AN: Wellp. Surprised by how quickly I wrote this second chapter, but here you go. I really couldn't help myself, I just love this pairing and I love Outlast so much. And Eddie is so gosh-darn hot, for a psycho with a rash on his face and blood everywhere. I mean, just saying. I'm rambling. Oh well. Anyway, this chapter explores Waylon's damaged psyche and goes into a little more depth on how he became 'the Tech'.

~Speak Softly Into the Night~

They had the monopoly on food. And electricity, but the more important was the food. After several failed attempts by several different troops of well-armed men to retake the Asylum, the government eventually barricaded the mountain off from any outside forces coming in, and set guards to kill any attempting to get out. Waylon figured that they were hoping the variants would just kill each other off. In any case, Eddie had been smart enough to stake out the place with the biggest food stores as his territory, and Waylon had claimed the upper levels of the building as his after he realized that he wasn't getting off the mountain alive.

Waylon had given up leaving the mountain, but he had not given up on life. He had returned to the Rec building and proceeded to face off with Dennis, the man with Dissociative Identity Disorder who had originally chased Waylon into the Groom's arms. Waylon had learned a thing or two in his time at Mount Massive, and this time he wasn't just trying to run away and escape -this was truly life or death. He had overpowered Dennis and presented him as a peace offering to the Groom, who'd managed to cut himself down from the entangled ropes Waylon had left him in.

If the rafters hadn't broken when they had, Waylon suspected that the Groom would have died that night, when Waylon had made his escape. He had gotten inches from impalation upon a metal bar as it was. After the peace offering, Eddie and Waylon fell into their 'out of sight, out of mind' mentality, and took turns using the kitchen, neither wanting to have anything to do with the other. Years worth of food lay in the storerooms, so that the Murkoff Corporation didn't have to rely on prying questions as to how many people they were feeding and what; same with the solar-powered generators giving the place electricity. Even if someone shut off the main power, the Rec building -which held the employee quarters- would still have electricity.

Waylon hadn't meant to start wiring up his little programs; he really hadn't. But the promise of food drew the surviving variants -the ones that could do more than just sit around waiting for death, anyway- to the building, even with the threat of the Groom below. Waylon had been attacked by a variant and before he knew it he had the man strapped to a table, wires entering into his bloodstream from cut-open veins and somehow, to Waylon's damaged psyche, they were beautiful. His beautiful machines that he'd once hacked into with ease, returned to him through the veins of his programs.

So the variants were drawn to the building of death from the promise of food, only to land on his or the Groom's table. Both meant certain death; though Waylon thought he was far kinder to his programs than the Groom was to his brides. After so long, electric shock simply shut down the body's nerves, causing the pain receptors to shut off. Eddie's method was far more painful and bloody. But Waylon supposed it didn't really matter; they still ended up dead, either way.

Waylon sighed, dragging a hand over his face. He hadn't meant to go this far; but he was in too deep. The few hours he spent under the effects of the morphogenic engine and then the horrors he'd faced directly after the exposure had deeply damaged something inside him. This was clear to him, but he couldn't stop himself. It just felt so... RIGHT. Stringing up the bodies, connecting sparking wires and fixing them up just right relieved a pressure that Waylon hadn't even realized was there until it had been relieved and now he couldn't stop. He knew, now, why Eddie pursued his hopeless dream because it was painful not to pretend, to just kill for the sake of killing and he had to give himself justification for making all those men into women and then stringing them up to hang.

Waylon understood Eddie. And he couldn't hate him. Not anymore. He disliked the Groom, disgusted at the looks the Groom would give him, but most of all, hated that he couldn't hate him. What Waylon hated, despised, was that he didn't hate Eddie as much as he should, especially after all the shit Eddie had put him through -the guy had almost cut off his dick, for Christ's sake! And he would have, if it hadn't been for that patient. That patient... Waylon had never seen him again, but no doubt he was strung up in the gym like the rest of the Groom's victims.

"...get married, son, and see how happy you will be...~" Waylon's head jerked up. Eddie was close, very close. What was he doing on Waylon's floor? Was he chasing another 'bride'? Waylon looked around, narrowing his eyes. His floor was well-lit, in stark contrast to Eddie's shadowed basement, in part due to Waylon's newfound nervousness of the dark.

Waylon prowled around the floor, fingering the loop of wire at his belt. If Eddie had lost his bride, Waylon would help him get the guy back -anything to stop hearing that thrice-damned song. He heard it so much that it got stuck in his head and he found himself humming it at times in spite of himself. He would always stop in disgust when he realized what he was doing, but that didn't stop it from happening.

But though Waylon carefully inspected his floor, there was no escaped bride to be found. Waylon's lips curled up and his nose flared in irritation. Eddie had been playing with him. He returned to his workroom to find Eddie standing at the threshold to the door leading to the lower floor, still singing that damn song.

Waylon bared his teeth. What did the fucker want? He had thought they'd had an arrangement -'out of sight, out of mind'! Why was Eddie suddenly breaking this?

"Darling~" Eddie purred upon spotting Waylon approaching.

Waylon scowled. "Don't call me that!" he snapped, his tone on the verge of snarling. It hurt, tore at the edges of his fragile psyche, to hear the Groom call HIM that. Especially when it was said in such a way that suggested Eddie had forgotten everything that had happened between them, as if Eddie had... forgiven him, and wanted him back. It hurt and Waylon wanted to snarl and scream and tear into someone because he HATED Eddie but he didn't hate him ENOUGH and he was just so God-damn LONELY.

Waylon's breathing was harsh and ragged now, and he glared at the Groom with unnaturally-glowing eyes, fingering the wire on his belt lovingly. Surely the hurt would stop if he strung up HIM -the cause of the pain?

But Eddie just laughed, and the sound was melodic and smooth and softened the fraying edges of Waylon's rage. Waylon turned away, his breathing still harsh, gripping the edges of his worktable sharply, enough to feel the rough grain of the wood underneath his fingers and feel the tiny motes of pain from wooden slivers poking their way into his palms. "What the hell do you want, Eddie?" he asked eventually, his voice rough.

There was no answer, and Waylon turned, only to find that the Groom was gone. It was almost as if he had never been there, and now Waylon was confused. Had he imagined the whole thing? With his damaged psyche, it was completely possible, but then... why? Why would he hallucinate about Eddie in a way that didn't paint the Groom as the monster that he was inside? Waylon sagged against his worktable, feeling suddenly exhausted. He made his way to the room he had set up for himself -it had once been an office, and Waylon had dragged a couch inside to form a makeshift bed, hating the cots meant for the patients. He laid down on the couch and attempted to sleep. After several hours of tossing and turning, his body finally shut down and he fell into a fitful slumber filled with dreams of being chased, and a soothing voice calling him "Darling."