Work Text:
East Westerburg, as its name suggests, is a town of glaring contradictions. It sits on the border between Oklahoma and Kansas, but half its population moved there from Minnesota or Canada so everyone’s got dumbass accents and makes a lot of casseroles. It’s got One Way signs on every road, but no one obeys them, turning shoulders into an extra lane as necessary to avoid crashes. Everyone goes to bed by 8pm, only to get up and party before dawn.
And the most drastic contradiction of all: Damien has lived there for almost three years and nothing has fallen apart.
His routine helps. He lives in a tiny furnished apartment that he pays for with real money from an honest job (mostly honest—his resume was entirely falsified and his “references” cost him $4000 of leftover Sam Barnes hush money on some sketchy Russian website that completely fucked up his laptop). Every day, he goes to the gas station/convenience store on the edge of town and stocks shelves, or mops up “he just couldn’t hold it” kid pee, or holds painfully stilted conversations with passers-through that usually include some variation of “Yes, the pumps are slow” and “No, I don’t control the prices.”
He leaves his apartment only for work, the grocery store, or the library, and spends the rest of his time reading in the uncomfortable hardback chair by his only window. He doesn’t talk to anybody if he can help it. And he tries—even though his nose never made it back to its original shape, and he still gets headaches when it’s about to rain, and the closest thing he has to an ability is the barest awareness of people’s minds, untouchable and out of reach—despite all the shit he’s been through, he tries—never to want anything.
He wakes one Tuesday with an annoying as fuck crick in his neck from the lumpy thrift store mattress he’s been telling himself he’ll replace “after this next paycheck” for the last year and a half. The cracked screen of his phone shows him three missed alarms and a text from an unsaved number listing Rose’s monthly book recommendations. He sighs and swipes his wallet off the nightstand, figuring if he’s already late for work, he might as well play hooky for a day.
From a plush armchair on the top floor of the county library, Damien has a clear view of the whole town through the wide, floor to ceiling windows behind the Fiction section. The book in his hand is interesting, but full of all the bullshit romance crap Rose is obsessed with. His attention is easily caught by the tiny people out the window, going about their daily lives with no clue that there’s someone watching them who once could’ve made them do whatever he wanted. Want whatever he wanted.
He’s so engrossed in the drama of some young couple arguing outside the bank (there’s lots of indiscernible shouting and dramatic handwaving and a better person than Damien probably wouldn’t find the image of a man cringing under the purse assault of a girl half his size quite so funny) that he barely notices when two people step out of the stairwell behind him.
Until he hears an older woman’s voice, hushed and exasperated, hiss, “Hurry up and find your stupid book so we can get back on the road. I told Janice we’d be back in town by three.”
Damien freezes, hands crinkling the pages of his book, neck going so stiff he couldn’t have looked away from the window if he tried. His heart starts to beat so rapidly that he’s certain it’s going to fly out of his chest and splat against the glass, and he has to close his eyes to avoid feeling faint. Because he knows that voice.
It’s his mother’s voice.
“I’ll be quick,” a man—his father—says, as footsteps disappear into the stacks. Damien tries to breathe normally, focusing on the presence of their minds just touching his. They should feel familiar to him, their consciousness, their wants, but all he feels is the same uncrossable gulf he gets from everyone else. They might as well be strangers.
“Excuse me, young man!”
His eyes snap open, and before he can knock some sense into his own body, he’s turning to face her, still clutching the fantasy book like a weapon, or something precious he needs to protect.
His mother looks him in the eye without an ounce of recognition. “Do you work here?”
Damien swallows. For a split second, he thinks he was mistaken, that this was just his dumb brain playing tricks on him, putting long-lost voices over the words of strangers. It wouldn’t be the first time. But, no. She may be older, hair a little grayer, skin a little more wrinkled, with those stupid glasses on chains old people wear hanging around her neck, but her eyes are the same shit brown as his, a birthmark they share just visible above the collar of her shirt. He knows her tight “asking for a manager” smile. He knows the spattering of freckles on her left cheek. He knows her wedding ring, the cheap imitation gold greening with age.
He’s scared to speak, in case his voice will trigger whatever small part of her remembers she has a son. Because just by looking at him, she doesn’t seem to know who he is at all.
So he just shakes his head. Her smile drops a little, disappointment settling into her shoulders, and she glances back at where his dad’s disappeared to browse. When she turns back to Damien, her smile is back, just as polite but even tighter. “Well, would you mind helping me anyway? My husband could have a book staring at him in the face for two hours before he’ll realize it’s the one he’s looking for. It’s called… oh, sweetie, what did you say it was called?” she calls over her shoulder. Damien flinches at her raised voice.
“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!” his dad shouts back, inappropriately loudly for a library. “It was one of R— uh, one of my favorites!”
Damien catches the twitch in his mother’s eye only because he’s looking for it. But there’s still no connection made, no hint that she relates the almost-spoken taboo with the man standing right in front of her. His stomach hurts. He’s going to be sick.
“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” his mother repeats, turning back to him, clearly getting impatient. “Do you know where I can find it?”
Not knowing what the hell else he can do, Damien nods slowly and stands from his seat, abandoning the now-crumpled book on the chair. He was gonna tell Rose it sucked anyway.
He walks, as if in a daze, through the rows of fiction books, luckily avoiding the stack his father’s fruitlessly searching in. He doesn’t think he could take looking him in the eye and knowing his dad doesn’t remember him either. He doesn’t think he could handle it if he did.
He finds the book easily and hands it over to his mother without making eye contact. She thanks him routinely and calls to her husband, “I found it! Can we go?”
Damien stares at the tiled floor, at his mother’s heeled shoes, slightly layered with dust from the dirt road outside. He blinks in surprise when a wad of cash suddenly enters his field of vision.
“For your trouble,” his mother says. He opens his mouth to speak. Closes it again. Takes the money and pockets it, feeling it immediately burn a hole in his pocket.
He closes his eyes, swallowing back the lump in his throat and praying—goddamn it, to who?—that this moment will be over. That it will never have happened.
“Oh, what was your name?” his mother asks, just when he’s starting to think they must be gone. “I want to let the lady at the front desk know how helpful you were.”
He should say, I told you, lady, I don’t work here. He should say, Oh, it was my pleasure, ma’am. He should say, Damien.
“Robert,” comes out of his mouth unbidden, and he opens his eyes just in time to see a flash of something in hers before politeness glazes it over.
“Robert,” she repeats, nodding. “I was always fond of that name. Thank you again for your help.”
She turns around and walks away, heels clicking on the library floor, and Damien watches her go, his heart aching like it’s been ripped out of his chest and stuck back in with superglue. He should call out to her, stop her, beg her not to leave him again. He should take this second chance for what it is and show her he’s better now. He’s been fixed.
But he tries not to want anything these days. And even when he does, he knows not to let himself think he deserves it.