Hidden and Silent (SpyxFamily)

Ch. 13: Part Four

        "Hey!" He whispered and caught her arm. She barely felt it. "It's fine! It's fine! It's fine" He said frantically. "Calm down! Everything's fine!"

Anya shook her head, searching for escape, though she didn't think she could make herself move any further.

"Hey—no! Look everything's fine! I won't tell anyone! I swear!"

Anya wasn't registering much of anything he said and absentmindedly tried to pull out of his grasp. She was lightheaded and her attempts were halfhearted against someone that had more or less become a distant blob of colour and sound.

Damian let go to take hold of her face and made her look at him. "Tch." He didn't like the next words out of his mouth. "Read my mind then!" He hissed through his teeth. "I'm not lying! Everything's fine!"

It was startling to hear him say that, like cotton being pulled from her ears, and he suddenly felt more real. As if he had only existed in the background before he came into focus.

She didn't know what was worse—that he was here forcing her to confront the thing she was trying to escape, or that he had said it out loud. That he knew. Hearing him speak it like opening the thickest, securest box in the world and emptying the valuable treasures inside. This couldn't be real. He didn't just say it. He didn't just manifest her worst fears into audible, real, awful words that seemed to mock her as they fled the box they had been trapped in.

Her breath quickened even more. The razing sear in her ribs paled in comparison to the clamp on her throat and the heavy, hazy pressure in her head that smeared her vision and awareness. She lost sense of Damian in front of her, her surroundings, the floor at her fingers where she vaguely understood there was something hard beneath them.

The soft heat on her face swiftly disappeared and some other quick, frantic movements with rushed sounds followed. Something hovered hesitantly near her, more sounds, though her attention was otherwise preoccupied to care.

She was suffocating. The pressure built and hurt her head. She had no air left and it was getting harder to hold herself up as her supporting limbs shook like a leaf. Anya was only in that moment, feeling each breath that didn't make it past her mouth and every pounding beat of her burning heart on the gong of her skull. A lump that extended into her stomach ached at the back of her throat and though she cried, the sound was unable to find it's way out, only making the stinging and drowning that vibrated in her lungs worse. Then the pounding, the rattle in her ribs, the voices in her head slowly drifted to something more quiet as a blackness crowded the edges of her consciousness.

And so, she startled when Damian hugged her.

Like a lawn sprinkler that had abruptly stopping spinning, her thoughts were impeded with a hiccupped breath. The jarring touch of his arms around her and the new view of his uniform in her face snatched a few gasps, disturbing the consistency of her failed attempts to breathe. It took her off guard, seizing her muscles, and forcing some amount of alertness on her.

It wasn't a proper hug. Damian had risen on his knees to hold her bowed head to his chest, but suddenly her rapid heaving was interrupted, if only a little. When she inhaled, it lined her lungs and her head hurt a bit less. Her chest shook with the air it had needed and the hair-framed vision of Damian's knees in front of her hands had become clearer. The blackness began to retreat and her skull was less loud.

It had taken her aback, freezing her at the contact, and she had tensed in shocked bewilderment. Damian kept holding her anyway and Anya didn't even have the bandwidth to know how to react. All of a sudden he was hugging her and her thoughts had gone still. Her tears splashed down by his knees and his sleeves were rustling by her ears. His lack of speech was deafening in how he opted to embrace her instead and the way his arms circled her head and reduced her eye-line to what was immediately in front of her felt like a barricade from the rest of the world. The distant chatter of lingering students, the open floor of the cafeteria, and the bright lights she was shielded from. Here, under the table where Damian blocked her sight, he kept her inside a small moment where nothing else mattered.

He breathed deep and slow—slower than Anya anyway—and her forehead rose and fell with it. The rhythmic motion contrasted with her own and listening to Damian's instead had a strange hold on her attention. Though her blood raced and her stunned brain made her breathing erratic, she was hyper aware of the steady beat of Damian's heart against her forehead. The crisp fabric on her skin and the freshly laundered scent of his uniform that laced the air she breathed. His quiet stillness that kept his hands on the back of her head from moving and getting tangled in her hair.

Anya was absorbed into that moment, taken captive by the present and held there where she didn't know how to move forward or go back. To slip out of this state of inaction and as if she'd nearly drowned from staying underwater too long, Anya filled her lungs with a gulp of air and nerves shuddered over her shoulders. She was a little cold, but the warmth on her neck and head made it seem minor.

What was he doing? Why was he hugging her? Holding her? Despite what he knew? He was so stiff. He so carefully avoided pulling her hair or holding her too tight, and even his body language wasn't angry. He wasn't scared of her. Damian had no ill intentions or feelings towards her and the truth of it confused her. One of the reasons she was scared to expose her secret was the fear and hate that would follow, and it didn't seem to apply to Damian.

What. . .what was wrong with him? She wondered and her tensed body couldn't stop the fragile way her chest seemed to open and rattle. Why was he—she hiccuped. How was he so calm? Why wasn't he—

Another hiccup and Anya noticed how much slower her chest rose. It shuddered and quaked, but it was deeper. Fuller.

He wouldn't tell anyone. She was sure of it. She knew it and Anya didn't understand why. This didn't make sense at all and she shivered on the cold floor.

Anya had no answer. Damian was simply here and she didn't know how to take it. He simply accepted the situation and Anya wasn't prepared for that. The anger, the fear, the disgust, that was what she was prepared for. But Damian just kept holding her and somehow his arms felt warmer and unexpectedly. . .safe. His chest supporting her head had become strangely comforting and it was almost unsettling how it felt okay to rest there. Like she'd been lured into a safe-house to take refuge, though she felt she should keep moving. It wasn't her intention to stay here, and yet it gave her walls to hide behind.

"Ar-are you okay now?" Damian mumbled and Anya breathed shakily through her nose. His arms slid away, taking his warmth with him, and sat back on his heels. He crossed his arms and looked somewhere off to the side. He must have been super hot because his grumpy face was beet red.

With another deep, unsteady breath, Anya exhaled heavily and her body seemed to vibrate with it. Her hands and shoulders spasmed with every exhalation and though her breathing was more or less under control, she remained anxious and tight with stress.

She swiped the wetness from her cheeks and avoided each nervous flicker of Damian's eyes that came her way.

She didn't want to be here. Around him. She felt outrageously vulnerable like her secret had been cut out of her with a chainsaw and locked inside a display case she couldn't break into. It was reassuring to know he'd keep this to himself, though it was as if every wall she'd ever built was decimated with one, easy strike and even if she rebuilt them, they wouldn't be able to keep him out ever again. He was already inside.

Damian knew.

"A bomb."

"Um. . . " He muttered an awkward attempt to ease the awkward situation and that was Anya's cue.

In a burst of panicked movement, she crawled out from under the table and ran away to the bathroom.