Your Heart is an Empty Room (3/5)

[davynn]

You stay awake the whole night, not having been given the command to sleep and not feeling like doing it of your own accord. For a while you just lie on the bed Derek provided, staring up at the sky as it slowly turns from grey to a dusky orange to black. He doesn’t visit again the whole day, doesn’t set foot anywhere near this section of the house.

You don’t mind so much.


He seems to be nice, nicer than Peter in any case, and he’s most certainly handsome. You know you find him attractive by the way your face flushes when he looks at you, how your heart races when he gets close, the way your stomach tingles and your toes curl and you’re suddenly hyper aware of your private areas. You hold that all back though. When you asked your alien brain how to act in these kinds of situations it said it’s not polite to express these things outright, most certainly if you’re interested in courtship. You have no idea whether Derek wants to have that kind of relationship with you, but you like him, like the way he treats you. You certainly don’t want to discourage it, so you try your best to keep it hidden, all the while wondering.

After the night starts to pass, when you see color begin to bleed back into the scenery, when you hear the birds outside, you get up, change your clothes, and make your way back into the house. Derek hadn’t said that you were to stay in the room, and so you choose to explore, maybe find a way to make yourself useful and endear him to the idea of you staying around. As you walk around the ground floor you take notice of the state of things - surfaces covered with a thick layer of dust, half the lights sputtering or out, staleness to the air around you. The house isn’t dirty, not really, just… dead, decrepit, left to wither. It’s… sad. You can’t quite place why, but it unsettles you, stirs something deep inside. You’re spurred to do something about it, a part of you deep inside sparking to life with that need to care for the people around you, to make sure they’re happy above all else.

You find a broom closet beneath the stairs and pull out all the tools and supplies, familiarizing yourself with their uses (there are so many varied accounts- it’s a little hard at first to get them to coalesce) before setting in with a determination steadfastly ingrained. You dust first, the handrails, the countertops, the tops of bookcases, idle fan blades. It turns out to be a bit of a fun chore once you let yourself settle into a rhythm, flitting around from place to place, watching the escaped dust motes glow in the early morning light, trying to clap them between your hands. Washing everything down and massaging oils into old wood isn’t as enjoyable- more on the actual work side of things; the hot water making you sweat, the repetitive, rigorous working of the rag making your hands cramp. Still, it’s a good kind of ache, the kind that comes with doing a worthwhile job and doing it well, plus the oil smells of oranges, a scent you’ve discovered you’re quite fond of, even if it’s an artificial citrus odor.

It all goes rather smoothly, cleaning the house in layers, not unlike peeling away dead skin to reveal the vibrant, new pink beneath, making the place alive again. All that’s left by the time the sun fully rises are the floors, but your alien brain says that’s a job better left for when everyone else is out, giving things a time to dry, avoiding the trouble of having to box up certain rooms. There’s already so little space left, the majority of the house a moratorium- padlocked doors an eerie, creeping reminder of what was, what can never be again. You obediently leave them be, curiosity turning bitter in your stomach when you wonder what the rooms might contain. You try not to think about them. Instead, you wait patiently on the stairs for Derek to come down, twiddling with your thumbs, picking at the holes in the jeans Peter gave you.

It’s nearly ten and you still haven’t heard so much as a rustle from the rooms above, honestly it’s starting to irritate you. Irritation is an uncomfortable sort of feeling. Your skin is sensitive and prickly, there’s a dull kind of ache in your teeth, and your shoulders slowly grow tense. It makes you frown and drum your fingers and glance up the staircase every few minutes, even when you know that you haven’t heard him wake. It borders on anger when you think about the fact that he’s consciously left you down here on your own, alone with his hauntings. Eventually you can’t stand it, this inactivity. He’s done just what Peter suggested, huddled you away and steadfastly ignored you. He probably hasn’t considered your feelings, assumed that you’re just like the perfect, packaged models from the factory. You can’t exactly blame him for it, and the lookout is admittedly nicer than a closet full of sex toys, but still.

Your ears burn at that thought and you shoot straight up, determined to find something else to keep you busy, to keep your mind from turning to things it shouldn’t, pleasant or decidedly otherwise. You wander outside and start cataloguing all the kinds of plants that surround the house, finding uses for certain leaves and roots, researching which kinds of flowers are considered pretty enough to bring inside, extensively checking on berries and mushrooms and nuts to make sure they’re edible before popping them in your mouth. Their poisons and allergens wouldn’t affect you, regardless, but you’d still prefer to get things right and be rewarded with a burst of sweet juice instead of bitter toxins.

You gather a little of everything, making several trips from the house to the woods and back, filling bowls with pretty stones and placing them around the house, arranging branches and flowers and hanging them on walls, dropping them in vases, washing fruits and herbs and leaving them out for snacks or to dry. By noon the house looks nothing like it did when you first arrived and it gives you a bit of a thrill to know that you’ve made your very first mark on something, changed the way the space exists. You have brought life to something, the same way it was gifted to you, and it makes you feel… giddy! You dance in and out through the rooms, sliding on your socked feet, twirling and leaping when you reach carpet, the whole while an instrumental song full of tinkling pianos and straining violins playing in your head. Eventually your artificial body begins generating sweat as it’s supposed to, but you never get short of breath, and your muscles only ache for a minute or two after you stop.

~~~

You’ve officially run out of things to do, things that occur to you anyway, and inevitably your thoughts turn to him. Derek was the first person you met that didn’t threaten you, and though he doesn’t seem particularly pleased that you’re here, he still wasn’t purposefully mean. Dr. Mahealani wasn’t a bad man, but tearing away someone’s limbs and nearly killing them tends to sour a disposition. Derek just - he seems confused by you - lost and maybe a little bit broken too. You’re a lot better at hiding it than he is, but your survival depends on being to hold things back, to behave within certain guidelines and keep up appearances.

With a frustrated sigh, you stand up from your spot on the stairs and decide to take the initiative. With a person like him, it probably would be better to wait for him to grow comfortable and come to you, but he also seems stubborn enough to stay up there for at least a couple of days and you couldn’t possibly contain yourself that long. You head into the kitchen, rifle through the pantry, and produce a coffee maker and some grounds and filters. You take a moment to search out this model’s instructions and then coffee brewing in general before proceeding to brew a cup, deviating from the standard in a few places to make it less bitter, smoother, richer.

There’s creamer in the fridge, but it’s gone sour so you pour it down the sink and set aside the container, vowing to find Derek’s recycle during some free time. What sugar he has is lumpy, but that’ll work fine enough so you stick a small teaspoon in the jar and hold that in the crook of one arm while fetching out a tall mug from the cupboards with your free hand. You fill the cup nearly to the brim, at first tickled by how warm the ceramic gets around your skin and gripping it tighter to leech more heat, but then nearly dropping it when it begins to burn. The skin of your palm turns an irritated pink and itches, painful every time you put pressure on the flesh and you silently berate yourself for letting your fascination get the better of you. Again.

Gritting your teeth against the discomfort you gather the sugar jar and mug of ‘joe’ (you decide to call it that because colloquialisms will make you seem more genuine and besides you find it funny that a hot drink has a human’s name. Suddenly you want to start calling the dining table Tom and the staircase George and the coffee maker sure seems like a Hank) and head upstairs. It’s unnerving how quiet it is, each step you take feeling strangely louder, even though you know they’re the same decibel they always were, quieter even as you try and compensate.

You stop and listen at each door, making sure you have the right room before you enter. Derek was very specific about staying on the ground floor, about keeping your nose out of where it doesn’t belong. For him, there’s a place for everything and everything should stay in its place. Yours, apparently, is downstairs. Quiet. Well-behaved. Out of the way. You don’t like that, and the little spike of negative emotion is enough to make you burst in. When you enter, you’re surprised to find that the room is nearly empty - a Spartan bedspread and a laundry basket filled with wrinkled clothing the only objects taking up floor space. There are no pictures, no books or tokens or knick knacks of any kind - nothing to suggest a person has actually spent their life here. It’s… wretched. Sad simply doesn’t encompass all the things that are wrong with it, the dozens of micro-emotions that rush through your system at the sight of it. Wretched seems most appropriate.

For some reason, one that you’re not quite sure of, it makes your face feel hot and your eyes prick and sting. You sniffle, quietly as you can manage, and set the coffee and sugar down on the floor. Suddenly, you’re ashamed to be up here, to be in this house at all. Clearly you’re invading this man’s space, treading where you’re not welcome, trespassing in some space of crisis. You’re unsure what to do at this point- whether to just make the best of the situation that you’re in, or to gracefully bow out, do what’s deemed as right and put Derek’s wishes ahead of your own.

There’s that part inside of you, the programming that must be inherent in your kind, that immediately attaches you to him, that makes him more important than anyone or anything else. You’re not sure when it kicked in exactly. It wasn’t like all those other foreign pieces of you that snap into place. It wasn’t that abrupt clicking, that flip of a switch that startles and disturbs you so. It was much faster than a human’s own experience, but oh so similar in fashion. It was this slow sinking, something like a dream - you don’t really know where you are, or how you got there, but you are utterly unafraid.

It took hardly a day, but already you just want him to want you.

~~~

It’s been a week, and he’s hardly spoken a handful of words.

It took two more days for him to even come downstairs and acknowledge your existence, but you took it as progress. After all, he could have stayed up their as long as he wished. You brought him three meals a day, leaving a tray of food and drink just inside the door, and he usually ate at least one. There was a bathroom down the hall he frequented, and it seemed as though he didn’t have any more needs than that. Personally, you were amazed by it all, his ability to shut everything down and live simply by need. You’ve nearly gone insane trying to find ways to occupy your time.

Constantly, you want to be out and exploring. There’re so many things you know about, objectively, but have yet to experience. You want to feel what it’s like to swim, to roll down a hill, that thrill of falling when you hop off a ledge. Most of all you want to sing. You did it that once - back in the white room - and it was so… fulfilling. Now with those codes lost, you probably never will again.

But you try not to focus on the things that you don’t have, the things that you can’t do. Instead you find a kind of pleasure in what is given to you. The lookout is truly something wondrous, the nights on which you can see the stars nothing short of breathtaking. The smell of rain is simply… enchanting. Yes, that’s just the word. The stuff of fairy tales, it makes you feel otherworldly in only the best ways. The feeling of mud between your toes is at once pleasant and terrible, and that fascinates you. Mostly though, the one thing that truly occupies your mind is the color of Derek’s eyes. You haven’t been able to find a shade of green anything like them, and even if you can ask your foreign brain to replicate the shade, it never gets it quite right.

He seems thoroughly put out when he catches you staring, even huffs out an angry breath, rolls his shoulders, and pinches his nose - all signs of bubbling irritation. You find that this is one thing that you cannot keep yourself from doing regardless. You want to please him, truly you do, and that should mean immediately stopping any actions that cause him discomfort. And yet… you can’t give this up. No matter how long you search his profile, no matter that you’ve mapped every angle, curve, jut, and dip of it, you can’t stop. Pictures and imaginings don’t do him justice, only the real thing will do.

You justify this indulgence based off the fact that you find him looking just as much as he does you. Usually it’s with this expression, so raw and open, you can’t tell if he’s hurting or healing. He keeps a distance between the two of you, hesitant, wary, acting like an animal that you’ve backed into a corner. You know that, physically, he must be attracted to you. His pupils dilate sometimes, his breath catching, his muscles going tense. The combination of them all points clearly to it, but you get the impression that this is something that would be wrong to bring up. For all that humanity celebrates its physicality, there is a long history of restraint, of trying to rein in the baser parts of themselves. You can tell this is what Derek is doing, might have been in the practice of long before you showed up. Despite the lack of variety, he is clearly a creature of emotion, ruled by his swings of mood, and he doesn’t seem to know quite how he feels about you yet.

You don’t know what to do about it besides continuing to just be there, to keep on showing up even when he doesn’t want you to. You give him the space he demands, never leaving the ground floor unless it’s to take or leave a tray of food, only engaging him when he chooses to be around you- leaving him open get-away’s if he chooses. But - but lately he’s been choosing to come down, to be around you, even if it’s with a clearly set distance between the two of you. It’s okay that he’s unsure of himself, unsure of how to act or what even he wants.

You know that you’re different, even if it doesn’t seem like it most of the time. So when he behaves a way that you don’t expect, a way that upsets you, you try and make it just roll off your shoulders, put it away so you can do what needs to be done. No one ever comes to visit, no one calls, there’s never even mail delivered. You wonder how long he’s been alone, how long this thing that’s setting him so far apart has been left to fester. It makes you feel uneasy and sick and anxious all at the same time. This is called melancholy, and the drowsy muck of it is more terrible than any other emotion you’ve yet to experience.

~~~

Fifteen days in, the fridge is empty, the pantry goes dry. You never ate yourself, not knowing if it was allowed, or if it was something Derek wanted you to do, and he only ate rarely. The things he’d had when you arrived lasted longer than they should and you have no idea how you’re supposed to replace them. Well, technically you do, but you don’t know if Derek wants to let you out of the house, if this is something he does for himself, or even if there might be someone who normally delivers necessities to there

Jittery - leg jack hammering, fingers tapping, corners of your mouth twitching - you wait for him on the couch, trying your best to practice patience. It’s something you’ve been working on ever since you got here - Derek being someone who valued it greatly - but you think that it’s going to be some time before you really get the hang of it. There’s just always so much to do, to see, to take in. You don’t know how he manages it.

You expect to be here all morning, just like that first day, waiting until he’s able to gather himself and come down. It always seems a great feat, some battle that he honorably fights as often as he can. It might be your imagination, or maybe even wishful thinking, but you think it’s getting better, slowly. You hear his footsteps solid and angry on the stairs, coming down before eleven and the reality of it shocks you so much, at first you wonder if it isn’t some intruder that’s come to raid this nearly abandoned home. Statistics show that inactive homes are far more likely to be robbed, and by all means this place surely seems left on its own. It spikes a small dose of adrenaline in your system, making your nerves worse than they already were.

Instead of a thief clad in black, sinister and unforgiving, Derek just sticks his head into the living space, brows drawn, mouth pulled into a tight frown, eyes sleep dreary, but projecting a clear annoyance. “Where’s my breakfast?” It’s more a grunt than anything else, but Derek’s never been much of one for talking, let alone eloquence.

You purse your lips for a moment before grabbing your notebook and hurriedly scribbling across one, two, three small sheets of paper. Half way through Derek pinches his nose and sighs loud enough that you know it was meant more for your benefit than his own. Scrambling off of the couch and handing him the double-sided sheets, you twist and sway in place as he reads them. You don’t even like breakfast. Last Thursday you asked me, and I quote, ‘Why do you always stumble into my room at ass o’clock in the morning even when you know I’m not going to eat any of it? Don’t you have things you’d rather be doing?’ And that’s verbatim. I never forget anything you say to me.

When he finishes reading them, it takes him a while for him to look back up to you- the papers crinkling and the pen smudging as his grip tightens. “That doesn’t answer my question.” You feel as if he’s avoiding your words just as much as you did his, though you didn’t do it on purpose like he just did. You make a point of looking put-out. This means that you have to slump your shoulders, huff a loud breath, roll your eyes. Your ‘theatrics’, as Peter called them, make Derek’s lips curl away from his teeth in something like a snarl and you immediately cut it out, shrugging your shoulders and laughing soundlessly.

You rip off another piece of paper and hold it against the wall, scribbling, We are out of groceries and I didn’t know if you wanted me to get more. before handing it over. When he reads this he throws his head back and groans, walking away without a word and heading back upstairs. Not sure exactly what that means, you stay where you are, fiddling with your clothes and pad and paper wondering if this will be another day spent wandering the house while Derek grumps around upstairs. Not that you begrudge him it - Peter gave you all the information before you were delivered and commanded you not to speak a word of it afterwards. You sympathize with Derek, feel all the proper emotions for him - not because you’re supposed to, but because you genuinely do - but you literally cannot offer any of it to him.

Twenty minutes later Derek comes back downstairs, fresh from the first shower he’s taken in four days, wearing a ratty t-shirt and too-tight jeans. You’ve never seen him in anything but pajamas and sweat pants, and somehow your attraction grows even stronger, suddenly understanding the expression “butterflies in your stomach.” You blush, rub your hands up and down your sides, and when his eyes catch yours, you can feel them glitch. It happens occasionally, when your emotions are heightened, and it always embarrasses you. Because while most the time you can pretend that things are different, that glitch reminds you of what you are, and that you’re here because you were bought, that you acquaintance is forced, not invited.

Your mouth suddenly goes dry and you turn away from him, bringing up a hand to cover your face. He doesn’t say anything, just brushes gentle fingers across your elbow as he walks by, opens the door, and walks right out. You seize up for a moment, heart pounding loud in your ears and your skin burning where he touched you. It takes several seconds longer than it should to process what just happened and by the time you realize that the gesture was meant to make you follow, Derek is already disappearing into the tree line.

You dash after him, losing another few seconds when you have to turn back to shut the door securely. He still doesn’t say anything when you catch up, doesn’t even turn his head at the sound of your footsteps, acting as though you’d never been gone. Each breath he takes is measured and even - his nostrils flaring and his chest puffing out - the corners of his mouth daring to make something like a smile. His eyes are impossibly bright out in the natural light, complimented by the greenery and the chilled air and the hesitant mist. He looks alive out here in a way that he never does inside that house, and you wish that he would allow himself out more often.

If you had your voice, you know it would be hard for you to keep the silence as the both of you walk along, setting a pace that’s just between a stroll and an amble. You don’t know that there’s a word for it just yet, and so you occupy yourself with maybe making one. You could chart the exact distance that the both of you travel if you wanted to, but for once there’s better things to occupy your mind. The way Derek’s skin goose pimples every time a breeze blows, the way moisture gathers in your lashes before dripping down like cooled tears, the tang of salt coming off of the sea.

You’re almost upset when you actually come out of the thicket and into a small section of town, suddenly thrust out of this comfortable bubble and into the mess of a community. You’ve never been around large groups of people before, don’t know how you’ll react even if you can look up proper behavior guidelines. When you glance over at Derek you can tell that he needs about as much reassurance as you do - his hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes wide. You don’t know if it’s appropriate, but you’re still determined to be there for him, and so you step close, take a deep breath, and thread your hand through his.

He jerks back at first, staring down at the connection like he’s been caught by a bear trap, breathing rapidly. It makes you feel like you made a mistake and your palms start to sweat. You can feel your face heating up and your chest feels tight. These are nerves, a special mixture of shame and worry and blind hope that roils up when you’re unsure of yourself. Your eyes glitch and with that you move to pull away, stepping back and turning so that you might flee back to the house, wanting to just burrow away back in the lookout to be ignored again.

But you’re jerked back, nearly falling over, when his grip tightens - almost to the point of pain. He’s looking resolutely at the ground, but he doesn’t let go, just pulls you along as he steps out onto the sidewalk and starts dutifully marching towards the building helpfully labeled ‘Neighborhood Market’ above its doors. You’re aware of strangers openly staring as the both of you walk by, unable to just shoulder past them like Derek is doing. There’s recognition in their eyes and you wonder what it is that they’re thinking about the both of you. Your imagination never was easy to rein in and now it’s set loose, worrying over what these people think that they’re seeing.

Derek can feel you lagging behind, tugs you jerkily forward, presses his shoulder against your own. “We’re just here to get some food and head right back. Ignore them and they’ll ignore you.” It sounds like more of an order than a reassurance and so you decide to take it that way, adopting his same stance and bull rushing your way inside the store.

He lets go of your hand to grab each of you a basket and then sets straight down the aisles. You follow after him, watching as he throws items into the plastic crates seemingly at random, and feeling self-conscious for not having anything to do. You chew at your cheek and look over all the items on display, balance out their relative costs, find out their names and uses and origins. They are merchandise. You were merchandise. You think of each box, can, bag as a kind of cousin, like the machines in the white room that put you together.

Half way through you get to imagining yourself, put up on a shelf like these foodstuffs and knickknacks and tools. You had a box of your own not so long ago - packaging and a price just like them. You wonder if you were purchased with the same kind of reckless abandon that Derek is exhibiting now. You know, objectively, that Peter’s the one that bought you, that you can’t think of it at all like that. But you do anyway. You wonder if he would have ever stopped to look at you, to deem you worth the price and the hassle, or just passed you by like the hundreds of other things that don’t make it into your baskets this morning. What if you had been that box all the way on the top shelf, behind all the other, fresher things?

While the woman behind the register rings everything up, Derek finally takes notice of your distraction, glancing over every few seconds as he counts out his cash and change, bags the groceries himself when the young boy on deck is taking too long. He frowns, looks like he might even be worried, but just continues to watch you instead of actually doing anything about it. On the way out he hands you half of the bags, puts his free arm around your shoulders, and leads you back onto the path home.

This time the silence is not so gentle, the air seems almost dank instead of fresh and full of possibilities as it did just a half hour ago. You hate these sudden changes that come about without warning or explanation. You experience them far too often for your own tastes and it makes you… frustrated. When you get inside, Derek ushers you to the kitchen, and you go on to a sort of auto-pilot - putting everything away where it goes, putting the paper bags with the other things you’re going to recycle, start making a fresh pot of coffee now that you have the things.

He watches you from the dining table, chewing on a thumbnail, and muttering to himself, low enough that you cannot hear. When you put the mug, filled to the brim and steaming, he actually thanks you, pulls a smile even if it comes out as more of a grimace. That simple action makes your heart tattoo a painfully quick stutter of a beat, and you can’t help but smile back. Your mood isn’t cleared completely, but you don’t feel quite so adrift as you did before.

The rest of the day is spent in each other’s company, though conversation is sparse and action even more so. Mostly you just sit together, doodle on the notepad, stare out the windows, avoid staring at each other at the same time. It’s as though the shared experience, the muted terror you both exhibited, has formed a camaraderie between you- a connection that wasn’t there before.

It’s nice.