Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2019-06-17
Completed:
2020-01-13
Words:
225,504
Chapters:
68/68
Comments:
1,522
Kudos:
1,818
Bookmarks:
192
Hits:
31,980

Monochrome

Summary:

When you build your life out of fear that your mental illness could worsen, it leaves little room for excitement. Luckily, Dan has found a space online where he feels comfortable.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Barren, his dad called it.

The words cling to Dan’s skin when he makes his way up the stairs and inside his apartment. It only has one room, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom. A queen sized bed against the wall to the left, underneath the angled ceiling. A white desk, facing two windows. It doesn’t have drawers. Instead, Dan’s important papers are kept in a neat stack of clear folders. The PC is on top of the desk, and it’s the object he gets the most use out of. To his right there’s a dip in the wall, like an inbuilt bookcase, shelved and open. His clothes hang on two racks on the opposite wall to the bed, beside the entrance to the kitchenette. Next to the bed, there’s a squeaky clean black electric piano.

Detached, his dad had continued to say.

There isn’t a single item inside Dan’s London studio apartment that he doesn’t care about. He doesn’t keep items for sentimental value, that much is true. He mostly owns things that he gets use out of. His selection of clothes is small, functional. The only three books in his bookcase were borrowed from the library, their placement serving as a reminder to bring them back in time. He keeps the colour scheme monochrome, for simplicity. Easy on the eyes, and not making any statement.

Temporary, his dad finalised.

Dan has lived here for two years. It is far from a place to dip in and out of. He has made connections in this city, he has good reason to live here and even more reason to keep this flat. He lives alone, the rent is decent for London, and he can commute to work. He has made friends with a couple of other residents in the building. It makes sense to stay. Dan has no immediate plans to leave. But that’s not what it looks like, apparently. Nothing about what this place means to Dan comes across to others.

It doesn’t matter. Dan hangs his messenger bag and coat on their assigned hooks next to the front door. His dad doesn’t live here. It doesn’t make sense that he has formed such a strong opinion about it.

-

The next morning, Dan starts his day like he usually does. With a quick shower, a mug of coffee, and sitting down by his PC. It’s organised, main folders leading into subfolders, all categorised into sections that make sense to Dan. Pictures, documents and videos he has a reason to keep. Virtually, he doesn’t need to worry about how much or what he decides to keep. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t look at his personal pictures after he’s picked out the best ones to go in their appropriate categories based on the year and month. His PC has space for them. They don’t clutter.

Dan puts on his headphones after finishing his coffee during a lazy scroll through Twitter, and minimizes the Chrome app window. He opens up a folder his computer insists on pinning to the side of File Explorer, regardless of the fact that he unpins it every single time.

There’s a reason he has to wade through several inconspicuously titled folders to find what he’s looking for. He doesn’t want or need the shortcut. Dan is so used to clicking through them he could do it in his sleep.

Finally, he gets to the folder he wants. It’s all videos, titled after mood.

“Soft”, “Slow”, “Quick”, “Pretty”, “Desperate”, “Insatiable”, to name a few.

Dan clicks the one titled “Romantic” and sits back as it begins to play. The visual of this particular one doesn’t appeal to him as much as the sound does. His noise cancelling headphones takes him into the moment as he closes his eyes and pulls his dick out of his sweatpants.

It’s all breathy, low moans and wet slapping sounds in his ears and the whole thing is over pretty quickly. When he is close, all Dan needs to do is to click forward to a memorised timestamp where the noises get loud and desperate and longing for his body to jolt and shake as he comes.

Dan exits the video and folder immediately upon finishing. He goes to the kitchen, washes his hands in the sink, and sits back down by the computer.

His head swims with dopamine, he’s got a comfortably soft tingling in his fingers as he watches the new videos in his YouTube subscriptions and goes through his emails.

He opens up his favourite game afterwards, Fall Whisperer. It’s an obscure, 2D pixel art game that starts with finishing achievements and doing tasks but doesn’t end once they’re all done. The player is free to roam the world and to keep building their character’s residence, skills, and relationships. Dan was done with the chronological storyline within a few days when he first played, and has since gone into the online version of the game. After some connection issues that required Dan to really optimise his computer’s performance it works smoothly and he finds himself back in his usual server, with the group of other players he has handpicked based on their skill levels and appropriate balance of taking the game seriously while having a sense of humour about it at the same time.

There are only two other players online now. Dan knows them pretty well. Jamie and Morgan always comment on his posts on the game’s online forum, and they’re always online at the same time that Dan is. Jamie is witty and cutting. Morgan seems to sense every time Dan is feeling low and messages him in private to talk it out. They are good people. Dan finds himself engaging in their mission to find rare crystals, deep in the mines until he loses all track of time and jumps when his phone buzzes with an alarm.

achromatic_bot: duty calls, ladies

falldelight: F

ripewhisperer: F

Dan chuckles to himself.

ripewhisperer: you coming online tonight?

achromatic_bot: if i can’t sleep definitely

ripewhisperer: so it’s a sure thing, then?

falldelight: LMAO. Jamie!

achromatic_bot has gone offline

Dan gets a kick out of just logging out when Jamie starts her shit. He doesn’t do it every time, in order to keep the element of surprise, so he knows for certain that Morgan is currently losing her mind trying to tell Jamie that she was being inconsiderate in the kindest way possible.

As Dan gets up and gets dressed he’s out the door only ten minutes later with his pre-packed bag slung over his shoulder. As anticipated, his phone buzzes with a message from Morgan asking him if he’s okay. Dan knows when to stop a joke, so he responds honestly.

achromatic_bot: not excited about work because i’d rather keep playing but yeah i’m ok i only exited out for the lols <3

falldelight: Oh, okay. That’s good. I didn’t get anxious at all. Anyway, I need to go and apologize to Jamie now. Also I owe her 5 bucks.

achromatic_bot: she probably didn’t even realise you’re upset with her lol, and keep your money for god sake jamie is a scheming bitch

falldelight: Please no more server drama??

achromatic_bot: dw she knows what she’s about

For emphasis, Dan screenshots their conversation and pastes the photos in their group chat while he’s on the tube. Jamie gives a snarky remark, but this time Morgan understands the joke so she sends a rather cringe yet endearing string of laughing emojis and gifs in response. Dan responds with ‘lol never change morgan’ before he reluctantly switches his phone to Do Not Disturb mode, puts his personal things in his locker, and gets to work.

-

By 12 am, Dan is beat. He clocks out of work on time, not a minute early nor late. The means to an end part of his day has ended and he is free to get his phone back and walk anxiously through the rainy night streets of London to get home.

Thursdays aren’t the worst days, but they’re not as calm as Wednesdays. Dan puts the hood up on his black coat and sticks his hands inside the pockets. His bag is secured over his shoulder, trapped between his arm and waist on his left side. Nothing has ever happened on his way home since he started working the night shift. Besides the terrifying inescapable scenarios playing on loop in Dan’s imagination, he has nothing to fear. He puts on an album in his headphones. Loud enough to drown out some of the anxious thoughts, but low enough to be able to hear the potential footsteps of an approaching attacker.

Susanne has told him that the fear of an attack is often worse than the attack itself. The constant anticipation holds a larger risk to create the trauma. The worry holds on tight, and even though it is over it doesn’t leave. For some, the passage of time heals the wound. For most, taking active steps to stop the ingrained protective behaviours is the only way to return to a sane and healthy state of mind. Dan can’t stop protecting himself. He has told Susanne that even if she thinks that that is what he has to do to get well, it won’t work for him. She doesn’t fight him on it. But every night that Dan has to walk the streets of London on his own he wonders what it is like to not feel scared. A fleeting but hopeful voice in his head considers if that actually is an achievable goal.

Dan makes it home with no incident. He goes to the bathroom and gets back in his pyjamas. With music still playing in his ears Dan puts on the kettle and makes three ham and cheese sandwiches. He places two of them in a tupperware container inside his tiny refrigerator, the other he puts on a plate as the kettle clicks finished. He pours the hot water into a mug and drops a blackcurrant flavoured bag of tea inside.

Dan’s back cracks as he stretches in his ergonomically designed desk chair. He switches his PC back on and looks through the Fall Whisperer forum as well as Twitter. He gets a laugh out of the new posts in his followed threads. There are pictures of funny situations in people’s games and servers. Morgan has posted the conversation between her, Jamie and Dan from earlier and it has received a fair amount of upvotes. She has garnered a bit of a following recently, especially by sharing these moments. She made this one into a cartoon, too, where their three individual in game sprites are standing in the mines. Dan logging off is visualised with his sprite suddenly evaporating behind a text saying “achromatic_bot went offline”, while Jamie and Morgan are having the conversation Dan wasn’t around for. Like he expected, Morgan wraps her confrontation up in metaphors after a long monologue of disclaimers summarised into her meaning no offence. All the while, Jamie’s sprite has turned into a question mark, only distinguished by her signature deadpan expression. After, Dan’s sprite materialises back and his and Morgan’s personal conversation is them standing in a corner whispering to one another before Dan shouts it all back for Jamie to hear.

Everyone in the comments are cracking up. Sure, the situation was funny, but it wouldn’t have held its own without Morgan’s art. Somehow she brings those moments to life, making an inside joke available for others to enjoy, while making it even funnier. Dan wishes he had the same skill, but going through the comments where people are saying that they think he’s funny mutes that jealousy for a little while.

Dan has some type of following of his own, but before Morgan’s cartoons it wasn’t personality based. At first, when Dan was mostly active in the thread he made about his personal game following the storyline people were impressed by his skill. He found secrets during his first run that others only found on maybe their third if they hadn’t already read about it on the forum. Later on he answered questions and helped people with computer specs and optimisation for the game to run well, on personal and online mode. He was one of the first ones to test the beta version of online mode, and so created a bunch of different servers that now have hundreds of members each. He’s not in them anymore, but he’s still credited for them and it has spread his gaming nick and so he’s recognised widely throughout the fandom. He definitely has more twitter and forum followers than he deserves.

Now, it’s different. He still gets questions from newcomers that find him through the help threads he has replied to, but now he gets follows and likes purely based on the cartoon version of him that Morgan created. Sure, the script is based on his real life sense of humour, but he doesn’t really feel deserving of the attention when really, it’s Morgan’s thing.

Nevertheless, the attention feels good. He pretends not to care about it publicly, but in reality Dan reads every comment and every message. He notices every new follow, every new like, every direct message asking to join their server. He ignores the requests, because while he drops in and out of the more public servers when he feels like it he wouldn’t invite just anyone to their personal one. It’s his safe place, with people he has come to trust over the years. There is no amount of attention or validation that would make him want to spoil that.

The heaviness of sleep envelops Dan’s bones. He has finished eating and the tea has gone cold. The time shows almost two in the morning, and he has to be up again at eight o’clock. Night shift or not, being up early and having time to go slow is crucial for him. When insomnia takes hold he only gets one or two hours, so feeling sleepy this early on is a rare promise to wake up feeling energised.

He brushes his teeth, has a wee, puts his dishes in the sink, gets in bed. He’s about to do his last compulsory scroll through twitter even if most people aren’t active, but once he’s refreshed the app there’s a new tweet from an account that hasn’t been active for almost two months.

One of the three main creators of Fall Whisperer, and in Dan’s opinion the most important one. Of course the coding and art is just as crucial, but the story was what ensured Dan’s obsession with the game. He has this guy on notifications, and Dan usually hates notifications.

Seagull: The community on the FW forums is so fun! I’d create a fake account to be part of it if I weren’t a seagull.

Seagull gets the most replies on his tweets out of any creator. The game is fairly underground, some would say underappreciated, but when Seagull finally tweets every player and their mother likes and replies. Dan doesn’t stray from the norm when it comes to this. He immediately opens the reply box and takes an unnecessarily long time to craft a good reply.

achromatic_bot: @Seagull you’re not ready for the cold hard depths of it yet keep your brilliant mind pure please it will only put up the next title

Dan goes through the other replies. Every single person he follows is responding, except for the sane ones in Dan’s time zone that are already asleep.

falldelight: @Seagull HE AWAKENS I LOVE YOU COME PLAY IN OUR SERVER?

ripewhisperer: @Seagull Go back to your cave, old man. I don’t want to hear from you until you make an announcement.

onebitwonder: @Seagull Reply for replying’s sake. Keep those numbers growing and get money for a good update with new storylines, people.

squigglyfw: @Seagull none of us are really human though, you’d fit right in <3

Dan is already picturing the state of the forum after this. Some people are going to get angry and protective. They always do. Dan wants the forum to remain a fan space like everyone else, but he’s not blind to the idea that the development team have a look around it from time to time. Other fans will be annoying in a completely different way, trolling like they’re actually one of the creators or questioning everyone else’s identity. It’s a meme that, in Dan’s opinion, should have been over with a long time ago but there’s always somebody fueling the fire. Dan knows which servers, threads, and users to avoid by now, but when Seagull tweets there’s no way to avoid it.

It’s been fifteen minutes and Dan has ignored Morgan’s excited direct message. He’s still tired, still decided on sleeping early, when he gets a reply notification.

Seagull: @achromatic_bot If you only knew what these eyes have seen. Good thing I’m skilled at compartmentalisation!

Dan looks at it. Then he puts down his phone. He isn’t feeling excitement. He is just confused.

He unlocks his phone again and goes to the replyer’s profile. There it is, blue checkmark in all of its glory, and the surrealist picture of an orange beak profile picture that he hasn’t changed for the three years that Dan has followed him.

The most Dan has ever gotten in terms of being noticed by any one of the developers are referral links to his threads when someone asks them for help with a problem. At one point, the game’s official twitter handle made him fan of the week and thanked him for all the work Dan has put into the servers and the technical difficulties section of the forum. It felt good, but for all Dan knows that could have been anyone, writing that tweet.

This is different. When Dan’s brain and body finally catch up to what has happened they do at the same time, and Dan kicks his feet in childish excitement in bed as he reads the reply, over and over. Then he likes it, because why the hell wouldn’t he? Then he screenshots it, and for a moment he considers printing it out and framing it as the first piece of art to ever hang on his own wall. He stores that idea for later as he clicks ‘reply’.

achromatic_bot: @Seagull wish i had those skills every time i close my eyes i see those horrors all over again is there any way you could include that in the next patch?

It’s a stupid joke but Dan sends it anyway. He isn’t going to get a second reply anyway, but he’s sure his friends will appreciate the joke. For all Dan knows, Morgan is already drafting this as her next cartoon.

Sleep, right? Dan sighs a smile and stares up at the white angled ceiling above his bed. His phone is buzzing on his chest with personal messages that he doesn’t want to respond to, half of them probably from Morgan. He’ll have to turn off notifications if he doesn’t want to be woken up every five minutes tonight.

Dan gets his laptop out. He has to watch something to calm the buzzing sensation in his skin and his beating heart. He can’t lean into the feeling too much because if he does it’ll topple over to anxiety. So he opens up a YouTube video, one he’s watched countless times already. It’s a stop motion drawing video, voiced over with the story behind the creation of Fall Whisperer. The three main creators collaborated on it; TriangleNoses, responsible for visuals and art, made the drawings. Irregularsymbol, responsible for the main coding and music theme, made a melodic background track in the same style as the music in the game. And finally, Seagull wrote the script and narrated the whole thing.

Dan doesn’t know what he looks like, how old he is, or what his real name is, but he does know his voice. Dan puts his headphones on and watches the drawings come to life, the sound of soft music playing in his ears. After a one minute intro Seagull starts to speak.

Dan doesn’t categorise himself with the fangirls and fanboys. He doesn’t actively participate in that part of the forum at all. But listening to this voice, telling the story that has come to mean a great deal to Dan at the exact right moment in his life, makes his chest clench tight every single time as he wonders who the storyteller really is, and how he could have told a story that seems so intimately relevant to Dan’s perspective on life it spooks him sometimes.

Dan grows sleepy to the sound, paying almost no attention the the actual video. He could tell this story in his sleep. He doesn’t have to actively listen. Once it’s over, Dan shuts his laptop off, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.

Notes:

Song for this chapter: Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi