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you’ve never seen him cry before.
his back is turned to you. you’re standing in the doorway. you think nothing of it at first. he can’t hear you. he can’t see you. so you assume that, perhaps, his phone is just out of your line of sight. or he’s writing something down. or something else, possibly.
then you hear a sniffle.
soft. barely audible.
and suddenly you wish you were anywhere else — like with your brother, or picking up dinner, or anywhere else possible to leave this scene alone. like you aren’t meant to be seeing this, and you should pretend that you didn’t. like you should give him the comfort and peace of mind that he hasn’t soiled whatever kind of reputation he’s built that you've been steadily unbuilding over the course of the past three years.
but he’s hurt.
and he’s been hurt for months.
you stomp your foot against the ground. you hope that he feels the vibration through the metal bed frame. either he does and he’s ignoring you (because you can be in love, but you can still be an asshole, and that’s something you found out months ago. in fact, you found it out when you met him. but you don’t want to think about that right now.) or he doesn’t feel it at all.
he doesn’t move, so you’re stuck.
“faith.”
you call his name like it isn’t useless now.
you find yourself doing that a lot now. maybe it’s due in part to the regret you feel from never calling him by his name when he could actually hear it.
you stomp your foot again. your boot clunks heavily against the hardwood. you still can’t tell if he’s ignoring you.
he’s been different, after all. and you tell yourself that that’s rightfully so.
music was his world. his escape, his passion, something that he put his soul into. something that was his . something that he loved, even if the two of you (constantly, loudly, mostly because he found it entertaining to rile you up) heavily disagreed on whether or not his stupid club mixes could even actually be considered music.
one of the things they made sure to hammer into your head at the academy was that substance was dangerous. being around it, coming into contact with it. there was a reason that heroes were made to escort civilians away from it as fast as possible. it wasn’t something to fuck around with. it never was, it never would be. the amount of times you had to listen to both the academy’s professors and victor go on and on about proper safety had to be in the thousands.
but it hadn’t yet been around long enough to properly study its effects on the human body.
the people who had been heroes the longest — people like your father — were people who were still actively walking around. there was not yet generations upon generations of medical data to study.
so could this have been prevented? you wonder that a lot.
to this extent? probably. he was always going to end up with some hearing loss… probably. blaring music and swaths of screaming girls were never going to be good for him. but mild hearing loss and total deafness were very, very different. he might have been okay if his music simply needed to be louder. he might have been able to cope with that. he might have been the alright that he was pretending to be, rather than the not that you knew that he was.
another sniffle breaks you out of your chain of thought.
you’re still standing in the doorway.
he’s still crying.
right, right.
clearly your stomping isn’t going to get you anywhere. you didn’t want to startle him, force him to put his guard up — but it didn’t seem like you had a choice anymore. even if he wanted to be left alone… this was your bedroom, too. it was sort of an impossibility to leave him alone completely. especially when you shared the same bed. (a recent development. one you, again, try not to think of in extensive detail, because getting embarrassed would not help you in any way in this situation.)
“hey.”
you call again (still uselessly) as you approach, slowly, so as not to startle him. your movement has to be becoming more obvious the closer you get. you can’t tell, because he still doesn’t move at all.
the gentle ghost of your fingertips against his arm is what finally elicits some sort of a response.
a jump, a violent one, a twist of his body to examine who or what has just made contact with his skin.
(ah. he wasn’t ignoring you. that, somehow, makes you feel worse.
as if you could possibly feel worse.)
your eyes lock.
and instead of your boyfriend, you see that child.
the one that came out of that weird spaceship. the one that hid behind oscar’s leg and sobbed whenever his brother left his sight. a terrified little boy with wide, pink eyes and a quivering lip that hurt you somewhere deep.
it’s only me , you want to say, but apparently your brain has finally caught up to reality enough to realize that it would be pointless.
the two of you stare at each other for what feels like forever, but is probably, in actuality, roughly ten seconds. his face floods a pink color bright enough to rival his eyes before he ducks to hide it in one of your pillows. ordinarily, you’d find that sort of cute. you’d tease him about it, or make fun of him, or whatever. but there was a time and place. neither of which were now.
unfortunately, without him looking at you, it’s become increasingly difficult to communicate. you can’t stumble your way through incredibly awkward attempts at soothing words or even basic platitudes. both of you are so new to this that you know about fifty words in sign language between you, and spelling every single thing out with your fingers when you hardly have the alphabet memorized is a challenge in and of itself. you’ve been forced to mainly communicate via text messages, and there was no way in hell you were going to be able to convince him to pull his phone out in order to speak with you right now.
so you touch your fingers to the skin of his exposed forearm again.
this time, he doesn’t move, except to maybe shy away from your touch. maybe that was his indicator that he wanted to be left alone.
too fucking bad.
heroes were supposed to help people, dammit.
are
you
okay
?
you write each word out with your fingertip, slowly and carefully, closing your fist against his arm between each word.
it isn’t a perfect method. it’s far from perfect, actually. you’re sure the letters you’re attempting are difficult to make out. but it isn’t as though he’s giving you another option. this is all you have right now.
“no.”
softer than he intended it to be, you’re certain. you don’t pay it any mind. volume control when you can’t hear yourself anymore is obviously difficult, and it was better for him to be too quiet than it was for him to be too loud.
want
to
talk
?
obviously not, but you’d be a shitty boyfriend if you didn’t at least ask.
he pulls his face away from your pillow.
“aha, don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
that pulls your rage to the forefront, but you manage to tamp it down. you hate it when he gets like this. when he deflects, when he hides, when he pushes you away. it’s irritating. it’s immature, and it pisses you off. but you’ve come to learn that he does it when he gets embarrassed, and that makes it easier to handle. sometimes. sort of.
no .
because ‘i want to help you, dipshit’ would take way too much time to spell out, as much as you’d prefer to say that instead.
he doesn’t seem satisfied with this response. in fact, he seems to pull himself even further away from you. you’ve always told people that he had the emotional capacity of a walnut, and you always sort of meant it jokingly, until instances like this proved that it was far from any sort of stupid hyperbole.
an expression crosses his face that you can’t properly put into words. one that looks like he may be considering the idea of humoring you but can’t actually make himself do so. like the embarrassment is holding him back. he’s so used to pretending not to care in most situations, or hiding from them altogether. he’s still so used to “dating” (used loosely, because what he and those girl groupies did together could not be considered dating, but you digress) people who only cared about how pretty he was that the idea of discussing his feelings with someone who was actually supposed to care made him stumble over himself like some nervous, attractive baby deer.
… weird analogy.
he hasn’t moved himself far enough away that you can’t still touch him, though. so you reach back out to pull your fingers over his skin again. and he turns his head to watch you. briefly. almost like he’s impressed by your ability to find a way to properly (attempt to) have a conversation with him despite how difficult both he (by choice) and the world (choice questionable) have made it for you.
part of you feels a bit of pride in having your problem solving skills acknowledged. that is, until you lock eyes for a brief second and take note of the fact that his have glazed over with tears again.
shit.
it’s
just
hard,
right
?
“… yeah.”
you can imagine so. you, yourself, cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to lose your hearing. especially literally instantaneously. you’re pretty certain that if you couldn’t play guitar anymore, you’d go insane. and for as much shit as you liked to give him about his computer and DJ decks not being ‘legitimate instruments’, he probably felt the same damn way.
he didn’t have anywhere to escape to.
not anymore.
“… hey.”
fuck, you spoke again.
not that it really matters, you realize, because he’s looking right at you. and if he focuses hard enough, the both of you have learned, he can sort of read lips. not well. he can’t make out sentences, but a three letter word while he’s mapping out every pore on your fucking face is easy enough. probably.
you reach for one of his hands, and you try not to think about how his face is inches from yours. because if you think too hard about that, you’ll flounder, and he’ll just make fun of you. maybe. you’re actually not quite sure what he’d do if you fucked up in this situation. it doesn’t look as though he has the energy left in him to mess with you. either way, you’d sort of like to avoid that. so you avoid making eye contact with those bright pink eyes and those long wet eyelashes that feel like they’re pulling your heart out of your chest.
instead, you sit there in silence, holding onto his hand like it’s supposed to tell you what to do.
(it doesn’t.)
he shifts in position and, for a second, you think he’s going to pull away from you. in anticipation of him ripping his hand away, you tighten your grip. he wasn’t going to be allowed to run away from this. you were supposed to be helping him, dammit. even if you were doing a really, really shitty job of it.
“hey,” he parrots back at you. his voice is still hovering between a normal volume and a whisper, and it’s tinged with cracks. you’re grateful he doesn’t have to hear what he sounds like right now, because he sounds downright pitiful. you tilt your head at him to show him that you’re listening. “… lay down.”
“huh?”
you blink. he blinks. you continue blinking at each other for what is almost certainly a comical amount of time.
“lay down,” he sighs, and you know he’s embarrassed, and you know he doesn’t want to say it again, because he doesn’t really have it in him to pretend to be cool like he always does.
it’s sort of nice to get to see past the walls he still tries to put up (even when it’s just the two of you) like this. it’d be nicer, however, if it wasn’t because he was too upset and exhausted to bother.
because you’re nice (and you love him or whatever,) you lay yourself back as instructed. with your feet still flat against the floor, the positioning feels sort of awkward, but whatever. he asked for this. whatever back pain you ultimately end up bitching at him about in the coming days is his own fault.
you blink again, as if to say now what?
he doesn’t blink back.
instead, he moves again, this time to lay himself beside you. so now both of you are in this weird-ass position, and you’re starting to wonder what the hell his plan is. if he wanted you to get into bed with him, he could have just said that , you think. it wasn’t like he was ever a stranger about it before. and it certainly wasn’t like him to hesitate with stuff like that, or to withhold any sort of vulgarity (mostly because he lived to see you squirm) no matter how upset he was.
you almost open your mouth to ask what the hell you’re supposed to be doing when he answers that question for you.
even though he’s several heads taller than you are (jackass,) he squishes himself up in a somehow-even-more stupid position before proceeding to lag his head on your chest with a sort of delicacy that you never imagined him possessing.
and there he continued to lay.
uncharacteristically vulnerable, curled up and looking for comfort.
a squeak leaves you that you are so, so fucking glad he can no longer hear.
but maybe he can feel it, because he laughs a little bit anyway. or maybe he just knows, instinctively, that he’s flustered you. it’s probably that one, knowing him. you’d be mad, maybe, but you’re finding it a little bit hard to be. maybe because he looks so… soft. and sweet. and comfortable. you kind of don’t want to get mad at him right now. even if he is an ass.
what
are
you
doing
?
you trace each word out on him again. this time it’s easier to write on his back, given your positioning. at least it’s a larger piece of real estate than his arm is.
“listening,” he responds after a few minutes.
to
what
?
“you,” he answers.
ah.
he isn’t really listening, you realize. he’s feeling. feeling the vibrations of your heartbeat through your chest, ones that you’re absolutely sure have now increased tenfold after this realization dawns on you. he’s finding comfort in the rhythm of the only thing left that he can still “hear”. and fuck, maybe your eyes sort of prickle with tears. maybe. they totally don’t, though.
all you know is that you don’t want to disturb him. so you don’t.
he closes his eyes eventually and you wonder to yourself if he’s falling asleep or if he’s just focusing hard enough to make it look that way. not that you really care. it’s quiet and comfortable, and you’re providing him with peace.
you run your hand along his back, and he shifts a little bit. you can’t tell if it’s because he’s expecting you to ‘say’ something or not, but you aren’t going to. you don’t really have anything left to ‘say’ anyway.
instead, you drum your fingers against his back.
a soft tapping. a gentle rhythm.
almost like you’re patting a baby’s back, if a baby was huge and also twenty years old.
he doesn’t acknowledge it at all, but that’s alright. you’re almost certain he’s fallen asleep anyway. hell, you’re almost ready to fall asleep yourself. and it’s not like the giant human-shaped weighted blanket is helping, either.
you can’t do a lot for him.
you can’t heal him, no matter how hard you try.
you can’t give him his lifeblood back. you can’t give him back the one thing that made his face light up brighter than any sky you’d ever seen in your life. you can’t take the tears away completely — you can only halt them until he’s fed up with his situation again, and it all comes spilling out somewhere when he thinks he’s alone. like now.
but you can be there. and that’s probably better than nothing.
so you close your own eyes. you let out a sigh. and maybe you kiss the top of his head (you know for sure that he isn’t awake as soon as you do, because he would have absolutely made fun of you. probably.)
you’ll keep being there. for as long as he wants. as stupid and cheesy as that sounds.
heroes are supposed to help people, after all.
and maybe you want to help this one just a little bit more than the rest of them.