Fandom: Outlast
Characters: Miles Upshur/Waylon Park, Billy Hope
Word Count: 2475
Warnings: dissociation, mild body horror, unreality.

Summary: He fears the reflection more than he does the illusion.

Notes: "stop picking at it, you'll make it worse"
"too late"

Are you alright? Waylon asks, Are you okay?

He is not looking at Miles, but staring off into the grey opening where the black road bleeds into dust and nothing. Are you here, now?

Miles swallows around a dry throat and looks at his hands. They are whole.

This does not strike him as strange.

He flexes his fingers, and wonders if he's missing something.

Most days I am, he says. He looks sideways at the road barrier, weather cracked cement, overgrown and withered brown vines draped over it and spilling into the shoulder. Today I am, I think. He says, looking back to Waylon and finds only the memory of his outline there. He blinks rapidly, a far away desperateness seizing him, until he sees oilslick impressions there, half dreaming that the next time he opens his eyes Waylon will be right in front of him again, staring up at him through smudged glasses with a bland half frown.

Instead there is nothing.

The jeep's engine idles behind him, exhaust fumes swirling warm air around his legs, making the calves of his jeans stick to his skin. Miles shudders, and his perception brightens, acid white, against his temples, and the tips of eight fingers buzz where he's tracing meaningless whorls into cool olive skin stretched over thin hip bones, and he thinks distantly, he's on the cusp of waking-

A hum, electric and high pitched whines between his ears, breaking over his streaming thoughts, plugging the spigot, and his vision stutters as he takes a step back, bracing himself with both hands against the hood of the jeep. The metal of the hood is cool and damp and gritty with caked on dirt.

When he comes to, the world is bleary, his tongue is swollen and dry in his mouth, his ears are muzzy, muting the already hushed stillness. Miles grits his teeth, shaking himself off, but he feels like the world is off kilter, settling at a slant. I'm fine, he says out loud, to himself. Fine, he repeats, clenching his fists on top of red metal, digging his knuckles into the dust. Okay.

A curl of breath whispers across his cheek, faint. And close.

And Miles turns to Waylon.

I see, Waylon says at his elbow, eyes cast to the side and chin low, hiding his pretty drawn face. A shiver goes through his wane frame, then drifts forwards, steps flickering and suddenly he is far down the road, only a shadow there. He does not turn back, but Miles thinks he can see the withered and pale tilt of his chapped lips. You're lying, aren't you, Waylon's fading back says. He is walking up a tiny slope of hill on the sunbaked road, the heels of his of shoes making soft scraping sounds where they scuff against detritus and it echoes strangely in this grey stretch of road..

Miles is reminded of an ancient, stone oven. Or the peeling spine of some long faded book. A shuttered and final inhalation. The crumbling walls of a hospital hallway he's huddled against.

No-no…. I don't think I am

(i can't be), is what Miles wants to say, maybe, to the vacant place beside his shoulder, in some approximation of repudiation . Impressive nothings without oppressive need. Instead- in spite of, possibly just because of- He says nothing. Continues to until the question, its answers, its false rhetoric in the form of by the ways and don't leave me, begins to evaporate, first on his lips, then-

He glances down at his fingers and wonders why that is.

Where are you going? He asks, before he can linger on questions (or, was it answers again?) he can't remember asking(giving? wishing?).

Waylon is gone.

Sudden and quiet and Miles can't be really sure he was ever there.

Oh, he breathes to himself. The sound is loud in the empty place, and he feels the real weight of it press and expand in his chest.

Bits of rubble flakes off under his weight when Miles leans to fall heavily against the road barrier. The rough fuzz of the vine feels strangely warm, like a wiry arm or a dry tongue or-

Miles looks at the path he thinks he remembers Waylon walking towards.

-Something.

And then he gets to his feet and follows.

Over the tiny slope, the road ends. It's not an abrupt end, he thinks; where the grey, worn tarmac becomes wild, dusty, thick leaved foliage that bleeds out and backwards towards a place that smells like wet stone. But….He can not tell exactly.

His world is blurred and his vision is failing and Miles….

The road and the end meld together. (That's a fact.) Says someone who read it from a torn page from a book without a title. (Maybe). He remembers the cadence of their voice murmuring for his attention... a smell like a cold day, a shuffle of soft soled shoes on checkered tile. The feeling of running the tips of his fingers over a nameplate on the side of the door because he didn't have anything to do with his hands (and he didn't want to hear and he didn't want to understand), spelling over and over

H

O

P

E

Miles hesitates. Uneasiness pricking at the skin of his face, his arms, his knuckles. He notices the humidity then, and he begins to move in place, shifting and discomfited beneath prickling, crawling, heat. Miles blinks through bleary eyes, taking several half aborted steps away from the grasping sway of the undergrowth, his boots grinding into black earth and tar as if bracing against a sudden gale or a revelation.

Miles is

sure

(b_ are you listening to me? b_, please. it's going to be-)

He's never heard that voice before.

That's not my memory, he whispers, face blanched and mouth dry.

But there's no way to

know

(slim fingers grip unto his temples m_, look at me, m_, do you _ my name? m_ chapped lips press into a thin line and the terribly pretty face staring down at him is haloed in watery light and his ears ache and his mouth waters and his eyes burn and he says of course of course i'm _ because he does not like the expression that pretty face makes when he can't answer. he know that, even if he doesnt always know why)

He's lost so much time. His mind skips. Burnt out celluloid frames shuttering on a reel.

Tension winds at his temple, Miles winces, blunt teeth digging into his lip as he presses shaking fingers to his brow, beading with cold sweat.

(b_y i'm sorry. Your mother. She's gone, b_y)

He gasps shallowly, a noise like a dying animal grits in his chest with smoke and rattling shells.

And then-

A stale wind sweeps along his back, unbalancing him as it plucks irritably at the loose folds of his clothes and through microscopic holes under his skin, brushing away the pressure. Miles blinks blearily.

And the answers are gone.

Like Waylon is, Miles reminds himself, forcibly latching onto the last wisps of fading pain in his skull with fingernails and teeth, and his chest constricts, gunsmoke and car exhaust and nicotine tar and the mirthy jangle of warped lead rattles his bones and pours from his open mouth.

Miles, someone says. Miles. Did you think you were-

The roiling smog burns at the green. Broad, leathery leaves wither, curling back and blackening like a jagged smile into cringing teeth.

free?

He has fallen to his knees, but there is no pain forthcoming. He picks at himself, delicately. Whole handed and vision cusping into spinning fractals, Miles wanders.

(And wanders)

(and perhaps it is as Orpheus once did. (Was there ever a moment where Orpheus could no longer see the way back? to?) Or is it the corpse that left his heart, in, where was it? Arizona? Colorado? a lake only seen in dreams? dirty roadside bathroom stall, "youre ok youre ok youre okokok" carved into the plaster? a hospital bed with a plain green privacy curtain? (if orpheus -if he, if it, if they- turned back, a scared little boy clinging to infinitesimal wisps of specters fluttering like the skirts of women...what would happen?) He doesn't know)

Hey, I heard what happened and.

Dark hair laying over a white neck. A scene faded in Neon, and buffeted in creaking vinyl stools, perspiration on glass, steam from a mug. Utensils scraping on empty Parker and Jane plates. Burst egg yolk coloring painted flowers.

I wanted to say I'm. That I'm. Sorry, I guess.

Yeah.

It's..., Bitten fingers worry at a damp coaster, blurring ink advertisements into the pulpy paper. I mean it, Billy. I can only pray it gets better.

The coffee's gone cold and Miles remembers he is not Billy. The stool scrapes back over checkered linoleum, the sound slipping into him, bleeding into hairline fractures to carve new wet fissures into his very infrastructure. He turns to the? his? Billy's? dream? ghost? friend? memory? and says, I don't belong here. I have to find- He chokes, tongue and lips and thoughts and throat welded with acidic bile and something saccharine. Need- he says, standing abruptly on legs skewered by pins and needles. To get away. Have to find...find-

His jaws lock. Teeth bared and lips pulled back, spittle foaming at the corners, mad

mad

mad dog (man)

dog mad had lost its wits

barking at (ghosts) and shadows (put him down)

He slams his fists down on the linoleum counter and it melts like wax and the clean yellow wallpaper blooms mold like flowers, like fire, like ash, like dust in the end, blown like wind; ceramic cups and plates and bone and teeth and glass lenses fall in a shattering rain on the checkered floor, and he breathes in the noise.

Miles. Says the fellow ghost, friend, wanderer, lover, dreamer, convict, runaway-dead man walking-Waylon.

And it is Waylon. Only- not quite.

Miles clings to the vision none the less, blinded by sunspots and the smell of instant coffee grains, flickering lights reflected in the window.

He fears the reflection more than he does the illusion.

Something inside tells him, as he reaches to touch soft curls. Bleary eyed, he makes a sound like he's dying when the black strands brush the pads of his fingers instead of unraveling like so much smoke.

What are you doing? Here, I mean. Waylon says, (kindly overlooking or perhaps) oblivious to Miles' shaking. He crouches down among the broken glass, fingers trailing over sharp edges with acerbic familiarity (almost like fondness?), leaving red and bits of himself behind. It took a while, but I'm here now. Miles. he says before Miles can reply, and Miles winces, chin trembling just slightly as he takes another step closer, shattered everything crunching underfoot.

Wa-

His eyes snap open. He sees grey gravel and dusty green leafs. Miles groans and slowly pushes himself to his knees. His hands are bleeding, leaving dark blots on the colorless ground, the smell of iron and earth muddling his already bruised head. Waylon, he says, and the name is bright and it urges him into standing even as his knees buckle under his weight. He pushes himself forward, bracing against a tree, the bark biting (the wound it seemed both sore and sad) into his skin while memories and words and feeling and sensations tumble through him from a point of disconnect. It builds behind his right eye, alien and shifting, not quite malignant, but-

other

-his legs slip out from beneath him, his fingers scrabble at the rough bark and splinters break off and under his nailbeds, he can't catch himself, vision inverting, the bruises in his head swelling. His shadow seeps into the dirt, the blood from his hands boil and crumble into the ground after it, breaking apart the earth like split fruit; the pressure behind his eye opens, lengthening and alive, yanking forward like a tether, slick and sinuous as it latches onto the roiling pit.

the blood and the dark and the tether pull and pull and pull and he opens his mouth to scream but a tar black skeletal hand bursts from his lips, and it burns like chemical smoke and tastes like gaslit fire as it scrabbles at the edge of the pit, no Miles says, tries to, but he has no strength left in him, dragging uselessly forward, not- not-no, not this

(a warm mouth hushes into the curve of his neck you will take me apart, just like this)

(no i won't he says. then he thinks i'll put you back together again and he slides his rough hands down the smooth slope of a white spine. i'll put you back together with pieces of myself)

Pretty dove hands dig into his (broadbowedwideweak) shoulders, bitten fingertips with their burned and bruised knuckles grip onto him tightly, ten lifelines and warm papery palms, and suddenly the Waylon's pretty pale face fills his vision, strained and dirt smudged and lined with fear and anger and stubbornness, and Miles gets the sudden impression that this is the first real thing he's seen. He gasps, gulping in harsh, foul, miraculous air like his lungs have only just remembered how to work, clutching at Waylon's too big sweater, twisting fistfuls of the fabric so hard he's almost expecting it to shred apart.

Idiot!

It rings loud and clear, more felt than heard as it rips through the muffled static filling his skull like so many cobwebs. The bruises swell in his mouth, and he's winding himself around Waylon, tossing them backwards into the ground with bone jarring force, their legs twist and tangles, chests impacting together and compressing their lungs into one.

Waylon, Miles says, fisting threadbare cloth and pushing uncomfortably close, chin digging into a rapid pulse. Waylonwaylonwaylonwaylon. He scrabbles impossibly closer, as if he can merge their very nervous systems together just like this, and his hands spasm like they want to claw a hollow out into the warm body beneath them, make a space he can fit himself away in before Waylon spins away into smoke and undisturbed dirt.

Miles, you idiot, Miles. Waylon rasps hoarsely, his own fingers gripping with urgent desperation to Miles' jacket with enough force to make the leather creak.

I looked, Miles agonizes senselessly. I looked for you everywhere. You were gone. I couldn't. I I I looked.

A noise of frustration scrapes its way out of Waylon's throat, and he shakes his head harshly, tugging frantically. Miles, Miles, listen, he whispers fiercely, a faint buzzing bleeding into his words, Miles, wake up. You need to wake up. Breathe. Your heart- stopped- Wake up, Miles, you aren't-

"Goodnight, Billy Hope."