accumulation of white outside. No matter how many times they do this, the cloud always comes. Richard palms the revealed flesh roughly, greedily, fingertips digging into its yielding warmth as Henry's spine twists against the hand between his shoulder blades with an accompanying raspy exhalation and a line between his eyebrows.
He can't take his eyes off the snow. Not even as Richard yanks jeans and boxers away and exposes ass and cock to the air, not even at the intrusion of his (trigger) finger and something wet, cold, that makes him tangle his hand in the sheet and heat creep swiftly up his neck. Richard looms above, reaching down and flicking mousy bangs off one of Henry's narrowed eyes before an electric flare of wrath spears up inside him and he grins a dark grin and thrusts— sharply—
The bed squeaks appropriately. Henry meanders free of Richard's heavy press, rocked into rumpled sheets as his feet move restlessly in their fruitless struggle for solid ground. There is a thick frosting of snow on the green trees, and Henry is breathing in a soft, ragged, wrenching manner with teeth sunk sporadically into a red bottom lip that Richard finds pleasing through his haze of coital apathy.
Richard bends almost completely over Henry's prone form, hissing out hot things into his ear that he's sure not to remember in a second. He grasps both sides of his ribcage, sliding flat palms over his back and the vague stickiness of implied sweat just underneath the heated cotton. This body tenses after a second, jerks and shudders once, twice, three times with a feeble groan and says no more.
They do this because there is no reason not to. They do this because there is
Absolutely.
Nothing.
Better.
To do—
Henry closes his eyes.
fin