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When Mike meets Oliver for the first time everything, for a blink, goes silent.
Mike lives with tinnitus. He doesn't mind. It's just white noise by now, that ringing that's almost the whistling of wind, the constant high drone like the cassette is running wrong and all you can hear is that whining squeak of the black tape.
That's what Oliver's hair looks like, he muses. Like waves of thick black tape of a video that's hopelessly tangled out of the open end of the plastic box.
He doesn't know Oliver's name at this time, but that doesn't matter. You don't need to know someone's name to stare at them in mute shock until the noise comes back and you remember you're looking at a man who is waiting for you to take your seat on the plane. Mike's got the window seat, naturally, but the plane is pretty empty and they'll have a space left between them. No one has to get the weird uncomfortable middle seat on this little aircraft. So the man with hair that moves like snakes checks his boarding pass and settles into the aisle seat, stretching his one leg into the aisle but pressed close to the seat in front of him so as not to trip anyone. How polite. It must be hard to have that much height, though it gets you closer to the sky.
Mike shakes off the strange moment, pulling his scarf further up, glad that the scarred side of his face is facing the window. He shouldn't get attached to the idea of anyone, especially not on this particular flight.
-
Takeoff feels fantastic, but of course it does. Feeling himself leave the ground is always euphoric. The swoop of his stomach and the pressure in his ears never gets old, and he revels even in the pain of the pops as they equalize. The rattle of the plane as they go through some clouds doesn't even bother him—why would it? He could jump out of this plane and feel perfectly at home among the wet, delicate things. Mike lifts the windowshade and stares out at the fluffy clouds, threaded in pink and gold with the late afternoon sun.
"Could you close that?"
The voice is soft and low to his right, and he twists enough to see the man in the other seat, who is far taller than the higher pitch of his voice would indicate. Mike's being looked at with dark eyes that are entirely opposite of his own unnaturally pale ones, endless in depth. How lovely. There's a questioning slant to his heavy, tired looking brows.
"I'm trying to sleep," he continues, explaining the obvious, given the travel pillow around his neck and the eye mask perched on his forehead just under his hair.
It doesn't look like tape in color. It's black, yes, but it isn't shiny. It's twisted into thick, long locs that were probably once very neat but now are fuzzy all over, giving him a bit of a halo effect of black fuzz. These are nearly as depthless as his eyes, and paired with his skin? He looks like he's made of sad shadows.
So wrapped up in this impromptu assessment of the stranger, he takes a long moment to process the words. Without further thought he says, "Sorry," and shuts the shade. He'll see it again soon enough.
-
It's a long flight they're on. It's crossing right over the entirety of Eurasia. They'd boarded in Hong Kong, so it's approximately twelve hours to London. Mike's got plenty of money, but going up to business class seemed excessive, and he's not dressed for it. Even Economy Class on a long flight is still pretty good, they'll get meals and the in-flight movies aren't all cheap B-films. Mike's at least going to have the first meal, it's supposed to be pasta.
Entertainment is a bit tougher. Movies aren't really his jam, but the idea of reading is even less palatable, and doing something like a puzzle is right out. Usually he wanders to pass the hours, but theirs only the middle aisle and he doesn't want to draw attention by pacing up and down it.
So he people-watches.
The couple in front of him have a child. The little one cried when the plane took off, so one mom gave the kid a small pill, and within an hour she was out like a light. That's nice, actually. He isn't really fond of kids in a situation like this, but he also couldn't be too picky. She won't know. Now the pill-administering mom is on her laptop, working on something that fills the screen with a spreadsheet, tapping away formulas and referencing other sheets until big, massively complex charts result. Mike thinks this is pretty impressive, whatever it is.
The other mom quietly works through a book, but she's making notes in the margins and dog-earing certain pages. Maybe it's a textbook, actually? The font is too small for him to make out from between the crack in the seat. That kind of focus is so interesting. He's only had that much focus when he's staring at empty spaces or hunting for books.
There's a light snore behind him and he turns to peek. The older man who has the middle seat all to himself is dead asleep, head listing to one side and messing up his combover. His clothes are wrinkly, middle class and a few years out of current popular style. His hands folded over his lap are the hands of someone who once did hard labor, but maybe not as recently. Worked his way up the ladder, it seems. Mike smiles to himself in amusement. You can learn so much about people by looking at them. By seeing how they react to stimuli. He wonders what their faces will look like in the next few hours.
This draws his attention back to the dark man across from him. Though there's a valiant effort there, obvious in the forcibly relaxed posture and the too-even breathing, he isn't asleep. Not deeply, at least. How interesting. Maybe he's scared of planes. Maybe he has insomnia. Maybe he's scared of the dark. That last one would be funny, given that he's basically a walking shadow of black everything. Meanwhile Mike is pale in every way, from blonde hair to light skin to clothes in whites and gentle greys. Funny.
The proof of his observation is in how quickly the stranger 'wakes' when the food carts come through, and the smell of dinner begins wafting through the cabin. Mike gets the pasta with chicken, the man deliberates a minute before settling on the vegetarian option with eggplant. He's kind enough to hand Mike his tray as it comes up, their fingers brush and to Mike's surprise, he is not warm. You'd think with that thick black coat and all that hair, he'd be a furnace. But no, his fingertips are cool and his knuckles a little ashy from dryness. His mask and pillow go into the middle seat without a word and he gets to eating with calm efficiency that says he probably isn't even tasting it.
Mike savors the meal. It's not fantastic pasta and it certainly isn't delicious Asian street food, but it'll do. The man takes his plate back after they've dined in comfortable silence surrounded by the murmurs and eating sounds of the rest of the sparse population of this plane, and Mike doesn't notice the low droning of the plane or the ringing in his ears, only thinks on the strange coldness of the man sharing his row.
He loves the cold. The higher up you go, the colder it gets, so it just makes sense. But even young he liked snow and really loved the frigid wind whipping past his face the few times he could indulge his adrenaline-fueled nature and do things like ski, or ride roller coasters, or zipline. Even the simple joy of going as fast and high as he could on the swings in the dead of winter on the playground. Cold is a blanket of clean, fresh energy. So why did the man's fingers feel like lead?
There's a weight to this man, he decides. He's blatantly staring now. The stranger isn't paying attention though, too busy resettling his sleep paraphernalia to try once again for rest. For a while he simply sits with the mask once again pressed to his forehead, staring up at the top of the craft.
"You could always watch a movie."
Mike says it before he thinks better of it. Really it catches him a bit by surprise, the suggestion slipping between his lips like a cell phone slipping out of someone's hands over a tall ledge. Just like with a cell phone he grasps for it as it drops away, mentally trying to grab the sounds back into his mouth. What the hell.
"It could tire you out," he says next when those hooded eyes slide over to look at him, because he's in it now and still is trying to minimize his presence even though he just slapped away anonymity with shocking ease. Just a normal conversation. "If you're having trouble."
There's a smile that slips onto the man's face that is so, so exhausted. It's the only bit of warmth on him, and it's directed at Mike. "I'm already very tired. But thank you."
"What's keeping you up?"
Dammit, he really needs to talk to people more. Mike's life has been one of purposeful solitude since he made his choice, the blissful energy of being in a room, or a plane, full of people and being utterly alone. Before that he was just anxious and avoidant besides. Most people don't notice him, if he covers the scar. But that kind of happy individuality comes with a cost that he isn't all that good at small talk anymore. He recognizes that the question is very invasive but it's too late now.
The man smiles wider, showing a sliver of white, well lined teeth like a crescent moon in a night sky. How pretty.
"Everyone. I'd thought that an overnight like this might..." He shakes his head, his mass of hair rustling, some ruefulness to the motion. "That's how it is now."
The words are extremely cryptic, giving away nothing of the actual cause, but Mike feels them resonate all the same. People are the root of everything, after all, and Mike can neither live with them or without them.
But this bone-deep weariness he can feel radiating off the stranger in waves keeps his attention. There's nothing to do but people-watch, and he's intriguing people. How can one be so tired and yet act so kind?
Mike reaches for the screen set into the back of the middle in front. "I was going to put something on. My screen is broken. But I can use the headphones." It isn't. He turned it off as soon as he boarded. But something compels him to this white lie and he's got no compunction against lying anyway.
Giving a long, curious look as the bright colors of the digital video menu wash over his face in shifting patterns, the man finally pulls his mask off entirely and leans a little. "No tragedies, please." He says, and Mike smiles.
-
They'd ended up watching some silly animated movie about birds. The camera following the dizzying heights and aerial acrobatics made Mike feel nice, while the animation and lively, playful characters seemed to please the sad man. Their shoulders were almost touching by the end of it, having both lifted their armrests to lean between the seats to watch the center screen. Overall it was a fun waste of nearly two hours, and as Mike navigates back to the flight tracker he can see they still have a long way to go. They're somewhere over the eastern edge of Kazakhstan. His mouth twists. Russia would be better. He glances up, noticing that now the man's attention is off him, readjusting his coat to wrap more firmly around him as he once again tries to sleep, the whistling is returned. Was it gone before? Or did he just not notice?
Russia will be better. He can wait.
-
There's weather when they get to the airspace over Russia. Maybe it's the air change from passing the edge of the Urals, or it's just a temperature collision from a storm below. At this height it's uncommon but not impossible. It's in the negative fifties outside right now, and Mike can't help but pull up the shade enough to put his hand to the glass and imagine he can feel it. It's dark outside anyway, it's the middle of the night.
But the shaking of the aircraft has woken up over half of the meager passengers, who are muttering amongst themselves. Within two minutes, the seatbelt light blinks on. Mike hasn't put his on at all and doesn't intend to, and the stranger never took his off. Neither of them have gotten up to use the restroom, he notes. How strange.
The shaking also wakes the stranger, who pulls off his mask once more with a sigh. His gaze goes up immediately, and Mike notices when his muscles tense. Dark irises roam across the metal hull, then move to sweep across the entire plane, landing on each person he can see from back to front, until they inevitably land on Mike, trembling as the rest of his body trembles with the shaking of the plane.
Mike didn't expect the weather. It doesn't change anything.
What does is the man.
"What are you doing?" He asks, the soft voice threaded with something like anxiousness but deeper, almost irritated. "What did you do?"
Mike doesn't respond right away, trying to parse out what this means. "It's just turbulence."
The man sighs again, from deep in his chest. "I just want to get home. I already had a really bad time on a boat recently, I don't want to add another form of transport to the list. Is it a bomb?"
A bomb? Mike blinks, twisting an idle finger in the tasseled end of his scarf. "No."
No use to lie about that one. What's going to happen is much worse than a bomb. The Desolation thinks too small. But how does this dark man know that anything is wrong at all? "Why do you think so?"
"You aren't scared."
"Who are you?"
Another thing that slips out. Mike is far too curious not to ask now, though. If he'd missed this, what else did he miss?
"Dr. Thomas Pritchard," he says, then snorts gently with a rueful smile. "No, can't keep using that one. You first. If you're trying to kill everyone on this plane, you can at least tell me your name."
Fair enough. "Michael Crew. And?" He gestures out.
"Oliver."
"Okay, Oliver No-Last-Name." He'd never put the armrest back down along with never putting on his seatbelt, so Mike slides easily to the middle seat, causing Oliver to need to shift his eyeline to continue to meet the shorter man but to Mike's surprise he doesn't lean away. "Did you know we're at an altitude of exactly thirty eight thousand, nine hundred and seventy six feet? The air pressure is so low up here that there's not enough oxygen to breathe, and any you can get will just crystalize in your throat from the cold. Can you imagine?"
"I'd rather not." Oliver replies easily.
"You'd be dead before you fell a few hundred feet."
"Probably. At least it would be quick. But that's not what's happening here."
Oliver's eyes are searching his, and now that they're closer, Mike can see the wrinkles between his brow, at the outer edges of his deep-set eyes, in the laugh and frown lines around his mouth, in thin pencil marks across his forehead. They aren't terribly deep, but they speak to a soul that has felt a lot in its life though it hasn't been long. Sometimes Mike's skin feels too tight, constricted by the scar that branches across much of his skin. That's why he felt so relieved to throw himself over that edge.
It's taken far too long to realize the depth of those eyes isn't mysterious at all: it's simply empty.
"Can you see their deaths?" Mike asks, pushing his overgrown bangs away from his face. He's feeling a little warm now, actually, and boldly unwinds his scarf to set it in his recently vacated seat.
Oliver doesn't answer this, but winds a hand into Mike's V-necked shirt and locks his fist closed. He waits.
This doesn't scare Mike at all, though maybe it should. Another avatar of Fear on this flight was the last thing he was expecting, and not everyone plays nice. Fairchild is an old hand, a really, really old hand, at playing house with others, managing some impressive collaborations, but Mike is a free agent. He's only met a few other avatars, and it was in passing. There's a short list of who Oliver might serve, and they're generally pretty low-key, but his guard is slowly going up nonetheless. Worst case scenario, he drops through the floor and disappears into the open air before violence erupts. It'll take a while to find his way to the ground, sure, but he's got no plans. Wherever he lands might be a pain in the arse, though.
"You wouldn't be asking if you were Hers..." He muses. "And it seems repetitive if you had already Seen it. Do you really care what happens to these people?"
The fist twists tighter, and Oliver leans closer, but Mike doesn't get the feeling that he's about to be hurt. There's no fire in the motions, only resoluteness. An assuredness, a stolidity that speaks to the graceful inevitable. The pull on his shirt, however, bares his neck and the top of his chest, and the low overhead glow from the middle seat's reading light casts over his skin, showing his scar in glints of silvery lines that stretch up and flirt with his jaw and cheek. Oliver glances down, who wouldn't? Mike can't help but to say: "Don't ask." And it's a warning.
Oliver stares at the markings, seeming to see more than is visually there. "I wasn't going to."
After another tense moment he lets go, dropping Mike back to the seat. "I can't care," Oliver says flatly, "I want to get home. If you extend my trip we may have a problem. Michael, can we save the disaster for another time?"
"Mike." He corrects. Unsure why he's done it, as they're not going to be friends by either of their designs it seems, Mike frowns lightly and looks again at the clock next to the flight tracker.
Giving him a raised eyebrow that conveys more sass than the entirety of their other interactions thus far, Oliver then shrugs. "Alright. Well?"
"You didn't have any plans?" Mike asks. His abilities are very outward facing, probably why it took him being practically told directly that anything was off about Oliver before recognizing how strange a figure he is. C'mon, give a little, he thinks. They'd already broken the awkwardness barrier with a movie, right?
The pillow gets drawn into Oliver's lap, giving up any pretense of future sleep. "I didn't. I don't need to."
"Because it's night?"
"What? No," Oliver seems puzzled.
His puzzlement is puzzling. "Oh." But it does cross another entity off the list. Really the only choice is obvious now, but it's mighty depressing. No wonder Oliver looks so tired. There's no fun from his master. "Wouldn't me doing something benefit you?"
"Don't need it. There's plenty on the ground. I just want to rest." Oliver admits.
Why does he keep asking questions? Mike hates prying, hates being in these kinds of searching conversations usually, and yet he keeps needling this man. Honestly, if he hadn't been chased by the Stranger through most of his human life, he probably would have ended up with the Lonely. The Vast isn't so different, sometimes. But he's not being peeled apart for answers here, Oliver is. He wants to open this man up to the elements, unfurl his skin and straighten out the wrinkles of his brain and let the cold nothingness brush against every cell until he understands.
This realization changes the fate of the plane, and when Oliver's head tilts to look about the cabin again, Mike knows he can see it.
"I appreciate it. I really didn't want to end you."
Mike huffs, amused. "Wouldn't that be something to see. You so sure you'd win?"
"Fairly sure." That smile is back but it's more like the crack of dawn than the moon now, warmer. It affects the slant of his eyes and they suddenly don't look so dead. How fascinating. Mike suddenly wants to see it again, see how they reflect light in the endless sun on a desert expanse, or on top of a skyscraper. Wants to see the way his skin color changes with space and light. He wants to see Oliver look warm.
"Glad we aren't finding out. I quite like my life as is." Mike replies.
"Do you?" Oliver asks, looking genuinely curious himself, though not excited.
That might have been insensitive, Mike considers. The End really does seem to be all work and no play. Easy gig though.
"Yeah. Very freeing. Lots of travel." Mike says, committed.
At this, Oliver almost laughs. "Oh, I get it now." He pauses. "Frankly I don't know what I'm doing after this." For the first time, it appears that Oliver has let something out he didn't necessarily mean to rather than Mike, and looks down.
"Hey," Mike says casually, bumping Oliver's elbow with his, "me either. I sort of leave it up in the air, go where the wind takes me."
There's an incredulous slant to Oliver's smile now. "How many of those do you have?"
"I dunno, really. Not many people get to stick around long enough to appreciate them."
"Lucky me." Oliver deadpans, and Mike laughs.
How curious. An avatar of the Vast and the End walk onto a plane...
"Do you want to watch another movie? We've still got five hours."
By this time the plane has stopped shaking, and everyone is quieting back down to get some last bits of shuteye before sunrise. There's an entirely different kind of vibrating under Mike's skin as he searches Oliver's expression, looking for clues. The man gives away nothing but calm, his whole persona radiating a solid sureness with the hint of a lingering smile. "Sounds good."
He hears no ringing for the rest of the trip, but he doesn't notice.