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Progress was being made, slowly. As he slowly got better, you began to feel more optimistic that one day he might leave the house, if only for an evening.
Brahms was talking more, and you found he was very intelligent. One day he’d use short sentences in his child voice, the next he’d surprise you with an in-depth debate about classics like Sense and Sensibility. He had confided in you one day that while he knew nearly every book in his home by heart, he never understood the emotional depth that was behind them. As he grew into the adult version of himself, Brahms learned emotions like joy and guilt, hope and worry, bravery and fear.
Unfortunately, with recovery came realizations, came old wounds being opened up so that they could be healed properly. Though Brahms was learning, slowly, that he didn’t have to act like a child anymore, that he had to speak and communicate to get what he wanted, and that the world didn’t revolve around his schedule and his time, he also learned painful truths as well.
You were afraid that the painful truths had been your fault. When he had started showing signs that he may be stable enough to leave the house, you had started telling him stories of your old life. Always happy ones, so as to not make him fear the outside world.
You told him of nights out with friends, of times when you had studied all night for tests, when you helped a neighborhood kid fix the chain on his bike. You spoke of family parties, of sitting around a campfire, always thinking of the good times, hoping he would want a taste of life.
However, the more you spoke of the outside world, the more detached Brahms seemed to be. His touch, which used to be ever-present, became more and more fleeting. Your talks, which had been getting longer and more involved, started trailing off, or never even starting. That was when you realized you shouldn’t have talked about the real world with him.
He started turning up in stranger and stranger places, spending more time in the wall again.
The first snow of the season, you went looking for him in the house, worried that he might catch a cold if he stayed in the walls. But he wasn’t in his room. Not the one you two sometimes shared, and not the one in the walls. You searched every inch of the house you could find, and just as you started to worry, you saw movement in an upstairs bedroom window.
Grabbing a blanket off the bed and wrapping it around your shoulders, you opened the window, stepping out into the balcony that surrounded the top of the house, you saw Brahms, standing in the cold, with nothing but his usual sweater on. His hands clutched the balcony, knuckles white from either gripping the railing or from the cold, you weren’t sure.
He didn’t even move to look at you when you walked up to him.
“It’s cold out.” Your voice cut through the silence like a knife, the snow muting the sounds of nature from the woods.
He just nodded, still facing away from you.
“You should come inside.” You tried again, stepping closer.
He nodded again, his arm muscles flexing as he squeezed the rail tighter. It scared you. He hadn’t lost his temper in weeks, and suddenly he was behaving like this.
“I’m sorry!” You blurted out before you could think out your next step. “I’m sorry I’ve been talking about home so much, I just wanted you to know what it was like, that it’s not scary, that-.”
“I’m not mad, my love.” He murmured. Though his voice was near silent, in this white, muted world, he didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. “I think you need to leave.”
His words made you stumble back as if you had been shot in the chest. “W-what?” You squeaked.
Brahms finally turned to look at you, and it was too dark to see his eyes behind the mask. “I want you to go home.”
“B-but I am home.” Your voice was shaking, your eyes welling up.
Brahms shook his head. “Your home is out in the real world. With the people you love.”
“But I’m with the person I love.” You reached forward, grabbing his sleeve. “Please, tell me what I did wrong!”
You heard a sigh behind the mask, and before you realized what was happening, you saw his hand reach up. He pulled off his mask and for the first time, you saw his face.
A dark, painful looking burn mark reached from his forehead to the top of his chin, covering half of his face. The other half was just a face, with dark facial hair, green eyes, nice cheekbones. He had a good face, and it took your breath away.
“Brahms…” You whispered, your hand flittering up to touch his face before you pulled it back, scared of somehow shattering the scene in front of you.
“I am not a man; Not a child.” Brahms murmured, taking your hand and bringing it to the burned side of his face. “Not alive; Not a ghost; Tell me my place in this world; What is a human without shared experiences?”
The burn was rough, his skin was warm, and what facial hair he had on that side of his face was prickly. It tickled your fingers. The eye on the burned side was bloodshot, his other eye was a brilliant emerald color.
“What is a living soul without the human condition?” He continued, and you realized he was quoting a poem you had read to him a few weeks ago. “You may call me a ghost; It would be in insult to the dead; Lie and say I’m a man; And you have offended the human race; I am not a man.”
He let go of your hand, but you didn’t move it from his face. You ran your thumb over his skin, not realizing you were crying until you tasted salt on your lips.
“Not a child; Nor a ghost; Nor a human.” His breath came out shakily as he finished the poem. “Tell me my place in this world; And let me fall in it; If only to have a title.”
Brahms looked down, his own eyes now welling up. “What can I give you here?”
You opened your mouth to reply, only to have the reply catch in your throat, almost literally choking you. Trying to clear your mouth, your window of time to reply was cut short when Brahms continued, his tears falling now, his breath making clouds in the air as he gasped out his next words.
“In what way could I possibly enrich your life?” He shouted, turning away from your touch, rubbing his eyes furiously. “What can I possibly give you that you can’t go out into the world and get for yourself?”
You could only shake your head, your whimpers making wisps in the frigid air. Snow had started to pile in Brahms’s hair, and at any other time you would have reached up to brush it out, any excuse to touch him. Right now, he seemed too fragile, too tired, too uncertain of his place in the world, as if you if touched him again, he would break.
“You?” You finally managed to say.
Brahms’s breath hitched in his throat, and he turned back to look at you, his tears cold on his face.
“I can’t have my Brahms anywhere else.” You whispered, tentatively stepping closer to him. Brahms backed away, his face betraying his worry.
“You keep talking about the outside world, and I haven’t seen it in twenty years…” Brahms trailed off, his body now shaking from the cold. “I can’t give you a normal life, the kind of experiences another man could.”
Letting your blanket slip off your shoulders, you gently draped the blanket over the tall man’s shoulders, holding the it closed over his chest. “Brahmsy, a bad childhood doesn’t foretell a bad adulthood, burns don’t make you unlovable, and a normal life isn’t necessary for happiness. I’ve never been as happy as when I’ve had you in my life.”
A squeak came from Brahms as he clenched his teeth, trying and failing not to openly sob. The tall man folded into you, burying his face into your shoulder as his body wracked with the cries and whimpers of a man who had repressed all that the world had done to him.
“Your life might have started as a tragedy, but as god as my witness I will give you a better ending.” You murmured in his ear, wrapping your arms around him, gently rubbing his back both in comfort and to warm him up. “And I want you to hold me to it.”
“M-my own parents didn’t-.” He started.
“I’m not them.” You cut him off. “They don’t decide if you’re worthy of love, if you’re worthy of a damn thing. Only you can decide that, and only you can decide of what love to accept.”
His cries were like a wolf howling in the night, a fresh blanket of white settling over the world as the two of you held each other, years of repression escaping the man in your arms in the form of sound.
When Brahms was finally done, the snow had stopped, and the both of you were shivering. He pulled back, his hair and shoulders coated with dusts of snow.
“I’m ready to go back inside.” He said, putting his mask back on, brushing off your hair.
“I’ll get the fireplace ready.” You kissed his chest before leading him back to the window.
After the two of you were safely back inside and the window was closed, Brahms finally spoke again. “Please don’t leave. Please, stay. Stay forever.”
You smiled, placing a light kiss on his porcelain lips. “That was always my intention.”
“I love you.” He squeezed your hand before wrapping the blanket back around your shoulders.
“I love you too.” You held the blanket in place, turning to walk to get the fireplace ready, when you felt his hand gently tug on the back of your blanket, causing you to smile to yourself. Brahms was back to his touchy self, only now he knew that he would never lose you.