Archive of Our Own ^beta

Oliver had once known a desolation avatar who had a locket passed down from her mother and grandmother, the picture inside something that could never be replaced. She had kept the locket around her neck til the day she was found strangled in webs, puppeted with her one betrayal held up like a confession.

Oliver had once known a stranger avatar who kept a journal, just a small one, just for them and signed each page with their name. When they had been bombed to a crisp, the journal was left, an altar to an identity.

Oliver had once known an eye avatar with a penchant for those sensory deprivation chambers, the ones he had tried that never quite worked for him but to each their own. He, the avatar, had drowned in one, blissfully unaware as the water reached over his head and into his lungs.

They all had their vices.

It didn’t excuse why Oliver had an obsession with scrolling on r/DeathPositive, but it sure explained it.

“What do you think happens, afterwards?” He said to Mike.

“After what?”

Mike was standing by the window in their penthouse, the constant smell of ozone that surrounded him wafting out as he stared. High ceilings, two walls of floor to ceiling windows, you could tell the place was picked out by a vast avatar and Oliver didn’t mind much, so long as he got to decorate how he wished in more subtle ways.

“You know, death.”

Mike turned, drawing his gaze from the cloudy grey sky and looked at him. “You’d know better than me.” He said in the voice of a man who had just been asked by a professional chef how to make a soufflé.

“I mean, I wouldn’t though.” Oliver looked back at his phone, a persistent buzzing of wrongness in the back of his mind that was drowned by his curiosity. “I just know how people die. Not what happens.”

“Aren’t there religions for that?” Mike walked from the window, opened the fridge and poured himself a glass of water, then popped it in their carbonator. He flicked on the kettle without Oliver having to ask him and leaned against the counter. “Maybe everyone just goes where they believe. Maybe you’ll go to…” he eyed him and paused. “Crystal land?”

“Yeah, not even close.” Oliver giggled. “Good try though”

Mike took his glass from the carbonator and gulped about half of it down, making Oliver wince. Why did they make water that hurt you?? Why did Mike enjoy it so much? “Well I dunno!” He said, wiping his mouth. “I’ve died and now I can go into the vast, so maybe there. Maybe that’s just where everyone’s gone and we can’t see them because it’s so big.”

“I’ve died too though,” Oliver said, leaning his head against the armrest of the couch and looking up, sighing. “And I just had to swim for a long time afterwards.”

“Well there you go, there’s a vast domain in the ocean too. I’ve solved the meaning of life.” Oliver heard sounds of the kettle flicking off, water pouring. He closed his eyes and saw the darkness of his eyelids that happened right before he fell asleep. It was his favourite sight, really, before all his dreams, the eager anticipation of a good night’s rest before the dream for it was ripped from him and mocked by the tendrils.

He heard a cup placed on the table and opened his eyes. He took it and sipped and grinned at the taste. “London fog. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Mike sat back. “If it is the vast, that’d make a lot of sense, yknow? Like, the vast is everything. It’s an endless expanse of every atom on the planet and they’re all eternal and everything else is meaningless.”

Oliver had heard a lot of vast avatars talk about their patron before. “You sound like Simon.” He said innocently.

“Oh RUDE!” Mike stood up, “And after I made you tea and answered your weird death question and figured out the meaning of life for you.” He began to dramatically stomp off into the bedroom.

“Nooo! I’m sorry, come back.” Oliver tried to hide his smile. Mike hesitated, but eventually sighed and plopped back down, taking another huge sip of his pain water.

“What’re you looking at anyways?” Mike saw his ipad resting on the coffee table and picked it up, scrolling through the subreddit. “Death Positive, really? Isn’t this like, the opposite of all you stand for?”

“Not really.” Oliver huffed and crossed his arms, “Most people are still scared.”

“Yeah, but this is like if I went to a skydiving school and just watched folks overcome their fear of heights. Just sat and watched.” Mike giggled. “What do you get out of this??”

“You sleep with a weighted blanket.” Oliver deflected, sipping his tea.

Mike looked at him with betrayal in his eyes. “You said you wouldn’t mention that again!”

Oliver smirked and Mike rolled his eyes.

“You can’t tell me you haven’t put a single thought into what happens.” Mike said, glancing down at the ipad again and scrolling a little more through the community. “That’s literally your whole thing. It’s not like you’re busy actually doing anything to get your fear.”

“First of all, rude.” True, but still rude. “Second of all, I…” He looked down at the tea warming his hands, suddenly struck with a kind of melancholy. “...I just hope it’s somewhere I can sleep. A dark rest. An end of consciousness. I probably deserve a hell, but I don’t believe in any of that. Just darkness. Just rest.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” Mike said, leaning back. “Am I there too?”

Oliver cracked open his eyes from where they had drifted shut and looked at him. “Yeah.” He said quietly. “Yeah, you are. Right next to me.”

“Good.” Mike grinned.

Oliver watched him flick his eyes back to the screen, trying to memorize every angle of his face, the scar spiraling over his eye in lightning fractals, the way his neutral expression was that smug little smile.

“This one’s pretty cool.” Mike said, snapping Oliver out of his train of thought. He tilted the ipad so Oliver could see the twitter post poem running across the screen.

i hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child & fell asleep on the couch during a family party. i hope you can hear the laughter from the next room.

The words settled over Oliver like a warm blanket and his shoulders dropped a bit. “I like that one.” He said.

“You ever did that? Fall asleep and have someone carry you to bed?”

Oliver nodded, “Yeah, lots. Sometimes I’d just pretend to fall asleep and I think my parents knew. It was really comforting. I kinda miss it.”

“Heh.” Mike looked back at the screen, a bit of a shadow across his face. “That must have been nice.” He said.

“What, you didn’t?”

“Me? Nah. No. Not really.” Mike tore his eyes away from the ipad and closed it, putting it on the coffee table. “Couldn’t sleep much after the lightning. Fractals, spiral, yknow. ”

“Yeah.” Oliver said, “Right.”

Mike looked back over at him and grinned. “You falling asleep now?” He asked.

Oliver had closed his eyes, on his side, thick fleece blanket wrapped over him and laying his head on one pillow with the other in his arms. “How… Couldja tell?”

“Want me to take you into the vast?” Mike offered, “So the death things don’t get all…” He wiggled his fingers in a way that might have meant anything from terribly cartoonishly evil to tickle tickle tickle to caterpillar army.

“No thanks.” Oliver murmured into his pillow, knowing he’d regret turning down the offer.

Oliver sat up. He left his body aside, he didn’t need it where he was going, and felt his dream legs protest as he walked. He knew where he needed to walk to, he didn’t want to, but at this point he knew that the only way to lessen the pain was to cooperate.

Down the stairs, across the street, he moved like a zombie, unaware as he passed tendril after tendril plunging in to people’s hearts and heads, wrapping around them and taunting him as he walked past. Tunnel vision could only take him so far when he was stepping over them at every turn.

Oliver found a forest after what might have been a few hours, might have been a few minutes, really how could he tell? He ran his hand against the bark of a tree and inhaled, exhaled, tried those stupid grief processing techniques his therapist had given him.

In the forest, he couldn’t avoid it, like a shark he had to keep moving and he did, into the trees that seemed to wave out of his way, tendrils like roots wrapping around until there was only one.

When he reached Mike’s body, he still had to let out a sob of surprise. He knew it would be there and yet when he saw it the grief held like a stone in his throat and his legs were shaky and he collapsed on the ground and his eyes burned with tears.

Every night for the past week, Oliver had seen Mike’s body. Bullet through the head, that was what killed him. He was alive, he had made a London Fog just an hour before and yet he was dead already. Dead man walking. They were going to bury him. Oliver would come back and dig him up and set him to rest in a lake. Maybe he’d like that better. Maybe he’d just be waiting for him in the darkness for him.

Mike didn’t like grief. He didn’t like talking about his feelings. He wouldn’t appreciate Oliver telling him, and Oliver knew he couldn’t. Maybe that made him terrible. That was alright. He could grieve in his dreams and let their last days be happy. Mike would know when he looked at the gun in his face, and he’d understand.

Oliver was suddenly back on the couch, blinking a few times at the sudden darkness, or what could pass for darkness with floor to ceiling windows. He hadn’t slept a wink and simultaneously had slept for entirely too long.

The second thing he became aware of, after the disorienting lack of light, was Mike. Particularly Mike with his arms around him, trying…

“Are you trying to pick me up?” Oliver mumbled.

“Awh damit, you’re awake?”

“No, no, still asleep.” Oliver grinned and could hear Mike roll his eyes.

“Why are you so hard to pick up?”

“Uh, because I’m a foot taller than you and at least fifty pounds heavier.”

“I just took my testosterone, I should be the hulk by now.”

Oliver giggled. “That’s very not what that does.”

“Shut up, you’re asleep, remember?”

Oliver had to admit, he was impressed. After he started cooperating, Mike managed to pick him up and victoriously carry him over to the bedroom. Having not been picked up in years, Oliver was cackling the entire way.

Mike dropped him as gently as possibly- which wasn’t entirely gentle- into the bed and rubbed his arms. “See? Death isn’t so bad after all, is it?” He grinned.

“Yeah, guess not.”

“I don’t get your dread power, honestly.” Mike sat down next to him and reclined. The bed was just about the best Simon’s money could buy. They had spent a day at the mall- Mike running around beside the ledges like a toddler without a leash, Oliver having a very in depth conversation with the salesperson at the mattress store, trying to avoid the tendrils that lay over the beds. The perfect bed to fall asleep on. It didn’t help, but Oliver appreciated the thought.

“You’re not afraid of dying?”

“Nah. None of it’s important, you know that? Plus, I’ve already died once and that was just about the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Yeah.”

Olivers hand found Mikes beside him and intertwined their fingers, locking them together, connecting them, holding him tightly and safe because they were safe now. Safe for now.

Mike’s phone buzzed on the nightstand and he picked it up, bright light from the screen shining over them both and making Oliver squint.

“Just got a text from Jude.” Mike said. “That’s weird. She wants me to meet up with someone. Told me to scare him a bit.”

“Just a bit? That doesn’t sound like Jude.”

“I mean her exact words were,” Mike looked at the text, “If you put a sheet over your head and say boo he’ll shit his pants, so have fun.”

“Is he going on a tour of all the fears or what?” Oliver laughed. “Didn’t know Jude took prisoners.”

The room was quiet. Blackout curtains, crystals on the bedstand, a lavender diffuser that was supposed to be calming and sometimes even was.

They fell silent. Oliver was pretty sure Mike was falling asleep. Oliver stood up and opened the cabinet by the foot of the bed and took out a 15 pound weighted blanket that he knew Mike kept hidden at the bottom. He climbed back onto the bed and spread it over the both of them.

Mike protested. “I don’t need-”

“Shush, I know it’s your favourite.” Oliver sighed. “I won’t tease you about it, promise.”

They all had their vices.

Mike fell asleep shortly after, but Oliver stayed up, holding his hand and feeling the pulse under his skin. He had thought a week of grieving would numb him at least a little, but the lump in his throat was still there.

He hoped when all of this was said and done, death would be gentle to him. He hoped he’d still be able to hear the laughter from the other room.