Chapter Text
Their new home is old, its wooden roof drooping down on itself making it look more dilapidated than it is. Fat droplets of rain drip down the corners of the roof onto the narrow, pebbled path that hugs the house. Curtainless windows sit on either side of the door, the glass panes showing nothing of the inside. A cemented walkway leads right up to the door decorated with dark stained glass, the flowing florals and leaves now muted to thorns and dead vines in the overcast afternoon hour.
Hanzo pulls up to the narrow driveway that shares its border with the grassy lawn of their neighbor’s house right as his daughter starts a new round of babbles, sounding close to another bout of tears.
Thirty minutes away from their home, the heavy clouds that had darkened the sky for most of the day finally let out their ire and the rain fell, the heavy drops beating on their car relentlessly. It was a blank and piercing noise that always soothed Hanzo. It did so now as the noise reverberated around the small space of the car but his daughter was too young to find peace in it.
All she had known of life was the scents of her fathers, their voices, and everything else that they brought to her to create her entire world. She had none of the scars and baggage that Hanzo carried - dead weights that sat at the back of his mind, and almost always a second away from pulling him under to drown him.
She squirmed in the child seat, her tears mirroring the water running down the car, her cries as loud as the staccato of the torrent and Cole could only take minutes of it before he demanded Hanzo to please pull over.
The rest of the drive she was in Cole’s arms, his seatbelt holding both of them snug against the seat. Hanzo had objected to the blatant law breaking and endangering of their daughter’s life but ultimately gave way to Cole’s reassurance. The road had laid empty for the last hour except for them and the forested sides gave nothing away, loosely convincing Hanzo that the chances of the law catching up to them was relatively low.
More importantly, his daughter was somewhat content in Cole’s arms as he crooned his songs to her and Hanzo found himself unwilling and unable to take that comfort away from her. Still, he eased the car to their new home under the speed limit and maintained that as they entered the town.
They now wait in their car, the only pocket left of their old life. Hanzo stares at their supposed new start that looked like it would spit them back out the moment they set foot inside. As he looks on, he notices that the roof abruptly ends a little over an inch away from the sides making little streams of water race down the wood. Every inch of the house looks like its color had been leeched out by age and still it continues to stand, forgotten by its old owners and now begrudgingly awaiting new ones.
It tugs at Hanzo in a way that feels both familiar and alien, welcoming and hostile. It was self hatred and acceptance, family and loss, beginnings and ends – the ouroboros of life. His vision swims with the intensity of it and yet he continues to stare, unwilling to look away.
Beside him, Cole clicks off the seat belt and lifts their daughter off of his lap and holds her standing on his jean clad thighs, her chubby legs wobbling at the sudden weight of her small body. Her lips quiver one final time before breaking into a little frown as a fresh set of quiet whimpers make their way out.
Her father is quick to react – Cole kisses her left cheek a few times in quick succession before peering at her face with a frown of his own. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asks his toddler daughter while lightly bouncing her. “Do you need to be changed? Y’don’t smell like you need a change. What’s wrong?”
Hopeless in his attempts at calming their daughter down, Cole turns to Hanzo and catches a thing sitting beside him. Its face is gone and instead there is a void of nothing out of which bloodshot, lidless eyes peers at the house. The world outside blinks to black and goes quiet as its head slowly turns to him, its eyes getting wider somehow, and Cole’s heart gives a painful beat as he realizes something.
The eyes, his mind whispered to him, those are Hanzo’s eyes starin’ at me.
His husband is gone and in his place, sits a thing that somehow stole Hanzo’s eyes. A low grown slowly fills the car, the suddenness of it rooting Cole into his seat. It comes from nowhere and everywhere, swelling in size as it molds into the shape of the car’s interior, filling it with nothing but the groan.
It then picks up in pitch, the voice now laced with pain, making Cole realize that it was making the sound. It has no lips to part, no mouth full of teeth, no tongue to speak with but Cole feels it in his bones all the same. The black hole of a face now screams at him in agony, and Cole immediately knows.
It is a wail he heard before, back in their old apartment with its many rugs and dim lights, when Hanzo had dropped to his knees like a dead log tipping over and made that noise until his voice gave out. It now comes out of the thing that stole Hanzo’s eyes and Cole sits, terrified, with his heart in his throat.
Gone, his husband is gone, and Cole can do nothing about it. The eyes look ready to pop out of black maw and the thought sends a new wave of terror through him. Hanzo’s eyes would be balls of white jelly rolling around, the only pieces of his husband left, reduced to squishy masses that would pop and melt in his palms if he held them wrong.
“Help,” he whispers out, not understanding how to make it stop but still begging for it to happen anyway.
It all snaps back. The weight of his daughter, the dull skylight of a rainy day, the silent thrum of the car, and his husband behind the wheel – it all returns back as if nothing was amiss in the first place.
As if a thread had been cut, the house severs its pull. Hanzo blinks himself to awareness and turns to face Cole and their daughter.. His husband stares back, his gaze slightly panicked, his chest heaving.
“She’s just fussing,” he says, hoping to soothe his husband’s worries. Cole is more in tune to her feelings and Hanzo always strove to foster that. “We are all tired, and she needs the rest more than us.”
His reassurances do nothing and Cole stays silent, his eyes flitting across Hanzo’s face like he was discovering it for the first time. Their daughter continues her whimpers but Cole pays her no mind as he limply holds her against his chest.
“Cole,” Hanzo calls out, catching his husband jerk slightly, as if waking himself awake from sleep.
He moves to unbuckle his seatbelt and reaches over the central console to cradle Cole’s face between his warm palms, guiding it in to place a kiss at the corner of his husband’s mouth. He moves his right hand and rests it on his daughter’s back, feeling her small body heave.
“Are you alright, sweetheart?” he asks, hoping that the endearment would tug Cole out of wherever he was lost. It does the job and Cole smiles back, still somewhat shaky, but at least now alert.
He nods once, inhales a heaving breath and takes a second to collect himself before speaking, hoping that his voice wouldn’t shake.
“Yeah,” he replies, silently swallowing down the remnants of fear that had gripped him moments ago. It already feels so far away as Hanzo’s living warmth grounds him, rooting him to reality. “Sorry, jus’ taking it all in,” he lies, knowing that Hanzo would believe him.
Hanzo huffs out, his breath ghosting over Cole’s skin. He smells the remnants of the sugar glazed donuts they downed for breakfast on his breath. Bet he’d taste like sugar, Cole thinks. The thought disjoints
“Think we should head in?” he asks, finally looking at their new home for the first time. It is dark and small, fit enough for their small family, and Cole can’t wait to get inside. The car feels cramped and loud. The rain still falls relentlessly against the hood, leaving his daughter weary and exhausted.
“No time like the present,” Hanzo says as he pulls away to turn the engine off and then pulls the key out. Despite Cole’s prompting, he finds himself unwilling to get out, resisting till the last possible second to open the door and welcome in the air of this place.
With nothing else left to stall the inevitable, he wills his hand to push open the door. He gets out to the smell of wet soil and grass invading his senses and the looming house fades to the back for a moment. The rain drips onto his shoulders, immediately wetting the turtleneck hugging his shoulders. He shuts his door and walks around the car to help Cole get out.
He pulls the door open and slightly bends down, his gaze taking in his family. His husband looks despondent, his shoulders hunching around their daughter who managed to cry herself to sleep.
Hanzo entertains the idea of getting back in and driving his family far away from this house that seems to call him in for all the wrong reasons. They can have a second fresh start, maybe somewhere near the coast with lots of birds circling the sky, roads lined with cheerful townhouses, and Cole’s tan skin welcoming him home. The past cannot haunt them in that imaginary town, and their daughter can grow into her dimpled smile.
“I hate feelin’ like this,” Cole blurts out, making the sunny dream fade out of Hanzo’s mind like a sigh. “Hate feelin’ like I dragged us out here for nothing and everything will go to hell.”
“We don’t know that,” Hanzo says, promptly realizing how inadequate that statement sounds.
“Yeah? You look fuckin’ miserable. She’s been cryin’ ever since we got here, and…” Cole stops as if he is unwilling to give voice to all the doubts that rattles the cage inside. He takes in a fortifying breath and continues on, his voice now shaking with tears he refuses to shed. “I don’t want you hatin’ me for this, Han. Can’t stand the thought of that. You lookin’ at me all unhappy and sad because you followed me here and now you hate it, and you hate me for doin’ this to you.”
“Stop,” Hanzo orders before his husband can fall further into his spiral. He hugs his husband’s head to his chest, the pain in Cole’s voice making his throat click as he swallows down the urge to cry. He loathes to think of his Cole ruminating over these doubts on his own, turning each and every one of them over and over again until they ballooned into crippling anxiety inside his chest.
He runs his fingers through Cole’s fluffy brown hair and repeats it again, hoping that it would drive home. “Stop.”
He plants his nose and presses his lips at the crown of his husband’s head, and speaks the next words into his scalp - maybe they will pierce through his skull and banish the uncertainties away. “I will never hate you. There is nothing you could do that would make me hate you. Everything we do, we do together.”
They breathe in tandem, both of them united in their love. “If we hate this house, this town, this place? We will hate it together,” Hanzo says, making Cole let out a startled laugh.
“I don’t hate it,” Cole admits, and Hanzo tightens his arms, making his husband rasp out, “Shit, can’t breathe.”
“Me either,” Hanzo lies as he releases his husband from his hold after pressing one final kiss on his hair. He steps away from the car and waits as Cole slowly makes his way out. The palm of his left hand is gently placed over their daughter’s small head, shielding her from the rain the clouds continue to spit out.
Hanzo shoves the car’s door shut before turning and walking up the short distance to the door, Cole following him close behind. He waits for the ugliness to come rushing back but it suspiciously stays quiet. It is just an aging house sitting at the edge of the forest.
A fraction of the weight lifts off of Hanzo at this new revelation and some of the unease unbound itself from his heart now feeling slightly chastised at the intensity of his earlier frustrations. He really should have trusted his husband.
The key to the door in his pocket is cool to touch, and he brings it out without much flourish. “Didn’t think they’d get fancy with the door,” Cole comments, echoing Hanzo’s thought from before. The stains that looked black from afar are gray up close, the leafed vines circling around itself over and over again all over the door.
“Think we need to replace it?” Cole asks as Hanzo sticks the key in.
“Should be safe enough,” Hanzo replies as the lock clicks, the noise echoing around them. The door waits for Hanzo to twist it open and with a silent prayer he turns the handle.
The house yawns open, inviting them inside.