Before It's Voiced

Melodrama

Another author's note: Shoutout to chaotic-panda for beta'ing this thing for me! So much kinder than I deserve tbh

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mel·o·dra·ma

noun

a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions

Hungry, vicious devils taunt Pete's mind as he sits, a notepad in his lap and pencil lead on his fingers. Graphite sticks his skin to the page, smudging the words, but he doesn't give himself time to notice. Patrick sleeps before him, red marks on his skin tracing the paths those creature's claws had traveled. His lips deepen the frown that's lasted the entire time he's slept, tempting Pete with more words to write.

But Pete doesn't focus on the merman before him. He writes of the demons he saw, the monsters now in his head.

Creatures from the pits of hell, monsters only his nightmares could concoct. Though the thought of them causes Pete's stomach to turn, he writes each detail. If he can face the way his mind describes it— and his mind has always been his cruelest friend— he can face them should they appear again.

When they appear again.

Pete's hand twitches towards his neck, grabbing nothing but air in the place his charm should be. His lost Sun, his sacrificed luck. A hard knot of fear forms in his throat and he drops his hand to the ground, eyes lifting to glare at Patrick, not for the first time in the past dropped handful of hours.

Pete understands he may not be owed any answers, knows he and Patrick are hardly more than friends. No matter how he writes of him, how he pretends to know the merman, Pete cannot claim access to his mind. Not even saving his life grants him the key to that.

But losing the most crucial piece to his survival might.

Unbidden, those memories rise like a crescent moon. The nurse's kind eyes gazing at Pete's empty ones as he stared out the window, stared at the stars with a bitter wonder over why they wouldn't let him die. The harshness of the hospital sheets as she adjusted them, reminding him in a gentle voice of the pills they wanted him to take, the number of hours they wanted him to sleep. And Pete couldn't respond, couldn't tear his gaze away from the stars spinning like bombs in the sky.

"The sky's too dark," he had said, at last, causing the nurse to jerk her head towards him. He hadn't spoken the entire time he'd been there, lost in thoughts and wondering whether those pills they pumped free took his words with him. But the stars demanded a response and Pete's never turned down a chance to be dramatic. "The stars aren't bright enough."

It should have earned him more pills or, at least, another appointment with the therapist they brought in before. It shouldn't have made sense to anyone because how would that be fair if it didn't make sense to Pete himself?

The nurse hadn't taken time to ponder his words. Instead, she slipped off the necklace hidden beneath her shirt without an ounce of hesitation, smiling softly when Pete looked over at the action.

"Here, then," she'd said, passing it to Pete— warm fingers dancing along his cool palm for the half-second it took for her to press it into his hand—, "have a Sun."

It shouldn't have meant anything but Pete's throat had closed up— the stars disappeared from his sight. The nurse's smile and the Sun in his hands was a sign of something Pete couldn't read into, something he has yet to describe in any of his books. It felt like hope or peace of mind, a pining promise or a plea for him to live. When he'd fastened it around his neck, he'd accepted the charm as all.