Chapter Text
Sniper shuffles, quiet-like, up the dusty path.
The wind has scattered the sand here far and wide since he had last walked this trail--but he swears his boots fall into the same shallow footsteps; the ones that have always led him to the phone.
The phone remains as it had been the first time he had come up here: appropriately blue, nestled inside a metal booth, and bolted to an electric pole.
The surrounding grey rock boxes the area in. To anyone on the outside looking in, it’d look like nothing but a nondescript cluster of boulders.
He stands in the small clearing within that cluster, surrounded by those same dull rocks. There’s a set of double doors built into the cliff-face to his right; it would’ve led him into the base proper if it hadn’t been boarded shut long before BLU team’s arrival.
A thin strip of tarmac--now cracked in places--sits at the foot of the doors. Sniper had figured it likely that this secluded outcropping had been designed as a backdoor of sorts.
Going off of the large stacks of rusted steel beams piled up around him, however, whatever this area was supposed to be, it had never even been finished in the first place.
There's no way a van, let alone a car, could fit into the gap he had come in through, anyway.
Despite this, halogen soapbox lights--which are similarly lined red with rust--had been bolted into the rock; what little, pale light they give off is weak. They buzz, still, surviving off the dregs of however much electricity remains directed to this part of BLU territory.
Sniper wouldn’t doubt RED team has their own copy of this area. Perhaps the lights in theirs are actually maintained; the wide-brimmed lamp haloing the phone-booth has lacked a lightbulb for as long as he can remember.
He had thought, once, about snagging a spare from Engie’s workshop. Do the bloody maintenance himself, if he has to.
But he has failed, as of yet, to convince himself that screwing a bulb in would be an improvement.
He steps up to the booth. He sweeps the dust from its metal top with his right forearm. It wafts downwards, in a grey cloud, over his boots.
He keeps his arm there as he bends down over the booth.
He finds the keypad with his other hand. Nine yellow squares, some more faded than others; a few buttons are missing their digits entirely.
Even then, the keypad, with each button marked by shallow, rough divots, remembers every number as well as he does.
He takes his time punching the number in.
Each key groans as they pop back up on old springs.
It’s as quiet as the sigh he lets out through his teeth. He’s tired--but it’s not like he’s got anything else to do tonight. Not that he had had anything planned, anyway. He had come here straight from his van.
As far as he knows, the rest of BLU might’ve gone out and done their own things. Maybe they had booked it out to the nearest town; parked themselves in their usual pub; they could be coming home with the sun.
And here he is, on a cool, blue Saturday night, picking up the phone.
He sets his hat on top of the booth. The desert cold brushes its long fingers against the shells of his now exposed ears, his neck; the small hairs there stand at attention. He rocks back and forth on his heels.
He puts the phone to his right ear; the plastic shell clicks against the side of his aviators.
Dead air sits where ringing should be.
He hums into receiver, as if inviting it to ring. He glances at the keypad with little more than a once-over, the motion more perfunctory than necessary--it’s far too dark now to make the buttons out, especially with the brim of his hat shading them, but it hardly matters.
He punches the number in a second time.
Old springs; shallow divots.
The line stays dead.
His mounting frustration almost feels genuine.
Almost.
He knows he had put the number in right; knows it as well as he knows the rough, pockmarked indents shaped into each corresponding button; the broken lamp that hides the faded digits from him.
It’s as innate as the deep-seated instinct that drags him up this dusty old path and into the condemned part of BLU territory that no one else on the team bothers with but him.
The number goes in once more, despite himself.
He usually stops after two.
It’s funny. He is who he is--every bit of DNA having been sequenced with the finest precision--and yet he finds no comfort in knowing exactly what he has to do, especially if it amounts to nothing.
Their weekday matches push-and-pull with that same, incessant rhythm. High stakes come and go, always on schedule. A payload explodes, or it doesn’t. Points are captured and lost in the same breath.
Doesn’t matter who wins; same place, same time next week, right, mate?
It’s routine, at this point. There’s little room for variation.
Even here, where novelty foregoes punishment--or even acknowledgment--he can’t bring himself to do more .
To do anything of significance.
To leave before he can let himself scratch this itch until it starts bleeding.
Routine knows him by the divots in a rusty old keypad; by the phone number he calls every weekend. Their private performance.
Is it true freedom if it's planned all the way down to the letter; the number; the bone?
The receiver is starting to chafe against the shell of his ear.
His frustration grows a shade less insincere as he pulls away from it.
He cups the receiver in his palm. He stares into the little holes in its mouthpiece, as though whoever is supposed to be on the other side is finally going to speak.
Even without the phone pressed to it, his hearing on his right retains that same muffled, dead air; he puts some heart into pretending to realize he’s gone and used the phone on the wrong side.
He’s never been able to hear a thing in his right ear.
He has his RED counterpart to thank for that.
He musters a smile--a small, sardonic thing. If he were truly anything like him , he would’ve left the phone alone by now. He would’ve gotten what he had wanted.
He puts it to his left ear instead.
This is the part where he lets himself admit that the phone is broken.
That it might’ve never worked to begin with.
That he will never find out who’s on the other end--
--when the quiet space in his mind that succeeds the phone number demands that he should already know.
Each key he presses--each digit--is another step towards the edge of that gap.
Anything else is just flailing in the face of the void; the shadows of people he remembers only by the palpable lack of them.
He sets the phone back on its hook; it clicks into place. He shakes his hat of its dust. He places it on his head.
He takes the crumpled white box of his cigarettes from his back pocket, taps out a the little white stick, and places it between his lips.
The box returns to his pocket; he produces his lighter, next. Holds it to the end of his cigarette. It flares to life--the only living thing amidst grey rock and blue sand.
He takes a long, slow drag as he sets back down the path that winds through the gap in the rocks and stretches on into the sparse desert--the path that will, eventually, bring him back to base.
He blows smoke through his nostrils as he walks; the trail it leaves disappears behind him.
Come morning, this path will forget that he was ever here, too--in the same way that the daylight will make him forget, momentarily, that he had had the nerve to expect someone to finally answer his call, even after all this time.
--
Long shoots of sunlight slip into the gaps between the room’s wooden walls; they spread out across the floor and to the far wall. One ray falls over the tip of Sniper’s boot. Another stripes his leg--a warm, golden line that traces the seam.
He watches dust motes drift through the stale air. His rifle rests, idle, in his lap. He thumbs the bolt; the metal is smooth under his touch. The stock digs into his left thigh.
He shifts his weight. The Mann Co. crate beneath him hardly protests. He digs his right heel into the floorboards--they, in stark contrast, groan in response.
A number of similar crates crowd the space to his right in tall stacks. They’re tall enough that if anyone were to enter the room, they’d hide him from view.
Only problem being that he wouldn’t see the other person coming, either.
He’ll take his chances.
The loft’s wooden walls swell and shrink in a steady, agonized rhythm beneath the noon sun; the part of the floor that bears the weight of Mann Co.’s junk has the most to whinge about.
That sound could’ve been his best bet at a security measure, he thinks--if he were able to hear anything on that side.
Sniper smiles to himself ruefully. Not like anyone’s paying attention to him up here, anyhow.
He takes his hat from his head and sets it on the crate beside him. He presses back against the wooden boards behind him; they’re warm to the touch. It’s almost pleasant.
Hotter still is the harsh, white sunlight that has squeezed its way into the loft through the starburst shaped hole in the wall to his left. It could, optimistically, be called a window.
(He’d sooner call it the aftermath of a rocket blast.)
The ray of sunlight is a few inches shy of enveloping his arm, the shell of his hearing ear, his cheek, in its maw; heat radiates off of it in syrupy waves and closes the distance between them.
A sizeable part of him is perfectly happy to be hiding out in the attic, even if he’s had to completely unbutton his work shirt; the collar of his white undershirt is soaked through. The cloth sticks to his damp back for the same reason.
As stuffy as it is in here, he’d rather be here than with the rest of BLU--running around out there and baking under the Badwater sun.
A shot rings out below.
Speaking of.
He’s careful to keep the muzzle of his rifle more-or-less within the loft. He raises the scope to his eye.
Tin buildings; dusty hills; tall, orange rock formations pass through his sights. He follows the old railroad back up the hill, across the way to the basin’s second point--
To the payload that the rest of BLU has finally managed to push around the corner, at the cost of one round stuck between Medic’s eyes.
The man in question lies dead in the sand. His face had settled, frozen, into one of surprise.
Sniper clicks his tongue. Cuts a glance at his watch. There’s five minutes left in the match; might be a bit of time before Respawn’s able to spit the doc out.
Meanwhile, BLU scatters in the chaos, hapless and out of their wits without support.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” he mutters. He had been betting on a stalemate today. “Can’t leave ‘em to do anythin’, can I.”
He’s sure the doc must be feeling the same--that is, if the man is watching this holy hell from wherever it is they go to between here and Respawn.
The thought makes him pause; that hesitance grants RED Pyro safe passage through his scope. Bright white flames spit out across the sand. They catch BLU Spy in the act.
Sniper swears under his breath. He’s not sure of the exact science of the Respawn machine; Truckie had explained it to all of them at some point, but, currently, he can only recall one thing:
The faster they fall, the longer they take to come back.
Come back from where?
The question--unprompted, unwanted --flits through his mind.
He shakes his head, as if that’d dissuade it from returning.
But it lingers in the back of his mind as he runs his scope back over the crowd. He’s got nine other things to worry about right now--he’s not looking to make Respawn, in all its implications, a tenth.
He cuts a glance at his watch; if they don’t push now, the match will end in two minutes.
He has two minutes to cull the herd--to get BLU team more time for one, grand final push.
Easy pickings.
Easy, now.
Steady.
Steady.
“Boom .”
A fine RED mist; one Medic for another.
Sniper flicks the bolt; the casing hits the floor; he finds his next sitting duck.
RED team scatters in all directions like startled sheep. Their Soldier soars through the blue sky--and makes for an even prettier red splat in the dust.
“Lotta good the bucket did ya,” Sniper mumbles, sharp with glee.
Click .
Another shell to the floorboards. He doesn’t know where it ends up. Doesn’t bother to check.
That’s how they’ll win this: for every casing, another RED stuck into Respawn.
Make the few, vital minutes they have trickle away--keep them off the field, off the payload.
Stagger them.
Keep them in that place between here and there.
Keep them in the dark .
Send them out into the dust--
--then let them walk back along the same shallow footsteps.
Let them call someone who will never answer.
Everything in Sniper stills.
He can feel his finger closed around the trigger. Half-squeezed. His mind whispers, tells him to let it go; his nerves obey. The spring whines. Whoever he had had in his sights slips by.
His scope rests on empty canyon rock.
He raises his head from it. He blinks; a sore ache blooms in his hands.
It should feel familiar. It should feel right .
But it’s only a reminder that he’s done this all before.
That he’ll do it again, and again, and again .
That anything between here and Respawn is little more than flailing in the face of the void; the inevitable.
The window in front of him is just that: an empty white starburst. Somewhere, in that shock of light, his team needs him. Needs him to do his job.
His hands return to the thing in his lap, fingers positioned where they have to be--but he doesn’t know what it is he’s holding anymore. What it does.
Pins and needles erupt from the very center of him. They spread out. The hairs on his neck rise.
He grows all too aware of his breathing; he forces each exhale out of his lungs.
Inhales just as mechanically.
Pick up the gun, Mundy , his mind screams.
Pick up the fucking gun.
It rests, idle, in his hands.
He had been in this attic the week before.
He’ll be here next week, too.
Him and the crates; the old floorboard; the gaps in the walls and the starburst window and the carnage and the dust in the air, always the dust.
On the weekends between then and now, he’ll walk the same dirt trail he has walked countless nights before and he’ll follow it into the gap between the rocks.
It’ll drop him at the edge of the gap in his memories and it’ll demand that he try again .
Even borrowed, wiry sinew and muscle can lie.
But even if the urge to call the same number every weekend is nothing more than muscle memory--it’s all he has to the name that hadn’t been his to begin with.
So who is it on the other end?
Who is it on the other end of the line; of the barrel of his gun?
He doesn’t know if either question matters anymore--not when every week, every stalemate, every bullet will inevitably bring him back to the place that forgets his footsteps; that keeps him in the dark; that will, one day, keep him forever.
The floorboard shifts beneath his boot. No noise on his right side.
But someone’s here.
He starts--then a white-hot pain sinks into the back of his neck.
It tears a shout from him. His gun clatters to his feet.
He writhes beneath the blade; the metal scrapes bone.
It twists down into it.
Then,
a precise snap
a clean cut dissection,
and the world goes dark.
--
The match, in contrast, dies slowly.
The payload barely caps the third point. It gives them more time, certainly--but the long push to the final terminus is agonizing.
Sniper changes nests frequently, frantically searching for the best angle that’ll turn the tide in their favour; RED’s Spy makes a game of hunting him down in every one.
One easy picking after another.
Sniper opens his eyes for the nth time. He stands facing the clock on the far wall. It takes him a moment to make sense of the numbers: they eventually tell him there’s twelve minutes to the match.
Twelve minutes until this is over.
It takes him five to understand where he is.
He takes a breath.
Another.
Feels his lungs expand inside his ribcage; notes how they balloon against the thin meat of his torso.
He steps forward, leans down, and raises the room’s shutter door.
He has a job to do.
His rifle becomes less of a weapon to him and more of an object. He knows, intimately, how it works; he’s put it together and taken it apart more times than he can count.
That knowledge does him little good now.
Now, it isn’t a gun--it’s a spring and a bullet and a trigger and a long piece of metal, all working in tandem.
It’s parts. Shapes.
Each individual mechanism means nothing to him.
A click. A casing. RED paints the wall.
His movements become automatic. It’s like he’s somewhere else, watching his body make the decisions for him. Beneath the haze, something sharp and frustrated and utterly empty twists in his gut.
It asks him why he keeps fighting.
It asks him why he keeps calling.
Don’t .
Sniper shakes his head, as if that’d dissuade the thought from rearing its ugly head, as if it’ll listen to him this time. His breathing comes too fast, too loud, as he runs into the fray.
His hands shake; he curls them into fists. Tries to hold onto the way his nails sting against his palms.
Don’t think about it.
They lose that day.
He doesn’t know how or when it happens.
Doesn’t even remember the bell ringing, calling time.
He doesn’t realize he’s piled into the van that’ll take them back to base, either--until some far-off part of his jittery mind whispers that everyone on BLU team must be looking at him .
--
The end of the week looms before them.
The phone--and all the little motions that sicken him--wait with open arms.
Each match slips him by; hours turn into mere minutes.
With every match that passes, another weight presses down upon his mind--until he can’t think of anything else but how much the world around him lacks that same heaviness.
It has mass--but very little of meaning.
His days have already been numbered and filed away for him. It’s all a script, now. When his body remembers doing things his hands have never done, what is there to wait for?
That same uneasiness bleeds into the days. Pools into a miasma of noise and cyclical motions. He loses his focus to the mess; just acknowledging it sends him reeling.
Every inch and corner of the basin is alien to him. Every shot is sloppy.
His teammates say nothing; their collective gaze, exact and cutting, speaks for them.
The days pass him by in a blur.
Soon, it’s Friday afternoon, and they’re back on base--with two days of nothing to look forward to.
It’s his fortune that he’s usually the last to exit the van. He watches each of his teammates leave before following suit.
They all pile out into the base’s loading dock. The second van--the one that transports their personal arsenals--hasn’t arrived yet.
As soon as they gather into a loose group, the first van drives off, rattling back up the road and kicking dust up in its wake.
Sniper tears his gaze from the retreating cloud. He keeps it on the rough, popcorned cement beneath his feet. Scuffed boots and torn pants and dirt-and-blood-crusted soles dip in and out of his vision. The setting sun washes the world in pink.
He’s got another weekend to himself; another weekend hiding out in the safety of the camper van. Exhaustion rests heavy on his shoulders, but his mind races with a thousand, cluttered thoughts. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep much tonight, let alone through the weekend--if at all.
He just needs to keep away from everyone until he can pull himself together.
Until he can deal with whatever the hell’s going on inside his head.
He looks up from under the torn rim of his hat. The desert stretches out before him, wide and golden in the sun. He finds the small cluster of boulders without trouble.
It takes a decent walk--about ten minutes back-and-forth--but the spot hardly invites curiosity. The trail leading to it would be near invisible to someone who hasn’t walked it before.
A hand touches Sniper’s shoulder, brings him out of his thoughts. He tries not to jump out of his skin.
He doesn’t know if he does a good job of it--because even Engie’s blank, dark lenses look sorry when he turns around.
“Hey, uh,” Engie starts. He takes his gloved hand from Sniper’s shoulder. “I was thinkin’ of takin’ the boys--” he gestures to the other mercs with a thumb-- “out t’ town tonight. Get us all drinkin’ off this shitty week.”
Sniper stares at the fine crack in one of Engie’s lenses. A few moments pass before he remembers to answer.
He nods.
“Yeah?” he replies, for lack of enthusiasm.
If Truckie picks up on the wary edge to his voice, he chooses not to comment on it.
“Yeah, might do us some good,” Engie responds, instead, bright and chipper, as usual. “You in?”
Sniper’s eyes flick to the rest of the team over the other man’s shoulder.
They’ve all gone still--like they’re listening in.
“You’re all goin’, then?”
An empty base.
A guarantee that they’ll leave him be.
“Well, I don’t know ‘bout Spy, but...” He grins, all toothy with Southern friendliness and an inside joke Sniper doesn’t feel like laughing at. “C’mon, buddy. Been one hell of a week, hasn’t it? We all need the downtime.”
You especially , is left unsaid; it hangs between them, however, heavy with implication.
“Thanks, mate, but...” Sniper trails off, then shrugs. “’m fine. Think I’m gonna spend the night inside, if that’s alright by ya.”
Engie’s smile falls an inch. Concern takes warmth’s place fast.
“You sure?”
He nods a second time, as if that’ll convince either of them.
“Yeah. Yeah. Sure as can be.”
“Right.” Engie tilts his head, hardhat following the slight motion. He clicks his tongue in disappointment. “That’s too bad. Well, y’ever change yer mind...”
Unlikely , he thinks.
“...y’know where to find us, ‘kay, buddy? Won’t be far. An’ y’know the number of the bar, right?”
He speaks as if he’s talking to a child.
Sniper bristles. They’re not that far apart in age--even if, in terms of semantics, they have only been around a year, give or take.
The words leave his mouth before he can think better of them.
“Yeah, pop. Got it. Don’t worry ‘bout me.” Sniper steps forward. Bumps up against Engie’s chest. He leans down and into his face. “You lot bring yer bloody fuckin’ house keys, yeah? I won’t be waitin’ up.”
Engie’s goggles betray little.
But his nostrils flare.
He’s so easy , even after all this time.
Sniper breathes, hot, through his nose. A white spot of condensation forms and dissipates on Engie’s cracked lens. The latter clenches his jaw, the round line of it going taut.
Some sick pleasure at the sight boils in the former’s gut.
It bubbles up to the back of his throat. It tastes almost like glee.
He spits it out--he laughs in Engie’s face.
Has his laugh always sounded this cruel?
Engie doesn’t shrink in the face of it. His grimace, from beneath his scruffy beard, cracks into a smile. All sharp canines and ruddy red gums; a familiar amusement, in place of what Sniper actually wants from him.
His fist finds the front of Engie’s shirt. He pulls the man forward with a jolt; Engie sucks in a breath; but that goddamned smile stays on his face.
Motion stirs behind him. Sniper looks--but the setting sun blinds him.
The world is red, red, red.
His eyes fly shut instinctually. He opens them slow.
The other mercs are barely more than gauzy shadows in the light.
They’re just as blurry when Engie raises his flesh hand over his shoulder, shows them his knuckles--the universal sign for stop .
His hand blocks out the worst of the light--
--and brings a single face out of the group.
Scout stands at the head of them. He had had his bat resting on his shoulders earlier; it now rests in his swinging arm, dented tip against the concrete. The sun drags a red line down its steel edge.
His brows are knitted together. Confusion and anger in equal measure line his young face in small, tight wrinkles. He bares his teeth; Sniper notes the little gap between the front two.
Everyone obeys BLU’s fearless leader--except Scout.
The kid keeps a firm grip on his bat. His sharp knuckles poke through the tape twisted around his palms. They’re stained black with old, dried blood. The bat taps the ground.
Sniper’s anger dissipates; something cold and entirely foreign sinks in his gut like a stone in water.
He swallows.
Would he have let it gone that far?
Would he have gone that far?
He looks away.
A white-hot guilt twists his insides.
Engie is anything but sympathetic; he keeps a wide smile, still--but when he speaks, his words are colored with the fury Sniper wishes he could’ve dragged from him, piece by piece .
“The hell is goin’ on with you?” he says, quietly.
“Nothin’,” Sniper replies. “’m all aces, mate.” He’s surprised to hear how level his voice is.
Engie chuckles; it comes out dry with disbelief. He tilts his head down to indicate Sniper’s fingers, which are still twisted into his shirt.
“Yeah.” He laughs, again. “Clearly. I don’t know what’s been goin’ on with you this past week, but this ain’t gonna make ya feel better.”
“Think I should be the judge of that.”
Engie shoots back, quick as a whip and just as dangerous,
“Try me, boy.”
Silence passes between them in a moment that seems to last an eternity.
Sniper is the one to break it.
He snarls the last of his frustration--then pushes Engie away from him.
The man staggers backwards, but he manages to stay on his feet. He smooths down the front of his shirt with both his gloved hand and little success. His grin loses its smug edge; it softens.
Sniper’s guilt twists into utter disgust.
“We’re worried about you,” Engie tells him. “Y’know that? We’re real goddamned worried about you, son, and whatever it is that’s goin’ on with ya--”
Another laugh; it rides the fine line between truth and hysteria.
“Piss. Off .”
“Mick, c’mon --”
Sniper doesn’t care if he makes even more of a scene. He’s made a pretty damning one already--one that’ll make for particularly salacious gossip later tonight, he supposes.
Let them talk, then; let them drink their merry way to next week; let this all happen again, over and over and over, until Sniper finds the courage to knock the teeth out of Engie’s bloody fucking smile.
He doesn’t have the guts to do it now--so he turns his back on his team and leaves.
They let him go.
--
It wouldn’t be hard to find him; any drongo who misses the big white cube on wheels parked a few meters out from the base is either piss drunk or more stupid than he had thought.
He makes it all the way to the van without a single soul coming after him. He takes his keys from his back pocket. His hands tremble with a simmering outrage; aching leftovers of the day’s match; exhaustion.
It takes him a few moments to get the key in the slot.
He pushes the door open.
He slams it shut behind him with a BANG!
The van wobbles with the force of it, then stills.
It’s childish. No one’s even around to hear. To flinch. To chew him out.
But it does make him feel a little better, all things considered.
He lingers, there, in the echoing silence.
Something searing and angry licks at his insides; forces its way out of his throat; hisses from his mouth like long shoots of steam. The teeth of his keys bites into his palm until they sting.
He squeezes his eyes shut. Clenches his jaw until that ache manifests itself in each tooth; until it’s a copy of Engie’s wide, wide grin, miserable in its perfection.
“That cunt,” he spits, into the quiet.
He almost doesn’t get the words out; they ease the mounting pressure in his head, if only by a modicum. He breathes a little easier for it.
“’Worried about me’, he says. That fucker .”
That cools his nerves another few degrees; while it isn’t enough to calm him down completely, it’s better than nothing.
He plants a hand on the table to his right. Its hinges wheeze under his weight.
Hazy, pink sunlight slips through the drawn blinds and stripes his knuckles.
Falls between the gaps in his fingers and into the little nicks and pockmarks in the plywood; they’re rough beneath his already calloused fingertips.
A small part of him howls to put his fist through that window.
Another demands, in a similar frenzy, that he go back out there and find Engie-- give him something real to worry about and make a pretty red necklace out of his goddamned teeth .
As soon as the thought hits him, Sniper flinches away from it.
He throws his aviators onto the table, alongside his keys. They both land with a clatter.
He presses his face into his hand. His hat falls to his feet; he lets it. He digs his fingertips into his eyelids until he has to blink away spots of static.
Somewhere, in the back of his frantic mind, he knows this can’t be him.
He isn't this person.
He isn't the violent feedback loop of noise that claws its way through his intestines, that feeds on horrible images and temptations.
This hunger that needs Engie--in all his goddamn wisdom and sanctimonious detachment, BLU’s ever fearless fucking leader--soaking the concrete with his blood.
Or perhaps…
Maybe he’s wrong.
Maybe he has always been this writhing, ugly thing.
Perhaps it’s been rotting inside him all this time.
The world has become quiet; unimportant; unreasonable.
Is this it, then?
Is this all that he has left to his name, at the end of the day?
A raw fury that cannot be directed; controlled; something wild that needs to lash out. Engie had just gotten too close to his snapping teeth.
Sniper presses back against the booth’s chair as he sinks to the floor. He draws his knees to his chest; there’s not enough space to stretch them out.
He puts his head between them. His knees tremble against the sides of his skull.
He runs his hands through his hair. His unsteady fingers catch on all the tangles and muck he has yet to wash out. He keeps them clamped over his nape.
The light from the window reflects onto the floor between his shoes.
He watches it fade--watches it turn--from red to blue to white--until his shaking fingers stop itching to peel back his own skin.
To let the noise bleed from him, drop by drop by drop.