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razorsharpteeth · 11 months

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TIMING: August, after Parker's attempt to steal PARTIES: Felix @recoveringdreamer and Samir @razorsharpteeth LOCATION: Felix' place. SUMMARY: Samir invites Felix to his place after the Parker situation and the two talk about the Grit Pit, how they got there and how stuck they are. CONTENT WARNINGS: Abuse, gaslighting, parental death

There was an instinct to care within Samir Zidan, even if he tried to deny it. Even if part of him had tried to starve it, stave it off — a solitary existence was not one fit for someone who cared for others, and yet he had forced it onto himself. Even as a ghost, flitting from town to town, he cared. Volunteering. Stopping to help someone whose groceries had spilled. Letting someone go before him in a queue. He called it repentance, or at least an attempt at it.

This wasn’t quite that. This was something larger than volunteering for the local elderly or a small act of kindness. Extending his address to Felix Mendoza was something bigger, wasn’t it? It was born from care, sure, a willingness to have the back of his coworkers (in what was, admittedly, the most abhorrent place he’d ever worked — even fast food places weren’t this bad at following labor laws). It was more personal. It was some kind of commitment to wanting to make this place work.

He hadn’t expected them to take him up on the offer, in all truth, and yet the doorbell rang. Samir moved down the stairs, telling Cleo to stay put and opened the door. Eyes took in Felix, taking him in for hidden and visible injuries. There were scratchmarks. How many fights had he been in? He tried to bite down his anger. “Come in. Shit.” He stepped back in, half-turning around to trudge back up the stairs but his eyes remaining on the other. There was a soft yap from Cleo and he tried not to think about the mess of the place. “Come in.”

—

There wasn’t usually much solidarity between fighters in the Grit Pit. There couldn’t be. The Pit was literally designed to put you up against the people you ‘worked’ with, to make you resent one another. It was intentional, Felix suspected; if you kept the people at the bottom at one another’s throats, they’d never come for the people at the top. Make the fights last even after they left the ring, give them less money when they left each other standing and more when they drew blood. Pull on their chains and blame it on the guy beside them. Felix had never had any friends at work because they weren’t supposed to, because the Pit wasn’t built for that.

But Samir was different.

Maybe it was because it was never really Samir in the Pit, because Samir and Razor were different in a way most fighters weren’t. Even other werewolves didn’t seem quite as separated as Samir was from Razor. Felix thought of their jaguar, the one with thoughts and feelings and a mind of its own. They knew werewolves weren’t really like that, that there was no wolf’s spirit living within Samir, but it felt similar in a way it usually didn’t with werewolves. So Samir invited him over, and Felix said yes. Samir showed sympathy, and Felix accepted it. Samir opened the door, and Felix felt a little safer than he had when it was closed. It was a new feeling. It wasn’t a bad one.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely, drawn in on himself as he ducked inside. There’d been fight after fight since their return from the jaguar’s turn at the steering wheel. No one seemed to believe that their absence had been accidental; Leo had told them as much. You’ve always been a flight risk, Fe. We thought you’d learned your lesson, but I guess you were always slow with that, weren’t you? I thought you were finished being stupid. He’d sounded almost sad as he’d said it, almost sympathetic. But not in the same way Samir was. Samir seemed more genuine. With Leo, it was about control. It always was.

Felix moved into the apartment, glancing to the kitchen chair in question. He shouldn’t sit. He’d get blood all over everything. His blood, the blood of the last couple people he’d fought, maybe leftover blood from the night before that he’d been too exhausted to shower off, too. But their legs hurt and they were tired, and the chair looked like the most comfortable thing in the fucking world, so Felix looked at it and didn’t ask the question aloud but let it hang between them all the same.

—

When his father had died and his mother had checked out, it had been Samir who had taken the brunt of the load on his shoulders. Safiya had helped, of course, but she had been gone when graduation had rolled around two years later and from then on it had been him. Making school lunches. Paying the bills. Trying to figure out the paperwork. Putting a band-aid on Wael’s knee. There was purpose in taking care of others, and perhaps more selfishly, there was distraction.

This wasn’t what he was supposed to do. He wanted his connection to the Grit Pit to exist three nights and days a week, and nothing more. He wanted the pay and more importantly, the ensurance that he would remain tightly locked in a place when his wolf came out. He wanted the privilege of ignorance — not connection, not ties, not anything. But here Felix was anyway, looking worse for wear and taking him up on his own insistent invitation. Because at the end of the day, Samir needed purpose, needed to feel helpful, like the shiniest tool in someone’s toolbelt. Like something that could do more than harm.

Like something redeemable.

But this was dangerous, wasn’t it? Letting Felix into his home, offering care — it was like admitting that the Pit wasn’t as good a place as he would like to think it. Workplaces demanded solidarity, but this wasn’t just a place of work for Samir. It was a cage, a deserved one. Corinna knew of his desperation. She did not know how involved he could get with others, though, how he was not just a man running from law and himself — and his heart and spirit he would rather not give up along with his monstrous, murderous intent. She could have that.

There was no looking away from this, though. “Come on, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the array of ugly chairs he’d collected. He moved towards his kitchen cabinets, pulling a bottom one open. The pots and pans were of shit quality, but his first aid kit was good. Well-stocked. It had to be, with his nature — usually he healed, but sometimes the worst of it happened on the last night of the full moon and there was no fast-track to take. Giving himself stitches was a skill learned long ago. Samir gave Felix a one over, placing the kit on the kitchen table. “Do you want anything to drink? I can make coffee, tea … I’ve got some beer. Water?” He drummed his fingers against the kit. “If you — well, I’m no nurse. But just shout if you need anything from this, yeah? Fucking Christ. How many fights did they have you do?”

—

Relief clung to him as Samir gave him the permission he needed to take a seat, practically collapsing onto one of those wooden chairs. Felix shifted in an attempt to keep from staining the wood, which wasn’t as hard as it might have been a few hours before. They weren’t in great shape, but they’d stopped by home before coming here and that had at least given things time to stop bleeding, time for their trembling hands to settle at least a little. They still shook, but they could almost hide it now. They could almost pretend it was okay.

“Thanks,” they mumbled, closing their eyes as they leaned back in the chair. Already, they felt safer than they had at their apartment. Maybe it was the presence of another person, or maybe it was the fact that they’d seen Samir fight. Both were silly security blankets to cling to, of course. If that warden chose to attack them, he’d do it whether someone was around or not. He’d proven as much in that alley, when Felix’s screams had seemed to be little more than an irritating inconvenience to him. And Samir was a hell of a fighter when the moon was full, but Felix had no idea if he even knew how to throw a punch in this form. Still, the comfort clung to them like a warm coat, and they let their eyes slip shut for a moment.

But only for a moment.

Samir spoke, and Felix’s eyes opened as they glanced around the apartment. “Uh, no. That’s okay. I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.” They probably couldn’t handle much more than water right now, anyway. They always got anxious after a fight, even a fight they’d won. They’d done well tonight, Leo told them; made the Pit a lot of money, made themself a lot of money, too. They hadn’t even grabbed their pay before ducking out, too disgusted with themself to think about the envelope full of cash and how they’d earned it. It would be waiting for them the next time they came to work — which would be far too soon. They’d still feel sick about it. They thought they probably always would.

“I don’t think anything needs stitches.” They smiled bitterly, adding, “I won.” As if it was victory. It never felt like one. Instead, it tasted far closer to damnation. Felix rubbed at their eyes, shrugging a shoulder. “I lost count. I don’t know. It’s been — It’s just constant, since I got back. Small stuff on the weekdays, then big stuff on the weekends. Which is just — the usual. But more of it.” They shook their head. Embarrassingly, they felt like crying. “It’s fine. Just… a little overwhelming tonight. With everything.”

—

Guilt was an ugly emotion. It ruined ones state of being, broke down the very pillars on which someone was built — that and shame were the great undoers of a person, Samir thought. It didn’t mean he knew how to deal with it. He just knew it was eating him from the outside, spreading like a rot and making him the way he was now. Solitary, short-tempered, clinging to his volunteer work as if it would be his saving grace. It also meant he was getting better at recognizing it in others.

Felix hadn’t walked around the dressing room like someone who took pride in what he did. They had a certain quietness to them, a quality Samir could appreciate. They had revealed, even, that they didn’t want to be here — but the work still demanded to be done and the work came with blood and hurt and sometimes death. Enter at your own risk, they said before people entered the Pit, but that those risk were of the binding variety was omitted to both customer and fighter. It wasn’t prideful work. It wasn’t even thankful work. It was work worthy of shame and guilt — but that didn’t make it easier.

It would be easier if they were all proud of it, if they were sadistic and masochistic fucks wanting to spread violence around for profit. It would be easier. But here sat Wildcat, with their eyes closed and shame hanging over them at Razor’s dingy kitchen table. What formidable fighters they made. Samir decided to distract himself by still filling two glasses of water, placing them on the table and then grabbing a beer for himself. If he was going to risk getting closer to someone he had to most likely fight next moon, then he’d need a boost. “Water’s pretty much free.”

He pulled out a chair, settling down himself and taking a long pull from his bottle. There was a frown on his face. “Congrats,” he replied, the bitterness of the comment mingling with the bitterness of the ale. “Shit, man. And tomorrow, you’re back on too I suppose? I — I mean, I don’t fucking get why they’re doing this, but even so there’s gotta be an end to this, right? Let you recover and breathe a little between fights.” Samir wondered what they’d do to him, should the roles were reversed. Make him fight as a human? Try and force the wolf out? They were ugly thoughts, even if realistic. “No, man, it’s not fine. It’s a lot, all at once, and you’re being punished for something a hunter did — a fucked up one, at that. I’m glad you came over. I’m not sure what I can do to help, but … they say talking’s good.”

—

It was strange, Samir’s kindness. Felix had never really interacted with the other fighters outside of the ring before, something that was largely by design. Friendship, in a place like the Grit Pit, was a dangerous thing. Even a moment of hesitation within the Pit could cost a fighter their life, and in spite of the guilt they often felt for what they did and how they did it, Felix didn’t want to die. So, they distanced themself. They saw other fighters around, sometimes, and they ducked their head to avoid eye contact. It wasn’t hard — most of the other fighters weren’t particularly big fans of Wildcat, who fought hard and dirty and with a great brutality.

But Samir was different. Maybe it was because he didn’t remember the fights he’d been a part of, didn’t know what an animal Wildcat could be when Felix got scared or desperate or both. Or… maybe Samir was just a kind man who’d been backed up against a wall. Maybe every fighter in the Pit was just someone in a shitty situation doing the best they could do. Selfishly, Felix hated the thought. He wanted them to be monsters. It would have been so much easier if they were all monsters.

Offering Samir a small smile, Felix took one of the glasses of water that was placed in front of them and held it in their hands. Not drinking it just yet, but not putting it aside, either. “Thanks,” they said quietly. “I can… do dishes or something.” It seemed only fair. If anything, it wasn’t enough to repay the kindness Samir was offering them, but they doubted the werewolf would accept anything more.

They let out a hollow laugh at the bitter congratulations, wondering if any of the Pit’s fighters were proud of what they did. Maybe some of the newer ones, the ones who hadn’t realized yet just how stuck they were. Or… maybe there were people there who wanted to do what they were doing, people who enjoyed the violence. The thought was a little sickening. “Yeah,” they confirmed, blowing out a huff of air. “And the next night. Schedule’s got me in every night this week, unless I can’t fight.” The only way out of a fight once it had been scheduled was to get injured badly enough in another fight to have your name temporarily pulled from the roster. So far, Felix had yet to experience this. They weren’t sure if that made them lucky or unlucky. It felt like both at the same time, somehow.

“Maybe it’s not fine,” they allowed, “but it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, either. It is what it is, right? I signed up for this.” Not knowingly, not on purpose, but no one had forced them to sign that contract. The higher ups at the Pit loved reminding them of that if they were ever caught complaining or fighting against the bind. “Yeah. Yeah, talking’s good. Better when you have someone to listen, so… Thanks for listening, man.”

—

Samir had been a person with friends once. His career stretched over a fair amount of jobs, many of them in hospitality and service, and they had all been marked with camaraderie. Working like hell during lunch and dinner rush, breaking open the skin of your hands on accident with knives or pots or even just cleaning agents, yelling at each other, getting lost in the cacophony of stress, smell, sound and hunger. And then, always, ending up chain-smoking, drinking beers until it was time to crawl home and redo it the next day.

Some of those people had been like siblings. People he’d fight with verbally but would always love — or so it had felt, at the very least. Things had happened, of course, since those years of working in kitchens in Floridean resorts. There had been the attack, the murders, the moving. He’d continued to work similar jobs, where solidarity and camaraderie were required to keep your head on your shoulders, but he’d never stuck around long enough for the bonds to become as strong as they had once been.

Samir had been a person built on connection once, and now he was something solitary. The Grit Pit was a place that on one hand demanded some kind of solidarity among its employees, if only because of the nature of the contracts. On another hand, any chance at it was choked by the nature of the work. There was something so very stupid about trying to get close to a person you were paid to fight. And this wasn’t like the mainstream MMA, where it was performance. Razor’s bloodthirst was real.

Who knew what would happen the next time they stood across each other in the ring.

But still, here they were. Felix offering to do dishes, Samir decisively shaking his head. “Do dishes? You’re dirtying one glass. I got it.” He shrugged. “Unless you wanna stay for dinner. Then we can do dishes together.” Cooking for people was part of his nature by now, an instinct born out of necessity, then turned into a career and now … just something he had almost forgotten about. “Every day? Fuck.” He couldn’t imagine it. Especially not being conscious for it. “What do they have you fighting?”

His ignorance about the reality of the Pit was fading in front of his eyes with every question he asked, with every expletive he used to express his discontentment. Felix mentioned the contracts without saying the word. Samir took another long pull from his bottle, wondering if they’d become one of the other fighters who’d die while signed up. “I mean, shit. Sure, I guess. It is what it is. And I don’t know what I can do. But at least we can both agree on the fact that there’s something about it that’s wrong, right?” He fiddled with the paper label on the beer bottle. “That why you tried to run?”

—

They used to be better at talking to people. As a kid, before their mom died, Felix was actually pretty damn sociable. They’d had a lot of friends in school, even if they hadn’t necessarily been a part of the ‘in’ crowd. They’d been the quiet, easygoing kind of kid that everyone got along with, able to go with the flow without issue or complaint. They helped their classmates with assignments, they sat next to whoever had an open seat at lunch, and they’d been good.

And then, a pair of terrified humans shot a jaguar in the woods, and just like that, the world turned upside down.

It was tempting, sometimes, to blame everything that happened after on their father. The way he’d handled his grief, the way he’d made his children prisoners to it, it had done a lot of damage. But it wasn’t the sole factor that contributed to Felix’s shift in perspective. It all started with that shot in the woods. It all started with two humans who weren’t built to hunt balam, but had unknowingly killed one anyway. The world became unsafe in that moment, a dangerous place. How could Felix worry about math problems on someone else’s worksheet now? How could they sit just anywhere at lunch?

The grief festered like a wound, poisoning the world outside of it. The isolation their father forced them into was almost a relief. Even the violence that came with it felt like an easy outlet, even if Felix would have never admitted it aloud. It was so much simpler to be angry, to hurt the world before the world could hurt you. It wasn’t who they wanted to be, but it seemed it was what the world wanted for them.

The Grit Pit seemed like proof of that. Being that quiet, easygoing kid wasn’t an option here, not anymore. In the Pit, you were ruthless or you were dead. Felix had known that early on, when every attempt they made to buck against their contract or unionize the other fighters ended only in more of that endless grief. The Grit Pit didn’t allow time or space for kindness.

And yet, here was Samir. Getting them a glass of water, offering to make them dinner. Felix stared at their hand, at the bruised knuckles and the dirty fingernails. “I wouldn’t want to put you out,” they said again, even though Samir had made it clear now that his kindness was for free. It was a difficult thing to accept, for Felix. It didn’t sit right in his chest.

They blew a puff of air from between their lips, nodding. “Yeah,” they confirmed, and the word felt heavy. “It’s different things. Nothing… sentient. Most of them are easy to beat. It’s just — I’m tired. You know?” And maybe he did. Maybe Samir was one of very few people who could know.

“There’s something wrong,” they agreed. “It — It’s fucked up. But there’s not anything to do about it.” They picked at their nails, feeling embarrassingly close to tears. “I didn’t really want to sign,” they admitted quietly. “I was — I was in love with someone. And he was a part of it. And I thought — I thought they’d trapped him there, you know? They told me the only way to get out of a contract is to have someone else sign in your place, to… Let someone take the bullet for you. And I thought… That’s what love is, right? Taking the bullet. So I did. But he wasn’t… He didn’t want out. And now I do, and there’s no… getting out. Just, this is me, now. This is my life. And I got myself into it. Nobody else to blame, right?”

—

It was through giving that he survived. Not just that, of course — there were other factors that had ensured his survival thus far in the face of the vicious beast he turned into every month and the hunters that had been on his trail before. Sure, ruthless viciousness had kept Samir alive as well (waking up near the corpse of a hunter, or worse, shooting one when fully conscious), but the spirit had to persist as well.

And that was done through giving. Making food for people – strangers or others – or offering small bits of kindness. Volunteering with elderly people who tended to bore or offend him to death more often than not, scrubbing pots and pans in a soup kitchen, giving back to any community he might inhabit, no matter for how long.

He wasn’t religious, but he knew somewhere that this was an attempt at repenting. There would be no redemption for him, but he could balance the scales somewhat, could he not? Samir at least figured he had to try, especially now that he was making money through bloodshed. Three nights a month he was contracted to fight and sporadically he was asked to do some social media things but besides that, he had all the time in the world for kinder ventures.

Like this. He needed Felix to accept his small kindnesses, which were nothing at all. The bare minimum of hosting. Something to drink, a seat to sit on and a listening ear. Samir shook his head. “You’re not. You’re my guest.” He swallowed the expletives that instinctually rose to his mouth.

He took a sip from his beer, the bitter and sweet mixing around on his tongue before he swallowed it. He did know, in a way. “Yeah. I know.” Not completely, not fully, but he shared a space with some of the not-sentient species that fought in the pit. Cages filled with supernatural creatures. Sometimes he’d awake when the moon had sunk and some of the cages that had been full would be empty. He’d wonder if he’d done that. “It’s fucking nonsense, that you’re not getting a beat to breathe between nights.”

There wasn’t anything to do about it. Samir knew that and he was fine with it, for the most part. He didn’t want to do anything about it, or see anything done about it. With the Grit Pit, his wolf wasn’t out and about, running where he might maul another set of tourists or other civilians. But he knew it was different for some. And so he felt guilty as Felix lifted the veil on how he’d come in.

He was quiet for a while, not equipped with the right words and ideas to say something fitting to that. What were you supposed to say, anyway? Part of Samir wanted to ask for a name, but that would mean getting more entrenched in this business, in this ugly place where he survived through self-imposed, tightly controlled ignorance. “Fuck. Shit, man, I’m sorry that he did that to you. Tricked you, that’s … shitty. At least I wanted to sign, you know? In a way. I didn’t know about all the shit that came with signing it, of course, but you know.” He’d been sweet talked, sure. Promised things that fell short, but the core of what he wanted from this all had been true. “He’s still there?”

—

Jaguars were solitary creatures. They weren’t like wolves, who formed packs to protect one another. When he was a kid, living in a house with their father and their siblings out in the woods far away from everyone else, part of Felix had felt that jaguar’s solitary nature. The way the spirit within them preferred the distance, the way it might have liked it more if the other balam weren’t there. The jaguar preferred to be alone, but Felix didn’t.

It was why they’d attached themself to Leo so quickly when he’d shown up. Felix loved their family, but there had been something so exhilarating about being seen by someone outside of it. Leo made them feel as if they were special, as if they mattered even outside of the house where they had no real control over what they did or thought or felt. Leo found those seeds of doubt in Felix’s mind and sowed them so carefully. And it felt like love. Felix wanted to believe it had been, even now. That at some point, somewhere along the way, they’d been loved.

But it was so hard to think so.

It might not have even been friendship, what Leo had felt for them. He’d rarely ever treated them with half as much kindness as Samir was showing them now unless there was some ulterior motive behind it, and Samir was only a step up from a stranger. Felix felt an ache in their chest, a quiet pain put there by someone who probably didn’t care enough to acknowledge it at all.

The Pit was fucked. All of it. Even the parts that gave Samir his outlet for the wolf were built from predatory contracts and the blood of people who might not have wanted to sign them. It was Samir’s teeth that were bloodied with flesh, but it was the people in charge who pocketed the majority of the winnings. It was Felix’s hands that shook, but it was Leo who used the money Felix earned the Pit to his advantage. (He’d always had so much cash on hand to shower Felix with gifts back when they’d been together; it was nauseating to think of now, with retrospect on their side.)

The quiet stretched between them like a tangible thing, and Felix didn’t look at Samir because they were afraid to. Because they didn’t want to see judgment on his face, even if Samir wasn’t the type to judge. Because they were afraid of pity, too, even if Samir wouldn’t mean it as an insult. When he finally spoke, Felix only shrugged. It sucked, it was shitty, but they’d been stupid, too, hadn’t they? Leo had told them as much. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do. It isn’t my fault you’ve never known what you wanted, is it? You can’t blame me for your mistakes, Fe. It isn’t fair.

They tapped their finger against the side of their glass, nodding carefully. “He’s still there,” they replied quietly. “He — They have him keep me in line, sometimes. Tell me when I’ve fucked up.” They used to think maybe it was the Pit’s attempt at softening the blow, but now they weren’t so sure. They suspected, with a sick twist in their gut, that Leo probably requested to be the one in charge of Felix’s contract.

—

There hadn’t been a lot of people in his life he was comfortable being silent around. He used to be talkative, an easy person to befriend and get to know — never particularly intimately, but still. Samir had simply never been very good at being alone, what with him growing up in a small but filled-to-the-brim home, with his teenage and young adult years having been spent taking care of these people.

But that was before a werewolf had bitten him and made something ugly of him. He had always been an angry person, that wasn’t something just awakened by the werewolf — but it seemed that rage was now even more damaging. That where it had cost walls and doors and the intactness of his knuckles, it had started costing human lives.

No longer was he a man who yelled and broke things — he was a man who turned into something murderous, that ravaged with a fury that Samir knew, deep down, he recognized. And so he’d become solitary, not just because he tended to move around but because he understood that he was no longer meant for such things. People deserved better than him. He, perhaps, did not deserve such niceties either. He was a man with blood-stained hands, a guilty conscience and with no dedication of really clearing that conscience.

He was, or at least he thought he was, a man of numbered days. But it had been five years, and he was still alive. Not out of a reluctance to die, but rather an inability to commit to dying. And because somehow, he’d evaded law and hunters alike.

Still. He was more omen than man. Not made to be a friend.

But Felix sat in his kitchen and it felt somewhat right, this extended olive branch of his. Still, he downed his beer in the silence that lingered, as it wasn’t comfortable. It was pressing. It was so very present, that he might as well take out a chair and invite it to sit as well.

Eventually Felix talked, though. Samir was glad, because he wasn’t sure what to say besides get them a beer (and get himself another one, too). He remained quiet, though, at those two sentences he was offered. Uncomfortable again.

But also angry. Not because of his own situation, or the resentment he held for himself, for his sister, his father, his mother, the world and its institutions, the weather — but on behalf of another. It had been quite a while since that had happened. Samir embraced it. This was a kind of anger that was tolerable.

“Fuck them. For that. Not just roping you in like that, but using it as a – as a tool, a measure of what, fucking discipline?” Of course Felix had tried to run. Of course they sat here now, struggling to accept kindness, a distrust marking plenty of their moves. Samir placed the bottle of beer on the table, trying not to slam it. “He ever hurt you, besides the … obvious, you know?” The manipulation of it all. The lies. He wanted another drink. He wished he didn’t know this, that he could stretch his ignorance a little further, a little more thin. “What do they do to keep you in line?” What did they do to his werewolf? He could forgive that, the measures they took against that mindless monster — but Felix wasn’t that.

—

Since the moment the contract was signed, Felix had been told under no uncertain terms that their situation was their own fault. No one forced them to do anything, no one held a knife to their throat or a gun to their head. They could have simply said no, could have walked away before pen went to paper if only they made the decision to do so. And they hadn’t. Leo had never lied to them directly — no one had. Maybe there had been implications there, but nothing Felix couldn’t have seen through if they’d really tried. It was their fault, and no one else’s. That’s what they’d been told, and that was what they’d believed.

But Samir was looking at them now with anger that wasn’t directed towards them at all. He was calling it fucked up, was righteously furious towards the situation and the manipulative net that had been cast. Maybe he was right — maybe Felix wasn’t entirely at fault here. The instinct to argue, to insist it was their fault was still there, but the words died on their tongue before they spit them out for the first time in a long time, replaced by a strange warmth in their chest at the idea that someone cared enough to be angry for them.

They looked away with a shrug, wringing their hands together. “I guess it’s supposed to be.” The contract was an easy way to keep fighters in line if they grew tired of their circumstances. Even the ones who’d wanted to fight in the beginning sometimes grew uneasy with the nonstop nature of the Pit — the way the contracts were set up were designed to ensure that no one left until the Pit was finished with them. And Felix wasn’t sure they’d ever be done with them. Too profitable, Leo said once.

They took the beer, though they didn’t drink it. Mostly, they just rolled the bottle in their hands, shrugging again at Samir’s question. There was an old desire to insist that that was ridiculous, to defend Leo, to say I was so stupid sometimes, or I didn’t understand the simplest things, or it was mostly my fault, anyway, I was always doing something wrong. Even now, with the bitter taste the end of the relationship left in their mouth, Felix wanted to insist that the blame was always theirs to carry. That everything that happened was deserved, that it would have gone differently had they been smarter or less clumsy or better, somehow.

“He got mad, sometimes,” they replied, both an answer and not one. It was too hard to say the truth point-blank; Felix was so much better at dancing around it and allowing people to come to the conclusions on their own. It was a big thing, for them, the phrasing of it. He got mad instead of I made him mad. One small step for man and all that. Felix lifted the beer to his lips and took a swig, though it was mostly just because they couldn’t be asked to explain further if their mouth was full.

They swallowed the swig as the next question settled, still looking anywhere but at Samir. “Depends on how, um… difficult I’m being,” they mumbled, mouth dry. “It was worse in the beginning. They used a taser a lot.” They’d seen the same weapon used on Razor, too, but they knew Samir didn’t want to hear about the wolf’s exploits. “A collar, for a while. But they let me out of it. Good behavior.” They smiled humorlessly, rolling the bottle between their hands again. “For the most part, they don’t need anything. The contract is… It hurts when you fight against it. It’s hard to even try, like it feels… unnatural. And when you manage it, it’s like…” They trailed off with a shrug. “It hurts,” they said again, because that was all there really was to it. “Even the jaguar. He felt it, I think, when he took control. It’s why he let me back in.”

—

Anger was a curse, he sometimes thought. An affliction much like his lycanthropy, a kind of sickness he could not be cured from. Samir didn’t tend to understand his rage, most of the time — the way it coiled and slipped out, took ahold of him. But this was different. This wasn’t an anger born from unprocessed grief or untreated trauma or whatever other explanation there might be. This was something righteous.

Because Felix had, in the short time he’d known them, proven that there was something good about them. Morality was a tough thing for the likes of him — he’d thrown his own in the wind, attempting to repent for his wrongdoings in ways that would never and could never mean enough. But Samir still thought that there was good and bad in the world and that, in a sense, some people deserved bad to be brought upon them for the bad they themself brought upon others.

Like him. He had told them, at the Pit, that he didn’t mind what they did to his wolf. He figured that whatever had to be done to restrain that beast, should be done. So sometimes he woke up with a kind of nerve pain that came from electric shock, sometimes the collar they slipped around him – with metal prongs pressed against a throat larger than his own human one – was still dangling around his neck when he woke, sometimes he watched how the other creatures were riled up before it was their turns and knew, deep down, that some of these things happened to Razor too.

But he was deserving. It wasn’t like he was masochistic, or at least he didn’t think so. He just thought of himself as something to be punished. The shame of waking in a cage was swallowed, as was the social media work. He was deserving.

Felix, however? Was not.

Yet here they sat, laying out what had happened. Some of it explicitly, but plenty of it unsaid — he got mad. Samir felt the implication hanging in the air, but didn’t prod or poke at it. There was enough to go off, wasn’t there? The methods of discipline. The treatment of the person across from him as cattle. At least Razor was a feral beast. (That’s how they liked him. That was, perhaps, how they intended to keep him.)

The beer did little to placate his restless spirit. Samir had tolerated all he saw at the Grit Pit, but now it seemed indigestible. Maybe he’d been wrong, to invite Felix here and lift the veils he refused to look through — but for now he didn’t reflect on that yet. He just sat with his rage.

“They’re better now, then? Less of that bullshit?” Samir caught himself, the meaning of those words. If Felix was more obedient now, they were just a better trained animal in the eyes of the Grit Pit. “Fuck, I mean — I know they do shit to the wolf, they’ve gotta. I signed for that, I don’t – don’t care. But you’re present.”

He took a swig. “Not trying to justify it, there’s nothing just about it. The contracts, I’ve noticed, whenever I fail to do my promotional work. Fucking hate that shit, and when I postpone it, don’t meet deadlines, I just — it starts with stomach pains, innocuous enough. Rox – she, um, brought me in – she explained it.” He ran a hand over his face. “But it’s, whatever. I’ll do it. But you —”

It was different. Samir took another sip from his bottle. “You want out. Right? I mean, fuck. You deserve to get out.” But what could he do, to help out Felix? Would he do it? He needed Corinna on his side, all the people at the Pit. Last thing he needed was for them to try and get ideas of provoking the wolf outside of the full moon. “I don’t know shit about this fae magic, though. But I know that. You deserve it. It’s not a place for you.” Unsaid, of course, was the fact that it was a place for him.

—

For most of Felix’s life, they’d been under the control of someone else. For years after their mother died, it was their father pulling the strings. He’d used grief and fear as a justification for all sorts of things, and maybe it was understandable. Felix had lost their mother, but their father had lost the love of his life and wasn’t that harder to swallow? Felix couldn’t imagine what it had felt like to him, couldn’t picture it. They had nothing to compare it to, really, nothing to help them understand. So maybe their father had done what he thought was necessary, but Felix wasn’t sure that made it okay. They weren’t sure any of this was okay.

The control the Pit had on them was a lot more restricting than what their father had exercised, of course, and so much less understandable. Sure, there’d been weeks where Felix wasn’t allowed to leave the house as a kid, but there’d always been a reason for it. Their father had seen someone near the cabin that he hadn’t had a chance to ‘take care of’ yet, or he’d heard a rumor that someone was looking for them, or something. It was never without cause.

The Pit was different. The Pit punished you sometimes just for being. Felix had seen it. Animals zapped for not being vicious enough, people who were hurt for losing a fight too badly or not badly enough. They’d seen Razor punished, too, for the smallest things. The staff seemed to enjoy riling the wolf up, and Felix hated it. The wolf wasn’t Samir, Samir insisted, but Felix still couldn’t stand to see him hurt. Not now that they knew the man behind the wolf, but really, not even when Samir had been a stranger. Felix wasn’t the type of person who could cope with seeing others in pain.

Hell of a job they’d gotten for themself, then. Wasn’t it?

“Better,” Felix replied, shrugging a shoulder. “When I’m doing what they want me to do.” Which wasn’t as often as it should have been. Felix had a bad habit of kicking against the goads, of fighting back even in small ways. It never amounted to anything, never earned them anything more than trouble, but at least it let them feel something through the shame. Like fighting back in the small ways made up for the people they hurt in the ring, like anything could.

They sighed at Samir’s anger, shaking their head. “I signed up for it, too,” they pointed out. They didn’t know what they were signing up for, sure — but had Samir? Had any of them? No one who signed those contracts did so with all the facts on their side. Otherwise, most of them wouldn’t have signed at all. “Most of us are present. That’s just how it goes, you know?” Some werewolves, like Samir, didn’t remember what happened in the ring. If Felix shifted fully in a fight, they wouldn’t remember it well, either. But most everyone else? They got a pretty clear picture of what went down, whether they wanted one or not.

Samir was angry, and Felix got that. They were angry sometimes, too. But mostly, they couldn’t do much more than sit in the pointlessness of that anger. What good would rage do? It wouldn’t free anyone from their contracts, wouldn’t stop the Pit from being what it was.

They nodded along as Samir talked about his experience with the contracts. They’d felt it too, of course. “Builds from there,” they said quietly, thinking of all the times they’d tried to leave before they really understood it. “After a while, it — It really hurts. Somebody told me, um, close to the start, that it can — It can kill you.” And that had terrified them. Felix didn’t want to die. Felix wanted anything but.

“I want out,” they confirmed with a small, sad smile. “But it’s not going to happen. The only way out is to drag someone else in. I couldn’t do that, man. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” And even if they tried, they weren’t sure Leo would let them. He liked the control so much more than their father ever had. “So what’s it matter, right? It is what it is.”

—

When anger left, there was not much left. In the face of anger there was opportunity after all: something about that burning emotion felt useful, like a weapon to be wielded or at least a push in the back. Anger had made Samir into the hard worker he was, after all. It was how he’d been able to juggle multiple jobs, how he’d looked after his siblings and kept himself afloat. It had been the burning force behind every movement, every struggle, the rock he’d clung to as an ocean of grief pooled around him.

Whenever he wasn’t angry, whenever he let go of that raging thing, he ended up hollow and empty. An echoing shell of a person. Whatever he was now, most days — someone who was pointless in his existence, who raged for his survival but saw no point it at the same time. He took good out of the world, spreading violence. He tried to put good back in, but fell short. He had nothing good to give here besides anger.

And so he offered Felix anger, because there was nothing else to give. To simply sit down and accept the reality of it all was the next logical step and eventually he would take it, but it was an ugly thing to offer. To tell the balam that they and he both just had to swallow it, all this bullshit thrown their way — well, it was true, but it wasn’t nice. So Samir was angry, because this was something to be angry about. Because to be angry in a situation like this was to be good, and he wanted to be good, despite all his previous failures to be exactly that.

There was an implication hiding within Felix words, one Samir hesitated to acknowledge for a moment. “But you don’t always?” He could understand that. He’d fought against former employers too, once he’d grown older and started understanding his rights. But those hadn’t been fae who used violence for profit.

“Sure, but under different circumstances. You didn’t have the full picture.” Had he had the full picture? Not entirely. Samir hadn’t known either, that he’d get trapped in this contract — but he didn’t mind it. He had wanted a solution to his issues and had found one, even if it was twisted and ugly and not honorable, either. “You were manipulated by some asshole. And yeah, shit. I know. I assumed maybe they went less hard on those who had more … awareness, I guess.”

He was quiet for a moment at that revelation, jaw working against itself as his teeth clenched. Fuck this shit. He bristled, got up, ripped another beer from the fridge and slammed it shut. So that was it, then: you had to stay or die. You had to bring someone else in to get out, condemn them too. No retirement plan, because the chance was big you were going to die in the ring. And maybe he deserved that, but not all of them. Not Felix.

Samir slammed the bottle open and sat down again, leaving his anger at the kitchen counter as he tried to compose himself across from Felix. “Yeah. Sure, it is what it is. Fucking seems like it. I wish I knew something we could do, something — shit, that would make it so you’ve not signed your life away to … fucking die in there.” Or die trying to get out. “I’ll — whatever, I’ll try and think, right? Of something.” Would he go against Corinna and her employees, the ones that had granted him the cage he had desired so desperately? He wasn’t sure. He wanted to be good, but he also wanted to be restrained.

—

“I used to do it more. Fight back, I mean.” It felt like the kind of confession that ought to be made in a wooden box, with a priest listening in; like the kind of thing you needed to seek redemption for, to beg forgiveness. They used to fight harder, used to be less complacent. They’d spent the first few days of their contract running, searching for their father or their siblings or anyone who might have been able to help them like a child turning to grown ups when they’d gotten themself in too deep, like something prodigal.

But it hurt. It always hurt. The contract tightened a noose around their throat, made it hard to breathe, and the punishments that waited for them when they finally returned to the Pit with their tail between their legs were no less painful. We have to set an example, Leo told them once, looking almost apologetic as he administered the retribution Felix had earned with their stubbornness. People can’t think that they can get away with this. You can’t think that you can get away with this.

So they fought back less, as time went on. In smaller ways. Acts of rebellion became small things. He showed up to work late instead of not at all, delivered less cinematic injuries to the opponents they faced in the ring, made fights a little less exciting in ways that weren’t quite as obviously intentional as they could have been. They thought their handlers in the Pit probably knew about it, and that made them feel like a little more of a coward. Like they were being placated, their ‘rebellion’ so small that it was allowed to continue. They wanted to do more. They wanted to be brave. They’d just… forgotten how, somewhere along the way.

And here was Samir, brave without even knowing it. Because it did take bravery, didn’t it, to rage on someone else’s behalf? It took a boldness, a heroic streak. It was easy to be angry for yourself and your circumstances, but it was harder to be angry for someone else. Felix and Samir didn’t even know one another that well, and still the anger burned. It was worth a lot. It was admirable, even if Felix thought it was also wasted.

“Nobody has the full picture, Samir,” they said softly. “Did you? Did they tell you everything before you signed?” He knew the answer. If the people behind the Pit were honest, no one would ever sign their contracts. Not even Samir, who claimed to need them. “I was… It was my own fault. What happened. I should have known better. Should have seen it.” They were stupid and they were in love and they’d let that turn them into… whatever they were now. Something different. Something worse. Something they didn’t want to be.

Samir went into the kitchen, and Felix watched him go. They watched him carry an anger that was not for himself, contemplated how it felt to be the reason for it without being the source. Leo’s anger had always been terrifying. Their father’s, too. Samir’s seemed different, somehow. Less suffocating, less of a threat. A dangerous thing, sure, but not to Felix.

They offered the werewolf a small, helpless shrug. What more could they do? What more could any of them do? “For, um… For what it’s worth? You’ve already helped me a lot just by listening. Nobody’s ever really listened before.” They’d been so isolated for so long, and they were only just now beginning to crawl out of that isolation. It felt better than they’d thought it would. “So, um… Thanks. Really. Thank you for listening.”

—

It was a sad statement. The fact that Felix used to, the past tense of it all. The way that they had found cruel reason to stop and cease their fight. Samir wasn’t good at being sad, though, and never had been. He was a person of action, someone motivated and moved by doing what was needed and could be done. But there was no solution to this problem, no clear way to solve the issue. There was nothing to be done, the pair of them tied down by words and contract, like verbal chains binding them down.

So he just felt anger and emptiness. Rolling over and taking it was easier when it was just he who was in a bad spot because of this. “I guess it is smarter to play by their rules. The fucking rules, though, they’re all fucked.” And they could most likely be changed and messed with, their situations and positions altered to fit their needs and wants. Samir wanted to spit on it all. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion. He wanted what he always wanted, which was a solution to a problem that could not and would not be solved.

Pointless, aimless anger it was. As always. The beer helped, the coolness of the glass against his palms. He started messing with the label, as if destroying that would help him in any kind of way. He shrugged at Felix’ question. “No, of course not. Fucking typical, of course, but it’s … it’s whatever, you know. I don’t —” care. He didn’t. Not about what happened to him there. Not whether he’d die there. It was a fate fitting for the fates he’d given others.

“Don’t say that shit. Neither of us are to blame for those shitty contracts, for whatever way we were pushed into it. I might not care as much about how it — what if means for me, but shit, you didn’t know. Neither did I. Yeah? Give yourself whatever grace you’re willing to give me.” It was wasted on him, anyway. He took a long pull from his beer, whose label was half torn off now. It was an ugly display. He’d light a cigarette, but his tense relation with his downstairs neighbors kept him from doing so.

When Felix told him that he’d somehow helped them, Samir felt strange. It was like coming back into whoever he had been a lifetime ago, that person who acted so dutifully and with the knowledge that he was most tolerable when useful. He was glad for it. “Well, then maybe that’s what we can do, yeah? Listen to each other. In other shit jobs I’ve had, I’ve learned that’s crucial.”

He looked into his living room, then back at Felix. “Maybe we should do something else now, though. You any good at Call of Duty? I’ve got FIFA too.” It’d be nice to just shoot the shit and do something to numb his brain, which was working angry over hours. “Could just hang for a bit?”

—

Play by their rules. Felix wondered how long you could do that before you became exactly what they wanted you to be, before you traded yourself for compliance. There wasn’t much choice in the matter. They knew that. They were angry at their situation, they hated being a part of it, they wanted out, but more than anything else, they didn’t want to die. It made them something of a coward, they thought; a braver person would have fought until their last breath, would have kicked and screamed and sacrificed their own life if it meant they could have their freedom. But Felix didn’t know how to be brave anymore. Felix only knew how to be alive. That was all.

They nodded as Samir confirmed what they already knew. The Grit Pit was a system built to be predatory. It trapped its fighters in unwinnable situations without telling them the rules, gave them just enough rope to hang themselves with. Samir didn’t deserve the bind holding him in place, and maybe Felix didn’t, either. Maybe none of them did. But what did it matter? The world cared so little about what people deserved. People got what they got, in the end. There was no justice but the justice you made for yourself.

“Harder than it sounds,” they admitted with a tight smile. It was easier for them to look at Samir’s situation and see how he’d been fooled. Samir had been desperate, had wanted a way to control the wolf that he shifted into once a month without fail, without say. Felix had been… an idiot in love, really. So desperate for things with Leo to be real that he’d tied a blindfold over his own eyes, tightened the cuffs on their own wrists. It was different, wasn’t it? They were more at fault than Samir was.

But they still didn’t think that meant they deserved it, sometimes. Not all the time — there were still nights they sat in the locker room with their knuckles aching and their heart pounding and someone else’s blood on their clothes and felt sure that the life they led and hated was one they’d earned through their own mistakes — but sometimes, at least. Maybe that was better than nothing.

“Listen to each other,” Felix agreed with a small smile. “I can do that.” They relaxed a little at the mention of video games, nodding their head. “Yeah,” they agreed. “Yeah, I’m good at Call of Duty. Probably gonna kick your ass, man.” The air was still heavy. Their chest was still tight. But they weren’t alone. Maybe that meant something, too. Maybe it had to.

#felix.#the chains that bind.#threads.

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nightmaretist · 1 year

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TIMING: Pre-goo PARTIES: Felix @recoveringdreamer & Inge @nightmaretist LOCATION: Inge's home, The Vending Machine SUMMARY: After their conversation online, Felix shows up to return Inge's chair. She asks him to show her the vending machine it supposedly came out of, and they guiltily oblige. CONTENT WARNINGS: Parental death mentions,

They stole a chair. They stole a chair! From a little old lady! And she was mad about it! Her threat to call the police if they didn’t return the chair ASAP had Felix scrambling, collecting the wooden chair from where he’d stashed it in the spare bedroom and practically sprinting it to his truck. At first, they put it in the truckbed, but they immediately felt bad for this, too. What if it fell out? What if it got rained on? They couldn’t steal a little old lady’s chair and return it damaged! The end result was Felix, driving down the road with the chair precariously stashed in the front seat of the truck, barely leaving them any elbow room to speak of.

The drive was a pretty short one, all things considered; they were speeding, and the town was small. They got to the address the little old lady had provided in record time, fumbling as they struggled to remove the chair from the truck without damaging it. When they finally knocked on the door, Felix was a little out of breath.

A woman answered, and their brow furrowed. She didn’t look like a little old lady. “Um, hi. I’m looking for, uh — an old lady? She said she lives here. She, uh, I, I have her chair. I didn’t steal it, but I found it. And I really wanted to get it back to her. Do you — Do you live with your grandmother? Or something? Maybe an aunt?”

—

Truth be told, Inge wasn’t sure if her trolling of the person-who-got-a-random-chair was to lead to any real world results. These things were done without consideration of consequence or impact on the people she talked to. Following ones whims and impulses was so delightfully easy online: to lie for fun was just something she did. Just because.

So when she heard someone knock on the door, she was somewhat surprised but also strangely delighted. Was this cruel? Perhaps. But it wasn’t crueler than the other things she got up to. The nightmares. The scams. The theft. What was a little messing around with a stranger? Besides, the chair seemed to be somewhat pretty. Maybe she could give it some kind of purpose in her house, or at least repurpose it for some kind of artwork.

She opened the door, looking at the other and the chair they brought. Right. Old lady. Technically true, but appearance-wise Inge still didn’t look a day older than thirty three. “Oh, it’s you. The thief. She’s been in a state for such a long time ever since that chair went missing, you know? Couldn’t even get to the door to look you in the eye.” She stepped down one step of her front door. “My mother, actually. Now, I think you owe me an explanation?”

—

“I’m not a thief!” The words tumbled out, desperation clinging to each syllable. What if she didn’t believe them? What if she called the police? Could Felix be arrested for buying the chair from the vending machine? The idea made them sweat. The Grit Pit wouldn’t take kindly to Felix getting themself thrown behind bars. Neither would the jaguar, for that matter. One of the two would remove them from a cell, and neither option was one they particularly liked. Neither option would allow for no one to get hurt.

God, and the woman’s mother was in a state? Upset about her missing chair? Even though they hadn’t stolen it, hadn’t intentionally come into possession of it at all, Felix felt an overwhelming guilt at the thought. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I found it outside a pawn shop. Did someone take it? I can help you find out who. But I want — I’d really like to return it to her. To explain what happened.” But the mother wouldn’t want to speak to them, would she? Maybe explaining to the daughter was their best bet here. She could pass word along.

“It was in a vending machine,” they blurted. “I know that sounds like a lie, I know. It isn’t, though, I swear it’s not. It’s the truth. I was trying to buy some chips and it spat out the chair instead and I knew it must have belonged to someone and that’s why I posted about it online. To return it. But I don’t know how it got into the vending machine.”

—

Maybe they were a thief. Maybe they weren’t. In a town like Wicked’s Rest, both things were extremely plausible — the question was, however, if Inge cared about the other’s innocence. She did not. She did care about pulling their leg, though, and making the bored hum in her head silent. “That is exactly what a thief might say! Maybe you’re one with a conscience? Do you feel bad about what you stole? Returning your treasures?” Dear baby Jesus, maybe she should get into acting.

Now here was a bit of an issue, though: they wanted to see her mother. Inge’s mother was very much dead, however. Had been for over a decade, even. (Not a topic worth discussing or thinking about to her, and yet her mind seemed adamant to think of her mother for a second. The funeral she never attended. Some distant childhood memory.) “No, that is simply not possible. Her mind is frail enough as is, and to be faced with you now after all the stress of losing the chair?” She shook her head. “No. You are not welcome in her home.”

They just kept talking, falling over the words that fell from their mouth and she witnessed it, figuring that chairs might as well be in vending machines in this town. Funny. She wanted to see this vending machine. “That is the worst possible excuse you could have come up with. Outside a pawn shop? Fine, but a vending machine? Spitting out a chair? Do you hear yourself? Do you feel alright?”

—

“I didn’t! I’m not!” It was silly, the panic thrumming in their chest. Felix was used to arguments they couldn’t win. Back when they’d been with Leo, every conversation had dissolved into something like this. Felix insisted that they had or hadn’t done something, and Leo sneered and told them they were wrong. They were misremembering, they were lying, they didn’t know what they were talking about. It still happened, even now, when they ran into their ex or one of his friends at the Grit Pit. And every time, it filled them with this same quiet anxiety.

It was just… pretty stupid to feel that way about a stranger insisting they’d stolen a chair.

But they were desperate, aching with the idea that some frail old lady was missing her chair because someone had taken it, sick with the thought that she assumed it was Felix. They weren’t a thief. They didn’t steal, tried not to lie unless it was strictly necessary. But why would this stranger believe them? Why would anyone? Half the time, Felix didn’t even believe himself, even when he knew he was telling the truth. “Okay. That’s okay. Um, can you just — You’ll tell her I’m sorry? I didn’t steal her chair. I promise I didn’t.”

But their excuse, while true, was thin and unrealistic and stupid. Felix shrunk into themself a little, swallowing. “I know. I know it sounds crazy, I know. But it’s — It really happened. I could — I can show you the vending machine, just — I swear, I swear it’s true. I know it is. I saw it.” They were half trying to convince themself now.

—

Either they were a very good liar or they really weren’t a thief — Inge assumed it was the latter, and for that she thought herself rather impactful. Amusement was easily ignored, though, swallowed so her face could remain as it should be: as if she was angry. She thought the people her age who hadn’t been blessed with immortality, the way they held themselves with indignation against people who couldn’t help it. “I hope you can understand why it’s hard for me to believe anything you say right now.”

She nodded. Inge would definitely tell her very-dead, buried-a-continent-away mother that this person hadn’t meant to upset her. “Yes. She will be glad to know that the chair is back. It seems undamaged, too, at least. But that’s just a small comfort.” The chair didn’t look too bad. Maybe it would look nice with the rest of her mismatched assortment of furniture. Maybe she’d put it back wherever he’d gotten it from. That could be fun. “I’ll tell her. She will hopefully be okay now.”

There was a reason, of course, why she did these things. Boredom, first and foremost — the world outside of dreams was so drab, so boring, so lacking in control. But she didn’t call it escapism: to Inge, this was just spontaneous behavior. A woman moved by whim. So when the other went on and on about this vending machine, she crossed her arms, raised a brow. “Sure. Give me the chair and then take me to it. I’ll see it when I believe it.” Well, she did believe it, but she really wanted to see it.

—

They did, of course, understand why she was struggling to believe them. That was the hardest part. It was so easy to get into Felix’s head, to make them doubt even the things they knew to be true. Leo had used it to his advantage, had molded their thoughts like Playdough, had so effortlessly isolated them by playing on old insecurities and convincing them that there was nothing about them worth befriending to begin with. This woman, at least, was angry for an understandable reason. Her mother was distraught, and Felix’s story didn’t add up. They wouldn’t have believed it, either. They barely believed themself now, and they knew they were telling the truth.

“Okay.” Their voice was small, and they nodded. “Thank you.” He wanted to apologize to the old woman in person, but he understood why it wasn’t allowed. No one wanted to let a thief into their home, to let them speak with their elderly mother. The woman was just being a good daughter, just trying to protect someone who’d already been victimized by whatever had snatched up her chair and warped time and space to put it inside that vending machine. (Okay, just space. Time probably hadn’t been involved. But ‘time and space’ sounded cooler, didn’t it?)

At least she seemed open to attempting to believe them. Nodding eagerly, Felix handed her the chair. “I, um, I can wait here for you to put it inside. Or in my truck. I’ll wait in my truck. That way I’m not standing on your porch.” Before she could respond, he ran to said truck, sliding into the driver’s seat and resting his head against the steering wheel. It’d be better, wouldn’t it? Once she saw the vending machine and knew they weren’t lying, it’d be better. The passenger’s door opened and they straightened, forcing a smile. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s roll?”

—

She took the chair, carrying it into her home and taking no time to reflect on her cruelty or lack of remorse. No, the main thing on Inge’s mind was whether she should now raise her voice and pretend to be talking to her elderly mother, to really bring it home. It seemed a little too ridiculous though, she found, and thus she was quiet as she plopped the chair into the kitchen among other chairs and gave it a little pat as if to welcome it home.

Inge took her bag and keys, shoving her feet in a pair of summery shoes and moving back outside. Eyes fell on the other with their head against the steering wheel, and she almost wished she could eat fear and misery when awake. It would make life even more enjoyable. She also thought the other should maybe grow some thicker skin: upsetting elderly ladies (even if fictional inventions of a bored old woman who didn’t look old) was an inevitable part of life. To feel so badly … well, that was their fault, hardly her own.

She nodded, “Yes, let’s roll.” As the other started the car, Inge got a little more comfortable in her seat, leaning forward to turn on the car radio. Maybe to make the silence more tolerable, or maybe just to be a bit of a pest. She looked sideways at them. “This better not be some kind of ploy …” Ironic. “I don’t tend to get into cars with strangers.”

—

She fiddled with the radio, and Felix let her. They probably owed her that much, probably owed her a little more. After all, upsetting their mother, even unintentionally and through no fault of his own, wasn’t great. Felix knew how upset he’d have been if someone upset his mother, back when they had her. (As for upsetting his father… well. That one made him less upset, more afraid. Felix’s dad was a little more brutal when upset.)

Gripping the steering wheel, Felix focused on the road outside the windshield. The last thing he wanted to do was drive poorly and make things worse, so they were on their best behavior as they moved down the street. Not one mile over the speed limit, full stops at every stop sign. They glanced over as the woman spoke, tensing again.

“No! Not a ploy, I promise.” Promises were dangerous to make, and Felix had learned that the hard way. Still, they couldn’t cut the word from their vocabulary. Or thanks. They were bad at this. They knew that. They were bad at most things. “There really is a vending machine. I’ll show you. Okay? We can figure out why your mom’s chair was in there.”

—

She flicked through numerous channels, passing pop she didn’t like, something dance-y she didn’t like, way too many men talking about current events and then something tolerable enough. Inge dropped the volume so there would still be enough room for them to talk, because the other did seem quite verbose and keen on explaining themself with their stammered words.

Maybe she should feel bad, but this was so very inconsequential. Much like the dreams she delivered to people, the ramifications of it were hardly palpable — it was a mere burst of anxiety through the stranger’s nervous system, something that was part of the human experience. And so she sat easily, watching the town pass them by before looking at the other again.

“Well, I’ll trust you, then,” she said, her tone grave. It wasn’t like she expected the other to do anything – though that kind of assumption had and would get her in hot water from time to time – but it seemed warranted to assume the worst. Inge nodded decisively. “Alright, Sherlock, we shall figure it out together. Godspeed.” And with the radio playing some nice classic rock, the car pulled through town, to wherever their destination was to be.

—

The radio danced through several stations, playing half-familiar songs and unfamiliar voices. None of them seemed to satisfy the woman, and Felix wondered if anything would. If they were wasting their breath here, if there was no explanation that would be fitting enough to earn them forgiveness. They thought they deserved to be forgiven — they hadn’t intentionally done anything wrong — but that wasn’t on them to decide, was it?

Still, there was a sense of relief when the woman agreed to trust them. Like she’d given them something, like that ‘trust’ meant that they were off the hook. They doubted it was the case. After all, the vending machine could very well stop working. That’d be just Felix’s luck, really — going to prove to a stranger that they’d been telling the truth only to have fate make a liar of them instead.

“Okay,” they sighed. “Thank you. We’ll figure it out. And, um, we can see if any of your mom’s other stuff is in there?” Was that something she was worried about? If her mother’s chair had been stuffed in a vending machine, odds were that other items belonging to her might have made their way inside as well, right? Maybe Felix could still be helpful, still be useful. They drove in silence for a little while before finally turning into the parking lot for the pawn shop and putting the truck in park. “Okay. Here we are. See, that’s the vending machine.” It looked unassuming enough, even now.

—

It was almost sad, to feel the tenseness of the other. Inge had been a fretful woman once, tight with anxieties and worries and terror, living life with fear in her system. But she had died and transformed into something better, something improved — and now she lived the way she thought everyone should. For herself and her whims and wants. Not ruled by the things that seemed to plague the other.

As they mentioned her mother again, and any other potential things of her in the vending machine, she nodded. It was getting a little ridiculous, but that wouldn’t stop Inge. She moved through dreams on the near-nightly, so she knew ridiculous. Whenever reality felt a little bit like a fever dream, she preferred it. It was dull, often. “Maybe. She has been missing some other things. Very strange indeed. She blamed the crystals until you showed up.” Lies were told with the largest ease.

They ended up near the pawn shop, where Inge had come nosing once or twice before. She’d sold a few things, too — bits and pieces nicked from bedrooms that needed no further comment. She didn’t look at the store though, more interested by the vending machine. “And you were saying … a chair came out of that?” It was hard to believe by natural standards, but forty years of immortality had taught Inge to not be skeptical. She got out of the car, approaching the thing. “Well, I — I find it hard to believe. Can you show me what you did?”

—

“Maybe the crystals do have something to do with it? Um, it could be connected.” In all honesty, Felix had been steering clear of the crystals. One of the guys at work had evidently touched one at one point or another, and it hadn’t ended well for him. Voices in his head, he’d claimed. Someone else trying to take over. Distractions like that weren’t particularly good in their line of work; the fighter in question had let it overtake him in the midst of a fight. Felix hadn’t seen him since, but rumors were swirling around the Pit. Some said he was dead, others claimed he’d been injured badly enough to be deemed so useless he was released from his contract. Felix wasn’t sure which was worse.

Adamantly, Felix nodded. “It did!” They insisted. “Look, I — I know it sounds weird. But you have to know that weird stuff happens in this town, right?” Sure, there were some people in Wicked’s Rest that lived with their heads in the sand, but she’d mentioned the crystals in a way that didn’t seem to imply she thought it was crazy that they might be involved in some of the strange happenstances here, so maybe that meant her mind was open to other things, too. Either way, Felix intended to prove their case.

Climbing out of the truck, they approached the vending machine and waved for the woman to follow them. Once in front of it, they fished around in their pocket. Four quarters, covered in lint, rested in the palm of their hand. “Okay,” they murmured, feeding the quarters into the machine one by one. “Here goes. Uh…” They craned their neck, inspecting the numbers on the machine and finding the chips they’d spent the better part of a day trying and failing to purchase. “B4. Here we go.” Buttons were pressed. The machine whirred to life. Something dropped into the slot. Felix reached a hand into the slot and pulled out…

A teal pasta strainer.

They held it up triumphantly. “See! See! It’s not chips.”

—

The crystals were the perfect, pretty scapegoat. If Inge was less of a survivor with less experience of not dying for a second time, she would have touched them by now. She just dreamed of getting her hands on them somehow, now, for aesthetical purposes. “It could all be connected indeed,” she said, nodding. “The crystals have been a real issue. Pretty, though.” At their assessment of strange things happening in this town she almost laughed, but in stead she just nodded. “This place does seem to attract oddities. But still … your story seems out there. I’ve never heard of such a thing at all.”

She followed the other, curiously eyeing the very-normal looking vending machine. The only thing to be said against it was that it looked a little old, maybe. Weathered, which could be explained by the fact that it was standing outside in a town like Wicked’s Rest. Inge raised her eyebrows at Felix, watching them toss in coins. “This seems like a very normal machine,” she pointed out, but she almost found herself holding her breath in anticipation.

When it whirred to life, Inge didn’t see a bag of chips move forward and fall ungraciously. There was still a thud, though, and Felix bend to get the not-chips out. Verrek! A pasta strainer. She moved closer, looking at it with wide eyes. She had to focus to hide her amusement, because this was ridiculous in a way that affected her more than most things did these days. “No way,” she said. “How does that make sense? How can that — I think …” She squinted. “I think I know that pasta strainer. I think my mother used to – how, what?!”

She’d never seen the thing before. Inge dug into her bag, producing her wallet and pulling out some coins too. “Is it just with the chips, or with everything?”

—

“They are pretty,” Felix agreed. They could understand why people had been drawn to them, why they touched them without thinking. Had Felix still been living in the woods with their family instead of living in town and earning all the terrible experiences that came with that, they might have touched one themself by now. For once, they were a little grateful that they’d had such bad luck. Bad luck, after all, taught a person a few things. “I know it sounds weird. But I swear, I’m not lying.” And they’d prove it, too.

She was right to doubt the story as they approached the machine, of course. It didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary at all, didn’t look like the kind of thing anyone should suspect of… being odd. But Felix had seen firsthand what the machine could do, and they were more than willing to show this woman, too. They needed her to know that they hadn’t stolen anything from her mother, not intentionally. It was just more of that bad luck. That was all.

As they held up the pasta strainer, a rare sense of triumph washed over them. The woman seemed shocked, but she had to believe them now. Hesitantly, Felix held the pasta strainer out for her to take. “Do you think… it’s all your mom’s stuff?” That would be a cruel trick, wouldn’t it? Someone enchanting this vending machine to rob one specific old lady blind. Of course, the cruelty didn’t mean it was false. If anything, that probably made it more likely to be true.

Blinking, Felix looked back to the machine. “Uh… I don’t know,” they admitted. “I only tried the chips. I really wanted some.” They’d tried the chips about thirty times, but it had never occurred to them to press… any other combination of buttons. “Should we try something else, do you think?” They were in this together now, after all.

—

The world was filled to the brim with inexplicable things, some more endearing than others. Inge had learned of some of them through Sanne, but plenty had been left to discover. Not even her sire had known all the world had to offer, because the world was ever changing. Supernatural and otherwise, there was always more, different, other.

This was inexplicable, but it was exciting. Some kind of magic. Inge almost regretted her debauchery, how she’d slipped herself into another lie in favor of just being intrigued and excited. It would be hard to sell her lies if she started jumping up and down and clapping, after all, and so she contained herself as she took the strainer. Tapping it with her nails, she considered it, wondering if this was new or also used. It seemed to be the latter.

“I don’t … know. I’m not sure if she’s missing a lot. She’s a bit of a hoarder, you know?” She turned the strainer upside down. She wasn’t sure where to put it, so just placed it on the floor as she gathered her coins and tossed them in. “Definitely we should.” She pushed the two buttons corresponding to a candy bar of sorts.

In stead of that dropping down, though, the flap whipped open violently as the machine seemingly spat out a vacuum cleaner. Inge jumped aside as not to be hit by the thing. “What the actual —” She squinted. “Is that a fucking Dyson?”

—

It made sense, Felix thought, that a strainer might be more difficult to notice missing than a chair. The strainer was a pretty recognizable one — the color was bright and gaudy — but it might not be used often enough in the woman’s presence for her to recognize it definitively on sight. Chairs were used a lot more often, and out in the open instead of tucked away in a cabinet when no one was actively sitting on them.

Still, it was a little disappointing that she didn’t know if the pasta strainer belonged to her mother or not. If it had, after all, it would have been another clue in the mystery. Another piece of the puzzle, even if it wouldn’t have given them the whole picture. Felix wasn’t great at solving mysteries, but they were curious. They wanted to know the why behind the vending machine just as much as the next person.

Maybe the best way to do that was to keep testing. Felix held their breath as the woman poked at the buttons, wondering what might happen. This, too, would offer more clues. A different combination of buttons, a different hand pressing them. If it was only Felix yielding the results, or only the chips that spat out something else, that would be… weird. A little concerning, in the case of the former. Felix didn’t want to be a vending machine whisperer.

But no candy bar dropped into the slot. Instead, the machine spat out something tall and silver and — was that a vacuum? Felix reached out, poking it. Yeah. That was a Dyson. “It looks old,” they commented. “Is it, um — Is it your mom’s?”

—

Inge, as far as vacuum cleaners went, preferred a Miele. Though she was no longer a housewife whose days were filled with housework and housekeeping, she still had her opinions when it came to things like this. Cleaning was boring! It had to be done with the best tools. (Or by someone she paid a fair wage, of course.)

Now the main question wasn’t whether she liked a Dyson or not, but whether she should claim it was her mother’s. Inge had no need for a free vacuum cleaner, but the entire sham she had going on with this stranger was deeply amusing. And so she didn’t think on it very long, crouching near the vacuum cleaner and inspecting it before nodding.

“Absolutely hers. Outdated thing, makes a horrid noise. I — well, that explains all the dust bunnies.” Inge shook her head in disbelief before rising to her full height again. She stared at the vending machine, as if that would give her any answers if she just looked hard enough. It didn’t, because this was just one of those things that didn’t need an explanation.

She looked at Felix, thought for a moment of her mother. How she would have hated this, if she were alive! The sheer notion of magic was something she despised: Inge and her siblings had never been allowed to read books with any of it in them. It went against their teachings. How dull. “So someone … must have targeted my dear old mother, no? Stealing her things, hiding them in plain sight … I don’t get it.” There was nothing to get. All of this was a lie.

—

So the vacuum was her mother’s, too. That was another clue to the case. Felix grabbed the vacuum and thrust it out towards her, a little overeager. She had to see now, didn’t she, that they weren’t responsible for this? That they were just as confused as she was? They weren’t a thief. They hadn’t stolen her mother’s chair any more than they’d stolen the vacuum she’d just watched fall from the vending machine! Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t Felix’s fault. They were a bystander.

“Um, maybe you could get her one of those… The robots, that vacuum by themselves. For the dust bunnies. I think that would probably be a lot easier than her trying to use this. If — If she’s old.” She had to be, didn’t she? To have a child as old as Inge? Not that Inge was elderly or anything, but old enough that her mother must have been pushing sixty or seventy, and it was harder for humans to get around at that age. She shouldn’t be vacuuming. The Dyson was heavy, too. It was a bad mix.

Felix shifted at the question, suddenly uncomfortable with the implication. They weren’t responsible for this, but someone must be. Right? Someone had filled this machine with objects they’d stolen from Inge’s mother, for one reason or another. A prank? Some kind of vengeance? “Does, uh… Does your mother have any… enemies?” That was a thing people asked in cop shows. Their sister had been so into Criminal Minds before they moved out to the woods where cable TV became a thing of the past. They were always asking about enemies.

—

They pushed the vacuum into her hands and Inge didn’t know what else to do but simply take it, staring down at it as if it was an object she did know. Maybe she’d sell it on Marketplace. Or donate it somewhere. Whatever she felt like, because she definitely didn’t need another vacuum cleaner, even if she’d gotten herself into a situation where she suddenly had a second one that supposedly belonged to her dead mother. Oh, Maria was rolling over in her grave at these lies!

“Ah, yes, maybe I should. She’s still quite mobile, though! Not that old, only in her fifties …” Did she look that old, that she’d have a parent that was ancient? Inge checked her reflection in the vending machine, but it didn’t offer a lot of feedback as she mostly as candy bars. “She likes her dyson very much.”

The other’s question was endearing. They were endearing, with that fretful and anxious nature and need to please. Inge didn’t often considering innocence endearing, but in this case it was. “Oh, I mean … she’s a crotchety senior, you know. Youths describe her as a Karen sometimes,” she said, frowning. Sometimes people called her a Karen, which she found incredibly insulting. “But what kind of enemy would do such a thing, right? It’s ridiculous. It’s … beyond ridiculous! Even if she is a rude customer or yells at her neighbor’s dog sometimes, she doesn’t deserve this, does she?”

—

“Her fifties?” Felix blinked, looking at the woman in front of them. How old was she? They’d been operating under the assumption that she was a bit older than them based on how she spoke and carried herself, but maybe that was rude. Maybe she was actually just their age. But their father was older than his fifties, wasn’t he? But, wait, Felix had older siblings. Maybe this woman was the oldest? Or an only child.

The balam’s mind was spinning with possibilities, anxiety eating away at them as they wondered if, perhaps, they’d been offensive in their assumptions. Bad enough that she’d come into this thinking they were the kind of person who stole from old ladies — or, rather, ladies in their fifties, apparently — now she probably thought they were trying to insult her, too! Looking to correct, Felix nodded. “Her fifties! Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I’m glad she’ll get her Dyson back, then.”

But… now she was describing her mother as a crotchety senior? Was fifties a senior? Didn’t you have to be sixty-five to qualify for the senior discount? Again, Felix’s head was spinning with confusion, but that wasn’t really a rare occurrence. They shifted as the woman spoke of some of her mother’s behavior, because… Well, Felix didn’t think someone deserved to have all their belongings stolen and put in a vending machine for those things, but they also couldn’t, in good conscience, agree with being a rude customer or yelling at a dog. “Maybe you should hire a detective,” they said, quickly avoiding the question. “To find out who did it. Also, uh, to find out how?”

—

“Yes. She was quite young when she had me,” Inge said. As if it was so hard to believe! She tried to swallow her offense, tried to remind herself that she was technically nearly eighty and that maybe it was her emotional age that made her seem older to this person. “In her twenties. And I’m in my early thirties. So, you see. That makes her in her fifties. Simple mathematics.”

Of course, her lies didn’t fully hold up. Inge was saying what was most interesting, her tale not held together tightly because this wasn’t a situation where her dishonesties had to be convincing. This was recreational lying, more than anything. Sure, she got some free household articles out of it, but she didn’t have to keep up the farce in order to survive or gain a few thousand dollars. “I’m glad too.”

She took the vacuum cleaner, wondering how much money she’d be able to get for it. If she was a kinder person, she’d just donate it, but Inge – even in her state of financial stability – was a frugal person who wanted more. Life was uncertain for her kind, was it not? One day soon, a hunter might actually chase her out of town, and she’d lose plenty of her possessions — it had happened before, would happen again. Having a large financial buffer was necessary for her to feel at peace. “Sure,” she said in answer to the other’s suggestion. “They’ll think I’m crazy, but sure. I think I’ve seen enough, though. I should go back to her.” Her poor mother, all alone.

—

Well, now Felix felt a little embarrassed. They were pretty sure they’d upset her, which was totally understandable because they had implied that she was old, kind of, and she wasn’t. Thirties wasn’t old! Felix had just entered their thirties, and they didn’t feel old. Most days, they still felt like a kid with no idea what they were doing. They offered the woman an apologetic smile, nodding their head adamantly. “Right, of course. I’m, uh… I’m just really bad at math. That’s all.”

Hopefully that would ensure that she wasn’t too angry at them. She had seemed to imply that her mother was older, but… Felix had probably just misunderstood, right? He’d never been the sharpest crayon in the box. Everyone always said so. Easily confused, bad at picking things up on the first go round, bad at following a conversation when it was in progress… This had to be their mistake rather than hers.

“Uh, right.” Felix shifted, rubbing the back of their neck sheepishly. They felt guilty for it, but they were relieved when she said she’d seen enough and wanted to go. The conversation felt like a minefield that he wasn’t skilled enough to navigate, and keeping up the attempts was exhausting. “I can give you a ride back to your house! Um, do you want to put the vacuum in the back of my truck?”

—

“I’ll say,” Inge said, trying not to start an indignant fight. It had been quite enough drama for one afternoon, and she didn’t want to make it seem like she was the one in the wrong here by overreacting once more. She did know what she was doing, after all, by convincing the other of untruths and lies and acting as if she was very concerned for her mother when she was not. Her offense about her appearing old was real — but of course, only her own lies were to blame. (This she did fail to recognize.)

The offer to ride her back was sweet. This Felix was sweet, a little too sweet for their own good. Even with their innocence proven, they were willing to help her out and Inge wondered how he ever got anything done in life, if he was so concerned with others. “A ride would be great. Walking home with this thing would be a nightmare.” Actually, she was the nightmare.

She placed the vacuum in the back of the car and got in, giving the other a look of appreciation. It was not even entirely feigned. Inge could appreciate kindness, especially when directed at her. “Very much appreciated.” Though she seriously doubted the other was a fae, one could never be careful enough.

—

They were relieved that she’d accepted the offer of a ride. The idea of her walking home lugging the vacuum, after everything, felt fundamentally unfair. She didn’t deserve it. And it wasn’t as if Felix had anyplace to be; their shift didn’t start for hours, and they had no desire to get to the Pit early.

So, they helped her load the vacuum in the back of their truck. They placed the pasta strainer carefully under the seat and made a mental note not to forget about it when they dropped her off. They offered her a small smile, nodding their head at her appreciation. It was nice to be appreciated, even if they were only doing what they figured anyone would do.

The ride back to her mother’s house was quiet, but that was all right. Less conversation meant less chance for Felix to embarrass themself. And when she refused, again, to let him meet her mother, Felix wasn’t offended. They were just happy to help a not-old woman get her vacuum back.

All in a day’s work, right?

#felix.#felix sucks!#threads.

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