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It’s too loud.
Not like, obviously loud – it’s quite subtle, actually, tiny creatures chirping in the silence of night, but it makes his ears hurt. Loud in the stifling, hair-tingling way. Loud that makes the air feel too thick and the blankets too warm and his skin feel like it isn’t his anymore.
Loud because he knows the creatures making those noises don’t belong to his realm.
His skin isn’t his, he realizes with a sickening jolt. It isn’t. It’s not his, it never was, it’s Caleb’s, and he’s not in his body and he’s not his own person and he can’t breathe and his arm is hurting and his veins have gone gold and it’s too loud it’s too LOUD–
Blinks. Blinks again.
Hunter holds his breath and moves. Gently nudges the blankets aside and the person beside him along with them. Gus is tiny against the weighted covers Ms. Noceda had given them, cloaked in shadow, the tear tracks down his face shimmering in the blue light through the window. He’s twelve, Hunter remembers, he’s only twelve , and Hunter’s understanding of this fact only makes it harder to breathe.
He stands. Willow’s form on his other side shifts as he goes for the door, and he feels a tiny pang of relief against the sick feeling in his stomach. Willow can take care of Gus. Willow can offer more than Hunter ever could.
They don’t really need him.
Breathe. Don’t panic.
Don’t panic.
The door is silent as he opens it, thankfully. He toes a stray pillow to the side and silently makes his way to the front door, placing his feet in the areas he knows won’t creak - he’d analyzed the floorboards the moment they’d stepped inside (in case he’d needed to make a silent escape; it was how he’d been trained) - and stumbles out onto the front porch, inhaling as crisp air and moonlight hits his face like cold water.
Hunter closes his eyes, covers his ears and sits. Waits. Air goes in, and then out. He can’t hear anything but his heartbeat, wild and rabid at first, calming into something more serene slowly as his focus centres to his breathing.
He is not Caleb Wittebane.
He is his own person.
He is his own person.
Is he?
His breathing slows. He slowly lowers his hands from his ears, and that’s when a finger taps his shoulder.
Hunter starts, reaches for a staff that’s not there, and is about a hair away from punching his attacker square in the nose before recognition settles in his eyes and he realizes it’s not an attacker at all.
It’s Luz, perched on the stairs in front of the house, blinking at him with tired eyes and a frail smile that looks like it’ll blow away in the cool night wind. She was definitely there before Hunter had come out, and he grimaces as he wonders how much of his episode she had needed to witness.
She nods her head with barely a shiver of movement. “Can’t sleep?”
He hesitates, then slowly edges forward to sit beside her. “I definitely closed my eyes for more than five minutes, I can tell you that much.”
Luz laughs briefly, then turns back to stare at the street. Hunter follows her gaze. The scene is… mundane, almost boring. Bleak houses, quiet trees. The chirping is louder out here, but somehow a little more pleasant, as if Hunter was listening to it through a static radio before and now he’s hearing the unfiltered version for the first time.
“They’re called crickets,” Luz says, almost like she’d read his mind. “Loud as hell, impossible to find. They sound like they’re right next to you, but you could scour your backyard for hours and not find any.”
Hunter looks at her. “Is this from a school class?”
“This is from experience.” Her usual brightness sparks back into her voice, just for a moment. “I used to go out at night with my dad to try and catch some. My mom didn’t like how he was keeping me up late, and we never managed to hold on to any, but we always came back so happy, so she let us go.” The human brings her knees up to her chin with a sigh. “He caught one, once, and he was so damn happy with himself. We named it Bean.”
“What happened to it?”
“We let it go.” Luz meets his eyes. “It had its own cricket life. It was perfectly happy living it. Who were we to disturb that?”
Hunter stares at her, trying to determine what the scrutiny in her face means until she points at her cheek and says, gently, “you’ve got a little- you’re crying.”
“I’m–” He pats his face and blinks at his hand when it comes back wet. “--Oh. Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine, I’m actually kinda relieved. You haven’t cried at all since we got here and that was honestly a little worrying.” Luz reaches over to press something crumpled into his hands - a tissue - and pats him on the shoulder. “You’re allowed to let it out, you know that, right?”
That’s his breaking point.
Because somewhere in the back of his brain a memory surfaces, tattered and sour around the edges, of a room that smelled of something rotten and dying and the pounding of a giant heart throbbing in his eardrums.
“No one wants to hear about your problems, Hunter,” he’d said - the man Hunter will not let himself remember, the man he will not think about under any circumstance. “They’ve got better things to do. More important lifes to have. Much more important than yours, anyhow.” A cold hand on his head, a colder smile staring him right in the eyes. “If you must cry, take it somewhere no one has to see it. It will only slow you down, and them along with you.”
He holds his head in his hands and sobs.
You’re allowed to let it out, you know that, right?
Luz doesn’t say anything, only sits beside him and rubs her hand along his back as what feels like a lifetime’s worth of tears spills out of him.
He doesn’t know how long they sat there. He doesn’t want to.
“You wanna talk about it?” Luz asks as his breathing finally steadies, her voice so soft he almost doesn’t catch it over the swishing of the tree leaves above them. He shakes his head slowly, but there’s words in his throat, angry ones that shove their way out before he can even taste them.
“We’re just kids. We shouldn’t have to deal with this – it’s all gone so fast and so much has happened and–” he swallows. “Gus hasn’t stopped crying for hours. He’s twelve . Willow can’t sleep, I can hear her moving at night and I can see how red her eyes are. She’s fourteen. I found out my uncle has been manipulating me my whole life, and the sigil he gave me almost killed me.” He looks at her. “I’m sixteen.”
“You’re sixteen,” Luz repeats.
“We’re fucking kids.” His voice breaks.
“You’re right.” She blinks, and Hunter realizes there’s tears in her eyes too. Silence falls between them, punctured only by their breathing against the night wind. Inhale, exhale. The trees breathe with them.
The crickets have gone quiet.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Luz says, standing up so suddenly Hunter almost falls over in the sudden disappearance of her weight against his. “There’s a store down the road; we should go get food for everyone. And us, too. Definitely us.” She laughs. “I’m fucking starving.”
“What? But–” Hunter is very caught off-guard by this sudden tone change. “We– we don’t have money.”
“We have enough. Seven-Eleven is cheap, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Seven… Eleven?”
“Oh my God.” She claps a hand to her mouth. “You have yet to experience the magic that is 24/7 convenience stores. Yeah, no, we are leaving right now.”
He barely manages to sputter out “But– we’re–”
“We’re kids, right?” Luz extends a hand towards him, her eyes wide. They’re not as bright as they were, not yet, but she’s trying. They all are. “Let’s go be kids.”
In the end, he doesn’t really have to hesitate at all before taking her hand.