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He was quiet as a kid, he’s been told. He remembers it, somewhere, in the back of his blurry mind, the quietness, the silence, the way he’d sometimes go for days upon days at a time without speaking. How when he’d finally whispered something, his words had come out all thick and syrupy, like treacle, ‘cause his voice was just so unused to it.
It’s one of the only things he can remember from being that young—the silence. How Belos had looked at him sometimes, head tilted curiously to the side before giving a pleased little nod. You listen so well, Hunter.
He’d been quiet, but his mind hadn’t. Everything around him was loud, loud, loud, the clashing of spars from the guards, the bubble of mixing potions, the way the palace gates had clattered, the fizzing of magic as it hissed in the air. Everything was loud so his mind was too; almost inhabitably so. There had been no way to shut it up so he’d just done the one thing he could to make it all better and keep his mouth firmly zipped shut.
He’d been quiet, but he’d also been – unusual. Darius had told him that once, when they’d been talking about the Coven, how he’d always watched him from afar. “ You hopped about when you were a kid,” he’d said, “ You didn’t walk.”
There’s bits and pieces Hunter half-remembers but he hasn’t asked about. How Belos had chided him when he’d waved his hands a little too wildly, how his silence wasn’t always listening because the Golden Guard must be a good public speaker, Hunter, you need to learn this.
He hasn’t asked about them because he doubts Darius remembers much and also he doesn’t want to bother him and also he’s a little - not embarrassed, not exactly, not ashamed, but – he doesn’t know. He guesses he doesn’t like the connection of that odd, quiet little kid to the person he is now. (Even though he knows they’re one and the same deep down, layers upon layers upon layers holding them good and close together.)
He’d been a quiet kid but he’d been a loudmouthed bratty teenager, or at least that was what people said. He’d quipped and argued and made himself a general annoyance, placing himself on the skyscraper high golden pedestal that was all he’d never known and all he’d feared he ever would know. It was safe up there, that pedestal, as much as he was terrified of falling from it.
He’d still hated the noise. But instead of hiding away and keeping his hands plastered firmly to his ears and biting at his nails until he reached the quick he’d created plenty of his own noise. He’d been trying to drown everything else out. He still doesn’t know if it worked or not.
He’d been a quiet kid and a snarky teenager, and now, after all of it, he’s a bit of both.
He’s loud when he needs to be; when he needs to defend his friends and when he stumbles across something he actually wants to talk about - wild magic, wolves, Cosmic Frontier, plants with Willow. He’s quiet when he’s peaceful but also when he’s – not. It’s the same as when he was first birthed into the earth he guesses; chalky clay, the clatter-clink of bones, air in a ribcage. He’s reverted somewhat so sometimes sometimes everything gets too much, loud and rushing. It makes the blood thrum in the very back of his head and at his pulse point. It makes him want to scream and sometimes he does. It also, more often than not, makes him want to run away.
Every since the end of it all, since the day they’d taken Belos out back and stamped him down into the mottled muddy earth, he’s done a good enough job of hiding it. It’s a good enough job because his friends know he doesn’t like it when it gets too noisy and they know he doesn’t much like to be touched when he’s not expecting it but also he does, sometimes, they know he likes the warm firm press of an embrace and the way the pressure kinda crushes him in a good way, and they know that sometimes he needs to sit by himself for a moment or two and rock on his hands until the world rightens itself.
They don’t know that when it gets too noisy the world feels like it’s ending all over again and that sometimes when he’s talking with them as much as he loves them (Titan, he loves them) he just wants to be somewhere else. It’s not their fault, he knows that, but so often each and every one of them have something to say at the exact same time and it all overlaps over and over and over like a broken radio. They don’t know that when it’s like that, too much, too loud, he sometimes just has to scream into the open palm of his hand because – as much as he hates the noise, as much as he hates how much it adds to the dim and the chaos it’s the only way he can let the crushing weight of everything welling inside him out.
They don’t know any of that because he hasn’t told them and he doesn’t want to tell them. He’s told them the other things; they need to have these conversations, he knows that. So he’s told them about what he knows about why he exists and how he’s plucked from the rib of Belos’ brother and a half-dozen other magical ingredients and how he came from the earth. And they know about what it was like in the Coven: know about the early mornings and the rigid routine structure (which he actually sorta misses, but he hadn’t said that - whenever he says he misses anything about the Coven Luz looks at him funny and he doesn’t want to start something back up again) and they know about Belos.
They don’t know about this because it’s his, and his alone to deal with.
He’d once upon a time thought that maybe it was something he could grow out of but he’s beginning to think that he’s stuck with it. Maybe it’s something to do with the way he was made. Maybe it’s something to do with the person he’d been before. Maybe it’s penance. Maybe it’s the way everybody else feels but they just don’t breathe it out loud the same way he does.
He’s hidden it well enough for the first couple of months. They get the school rebuilt brick by graffitied brick and Hunter starts there and loves it. There’s so much to learn and he’s always loved learning. There’s also his friends and he loves them too.
He’s hidden it well enough but today he can’t.
Because they’re sat in the cafeteria and everybody’s talking at the same time which already sets him on edge - not yet in the horrible skin-crawling way, but just in a normal low-level way, a way he’s learned to force himself to regulate. Everybody’s talking at the same time and whatever’s for lunch - a soup of some kind, maybe - smells sorta sweet but not, and the smell is crawling right inside his senses. Somewhere in the far corner of the cafeteria, somebody yells loudly, and he flinches at it.
Gus gives him a look, like, are you okay? and Hunter just nods back because he is fine, mostly, pretty much. That’s an okay level of fine to be. He can cope at that level.
Then there’s another yell except this one is more of a shriek and it splits the air wide open and Hunter’s grip tightens on his knife. He stares resolutely down at the table and counts to ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. The numbers tick by in his head and he holds onto them before moving to the next.
He thinks that’s about it but then suddenly and violently there’s a vicious drilling - an alarm - and it starts and it doesn’t stop. One of the teachers gets to his feet and goes off after some giggling younger kid who evidently pulled the alarm, but it doesn’t stop and it doesn’t stop and Hunter’s heart is drumming relentlessly in his chest.
It goes on for – it feels like forever but Hunter knows with the calm side of his mind that it’s only been a minute. It’s all it takes though and he knows full well that he can either have a breakdown (or whatever the fuck it is that he does when things get too much) here or somewhere else and he’s choosing somewhere else.
He starts up sharply and says in a low monotone, “I need to leave,” before pacing out of the cafeteria as quickly as he dares. He just about makes it through the doors before he breaks into a sprint.
He runs, feet pounding on the squeaky floor, with urgency. He spots a closet - cleaning cupboard? - out of the very corner of his gaze and throws the door open before huddling up tight inside.
He sits there and bundles up as tight as he can, arms locked to his shoulders, breathing heavily. His chest feels like it’s about to pound right out his body. He draws his knees up and breathes and breathes and it’s still not enough.
He winces and grips tighter at his skin. That helps, somewhat. It’s not that he’s using the pain to help him focus, it’s just more that it’s something he’s creating himself and it grounds him. It’s still not enough but he doesn’t know what could be. He can still hear the keening of the bell from here, loud and reverberating, but at least there’s no talking. Not here.
He sits in silence for a moment then two and then starts humming softly to himself. Noise like this helps, it’s his, his alone, like the pain when he pinches softly at his skin. He’s making more throaty hums, the kind that come from the back of his throat, when the door opens.
It’s Amity.
“I thought I’d find you in here,” she says, and it’s so soft but it makes his ears shudder all the same. He holds his hands up to shield them and then immediately drops his hands - it’s one thing to do the things he does alone, and another entirely to do them in front of Amity. “Mind if I join you?”
He looks up at her. He’s – not the best, admittedly, at judging other people - their expressions, the tiny twists of their mouths. She doesn’t look disgusted though. Or - any other thing he might have guessed at. She just looks the same as she always does.
He doesn’t move but he doesn’t say no.
She slips inside and closes the door behind her. They’re both sat in the cautious dark. She frowns, and hums quietly, the same way he’d been doing before. Her fingers twitch and then there’s the smallest ball of light he’s ever seen, hanging in the air between them. Then she hums again and before he can properly stop himself he does it back.
She smiles softly at him. “Hey,” she says.
He still isn’t talking. He doesn’t have the words.
“You’re okay,” she murmurs gently, “It’s so loud, isn’t it? I’m going to have a migraine for days if it keeps going, I swear.” Then she pauses, head tilting to the side. “If you don’t want me to talk, I can stop. We can just sit.”
He manages a nod.
“Is that - you don’t want me to talk, or-” and he nods before she can finish her sentence. “Okay. That’s fine. We can sit.”
So they sit. She hums some more, and after a minute, he does the same. It feels pleasant, the way his lips buzz together, like a hummingbird taking off. He hums and she echos him softly. He doesn’t entirely know what’s going on – he’s never had this happen before.
When Belos had caught him when he was like this - too overwhelmed to even say a single word - he’d just told him to snap out of it Hunter, the Golden Guard doesn’t behave like this. What are you, a toddler? And Hunter had flinched because he knew - Titan, he knew - what a truly displeased Belos could do, and he’d snapped out of it, mostly. Not properly, not really - one time when he was nine or so he’d been sent on a training mission to a little market square and it had been loud, oh so loud, and they’d thought he was some kind of prophet or something, a messenger of the Titan, and they’d rested their hands on his back hoping to soak up something of his. He’d gotten back afterwards and he’d felt so wrung out that he hadn’t been able to talk for a whole three days.
And when someone else had found him - Darius, a few times; Luz, once, and he thinks that she’d thought he’d had a panic attack - they’d hugged him awkwardly, told him there, there, and that things would be fine. They’d suffocated him with gentle kindness and hadn’t – well. They hadn’t done what Amity’s doing, now.
She’s still humming. He’s still humming. The tense knot right in the apex of his spine is still right there but it’s lessened. He rocks back and forth briefly where he’s sitting and he withdraws his hands because he thinks that if he just – if he can just –
“Hey,” says Amity, featherlight, “Do what you need to do, Hunter.”
He nods and flaps his hands once, twice, and Titan he can feel that knot getting looser by the second. She smiles at him and – huh. Hmm.
There’s something almost knowing in her gaze but he disregards it for a handful of a moment, flapping again and again until the lump in his throat slacks enough to let him breathe again. He breathes in and out and in and out and does it holding his breath for three seconds and that feels important, that three seconds, so he does it a few times. Then he turns back to her.
“Hey,” he whispers, “Sorry.”
Amity narrows her eyes at him. “What are you apologising for?”
He shrugs. Gestures down at himself. He’s stopped flapping his hands but he’s still rocking back and forth. In the dim light, he can see that there are crimson red marks up and down his arms from where he’d been pinching himself.
“Oh, no,” she shakes his head, “Don’t be silly.”
“M’not,” he mumbles, “I’m sorry.”
“Hunter, stop,” she says, “It’s fine. Really. Hey - listen. I’m-” she screws up her face like she doesn’t want to keep talking but perseveres anyway, “I saw you run off, and I knew what was going on because - I’m the same. With loud noises. And with a lot of things, but - y’know.”
It’s vaguely nonsensical for Amity but Hunter somehow gets it. “Really?” He asks in a whisper.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, “How’d you think I knew where to find you? I used to love this cupboard. I came here whenever that alarm got pulled.”
“Oh,” Hunter murmurs, “I just thought you’d followed me.”
“That, too,” she admits, “This closet is great for - this, though, isn’t it? I told Luz I loved it, once, when we - when she still went here,” her face does a funny little thing then, a subtle downturn, “And she looked at me weird, and made a joke I didn’t get, but it’s… nice. Isn’t it? Quiet, when you need it to be.”
“Luz does that a lot,” Hunter says, meaning the joke thing. He’s glad he’s not just the only one who feels left out by some of her jokes - though it’s not just her jokes, sometimes Willow says something with an odd turn of phrase that he doesn’t entirely get. His girlfriend is the best, though, and when he doesn’t get it he just asks her to explain and she doesn’t question why. “But - it is. Nice.”
His words are still coming out stiff and monosyllabic but they’re actually coming out now without him feeling like he’s in physical pain or something so that’s - good, he thinks.
“Do you want to talk?” Amity blurts, suddenly.
He blinks at her. Tilts his head to the side. “I don’t know what there is to say,” he says softly, “I’m just-” he sighs, looks down. He wrings his hands tightly in his lap. His nails scratch at his skin, leaving long white streaks. It’s grounding in the same way the pinching is but makes sure to hide his hands ‘cause he knows it’s straying into the territory of odd or strange and he doesn’t want Amity to think – well. He’s sure she already thinks, but he doesn’t want her to think that any more than she must do already. “I just don’t like loud noises. And – sometimes, I can’t -” Titan, this is hard. This is why he’s never ever told anyone this before, not properly, not trying to explain it. But Amity’s the only one who’s ever properly asked, so. “I can’t deal with it. If it’s too loud.”
Amity nods. “I get it,” she says, and before Hunter can go no you don’t, or at least I don’t think you do, because how could you, she’s talking again, “I mean it. I’m the - I’m the same, I guess. With the loud noises. And some other things, too.”
He clicks his tongue. He finds he likes the noise, low and rolling inside his mouth, and does it again for good measure. Amity looks up at him and the insides of her cheeks hollow, like she’s amused. “Oh,” he says softly, “I didn’t know that.”
Amity smiles a wry smile. “I hide it well.”
“Huh,” he blinks and looks back down at his hands, “I didn’t know you - I don’t know. I thought I was the only person who was like - this.”
She tilts her body to the side slightly so their knees bump together. The physical contact makes him wince but he relaxes into it. It’s just Amity, he tells himself, just Amity. “No, you’re not,” she murmurs, “Don’t worry.”
“Good,” he says, and it feels like breathing after a long time underwater, “That’s good.”
“You’re not alone,” she says again, and she sounds far older than she actually is, and like a kid at the same time, “Promise.” Then she stretches out and stands up, her head knocking on the low ceiling. “Do you need a little longer in here alone?”
He swallows. He does, and he says so.
“That’s fine,” she murmurs, “We’ve got class in twenty, but I’ll say that you’re - I don’t know, sick or something if you don’t show.”
“I’ll be there for class,” he says, “Don’t worry.”
“Good,” she says, “‘Cause I’m totally going to kick your ass during the quiz.”
He grins up at her, a proper smile, the kind with too many teeth. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he says, and then, after a beat, “Amity?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” he whispers it, “I mean it.”
“What are friends for,” Amity says back, and smiles at him in the way that has slowly, over the months and the realms they’ve been in and the battles they’ve fought, come to mean I love you, I trust you, I’d do anything for you.
He smiles that very same smile right back at her and listens to the click of the lock in the door before his shoulders slump. His head falls back into his chest and the tenseness falls out of him. He allows his eyes to flutter close for a moment.
He waits twenty minutes. As he’s coming back out of the closet, he swears the lights Amity created wink at him.
When he gets back to class, Willow asks before holding his hand under the desk in the sweet way she always does, and his palm is sweaty when he clutches her hand. She doesn’t say a word. Gus beams at him and says something about saving him his dessert.
Amity totally kicks his ass during the quiz, and he really doesn’t mind.