Chapter Text
Danger is a word that everyone knows instinctively. It is a feeling everything is instilled with at birth, ingrained into the logic and patterns of every animal and person who has lived and died. Prey know how to run away, they know how to hide, and most importantly they know what is and is not to be avoided.
Danger as a word does not encapsulate what it means, and that is okay because humans are simple creatures even with their complexity, so they do not need to have a word that perfectly reflects something such as danger. No matter what language is used, it will never be enough and it will never truly describe the feeling; nothing can describe the innate expression of life that is the knowing of danger, and that is why nobody used it as a descriptor for the house at the end of the block.
~ ~ ~
23.There were no guests in the guest room, but if there were then you needed to knock before you went in to clean it or grab something.
18.No other children were allowed inside, but if one was around, you needed to make sure they picked up their toys off the stairs before bedtime.
12.You were always the only person in the mirror, even after dark, even if the face mounted in it is not your own.
34.Your windows were to be closed at night, the trees get gossipy and they'd keep you up until dawn.
14.Nobody would call the home phone, but always make sure to take a message down from whoever is on the other end, even if you do not understand the gurgling.
32.There are only 12 rooms inside the main house, remember which ones are yours.
The list went on, too many things to list or memorize. You had to know the house from birth to know all the goings-on and goings-off inside it. But more important, the house had to know you too, or it wouldn't matter if you followed all the rules and routines it held.
Tommy knew his house. He knew the way the wind in his room seemed to pulse whenever he focused too hard on where it was coming from, knew the way the wallpaper next to the dining table peeled ever so slightly when you caught it at the right time of day, knew the smell of rain in the westward wall meant a leaky pipe was about to reveal itself somewhere else in the house. Tommy was in tune with his home the same way one might be in tune with a violin they've spent their entire lifetime playing and adjusting.
Going through the day had always been like a dance -- one where your partner had a knife and was prone to mood swings, a chainsaw strung up from the ceiling weaving its way between and around whilst you dipped and twirled. Maybe that's why he minded the way life outside of home was painfully mundane. When the 'resting' parts of existing in the comfort of your own living room have you a ballet dancer pirouetting over a waterfall, the water awaiting your fall with sharp rocks and rapids to catch you; the more 'active' aspects of it: sitting at a school desk or talking to the newest friend about an arcade, didn't come off as anything very interesting. "Why," he thought daily, "would anyone want to do anything outside at all if exploring your own house is clearly more fun?"
Tommy's home was mundane, he thought it was the same as every other house in every other street in every other town, even if it was more interesting than going outside.
He did not realize until much later that people stopped inviting him over for sleepovers at five when they realized the correlation between the child on the couch and the not-right shadows that filled their homes.
He did not know that the reason the other kids stopped being his friends was because parents shared the horror stories of the little golden haired boy who lived at the end of the road.
It is hard to find something extraordinary, or even horrific, if you spend every moment of your life breathing it in.
So of course, Tommy's home was ordinary for him (as ordinary as he was, powerless in a world full of abilities). Even if he, at the same, time knew how dangerous it was to simply wander it's halls.
~ ~ ~
Tommy had just moved again when the house started creeping in. Sitting on the new couch of his little apartment in Essempi, he felt it when the air shifted.
It smelt like honey today, a heavy lingering scent like someone opened a few jars and stuck them under the floorboards. Not that odd a choice, but a sweet smell always meant good news. It was always iffy if the house would take well to a new location, the last place hadn't gone over well and it reeked of shrimp for a month before Tommy finally got the hint and started looking for somewhere new. Unfortunately for him, buying another entire house was too much money, especially considering he'd just moved into a new one. Sure, the first house meant he had a generous amount to spare, selling for a lot more than he would've thought, but that fund capped out buying the second one. It meant that to move here he had be sure home would settle in too, that and he had to save for a few months before he finally accumulated all the cash to actually rent reliably.
He'd been smart this time, making sure the house would like the new place; and while looking at somewhere never guaranteed the house would enjoy it, letting it put in it's two cents was always a nice thing to do. While it didn't help that this apartment was technically a downgrade from a house, being much smaller, if the house liked it, then it was perfect.
Looking out at the slightly broken down and aged apartment as his home started to accumulate, first in the shadowed corners and doorways, he grinned to himself. The smell of honey filled his lungs, and he opened his first boxes.
Moving sucked, but a happy home made a happy house, plus Essempi had some cool heroes and villains, maybe he could get someone's autograph!
(and if, in the back of his mind, he was happy about the fact a lot of the normal house rules-- ones that required stairs or basements, couldn't apply here, then that was his business.)