Re: Quiet Home: Misha & Oliver
"Loud's okay…" Oliver meant loud music, not loud people. There was a difference in that because loud music made him think of the sisters from the music store that he'd once befriended. Maybe not him wholly, but his brother Jude had done a better job of befriending them, and Oliver spent that brief patch of summer learning a bit about music and how sometimes it was loud because the musician's heart was loud too. That was okay, it was different from loud people. Loud people were gunshots in silent art stores. Loud people were the shattering of expensive vases because you couldn't ever do anything right, and you thought that Caravaggio was a Da Vinci, you idiot!
Oliver didn't know if loud was worse than quiet, though. They hurt in different ways. The quiet of no words, no looks, no nothing. You thought that Caravaggio postcard was a Da Vinci… and you'll never forgive yourself. There were other kinds of quiet where Oliver grew up, though. Those were the quiets that nobody talked about, not even Jude and himself. Those were locked bedroom doors. They were fists and hearts and wordless mouths crammed into pillows.
There was loud, and there was quiet, and Oliver didn't know which he was or which was worse. He didn't even know what he was, and … I like you. Oliver seemed almost wounded, insulted, when he looked up. People didn't like him. Only Jude. And maybe it was Oliver's own fault, but he didn't care because all he needed was Jude. Even the friendships of Sam and Gwen and Hunter… those were secondary things that Oliver convinced himself relied on convenience. They didn't like him because they didn't know him, and he didn't want anybody but Jude to know him.
"Well don't." And when all of those other words came? About being fine and the dead girl and the past, Oliver flinched away like he wanted to smash everything in the room. He didn't want to be okay! It didn't seem to be okay after everything. Everything that had happened? It was supposed to mean something, and he wasn't ever going to be okay.