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Rain, Corvo thinks, has a bad habit of coming at the worst time. He hadn’t expected it when he’d set out that morning, for the sky was as clear and nothing more than a gentle breeze, tainted with the stench of sea salt and rot, had tugged at the long stray locks of his hair. But almost as sudden as a plague could take over a thriving city, the sky had darkened, and freezing rain had sent Corvo scrambling for the nearest shelter he could reach.
So that’s where he sits now, huddled in his dark jacket with his mask at his side, the interior fabric busy drying after being soaked with water. In his frozen, calloused hands is a rusty tin of processed whale meat. His dark eyes scan the worn label, slowly and internally repeating the ingredients to himself to try and drown out the constant din of nearby rune.
It was just his luck, really, to be trapped in an apartment with one of the Outsider’s altars. It sat behind a wooden door, once cracked open and now firmly shut. Crovo hadn’t even spared the interior a glance when he first arrived. No— he simply pulled the rotting wood back into it’s frame, and pressed himself against the far wall to try and put as much space between it and him.
Runes were helpful. And it pained Corvo to turn up his nose at them when they were so blatantly left out for the taking. But he wasn’t ready to face the Outsider, and it’s a near guarantee that he’d have to as soon as his fingers even so much as brushed it’s sun bleached surface.
He had no excuse for his problem, really, because he knew his resolve, and he knew he was not yet broken, nor anywhere near his breaking point, and that desperation was yet to cling to him. This,—whatever this was—it wasn’t born from madness. He’d gravitated towards the Outsider on his own volition, whether he liked it or not.
His feelings of hatred had swelled into something more, something that beckoned the Outsider into his dreams and his thoughts when his mind fell quiet. And the most daunting thought that reigned over it all was that the Outsider knew. There was no way he wouldn’t know.
“I’m always watching you,” Corvo’s mind offers. And he hates that the Outsider’s lilting voice is still so fresh in his ears despite how long it’s been.
Always watching.
“Well, watch this, jackass,” Corvo challenges the droning. The atmosphere tightens, rancid air dense and heavy as it weighs down on Corvo’s broad shoulders. He stands. The rune calls to him, lures him in with it’s song. It’s giving him a headache, but he ignores it in favor of proving he’s not afraid of some god wearing a handsome man’s skin.
Corvo stomps over to the door, his footfalls heavy, and despite how the floorboards groan in protest, he’s sure they won’t collapse in.
His hand wraps around the brass doorknob, but he doesn’t even need to turn it for the old door to open. It swings inward with no resistance, for it’s hinges have miraculously evaded the rust that’s consumed most of Dunwall’s abandoned buildings. Fortunate, he thinks. It’s odd, too.
Corvo doesn’t have time to contemplate meager hinges though, because as soon as he lays eyes on the interior all his thoughts flee the forefront.
Inside lays a scene ripped right from a dream; A memory of the days before Dunwall’s downward spiral. Gilded candle holders jut out from the far wall, bearing white candles dripping wax steadily down dusky red paper. A grand, ornate, mirror hangs heavy between them. And below sits a bed big enough for the emperor himself. It’s massive. Nearly the size of the room, with a frame of glittering gold and a headboard studded in fair little pearls that sparkled blue in the soft light of the whale oil lamps scattered on every little shelf and table. It was beautiful.
On top of the plush duvet is the rune, and it’s jagged appearance lodges itself like a bullet hole in this carefully crafted reality. It doesn’t belong. And neither does Corvo, who stands at the foot of the bed completely dumbfounded.
“What the hell?” he asks, mostly to himself, but if the Outsider were listening then surely it’s a question for him, too. What is all this?
Corvo had seen places like this, but that was only before, and never after. In the ruin of Dunwall, nobody could afford such extravagant furnishings. Nobody living in a one bedroom apartment, surely.
“You don’t like it?” The voice startles Corvo out of whatever trance this scene has lured him into. In the place of the once deafening rune now sits the Outsider, lounging like he’d always been there just waiting for Corvo to notice.
Dark smoke rises from his lithe figure—it curls and dances, and then dissipates into thin air. And before Corvo can even part his lips to ask, the Outsider answers his question. “No, of course it isn’t real,” he says with an amused grin pulling at the corners of his lips. “You’re seeing things, my dear.”
Don’t call me that, he thinks bitterly, scowling. It sounds so wrong coming from him, from a man—or god. Or whatever the Outsider happened to be. Corvo hates the way that the wrongness sparks something within him. Hates to think of what it might be.
The Outsider’s expression falls into neutrality, and he sits up finally. “You seem upset.” He points it out like it was not blatantly obvious. Corvo does not deign him with an answer. “You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?” he continues, undeterred. “It’s been so many days, my dear. You’ve turned away all the gifts my followers have left for you. . .and why is that?” he prods. His way of speaking, so soft and demure, works to ignite that spark, to turn it to a fire. Corvo grits his teeth.
“Because I don’t want to talk with you.”
“Your dreams suggest otherwise,” it’s simple, but it hits Corvo hard enough to unsteady him a little.
His mind tilts, his worst fear confirmed. He’d seen everything. “That’s not—”
“But it is.” There’s no cheeky smile on the Outsider’s pale face, but Corvo can sense it in his tone. It fills him to the brim with ire.
“Black eyed bastard.” He growls, indignant.
“How original,” the Outsider deadpans. Then, he smiles. “Come. Sit with me.” His hand pats the spot in front of him. But Corvo turns away, and makes for the door instead.
If the bastard thinks for even a second that Corvo is willing to listen to him, then—
He steps forward, but his body lurches back about thirty, and he finds himself laying flat on his back with his head cradled in the Outsider’s lap. “That was an order, dear Corvo,” he says, and this time he’s really smirking.
“Bastard!” Corvo curses, lips tight with his annoyance. He moves to sit up, but the motion is futile—the God pins him down by his shoulders.
The touch is light, almost catty, the way his pale fingers caress Corvo’s collar bone, but there is no give when he pushes himself up, and they just press him back down again.
“You’re just doing this to be an asshole,” Corvo spits.
The Outsider shakes his head. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he insists, “I’m just curious as to what you’ll do.” He presses down a little harder, laying the flats of his cool palms against Corvo’s lapels. They feel like frigid water, like he’s back outside in the freezing rain, the cold sinking in through his layers of fabric, through skin and fat, gripping him by the bones.
Corvo tries to shy away from it, but the Outsider does not give, and the bed will not collapse in under him no matter how much he wills it to. He stares up at empty eyes, black and inky and bottomless, and they’re assessing him with a clinical curiosity. Corvo squirms. He demands, “Get your hands off me.”
“You act as if you have any sort of authority over me.” He doesn’t comply. Bastard.
Fed up with playing around, Corvo dares to swing his fist at the other in a last ditch effort. And it connects to his own surprise—he strikes the Outsider square in his jaw. But instead of caving flesh his bare knuckles meet something solid as cement, as the rock that Dunwall sits on, and there’s a sickening crunch that makes even the Outsider react.
His eyebrows arch, his hands leave. And Corvo scrambles to sit up and cradle his broken knuckles against his heaving chest.
“Fuck!” He grits out. His voice is strained as he asks, “What in the void are you made out of?”
The Outsider doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “It’s been a long time since anyone has thrown a punch at me.” He looks to Corvo, and his lips perk in the slightest. “What a fine surprise.”
Corvo wants to wipe that stupid grin from his porcelain face, but he has more pressing matters to attend to. His hand aches. It throbs with his heartbeat. Burns like it’s on fire. If he doesn’t get it fixed soon, the damage could—
“I admire your nerve,” the Outsider continues.
“You just broke my hand!” He shifts on his knees to face the other. His hand is already swelling. It’s hot and inflamed, and his jagged knuckles are bruised a deep purple that rivals the duvet the two are sat upon.
“You’ve been through worse.”
He’s right, and Corvo knows it, too. But that sentiment, as helpful as he’s sure it was meant to be, doesn’t lessen the pain even a little bit.
The gall of this bastard! If he didn’t already know the consequences, he’d be tempted to punch him again.
He opens his mouth to argue with him, to curse the Outsider with every ounce of power he could muster, but suddenly, without warning, there’s a pair of lips pressing up against his own. They’re cold, clinical and rubbery like the press of a doctor’s glove. Nothing like he’d expected, and yet somehow it made perfect sense all the same.
He’s caught off guard. No, off guard is an understatement.
His words are trapped in his throat, and they curl down into the cavity of his chest, suddenly dead and forgotten in the throes of emotion bubbling up from Corvo’s tell-tale heart. Despite his initial surprise, he tilts. And briefly he even kisses the other back in return. But the Outsider is the first to pull away, and instinctively Corvo chases him before he reels in disgust—both with himself and the god before him. “What the hell was—”
He’s cut off by another chaste peck to the corner of his mouth. The Outsider seems fond of cutting him off, apparently and Corvo couldn’t be angrier about it.
“I wanted to see what you would do,” he answers him simply, relaxing back from his lean in to Corvo’s space. “It was my jaw that broke your hand, but you returned my gesture with earnest. Curious.”
Corvo flushes red, embarrassed to the bone. Sure, it was true, and he knew it too, but hearing how easily he bent still got to him in a way it shouldn’t have been able to.
“You’re truly a very interesting man.” The Outsider praises him, and for once Corvo is inclined to believe it’s genuine.
And then he blinks away in a flurry of void, and he’s standing by the edge of the bed with his arms folded loose over his chest. “Our talks always keep me intrigued. Please, do come seek me out more often.” He says it with a smile, and a hand comes to caress Corvo’s face. “See you again, soon.”
Before Corvo even has a chance to process it, the world turns to wisps behind his eyelids, and he awakens on a grimy mattress with only a memory of a hand ghosting against his scuffed cheek.