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“You’ve changed,” says Ray, and the way in which he monopolizes the central third of Norman’s office truly is unforgiving. Having only just entered, there’s really only so far he can go— and having just arrived to the settlement, there’s not much say he has in regards to the territory he takes up. Formally speaking, that is. Literally speaking, he has more reign than even Norman himself.
The reasonable parts of Norman’s brain, the bits unaffected by his life and treatment at Grace Field and Lambda and beyond (which, assuredly, are few and far between), are wary of Ray’s advancements. Ray drops the gun he totes with him everywhere, leaving it to adorn the nice upholstery of one of the sofas. He kicks the coffee table with the side of his shin, which is just as accidental as it is intentional, and Norman knows that. The rest of Norman’s brain, the bits turning to soup in their collective anatomical segments, the bits swimming slowly from his head to the churning terror that has become of his cerebrospinal fluid or leaking to his gut, the bits he resents...
Those bits of himself find this fun.
“So have you,” Norman replies. He smiles, and wonders if that will fix things. Maybe it’ll convince Ray of the utter normalcy they refuse to sink into since the eve of Conny’s death— or since the eve of Ray’s birth, perhaps. Even if it won’t, though, Norman can’t control himself. Every time he sees Ray’s face, or Emma’s face, he can’t help but smile. He remembers the softest moments of Grace Field, and he remembers Mom and her gentle care. He remembers the love he felt, however fake it was. He remembers the string telephone. It makes him smile. Like an idiot, really. He is not unaware of his intelligence, but he is also not unaware of his stupidity.
He, like Emma, is naïve. That is the only explanation he can come up with. It is the only explanation he needs.
“No,” says Ray. “No, not the way you have. You’ve changed in a way even I never managed to, and that’s really saying a lot.”
“Is it?” Norman stands. He sets his quill down, too, while he’s at it. Unbeknown to Barbara, Vincent, and Cislo, the stained inkwell has been dry for some time now. He hasn’t bothered to get a new one from the shelf, and even Norman isn’t sure why. He’d be hard-pressed to consider himself lazy, but it isn’t impossible. Weirder revelations have been brought to his attention. Still, he would be more apt to consider himself merely exhausted. He looks down at his desk and slides his fingers down along the sides of the papers sacked just before him. He shuffles them, more for effect and curiosity than anything else.
The contract. The contract was the last thing he wrote, was it not? Yes. Since, he’s developed a tremor. His own signature, practiced to keep himself sane, now remains unintelligible. He smiles as he catches sight of it, of this obligatory agreement between his underground and the pawn group of the profaned Lord Geelan himself. Call it immoral, call it unethical, but there are no other options. Every emancipatory path for the children results in the annihilation of Them.
The demons, so Emma calls Them. The demons, so Ray calls Them. The demons, so everyone calls Them.
Norman, too, considered them demons at one point.
A jagged and war-weathered hand slams down on Norman’s desk, and Norman flinches. He looks up, only to gaze directly into the dark and purposeful eyes of Ray.
Ever since they were babies, Ray has appeared sleep-deprived. He had nightmares every night. He’d wake up screaming— screaming so loud, the whole house would wake, including Mom. She’d rush to Ray’s room and coddle him until he obeyed the exhaustion too overwhelming for his poor little body.
Looking back on it, Ray’s anxious demeanor had always been there below the surface. The panic attacks he suffered as a young child and the tearfulness he’d been prone to only disappeared come the age of six, and well— thus is the resulting history of the damned, the children raised to be food.
Norman hadn’t been lying when he said Ray changed. He has changed, quite a bit— though it pains him to imagine so. It pains him, for he knows that the mass majority of Ray’s changing was done under the roof of Grace Field. The rest was nearly inconsequential. Norman has a feeling the suicidal urges Ray exhibited in the House have yet to leave.
It is for this reason that Norman states, “I suppose you haven’t changed.”
Although offended, Ray does not recoil. He hardens his stance, fast and attentive, to what exactly Norman means. They’ve always been connected this way— even Emma knew this. She always had an inkling that they’d been connected in some way unimaginable to her. She’d disclosed such a thing to him in the way she looks at Ray, in the way she flicked her gaze to him just this morning shortly after reuniting.
Emma, right now, is sleeping. And Ray should be, too.
“She wasn’t pleased,” Norman says. “I could tell. Could you ask her about that tomorrow?”
“Me?” Ray asks. “Why not you?”
“I have some business to take care of.”
“Business,” sneers Ray. He drops his other hand onto the desk, too. “Business, business, business— it’s all about business with you—”
“We live in a demon’s world, Ray,” Norman says.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Ray snaps. “I don’t care that you’re being productive, I care that you’re killing yourself! That’s what I care about!”
Something iron slips out of Ray’s shoulders. No longer does he stalk as much as he hangs. Gone is the skeleton, and in its place is the suit. His gaze remains as sharp as ever.
He exhales, “Norman.”
Norman’s breath catches somewhere between his lungs and his throat. His trachea squeezes and trembles in the same manner as his hands, come their tremors when he writes. He reaches up, but doesn’t quite get his hand to his throat. He grabs the lapel of his suit, instead. He tugs it. Once, just once, and the feeling dissipates.
“Soon, you won’t have to suffer anymore, Ray,” whispers Norman. “Don’t you see? That this is the only way? You agree with me, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Ray says. “Of course I agree with you, so what? That doesn’t mean it’s right, that doesn’t mean I want to.”
“You have to, though,” Norman says. “I have to kill Them.”
“You? You?” Only now does Ray recoil from the desk. He turns on his heel and steps away from Norman in disgust, this bitter haggardness with every shuffle-stomping step.
Liquid-brained, Norman follows him. He rounds the desk and stops in front of it, waiting for Ray to turn back around or to say something in addition to his irreverent point. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Ray gives him exactly what he knew would come.
“Pay attention to how you’re speaking,” Ray says. He turns his head as if to glance over his shoulder at Norman, but he does not complete the action. He stutters to a stop and turns back to stare at the door. “‘Could you ask her’, ‘I have business’, ‘You won’t have to suffer soon’, ‘I have to kill Them’—”
“I do—”
“No!” Ray spins around, glaring with every bit of energy his tired soul has. He yanks a hand out of his pocket and jabs his finger against the side of his head, tapping it sharply. The hollow sound of his skull against the bony tips of his fingers echoes in the room the way only a dead sound can reverberate within a hollow cement tube. Norman wonders if that’s his compensatory way of harming himself. “I don’t know what the hell wormed its way into your brain over these two years, but it’s wrong.”
“It’s wrong?”
“That’s what I said,” says Ray. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see? Or have you actually learned nothing? Are you stubborn, or just stupid? Are you ignorant of it, or are you pretending not to notice? I can’t tell anymore.”
“Notice what?” Norman asks, and he feels a bit like a broken record. Asking obvious questions he knows the answer to, just to worm Ray’s feelings out of him. To get the truth, however buried in irrationality and feelings and disgusting ichor from the human heart. It’s garish. To smear Ray’s words out on a canvas would be lurid.
“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe your life isn’t the price we have to pay for this?”
This book says idiots can’t catch colds, Ray had said to an exasperated Mom. Weary was she from toting Emma out of the infirmary for the second time in twenty-four hours. Norman remembers this well, and it is with this thought that he smiles. He smiles, for he fears it may be true. Emma is reckless and wholehearted as ever. She’s been affected, but she is not beyond repair. She is strong. She’s very smart, and very quick, and very bright, but she is also an idiot.
Ray’s plague is his knowledge, he’s ailed from it since the beginning, yet he does not know of Norman’s fate. Or maybe that, too, is the naivete he shares with Emma. Not only does he disregard his own life— does he throw it away to the wind to be caught by the stragglers who always cared more than he did— but he also disregards Norman’s death.
Ray cannot believe it. Norman sees it in his eyes.
Ray could not believe it even if Norman told him, could he? Or maybe Ray would understand immediately. Maybe it would sink harder than a stone to the depths of a cliff. Then who would Ray be, resolved to the true death of a childhood friend? He had grieved it once already, should he be forced to know he must grieve it again? Should Norman doom Ray to the same fate he suffered within Grace Field?
It would be cruel.
So Norman keeps smiling as he says, “We have been through Hell, Ray.”
Ray’s eyes widen. His mouth goes tight and his hair juxtaposes with shocking sharpness against the tone of his skin. Norman has seen this look before many times. He saw it when they were babies, hardly conscious enough to do more than toddle and cry (or laugh, in Emma’s case) should they fall. How funny it is, that most of Norman’s snapshots just at the brink of that infantile amnesia contain Ray’s distress.
Norman doesn’t want Ray to feel that way anymore. He begs for a world where he can tell Ray he is free, and truly mean it. He prays for the day…
Soon, it will come. Norman will be able to say it. Even if it’s on his deathbed, he will say it.
“You’ll be free,” Norman says. “You, and Emma, and all the rest. Don’t you want that?”
Ray advances with unsurprising quickness. The gap between them shortens until the human parts of Norman’s brain tell him to back up. He still finds it interesting that he obeys those urges when they come, even if they’re no more than reflex. Nonetheless, he retreats until the backs of his legs meet the edge of the desk, and he’s forced to stop. Ray does not.
Ray grabs Norman’s lapel, grabs on so tight Norman wonders if the suit will rip, and doesn’t let go. Ray’s skin smells sweet, but his jacket still carries the stench of survival. He took advantage of the baths, dressed in clean clothing, only to tote the sullied gun on the short walk to this office. Why?
“You jerk,” Ray whispers. He shakes Norman, an action accomplished even with barely half of Ray’s strength. He shakes Norman again, as the first time had not been enough. After that, he directs his battlefront gaze directly toward Norman’s eyes, where neither of them give room to stop their sudden staring contest. “You selfish asshole. You… you… you…!”
“I?” prompts Norman.
Ray kisses him.
Norman fumbles against the desk, but catches himself before he falls into a regrettable position.
He’s confused. For the first time, he truly doesn’t know what this means.
And he doesn’t know why...
He sinks into it, shutting his eyes and huffing out a breath through his nose that he regrets immediately after he does it. He scoops handfuls of Ray’s hair, clenching fingers through the length that has grown from being uncontrolled in the wild. All the while, Ray scoots closer, and tugs Norman’s lapel harder.
They pull away to breathe, but the break isn’t long enough for them to understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s on purpose. Maybe regarding this with the thought it deserves would break them beyond repair. Maybe it would hurt them more than the looming shadow of doom or decay. Maybe this threatens them more readily than the demons of tomorrow or the day after that.
It doesn’t, but there’s no harm in hyperbole.
They dive back in. In their recklessness, they steal each other’s air to breathe through each kiss.
Norman knows what this is. He’s never seen a movie, never seen it in real life, but he’s read a book in which this happens. He never knew this is what that felt like, though. He never knew that it would be so warm, or so tight. He didn’t know that even closed mouths still give way to dampness, however mild. He’d always been disturbed by the thought of saliva, but now it doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t understand why.
It feels good.
Brutal, with the way they claw at each other. They’re desperate, the both of them. It radiates through each shift, through each suffocating press, through each grab. But it’s good.
“Don’t leave,” Ray murmurs against Norman’s lips. Norman feels it more than he hears it, but it registers all the same. He moves his hands from Ray’s hair to instead hold his face. Norman feels he may catch fire when Ray lets go of his lapel in order to grab his sides. “Don’t.”
“I won’t,” Norman answers.
It is a near-silent promise that Norman cannot, in good conscience, keep.