to put voice to thought: part 2

[luxover]

Archie comes in again and tries to hold a conversation with Dave. Dave doesn’t give a fuck, isn’t having any of that shit.

“Listen, man,” he says. “I’m bored as shit and I still don’t want to fucking talk to you. Take a hint.” And he wants to say more than that, wants to call Archie a piece of shit, a fucking bastard, and whatever else he can think of because a large part of him is mad, but he doesn’t because an even larger part of him is resigned, accepting of the fact that he will die here.

Archie drags a chair over to the side of Dave’s bed and Dave’s about to say some real nasty shit to him when Archie turns the whiteboard around. There’s eight dashes all in a row, a neat little stick drawing of some gallows in the corner.

“You want me to play hangman?” Dave asks. “Are you kidding?”

Archie just shrugs and Dave ignores him. He doesn’t say a letter and stares out the window and he tries to imagine what Neal’s up to. Archie just watches him.

“Fine,” Dave says. “D.”

Archie draws a head.

“Fuck. A,” Dave says, and he at least gets that one right. “T.”

Archie smiles and shakes his head. He draws a body.

“Um,” Dave says. “I don’t know. I. E. An R.”

Archie fills in two of the blanks with an I and an E and then draws a leg on the hangman.

Dave guesses two more letters-an N and a U-and is down to just one more arm. He doesn’t want to guess anymore. This stopped being fun.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” he says, and he realizes it’s childish but the idea of seeing a stick figure hanging in the gallows just cuts Dave up inside for some reason.

Archie nudges him and raises his eyebrows.

“Fucking-fine,” Dave says. “M.” And he says it because it’s a bullshit letter, one that implies that he’s trying but that doesn’t show how he’s lost interest in the game, or maybe invested too much interest in it, Dave doesn’t know.

Archie writes an M in the first blank and David rolls his eyes.

“Miracles?” he reads, and he’s mocking it, knows Archie knows that he is.

They happen sometimes, you know, Archie writes. You just can’t give up.

And that, right there, from one of the assholes keeping him chained to the bed, is the little seed of hope that David needed, hoped for, doubted he would ever have. He looks at Archie, reaches out to him with his free hand, and when his fingers wrap around Archie’s wrist, Dave sits there and cries.

Things with Archie change after that. They have to, Dave realizes, even if a lot of it is still the same. They talk more, share more, and Dave thinks that if he wasn’t who he was, and if Archie wasn’t who Archie was, that maybe, possibly, they could be friends.

Archie tells him about his life outside. At first he didn’t want to, didn’t want to upset Dave, but Dave made him because it makes him feel human, feel normal, at least for a while.

Took my neighbor’s dog for a walk this morning; they’re on vacation, Archie writes. The dog’s too big. It took me for a walk, more like.

David laughs and says, “My roommate Neal has a dog-real big, real stubborn. Actually, that’s kind of what Neal’s like, too. He’s a real asshole.”

Archie writes, What’s he like?

“I dunno,” Dave says. “The crazy artist type, kind of. He’s got a lot of tattoos that he drew, and he chain-smokes like a motherfucker. He’s the kind of guy who like-okay, we were in high school, I think, and this guy said some real nasty shit to me, about my mom and my brother and about me, too, and I mean, whatever. I try not to let things like that get to me, you know? But Neal-quiet, little Neal who didn’t look an ounce intimidating back then, before the ink and the piercings and everything-he just took the guy’s head and slammed it into a locker. Almost got expelled for that, too.”

He sounds like he’d do anything for you, Archie writes.

“Yeah,” Dave nods, and he’s smiling but he knows it must be a sad one. “Yeah, he would.”

I get that, Archie writes. I have two little sisters that I’d do anything for.

“Oh yeah?” David asks. “What’re they up to?”

I don’t know. I haven’t seen them in years, Archie writes.

“Why?”

Things happen, Archie writes, and Dave gets that he doesn’t want to talk about it and so Dave lets it drop.

He dreams of Neal again.

They’re on the broken chairs in the front, watching Sixx shit on the neighbor’s lawn.

Oh god, Neal thinks. I really don’t want to go clean that up.

“What does it matter?” David asks. “You never do anyways.” Neal laughs and the sound of it-the sound of it makes David’s chest tighten and he doesn’t know why.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Neal says, and David’s not surprised Neal can talk.

“Hey, Sixx! C’mere!” David yells out, but for some reason, there’s no sound. He tries again-“Sixx!”-but nothing happens.

Neal laughs again and says, “Dude, watching you try to talk will never not be funny to me. You look like a fucking idiot.”

David realizes that he can’t talk-he can’t talk-but instead of the happiness he expected to feel, he just feels cold and empty and sad.

Simon comes to see him the next day, writes on a piece of printer paper that David is looking well.

Has Archuleta been doing his job?

“Yes,” Dave says, and he doesn’t add anything else because he doesn’t like to give Simon what he wants, doesn’t know what else to say, anyways.

Oh dear, Simon writes. Then I suppose I haven’t been doing mine very well.

When Archie comes in, he notices it right away. He ghosts his fingertips over Dave’s closed eyelid and over the purple bruise forming underneath his eye. He looks genuinely concerned, Dave notes.

Who did this to you? the whiteboard says.

“Simon,” Dave says. He shrugs. “What can you do? It could be worse.”

Archie’s breath is shallow and ragged when he asks, Why? He wasn’t even supposed to be here.

“People like Simon don’t need a reason,” Dave says.

I’m sorry.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” And Dave means that, when he says it. Archie’s been nothing but good to him, as good as Dave could ever have hoped for.

Does it hurt?

“A little.”

Archie just looks at him after he says that. He doesn’t do much, just looks at Dave, and Dave can see his eyes flicker back and forth as they move across his face.

Archie leans forward and Dave’s first instinct is to lean back, but he can’t, not when he’s propped up on the bed like this. Whatever it is that he’s expecting, Archie doesn’t do it. Instead, he just places a kiss, soft and gentle, to the corner of Dave’s eye, to his cheekbone, to the bridge of his nose.

Dave doesn’t move, doesn’t want to ruin the moment, likes the feel of Archie’s breath on his lips. When Archie kisses him on the mouth, Dave kisses back and he didn’t even realize it was something that he wanted, only now that he has it he doesn’t want to give it up. He lifts his arm to pull Archie closer, but the handcuff yanks his arm in place and clatters loudly against the railing.

Archie jumps and pulls back, his eyes wide and surprised. He leaves the room.

Archie comes back the next few days but he doesn’t bring his clipboard and David gets that he doesn’t want to talk.

Sometimes, Dave lets his mind wander. He tries not to because it hurts, usually, to think about all the things he could and should and doesn’t have. But this-this, Dave can’t help.

He looks at the line of Archie’s neck and imagines running his tongue there, and he looks at Archie’s lips and imagines tugging on them with his teeth, making them full and red.

He thinks about Archie’s voice sometimes, bets that it would be beautiful. He’s upset that he can’t hear Archie’s thoughts, but he’s even more upset that he can’t hear Archie’s laugh, real and loud and from his throat.

“I’ve gotta admit,” David says. “You’re pretty clever.” Nothing he’s said this far has even gotten Archie to look at him, but David doesn’t mind. He keeps talking anyways, just saying shit that he thinks will get Archie to react because he’s bored and because, honestly, he misses him.

“I mean,” he continues, “pretending to like me is one thing, yeah, sure. But getting me to like you back so I’d open up to you, and all for the sake of science… Pretty fucking clever.”

Archie doesn’t so much as look up from his charts or the whirring machines he’s standing next to.

“I knew it,” Dave mutters. “You’re just like the fucking rest of them.”

And that-that does something to Archie because he just snaps, smacks his palms against the countertop and whirls around.

Shut up, he writes. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Maybe,” Dave says. “But I am talking.”

And Archie makes this face, this I’m so frustrated with you face, and then before Dave even knows what’s going on, Archie has a hand on either side of his face and is kissing him firmly on the mouth.

It’s something Dave’s thought a lot about since the first kiss, but he realizes now he imagined it all wrong. Archie’s not shy or timid like he had expected. Dave supposes it makes sense, considering what Archie does for a living, but after getting to know him, Archie always seemed gentle, soft.

So he kisses back, just as hard and it hits him all of a sudden just how lonely he’s been, just how badly he wants Archie. He wants Archie spread out beneath him and he wants to take his time, to bring Archie to the edge and then leave him there, again and again, before finally pushing him over. And if he could get him to agree, Dave would set up the tripod and film them together, and he would watch it later when Archie wasn’t with him and Dave wished he was.

And then it hits him.

“Wait, wait,” Dave says as Archie’s kissing his neck. “The cameras-you’ll-”

Archie shakes his head, waves one hand in a meaningless gesture while his other is hot and heavy on the side of Dave’s neck.

“They’re not, they’ll-” Dave says, and he still can’t get the words out, not with Archie right there on top of him and the handcuff biting into his wrist. He tries to push Archie back.

Archie stops, puts both hands flat on Dave’s chest to calm him down. He raises an eyebrow and Dave doesn’t know what it means that he understands what that one eyebrow means. He calms down.

Archie leans over and grabs his whiteboard. The cameras are off, he writes. It was part of the agreement when they asked me to take this job.

And something about that doesn’t sit well with Dave. They asked him? But Archie’s just a boy-a kid, really. What could he possibly have that people like Simon would want?

“What did-” Dave asks, and his voice stutters because he’s not sure he wants to know. “What did you do before I met you?”

Please don’t ask me that, Archie writes.

“Why?” Dave asks.

Because I’m ashamed.

And David-David realized that perhaps it’s better not to know, perhaps it’s better to just imagine that Archie’s just a regular guy and that he’s not trapped in a government facility, waiting to die. Perhaps it’s better.

So David reaches his one free hand out and balls it up in the front of Archie’s shirt. Archie leans forward and kisses him, and there’s so much more to this kiss than the one before it. David doesn’t know what’s different, just knows that it is, and somehow everything seems more real and more tangible to him.

And maybe it’s because it’s been such a long time, the weeksmonthsyears that Dave’s been stuck here, or maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just because it’s Archie, but it’s like Dave blinks and then all of a sudden Archie’s hands are down his pants and his hips are stuttering and he can’t think straight.

“Archie,” David says. “Archie, Archie,” and he can feel Archie’s smile against his neck as he comes undone.

Archie comes in the next day and David’s smiling already; Archie’s visits are far and away the best parts of his day. But Archie looks different this time, looks nervous and upset and spends a long time, too long, with his back towards David as he pokes around in the medical cabinets. When Archie finally does turn around, he moves fast and shuts the door, looking both ways down the hall before he does.

You could really do a lot of damage if you ever told anyone this, okay? Archie writes, and he writes it so fast that David almost doesn’t have time to read it before Archie’s erasing it and writing more. So I’m really hoping that me telling you this is a good thing, even though they all said it would be a mistake. Erase. You’re too rash, or they all think so at least. I don’t think so.

“Who’s they?” David asks. He doesn’t really give a shit, but he’s bored, so he’ll bite.

There’s this group of people, about a hundred and fifty of them, maybe more, and they can all talk, just like you. Erase. They live-I don’t where they live, actually. They wander, hiding from the government. Erase. I have family-my sisters- living in their camp. They can talk, too. Erase. I help them.

“How?” David asks, and his voice is uneven because all of a sudden his hopes are up, even though he doesn’t want them to be.

Sometimes I find speakers before the government does, sometimes I don’t. Erase. I’ve never helped someone escape before.

“Before?” David asks. “So you’re going to help me-?” Archie dives forward and puts his hand over David’s mouth, fixing him with a glare.

Oh gosh, are you trying to get us both killed?

“Holy shit, you were serious?” David asks.

YES.

“When?” he asks.

I don’t know.

“How?” he asks.

I don’t know.

“Why?” he asks.

I don’t know, the whiteboard says, but David doesn’t buy it. Archie gets up to leave.

“Hey,” David calls out to him when he’s almost out the door. “If you’ve got family there and stuff, can you, you know?” He’d like to hear Archie’s voice.

Archie holds up the whiteboard again. I don’t know. David thinks that’s pretty fucking lame of him, not answering his questions.

The next few days, David can hardly sit still. He can’t believe it, can’t believe that after all this time-so much time-he’s getting out. He’d stopped entertaining that possibility a long time ago.

Dave lets himself think of the things he misses. He misses beer and he misses the wind on his face. He misses sitting on the roof with Neal and his mom’s cooking and his brother’s shitty jokes. It’s hard to pin down what he misses the most; he misses everything.

Only-only then Dave realizes that just because he leaves, it doesn’t mean things can go back to how they were before. He’s going to be on the run, like some fucking fugitive. He can’t go see his family, he can’t go back to Neal and Sixx. Even if they accepted him for how he was, everything would be different; everything is different.

And suddenly-suddenly Dave’s not too keen on leaving. He’s sure as fuck not staying this shithole, but looking for that camp? Living life like that? Dave wonders why he shouldn’t just kill himself when he gets the chance.

And then Archie comes in, and he’s all smiles and smiles and even though Dave can tell that he’s nervous, worried, Archie still looks good to him.

Good morning, Archie writes. You okay?

Dave nods once and then goes to staring out the window. Archie’s smart; he gets that Dave doesn’t really want to talk.

“It’s just,” David says finally. “It’s just that I don’t know where to go. Nothing’s the same anymore; I can’t go home, I can’t go anywhere because I can’t fucking think.”

Archie looks at him and bites his lip, but he doesn’t write anything and for that David is grateful.

“So what’ll I do? How will I know where to find people like me? You know?”

At that Archie squeezes his knee and writes, I’ll tell you where to go, what to do. I’ve thought it all out. I’ll let you know when time is close. You’re not alone, David.

“It sure feels like it,” he says, and Archie looks sad at that. “Why me, you know? I’m just tired, I’m so tired.”

Let me take care of you, then, Archie writes. I’m a doctor. He kisses the inside of Dave’s wrist, the inside of his elbow, and on up towards his neck.

Archie sits back on his heels, knees on either side of Dave’s hips, and undresses himself, and Dave watches, all the time wishing he could reach out and run both hands up Archie’s sides. But later, when Archie pushes David’s shirt up and kisses a line up his stomach to his chest, Dave curls his fingers into Archie’s hair and doesn’t mind so much anymore.

Archie stays for a while after that, squeezes himself into the twin bed alongside David. With his one free arm, Dave lets his fingertips trail up and down Archie’s spine, lets his fingers splay out on Archie’s hips, his thighs.

“You never answered the question, you know,” Dave says. “About if you can speak.” Archie looks at him hard for a minute and then sits up to grab his whiteboard.

Yes I did, I he writes.

“No, you said, ‘I don’t know.’”

And I don’t know, Archie writes, but Dave doesn’t get it. How can you not know something like that?

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” he asks.

I’ve never tried. Archie shrugs as he shows Dave the whiteboard.

“Never tried? But aren’t you-aren’t you curious?” Dave asks, although the second the words are out of his mouth he worries that maybe Archie’s never tried because he’s afraid of being like Dave.

Of course I’m curious. I’m dying to know, Archie writes. But if something happens, and I can talk? I’d have to leave, I’d have to get out of this place, and then who would be here to look out for the people who can speak? For people like my family? He erases the whiteboard and keeps writing. No. I have to stay here. I have to help the people that are stuck here, people like you. I have to find the cure.

And that-that just breaks Dave’s heart, makes him sad, so sad, because Dave doesn’t want a cure, not anymore. Maybe his voice is a genetic mutation, or the side effect of some disease, but Dave doesn’t see it as a bad thing, not anymore. It’s not good, it’s not bad; it just is, and that’s the thing Archie doesn’t get.

Dave kind of pities Archie for that.

Simon comes in a bit later and Dave flinches automatically. Archie’s still in the room with him, but he’s learned the hard way that that doesn’t mean anything, that Simon will still do whatever he wants while Archie has no choice but to sit and watch. It’s not something Dave likes to think about.

Instead, he watches as Archie messes around with the medical trays and cabinets, busying himself while Simon thinks to him. Archie stills, and Simon bats a hand at the air.

And then Archie whips around, eyes wide, wider than Dave’s ever seen, and he’s shaking his head and throwing his hands around wildly. Simon smiles like one would at a child and pats Archie’s shoulder, there, there. Archie furrows his eyebrows and then nods once, swift, and Simon smiles again, proudly this time.

When Simon leaves, Archie’s eyes follow him out the door. He stands there for a minute, not moving, and then all of a sudden jumps in the air, seems to come to his senses. He fumbles for his whiteboard and scribbles out a barely legible, There’s no time! I thought we had more but we have to hurry!

“What’re you-what’re you talking about?” Dave asks, and his voice cracks halfway through.

Simon says you’re done, says you’ve got nothing else, Archie writes, and it’s hard for Dave to read. Archie’s hands are shaking too badly. He wants you moved into the surgical ward.

“Well that’s not-that’s not too bad, I mean-pain is nothing new, right, so-”

No, Archie writes, and he underlines it three times. He wants you examined for anything we could have missed. We didn’t miss anything, don’t you get it? You’re not the first one, and you’re not going to be the last one. There is nothing to find.

And David-David gets it. He’s overstayed his welcome. He has reached the end.

Archie races out the door and Dave’s left lying there with dry lips.

He doesn’t see anyone for the rest of the day. It’s boring, real boring, especially since he’s so used to having Archie come keep him company, to tell him about his day and to play stupid board games with him. He thinks he should be worried, knowing what’s coming, but he’s not. He’s resigned, if anything. A part of him-very small and deep down, but at the center of everything-knew this was his last stop. It was nice of Archie to calm his nerves like that, though; to keep him going for as long as he could.

It looks nice outside, crisp and cool, and the leaves on the trees are changing colors. It’s all Dave can see, and he remembers how he used to love crunching them underfoot when he was a kid. It feels like so long ago, now. For an idle second, he wonders what else he’ll miss doing once he dies, but he shakes the thought from his head.

He won’t miss anything.

He thinks he’d miss Archie, if he could.

Dave’s staring at the ceiling when Archie finally races back into the room with a black eye and a knot on his head the size of a baseball. He fumbles in his pockets for something, his hands shaking, and Dave is startled, wonders what happened.

Archie pulls out a small key and uncuffs Dave from the bed. Dave, for his part, just sits there flexing his wrist. He’s not free but he’s free, and he can’t believe it, tried his hardest not to let himself believe it. But he is.

Archie drags Dave out of bed and his feet stumble under his weight. Dave is stunned-can’t do anything, can’t think, can’t move, can’t breathe. He stands there, immobile in the middle of the room, as Archie shoves Dave’s shoes and jacket and Neal’s old lighter at him-all things he never thought he’d see again.

Archie unlocks the window and waves his hand fast, hurry, hurry, there’s no time! He thrusts a crumpled piece of paper at Dave and it’s only when Dave reaches a hand out to take it that he realizes he’s shaking just as badly as Archie is.

Tell my family that I love them, that I miss them, that I’m trying.

Dave licks his lips, says, “Wait-I don’t know where to go, or what to do, or-you haven’t even told me where to meet them yet.”

And Archie just shakes his head and shrugs, his face wild and his eyes darting around the room, from Dave’s face to the door and back again. He snatches the paper back from Dave and flips it over to write on the other side. They usually meet me thirty miles up the hill by an old abandoned house, but I don’t know. They haven’t come the past three times. Just go, even if you don’t find them, living on the run is better than dying here, alone.

“I wouldn’t be alone; I’d have you,” David says.

But then you’d be dead, and I’d be alone, Archie writes, and Dave doesn’t know what to say.

When he finally reaches the window, the fresh air feels good on his scalp and makes his eyes burn. Neal’s outside and he look’s antsy, constantly glancing around. He makes a hand gesture that Dave can easily understand as Hurry the fuck up, but David has to say goodbye, can’t leave without saying goodbye.

“Neal-?” Dave asks, and Archie nods.

You were right, Archie writes. He would do anything for you.

“I-thank you,” David says, and Archie just smiles. It makes David’s heart clench because he knows how much trouble Archie could get into for this. “Are you sure you don’t-? Because, I mean, you could.”

Archie shakes his head and David only knows what he’s thinking because Archie’s written it out for him so many times before. I can’t. There’s too much good for me to do here. So David clenches his hand around Archie’s and Archie’s skinny, too skinny, but David doesn’t think too much on it.

“I think I could have loved you,” David says, “if things were different.” And he can’t hear Archie’s thoughts, not even a little bit, but the way Archie’s thumb sweeps over the back of David’s hand, again and again, tells David everything he needs to hear.

“Goodbye, Archie,” David says. “Thank you for everything,” and then he’s climbing out the window, down to Neal and his escape plan. When he looks back, Archie’s clenching the windowsill tight, and David tells himself that Archie isn’t crying because that makes it easier for him.

Neal’s got a notebook with him, and on it he’s written, Hey, asshole. David smiles slightly and they run off, just the two of them, farther and farther away from the hospital and Archie and everything.

We’ll find them soon, Neal writes. It’s been three weeks of searching and they haven’t found the camp or anyone else who can speak, don’t even know what they’re looking for, and Dave is starting to lose hope. There’s only so many nights that he can make Neal lie on a threadbare blanket on the ground before it becomes too much. But the stars are out and the trees are still and David thinks he can keep going if Neal can, that he can look forever so long as Neal’s with him.

Neal nudges him again and writes, Hey. We will, you know. Trust me on this one.

David says, “I already do,” and his voice is the loudest thing in the world.