When's the last time I had company over?

Oh, that's right.

Never.

Do I tidy up? Do I fix my hair? Sure, I have a working shower, but do I still smell like blood? Shit, what does it matter anyway? It's not like Oliver's really coming.

Chewy watched me panic from his spot on my beat up couch. His eyes gleamed mischievously.

"You shut up over there. He's an old friend...I think. Maybe. Look, you'd be the same way, a'ight?"

Chewy only stared through me with his usual aura of disapproval.

"Oh my God. I'm not replacing you, asshole. It's just a visit."

A visit. It's not that serious. It's not. That. Serious. Maybe he forgot about me. Or he lied to me. Why the hell would he care enough to show up? God, I'm so stupid for holding out hope. It's never easy, is it? Human contact can't be that easy.

"H-Hello?"

I whipped my head around to find Oliver standing behind the half-opened door. He pushed the door open fully and closed it behind him with a relieved hand over his heart when he spotted me in the middle of the room.

"Oh, there you are, Mr. Diamondback. Here I thought you were gonna jump out at me or something." His nervous chuckle let me know he was a little more serious than he let on.

"You came back."

"Of course I came back," Olly snickered at the lost expression on my face. "You weren't expecting me or what? I thought I was pretty clear when I said I'd be stopping by again."

"I didn't think you were serious," I peered out the glassless window at the sun weaseling its way through the trees and into my house. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

He shook his head, still not moving from his spot against the door. "It's Saturday." I guess that makes sense. With all my time spent alone, keeping track of the days of the week has completely slipped my mind. No such thing as a weekend when everyday feels like a mental workout.

Olly wasn't wearing a school uniform or his ballet getup from yesterday either. Outside of social duties, he was a pretty spiffy dresser, decked out in black dress pants, shining loafers, and a tight red long-sleeved v-neck. Looking down at myself in nothing but year-old shorts and a torn white button-up, I was a little embarrassed to not have thought twice about stealing a new outfit off of a dead body or two.

Oliver's eyes were fixed on the defaced wall in front of him. A faintly troubled frown tugged at his lips as he read my curse. There was that same expression of concern from yesterday.

"Are you curious?"

The sound of my voice made him jump. "O-Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to stare, I-"

"I can't blame you, it's literally all over the walls. It's just a curse I've never been able to figure out. Human contact is supposed to free me from being...whatever the hell I am, but y'know, human contact can mean anything."

"We're in contact, aren't we?"

"It's not that simple, man. It has to be the right person and I guess I've gotta, like, do something or say something to them? I dunno. Shit was never explained to me."

"I see," Oliver inched a little closer to me. He smelled like oceanic cologne and some sort of faintly fermented rotten fruit. Has the purple dye in his hair always looked this faded up close? Suddenly, he turned towards me with an unsure squint and raised brows. "Slap me if this sounds crazy, but maybe I can help?"

"How hard do you want me to slap?"

"I-I'm serious!"

"Your heart's in the right place, Oliver, but do you know what happens to people who aren't my human contact?"

He shook his head, blinking up at me innocently.

"They die, man. Dead. Forever. Ain't no way in hell they're comin' back."

"I know what dead means..." Oliver plopped down on the couch next to Chewy, sighing and crossing his arms over his toned chest.

Nosy bastard.

But maybe he has a point. He's not dead yet. I haven't even thought about killing him yet. No signs of blacking out yet either. Did Eliza send me all the way back to Roseorn for Oliver? That doesn't seem right. If he was so important to me in the past, I wouldn't have forgotten nearly everything about him. Then again, it's not like my whole situation has been getting any better. I can hardly remember what my own family members looked like anyway.

I watched Olly pick away at a hole in the couch. He glanced up at me and smiled quickly before scrutinizing the couch again.

Maybe hanging out with Olly won't be too bad.

"Oliver,"

"Yes?"

"You're not afraid of death, are you?"

He only laughed.

"If this doesn't work out, I could kill you. I just wanna make sure you understand that."

"I get it, Mr. Diamondback."

"You don't have to call me Mister. I'm only sixteen."

His face flushed red. "What?! You're lying! We're practically the same age?! I'm gonna be sixteen in a few months! Crap, I am so sorry. I thought you were, like, a whole ass adult. Thank God. This'll make things way less awkward then."

Can this day get any more embarrassing?

"Well, um, Diamondback. I wanted to take you somewhere today i-if that's okay with you."

Apparently it can.

"What place did you have in mind?"

All of Oliver's features lit up with overwhelming joy. That can't be good. "It's a surprise," He skipped towards the door and let every last ray of sunshine pour in. "C'mon. If we don't leave now, we'll miss it."

I gave Chewy a pleading look, but he ignored me completely. Dammit.

The thought of going outside isn't what scares me. It's the fact that I'm outside with someone. Company isn't something I'm used to, per se. When I go to the city, I'm in and outta there. I don't have time for sightseeing or discovering cute new coffee shops or whatever.

But I agreed to let Olly "thank me for yesterday", so I don't really have a choice, do I?

I grabbed my fur coat and followed Oliver outside, listlessly closing the door behind me.

Oliver seemed unnaturally happy, compared to our previous encounter. I judged him to be the type to be insecure about everything that he did, but he was humming and skipping the whole way through the forest. I trailed behind him with my hands shoved in my pockets, occasionally correcting his direction every now and then. Now that I think about it, the trees seemed more lush than they had ever been before and the sun shone brighter than the very first day I went outside in this form. I could feel the discordant rays of sunlight hitting my skin between each opening of the leaves on the trees. The breeze was very faint and the only reason that I noticed it was because it made Oliver's hair dance along with it. After a few minutes of Oliver's soft humming and my own spacing out, we found ourselves on the stone path which leads to the city.

"Gee," Olly stopped walking -- well -- skipping and bent forward to look at the stone path beneath his feet. "That's new."

"Seriously? It's been here, dude. When you first came to my house, didn't 'ya run here?"

His dark eyes gave me the most innocent look on Planet Earth as he shook his head. "Uh-uh. When I was being chased the other day, I cut through the trees. Look, if I ran down the path, they would've followed me too easily. Haven't you ever run from someone before, Diamondback?"

"Can't say I have. I've always been the chaser not the chasee. Monster speaking, 'member?"

"I know, I know."

"Wait. Back up two steps,"

He literally did.

"No, no, Oliver, I mean figuratively. When you came to my house this morning, didn't you take this path?"

"Nope. I just wove through the trees by following the scent of blood," As he said that, I casually sniffed myself. "Once you get past three or four trees, you just smell it."

"Smell it? God, do I stink that bad?"

He giggled a bit, then shook his head yet again, the curled ends of his hair swishing against his shoulders. "It's your house. That's where you take most of your prey, right?"

"Depends. If they're dawdling out in the forest, I will, but if they're in the city, I might just eat them in an alleyway or somethin' like that."

Oliver's eyes went wide but quickly went back to their usual delicate expression. He shrugged indifferently, then continued walking.

"It's not as bad as it sounds, really."

"No, that's pretty bad." he chuckled. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. His content expression wasn't something that worried me, but it's times like this that I wish I could dig into his head.

And that's when it hit me.

I can do that! I tried my best not to look shady, so I fell behind a few steps to make sure he wouldn't pay much attention to me. Fixing my eyes on the back of his head, I focused my whole being on his small frame.

An image of a dark piano room.

A discordant attempt at Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was muffled in the background.

"...No, that can't be..."

An image of a cold bathtub.

The water swished at a rhythmic pace as its clear color faded into a tainted red.

What...the hell? I could barely make any sense of what he was trying to think about or what he even meant. I was about to brush it off as me just being rusty, but the same old pain that I thought had disappeared a year ago came shooting back like a bullet. It sounded like anybody could hear my brain pounding within my own head and my heart was just about ready to burst out of my chest. My hands shot up to clutch my head tightly as I hunched over in pain, clenching my teeth to hold in an internal groan.

Shit, Oliver's still here.

I forced my eyes open to make sure he didn't notice my darkening condition. Unfortunately, everything in front of me was reduced to nothing but a smeared blur. All I could see was a purple and red blob in the middle of splashes of green with two big blotches of black.

"Diamondback! A-Are you okay?" I felt Oliver's bony hands grasp my arm. Once he made contact with me, my vision gradually returned. "Here, lean on me for now." He threw my arm over his shoulder and my headache was gone as if it had never been there in the first place.

"No, no. I'm fine. It's nothing new."

"Are you sure?" He turned to me and placed his other hand on my shoulder. My breathing fell back to a normal pace. All that was left was my racing heart. "Don't lie to me. It won't do us any good."

"I'm...okay. Really."

His expressive eyes desperately scanned all of my features. He gently wiped my face with his sleeve, then smiled at me sweetly. "Alright. I believe you. Just, um, let me know if you feel any awful headaches like that again. My brother told me that if you squeeze really hard between your thumb and index finger, it can make headaches go away. It might just be a psychological thing, but it works for me."

He says the stupidest things.

And means it.

How is he real?

Olly's freckled cheeks dusted a faint red as he stepped away from me. "I'm ready to go when you are."

"Lead the way, lil bit."

Trailing behind him once again, I watched his embarrassed back hurry towards our destination.

Even if Olly doesn't end up being my human contact, getting to know him all over again sounds like something that I actually won't mind doing.

~~~

A/N: Do y'all have any remedies like the whole hand-headache thing? In my family, whenever one of us has a headache, we always fear that someone will find out and squeeze the life outta our hands lol. Don't forget to drop a vote while you're here! <3