The Darkness Consumes

Chapter 1 New home

Viv hated hospitals. The smell, the fake-clean air, the way the lights buzzed just enough to make your head hurt but not enough for anyone to do anything about it.?

Room 17 was worse. Too quiet. Too white. Like the walls were trying to erase you.

He sat on the edge of the bed, not even bothering to unpack the little duffel bag his brother had dropped off. He wasn't staying long anyway. Just a week, maybe two. Three? Who the hell knew? "Observation," the doctor had said, like he was a wild animal they needed to keep behind glass.

Whatever.

He just hoped it wasn't more than four because that would definitely suck.

He leaned back on his elbows, staring at the ceiling.

His name was printed on the clipboard clipped to the end of the bed: Vitale, Viviano.

He hated that. No one called him that except his mother when she was pissed off about something.

Which, he guessed, was all the time. He'd told the nurse just "Viv," and he was hoping, and praying, that they would listen to him.

It sounded like a girl's name anyway.

The other bed in the room was made up but empty.

He was glad for that. He wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, especially some other sad kid who'd probably try to trauma-bond over group therapy.

Viv wasn't here to make friends. He was here because he'd scared his brother and maybe himself a little too.

Because sleeping 18 hours a day had stopped being funny.

Because talking about wanting to feel nothing anymore was slightly concerning rather than just drunken words he hoped could be forgotten the next morning.

Because one morning, brushing his teeth, he'd looked in the mirror and thought.

.. Oh. I don't feel anything anymore.

Not angry. Not sad. Just... off.

So now he was here. Room 17. Hospital socks on his feet.

Nothing to say. He stood up, stretching his arms like he'd just woken up from a nap he didn't enjoy.

The mattress already felt like cardboard.

He wandered over to the window—if you could even call it that.

It was one of those small, rectangular ones wedged up near the ceiling, like an afterthought.

Like someone in the hospital design department went, Oh right, humans like sunlight, and threw it in at the last second.

He craned his neck and stood on his toes. Useless. He could just about see the edge of the sky, a strip of grey-blue with maybe a cloud or two dragging past. That was it. No trees, no buildings, no people. Just a view that screamed you don't belong anywhere important.

Viv didn't think he was short. Average, maybe.

Five-nine. Sigh. Five-eight. Okay, five-seven and a half, but who the hell was measuring?

The window was just stupidly high. Like they didn't want you to actually see the world outside, just enough to know it was still there and you weren't in it.

He dropped back down with a huff and wiped his hands on his new sweatpants like the window had personally insulted him.

God, he hated this place already.

The silence. The walls. The way everything felt like it was trying too hard to be calm.

Like even the furniture was on meds. Viv didn't belong here.

He wasn't like those other patients—he didn't hear voices, didn't throw chairs, didn't sit rocking back and forth whispering to the floor.

He just... got tired. Really tired. And sad, sometimes.

Not even sad, more like hollow. And yeah, maybe he'd stopped talking to people for a while.

Maybe he'd sort of disappeared in plain sight. But still.

He shouldn't be here.

And definitely not because of Matteo.

Matteo, who couldn't shut up about how "brave" it was to get help.

Matteo, who cried more than Viv did when the intake nurse asked if he'd ever thought about hurting himself.

Matteo, who'd always been the golden boy—clean-shaven, top of his class, always knew what to say.

Of course it was Matteo who dragged him here, like he knew what was best.

Viv clenched his jaw and sat back on the bed, arms crossed. Brave? No. Getting thrown in a psych ward because your brother guilt-tripped you into it wasn't brave. It was pathetic.

The door clicked open and Viv didn't even bother to look up. He already knew it was a nurse. He could smell that awful sharp, lemony-clean scent they all wore. It was gross.

"Hi, Viviano," she said, voice bright like it was supposed to bounce off the walls and cheer the place up. "I'm Carla. Just going to run you through the daily routine, okay?"

Viv didn't answer. Didn't nod either. She kept talking anyway.

Breakfast at 8. Group therapy at 10. Recreational hour. One-on-ones. Lunch. Quiet time. More therapy. Dinner. Evening meds. Lights out by ten. No phones. No unsupervised visits. Don't touch anyone. Don't run. Don't cry too loud or someone'll write it down in your chart.

He let the words skim past him like white noise. His brain was already filing everything under "doesn't matter."

Instead, he studied her face. Probably mid-thirties.

Brown eyes, tired but pretending not to be.

Cheap mascara. Her nose was slightly crooked, like it had been broken once but not enough to fix.

She had one of those mouths that looked like it wanted to smile all the time, even when she wasn't. He wondered if it ever stopped hurting, pretending to be nice for a living.

Her shoes squeaked when she shifted weight from one foot to the other.

They were flat and plain, probably worn down.

He imagined how many times she'd walked down this hallway in those very shoes.

How many kids like him she'd looked at with that same polite expression.

Not too warm, not too cold. Just enough.

She finished her speech, like she was reading off a script. Then silence again. Viv glanced at her, just barely. She smiled like she expected something. He blinked once, slow. She gave a small nod and left. The door clicked shut. The air felt heavier again.

Routine, check.

Nurse, check.

Disinterest, double check.

Viv leaned back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

God, what a joke. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a second and tried to imagine his own bedroom back at home.

Not the fake-clean smell of disinfectant, not the buzzing light above him, but the warm, dusty air of home.

His bed with the sort of old mattress he never bothered to flip.

The posters peeling off his walls. The half-dead plant on the windowsill he kept forgetting to water.

That familiar mess that somehow made sense to him.

God, he'd kill to be there right now. Doing absolutely nothing.

Just lying around in his hoodie, maybe scrolling mindlessly through his phone or watching the ceiling change colours as the sun moved.

He didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't want anyone asking how he felt or telling him to open up or dragging him to therapy circles where everyone spoke like they were reading from Tumblr quotes.

He just wanted silence. Not this sterile, heavy silence either.

He wanted the real kind. The kind that existed in his own damn bedroom, where no one expected him to say anything or be anything.

Where he could exist like a shadow, still and unnoticed.

He was scared he wouldn't get that here.

Scared that someone would always be watching him, always knocking on his door, always trying to help.

That he wouldn't get even five minutes to just sit and stare at a wall like he wanted, like he needed to.

He wasn't afraid of being sad. He was afraid of being interrupted.

Viv lay back and stared at the ceiling some more, his arms behind his head like he was trying to stretch himself thin enough to disappear into the mattress.

The longer he stared, the more he felt nothing.

Not boredom. Not peace. Just that weird, floating kind of blankness that had been following him around for months now, like a shadow that never touched the ground.

He didn't think he was depressed. At least, not in the way people always described it.

He wasn't crying into his pillow at night or writing goodbye notes.

He wasn't listening to sad music or avoiding sunlight.

He didn't even feel sad, really. He didn't feel anything.

That was the thing no one got. It wasn't about pain.

It was about silence. Inside his head, everything had gone quiet, like someone had turned down the volume on his entire life.

No highs, no lows. Just static. Sometimes, yeah, he thought about not being here.

Doesn't everyone? But not in some dramatic, tragic or emo way.

More like... it wouldn't be a big deal if he just stopped.

Ya know? Like... Stopped showing up. Stopped thinking.

Stopped being. It wasn't suicidal.

It wasn't a plan. It was just... a shrug. A thought with no teeth.

He tried to explain that to Matteo once.

Just once. Matteo had looked at him like he'd been slapped.

Like Viv had said something monstrous. But Viv hadn't meant it that way.

He wasn't trying to scare anyone. He just didn't know how else to say it—that existing felt like a chore, and he was tired of pretending it didn't.

The door clicked open again. It was softer this time, no nurse voice trailing behind it. Just footsteps. Quiet ones.

Viv sat up slowly, instinctively.

His brand new roommate walked in without saying a word.

Dirty brownish-blond hair, a little messy, like he didn't bother brushing it this morning—or ever.

The boys green eyes, pale like glass, flickered toward Viv for half a second and then away, already scanning the bed, the corner of the room, the floor.

He didn't seem surprised to see someone already there.

He just nodded once to himself, like he was confirming a thought he hadn't said out loud.

Viv watched him carefully. He was the same height, more or less. Same build too—lanky, maybe a little underfed. He was wearing the same loose hospital grey sweatpants and oversized grey hoodie that Viv had been handed at intake, like they only had one size for everyone: "Emotionally Unstable."

Viv narrowed his eyes a little, studying his face, his posture, the quiet way he moved. Something about him felt... not fragile, exactly, but like he was running on backup power. Viv couldn't tell what was going on behind those green eyes, but whatever it was, it wasn't loud.

Viv kept watching him, trying not to be obvious about it, but failing a little.

It wasn't like he had anything else to look at.

The kid had short hair, like almost buzzed on the sides and messy up top, like he'd let it grow wild and then got tired of it one day.

But his nails were painted—chipped black polish, like he'd done it himself and stopped caring halfway through. That threw Viv off.

He had a pretty face. That was the first word that came to mind.

Not handsome. Not cute. Pretty. High cheekbones, soft mouth, a small scar cutting through his left eyebrow that somehow made him look more intentional, like the scar belonged there.

But the way he carried himself—shoulders slightly hunched, chin low, hands stuffed into his hoodie—felt like a guy.

That aura boys had when they didn't want to be noticed, but expected to be anyway.

Viv's eyes narrowed. Was he a boy? He thought so.

He assumed so. They wouldn't mix rooms in a place like this, right?

There had to be rules. Regulations. But he wasn't sure.

And that annoyed him. Because sure, the roommate looked like a guy.

.. but also a girl...? The kid didn't seem to care either way that Viv had his eyes trained on him.

He moved like someone who didn't expect to be figured out.

Like he'd spent a long time making peace with being unreadable.

Viv sat back against his pillow and looked away, jaw tight. Great. Another mystery. Just what he needed. Neither of them said anything. They just sat there, in the thick, echoey quiet of Room 17, pretending not to be curious about each other.

Viv let out a breath, a long one that seemed to carry all the weight he'd been holding onto for the past few hours.

He didn't care about figuring out the 'he/she' kid on the other side of the room, the one with the short hair and painted nails, or whatever they were.

In fact, he wasn't even interested in making an introduction.

Hell, he wasn't interested in anything except shutting the world out for a while.

He swung his legs back up onto the bed and pulled the thin, itchy hospital blanket over him, not bothering to tuck it in. Who cared? He wasn't here to win any awards for neatness.

The kid was sat on his bed, but they weren't making a sound, just moving quietly around the room.

Viv didn't pay attention. He'd deal with it tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever the hell they forced him to.

For now, he just wanted to sleep. Sleep was the only thing that made sense anymore.

It wasn't like he was avoiding anything when he slept, at least not in the way people always said.

He wasn't running from his thoughts, not really.

He was just too tired to care about anything.

Too tired to listen to the constant hum of his brain, too tired to care about what anyone expected of him.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the pale room, the faded hospital walls, the low shuffle of his roommate moving around.

Just sleep. The only thing that mattered.

Maybe when he woke up, the day would feel a little less heavy. Maybe the noise in his head would quiet down. Maybe everything would just go away for a while.

And if it didn't, at least he'd gotten a few hours of peace.