Oliver sees more than just a man when he looks into Damien’s eyes. He sees the reservations he's met with at every turn. He sees the uphill battles and the long roads ahead. He sees the starry nights filled with too much PBR and not enough oxygen between long drags off of impossibly short cigarettes.

Oliver sees the future torn into walls around them and he wants to catch Damien in a net to keep him safe but he's not strong enough, and he's seen Damien burn holes through concrete.

xxx

Oliver likes to think he's strong enough to handle anything, but he does have his breaking points. He spends a lot of time wondering if Damien does, too, or if he's really as calm and collected as he seems.

Oliver breaks down when he feels like the weight of the world is crushing him, a thousand oversized bowling balls pressing individual triggers into each of his most sensitive areas and convincing him, unequivocally, that he's just not a member of a species meant to last. He crumbles, breaks, falls to the wayside of his own overly caffeinated redeye life on a semi-regular basis because he just doesn't see how anyone can be so completely bulletproof that this stockpile of extra stress and unnecessary heaviness wouldn't break them down.

But then he talks to Damien.

Whatever Oliver is experiencing on any given day of the week seems to fall short of the utter fucking catastrophe that is the life of one Damien Marshall. Whatever mess Oliver is facing, Damien has something that likens Oliver's personal disaster to that of a scraped knee, but he always manages to handle it with all the finesse of a papercut. (Not one of Oliver's papercuts though. Those are always a matter of life and death, and Damien never makes him feel lesser for it.)

Envy is a weak word in the light of Oliver's emotions.

Oliver wants to take all the bad from Damien’s life and drown it in the well behind his grandmother's house, because he thinks if enough people drink from it the weight of the world - Damien’s world - it will be a little more manageable. He thinks that if, just maybe, he could take some of that burden off of Damien’s small shoulders he would smile more. Oliver thinks Damien’s shoulders are too small to carry the load they've been gifted, but Oliver knows there aren't many people who could live Damien’s life and still come out on top.

Oliver knows his back would break if he tried.

xxx

Damien is being unusually quiet, which is kind of impressive because he's usually so quiet people forget he's there, but tonight it's worse. Oliver usually thinks of Damien like an old piece of furniture - quietly watching the day's events and the lives of everyone around him unfolding. He's an occasional participant to the events of his own life, boredom eating holes where his eyes used to be.

Tonight, though, Damien is a black hole. He's not asking for the attention being awarded to him - in fact he's not asking for anything at all. He's just collecting dust mites and fractals of shattered light beams scattering across the dining room table as too many of their friends hover in proximity, liquor staining their breath. They all want too much, pecking at Damien for pieces of whatever wisdom and self control he can bestow on a crowd of rowdy twenty somethings like he's not one of the youngest ones in the room.

Oliver is much more than half-drunk when he realizes that Damien isn't drinking at all. Damien doesn't usually seem to have fun at these things, despite his constant assurances that he actually does enjoy being around his chosen collection of morons and misfits (Oliver usually snickers and reminds Damien that the word friend exists) so Oliver's not really sure what's different about tonight. Damien is at least talking to Drake, but it's impossible to say about what when Drake is just as quiet, just as elusive.

Oliver is a lot more obnoxious than he means to be when he throws a jealous arm around Damien’s shoulders, pouting at Drake and Damien in turn until Damien pets his face like he's a needy kitten and sends him off to play with Antonio.

xxx

Oliver isn't dating Damien. They've been best friends since the dawn of freaking forever, and they know each other uncomfortably well sometimes - Damien likes to, on days he's particularly bored, bring up the time Oliver had drunkenly tried to seduce one of New York’s finest and had been turned down and threatened with a night in a holding cell in under two seconds - but there's a line they have never crossed. Oliver sometimes wonders if there's something going on between Damien and Drake, though.

Damien had seemed quite annoyed the day he asked if Oliver was seeing the dancer, abnormal jealousy seething through his pores and saturating the air around them until breathing was uncomfortable. Damien didn’t really calm down until a week or so later, when Drake had gotten high and informed everyone that Oliver wasn't his type. Oliver's always chalked it up to nothing worth noting. Oliver’s pretty sure he's going to end up single forever anyway, so there's no need to worry about Oliver stealing away Damien’s lover.

xxx

Damien is broody and keeps pushing Oliver away in the days leading up to Benji’s death.

Oliver doesn't generally think of Damien as being psychic, but sometimes he wonders about those time relativity theories. Damien always seems to start the mourning process before the tragedy has a chance to manifest. Oliver just tries to play catch-up when it comes to Damien’s feelings, but he's always six steps behind and swirling in a sea of confusion he can never find his way out of. It stings, if he's being honest, but he’s starting to think Damien just doesn't have time to be sad between tragedies anymore.

xxx

Oliver's never quite been able to figure out why Damien seems to love him one day, and hate him the next. He tries to chalk it up to the weather, or maybe the day of the week, and at one wild point he'd blamed it on Mercury's retrograde - not that he had an honest clue what that even meant - but he's come to the conclusion that maybe there is no rhyme or reason to it.

Maybe sometimes Damien just wakes up and hates everyone. Maybe it's just how he keeps himself safe.

xxx

The day Drake announces that he's dating Chris is the day the entire world tilts on its axis. Oliver can't even begin to piece together what's taking place, because in all the time he's spent with his friends, he's never been able to picture an outcome that didn't directly involve Drake and Damien ending up together.

Oliver is honestly expecting Damien to be heartbroken, or at least vaguely upset, but he seems perfectly at ease with this new development, like he's known about it all along. Oliver finds himself in a weird state of discomfort, and he tries to shake it off by drinking with Louis, but it doesn't do him much good, and in the end, he still doesn't know what he's upset about.

xxx

In the time it takes for Oliver to determine that the weird flippy feeling he keeps getting just under his ribcage is probably not indigestion like he's been thinking, Damien manages to just miss a handful of catastrophic events and find time to dye his hair a nice shade of burgundy.

Oliver's not really sure if he likes the new color or not, but he's got bigger things on his mind, and he's dodging Damien’s phone calls and newfound clinginess with the expert precision of someone who grew up taking close range shots from paintball guns in some pretty personal areas.

xxx

It's not that he doesn't want to spend time with Damien anymore. In fact, the issue is damn near polar opposite of what he stands accused. Damien has been his best friend since forever, but Oliver was never supposed to fall into this weird magic vortex the rest of the world could never avoid, no matter how much Damien wishes they would.

Oliver is supposed to be the impermeable one, the one who sees Damien for who he truly is. Another human standing on the sidelines of the human race and watching the world bring itself to its own knees, listening as cries for a merciful God fall on deaf ears.