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redd1ne · 2 months ago

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Baz when I get my hands on you Baz!!!

Honestly tho this was prob my fav chapter to read. The drama, the chaos, it’s just so argggg 🤭

the world (it burns through me)

Chapter 27: Darlin’

Ao3 | 3.1k Words | Darlin’s POV

Sam has fancy hair cutting scissors. Asher continues Gabe’s noble pursuit. Darlin’ needs bowling and bear and pizza. David chose his neighborhood specifically for Gregory Keaton. Angel is a clever little thing.

TW: depression, shock, reactions to trauma, reaction to assault, fire, injury, CPR.

After the Moonbound Motel, you went to bed and stayed there for three days. The only time in that period that you’d spent out from under a set of blankets was when Sam moved you from David’s house to his.

You realized, somewhere between the bed in David’s spare room to Sam’s all too familiar one, that you didn’t have a bed. Not one of your own, anyway. Casting your mind back, you couldn’t recall a time that you did have one. You knew you hadn’t had a crib, your mother had opted to keep you in her bed until you were too old and it got weird. Then, you slept where you could. Couch, recliner, the floor when it suited you. Bouncing between whatever studio apartment would take you with her eviction history, you weren’t confident you’d even had a room of your own.

Sam had to hold you up on the walk between his car and his bed. You were unsteady, slow and stupid. He tried to talk you into the shower, but you stiffened when he did. For whatever reason, you didn’t want to wash the smell of Quinn off of you. You didn’t want to wash his saliva from your neck, his blood from your knuckles, the stench of smoke from your every pore. You would never be clean again, so what exactly was the point?

Instead, you stripped your clothes off and curled under Sam’s unfairly soft sheets. You slept, or at least you thought you did, in between bouts of staring out of his bedroom window into the woods surrounding his cabin. You loved it out here. You loved the quiet and still.

You went to bed and Sam tried to coax you out of it every hour or so. He still called you sweet names, darling, baby, love. You imagined that they must taste acidic on his tongue, but his tone didn’t give it away. He brought you tea and food and water. He brushed his fingers through your hair, braiding it back from your face so that it didn’t become tangled and matted. It had gotten so long since you came home.

On the third day, Sam stood at the foot of the bed, hands on his hips, his face pinched in frustration. You hadn’t said anything since you left room thirteen. The last words you’d spat at him, hateful and venomous, rang in your ears every time you opened your mouth. What else was there to say? How the fuck did you recover from that?

“You’ve gotta get up.” He rumbled.

You stared past him. You couldn’t meet his eyes. Those pretty brown eyes. You were such a sucker for brown eyes.

“I’m not letting you lay here and rot. You’ve gotta get up.” His voice was growing more firm. He was getting pissed off with you. And who could blame him? He was stuck taking care of a vegetable that had broken his heart. You couldn’t imagine you would have stuck around to carry yourself home, let alone three days after.

The sheets were snatched back from you. Your bare skin was exposed to the chilled air of Sam’s bedroom. His stupid rich person house was always so cold. You jerked and curled further in on yourself. Sam’s hands met your skin, shaking and intrusive.

“Come on,” he said, “up. You’re taking a shower and eating something.”

Sam made a mean grilled cheese, and he didn’t have to ask to know that’s what you wanted. He left you in the bathroom to dry off and slip into a set of his pajamas. You lingered in front of the mirror, dripping wet. This bathroom was ridiculously large, so big that the equally ridiculously large mirror hadn’t fogged up in the thirty minutes that you’d sat, motionless in the scorching shower.

Your hair had gotten so long. It had been close cropped when you met Quinn, barely brushing your forehead and the back of your neck. Now, the longest sections that grew at the back of your head fell to your middle back. You took scissors or a knife to the bangs and a set of clippers to the sides to keep it off your ears. Nothing more than keeping it short enough not to piss you off.

Sam had fancy scissors just for hair cutting. When you took them to your hair, they sang through them like fog down a darkened road. Your hair fell in wet, uneven chunks, exposed your face from where it had hidden. By the time you were done, you were heaving sharp breaths and your hair was sticking out in uneven chunks, some inches long, some so close to your scalp you’d nicked yourself. But it was new and it was good and when you looked at yourself in the mirror, you didn’t look like a ghost anymore.

Sam evened it out once it had dried, and when he looked at you, there was nothing but adoration in his gaze. It made you nauseous.

It was easier to move around after that. Once the seal had been broken, it was harder to disappear without Sam noticing. He stayed on top of you like it was his job, force fed you, made you put on clothes and talk and go for walks.

Asher made contact first. You weren’t sure if he knew what exactly had happened, but you knew he knew something had. He wasn’t tentative or delicate with you. His text came through on day five, and it read simply;

Bowling. Beer. Pizza. Tonight. Be there or be a FUCKING LOSER!

It didn’t leave much room for argument.

Sam dropped you off at Asher’s, the drive having passed in silence. He rolled his still tender shoulder and looked across the car at you in the passenger seat.

“You gonna be okay?” He asked softly. You knew that Asher had probably conferred with him, and he had offered to tag along if you needed him. You insisted that he stay home. He deserved to rest. He deserves some time away from you. You’d made his life miserable enough in the last week, the last thing he needed was to be dragged along to a noisy bowling alley like some emotional support dog.

“Yeah.” You replied. “You’ll be late.” Sam hadn’t worked a shift since he took you home, but he was back in his uniform again, cutting a nice figure in the fitted navy button up. You looked away.

Sam pursed his lips.

“I love you.” He said. Try as you might, you couldn’t say it back.

Turns out, bowling and beer and pizza was exactly what you had needed. Something about the buzz of the neon lights and the distant sounds of arcade machines transported you right back to your early days in the 10-19. Gabe insisted that team building was essential for houses to be successful, and he always forced you to come along. He liked childish locations like theme parks and roller rinks and bowling alleys. He could be serious at times, but you knew that Gabriel Shaw was a child at heart.

Asher seemed to have continued Gabe’s noble pursuit of adding some levity into the house. He gave all of you goofy names and ordered as much junk food as he could, plying you and David with beer and Milo with sugar soda. The food was bad and the beer was worse, but with each bite and sip you settled a bit more into yourself.

David did end up winning, but you gave him a run for his money.

While Ash and Milo settled up your tab, David reclined on the bench in front of your lane, scrubbing his big hand across your buzzed hair.

“New look?” He asked. It was a noncommittal question, no pressure, no urging. You knew he was curious. You could taste it in all of their gazes, but you weren’t ready to talk about it. David welcomed the silence lazily, like he’d expected it, like it was welcoming it home.

Asher had somehow rigged the Bluetooth in David’s truck to connect with his own phone over David’s, and he blared annoying pop music and sang along in the passenger seat, all vocal fry and giggles. David and Milo were arguing about whether Asher’s catcalling was distraction enough to take a gutter ball off of Milo’s score when Milo went silent and still.

“David,” Milo unbuckled his seat belt, leaning forward to get a better view out of the front window. David started shouting in protest, but Milo whacked him hard on the arm. “Is that… house smoke? Look, right there, black, billowing… it’s going down.”

All eyes followed Milo’s pointing hand to the pillar of dark smoke choking out the star filled sky. Ash turned off the music.

“That’s close to your place.” Asher whistled. “It’ll be the 7-30 on call.” David mused. As soon as you looked at the zone map, you knew he had chosen his and Little Shaw’s neighborhood for that very reason. If his house was on fire and he couldn’t respond to it himself, he wanted Gregory Keaton to do it.

“We should go make sure the house is clear.” Milo nodded firmly. David shoved him back hard, straight into his seat.

“Buckle up. Now.” Tension had begun to spread across David’s features and you understood why. As the four of you weaved through the twisting, residential streets, you realized that the burning house was closer to David’s than it first appeared. If the 7-30 didn’t come and do their job in a timely manner, then they ran the risk of the fire spreading to neighboring houses, David’s included.

“Can’t get a night off.” Asher smiled despite the tension. “Let me call Arden. See if they can spare any rigs at the 10-19. “

“Holy shit!” you barked. You saw it a split second before David did, as he turned that last stretch up to his driveway.

You didn’t need to worry about the fire spreading. It had started in David’s pretty, perfect house. He made a desperate, guttural noise in his chest that spoke of an animal in panic. His eyes blew wide as he threw his truck into park on the lawn without breaking, plowing down a few rose bushes as he did.

He was out of the car fast, but not faster than you. You’d always been quick as a fox when you needed to be, and you’d always been the first one in a fire.

Little Shaw’s car was in the two car garage, the metal door open for David’s arrival and warping under unnatural heat. They were inside somewhere.

You burst through the front door with a heave as you tugged your over-shirt up and off. You wrapped it around your face, protecting your airways, and squinted through the tears that acrid smoke brought to your eyes. David barreled into you, his face uncovered, searching wildly through the open foyer and living room. Tears streamed freely down his face as ash clung to his tanned skin. You shoved him once and motioned to the top floor. His eyes, wild and panicked, locked with yours. Understanding overtook his fight or flight. He tugged his t-shirt up over his nose and made for the already crumbling stairway.

You had to trust that he would cover the top floor. You had to trust that if they were up there, he would find them. You faced the blazing ground floor, the roar of flames like hissing cats drowning out any clear thought.

Straight ahead. These flames, this fire. That was what you had to fight.

You knew Quinn. If this was him, and it had to be him, he wouldn’t leave them in the open. He would stuff them away somewhere difficult to find, somewhere small, somewhere for David to find their charred remains among the ashes. Closets, bathrooms, storage. You swallowed the bile that pounded at your throat as the image of their little corpse, all skeleton and charcoal, placed itself at the forefront of your mind.

You moved through the ground floor like water, flowing, each movement leading into the next. Coat closet, nothing. Kitchen, pantry, linen closet, clear. You pushed your way into the guest bedroom. You’d laid awake in this room five nights ago, trembling and retching, wrapped up in Sam’s arms. Now, it was alight. The driftwood on the bookshelf was consumed. The coffee mug had shattered in the heat. Your head pounded. You wouldn’t make it through the flames that had eaten the bed and the carpet alive. If Little were in there, they were already dead. Move on. Keep looking.

You found them in the giant bathtub of the master bathroom, soaking wet and unconscious. A blood trail led you across their plush carpet and the heated linoleum that made your boots sticky. Clever, clever little thing. They’d pulled themself into the tub. The ceramic was cooler than the rest of the smoldering room, it was filed halfway with water, and the lip of the tub provided them some cover from the smoke and flames that licked across the dark stained cabinets. You grabbed them before you processed the state of them. Little Shaw’s hands were bound, tied painfully tight and purple behind their back. A gag sat in their mouth, darkened with saliva and blood. Your stomach rolled as you swung them over your shoulder and recognized the fabric. It was the tie to David’s dress uniform. Blood dribbled down their head lazily from a sizable gash on their forehead. Their clothes were torn and bloodied. Bruises scattered their skin.

You were going to tear Quinn apart with your teeth. You were going to pick at your gums with the shards of his bones. You were going to bathe in his blood and innards and stomach acid and walk out in the street in the daylight. You were going to let everyone see what happened when someone fucked with your people.

Little Shaw was deadweight over your shoulder, unconscious, but you moved anyway. You could check their vitals when you were out of the burning building, thank you. Whether they were dead or just out cold, their body wasn’t scorched. If all you did for David tonight was saving him from identifying his spouse by their dental records, it would be good work.

You almost made it out of the front door. Pounding footsteps sounded over the crackling frames and popping support structures. You glanced up as David descended the stairs, his chest heaving as he caught sight of Little Shaw over your shoulder. He had just enough time for relief to pass over his dark eyes before the railing over the stairs crumbled under the flames. You barked out a short cry as the heat singed across your face. You had a split second to make a decision. You wouldn’t clear the entryway before the debris hit you. Little Shaw was over your shoulder. They would take the brunt of the damage.

You moved without even thinking. You swung Little Shaw off of your shoulder and planted them on the ground. They were so small. You covered them so easily.

Pain blossomed across your back as the railing hit you. Hot and hurt and bruise and burn mixed together to claw a scream out of you. You smelled burning hair and bacon. Something connected with the back of your head and blackened your vision on the edges. Little Shaw groaned under you as your weight and the railing crushed down on them. You couldn’t hold yourself up. Your muscles failed as you pressed down into them, your breath stuttering against their skin. You breathed out a groan into their chest, your head resting against their sternum, your lips wet with blood and the taste of their sweat.

Relief crashed into you. Weight lifted, fire cooled. You felt your skin pulled at as burning wood was ripped away. Your body trembled and gave out as an arm wrapped around your waist. You kept Little Shaw’s wrist in your hand. They went up with you.

You blinked and you were face down on the lawn. You could taste it, dirt and grass and evening dew. Your mouth was open and your throat was raw. You were screaming.

“I know,” Milo’s voice cut through the fog in your brain, “I know, I know, they’re comin’. Come on, Tanker, you stay with me! You stay here with me, you understand?” He was pinning you, or trying to. You were writhing as the skin on your back settled into a buzzing, ripping pain. Pain was good, though. Pain meant that the burns were second degree, not third. That meant the nerves in your skin weren’t dead. That meant no skin grafts, no permanent damage beyond discoloration.

One of Milo’s hands was planted on the back of your neck, holding your head steady, right cheek pressed into the ground. The other braced against the back of your thighs and attempted to contain the twitches and convulsions as your body tried to escape the pain.

Your vision snapped back into place very suddenly, darkened and bathed in warm light. Asher knelt at Little’s head, pocket knife in hand, holding the remnants of their restraints. David was bent over them, his big hands pounding into their chest. Compressions. His face was twisted in familiar horror.

You were on the road side, a stone’s throw from Max’s. Gabriel Shaw was dead on arrival, and David didn’t stop willing his heart to beat until you pulled him away.

You were pressed into the lawn of David’s beautiful home, and his little spouse was splayed out in the dewy grass, heart stopping and chest stuttering in it’s fight against the smoke. David wouldn’t stop willing them to live until someone pulled him away.

Your eyes slid closed. It couldn’t be you. You had done all you could tonight. It would have to be someone else.

Sirens pierced your ears over David’s panicked pleas and sobs. He was so good in a crisis, at calming people whose world was ending, until it was his world, his people. Hands met your back and neck, a c-collar wrapped around your throat like clawing hands.

“You’re okay, it’s okay.” Milo chanted like a prayer, like just saying it made it so. “You’re gonna be okay.”

You closed your eyes to the sounds of an AED pumping jolts into sizzling skin, the gags of intubation, ribs snapping under compressions.

It was always the sounds of a fire that stuck with you.

#here have my first born #such an amazing author #bravo

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