comfort of strangers // bastille

comfort of strangers

disclaimer: i am not british, so please forgive me if any of the terminology is off! i have tried my best. :') i also am doing this without an editor/beta so i am sorry in advance for typos and such. just ask if a sentence doesn't make sense. also posted to ao3, same username.

Something had caused this, the way his brain didn't function quite right. It made him see things that weren't really there, and make up sounds in his head. He had been told loads of times that it was trauma, and he succumbed to the worst things his own brain conjured up to use against him. The bright colour that Dan saw on every single person reminded him of the pebbles that were on the bottoms of his grandmother's fish tank. It glowed at night on the minnows drifting in the false environment. He couldn't fathom what the puny creatures thought of his face looming from the darkness and watching them when he should have been sleeping.

Memories and reality often blurred for Dan. They bled through and made false thing after false thing appear throughout his vision and play in his ears. It made walking down the street difficult.

Through Dan's eyes, the world had colour. Sometimes too much. But when he looked at himself, he was black and white. Like he had pulled himself through the TV directly from the Twilight Zone tapes his grandma kept running all night. That was where she said he got his strange mind from. Late nights where he wouldn't sleep, and he would watch each episode as if he hadn't seen it before. Faces and voices from the past. They talked so funny. The narrator, especially. He would hear that ominous, clear voice in his head, telling him what was happening as it did.

Daniel Campbell Smith, the boy out of his mind. He stumbles through the streets like the homeless people. Everyone stares at him, because he doesn't have any colour. He's blank. Pointless. Useless. Everyone knows, Dan.

"Nobody knows." Dan whispered back harshly. He wasn't supposed to talk back to the narrator, but it was hard to be good in that aspect. The narrator was so constant and mean. And sometimes the only way to get him to shut up was to prove that Dan didn't believe in it. "Nan says it's all in my head."

Then why are people looking at you?

Dan glanced around quickly. Yes, they were looking. Their eyes pulsed varying tank-pebble colours, threatening to splatter him with the hues. They seemed to be too close, sucking in all the oxygen with each expanding and contracting of their ribs stealing it almost directly from his mouth.

Panic was not an unfamiliar emotion to Dan. Familiar, inconvenient. It surged over him most times he was around other people. That tongue-numbing and mind-frazzling fear that left Dan shaking and jumpy.

Why are you even walking in the city? You know you can't handle it. Grandma told you so. Go home, now.

Dan closed his eyes and tried to focus on taking deep breathes. "I need groceries." He reminded himself out loud, earning him a few more colourful stares. But he shook them off, taking comfort in the fact that he was still greyscale in his own eyes. He moved his clumsy feet along the pavement, keeping his eyes cast downward and trying to remember the way to the store. He hadn't been by himself in quite a while. His uncle used to drive him, but he was busy today. And Dan was out of milk, eggs, and bread.

Grandma used to make bread. Why can't you? You're pathetic, that's why. You can't do anything except stay at home and drain the life out of your family.

Dan chuckled, hugging himself tightly to try and defend himself from any accidental touches. "Can't bake, not allowed. I tried to put grandma's cat in the oven. You were there."

I was there.

"You told me it was ham."

I thought it was.