#but i do feel like a deflated balloon with broken limbs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-secondhand-sorrow · 4 years

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growth in the grey areas

The @sincerely-us gift exchange is always SO much fun to participate in, and I’m so happy to share my gift on this summer’s holideh. As a fun little surprise for @thatfriendlyanon... we are 2 for 2! thank you for your gorgeous prompts and I hope I could do them justice 💜 (here’s an ao3 link!)

***

Imagine, if you will, a dollhouse.

Imagine the façade first; imagine perfect white siding, trimmed and shaped plastic shrubs, pristine windows with freshly-painted sills. Now travel inside, moving past stickered-on wallpaper and furniture you are free to arrange at will. See the people living inside, their hair perfectly shaped and mouths curved into perpetual smiles. Nothing is complicated or difficult - there are shadows and there is light, and they never mix. There is Good and there is Bad, nothing beyond.

Imagine, if you will, that the Murphy family’s house is a dollhouse.

It truly has every appearance of one, from the shrubs to the wallpaper to, at first glance, the people inside; carefully curated with a precision only money can buy, packaged together in a box to nod your head at as you pass in the store and not look at much for longer.

Now, if you will, crack the dollhouse open right down the middle.

You’ll first see the house, as impeccable as always, but the people inside are not congregated together in the kitchen as they were before. Only the newcomer remains in the kitchen, far less of a newcomer than he thought of himself. Slide your eyes to the left, over to the other half, and you’ll see gray hair slicked back carefully and a painted-on shirt collar recently undone from hands worrying it standing over a box of memorabilia, a permanent crease molded between his brows. Slide them up over floors and walls to see hundreds of pages clutched between an ever-impeccable hand, another hand pressed to mouth to stifle something while seated on a bed that is not her own. And, finally, locate the final person, doll, pawn - over the grid of plastic that separates all of them, find her one room over, curled into a position you didn’t know she can manage, her hands pressing to her face as though they alleviate building pressure. Imagine, if you will, them - that whole picture.

If you understand what it is to be falling apart inside a picture-perfect life, you may begin to understand what it is to be a Murphy.

I. something shatters

Evan read once that, after a sonic boom, all is deathly silent. Surprisingly, that isn’t because all machinery and living beings present are completely destroyed; no, the silence is from the explosion itself. If the force is powerful enough, it will create a vacuum where air levels are so low that sound doesn’t travel. You could curse, you could scream, you could beg to go back in time for a minute or an hour or a year and it wouldn’t matter. Your lips would move and no sound would escape. That was what true silence was.

He passed physics as a freshman, so of course he understood that concept in theory, even if there was always a part of his brain that never fully registered just how awful and harsh and real that vacuum could be.

He never understood until he uttered those words, those explosive words, in the Murphy’s kitchen over the sounds of phones ringing and the people he’d grown to love breathing and speaking. He never understood until they rode the explosion out and away. He never understood until he was left in the aftershocks, no air left for him to speak with.

He wishes he’d understood that before, that kind of choking silence. Of course, that may just be guilt. Heidi always says that guilt is the most unproductive emotion - it’s useless, he can hear her say in his mind in between sniffles, you can’t go back and change the past - but he knows he has no hope of curbing the swell of it inside of him all the same.

His ride was, originally, Zoe. How funny that seems looking back with hindsight. Not even an hour before, he’d felt that he belonged enough to have a guaranteed way back to his house, to monotony and crushing stability. He’d been able to rely on that tiny routine.

Without it, he feels liable to break apart and shatter into a thousand pieces.

He still has to get home, though, and so he curbs that particular impulse and accepts the fact that he’s just ruined the only good things in his life. (You were bound to ruin them when you first lied to them, something in his mind says, which is nothing he doesn’t know already.) He never sat down, so save for a brief pep talk (or mental beration) to his feet to get them moving he manages to make his exit from the Murphy household swiftly. Evan walks the whole way home, and he knows that he must pass some landmarks - trees, houses, even Ellison Park is on the path back. But when he reaches his front door, he can’t remember anything about the walk. The only thing that reminds him of the walk he just made is his aching feet. And, of course. the house in front of him.

Heidi’s car is out front, and he’s not sure whether to be terrified or relieved. He’s not given a chance to settle on one or the other before his right hand is cold on the handle of his front door as his left stays firmly planted in his pocket. The interior of the house is maybe a degree or so warmer than the outside air, and the contrast lands softly on his cheeks for a moment as the door clicks shut behind him.

His mother sits on the couch in the living room, only ten or so feet from the door. She’s still wearing her scrubs, but her laptop is on her lap all the same. Their eyes meet, and Evan knows he won’t be able to brush past her and get to his room. The suspicion only confirmed when she opens her mouth, and that’s when he finally places the expression on her face; shock.

“Have you seen this? The note that Connor Murphy...?”

Evan nods, finally closing the distance between the living room half of the room and the entrance part. His limbs warm the further in he walks, but his hands continue to fiddle with his sweatshirt hem all the same, his neck bowed. He can’t bring himself to meet Heidi’s eyes.

“It’s all over everyone’s Facebook.”

She looks back at her computer screen.

“Dear Evan Hansen…” She shakes her head slowly, letting out one long sigh like a deflated and punctured balloon.“Did you… you wrote this? The note?”

Evan nods again.

“I didn’t know.”

“No one did,” Evan says, taking a tiny step forward. He gestures with one hand in the rush to assure her, still at the level of his hem.

“No, that’s not what I...I didn’t know that you...that you were…” Her voice can be so soft, so gently imploring, almost tenuously polite even to her own son. Like she’s terrified of saying the wrong thing, and she knows how to cushion her words in case it goes wrong. Hearing something that sounds so similar to his own brain pains him for a moment. “...hurting like that. That you felt so...I didn’t know. How did I not know?”

“Because I never told you.”

“You shouldn’t have had to.”

He shakes his head, bowing his neck further and pressing his lips into a line.“I lied. About...so many things. Not just Connor. Last summer, I just...I felt so alone…”

She speaks again as she always does, right in front of him when he needs her presence - soft, supportive, her voice gravelly with how serious it is. “You can tell me.”

Shaking his head against the building pressure of tears, Evan chokes out “you’ll hate me.”

“Oh, Evan.”

“You should. If you knew what I tried to do. If you knew how I am, how,” the hand gestures return with a vengeance, emphasizing nothing in particular. “...broken I am.”

“I already know you, and I love you.”

That gets him to break. He’d been slowly edging forward towards the couch throughout the conversation, but with that, he drops to perch on the edge of the cushion.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he can say, and Heidi takes his hands with a gesture that makes him feel more seven than seventeen, and it’s then that the vacuum around his throat finally lifts and he falls apart.

***

He feels like a goddamn fool.

Larry should be - well, he should be furious, shouldn’t he? This kid waltzed into his life, his family’s life, to build up some fairy tales about what his son was supposed to be and then he has to go and tear it all down just when they need them the most. He should be blind with a white-hot rage, like the one he’d felt when they got the call that early September day. He should be breaking things and making shout-filled phone calls.

Anger can be quiet, he reassures himself. Anger can be silent. Anger can be standing up from a table and staring down someone who lied without saying a word. Anger can be walking so that your steps make no noise against the floor and keeping heavy eye contact, being the last to leave the room. Anger can be leaving a kid who made a mistake to fend for himself when he was practically the son you never really had an hour before.

Larry passes a hand over his face with perhaps more force than necessary.

God, he’s not angry. He’s just a fool.

Connor’s been buried six feet under the ground for over three months, but Larry still half expects to hear him call him a fool to his face. Or probably some expletive-riddled alternative. When the words never come, he appears strangely off-balance. He tilts right where he stands in the garage, driving his fist into the nearest object - conveniently, a wall. His knuckles crack on impact and he regrets the eruption immediately but still, he doesn’t shed a tear for either the punch or for his son.

Apparently missing Connor turned Larry into some faded and worn version of his outbursts.

That thought sobers him right up, and he takes a deep, controlled breath in response. The movement reminds him of his daughter, how she does the same over almost every family breakfast and trying conversation. He’d be admiring her self-control if he wasn’t lacking so much himself. Still, he manages to calm himself enough that he lowers his fist from the wall, wincing all the way as his skin snags on the rough concrete. He turns back to his previous task. Any given member of the family would scold him at the sight of the baseball memorabilia, a fact that he knows well and has tested one too many times. The cards are an addiction he can’t quite kick, but it’s a preferable one to pulling out the whiskey in his desk drawer. Or whatever the hell Connor had been hooked on. Dealing with the memorabilia is easier than dealing with the mediocre reaction and the stew of feelings he has. Breaking down into tears would be easier. Flying into a blind rage would be preferable. Instead, he’s just sedentary and mindlessly occupying himself.

Larry knows that he should be joining his girls, trying to be strong, to kick away habits in favor of human connection. He should be allowing himself to process grief in a natural way, as the grief counselor said at the very beginning of this whole nightmare. In so many ways, he’s right back at square one. But at least this time around, things are not as hazy. With Evan and his stories and his emails - things were better, happier. But they were fuzzy, too. Now he’s wide awake, but he can’t find it in himself to tear away from the all-consuming sorting and looking and sorting and looking that the garage requires. The task is a thousand times emptier without Evan asking questions and filling up the negative space in the garage in a way he rarely filled up any other rooms, but it’s a distraction and a release, and Larry - who has always, always been a fool - takes the piles of Orioles cards under his hands for the blessing and curse that they are.

***

“I deluded myself to think that - to try and justify it as though maybe, maybe I wasn’t the only person who craved a normal life - who craved being accepted, being part of something bigger than myself. It’s no excuse, I know that - there is no excuse. But I hoped that I was helping other people when really all I was doing was bolstering myself. I hoped that maybe I wasn’t the only broken person.”

The only broken person.

From the moment Evan spoke those words, Zoe hasn’t been able to get them out of her head.

So many other parts of his speech present themselves for her to mull over, to cry over, to scream and be furious about. After all, quite a bit of deceit was revealed. The freshness of their presumed break-up, their family tensions being aired for the whole internet to see, and, of course, Evan’s backdated and misread and completely and blatantly nonexistent relationship with Connor all battle for dominance on her heavily-weighed mind, but above all are those echoing words.

The only broken person.

When she reaches her room, where she’d run out of force of habit rather than any real intent, she collapses back against her door. It clicks satisfyingly against the frame. She barely hears the sound before she’s cringing away. Something about the combined sensation of the door moving and the unexpected sound clash in her mind. Zoe expects the door to crash open at any second, and she chokes on tears and sobs and the stilted, heavy air in her room as she tries to put as much distance between the door and her as possible.

It takes a moment for reality to return to her, and she stills halfway between her door and her bed, the hardwood floor biting into her calloused fingers and sensitive palms. Her head aches, her heart aches, and all she can think is the only broken person, only they’re not in Evan’s voice, they’re in hers. The words drip with so much Murphy family venom that she can feel them trail a burning path down her throat and brand themselves into her upper mouth until her vision fills with little white dots.

But Zoe is nothing if not resilient. She has always been the last one standing, the strongest and sturdiest, the one with the best poker face who is willing to play the game. And so Zoe pushes herself up in a wave, hands to elbows to give herself the momentum needed to move upwards. Once she finds her feet she staggers forward towards the bed. She can barely see in her darkened room. The only light comes from the stars outside her window, but they’re blurred around her tears. She curls onto her duvet without crawling underneath, bunching it between her arms as though it could be another person instead of just fabric. For a moment the blanket might be Evan - she’s grown so used to his weight beside her that lying without him is cold and lonely by contrast. And a moment later she can even imagine it’s Connor like it had been when they were little kids. No matter what she thinks, however, it really is just cloth.

It’s a step up from lying on the ground, at least. A small comfort in a day that has been filled with anything but.

She’d told him she loved him in this room. On this bed, this duvet. He’d told her that he loved her, and she’d felt safe, certain for the first time that no one was on the other side of the door. That they were truly alone in her room, the rest of the world falling to the wayside. He’d murmured the words into her lips, peppered them across her face with her freckles, spoke them each time with a reverence deeper than any devotion she’d ever heard until she was incapable of doubting the truth in the words. Not a single moment passed where she doubted that she was loved while they were together.

In the aftermath, she has to doubt every single moment, and that somehow makes everything worse.

So much hurts. There is a Connor-shaped hole in her that he punched into her himself, one that Evan expanded and twisted with his declarations that Connor really did love her, that he didn’t want to hurt her. And there’s a new Evan-shaped hole in her chest and in her bed and in her soul that she never would have expected existing in August. Her phone won’t stop ringing, either, and the ringtone her friends picked out as a joke about how bubbly Zoe was is starting to repeat so incessantly in her head that she’s ready to crawl right out of her skin.

She could put her phone on do not disturb, but instead, she throws it as hard as she can across the room. Some part of her, the part of her that shadowed Connor incessantly and took some sick pleasure from the familiar rhythm of her parent’s fights, wants desperately to hear the phone shatter. But it’s thrown from an awkward angle, so her hopes aren’t high for destruction. All the same, when she hears it buzzing against the floorboards she is disproportionately disappointed.

Zoe wants to scream. She wants to get up and really shatter her phone like Connor and Evan shattered her family. She wants to settle on her heart and her soul by feeling either love or hate and not some jagged mix of both. Mostly, though, she’s tired. She has always been the strongest of all of them, the last one standing, the ever-composed and happiest, but her legs are beginning to shake under the strain of standing stock-still. For the first time, she thinks she understands why her family takes to shouting under the slightest duress. Anything must be better than leaving everything she experiences to weigh on her chest until she holds so much that the pain of it all starts to jolt her.

Maybe the most suffocating part of the whole situation is that she knew all along. Knew that his lies were too good to be true. Knew that Connor would never say those things, even if he didn’t hate her (and now she’ll never know whether he did.) Knew that Evan’s stories, for all their sincerity, didn’t hold up to any given timeline. From the moment he sat at her dinner table and fumbled over a conversation about the wretched skiing trips, she knew not a word that came out of his mouth was true. If she looks back, she knows she never really believed him. But instead of saying anything, she kept her mouth shut just like she always did. She swallowed her pride and his lies because they went down easier than the idea of never knowing for certain, of living the rest of her life in limbo over what Connor thought of her. They hurt less than the idea that she’d helped lead to his demise.

She knew all along, but she went along with his story all the same because the cracks in her sentry became more pronounced day after day, the chest-crushing anxiety that sometimes made her wonder if her heart finally succumbed to a heart attack and the blatant disregard for her own physical safety as she moved through her day only multiplying into dizzying numbers. She splintered under the constant pressure and the unrelenting lights like she never had before, and she was seconds away from falling to the ground before Connor died and even closer than that when Evan walked into their lives. Before that dinner, she had wished with a futile hope - one she couldn’t remember using since she was small - that Connor hadn’t taken so much from her, including the only way out. His pain overshadowed everyone else’s, and once he was gone nothing was left to hide hers behind. Evan’s lies eased it, propped her up. Maybe that’s why she grit her teeth, flashed a smile, and accepted it.

Connor may have been broken, and Evan too, but they were far from the only ones.

Zoe curls further into her bed, searching for something solid to grip onto, before she pushes herself upright just as she always does.

***

Cynthia runs out of tears sometime around the fortieth email.

It was bound to happen at some point - she can only physically produce tears for so long, after all - but she can’t help but feel hollow as her eyes dry and her breaths begin to steady out. Her head begins to grow heavier with the familiar fatigue that follows crying, but none of the satisfaction follows it. No resolution to the truth that made her cry appears. She wishes she would just continue crying instead of sitting still and empty on her son’s bed.

Instead, she turns another page and reads until her eyelids dry out and her eyes catch on them as she moves them back and forth, left to right, as though her life depends on that one action.

Now - now she can see it. How much each one of these, even the ones from ‘Connor,’ just drip Evan all over. He’d had her fooled, he truly had, but now that she knows he wrote them she can’t unsee it. The words are a little too stiff and structured to be her son’s. They are so much like Evan himself, pieced together to try and make others happy while sacrificing his own happiness. Common sense dictates that she’d miss that at first when she barely knew him (and barely understood Connor). Now that she knows him so well-

Well. Maybe she doesn’t really know him at all. That’s the thought that really stings.

Cynthia looks up from the page. Her daughter had made it a foot or so into Connor’s room without Cynthia hearing at all. A pang of guilt hits her as she takes in Zoe’s bloodshot eyes and eerily still features, save for the bottom lip being worried between her teeth. She’d been forgotten again. Cynthia had forgotten her again.

The severity of the guilt feels dampened, somehow, but she’s not quite sure why.

Zoe doesn’t say anything. Where Cynthia is so accustomed to Connor’s explosive words, Zoe is always silent, something Cynthia never quite wraps her head around. The opposite is also true, of course. Where she is used to Connor’s weighty silence, Zoe always manages to surprise her with a sarcastic mutter or an occasional scathing sentence. Only since his death has her voice ever raised above a normal speaking tone when speaking with her or Larry, and only then to scold Cynthia for defending Connor.

Something has to replace Zoe’s occasional shouting at Connor, Cynthia supposes, but the earlier guilt crawls back and kills the thought.

Instead of speaking, Cynthia just watches as Zoe crosses the line of bookshelves on the front wall and nestles herself comfortably on the floor between two of them. The location is an odd choice, but Cynthia can’t find it in herself to be surprised.

(Of course, Cynthia wouldn’t know that that spot is where Zoe always used to sit, mostly in middle school before Connor completely tore their relationship to shreds. Back when Connor would let Zoe sit and do her homework while he drew or read instead of chasing her out of the room if she so much as crossed a foot in front of his door. She wouldn’t know how many hours Zoe spent quietly consoling Connor and curling up to sleep on the floor in the months before Connor kicked her out and she was forced to sleep in front of his door instead, just so he knew she was close.

Zoe stopped halfway through freshman year. She had to. But the habit of sitting nestled between the two bookshelves remains two years later.)

Cynthia doesn’t speak. She doesn’t know what she would say if she did. She just sits, and Zoe sits near her. After a beat, Zoe holds one hand out expectantly. Cynthia divides about a fourth of the emails off the top of her stack after only a moment of deliberation to hand them to her. They look so large in her daughter’s hand, and Cynthia is abruptly reminded just how young Zoe is. She recognized the same fact the night that Connor - well. Zoe had a similarly lost edge in her eyes that night. Cynthia had looked into those eyes, the eyes that Zoe and Connor shared, and that's when Cynthia realized no one had ever taught her this. She’d read her fair share of parenting books once Connor started to go downhill, but no one prepared her for that moment. For the look in Zoe’s eyes when she realized Connor was gone, when Cynthia was the one to tell her for good. No one can ever teach you how to handle that.

That was the first time Cynthia realized just how young Zoe truly was since normally she was so carefully guarded and built up that she seemed several years older. But Cynthia had let herself forget, again, how young and small her daughter was.

Now Zoe, the version Cynthia is truly seeing for the first time, flips through pages at a rapid speed. Her eyes scan over every line.

“I can’t believe I read these,” Zoe whispers. Cynthia can’t tell if Zoe meant for her mother to hear it or not. “I can’t believe I…”

“Believed it?” She offers, bitterness curling into the words. They’re nasally, probably because of all the crying. Zoe doesn’t respond, just flips another page with a light scoff.

They read in silence for some time. A shadow falls across the doorway. When Cynthia glances up, it’s to see her husband leaning against the doorframe. His lips are in their same perpetual thinned form, his forehead creased and the corners of his eyes hardened.

No one taught her how to fix any of this. She should know how, shouldn’t she? It should be on her to fix this. Not a group of teenagers who can barely hold themselves together while they scatter, no, it should have been her to provide that for them. She should have taken on their burden, their pain, because that was her job. She was too caught up in her own grief to save theirs and so they acted rashly and painfully, just as she has done by trusting them, just as Connor did - she can’t let this all happen again, not when circumstances are so dire. She must fix everything for them.

But Larry is in Connor’s room, instead of hiding away downstairs, and so when he holds out a silent hand for more papers she relinquishes half of her stack without much thought. And the three of them stand their ground, flipping through fabricated pages silently but together. They are closer together than they’ve been in years.

It’s a start, maybe.

Cynthia - for all that has been torn away from her day by day, second by second, as Evan’s lie crumbled apart slowly - can hope.

***

II. and slowly, quietly, imperfectly

Heidi insists on a session with Dr. Sherman first thing the next day.

It’s a Saturday, so he can’t really deny her request. And she’s already bartered for the whole day off, or so she informs him.

That early winter chill fills the air, the one that makes him feel weirdly like a little kid. Everything is cold enough that snow should coat the ground and purify the landscape, cover in every broken crevice in the ground until the world is a blank slate. But it’s too early for that kind of snow, and he has to settle for greying skies and cheek-stinging wind. The weather is perfect for curling up under the covers with someone you care about, or for visiting your therapist and probably crying until your throat hurts.

But Heidi held him close for so long the night before, and when she’d pulled away it was only when he’d initiated the separation. She had only strayed away from him to make him the matzo ball soup she always made him when he felt sick, anxiety-based or otherwise, as a little kid. Eating it is like stepping into little Evan’s life for just a blissful minute, and for that time he remembers just how much she loves him. It tastes like he thinks caring about someone feels, and Evan is certain he won’t be able to argue with his mother again.

Maybe that was her intent all along with the soup. That would’ve been a pretty impressive con.

Almost all of the Dr. Sherman session is spent spilling his guts of every secret he’s kept over the past few months and chose not to share. All Dr. Sherman does is regard him over his steepled fingers for a moment, nodding all the way. He thought saying everything out loud would make the guilt in his stomach curdle and choke, which it did - he had to stop several times just to catch a breath when recounting everything, and he’d swear he was seconds from passing out or throwing up or something - but by the time his session is over, his soul feels a bit lighter, too. Like a weight has been lifted off of his shoulders. He’s been experiencing the same sensation since standing in the Murphy’s dollhouse of a life to tear it to the ground - like for once, he can sit up a little straighter and nothing will come crashing down on him. Fewer things can crumble from the sky when everything is already lying on the ground in the rubble.

Heidi’s car waits for him outside - he sees it from the window of Dr. Sherman’s office - but when he finally exits with slightly bloodshot eyes he sees her sitting in the waiting room. She doesn’t fidget like Evan does, her entire body almost wearily still at most times, but he catches her teeth biting at the edge of one nail before she’s up and facing Evan and Dr. Sherman, composed as ever.

Afterward, she’ll ask all kinds of questions about his meds and how the session was and if he’s really okay. But for then it’s kind of nice to just have her there at all. Evan isn’t naïve enough to hope that she’ll be back again, but for that moment he draws strength from her arm looped in his and the warm car he knows is waiting outdoors.

“I’m a bad person,” he says once he’s buckled up in the passenger seat. Before Heidi reaches over to take his hand, he doesn’t realize his hands are shaking. “I’m a terrible person. I knew that, I did, but I couldn’t realize how much - just how terrible.”

“You’re not,” is all Heidi says.

“I am. I did terrible things, and I can’t fix them.”

“You are not a bad person, Evan,” Heidi repeats, a little more forcefully. “I’m your mother. I know you. If you gained something from this situation it was...accidental. You’d never have done this if you didn’t want to help them.”

“But I didn’t,” he parrots, ignoring how completely she understood his motivation without him explaining it to her. “I mean - I wanted to help them, but I knew what I could gain. I...I knew I was hurting them but I did it anyway. I never helped them.”

She’s quiet for a moment, her other hand reaching to cup his left hand. “The world isn’t so binary, Ev,” she finally settles on. “This may have been bad, but you’ll find a way to balance it out. Just because this hurts now doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person forever. If you were truly bad you wouldn’t feel like this.”

He shrugs, trying to hide his burning eyes.

“You’re a...a good person, with a kind heart,” she says, pushing past Evan’s noise of disbelief. “You did something bad. But I know you, Evan. You’ll make it right. Life is messy and complicated, but you love so fiercely, Ev, and you care so much. You’d never want to hurt someone. That doesn’t make you bad. No one is really bad or good, anyway. We live in a complex, dark world, and you’re about as good as they come.”

At last, he shakes his head to break the fog around it. “You have to say that. You’re my mother.”

With an airy laugh, she withdraws her hands, choosing instead to wrap them around the wheel. “Maybe so,” she says, her crooked grin returning. Evan smiles back at her.

***

A Jazz Band concert is scheduled for the next week.

Zoe practically begs off sick. God, she wants to beg off sick. She doesn’t want to plaster a smile on her face (because she can’t do that without thinking about him) and she doesn’t want to look out to the audience and see her parents looking politely interested but privately bored (because that’s him all over, too) and she really doesn’t want to play guitar in front of everyone.

That’s him, too. Both hims. Every all-consuming him in her life.

But if there is one thing Zoe has inherited from her family, it’s the all-consuming need to arrive where she’s supposed to at the time she’s supposed to. Her parents did, too, so they drive her and wait for the performance. Half-asleep, her feet make the journey backstage with her guitar case clasped in hand. She nods absently to some of her classmates, at least the ones who are nice enough to acknowledge her with some warmth. Between the letter and her relationship and subsequent breakup with Evan, most had taken to ignoring her or sending icy glares in her direction. Any true confrontations normally take place behind a screen, but Zoe is still distinctly shut out from most of the school.

As she pulls her guitar free from the case and begins tuning it back to standard instead of open D, as she’d tuned it for the sake of an earlier song and was too lazy to change back, a girl who plays sax compliments her outfit. That comment is probably the nicest direct thing anyone has said to her since the letter came out. Though Zoe only abstractly remembers picking out an appropriate outfit and applying her festive winter makeup, she scrounges up a smile and thanks her classmate all the same.

The smile untucks something from the corner of her brain, and suddenly she’s extremely hopeful Evan won’t be there.

He has no reason to be, she reminds herself when trailing out towards the stage. He has no reason to be, she repeats as she sits and everyone settles on stage and in the audience. He has no reason to be, she reminds herself as they launch into the first song after the director’s brief remarks. Don’t look. He has no reason to be here.

She looks anyway.

Zoe hopes that’s not his outline lurking towards the back of the theater. She really hopes he wouldn’t put them both through that. Zoe has to be at the concert, of course, since she has no choice. But Evan - Evan was at liberty to make the decision to stay home. Evan could stay away from this experience and spare them both a bit of pain. God knows they both have more than enough hurt to last a lifetime. For him to see her now would be too familiar, too intimate. After all those hours in her room, him tracing her movements with his eyes and applauding enthusiastically after each and every song - tracing the curve of the unconscious smile with his eyes while she played and then tracing it with his own mouth, both their hands tracing everywhere, every outline, every happy little smile line - him being in the same room is too much.

She knows it’s him. Not realizing the figure is him is probably impossible, when she knows - knew - knows him so well. But she pretends she doesn’t recognize him all the same, letting her eyes fall back to the other side of the theater, a stupid little fake smile tucked in her lips and her fingers plucking out the familiar melody.

This is one of her first Jazz Band concerts without Connor. Although he normally sank so low in his seat that Zoe assumed he was sleeping, he was always present. And in her haste to forget Evan she remembers Connor all over again, because the two are forever and always linked directly in her mind. One doesn’t come to mind without the other lurking just behind.

She half-expects to see Connor in the audience all the same, but when her gaze falls to her parents, they are only the two figures visible.

Her fingers never slip on the strings, but she forgets where she is for a moment. Instead, she is back in her room, Connor sunk low in her beanbag, clapping politely as she strums a basic chord progression. If she strains she can remember his eyes, how they softened and narrowed to see her, like looking into a mirror as always. Gentle, almost, although the word is laughable to her now. And then a fresher memory, when Connor’s eyes fill with steel and snatch the guitar from her grasp - the siblings are quiet now because Cynthia and Larry are asleep, but his words carry with the harshness laced through them. Anger, too. Not his normal anger, not senseless, not splintered doors and screaming “fuck you” and the bitter scent of destruction, but instead something edged in concern, like an overused washcloth and a scabbing wound and blood sharp on her tongue from biting her cheek. Her memory is blurred because she was tipped over that hazy edge of intoxication where everything was cause for giggles and everything was a thousand times more consequential, but his eyes are clear where everything else is soft at the edges. Her intoxication causes his angry eyes - she drove herself home alone well past midnight, and he took it upon himself to be concerned. She has her own anger couched between giggles. Don’t pretend you don’t do this all the time, Connie, I’m just trying to be like you, you know, that’s all I ever wanted. And Connor’s strained voice just barely reaching normal volume, stone-cold sober for once, saying take that fucking back, you don’t want to be me, I’m a fuckup and you’re- when Zoe, startlingly honest in a way only being high can provoke, replies oh but I’m already as good as dead on my feet so I might as well do as you do, what’s the point in pretending I’ll ever be okay while you destroy yourself, can’t I want this-

Connor takes the guitar from her hands and smashes it to pieces against her dresser before she can finish, and then she’s back on stage with applause filtering through her ears.

***

Evan stands in the back of the auditorium, watching Zoe play guitar with an intensity he can’t remember watching her with before, and suddenly it’s difficult to breathe.

Evan is no stranger to panic attacks, but this is not the same throat tightening that panic brings him. Panic is sharper and quicker, but this is all-encompassing and gradually taking over his lungs in a new and more frightening way. Tearing his eyes away from her, striking on the illuminated stage as she always is, he makes his way out of the double doors and into the empty hallway before he can even begin to understand why his breaths are difficult to come by. Guilt is a familiar force behind his pricking eyes, and he falls back against the (blessedly empty) corridor wall with perhaps a bit more force than necessary, his head tilted back to hit against the stone wall before the rest of his body. Guilt. Shame. Longing. Love. All of them are spurred from the sight of Zoe for the first time since the confession, and they make a bitter combination burning down his throat like the unwanted sting of alcohol. They’re just as all-consuming, too.

Evan brings his hands to his face and just tries to breathe.

(It’s difficult because he used to breathe the same air as her. As often as she’d taken the air from his lungs she’d gifted it back to him, easing the painful jolt of being alive with a small smile and her hand in his. He’d stolen hers in return, cut her off mid-song to feel her breath in a hot puff against his lips until it hitched in anticipation of his lips pressing to hers. Those safe moments where they breathed easier even though they shared almost every breath, every joke and giggle and sentence buried into each other’s mouths. She made it so easy and natural where now there is only difficulty. Just seeing her makes it impossible to get air into his lungs. It’s difficult because he’s reminded that he loves her too much to be healthy and he’s lost the right to do so.)

Once he catches his breath he pulls his phone out. He doesn’t have a ton of options, but he hesitates all the same. Finally, he sends his mother a text, and she responds at once, so she must be out of class.

Leaving is probably the safest option for everyone involved.

He leaves his haunt outside the auditorium doors, opting instead to make the trek outside and wait. As soon as he’s out of the door there’s a shock to his system, the cold night air washing over him like a bucket of freezing water. He breathes the air in anyways, and it goes down easier than any of the air indoors had. From the corner of his eye, he catches a flash of silver. His mother’s car.

Evan meets her halfway, jogging to meet the car and open the door quickly.

“Hey,” she says, hesitant and cheery all at once. Her class must have gone well. She opens her mouth again as though to speak, but the words die on her lips. When Evan is silent, she tries again. “How was…I mean, did you talk to-”

“It was fine,” he cuts off. His voice is soft out of fear that if he gets louder he’ll get emotional. “I didn’t. I saw them, but I didn’t... do anything.”

“That’s okay,” she hurries to say. “That’s perfectly fine, sweetheart. It’s probably better that way.”

Evan nods, tilting his head to hit the window pane.

“I guess you just want to go home?” Evan nods mutely for a second time. “I’ll order a pizza or something, yeah? That sounds good?” With Evan’s third nod and a subsequent little smile on his face, Heidi nods herself and finally shifts back into drive.

***

Admittedly, they have a little difficulty focusing on high school jazz band jazz, but Larry and Cynthia make the attempt valiantly anyway.

In normal times, or times of pride instead of grief, both of them excel at small talk. Be it career schmoozing, dealing with extended family, or interacting with anyone from Connor and Zoe’s schools, it’s a necessary evil for almost every aspect of their lives. They have small talk down to a fine art, always ready to uphold their image and chat with a friendly face.

It is not normal times, but they try anyway.

The first parents they see avert their eyes and hurry through the theater doors before either of them open their mouths. The air is stiff with all the eyes on them, but the gazes are quick to drop away when they glance around as no one is keen on making eye contact. Cynthia goes out of her way to say hi to one of her friends from the Parent’s Association, but when she’s only met with a strained smile and a wave, the Murphy parents wordlessly decide to cut their losses and just find seats.

By force of habit, they sit leaving one seat open on the aisle. Neither says anything about it, nor do they move to fill the seat. Better to leave it empty than to pretend they didn’t wish it was full.

As far as Larry is concerned, the concert can’t be over quickly enough. That urgent coil only grows in his chest when the kids file out and settle down on stage. No one exactly looks like they want to be at a Jazz Band concert because they are a bunch of high schoolers on a Friday night with better and stupider things to be doing. Impatience threads through everyone, and as an event the concert appears to be doomed.

Cynthia’s gaze bounces between the students on stage, but Larry focuses on his daughter, his vision practically tunneling to her. Her eyes steady on a point towards the back wall, but her smile doesn’t waver throughout. Larry absently wonders if she’s employing the technique she used in middle school back when she had terrible stage fright, where she focused her attention on a focal point in the back instead of looking around the audience. He can’t blame her if she is. But towards the bridge of the song (at least, Larry thinks it’s the bridge. He never can tell with jazz) her eyes slide along the rows of seats until they land right by him and Cynthia. Zoe’s face tightens almost imperceptibly, her grin thinning just the slightest bit. A shadow passes over her eyes, and Larry’s sure that if he weren’t her father he wouldn’t notice. Her eyes divert a moment later, but the shadow won’t get out of Larry’s head.

It's the closest he has seen to Connor in a long time.

The rest of the evening passes without incident, which is all they can truly hope for. They greet Zoe in the hallway afterward. Larry is a little late, as he made the trip back to the car for Zoe’s bouquet. When he nears Cynthia, he can see that she’s finally gotten ahold of Zoe. Her eyebrows pinch together just slightly as her hands lightly rest on their daughter’s elbows. Still, Cynthia practically radiates pride, and neither Zoe, Larry, or the other students and parents are heartless enough to take that away from her.

Larry presents Zoe the bouquet with very little ceremony, simply bending down to press a kiss to her cheek. Zoe rolls her eyes when Larry straightens, but her unconscious smile is back all the same.

“Congrats, kid,” he says, gesturing to the flowers.

“It’s the same thing I’ve been doing since middle school.”

“It’s damn impressive-” Larry starts, but he never finishes the sentence.

“Didn’t you help arrange some of those?” Cynthia presses with little preamble. “That’s a first.”

“I mean, kind of?” Zoe replies, making a vague hand gesture towards the auditorium. “It was a first, yeah, but I didn’t really do-”

“Nonsense, I’m sure it was all your-”

“I really didn’t-”

“Either way,” Larry cuts in, raising his voice just a little to cut off their identical, increasingly frustrated tones and scrunching faces, “We’re proud of you, Zo’.”

“We are.” Cynthia seizes her in a sudden hug, and Zoe pretends to gag again, but Larry is pretty sure it’s at least seventy percent for show.

***

III. it all mends

Zoe drives herself to the orchard.

She can’t even get out of the car. She doesn’t think that’s why she drove there at all, really. She didn’t really intend to get out and exist in that space - the one that screams The Connor Project all over and hides Evan in every shadow. She didn’t really intend to do anything, after all, except for getting in the car. Her hands guided her to her final destination.

Maybe the intention, all along, was just to see it. She hasn’t even seen the outside, and that strikes her as wrong, for some reason. Because a dull ache won’t leave her chest, and seeing the orchard will either ease it or transform it into a sharp pain. At this point, she’s willing to take either over the constant, infuriating, numbing guilt and grief slowly gnawing away at her.

It helps a little, and a little goes a long way.

Even though she just sits in the car, the air is easier to breathe, somehow. Knowing that something new, something with the possibility of a future, came out of the Connor Project Fiasco is...nice. What they did wasn’t completely in vain. Something will live beyond Connor, beyond all of them, that shares his name.

A kind of karmic balance is in that cycle, Zoe thinks. For all the pain Connor caused her, something beautiful will share his name forever. Other kids can go to the orchard as they did, grow up and older and more mature. Maybe those kids will gain just an ounce of joy from the growing trees and emergency-landing lake. Maybe the bad things he did don't have to mean he’s remembered as bad forever. Maybe this orchard will be the grey area in Connor’s memory, where black and white mix and mingle and lay out some kind of future.

That grey area can live in her, as well. Because Connor was the brother who made her life a living hell with his fists and his raised voice, but he was also the brother that taught her the constellations and drew her doodles of flower-wielding superheroes as an apology until he hit middle school. He may have given her nightmares throughout her teen years, but before then he was the one to chase them away with an arm slung around her shoulders. He protected her and made her need protection all at once, and at that moment outside the orchard, with her head cradled in her hands as she sits in the driver’s seat, Zoe realizes she doesn’t have to remember him as one or the other. The good and the bad of what he was can be simultaneously true.

It’s that thought that accompanies her home safely and in relative peace.

***

Evan lies sprawled on his bed.

In terms of sitting down, sprawling quite different from what he’s used to. Normally he is a huncher rather than a sprawler, always sitting with his legs crossed or folded and curled over a book or a laptop instead of lying horizontally.

In that context, he’s definitely branching out in this new horizontal - or really diagonal - position, all across his bed at an obnoxious angle. He takes up space in a way he never used to, and for once, his spine doesn’t curl reflexively as though in a shell. A journal is nestled under his fingertips, the possibility for creation only seconds away. He’s sure the succulents nestled around his room in little bursts of green help ease the flow of oxygen into his lungs.

It’s a nice day.

It’s nice to let it just be a nice day. He’d never appreciated nice days before, really.

“Lazy day?” Heidi says, popping her head into his doorway. He nods absently, bent over a page with a pen clenched in his hand, before he really looks up and smiles at her. She smiles back. “I’m leaving for a shift in five. Enjoy it!”

“I will,” he promises, his voice quiet and steady. She smiles again.

“You’re like a cat, always curled in the sun,” she comments with an easy finality before leaving his room. And, well. Evan can’t really dispute that fact.

***

When Cynthia drives to the orchard, Larry is absorbed in his phone on the passenger side and Zoe gazes out the window in the back. They used to make that drive all the time, and something about the path is achingly familiar. As with all familiar things, it makes Connor’s absence clear as day to Cynthia. At this point, that ache is almost comforting to her. Though never quite gone completely, missing him has begun to dull out into something not as noticeable. She almost feels guilty that the experience has eased for her; some part of her thinks every day should be as painful as the first was. Maybe that’s what Connor would have wanted, or maybe he would have wanted to just disappear from their minds completely. She’ll never know, and she refuses to make up her mind about it, so she leaves herself to be guilty alone.

Once the familiar gate of Ellison park comes in sight, Cynthia parks the car in record time. They each grab an assortment of items and hurry past the plaques by the entrance. The day is too nice to spend fighting back tears.

Larry spreads a picnic blanket, and Zoe lays out their food with a practiced precision and a critical eye for plating. For once, nothing plastic hides in their movements. They really appear natural and relaxed. If Cynthia didn’t know better, she may say they look happy.

It may be the closest they ever get, though what that says about them Cynthia doesn’t know.

The Murphy’s are content to eat in silence. None are particularly adept with words, and fighting would only sully the beautiful afternoon sunshine. That’s why no one argues when Larry pulls a book free and flips it open. The same applies to Zoe popping in a pair of earbuds and scrolling idly through her phone. (Cynthia almost lets a snarky comment slip about enjoying nature instead of her music, but she bites her tongue at the last second.) That leaves Cynthia to enjoy the park, and she does so from her spot seated criss-cross on the ground. She gazes out to the horizon line. Saplings dot the bright sky, new life growing where destruction and deadeends once dominated. Their tiny frames stand in silhouette against the blue, and Cynthia's eyes burn a little with the contrast.

Change buzzes in their air and clings to her skin, and for once it seems like a good thing. A positive thing. Loss brought them to that point, and loss will trail them for all their future days, but the product of their grief is also the reason those trees will fight year after year and grow into something large enough for someone to climb and find comfort in. Some kind of balance is in that, isn't there? Some kind of benefit to living in the grey area between past pain and future hope. She and Zoe catch eyes over the edge of Zoe’s phone, and Zoe gives her a tiny smile. Her freckles, inherited from Cynthia, wrinkle a little in response to the movement.

“It’s balanced,” she says softly, as though she read Cynthia’s thoughts. In the afternoon light, she almost looks like Connor used to. Cynthia, as Connor’s mother, will never see the similarities end. But somewhere in Zoe’s eyes is hope and life and a bright, albeit tumultuous, future. She will never see that in Connor’s eyes, although the two sets are so identical they were often mistaken for twins.

Cynthia nods, and her responding smile is genuine and strained and a little bittersweet.

For once, the ground is even beneath their feet, and that may be enough to go forward.

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lallemcnt · 4 years

Text

without feeling, 2.6k words 🍃

lucas is a bit overwhelmed by quarantine. an elu social distancing drabble.

(or, 2.6k words of expressing all my feelings induced by social distancing through lucas.)

It’s cold outside.

It’s a little bit misty. The minaret of a mosque and spires of grand churches disappear into a grey-hued nothingness that catches the wind like a kite, spreading like acrid smoke, staining the sky in miserable doom: the red warning of traffic lights less vibrant and severe, less of a demand, an imperative to stop, and more of a weak sign of I still exist; there are still rules to follow. The sun exerts its will the hardest when usually it doesn’t have to do more than rise up from the horizon. Its potent presence and unmistakeable warmth is not quite so disarming. This is a first for the sun. Narrow beams of light puncture through where they might, at the weakest points of the fog’s intent: through slits of wooden floorboards, gaps in rusted blinds — hitting the edge of make-up smeared mirrors and feeding the forest-green leaves of succulents that create canopies on burnished-brown bookshelves.

And Lucas feels it across his bare back as he lies on the sofa in contemplative thought. No one thought plays centre stage, captivating this audience of one in a velvet filled old structure dedicated to entertainment. Or rather, on this blue velvet sofa upon which he is currently lying, stomach down, face resting on his hands as he stares out on the disappearing city. Curtains billowing around windows that have definitely seen better days and could do with a loving touch of paint.

The ocean waves. A fishing boat. The last time he had a cup of coffee. When he should realistically be doing laundry next. A slight head tilt shows an overflowing woven basket. Soon. When Eliott will be done with the commission he’s been working on for the past four days — Lucas is excited to see it. But he’s bias. Everything Eliott does is mesmerising in Lucas’ eyes; he falls a little bit more in love with him every time he sees the creations formed from such a brilliant mind. When will Eliott call the work day quits for today. He wants to see him, touch his hand, which he hasn’t done for the past six hours, because Lucas despises encroaching on Eliott’s space when he’s focusing and doing what he loves. Hates the idea of being a nuisance or disrupting a miraculous train of thought just for the ridiculous reason of him feeling needy and wanting attention.

What would it be like to experience the rain in a rainforest? This thought snags.

It recalls a memory.

At age ten, Lucas’ class was tasked with painting a scene from this famous painting. He can’t quite recall the name, but he remembers a broad canopy of cobalt coloured umbrellas clutched in the hands of men in top hats and tails, and women in petticoats, hair tucked up into chignons under a furious downpour. By the end, each class’ section of the painting would form to recreate an entire tableau of mixed-media, a cohesive mess of blue.

It lends his thoughts to Eliott once more, and they won’t shift. Lucas glances at his watch: 17:33. A sigh. He drops his head back onto his hands and rolls over onto his back, disgruntled by the thumping feet of their upstairs neighbours on the ceiling which is beginning to look worryingly like paper stained by coffee. Their landlord would not be happy.

Stretching out his limbs, the weak sun strokes a long finger down his spine as Lucas climbs to his feet, dragging the ends of his joggers down his calves with his feet. He shuffles towards a small closet slash utility room, turned Eliott’s office, dragging his t-shirt from the back of the sofa with his hand as he goes.

Tiptoeing, Lucas leans in the doorway of the decidedly tiny room, shirt clutched in hand. Observing from a slight distance, holding his breath and his shirt to his chest in the hopes of not letting loose a single sound. As quiet as a moose. As stealthy as a wolf. Serotonin and endorphin boost at just the sight of him, causing the sides of Lucas’ mouth to lift at the human person hunched over a table they saved from a neighbour who dumped it in the bin building. Restoring it from a wood-chipped, faded white-yellow desk, abandoned and discarded, with broken draws to a moon-chilled silver with baby blue accents. The draws reconstructed on a productive Sunday morning after Eliott managed to get several defrosted waffles stuffed into Lucas and a cup of coffee, which Lucas detested but made a ritual of because it was a grown up thing and he always seemed to feel a little tired.

Now, he yearns to run his hands up Eliott’s back and kiss his freckled shoulders. Lie on the sofa, snuggled up so tight they became a sine organism with no way of disaggregating. Permanently etched together like quotation marks; the perfect fit. But, as slient as a mouse, Lucas aimed to be. Even as Eliott shifting in his seat and Lucas saw he had put on jeans of all things. Yes, they were stuck at home but...jeans? He felt a rumble of laughter hit his chest and dashed from the doorway trying to prevent its outbreak, and in doing so, was in all ways unquiet, feet hitting the wooden floorboards hard.

“Lucas?” A sigh was all the response. Though not an unhappy one.

Oh, the wonders a voice could do and make you feel. Sometimes feel never felt like a big enough, grand enough, expansive enough word to encompass what it really meant. Nor could anything compare to one’s name being uttered by the person who made the word feel feel too small a word. His very bones and nerves and fingertips were on fire, but then again that could be logically reduced to the fact that Lucas was quarantined with his boyfriend who he didn’t speak to much during the day — on his own accord and to the reluctance of Eliott — but was separated by a nimbly, hallow wall and he simply wanted to kiss his face off every second of every minute. It was simple really. Not much to it. Except his undying love, of course.

Another soft: “Lucas?”

The person in question returns to the little office and peers in expectantly. Eliott is resting his face in his hand, elbow on desk, hair ruffled and in need of a wash. As soon as Lucas appears his dazed eyes contract a more alert appearance, wistful and quite content with the sight he brings.

“You hungry?”

“Are you?”

“Kind of. I was thinking—”

“That we should have cheese toasties! Brilliant idea, Eliott. You finish up, if you’re ready? I don’t wanna rush you or anything, and I’ll be chefing away.”

“You’re not rushing me, and anyway, if you were, which you’re not,” Eliott replies, voicing rising slightly as he gets to his feet to move toward Lucas who retreats at the idea of imposing his presence on Eliott. “I would love you to rush me, because I’m sick of looking at it all. I’m tired. And I would much prefer to look at you instead.”

Reaching Lucas, Eliott runs his hands through Lucas’ hair till he’s cupping the back of his head, and then drawing it down the scope of his neck and shoulder, skimming lightly over collarbones — leaving an imprint in Lucas’ bones and muscles, a memory of a lover’s touch — and trailing down an arm lined with goose bumps until fingers are slotting together. A gift of warmth and blesséd touch. One Lucas is eternally thankful for. He is at his most appreciative when it comes to Eliott. For him, anything.

“Cheese toasties?” Lucas asks, face flushed from the loving caress of Eliott’s words that fall off his tongue as easily as they cost him nothing.

“Hm.” Eliott raises their entwined hands, lifting Lucas’ hand palm down so he can plant a sweet kiss onto it and then his knuckles.

“And then I was thinking...we, I mean, I, could paint your nails,” Lucas is almost, slightly breathless and it’s all a bit embarrassing. He rushes on, “It’s literally all I could think about this morning until my brain sputtered out from boredom.” He laughs a bit, self-conscious.

“Let me have a hug first, please?”

Lucas can hear the tiredness seeping out of every syllable, Eliott’s shoulder sink slowly down with each words like a deflating balloon left of all its oxygen. He reaches up to cup Eliott’s cheek, the skin soft and pimply behind his hand, he plants a quick peck on it before snaking his arms around Eliott’s hips and squeezing him just enough that he isn’t suffocating him but feels that steading presence of bodily contact, one t-shirt away from skin on skin. Lucas feels the reciprocation instantly, Eliott’s arms around Lucas’ shoulders, and then slipping a fraction further down as Eliott pulls him into the cocoon of his body.

“Ahhh.” Lucas can’t help the sigh of contentment. The verbal confirmation of satisfaction.

Warm breaths hit his neck, Eliott’s chest shakes marginally against his, and his arms tighten around Lucas who pushes at Eliott’s arms, because he is actually starving, suddenly, potently aware of it. He slides down and out of that particular safe haven and walks slowly backwards, eyes locked with the mystery of his boyfriend’s, the secret of their colour claimed by the first atoms of the world that created pigmentation. Sliding his t-shirt on he observes Eliott watching the last stretch of his abdomen disappear from, a slight hand clench is visible as he lifts his hand to rub over his face, and Lucas can’t help but laugh properly now as he enters the kitchen. Lucas is not a seductive person, but he does find pleasure in the way something small he does, not even consciously provocative can affect Eliott so.

Lucas spins around on his heels remembering that Eliott doesn’t, in fact, own a sandwich toaster so he improvises. Cheddar, four slices of toast and in the preheated oven. He’s gonna have to clean the oven afterwards, but it’s not like he doesn’t have the time for that: time he is in an abundant supply of these days.

While devouring their cheese toasties, Lucas and Eliott find themselves wrapped up in blankets on the sofa. Lucas is concentrating like a child trying their hardest to colour inside the lines of a picture as he sits bent over painting Eliott’s index finger a muted blue and his thumb a dusky pink. With a leg stretched over Eliott’s he inches forward as the former skips through a playlist on his phone sending the sound of bass and drums into the far reaches of the room, into the fissures and crevices of the walls decorated in black and white portraits and enticing landscapes of fruitful trees and sandstone buildings.

These photos shake Lucas a little at his core. Lucas dreams of running along cliff sides made of limestone, skimming his feet in the freezing loches of Scotland, picking mangoes from trees in Malawi during October, just before their rainy season commences. He’s been dreaming of far off places for days, wishing to escape from their confinement, daring to live a little wilder, further, deeper. Someday. Though this future he couldn’t quite make out in his head, secure behind a veil, much like the weather outside.

His eyes cloud over and he tries to focus back on the task at hand, sliding the side of his thumb down the corner of Eliott’s pinky finger where the brush veered off course. He wipes his left eye with the hand that was holding Eliott’s in place, trying to be subtle, because he feels stupid. He feels entitled and furious at himself. So he goes back to his task without a word, attempting to sink back into the motions and the music; the swipe of the brush, the sound of Eliott’s contented “this is it” as he finds the right song, settles into the melody of it and throws his phone to the other side of the sofa.

Social distancing has been at once soothing and triggering for Lucas’ anxiety. The beginning was a frustrating time, arriving when he finally thought he had some semblance of a plan formed. For his future. Then it all derailed and he was traversed into an existence of blissful indulgence in seven series TV shows and warm baguettes not reached lukewarm because he had somewhere to rush off to; waking up at 9 or 10am instead of his usual 7; walking around the block, stepping into a park for the daily fresh intake of vitamin c, watching fluffy creatures prance around the forbidden grasslands. Now, he knows he’s on the brink of a tumble downhill, a dip in a deceptively solid surface, and all he keeps hearing from online personalities, from friends and instagram stories is that “this is to be expected.” God, how tired he is of hearing that perfunctory sentence. Frankly, he wishes, fruitlessly, for someone to teach him once more how to cope, to be fucking okay. His ten week course of CBD ended the first week of quarantine and while he supposedly has the tools to rationalise, to acknowledge his thoughts and recognise some of them are to be untrue...it’s not quite so easy, because he can’t debunk them while stuck in a tiny city apartment. He is very literally restricted in space. So he’s on hyper alert for himself and Eliott, tainting the very air with his insecurities and fears. But that’s not quite right; he’s too consumed by himself, selfish, he thinks, you wouldn’t even notice the signs with Eliott. Sometimes he wants to be allowed, allow himself, to feel sad, dispirited, hopeless. He wants to lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking of nothing but the way some areas are slightly raised. To sleep. But he hasn’t been diagnosed with depression, he’s not depressed, he doesn’t get depressed. Just sad and vapid, occasionally. The instances are few and far between.

He has his mum to reassure him. He wouldn’t call it comforting though she tries: “We’ll all get through this. You will, Lucas. That job is waiting for you, remember? Take a deep breath with me, okay?”

Today though isn’t as bad as it was two days ago, he feels himself getting out of this cave of darkness, this allocated place of sorrowful isolation, because he also has this. The security of these arms and this chest he rests his face against. That kiss on his head. And this person who can’t fight it all away for him, can’t always find the right words to comfort him, like Lucas cannot be a constant solid presence of stone in the flow of a rapid river for Eliott, he has to be patient and assume the pace Eliott sets.

They can’t always be the right answer, but they can try.

“I think you’re gonna need to repaint this hand, Lu.”

It takes him a moment to gather himself. He’s been resting here for some time, though time is inconsequential here so the length is lost to him. As he sits back up and his face disconnects with heart beat and muscle and skin, it feels flushed on the connect side and his eyes dry. He takes in Eliott’s painted hand, now smudged and clicks his tongue, shaking his head at the same time.

“Give me the polish.”

As Eliott reaches out to grab a mint-green bottle of polish, he responds in kind. “Try this.” Lucas shakes the bottle and glances at Eliott in askance. Eliott shakes his head, a small smile on his lips, not teasing. “Trust me.” No, not teasing. More in expectation of something good, something sweet.

And Lucas complies as he is wont to do, savouring those eyes and the hundreds of thousands of emotions they express in a single moment.

It tastes good.

Strawberries.

It tastes like sweetness.

#elu fic #elu drabble #skam france #tw anxiety #anxiety #my writing #lucas lallemant #eliott demaury #elu #mine

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 5 years

Photo

All Those Things They Couldn’t Say - A Runaway Baudelaires AU

{ao3} {tumblr} {masterlist}

Chapter Thirty-One - Remnants

The children did not dare speak for most of the climb. Sunny stopped screaming and kicking and demanding to go back up and bite Esmé’s arm off after a while, and settled to lean against Klaus as he moved down. Klaus would stop occasionally when Duncan started slipping, reaching up to touch his foot and make sure he regained his balance, and when Isadora did the same, Violet reached down to hold onto her until she was certain she could keep going. The scarves were not the best material for climbing, and they had no idea how long they had to go, so it was quite tense.

They climbed down for at least an hour, maybe two, in relative silence. Then, finally, Duncan said, “Do… do you know what this reminds me of?”

They didn’t respond immediately, a little scared to open their mouths. Klaus even glanced up to make sure Duncan wasn’t starting to slip.

“We were at the fair once.” Duncan said, his voice distant as he continued his descent. “We had to be… five or six. And I wanted a balloon more than anything else in the world. I begged until Father bought me one. I don’t even remember why I wanted it, I… must’ve just thought it was pretty. I let go on accident while we were in line for popcorn, and I… I ran after it.”

Violet shut her eyes. She’d been to a couple fairs, and sometimes they’d even had some fun there. It was dangerous, but her parents always wanted them to have a bit of enjoyment here or there. She’d once bought three balloons with spare change, and tied them together to see if they’d make her fly. They had not, but it was worth a try.

“I ran after it,” Duncan recalled, as they continued, not slowing, “And- and it got caught in a tree. I couldn’t climb for shit so I just started jumping and crying. And… then you found me, Isa. You and Quigley.”

“I don’t even remember that.” Isadora admitted, very softly.

“I’m sure you don’t.” Duncan sighed. “But… you saw me crying. Quigley told me to calm down and Father could get me another one, but I was so upset that this one was stuck, I- I didn’t want it to stay trapped. And… Isa, you just grabbed a branch and hoisted yourself up.”

Klaus reached up to make sure Duncan was steady, as the rope had shaken slightly, but he found that Duncan was just quietly crying. He patted his leg gently, hoping that’d be a comfort; he couldn’t do much else.

“You just went up, and I didn’t even know you could climb that well.” Duncan said. “You always yelled at Quigley to get down when he climbed, but you were so good at it. And- and you got to the balloon, and untangled it, and brought it back down. You skinned your knee when you landed, and got a splinter or something - I remember crying even more because you were hurt, but you just tied the balloon to my wrist so I wouldn’t lose it. We- we’d just learned how to tie knots. And you told me not to- not to worry about it…”

He fell silent again, and Isadora struggled to find words to say. She really had no recollection of this incident whatsoever.

“You wanna know something?” Duncan whispered. “I… kept the balloon. It didn’t deflate for the longest time, and when it did I kept it in a drawer. Because that was the special balloon my sister rescued for me.”

Nobody knew what to say.

Duncan let go of the rope with one hand to wipe his face with his sleeve, and then whispered, “So. Yeah. That’s what this reminded me of.”

They continued downward for only a minute more, before Klaus said, “I found the ground.”

He jumped down and stepped back, reaching into his bag for his flashlight. Once he flickered it on, Duncan had already reached the ground, and was waiting on the girls. Isadora slid down and immediately went over to her brother, pulling him into a hug. They kept embracing even as Violet reached the floor. She tugged on the rope once more and said, “Yeah, it was a bit longer than we thought, but we made it. And Sunny managed to injure that bitch- though, Sunny, I would prefer if you did not just jump at our enemies, okay?”

“Iwdi?” Sunny huffed. “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Violet pulled her ribbon out of her hair and gestured around. Klaus shone his light until they reached what seemed to be a doorway. Violet went over to the Quagmires, waiting until Isadora pulled away, still keeping an arm linked with her triplet’s, before saying, “We’ve got an exit.”

Isadora nodded, and the children went through the door. Violet let out a sigh inside. “VFD tunnel.”

“Well, at least it’s a way out.” Klaus said. He moved in front, holding his flashlight out. “Come on, gang.”

They walked for quite some time, which was a bit difficult with how already tired their limbs were from the climb down. Sunny fell asleep against Klaus’s chest, but awoke only a few minutes later when they finally reached a trapdoor. They almost missed it, with how little light came through, but Violet noticed the handle and stopped them, having Klaus shine his light up to see the wood of the door. She then had Isadora lift her up while she picked the lock, muttering under her breath. When she got it, she flipped the door open and immediately hoisted herself onto the floor. She glanced around, just seeing a simple, dusty library. She sighed and leaned back down, holding out her arms to help Isadora up. They both then helped their brothers to the floor, and Klaus carefully let Sunny out of her straps, holding her hand to help her walk forwards a bit.

“Where do you think we are?” Isadora asked.

“Still in the city, probably.” Violet shrugged. “Didn’t walk far. Will be a decent place to crash for a bit until we can get the fuck out.”

“Quando?” Sunny asked.

“I don’t know.” Violet admitted. She moved to the library shelves, running a hand over the books. She coughed as a spray of dust hit her. “Fuck. Well, folks, I’m pretty sure this building’s been abandoned for a long-ass time.”

“I found a piano.” Klaus said, walking Sunny over to the instrument. He pressed a key, and then flinched. “Whoa. Yeah, really out of tune.”

Isadora moved to a grandfather clock, which looked like it had stopped long ago. “This is eerie.”

“Maybe someone lives here and just doesn’t care.” Duncan suggested, though he looked unconvinced. He moved to the nearest doorway, peering through and calling Hellos and Is anyone heres for a few minutes, while Violet and Klaus helped Sunny walk over the carpet, which had been mostly dirited and destroyed.

Isadora peered at a couple spiderwebs, before making her way to Duncan. “Yeah, I think I saw a rat over there. We should probably move out.”

“We can probably find a decent room. We’ve slept in worse.” Violet said. “At least the floor sounds stable. The structure of this library seems to be good.”

“I don’t think it’s a library.” Duncan said. “The hall out there had a couple old portraits and shit, and a bunch of rooms, and the one swinging open looked more like a dining room. This is probably just a library in an old house.”

“Who would abandon all these books?” Isadora asked.

Violet paused, and then said, “Let’s see the dining room, then.”

While Klaus helped Sunny step over the door’s threshold, they made their way to a swinging door whose knob had fallen off. Klaus shone his light in, and they saw a long dining table, probably meant for a party with a large number of guests. There were cupboards and shelves littering the area, but there were also books stashed atop dressers and inside glass cases.

“This person must have really loved books.” Duncan said, pulling out his commonplace book and starting to take notes. “There’s a lot. But they’re all still here. Maybe the person died and nobody picked up their stuff?”

“Maybe they had to leave quickly.” Klaus sighed. “We’ve had to leave behind cool stuff before.”

“And then didn’t come back for years?” Isadora moved to a cracked, broken window, running a hand over the dusty sill.

“Look, it doesn’t really matter. We’ll probably leave soon anyway.” Klaus said. “We-”

“Violet?” Sunny called.

They all turned to the oldest girl at Sunny’s call, to see that she was standing, frozen, over three books, piled onto the edge of the table. She was staring down, her eyes wide and with a strange feeling behind them- horror? No, she didn’t seem scared. Sadness? A bit too active a spark in her eyes.

Recognition. That was it. A surprised recognition.

Violet ran her hand over the spines, letting dust sprinkle to the ground.

“Les Fleurs du mal.” she read, her voice barely audible. “We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The Blue Aspic.”

Klaus picked up Sunny, walking over with confusion written across his face. “Those first two-”

“Bayuh,” Sunny said. “Our parents’ favorites, right?”

Violet nodded shakily. “And Blue Aspic… She reached down, touching the spine. “That was Lemony’s. Mother told us that once, remember?”

“I never understood that.” Klaus said. “But why-”

His breath caught in his throat.

Duncan and Isadora turned, confused, watching as he stumbled back into a creaky chair, sitting down and staring into nothing, a stunned silence spreading over all the children. Sunny gasped and leaned forwards, reaching to brush her hand against Violet’s, while Violet just kept her eyes on the books.

“Violet?” Isadora asked. “Are you okay?”

Violet slowly, slowly, shook her head.

“I think,” she said, “This is our house.”

Isadora and Duncan fell completely silent. Violet, meanwhile, wandered to one of the cupboards, sliding it open and stepping back to let the dust fall out. She peered inside at the old books and jars, reaching forward to take a novel out- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. She’d never read it. Maybe she would have, if she’d grown up here.

“These are the remnants of what… what we were supposed to have.” she said, staring down at the cover. “If we never… went running.”

Klaus hugged Sunny tight, as Sunny started to cry. “Can you…” he took a deep breath. “This place must have been beautiful before Mother and Father- before they had to leave.”

Duncan nodded, and sadly ran his hand over the wall. “You can see what the paint must have been, the designs.”

“Everything here used to be so pretty.” Isadora nodded, looking at a vase that had toppled to the ground and been subsequently covered by cobwebs.

Violet took a breath, before waving the book in the wind to break the dust off it, and then sliding it into her bag. “I- I have to see something.” she said, and she took off. Without a word, the others quickly followed.

Violet ran down the hall until she reached a large foyer. A chandelier still hung from the ceiling, though it looked like it was about to fall at any instant, and there was a creaky door, with a lock over it and fallen boards behind it, seen through the low windows. Violet ignored the door, instead going for the stairs. She found them to be sturdy enough, so she raced up, letting her sleeve rub against the railing, causing dust to scatter behind her and over the side. She heard the others running behind her, but at this point, her head was buzzing, with just one thought in her mind.

On the second story, she opened each door, peering inside for only an instant before moving on. Another library. A bathroom. A broom closet. A master bedroom. A study. No, no, no…

Then she found the right door, and when she opened it, she fell from her heightened, almost frenzied state into one of complete stillness. Not the normal stillness she got when she froze- she still stepped forward, but there was a reverence in it she had never had before. The stillness was in her heart; for a moment, all her feelings had stopped, all her emotions halted to just give her a moment to look ahead.

Klaus came in after her, and then froze behind her, putting a hand over his mouth. Sunny slid to the ground, and when she, too, realized what they were looking at she said a quiet, “Oh.”

Duncan and Isadora arrived just in time to see Violet carefully slide to her knees, her hands throwing themselves onto the ground to steady her as she stared inside. And as the Quagmires looked in, they also saw the painted clouds and birds, faded and chipped from fifteen years away. They saw boxes and crates, never to be unpacked, left with the intention of decorations or unbuilt furniture never to be built. But there was some- a dresser with a music box atop it, and a statue of a carousel. The drawers were painted with purple stripes and swirls, and the handles still had the remains of fifteen-year-old glitter. A rocking chair had tipped over in the corner, a moth-eaten cushion beside it.

And pushed against the wall was a broken crib, a small mobile hung over it. The mobile had delicately-crafted stars, the color long since faded, and when the door swung shut, the slight breeze caused it to turn a little.

Violet remained frozen, just staring at the crib.

Duncan and Isadora quietly stepped in, almost wondering if they shouldn’t be here. Klaus made his way over to the music box, picking it up off the dresser. Sunny reached up her arms for it, and he handed it to her, before picking up the carousel. Sunny opened the music box, a few soft notes playing out- the Quagmires couldn’t place the tune, though it sounded to be in common meter.

Klaus shook his head, “I- I thought Mother and Father didn’t have us until they went on the run. So… were they just trying? Or-”

Sunny shook her head.

“What do you mean, Sunny?” Isadora asked.

Sunny held up the music box. “Eton,” she said. “There’s a note inside.”

Duncan took it from her, as Klaus slowly put the carousel back and picked up Sunny again, hugging her tight. He looked down, and said, “It’s written onto the bottom of the box.” He read it aloud, for all of them to hear.

To our Violet, May this help you sleep well. We’ll make the world a song for you. - L.S.

Klaus shut his eyes. “Lemony prepared the room?”

“Probably before… before your parents decided they had to leave.” Isadora said, hugging herself and leaning onto Duncan’s shoulder, looking down at the faint writing. “That’s why it’s unfinished, he realized that- that they weren’t going to use it.”

“But… why…”

“Cause he was our Dad.” Violet said.

Everyone fell silent. Violet still hadn’t moved from her position, on her knees, on the floor. Her eyes were shut. She’d processed what they’d all said behind her, and put it all together, and now she never wanted to get up.

“Our parents loved him, and he loved them.” Violet whispered, lowering her head. Her hair fell over her shoulders, brushing her cheeks. “And now he’s gone. And so is all this.”

Duncan slowly reached over and wound the music box. The notes carried some more.

Klaus walked over to Violet, kneeling beside her. He looked at her face, and then wondered how long she’d been crying.

He put his hand on her shoulder, and Sunny touched her arm. Violet didn’t look over at them, but she did speak again.

“We’re not running again.” she whispered. “We’re going to find our parents, and kill the bastard keeping them from us. Who caused… this.”

Nobody said anything, and they just let the music box play on.

Esmé dramatically fainted onto the sofa. “Darling, I can’t possibly do any more work today. Those fucking children tried to kill me.”

“The baby bit you. Babies bite all the time.” Olaf groaned.

Their recent hideout was thankfully near enough for Esmé to reach in a short amount of time, and while the rest of the Henchpeople were out in the city looking for the children, Fernald remained behind with a map. After he finished tracing a path- no small feat, considering he had hooks- he waved towards his boss.

“See, Esmé? Hooky’s doing work for us.”

Fernald brought the map over, laying it out on the ground. “They just left Prufrock, yes? So if we assume they take the roads, they’ll probably go this way.”

Olaf looked down at the route, and then smiled very, very darkly. He reached down and pointed at a spot, about halfway to the City in that direction.

Fernald’s eyes widened. “Uh, boss, I really don’t think-”

“Shut up, Hooky. Esmé?”

She groaned and looked up. “What?”

“We need you to pay off a bus driver to have an unscheduled stop.”

“Can’t we just wait until they reach the city?”

“Oh, no, my dear,” Olaf said, and then he gestured for her to look at the area he was pointing at. “Look what they could run into on the way.”

Esmé glanced down, and then beamed.

#asoue #asoue au #asoue netflix #a series of unfortunate events #runaway baudelaires au #all those things they couldn't say #the ersatz elevator #mine #my fanfic #asoue fanfiction

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spacegaywritings · 5 years

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Communication of Silence - Chapter 9: Ups and Downs

I am rly tired and i think now TWs outside of the general ones for the whole story apply. Except there is food ig? Idk man, shoot me a message when you got sth I overlooked bc I am just big stress rn. linky link :) Story under the cut;

Virgil shuffled under his blanket and pushed his bottom lip forward into a little pout. His head was pounding dully and his vision was just blurry enough to have issues seeing Dee despite her being so close around.

“Talk...”, he repeated softly and nodded. The sleep was still heavy on her limbs, the nap seemed to have left him in a more tired out state than before. Exhaustion was pulling at his body and he extended his arms, making grabby hands like a little toddler who wanted to be picked up. Declyn gave him a smile and carefully moved around to let the other wrap his arms around her neck. She moved and tugged Virgil along.

Logan was far away enough to not directly be disturbed for now. He was still peacefully slumbering in the middle of the couch while the couple slowly moved away. “Room”, Virgil muttered as he held onto Dee who supported him without complaints. She nodded. “Of course.” The elder one carefully helped Virgil up and together they silently sneaked over to the room he shared with Logan. At least now he was sleeping and sure to not come back.

Virgil’s arms were lowered down to be around Dee’s chest by now instead of the neck. It helped him stretch with more comfort and still have the stability of walking around without immediately dropping to the floor like the wet sack of stones he was to his own life. He bit his lip as his partner reached out to open the door with the precision and care he would not have expected from the other considering his eyesight and the fact that it was dim enough to almost be dark at the moment.

The punk muttered an apology as the door opened and he leaned back, rolling onto his feet in a more straight-up position. He held onto the door frame and swung himself into the room, stumbling a little before he patted the light switch with a slap of his left hand that crossed over his chest to reach around to it. Light immersed them and blessed their eyes with temporary hurt in exchange for better vision after a few moments of adjustment.

Dee groaned at the new light and stepped into the room, dragging the door behind her until it was shut and closed them both off the others. Right now, they were alone with the elephant int the room. Virgil carefully slipped onto Logan’s bed instead of making the long way around it. He settled once he slid off it and right onto his mattress that was conveniently close.

Yes, he did not mind sleeping there, no matter how much people got worried about him or told him it was undignified or something. He liked it. Also it was a short-lived thing and he would move out in about a month. He would be fine together with his brother and he would be out of all the bullshit. Then again, he had not even a single problem with Logan. Far from it.

He could see Dee move to join him on his little bed and she stayed at a distance. “Thank you for the light, Virgil” The art student cast a glance aside and shrugged. “Just spill it, okay? What did I fuck up this time - I.. I can stop, okay?”

Her expression changed from remotely pained to utterly horrified. “Virgil, no.” She breathed out and closed her eyes, her more neutral expression switching back onto her features in an attempt to ease up herself as much as Virgil. “I am worried about you. I do not want you to change for my liking but for your health.”

The student shook his head and gripped his lower arms through his sleeves. Immediately, a rubbing, intense pain spread through his left one and he hissed at the sensation yet denied the possibility of letting it go.

“Just tell me what I fucked up!”, he snarled, teeth ramming into his lip as he desperately kept his gaze on his mattress. The lawyer sighed softly but did try not to aggravate the other too much. Virgil was much like a cat and if it was not fight then it was flight - the mood would change faster than a dysfunctional compass needle could spin under the influence of magnets. “It is less about what you do but what you do not do, Virgil. You stopped eating again. Your friend messaged you and I saw it when your phone vibrated so much, it almost woke up you and Logan. A chain of whether you are alright and reminders of eating and taking certain supplements because you fainted in your self-defence training session.”

Virgil chewed on his bottom lip a if to bite through the situation. White, sharp teeth dug into his pale lips and created a contrast that would only be topped by the copper taste of crimson running from broken skin and destructive habits. “Yeah, so?” He grabbed his arms tighter and winced at the pain yet stayed grounded. It was shooting through him. It was quick like a bunny in the moment of flight and sharper than Dee's words had ever been.

Oh no. “My heart, would you mind giving me your hands, please? I just want to hold them for you.” Virgil looked over, merely glancing over her legs and shrugged eventually. His lips moved off his teeth and he shifted his legs to the so he could carefully reach over to give Declyn his hands. She received them and gently pushed her thumbs into his palms, softly brushing over the area in the middle of his hands that was a tad lower. The touch reminded him of stepping into a tub of hot bath water after a particularly icy and stressful time. It was sudden and he wanted to pull away at all the new sensations. The heat, the comfort, the smells and the hands that grabbed the heavy burden of his problems and worries. He did not pull back. Virgil eased into the touch like he would ease into the welcoming warmth of a relaxing bath. “See? I am not hurting you, Virgil. It is all good. I am just worried around you.”

The younger one nodded carefully and insistently stared into their hands. “Did you talk about it in therapy, darling?” Virgil sniffled and shrugged. “I can skip lesson and go tomorrow”, he mumbled into his hoodie. The fabric soaked up his anxiety and became heavy with his fear in solidarity. “Em lets me have emergency sessions if it is really bad.” Dee continued brushing over his hands, his thumbs moving in a steady rhythm. They travelled smoothly like the waves of the ocean that approached and left the beach curiously. It was a promise to rely on, the kiss of goodbye and the embrace of meeting again after so long.

“You do not have to. But if you feel that you relapse maybe you should talk to someone. If it has to be professional, then so be it.” Virgil snorted. “You are a professional, Dee.” - “I am talking about a professional for mental health issues more than legal ones but I appreciate your effort.”

A long silence stretched between them like a tired cat. One end reaching up to Dee's knee over to Virgil's big toe. “Why did you stop?”

Virgil felt tears sting into his eyes, the words pushing his lacrimal glands to squeeze out the salty liquid he had stored plenty of in his body. He gasped for air. His lungs were raging and howling within him, demanding more and more air to enter his system without really appreciating it. They were simply throwing a tantrum for the sake of messing him up even further.

He shoulders flinched upwards in a weak motion and immediately dropped down to the lowest level they could anatomically reach without possibly be broken in the first place. His teeth clenched around his lips again. They were stuck and sucked into a grasp of violence and abuse as he stubbornly shook his head. The blood rushed through him in a quick sprint, painting his cold body in panicked flushes like rashes of abused skin.

“N-nothing”, he defended. His voice was deflated, thinner than hair strands that were bleached into oblivion and disintegration. Declyn’s warm eyes took the change into account and watched the rapid speed at which his lungs expanded and, just shortly after, decreased in volume like a popped balloon.

She carefully squeezed Virgil’s hands with a tad more force, acting like a strong life line that may cut into you but ultimately, caused nothing but collateral damage. Glass and metal shreds pressed into Virgil’s feelings as he gasped for air. His legs pushed and pressed his back further into the pillow behind him and the uncomfortable corner between the wall that backed up his mattress, and Logan’s bed bordering to it. He was effectively resting his shoulders against the wall and the bed, his back pushing into the nothing he could not reach due to the angle.

It would have caused more than dull pressing sensations rather than actual pain his body provided as warning signal. However, he could feel the heat coming from Dee as his body seemed to fade. All life and personal warmth was draining from him, down the pipes and into the void he felt eating him away. He was glad for it.

“Virgil, Virgil, listen to me”, Dee called out as Virgil starting tugging at her grip in an attempt to claw his finger nails into his skin and ground himself, just come back to where he should be so he could be faced with every dirt and filth he deserved to be pushed into him. All his sucky habits and horrible attitudes should qualify him to suck up to the damage he had done to others when he brought them down with his mere existence.

He was a bad influence. Virgil should not be, he should be gone gone gone because he kept hurting nice people in his life. He made Kyle worry and have Dee be mad with him - and she was right about it. If she had any sense of right and wrong with her like any other conventional person, she would beat it into him and let him feel just how much pain he had caused her by abusing the feeling she had in herself for his own sorry self.

Gasps and sobs could be heard but Virgil was deafened and muted by his own racing heartbeat. It was beating a lot right now, probably making up for the times it could not beat when he would miss out on all these years he could have but was not worthy of. He had not earned a single day more than beyond the day he was born and had wretched people apart, tearing life down with him and starting his career as professional bringer of misery and death.

It was his fault, his fault, only his fault. If he had not survived, everyone would have had a better and nicer life. If he had not lived in the first place, everything should have been goon and precious to everyone and people would finally be full of joy. Heck, not just individuals but whole countries and systems would be better off without the chaos he had caused. The best achievement in life was truly taking care of a rodent he should probably have never taken in but he just had to be so self-absorbed and convinced he was better than others and would do such a great job when in reality, he was the apparently oh so innocent manifestation of doom.

“Virgil. Virgil, can you hear me?”, a voice called. He barely heard it. His head fell back against nothing and almost rolled off. His joints had him good and instead, it unceremoniously snapped backwards and circled around like an egg. He took the effort to angle his neck a bit just to try and locate the noise that intruded into his system and disturbed his thoughts. The sounds just came in, wrecking the havoc in his mind and tearing down the storms of self-deprecation like an ideal sniper who gave just one sound here, another one there and directed yet another load of sounds into a direction Virgil did not even know he was bombarded from.

It took some more moments for him to let his knocked down mind process that the shit storm of pessimistic thoughts was barely hitting him anymore despite aiming at his form. In true fashion of lethargy, some more time passed before he blinked away the veil of self-directed odium and contempt and could see the distant picture of two hands holding a pair of other hands together. Colours were melting together but he felt as if he knew those were hands.

The artist hummed at the sensation. It was a weak attempt at vocalising the gratitude within him. For some reason, he just felt that these hands were something good, something personally connected to him like a string attached to his heart. It was so strong, he could feel the ghastly phantom touch at the area he assumed to be his own fingers.

“hm..huh...hm..”. Nonsense plunged from his slightly parted lips. His face was static, slow. It was frozen water, a video stopped in the middle of a scene while the rest of the world was still moving on despite his conserved state. Maybe he was in a snow globe. He was the middle. Unmoving, unimportant and surrounded by all that made people wonder and squeak in delight while he was the decoration people tolerated. He was the least of the worst ones.

He blinked, trying to clear up the whitish coat that seemed to not just blur his vision but darken all he could see as well. It seemed so unsteady and moving... It made him sick and...and sweaty and sick... so sick and heavy..

His fingers moved to sign “bathroom”, a word Dee knew at last. Whether or not she had but a few knowledge about the language used, she knew this words as part of a few common phrases she could react and identify at last. She nodded and carefully tugged the corpse-like body of her datemate forward.

He did not know what took so long about making eggs but he was grateful that Roman and Patton took their sweet time preparing things one by one and especially using sweet potatoes because they took a while to get soft enough for comfortable consumption. The couple made it into the room without issues and Declyn quickly shut and locked the door behind them after stumbling through the dark and running a few edges of furniture. It did not hurt too much but she was glad that she usually covered about as much as she could without appearing to be suspicious to other people or mask her face away. She could feel little areas throb in pain at the impact but it was none of her concern at the moment.

Virgil immediately dropped to his knees, arms ready to embrace the porcelain throne before him as he felt heat and sweat break through his body. Sick, nauseous. It was tickling in his throat, trying to provoke Patton’s baked delight out of him.

There was something else. Not within him. Besides his pounding heart, light head and sweating palms, there was the distant sound of another voice. Not his thoughts but another person.

It sounded like Dee but did not feel liker her.

”Sweetheart, you are safe”, she cooed patiently. Her words dropped onto him like water droplets in a cleansing shower. His body temperature seemed to immediately drop.

”It is okay. I would never hurt you. I am sorry for touching you.”

Virgil heard the words and took them in, accepted them with a dazed head and heavy yet light feelings in his body. This was like being drunk but there was no fun in it. There was so much going on within and outside of him, he could barely keep track. It was.. was like standing in the middle of the busy street, tires roaring and engines blaring while the heavy vehicles sped around him. And he was trapped and caged and could not get out and it was dangerous and loud and bad, so bad. Why was it so bad, why was he standing there! This was dumb, he was dumb, he must have done dumb things to make all of this happen and endanger him and others and he was so scared and worried. Oh fuck, he would die a nameless and faceless victim in a dumb car crash and no lane was every free enough for him to run over to the other side and be safe.

He could not even try it, he would never try it because it was doomed. He was bound to fail, he was, he.. he was already

..warm.

A warm hand gently caressed his cheek, brushing over his cheekbone. A silent yet constant sound could be heard. Like rushing of the water. Water did not hurt him.. water was okay..

”It is okay, you are safe.”

Virgil nodded against the heat in his body, the heavy and heat feeling that had him so dizzy. It was hard. It felt so hard.

The water sound returned and slowed down, Virgil concentrated on it with all his might. He tuned out all the sounds, all the voices and the worries. Nothing mattered. Just the water, just the sound from out there. His heart was not going to jump out of his chest, his body was not going to collapse and he would not just die.

What about his lungs-

Panic flared up within him once more. His small figure retreated and hit itself on a wall just to lean into the steady touch of something to lean against, to hold onto.

”Virgil, please, can you hear me?”

He nodded again. The voice was nice, he knew the voice was nice and he was okay... the voice made it okay. It would be okay. His tired eyes closed and he let his body slump against the wall.

”Put your feet down and press them against the ground, feel the floor, okay?”

There.. was no real sense to him or anything at this moment so he just did as he was told, trusting the voice to continue and be nice as he felt it would continue to be. Nice voice... Ground.. ground.. His toes curled and pushed his heels back against the ground with all the resistance he deemed fit. It was ..experimental and careful at first. There was a motivation and understanding that was not in these heels but somewhere else.

”Ease up, again”

He followed the instruction and let himself go limp. The whole tension had served him in nothing but pushing his back against the wall. It was a wall, a cool wall but it was not cold.

”You are here, Virgil. You are right here with me and you are safe.” He nodded again. His head just bopped forward as if knocked out but he was moderately-paced at leaning his head back against the wall once more. ”You are at home, do you know? You are here, in the bathroom. You live here with Logan in a room. Logan is a nice person, right?”

The emo smiled for a bit. He might not feel the happiness like sunshine in his heart but it did do the job to make the dull numbness fuck off a bit more.

“And you are living here and you are safe and you are not there anymore. You are not with them anymore. You are with people like Logan, like myself.”

Virgil felt his lip twitch into a lopsided smile. It was but the flash of a moment, the split in a second and the beat of his heart. Yes, Logan was nice. Dee was nice. She was really kind and made him feel pretty good. Like a natural thing.

“You are safe. Right here, or with me.”

The smaller one carefully nodded and slowly rose his hand to pat the space next to him before he started pushing his heels against the floor again. A grounding activity, he remembered it now. He knew it very well but sometimes it just slipped his mind when his panic curled around his eyes like a blindfold. But grounding was good.

If there was one thing Virgil has learned in all these years, then it was that one panic attach easily paved the way for another. It was important to ground yourself even afterwards and just make sure that you were really safe and back in reality. It was too easy to jump from one into another spell of dissociation.

Dee’s hand carefully pushed its back against the side of his hand and he took the invitation with delight.

“You are here, you are safe. I promise you are safe with me.”

Virgil nodded.

“I fucked up, though.”

Declyn shook her head.

“Oh, why would you say that. It was a silly misunderstanding.”

Virgil scoffed.

“A good enough one to set me off”, he shot back dryly and cleared his throat. His voice felt a bit raspy and his words felt like torture to him. The emo dragged every last breath out of himself. ”Uh, not what I meant, anyway.”

He carefully gestured to his right arm and sighed. Sometimes it felt as if he was the only one to really mess up his life. It was not on others but it was on him. Well, not that he would let himself think into that at this moment. He knew better than to do this kind of foolish thing.

“Aw, don’t be dramatic! We can fix this. Let me see.”

She extended her arm and Virgil rolled his eyes in return but willingly rolled up his sleep to reveal a bunch of colourful marks along with dark streaks. The curves and swings formed words and letters, they were strings putting it all together and forming a big arrow and meanings more than just a literal one.

“I know you pressed on it a lot but it seems fine. Come on, let us get out before the others get worried. You can keep an eye on it, so nothing happens. If you are worried, you can go to the parlour and tell them what happened.”

Virgil shook his at Dee carefully pulled the sleeve back over the tattoo. It was covered by a thin foil that almost reminded him of stickers. When his arm was in certain positions, it would wrinkle up a bit but it was solid. It was there to protect him and his new little treasure.

He hummed.

“I’m sorry.”

Declyn already got up and straighten out her clothes before she leaned down to offer Virgil a hand. He gladly accepted and got up with a bit of help from a supportive wall and his wonderful friend.

“Don’t be sorry, sweetie Vee, I know you are trying.”

The smaller man looked down at his socks and curled and uncurled his toes once more.

“I um”, he started but stopped himself again. Words were so hard. His were just trying to put things into movement he did not know to put into any phrase. It was a wild chase for sense in an intense situation.

“I..it got a bit dumb again and I was worried and had shitty dreams and such.”

Virgil shrugged it off, his head rolling over the side of his shoulder and leaning on it. His tongue pushed against his gums. Words... words...

“uhh.. I will try talking about it next time, okay?”

For a moment, Dee’s face was unreadable. Her lips were moving from side to side. Just a bit, merely more than a twitch. It felt like she was playing with the words, weighing them against one another to construct the perfect sentence as she tasted the flavour of his syllables.

“Okay. Please, try. I do not want to hurt you, Vee. I hope you know this.”

The other blinked up for a moment before casting his glance down again, just for a bit. Only to look up at her and into her eyes with a determination in hi face.

“I-I am safe with you .”

She nodded and carefully stretched out her arms halfway, they looked awkward at that angle but not quite as awkward as fully stretched out arms would be. Well, there was nothing odd or wrong if he just so happened to take another step and walk right into her literally open arms and just let himself be engulfed.

“You are. I am not like them, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, Virgil. I would never want to cause you any harm. I just asked because I am concerned for you. I know you have been so much worse last year.”

She did not want him to go back to that. ...Maybe Declyn did not say it but the sigh that followed her words spoke more hours of audio books could fill.

“Mh... you are so much better”, Virgil argued and carefully nudged her. “We should still go. I have no idea whether they are politely waiting for us or if they are actually taking that look to make some fucking eggs.”

Dee rolled her eyes this time and leaned back a bit, her eyebrows narrowing as she eyed the smaller individual before her. Her heart was filled with warmth.

The two started moving towards the door to exit the room. Virgil hooked one of his arms around his love and nudged his Dee with his head. She was a bit shorter than guys were on average but it was enough for Virgil to reach her shoulder only. His face buried itself a bit in her loving chest as they walked on.

“You really are the best”, Virgil reiterated, his words muffled by the fabric of Dee’s clothing.

“I am still sorry for not talking. Will do better.”

She smiled.

“Go to therapy or you can party alone next week”

Virgil snorted at that. Nobody else would be that dry and just shoot back with an answer like that. Dee was his sunshine, his hope on a fiery tongue. Did she ever do as expected?

Virgil squeezed her into a hug.

“I will.”

“I know.”

Steps outside could be heard and a loud Roman seemed to announce something. It was obviously his boisterous voice but his exact words were swallowed my the door between the two lovebirds and the three friends outside. They were in completely over worlds, different events and feelings holding them together and building up a unique scene of feelings and mutual understanding.

“And I love you, Dee”

She stopped for a moment and let herself look back at her joyful friend.

“You know I do love you too, Virgil. I love you with all my heart.”

Her gorgeous arms would around him and drew him in for a deep hug. Limbs and hearts joined in and let the hymns of the outside just disappear for a little longer. The panic was gone, Roman was forgotten. And if it was not for eggs to have a strong smell, even the meal would probably be fully wiped from their minds but the savoury sensation got to them, got to the bathroom like a sneaky snitch.

The emo took another deep breath, simply inhaling the warmth and love he was willingly provided without trick or secret conditions. It was a mutuality, a natural exchange between them. Constant, equal, balanced.

“Mhmm... the eggs smell good~”

“They better do because you really need to devour some food right the fuck now, my love.”

Virgil unlocked the door and opened it for them to get back into the happenings of this home. Once back into the kitchen, they could hear whatever had been up with Roman before.

The man had grabbed a roll of wrapping paper and pointed it at Logan, Patton in his arms and giggling in his giant demeanour of being ridiculously tall for a person that was a human being. “I demand it one last time, foul creature, hand back the princess!”

Logan blinked at Roman, lightly.. out of place. He looked a bit as if he had been dragged onto stage and he did not know the words to the scene and everyone was staring at him. The glassgreen-eyed man was still giggling in fits while hugging Logan close in a squeaky joy of childish delight.

Before Virgil even got to ask about what was going on, Dee caught on to this and put the back of her hand up to her forehead and let out a sigh, dramatic enough to put Shakespeare into a position of envy.

“Someone stop this violence and bloodshed! This is insanity” Her voice dropped from full and proud to thin, it was about as thin as the patience of a person in an emergency situation.

Roman had to be proud. His eyes sure seemed to sparkle with something undefinable at this moment.

“Please, this beast and I have taken to end this situation. We mortals and the magical beings shall make peace and live in harmony!”

Beast? He was a beast now?

”Hey!”

“Honey, you literally are a small demon.”

“...you are more demonic than I could ever make out to be, Dee”, he pouted in response and let his arms cross over his chest. “Whatever, let’s fucking end a war and shit.”

The princess giggled again. “Yeah, Roman! The dragon makes for really great cuddles! He hugged Logan as if to emphasise just how huggable he was! And huggability was a direct indicator of kindness and peacefulness. Which, again, showed just how low the level of likelihood to ”take-over-the-kingdom-and-enslave-humanity” was. ...At least in case of Logan.

Roman looked at the sudden turn of events, he admitted the twist but would he admit defeat? He might have been wrong, he might have been biased by his own stance as a human being, himself. What if he did? His doubts lowered his weapon and in the moment of vulnerability, his determination faded and Declyn was quick to snatch up a nearby roll herself an smack Roman’s sword out of his hands!

A huge gasp followed the betrayal and Patton sucked in a sharp breath. This blew, this hit so deep.

Virgil already caught the falling weapon and flash-stepped back into his partner’s circle.

“Roman, I challenge you. You are guilty for evoking hostility between the fantastic and simple beings, you are the villain to tilt the balance!”

She pointed her sword at the prince, who was still mourning over the loss of his own shiny weapon. Meanwhile, Declyn’s rich voice was back to the usual strength of a proud man and she stole all of Roman’s determination from him to enrich herself with this resource.

“No, how could you! You disarmed me in my own battle!”, the prince retorted in indignation. Hot feelings flooded his body. His eyes wandered from Declyn to her partner. “And you took my beautifully manicured sword!”

Virgil shrugged at that, his mouth twitching into a lazy corner for a lopsided-grin. ...and then he blew really mature raspberries at him. "Suck up, Princey. War sucks and only the higher-ups seek battle rather than conversation." His voice sounded so excited, it was amazing he did not jump out of his socks with all the energy circulating within him. Clearly impressive. Dee let her hand travel down to Virgil’s grip on the sword he had taken to be his. He had stripped Roman of his word, off his sword. There was barely any left to the pride of this man.

“I love you my dear but I feel we need to take a less violent approach.” She gently squeezed Virgil’s hands and he slowly lowered his sword, eyes sparkling red warnings at Roman who still stood there, frozen and perplexed at how the game has changed in under a minute. Much to his disadvantage.

Logan cut in, for the first time.

”I believe we need to call for equality in this mater. Violence has brought this terrible situation upon us and has made love illegal to us simple beings.”

His words were clearer than glass, they felt cold but in a refreshing manner. Like stepping into the water underneath the frozen surface of a natural lake. It was everywhere and it ran deep into Virgil, dripping slowly yet flooding his mind with meaning in less than a moment. There was an intent behind Logan’s words.

“Equality? You don’t mean some shit like going back on how it used to be, right?”

Roman scoffed at them.

“Equality? You are my subjects and your words are an incredulous audacity to my work and status!”

Virgil glared at the prince. There was enough feeling to burn down the parliament in these eyes. They were dark like the night of mischief in which any resistance group would rise up to revolt against the state as it was. To change everything radically and drastically without warning, without open ears.

“One of us”, Virgil prompted and Roman’s eyes grew wide. Could he taste the disgust for being just as valuable as any other life? “One of us! Yes, Roman!”, Patton cheered happily. His cheeks went wide and he held out his hand to let Roman in.

He invited him.

“I might love a dragon but all in all, I just love his heart. We all have a heart.”

Dee cleared her throat.

“As a vampire, I kind of do not but go on, dearest companion.”

Virgil nudged her to lower her sword which she had pointed at Roman, still. She slowly blinked at the man and arched an eyebrow at the royal. expecting something.

“This is a riot”, Roman started but his words dried up in his throat and he had to clear it, granting himself another moment of pause to consider his words. “You want to abolish the royal family in this land but can you dethrone all royals in this world?”

Virgil dropped the beautiful and freshly manicured sword, still keeping his intense gaze fixed on the struggling prince. The weapon fell down in tragedy, the metal making a clattering sound. (It was a paper roll still, it just made a dull sounds but this was a fantasy world we were improvising here) A quick kick let the sword cry out in abandonment, in rage and frustration.

In war.

“Maybe we cannot but love surely can. And we will try.”

Dee dropped her roll as well and stretched out her free hand to invite Roman as well. Logan joined, extending his long arm to welcome Roman into the life of a common person, the life of struggle and family, the life of everyone. The prince still seemed torn, one foot closer to the group of unusual lovers and one closer to the kitchen unit and the cooling dinner eggs.

“You do not have to be afraid, Roman. You will be respected as a person, not for a crown.”

The prince looked to the side and picked up a small package of big loops.

“I want us to have rings together. I will give up my crown to step down as a royal but I want us to have a new bond. If you want to fight for what you believe is right, then I want to take a part in doing good deed and strive for a betterment of our world.”

Patton squealed and hopped up, nearly shaking the apartment with his powerful hop. He immediately dashed forward to embrace his friend, happy sounds and extensive praise leaving his mouth as he pressed their bodies together and told him about how he was proud of his insight. Logan was dragged along and nobody could deny the obvious smile that turned his usususally rather spacey or stone-cold face into a sweet mask of affection. He still insisted on holding out his hand but this time, he invited a beast and a heartless creature.

They all cheered to getting their respective share of fruit loops and everyone got milk (dairy free or regular cow’s milk). “I declare us to be companions to defy laws and rules for the sake of love and true love only!”, Roman started and held up his cup, raising it a bit for everyone to see and the others mimicked the motion.

“To love!”, the former prince invited. “To our union”, Patton added. “To relationships”, Dee offered and Virgil followed “to the revolution” with a cheeky grin. Logan blinked. “To true love”

Their cups made sounds as they all clashed together in a weird traditional way.

“Anyway, food is getting cold but this was fun, friends!”

Roman whined.

“Patton, you ruined the sceeeene”

His emphasis on the last word was obvious with how much he drew out the syllable. A loud crunching sound drew more attention to itself than Roman to his words with how much he bastardised the pronunciation of certain words in his dramatic flair.

“What? It’s fruit loops and I am hungry”, Virgil mumbled between his broken pieces of a green loop. It was sweet and artificial but he could bet he was already addicted. If he was a kid, he would bet he could see rainbows upon consuming this.

“Yes, Virgil is right. We united a fictional world so now we should assemble to eat at last”

“Thanks, Log”

They finally settled around the table, Virgil and Patton bringing the food over because he kept insisting it was the least he could do for sleeping through cooking. That was a lie. Patton probably knew it. The way Patton smiled at him with his glass green bottle eyes just let him know that he knew. He must have heard the door or seen them sneak over.

He was too scared of sounding weird if he asked how it took them this long to finish eggs but when Logan rolled his eyes and blamed Patton for starting “this ridiculous scene in the first place”, he blinked at the giant. They both knew. Virgil smiled and signed a quick thanks before returning to the table to lay it with food and others.

“Virgil, why do you call Logan ‘Log’?”

Patton glanced over Roman and Virgil for a moment as the latter sat down next to Declyn. She moved her arm under the table but did not put it on the table either. The emo simply fidgeted a bit in his seat, all limbs moving a bit as he adjusted on his chair.

“Uh, because I do?”

Weak answer. He gave it a shrug to emphasise the point. Roman arched an eyebrow at him, his features looking oddly wrinkled in a reaction he did not want to provoke. His gaze seemed distant yet so fixed on him and there was interest burning within him.

“Yes, but how did you come up with it? Is there some kind of story? It sure is a special nickname and I wish to be enlightened.”

Dee chuckled, curled up lips hidden behind a dark hand. The back of it was all the others could see instead.

“Do you feel in the right mood to enlighten the advocate of dragons?”

Virgil shook his head. It was his turn to giggle and he hid his full face in his hands. Declyn retreated her hand and looked at him, her lips still forming a smile of fine amusement. It was the mere ghost of a smile but it was warm and gentle when she observed the little wrinkles that formed around Virgil’s mouth. She could mentally see his nose scrunch up despite it being hidden behind his hands.

“Come on, Virgil, implore the idea of expanding Roman’s horizon with the precious knowledge of your nickname-giving abilities.”

Virgil giggled harder, his sleeves flailing for a bit as he adjusted his hands and rubbed them deeper into his face. His head was nothing but black and purple hair as well black jacket with single neon stripes on each side.

“I- “, he started, words breathless and useless. They were barely audible. Not to mention how torn and incomplete the one tone itself sounded already. He took a deep break and cleared his throat. One last giggle took him back and Logan brushed through his hair. “Dee, stop, I will talk just stop already”

He whined, drawing out the last ‘stop’ as he pushed his sleeves against Dee’s lap for dramatic effect to his words.

“It is just a joke about logarithms because when I met Logan, he was literally reading a book about numbers.”

Roman blinked.

“That does sound an awful lot like our teacher”

Virgil nodded, his head going up and down at an amazing speed. Dee gently squeezed his thigh and caused the other to curl up in his seat and take her hand.

“Needless to say I do not approve of the name. I did not do it back then, to clarify, but I do not approve any more of it by now, either.”

Virgil blew raspberries at Logan but because English was not exactly his best subject and he did not grow into it, he would call this action “farting at someone”. Logan gave him a look but even his glasses on his nose looked delighted.

”You are such an adult, Virgil.”

Patton let out a soft “aww” but did not do anymore but start to give everyone some food as silent indicator that they once had a plan.

Roman blinked.

“Wait, you are an adult?”

Virgil’s brows knitted together into a frown. Apprehension and the disability to understand the other sketched the features of his face into a near-neutral mask.

“Of course I am. I sign contracts and leave countries without parents, learn how to drive. I do all the adulting things. I work with Logan. You should know I am an adult.”

Words burned on his tongues. His sentence turned more and more sour with each word he spilled.

His therapist said it was bad.

Roman shrugged.

“Chillax a bit, Charlie Frown. I did not know that. I thought you lived here because you could not get your own place.”

Declyn dropped her fork, letting it crash onto her plate with a shattering sound against the tensed silence between them.

“I am moving out, like, next month. I got a place to go to. I pay bills here. What is your problem?”

Dee nudged him. He sighed in reply and Roman shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I did not mean it like that, I-”

Logan cleared his throat as Patton reached out to brush over Roman’s arm. His whole posture was straightening out for the fight already. He was a true knight. Always ready to jump into whatever battle he could feel coming up.

“I will be out of your hair soon. I am gonna be busy working anyway so you won’t see me. Don’t worry. Soon enough it will be like I have never existed in your world at all.”

Something marvellous fell from Roman’s face. For a moment, the gleam of an aspiring prince was gone. Virgil’s words had drawn something essential out of him. He just was not sure what i was but it left him feel.. acutely incomplete.

At the same time, Patton was drawing patterns into Roman’s arm and singing melodies of truth and peace with his thoughtful hums.

“Dee, when did you meet Virgil? I never thought you two would meet, considering you are done with your studies already.”

Dee’s fingers were entangled with Virgil’s under the table and they conversed without words. Nostalgia tuned the sound of her words when she decided to speak up after cleaning her mouth with a napkin.

“We have met about one year ago. It was not quite Christmas, though.”

Patton nodded, a smile prompting her to go on as Virgil pushed his plate away and leaned into his chair instead.

Dee squeezed his hand.

“I met her when I was out. She did not want me walking around all on my own because it was late and I was alone.” He shrugged as if all of these words did not matter. His tongue whipped out vocalisations as if they were the laws every person had to abide to. “She brought me home - someone else was with us because I talked to them and they did not trust each other to be nice to me. We fell asleep together and I got her number. That was about it.”

The giant’s lips rubbed against one another. He was tasting the lies of omission in his mouth and mused the value of his deception. He had a knife like a sword and a fork like scaled of justice in his hands and his strangeness was his blindfold.

“That was quite the coincidence, was it not?”

Virgil shrugged.

“Life has always been full of weird events and unlikely happenings, has it not?”

Logan nodded.

“It sure was.”

They ended their meal on this note. Neither the sustenance nor the conversation really had been worth it.

#ts fanfic #ts logan #ts deceit #ts logic #ts fanfiction #ts patton #fanfiction #fanfic #fanficion #joey writes #i am tired #hhhhh #ts roman #ts virgil #uhhhhh #anxceit #tw food mention

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anubislover · 5 years

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Welcome to the Heart Pirates, Nami-ya Chapter 8: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Crap crap crap! Nami thought, looking between the two Devil Fruit users. Her night really couldn’t have been going worse. She was disarmed, caught up in the sticky, painful grasp of a perverted old man with way too many arms, one of which was still worming its way inside the deep V of her bodysuit. Then, even if she could somehow escape the tightly wound tentacles, Black Cage Hina herself stood between her and the exit. The woman might not have been a powerhouse, but her abilities were like something out of a Marines’ wet dream, specifically designed to capture wayward pirates like Nami.

Escape couldn’t have looked more unlikely and at this point she was really hoping Law was ok so he could get his ass back inside and rescue her.

“Ah, Hina-chan, perfect timing!” Harpin laughed. Two of his unoccupied arms pointed at Nami, who was trying her best not to show how much the razor-edged suckers digging into her skin had started to hurt. “I caught this pirate lurking around my study. She must be in on the village’s rebellion; I recognize her necklace as one created by my worthless former jeweler. They must have hired her as an assassin. Arrest her at once, my dear!”

The pink-haired Marine jutted out her hip, expression stern and unimpressed. “I’ll gladly put a Straw Hat behind bars, you’ll be going to jail too.”

Black, watery eyes widened. “What?”

Cool as iron in winter, Hina pulled out a cigarette, taking the time to light it before answering, “Didn’t I tell you that my superiors decided my attendance at your party was more important than attending to my duties? That’s because they wanted me to gather evidence that you’ve been selling government secrets and destroy whatever blackmail you have on them; we’re in tumultuous times, and the last thing they need is you churning even more chaos for your own gain.”

“Ah, a honey-trap. Of course,” he chuckled, giving her beautiful, athletic body an open leer. “Not a bad plan, given my fondness for you, but shouldn’t you have been a little nicer to me if you wanted to get your hands on some evidence? Avoiding me all night isn’t a very good seduction technique.”

Hina looked disgusted at the very thought. “I’d rather cut my own face off than allow you to touch me. No, our plan was far more palatable; Smoker had snuck away earlier to mess with the pipes connected to the spa above the ballroom. We were hoping the water damage to the ceiling would catch your attention for a while so we could investigate.”

“And instead, the village’s rebellion, led by Cat Thief Nami, puts all that careful planning to waste,” he said, giving the captive woman a shake for emphasis. Much as the action hurt, Nami was silently grateful, as it dislodged the tentacle still in her cleavage.

A pink eyebrow raised in disbelief. “You really think the villagers are the ones bombing your mansion? How stupid.”

“Stupid? How dare you! It doesn’t matter whether those peasants were in on it or not; it’s the narrative I’ll spin to the papers when they report on tonight’s events. Once word’s gotten out that they sided with pirates over their beloved master, no one will blame me for finally eliminating those slums. I’ve been wanting that eyesore removed for ages, but they simply refuse to leave.”

The Marine captain scowled at his confession. “Then I suppose when I take you in, I can add ‘slander’ and ‘corruption’ to your list of crimes.”

“How are you planning on arresting me, Hina-chan?” he asked with an incredulous laugh. “By force? My rank was comparable to a Vice-Admiral!”

Grey smoke streamed from her cigarette as she replied, “But your strength wasn’t. Powerful as the Ika Ika no Mi is, you rarely ventured onto the battlefield, instead getting fat and lazy behind a desk. And now that you’re past whatever prime you had, I’d say you’re a little closer to my level.” She smirked, cracking her knuckles. “Hina will enjoy this.”

“You should have stayed downstairs with the guests, Hina-chan,” Harpin sneered. “I’d hate to hurt such a pretty face.”

Glancing at Nami, who’d wisely chosen to remain quiet throughout the conversation, Hina frowned in consideration and—surprisingly—a hint of sympathy. “You’re going to jail, Cat Thief, but if you promise to sit tight, I’ll get you out of your sticky situation first. No woman deserves to be manhandled by a creepy squid.”

All things considered, that was probably be the best deal a pirate could get from her, so Nami nodded enthusiastically.

Running forward, Hina extended her arm, clotheslining the two tentacles encasing her wrists. Nami stared in awe as the Marine’s arm went right through them, leaving behind a black shackle locked around each clammy limb. Spinning on her heel, she next kicked her leg through the two binding the pirate’s thighs. The way the rubbery grey flesh immediately began to pucker and swell indicated that the bands were painfully tight, and Nami soon felt their grasp weaken.

“Fuck!” Harpin yelped, though any further curses were cut off as Hina’s fist slammed into his face. The blow knocked him stumbling back, and after another right hook he had no choice but to release his hold on Nami, the shackles on four of his limbs too constricting and the Marine before him too skilled to engage while restraining a thief.

Falling onto her ass with an “oof!” Nami immediately inspected her thighs and wrists, wincing at the angry marks left behind. Perfectly round, thumbprint-sized red rings littered her skin where the suckers had taken hold, the incisions from the chitin little deeper than a papercut but just as painful. A few had even drawn blood, though to be honest, Beatrix’s nails had sunk deeper.

The suckers are designed to capture and restrain, not rend and tear, Nami concluded. Those tentacles are no joke, though. If he’d been trying, he could have pulled me apart like a paper doll!

With a heavy kick to the chest, Hina sent her former superior crashing into his desk, papers and trinkets flying everywhere. Glancing down at the thief, she raised a challenging eyebrow. “I’m not going to waste my time and energy restraining you, but if you try to run, I won’t hesitate.”

“Fine. Wouldn’t want to miss your beatdown of that pervert, anyway,” she ground out, gingerly prodding at her disfigured legs. If she were lucky, Hina would eventually be too distracted with her fight to notice her sneaking off, but she wouldn’t play her hand until the time was right.

Pleased with the compliance, the Marine darted across the room to continue her cathartic thrashing of the ex-head of Navy intelligence, each punch, kick, and slap making her smile wider as she threw him into suits of armor, furniture, and anything else that was in the way.

Meanwhile, Nami took the opportunity to crawl towards her Clima-Tact, hugging the batons to her chest like an old friend. A glimmer from across the room caught her eye as Harpin was knocked into a lamp, and the embossed titles of the black ledgers winked at her as they lay on the floor. After all this trouble, Law would be pissed if she left without them. Quite frankly, now Nami was feeling pretty determined to get them, too. She wanted to read up some more on Jinbei, and that diagram on the Pacifistas could be useful if they ever ran into Kuma again; maybe it even had some information on how his powers worked, and she could use that to track down the others!

On top of that, Hina was right; the world was already in chaos, and people like Harpin shouldn’t be gaining from it.

While the Navy captain was busy repeatedly grinding the heel of her shoe down onto his crotch, Nami took the opportunity to dash across the room, skidding to a halt by the knight’s armor and gathering up the black leather books.

A crash caught her attention, and Nami’s head whipped to the left to watch Hina dodge a fallen chandelier. Haprin’s floppy lips smirked around his beak, hand pressed against a hidden switch on the wall.

Crap, Nami thought. I forgot there were other traps. She froze as Hina tossed her a glare, the thief’s new position not escaping her notice. Double crap!

The Marine didn’t have any time to do anything about the wayward pirate, though, as Harpin decided to go on the attack, using his multiple arms to fling books, debris, and scattered pieces of armor at the women. Nami awkwardly dodged the projectiles, ducking behind the safe. A thought suddenly hit her, and she peeked out from around the corner of her impromptu shield to observe the Golden Octopus.

Despite the beating Hina had given him, he didn’t look all that much worse for wear. No bruises or welts marred his ashen skin, no bones seemed to be broken, and he even seemed to be walking normally despite the testicular trauma Hina must have inflicted. On top of that, the shackles still locked around his tentacles didn’t seem to be slowing him down, either.

Having had more than enough, Hina shouted “Awase Baori!” as iron bars extended from her arms, spanning across the room. The cage smashed into Harpin’s rubbery body, squishing and distorting it as the bars wrapped around him. Maliciously, she raised the bars and the ensnared man as high into the air as she could before slamming him down onto the floor. As he glared at her, she smirked around her cigarette. “Give up. Everything that passes through my body is locked tight.”

The feeling of victory shattered as his scowl morphed into a smug smile around his beak. “Silly Hina-chan,” he sneered, and as if deflating a balloon, his body became thinner and more flexible, squeezing out from between the bars. Even the shackles Hina’d wrapped around his arms fell away, clattering to the floor. Quickly, eight rubbery limbs lashed out, the two powerful clubs slamming into her stomach like bludgeons. “You can’t cage a squid!”

“Gah!” she coughed, the air pushed from her lungs. Six more arms lashed out, striking her across her face, torso, legs, and ass, jerking her about with each surprisingly powerful blow.

Damn it, didn’t Hina even stun him? Nami thought incredulously, doing her best to stay behind the safe and out of sight.

Inflicting more harsh and humiliating lashes against his former subordinate, he cackled. “I’ll admit, your powers are quite the bane of normal men, but they’re useless against me. A giant squid’s body is malleable enough to withstand deep sea pressure, yet powerful enough to fight a sperm whale! It also makes physical blows practically useless. And while squid might not be quite as notorious escape artists as octopi, this flexible body makes your cage and shackles little more than temporary inconveniences. But escape isn’t my plan.”

Before both women’s eyes, Harpin began to transform again, this time growing larger and larger, his whole body becoming that of an enormous squid that took up nearly a third of the room. Each arm was now at least ten feet long and over a foot thick, with the clubbed feeding tentacles extending to nearly fifteen feet. Black, watery eyes swelled to the size of beach balls, and the disturbing beak grew to the point where it could easily crush a melon in its jaws.

Oh, right, Nami thought, cold terror freezing her lungs. Zoan-type Devil Fruit users can fully transform into their animal.

Quick as a whip, one arm wrapped itself around the dazed Hina, the powerful limb pinning down her arms while sharp suckers latched into the skin. The long silk gown allowed her legs some protection, but only from the chitin; the tentacle itself twined about her entire body until she was completely trapped, squeezing so tightly Nami could hear some of the Marine’s bones pop.

“You should have just been a good girl and agreed to be my secretary instead of hiding behind Sengoku,” he said, voice even more distorted now that his mouth was mainly beak. He dragged her close so he could glare at her through one massive, soggy eye. “I would have treated you nicely—given you more than you deserve. All you had to do was look pretty, spread your legs, and know your place!”

Hina bit down on her cries of pain as Harpin gave her another squeeze, laughing at her attempts to remain defiant. “Pity you had to play so hard to get, Hina-chan. At least Smoker won’t have to mourn you long; he’ll join you in Hell once I’ve finished ripping him to pieces!”

“Fuck…you,” she gasped out, glaring down at the hideous creature even as her bones creaked in his powerful grasp.

Looking on, Nami knew Hina was outmatched, and there was little that the Straw Hat navigator could do to help her. It was better to take the chance to run and live, maybe even find Smoker and tell him to help his friend, as unlikely as it would be that he’d get to her in time. Besides, if she didn’t get out now, she’d be next, and if Hina did manage to beat him, all she could count on a one-way trip to Impel Down.

But that pink hair, cigarette, and determination was just far too familiar, and Nami always had a soft spot for female Marines. Plus, she did owe her for the earlier rescue.

“Thunder Ball!” she shouted, launching a barrage of small electric bolts at the giant squid. She knew it wouldn’t do as much damage as a concentrated lightning strike, but it was just enough to distract him, keeping Hina from getting crushed.

Harpin let out what Nami assumed were yelps of pain before he turned his full attention on her. Grey skin sizzled slightly where the shocks had hit—his skin was rubbery, but it wasn’t rubber. Unlike Luffy, Harpin clearly still took damage from electricity. Nami didn’t have time to gloat, though, as one of the clubbed tentacles raised itself high before swinging down, slamming into the floor right in front of the safe, missing the thief as she dodged just in time.

The force of the blow, combined with the time Nami had been standing on the pressure tile, activated the trapped suit of armor, releasing the halberd from the knight’s grasp to fall onto the massive limb. The sharp blade didn’t quite slice all the way through the slimy club, but it did open a deep gash, blue blood gushing out.

“You bitch!” the giant squid cried, pulling the wounded arm back to inspect the cut, shocked that one of his own traps had been used against him.

Cat-like smile stretched across her face, Nami replied, “Oh, that’s nothing. Didn’t I say there would be thunderstorms tonight? Well, it’s not over yet!”

“Are you seriously—” Harpin began, only to be interrupted by a low rumble from above.

As he looked up, a bolt of lightning came down from the forgotten cloud, striking through the center of the arm constricting Hina as it connected to the Clima-Tact. “Thunder Lance Tempo!”

Once more the foul scent of sizzling sea creature filled her nose, and the concentrated electrical blast was just enough to cripple the limb holding Hina, the blackened flesh smoking and oozing blood in places. A horrific scream of agony rang out from the creature, the closest equivalent she could think of being nails on chalkboard. The limb wasn’t severed like Nami’d hoped, but while it still gripped the captive Marine, her face was much more relaxed, the crushing pressure significantly lessened as it flopped on the floor.

However, the Cat Thief now had a new problem; Harpin was hurt, furious, and his enormous, hateful eyes were fixated squarely on her.

Before she could hide herself or cast another lightning strike she was scooped up by a different tentacle, its grip ten times stronger than before, the serrated suckers the size of peach stones and digging deeper into her skin. She didn’t have Hina’s restraint, screaming as he maliciously began crushing her chest, bit by bit squeezing the life out of her.

“You worthless, stupid, wicked twat!” he snarled, bringing her so close Nami could see her pained, terrified reflection in his watery eye. “I’ll make you pay for that! You should have run while you had the chance! Now who’s going to save you, pirate whore?!”

The answer came in the form of Law and Smoker crashing through the windows, the Marine’s thick smoke clouds wrapped around the surgeon’s waist while their weapons locked in a stalemate. Trapped in the smoke were two large barrels of gunpowder. Shattered glass from the windows floated through the air, forcing Smoker to shield his eyes, giving Law an opening to punch him in the jaw, causing him to fling the pirate and the barrels deeper into the room.

Switching his body and the tumbling barrels with debris, Law smirked up at his opponent, patting one of the bombs as it settled next to him. “Gonna have to try harder than that to get these away from me, White Chase-ya.”

“I’m gonna tear your fucking head off, Trafalgar!” Smoker countered still wiping away the glass. His suit was shredded and smoldering faintly in some places while his jitte had a few scorch marks on it. Law must have taken the bombs meant for the third distraction to use against the Marine. Nami had been so caught up dealing with the Baron she hadn’t even noticed they’d never gone off.

Panting lightly, the Heart Captain brandished his cane sword, preparing to strike, only to pause as he took in the state of the room. He’d lost his mask and coat at some point and his lip was bleeding, but at least he was in one piece. More importantly, once he saw what kind of situation Nami had gotten herself into, he used his powers to switch her with one of the barrels.

She barely had time to regain her footing before he ordered, “Nami-ya, a spark to light the fuse, please.”

“Screw the fuse,” she gasped, gulping down air. Her Thunder Lance Tempo crashed through the wooden barrel, quickly setting off the explosive powder, making Harpin bellow as the tentacle was reduced to nothing more than a stump, enormous body flailing backwards to avoid the flames and shrapnel from damaging his face.

At the sound, Law finally gave the creature attached to the tentacle a good look, color draining from his face at the massive sea monster. “Well shit,” he said as he pushed her behind him, ready to fend off further tentacle strikes. “He’s actually a Devil Fruit user.”

“You owe me so much money for this!” Nami practically sobbed in relief, clutching the back of his vest.

“I’ll pay you when we don’t have a fucking squid monster trying to kill us.”

“And who the hell are you?” Harpin snapped, furious that his prey had been snatched from his sticky grasp once again.

“No one,” Law answered coolly, expanding his Room and slashing at the tentacle whipping towards them. It fell to the ground, wiggling and twitching, and Nami sent another blast of lightning at it for good measure.

“The fuck is Trafalgar Law doing with Cat Thief Nami?” Smoker growled to Hina as he slammed his jitte into the tentacle restraining her, the Seastone tip forcing it to go limp as Harpin howled in pain. Once he’d managed to clear the glass from his eyes, he too had decided aiding his companion was a higher priority than taking out his opponent.

“Are you surprised?” she asked dryly as she peeled the suckers from her skin, wincing at the rings left behind. “Perhaps saving Straw Hats is his new hobby.”

“Well, put them in a cage so we can focus on kicking Harpin’s ass!” he snapped as a shadow fell across him.

“Thunder Lance Tempo!” he heard the female pirate cry out, and he whipped around, ready to defend himself, when he was blinded by a lightning bolt flashing right in front of his face.

When the blotchy spots cleared from his vision, Smoker looked down to find a sizzling lump of squid flesh at his feet, the rest of the tentacle gingerly dragging the mangled tip away.

Hina gave Nami a grateful smile, and an unspoken understanding passed between them. “I only have so much energy and would rather let a few pirates gain a one-day head start if it means taking down a man who’s been leaking government secrets.”

Smoker’s eyes widened in comprehension, then narrowed in annoyance. “Are you shittin’ me?!”

Rather than hear out their argument, Nami urgently tugged Law’s vest. “I think the Navy’s got this covered. They don’t need us getting in their way.”

The way the line of his mouth hardened indicated he wasn’t thrilled with the idea, however, when he noticed the three hardcover ledgers she’d scooped off the floor, he nodded in acceptance. Grabbing her free arm, he turned towards the door, but Harpin was already two steps ahead of them, a massive tentacle batting the safe off its pressure-sensitive tile as easily as a cat would tip over a glass of water. Iron grates shot down over the entrance and windows, cutting off their escape routes.

Before Law could use his Room to bypass the gate, another tentacle whipped forward, smashing into his spine and knocking him into a wall, dragging Nami along with him. It was only sheer instinct that allowed him to turn midair and shield the smaller pirate from the hard impact, but as she reoriented herself, she immediately began to panic.

“Law!” Nami shouted, frantically checking to make sure he was breathing. “Oh, God, please tell me you’re alright!”

“Fuck,” he hissed, cracking an eye open as his teeth grit against the pain.

At least he’s alive, she thought, heart thundering in her chest. “Can you move? Is anything broken?”

Despite the obvious distress he was in, he gave a weak smirk. “And here I thought I was the doctor.”

Behind them, Nami could hear Smoker shout “White Blow!” a sickening, squishy sound filling her ears as the blast made impact with Harpin’s rubbery head. Glancing over her shoulder, she found the Marine standing in front of her, thick white smoke billowing from his arms, the dense clouds wrapping around the flailing tentacles like manacles. “Hina, if we live through this, you’re buying me dinner! All you can eat seafood!”

“Fine, but I’ll skip the calamari,” Hina coughed, slamming her Kimono Sleeve into the open wound of the pinned-down club, smirking slightly when the Baron let out a pained scream. The halberd’s gash hadn’t been deep, but even a creature resilient to physical strikes wouldn’t like a metal pole shoved inside a cut.

Unfortunately, their moment of victory didn’t last long, as Harpin had another trick up his sleeve; flexing his stomach, a spray of inky mist filled the room, blinding the quartet of humans, distracting both Smoker and Hina enough that Harpin was able to wiggle his way out of their traps.

“Hahaha! What are you going to do now?” the giant squid gloated, grunts of pain sounding from the pair of Marines. The floor shook as something repeatedly slammed into it, tiles cracking followed by more groans. “You can’t see me, but you’re all easy enough to find; squid are designed to hunt in virtual darkness!”

“Not much of an advantage when you take up half the room, you freaky bastard,” Law wheezed.

Though she couldn’t see her companion, she could feel him gingerly trying pull himself into a sitting position beneath her. Ok, if he’s snarking, he should be ok, she assured herself as she blindly got to her feet. Muscle memory and familiarity allowed her to assemble her batons properly, and following Harpin’s maniacal laughter, Nami tossed her Clima-Tact in what she hoped was the right direction. “Cyclone Tempo!”

His angry shouts told her she’d hit her mark, and with the ink cleared from the air, she was able to blink away the black film that formed over her eyes. Vision cleared, she was startled to find both Smoker and Hina in his grasp, the serrated rings in his suckers puncturing their skin, the muscular tentacles squeezing them like a pair of toothpaste tubes. Smoker looked far worse for wear, and she understood why as the squid bashed him against the floor like a child trying to break a toy soldier during a tantrum.

Seeing the lone thief before him, Harpin laughed again, taking a break from abusing his former subordinate. “Seems it’s my lucky night; all my problems will be solved in one fell swoop! I can frame Trafalgar Law for Smoker and Hina-chan’s murders and for those little information leaks—the World Government will be happy to pin the blame on him over one of their own, especially if it means I won’t release some rather scandalous information to Big News Morgans. Those charges against me will be dropped in no time!” he cried joyously, a third arm plucking Law from the rubble behind Nami, giving all three of his victims a harsh squeeze. “Add in the arrest of all those pathetic fishermen and their families for ‘aiding’ the Heart Pirates, and I’ll finally have my beautiful island all to myself! No more low-class trash or eyesore shanties—just beautiful women and fancy parties!”

His enormous eyes zeroed in on his final opponent. “That just leaves you, Nami-chan. Since I’m in such a good mood, I’ll give you a choice; be handed over to the Navy with your boyfriend or stay as my pretty plaything. After the trouble you’ve caused me, I can’t promise I’ll be gentle, but I can assure you, it’ll be better than what they’ll have in store for you at Impel Down.”

As Law, Smoker, and Hina cried out in pain from the crushing pressure of Harpin’s grip, Nami ran through her options. The choices he’d offered weren’t even worth considering. She couldn’t run; even if she weren’t trapped, she couldn’t just leave Law and the two Marines to their fates, nor risk Harpin framing the innocent villagers for an attack they weren’t involved in. Bargaining was pointless as the Baron held all the cards. Nami considered pleading for mercy, but she was positive that it would do nothing but stoke the squid’s massive ego and possibly sign herself up for an even worse fate—if Harpin was willing to blackmail his own companions, who was to say he wouldn’t force her to commit any number of depraved acts for the sake of her companions’ lives?

Spying the remaining two barrels of gunpowder, she came to a decision. With a shout of “Cyclone Tempo!” she launched them at him, pleased when he instinctively knocked them aside with his last pair of uninjured tentacles. She had no intention of setting them off; there was too much of a chance that the others would get caught in the explosion.

They did, however, distract Harpin enough to let her dash the twenty feet she needed to reach the entrance.

“Did you forget about the gate, stupid girl?” he called mockingly as he realized where she’d run.

Instead of answering verbally, Nami smirked as she stomped her foot down on one of the tiles in the third row, praying that the mechanisms hadn’t been damaged during the battle.

The result was better than she could have hoped; a Seastone net the size of the room itself plummeted from the ceiling, smashing into the huge, hideous creature, narrowly missing Nami as she sprang back and squeezed her small body against the grate, taking advantage of the narrow shelter provided by the threshold. Loud groans from the four Devil Fruit users rang out, all their strengths sapped but the thick tentacles around the three humans loosening, their rubbery bulk also providing ample protection against the force of the heavy net.

“Cat Thief, I’m not sure if I hate you more or less than your captain right now,” Smoker wheezed. His forehead was bleeding, his nose looked broken, and his beefy body would probably be one big bruise in the morning, but he was still alive.

“Be grateful,” Nami panted, walking out into the room to collect the black ledgers. “Luffy would have punched him through the floor; I at least left the room intact.”

Either the Gods of Dramatic Irony decided such a statement couldn’t be left alone or Luffy had died and his ghost was haunting her, but beneath her feet, thin fissures began to form.

“Smoker,” Hina asked softly, “you memorized the blueprints of the mansion. What’s below us?”

Briefly, Law and Smoker shared a guilty glance. “The art gallery. Which Trafalgar and I might have briefly…tussled in.”

“Tussled?”

“I may have bashed his head into a potentially load-bearing pillar or two.”

“And I may have cut a few more,” Law added weakly.

As the cracks grew wider, Hina sighed. “And of course, below that is the spa, which has surely sustained massive water damage by now due to Smoker breaking the pipes.”

There was no way to deny it—from the battles to the bombs to the sabotage, the structural integrity of the room had been compromised. Comical tears streamed down Nami’s face as she collapsed to her knees. “We’re all gonna die.”

Trapped as they all were, there was no choice but to watch the cracks grow larger and larger before the floor finally broke apart like a jigsaw puzzle. Harpin’s much heavier bulk mixed with the force of gravity caused him to smash through the floors of two more ceilings, finally crashing into the first floor. His squishy body did provide ample cushioning for the Cat Thief, though, as she bounced off his elastic head, landing hard but safely on the floor.

When the smoke cleared, Nami realized that they’d landed at the far end of the ballroom. Most of the guests had chosen to use the room as a shelter instead of evacuating and possibly facing what they believed to be an angry mob of villagers, but Reginald had managed to herd them all into the corner closest to the entrance where it was safest, and conveniently away from the spot Harpin’s hulking form had landed.

Luck was once again briefly on the pirates’ side as the fall had also managed to dislodge Law from both the tentacle and the net, freeing him. Tired, dirty, but not as badly injured as assumed, he unsteadily got to his feet, grinning slightly when Nami immediately rushed to his side, juggling the books under her arm, ready to catch him if he fell.

“Are you ok?”

“Better than I was under the Seastone net,” he assured. “That was quick thinking back there. I’m just sorry you had to face him alone.”

“Is the crew ok?”

“Shachi’s team has some pretty bad injuries, but Penguin’s was able to evacuate them while I took on White Chase.”

She let out a sigh of relief. Of course he hadn’t abandoned her; the others had just been in more immediate danger. He wouldn’t have even left her in the first place if he hadn’t known they needed his help. And once he saw she was in trouble, he’d immediately saved her and was even apologizing for the fact that he hadn’t been there sooner.

He wasn’t Luffy, but she was grateful her temporary captain had her back.

Grey eyes shifted towards the small red circles that littered Nami’s skin, and she could see him taking stock of her various minor injuries. His glare intensified as it landed on the smaller rings wrapped around her upper thighs, his highly intelligent brain easily deducing what she’d gone through while he’d been off fighting Smoker. “Since we’re back in the ballroom, I guess I get to play the part of ‘jealous boyfriend’ again,” he said lowly, dark tone sending a shiver down her spine.

“What?”

Pulling out of her grasp, he nodded to the books under her arm. “Hold onto those while I thank the Baron for his hospitality; I’ve got just enough strength for two more big techniques.”

Bad as their own states were, their host was far worse off, the Seastone net still twisted around his bulbous head, pinning him to the floor as Hina and Smoker lay barely conscious in his limp tentacles. His beachball-sized eyes glared at the two pirates that had ruined his plans before bulging further as his guests began screaming in horror.

“Dear god, what is that thing?!” a woman cried, pointing at their host.

“What kind of monster has Harpin been keeping?”

“Gerald, must you show that form in public?” Beatrix shouted, appalled.

“Miss Bellemere, is that you?” Reginald called out. He must have recognized her mask, or at least Law standing next to her. His eyes widened as he took in her infamous tattoo and mikan hair. “Gracious, you’re a pirate?”

Somehow, despite the giant squid that had crashed through the ceiling, it was the word “pirate” that sent the crowd into a frenzy.

“Pirates are leading the villagers’ rebellion!”

“No, they must have murdered the townspeople and are now here for us!”

“Where are those Marines?”

“They’re trapped under the net with that monster!”

“Don’t worry; I’ll take care of this!” Kujakumaru shouted, grabbing Law’s fallen cane sword and lunging at Nami.

Exhausted though she was, she still had the strength to sidestep the untrained fop, tripping him before smacking him over the head with her Clima-Tact.

“Nice one,” Law chuckled as he staggered over to Harpin’s pinned form, a sadistic grin on his face as he stared down at the trapped former Intelligence Officer. “Weaklings like him are lucky to be left alive.”

“Law?” Nami murmured in concern, hovering slightly.

Glancing over his shoulder at her, Law’s eyes were filled with wicked excitement and pride. “I said I had the energy for two more techniques, didn’t I? Well, I’ve been looking for a decent subject to test this first one on. So good of Harpin to donate his body to science.”

Before Nami could reason with him to use his powers to get them out of there, a small blade of green, crackling energy formed in his hand. Without even a moment of hesitation, he stabbed it into Harpin’s big, watery eye.

“Gamma Knife!”

A violent tremor rocked the giant squid’s rubbery body as Harpin let out a truly inhuman shriek of agony, blue blood exploding from his beak before going completely still, the spark of life visibly fading in his eyes.

When Law started to sway, Nami grabbed him around the waist, looping his arm over her shoulder and letting him lean on her for support. “What was that?” she asked, voice somewhere between horror and awe.

Panting, he replied, “An attack I’ve been working on. Completely destroys the body from the inside. Figured it was the best way to finish that creep, since external damage wasn’t doing the job.”

Inside, she was torn. Harpin had been a monster, a lecherous creep, an asshole, and a very real danger to the world, Navy and Pirates alike, with the information he had. Even with Smoker and Hina’s testimonies and the ledgers as proof, his extensive connections with the World Government and Underworld meant there was no guarantee that, if left alive, he’d really pay for his crimes.

But in her entire time sailing with Luffy, she’d never seen her captain kill anyone. Not Arlong, Enel, or Crocodile. He left them a broken, bloody mess, dreams destroyed and helpless as the Navy sent them off to prison, but alive. The Straw Hat captain was a reckless fool and a pirate, but he wasn’t a murderer.

Law had just killed a man like it was nothing.

A little part of her wondered if he’d always been planning on taking Baron Harpin Gerald’s life, or if seeing the painful and suggestive marks on her skin had sealed his fate.

Conflicted as her feelings were, Nami didn’t allow her hold to loosen as Law slumped a little harder against her. She could feel his body tremble, his breath coming out in short, staggering pants, his heart pounding beneath her hand.

It seemed her unflinching support was appreciated, as Law gave a tired wink as he activated his Room, spreading it so widely she had to look out the window to see the faint blue edge at the far side of the island.

“What’s he doing?”

“Oh my God, he’s the Surgeon of Death!”

“We’re all going to die!”

Taking a deep breath, Law ignored the crowd’s panicked cries, softly murmuring, “Scan. Shambles.”

In a blink, the duo was whisked from the ballroom to the other side of the island, the Polar Tang waiting in the cove, the rest of the Heart Pirates immediately rushing forward to check on their captain. Law waved off their concerned questions, but Nami shrieked as she was dragged down to the sandy ground as he collapsed to his knees in exhaustion. Now she understood why he’d been against using his powers until necessary; doing all that on such a large scale, plus his fights with Smoker and Harpin, was draining.

Her concern only distracted her for so long, though. As she looked around, she realized they were surrounded by solid gold statues, jewelry, the buffet, the ledgers, and blessedly, her dress, leather wallets spilling out of the hidden pockets. Gleeful that not only were they alive but that he’d kept his promise, her grip around him shifted into a grateful hug, her lips unconsciously brushing against his cheek in thanks.

Law opened one exhausted eye. “Everyone start loading up the loot.” The last syllable barely left his lips before his eyes rolled back and he completely passed out in Nami’s arms, head lolling until it was squished against the Cat Thief’s chest.

“Captain!” the crew cried out.

Terrified that she might be holding a corpse, Nami pressed her fingers to his neck, heaving a massive sigh of relief when she felt a steady pulse. “He’s alive,” she assured the hovering pirates, attempting to shift the dead weight of their captain so he didn’t smother himself in her cleavage.

“Holy crap, Nami, you both look like shit!” Ikkaku said as she kneeled down to help, too concerned to even tease her about the fact that she hadn’t even hit Law for using her breasts as a pillow.

“It’s been a long night,” she sighed as they finally managed to maneuver him so he was lying flat on the ground. As if annoyed at the loss of his comfortable headrest, his brow furrowed briefly, but after a moment smoothed out as he fully succumbed to his exhaustion.

There was still work to be done, though, and Nami accepted her roommate’s proffered hand, letting her pull her to her feet. With a quick glance around, she raised an eyebrow. “Hey, there’s no way we can eat everything from the buffet before it goes bad. Load up what you can, but before we go, do you think you can help me get some of these leftovers to the town?”

“The Marines will be swarming the place within an hour.”

“Harpin’s call for backup was already denied and Smoker and Hina were barely conscious when we left. Even if they did wake up, they’re going to have their hands full up at the mansion. I don’t think we have to worry for a while yet.” Despite her stinging cuts, sore muscles, and flagging energy, Nami gave a cat-like grin. “In the meantime, the food’ll make an excellent bribe to convince the townsfolk not to tell them about these caves.”

Shaking her head in amusement, Ikkaku simply replied, “Whatever you say, Nami.”

XXX

Several hours later Nami staggered into her quarters, only pausing to check that all three black-bound ledgers were still on her desk before letting out a sigh of relief and collapsing into the vanity’s plush chair. The work had been non-stop; they’d been short-staffed in terms of loading up the treasure into the cargo hold. Even Nami had been roped into partaking in physical labor, barely even given enough time to drop off her dress and the ledgers and change into more sensible footwear before she’d been put to work.

It couldn’t be helped. The majority of Shachi’s group was recovering in the infirmary, the second mate’s wounds the worst with a broken arm and three cracked ribs. Bepo had seen him try to take on Smoker by himself to protect the others, and according to the bear, he’d be far worse off if Law hadn’t arrived in time to save him.

Speaking of, while Law could have moved all the food and treasure in an instant, it was universally agreed that they weren’t going to wait around for him to regain consciousness just so he could overuse his powers again. Penguin had even insisted on carrying him to his quarters before heading to infirmary to act as interim doctor, the First Mate piggybacking the taller man awkwardly, but refusing any help. It had been kind of sweet, watching him take such a big-brother role, and it confirmed in her mind that the crew cared for each other just as much as the Straw Hats did.

At least her own injuries hadn’t been too debilitating, and once they’d gotten everything they could into the ship Ikkaku had roped Bepo, Jean-Bart, and Clione into helping transport the remaining food into the town. Late as the evening was, the villagers had been absolutely in shock as they stumbled out of their shacks, staring at the massive feast that had been laid out before them. Several had even rubbed their eyes in disbelief, clearly thinking it was some kind of dream. Once they realized what was actually happening, though, the whole town had let out a cheer, and Nami had been blessed with a hug from the little girl from earlier, the child recognizing the thief’s jewelry and mischievous smile.

Nami was a bit sad to have to leave, as the townsfolk had asked the pirates to stay and celebrate the Baron’s downfall, but the navigator wasn’t going to squander that one-day head-start Hina had promised and had immediately ordered Jean-Bart to get them out into the open sea. Once Tokken Island was nothing more than a speck in the distance, she’d handed the reigns over to Bepo; he’d shyly informed her that Law had discussed an escape route and destination before the mission had even started.

Now she was back in her room, finally able to take a moment to herself. Ikkaku would be gone at least a few more hours; she’d insisted on monitoring the engine, making sure the additional weight of the treasure wouldn’t put too much strain on the ship. She’d given the hickey on Nami’s neck a meaningful look, though, and the navigator hadn’t even bothered trying to play it off as one of Harpin’s suction marks. Looking at it in the mirror, she knew that was the right call; only an idiot would assume the plum-colored blemish was in any way related to the bright red rings.

“Pervy jerk,” she grumbled, tearing her eyes from the hickey to focus on wiping off her makeup. “Maybe Ikkaku has a cute scarf I could borrow.”

A brief knock interrupted her musings, so she called out “Come in!” assuming it was Bepo asking for her input on their heading. To her surprise, it was Law who sidled through the door. He was once more in his normal hoodie and spotted jeans, colored contacts gone, dark circles proudly visible under his eyes. The black hair dye was still in, but it would likely be fully washed out and back to its original midnight blue in no more than a week.

“Here for your hat?” Nami asked, indicating the black-spotted accessory on the bed. She’d noticed it when she’d dropped off her things and had planned on returning it in the morning. Even she wasn’t mean enough to disturb an exhausted swordsman just to get his hat out of her room.

Plopping the fuzzy accessory onto his head, Law stood behind the back of her chair, pulling something from his jeans pocket. “Among other things.”

The cool touch of gold made goosebumps rise across her collarbone, and she gasped as she recognized Beatrix’s extravagant, heart-shaped diamond necklace as it settled against her throat.

“Is this—?”

“Let it never be said Dr. Goodheart doesn’t spoil his woman,” he chuckled in her ear as he secured the delicate clasp behind her neck. “Consider it my payment for being my date tonight. I estimate that yellow diamond alone is worth at least ten times the forty-five million belli I accrued for three hours of your company. You can count the other thirty diamonds as reparations for dealing with such a shit host.”

Unbidden, a tiny smile came to her lips. She was good at reading between the lines, and this was definitely Law’s way of begging forgiveness for the absolute shitshow she’d endured because he’d left. To be honest, it wasn’t necessary. After hearing about the state Shachi was in, she couldn’t bring herself to blame him—if that had been Usopp or Sanji or Robin, she’d have done the same.

Not that she was going to let him know that. He might take the necklace back.

“Hmmm, I guess it’s acceptable,” she replied coyly, admiring herself in the mirror. The diamonds sparkled elegantly in the light, the pale yellow heart resting precisely in the divot of her collarbone. “Though with all the chaos, I’m impressed even thought to grab it when we left.”

Behind her, Law’s wide grin was devious and self-satisfied. “Oh, no, I grabbed it when I set the curtain on fire. Even if I came away with nothing else, I was making damn sure I got this after that crazy bitch had the gall to insult you.”

Oddly flattered that he’d put in the effort to get her such a luxurious gift and revenge on the woman who’d dared to call her “cheap,” Nami gave him a soft, genuine smile. She wouldn’t even sell it, since he was being so sweet. “Thank you. It’s gorgeous.”

“You carry it better than she does, anyway,” he replied, thumb idly rubbing little circles on her shoulders. “I think you should wear it to the next party.”

Without the gloves, his hands were deliciously warm against her skin and it was oddly nice to see the tattoos on his fingers again. Like the bags under his eyes, they were such a familiar part of him that she’d unconsciously begun to miss. “Hard pass. Tonight was a clusterfuck, and I think I’ll stick to hitting bars. At least there I can beat the crap out of the horny assholes dumb enough to grope me.”

“Fair.” Carefully turning her chair around, he pulled a small first-aid kit out of his hoodie pocket. From the little white box he removed some gauze, antiseptic, and medical tape. Pouring a bit of the clear alcohol onto a small square of white cotton, he gently dabbed at the scabbed-over cuts on her clavicle. “I promised I’d clean these up when we got back to the ship, and I wanted to get a better look at those suction marks. Did you even bother getting these checked over earlier?” he scolded.

Red crept across her face as she realized she’d completely forgotten about her own injuries. “Shachi’s team needed the medical attention way more than me; I figured I could wait until they were out of the woods.” She winced as the sting of alcohol irritated Beatrix’s claw marks but knew better than to complain.

“Of course. It had nothing to do with you being distracted by piles of treasure.” After carefully taping a wide gauze bandage over the cuts, he turned his attention to the sucker marks. His frown darkened as he got a better look at the rings across her thighs. “In the interest of doing my job as your doctor, I have to ask; were all the injuries you received from Harpin external, or should I scan you for internal trauma?”

Her eyes widened and the blood drained from her cheeks as she registered what he was suggesting. “No I…I’m fine. He didn’t…I mean, he groped me and I’m sure if Hina hadn’t arrived—”

Law held up his hand, halting her uncomfortable stammering. “Again, I’m truly sorry you had to deal with him on your own. I knew he was a creep and a pervert, but I swear I thought he was a normal human—someone you could hold off on your own if necessary.”

“It’s ok,” she assured, anxiously rubbing her arms. She really didn’t want to dwell on what Harpin could have done to her if Hina hadn’t shown up. Given the Marine’s willingness to release her from his lecherous grasp, Nami wondered if she’d been in that position herself, or at least seen comrades treated similarly. After all, he had at least a hundred reported accusations of sexual harassment against him. The Navy really needed to stop giving such monsters seats of power. “I guess I should be flattered that you had faith in me to take out a former Marine officer.”

“I promise to never make that mistake again. Once things have settled down, we’re beginning combat training. Your weather attacks are impressive, but they won’t work in every situation,” he said seriously as he turned his focus to her wrists. Taking a silver tube out of his hoodie’s pocket, he squirted a small amount of thick, grey cream into his palm before massaging it into the thumbprint-sized rings. Cool and slightly minty, Nami could immediately feel it begin to soothe her sore muscles and stinging marks.

“I’m pretty sure the odds are good that we’ll never run into another squid-guy,” she joked weakly.

“True, and I suppose he could have been so much worse.”

“How?”

“Did you know several species of squid are cannibals?”

Stomach churning in disgust, her mind frantically fought against the images that tried to wrestle their way into the forefront of her mind. “Ew ew ew! Oh god, how do you even know that?”

The corner of his mouth quirked upwards in amusement as he worked the cream into the larger circles on her upper arms. “When you spend a lot of time in a submarine, one of the main ways to pass the time is studying the habits of underwater creatures. Clione’s even started writing a book about some of the things we’ve seen.”

“Ugh! Remind me to never read it!”

Squeezing another dollop of cream into his palm, he chuckled. “I make no such promise as his research has been extremely beneficial. Right now, he’s studying a skin and blood sample from one of my own sucker marks to be safe, but he assures me that giant squid aren’t venomous. I am ordering you to report any dizziness, shortness of breath, swelling, or other unusual symptoms, though.”

“Fine,” she sighed as he let go of her arms to crouch between her legs. She jerked violently as his long fingers wrapped around her calf, leg kicking out while her heart hammered against her chest with instinctual panic. With the cream coating his skin, the sensation was far too similar to the texture of Harpin’s tentacles slithering across her flesh. Law must have drawn a similar conclusion, as he mumbled an apology, holding his hands up to show he meant no harm.

Nami immediately felt guilty and mentally berated herself. Sure, Law could be forward, but she knew he was no threat compared to Harpin. Yes, he flirted and stared, but if the disgust he showed towards the mere possibility that she’d been sexually assaulted was anything to go by, he wasn’t that kind of threat. She had no reason to be afraid of him.

Taking a few calming breaths, she met his eyes, nodding down at her leg. “It’s fine. Go ahead, doctor.”

As if she were a skittish doe, he slowly and cautiously placed his hand on her shin, pleased when she remained completely still, even though he could still feel the tension in her muscles. Slow and gentle, he focused on massaging it into her left calf with both hands, keeping his hands where she could see them.

“So,” he began, glancing up at her from his place on the floor, “where are you taking me for dinner?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, eyes locked on the way his fingers splayed out and he rubbed careful, broad circles over each contusion. It seemed he was doing everything he could to make his hands feel as different from the invasive tentacles as possible.

“The dinner you owe me for losing the bet.”

“Fucking excuse you?” she snapped, sitting up straight in her chair so she could properly glare down at him.

A dark eyebrow raised in challenge, though only amusement danced in his amber eyes. “You only got seven wallets before escaping the ballroom. That means you’re paying for our victory dinner.”

“Um, no, I grabbed six more as I ran out,” she huffed, crossing her arms.

“Did you really?”

“Yes!”

“Too bad you can’t prove it.”

“My word’s enough!”

“It’s absolutely adorable that you think I’d trust your word when money’s on the line.”

Furious though she was, she knew he had a point and she really couldn’t prove that she which wallets were stolen when, so she switched tactics. “That reminds me; you owe me an extra fifty million belli for your shitty intel, and no, the necklace doesn’t count towards that.”

“Do you accept gold bars?”

She blinked, surprised. “Um, sure.”

A narrow shoulder lifted in a relaxed shrug “Then you’ll get your payment after I get that ugly-ass squid statue melted down on Knox Island.”

“You grabbed that?” She’d noticed a few gold statues being loaded up, but in the excitement of all that treasure, she hadn’t really registered that it was the one from Harpin’s office.

“I decided I deserved a bonus for everything I’ve put up with tonight, though I grabbed just about everything of value I could. Even if we couldn’t fit it all in the cargo hold, stealing and scattering Harpin’s possessions throughout the island will make it harder for the authorities to figure out what we actually took until after we’ve sold it.”

“Good thinking.”

His smug grin made it clear he knew exactly how clever he was. A more liberal dollop of cream filled his palm, and without even asking he began massaging it into her right thigh. It only then registered that throughout their argument, he’d finished treating both her calves without her even noticing, if the cool tingle dancing across her skin was anything to go by. He’d easily managed to distract her from his actions, and she must have unconsciously gotten used to the feeling of his hands on her legs, as she barely twitched when his calloused palms touched her.

Unfortunately, she now had a different problem—he was intimately close, hands thoroughly rubbing the cream into the sensitive flesh of her thighs, and hot blood immediately rushed to her cheeks as she took in the picture the handsome captain made kneeling between her spread legs.

“What is that stuff, anyway?” she asked, trying to keep herself distracted, though this time for very different reasons.

“It’s a special salve I developed. It soothes the pain, plus speeds up the healing process. I’ve found it’s damn good on welts, bruises, contusions, and other unseemly blemishes.”

“How do you make it?”

“It’s plant-based, actually. I found a unique type of aloe on a jungle island, among several other interesting medicinal plants. That’s actually why I’m so invested in your greenhouse idea; I’d like to plant some of the seeds so I can replenish my stores once they run low.”

He may be a pirate, but he definitely takes his medical duties seriously, she thought with a hint of fondness.

Nami noticed then that, despite how suggestive his position was and how risqué the area he was massaging the thick cream into might have been, his actions were cold and clinical. He was in full-on doctor mode, all his focus on treating a patient.

It also didn’t escape her attention that, once more, he didn’t seem to be moved by the amount of skin on display. She was still in her skimpy bodysuit, and considering how many times she’d caught Uni, Clione, and others staring at her and sporting nosebleeds, she knew she looked sexy as hell, even with the sucker marks. She knew he wasn’t as easily impressed by women as the others, but did he find the marks that repulsive? Maybe the others just hadn’t been able to properly see them in the moonlight, or they’d been too fixated on her chest to notice.

Except Law also didn’t seem to be flirting with her as much as she’d expected. Hadn’t even teased her about the kiss, or even seemed aware that he’d passed out on her boobs earlier. Was he too focused to bother? Too tired? Or was he just not interested now that she was practically naked?

Deciding to test the waters as he switched to her other thigh, she quipped, “I don’t suppose that stuff works on hickeys, does it?”

“Oh, there’s not a chance in Hell this stuff’s going anywhere near your neck,” he said, glancing up at her with a tired but devilish smile. “I worked hard on that mark, and you’re going to wear it with pride.”

Ok, that was more like the Law she’d gotten used to, annoying as he was. “No, I’m going to slather it with concealer until it goes away on its own.”

His hands stilled their motions as his voice dropped an octave. “If I think you’ve put even a speck of makeup on that hickey, Nami-ya, I may have to leave something a little more…obvious.”

She swallowed hard, red tinging her cheeks. She wasn’t quite she what he had in mind, but she knew better than to ask when he started to get that hungry glint in his eyes. After all, if the hickey was payback for her sunburn prank, his punishment for covering it up was probably the kind of kinky shit Robin had told her about after a few too many glasses of wine on girls’ night.

Forcing away those kinds of thoughts, she huffed, “Fine, I’ll leave it alone. You’re just lucky I’m in a good mood from all the treasure we got.”

Salve thoroughly worked into her skin, Law finally stood. “Things might not have gone exactly as I planned, but in the end, I’d call tonight a success.” He strolled over to her desk, picking up the black ledger marked “Intel,” casually thumbing through it with a pleased grin. “Especially since we got what we came for. More, even.” He tsked sarcastically, grin stretching wider as he took in the various reports and formulas. “Look at all this classified information. The Navy should really send us a thank-you card for taking this away from an unscrupulous bastard like Harpin. I mean, who knows what kind of chaos could be stirred up if it got leaked to the Underworld?”

The sharp, maniacal gleam in his eyes sent tremors down Nami’s spine. “It…definitely could cause problems.”

“Absolutely. Imagine how people would react if they saw what Vegapunk and his subordinates got up to? Why, there’s a whole chapter here on the experiments performed on Punk Hazard—looks like a scientist named Caesar created a chemical weapon that nearly destroyed the whole island. And look,” he chuckled, turning the book to show Nami a complicated chemical formula, “there’s even a recipe.”

It suddenly dawned on Nami that as dangerous as such intel was with Harpin, Law might not be much better. He wasn’t like Luffy, who was too good-natured and direct to even consider using such backhanded means against the Navy. Nor was he like Arlong, who would have been too stupid to understand the scientific intel and instead focused on selling the blackmail. Robin and Franky were smart enough to understand and potentially use it, but they had the morals not to, especially if their captain was against it.

Law was intelligent, ambitious, connected, and unscrupulous. It was clear he had some sort of plan for what was in those books, and Nami wasn’t sure she liked it. These weren’t just military codes or dossiers on shichibukai.

This was the kind of stuff that could start an arms race.

White teeth sank into her lower lip. “Considering how dangerous that information is, then, I think we should get rid of those ledgers.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, Hina may have only been specifically ordered to retrieve his blackmail materials, but Harpin was already being investigated for leaking classified intel to the Underworld—if the Navy thinks we took more than just gold, they’ll send every Fleet Admiral after us with extreme prejudice. We’re better off dumping them at a Marine base so they won’t consider us a threat.”

“Are you seriously saying you want me to give them back?” Gold eyes flashed with anger, and after hours of staring at the more muted grey, Nami found them all the more intense. She jumped when he slammed the book down onto the desk. “I did not fight a giant squid and nearly get my crew killed for nothing!”

“Wha—it wasn’t nothing! We got all that treasure—”

So quick she could have sworn he used his powers, Law was back in front of her. Long, tattooed fingers harshly grasped the back of the chair, trapping her in her seat. “I’ve told you before; I don’t give a shit about money. The information in those books is more valuable to me than everything in that mansion combined,” he sneered.

Brown eyes widened at his change of tone as she shrank back, immediately on-guard as his threatening aura surrounded her. “Look, Law, I know it’s been a rough night, but you have to listen to me; we can’t let that intel out into the world. I hate the World Government just like any other pirate, but if the Underworld gets hold of those blueprints and formulas, they’re not going to just be used on Marines—innocent civilians will be caught in the crossfire. There will be massacres across the Grand Line, wars could start—”

Leaning in so close their noses nearly touched, his glaring irises filled her vision. “Innocent civilians also get slaughtered to cover up the World Government’s crimes. I’ve seen genocide carried out because of greedy bastards who would rather kill thousands than admit they’d poisoned an entire city. That’s just the way it is, Nami-ya; the weak don’t get to decide how they die.”

Manicured nails dug into the armrests. For a moment she considered backing down, but all she could imagine was all the inevitable death that would come if she allowed that intel to find its way into the wrong hands. Swallowing hard, she replied, “You…sound like you speak from experience. Are you saying that if someone could have stopped that massacre, you would have told them not to?”

“It might never have happened in the first place if the truth that Amber Lead wasn’t contagious hadn’t been covered up!”

She gasped. She’d heard about Amber Lead and the tragedy of Flevance, but was he saying there was more to it than the world had been told? It wouldn’t surprise her, but…

Wait, he’d said he’d published papers on the effects of lead poisoning in children, she thought with dawning understanding. Had he discovered some government conspiracy, some sanctioned cover-up that had led to the genocide of the White City during his research? Was that why he wanted to out their secrets? Why he became a pirate instead of a doctor?

“There’s a difference between releasing information about a disease and selling weapons, though,” she said quietly, desperately hoping her uncombative tone would calm him down. “If those ledgers have methods for curing a disease, by all means, spread the word, but you know as well as I do that the formula to a weaponized gas in the wrong hands will bring nothing but disaster. And if innocent lives aren’t enough to convince you, think of your crew; aside from the Navy coming after you, how do you know whoever you sell that formula to wouldn’t immediately use it to take you out? After all, you could easily play both sides and sell them out for double the profit. A smart man would see Trafalgar Law and the Heart Pirates as their biggest threat and act accordingly.”

The grip on the chair behind her audibly tightened, and Nami was reminded that this wasn’t Luffy, or Usopp, or even Zoro she was dealing with; Law was a pirate known for his sadism and didn’t have her nakama’s qualms against killing. For a brief, terrifying moment, she feared he might shift his hands to crush her throat, but after a few slow, calming breaths, he dropped his arms and backed away.

His tone was significantly lighter as he stated, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding—I’m not looking to sell any of the intel in those books. Especially not the weapons research. It’s fascinating and will make for great bedtime reading, but at most it’s a passing curiosity. Something to entertain me on sleepless nights.”

“Then why go through all the trouble to get those ledgers?” she asked nervously.

“Because they have information I need to achieve my dream.”

“Information that’s worth the Navy and Underworld coming after you?”

The trademark smug smirk returned to his lips. “Concerned for my safety? I really must be growing on you.”

Pale hands fisted on her knees as she glared up at him. “After tonight, people are going to realize I’m sailing with the Heart Pirates; that means for the next year, your enemies are my enemies.”

“True, and we’re both smart enough to know that it’s better to avoid trouble.” As if sensing her need for more space, he backed up until he was leaning against her desk. “If you’re worried about Black Cage, I’m happy to compromise—we’ll take a photo of you burning the Personal ledger and send it to the nearest Navy base. That’s the one I’m the least interested in, and it should lower our threat level in their eyes.”

It wasn’t a bad plan. Blackmail and personal information on the Admirals was generally easier to sell and distribute than scientific research, as even a dummy could recognize their value. If the Marines saw they’d destroyed that, they’d likely assume they’d done the same with the rest so long as the secrets never got out. “What about the rest of it?”

“Like I said, I’m not looking to release anything dangerous, but I see no reason not to study it myself in case we ever encounter those weapons. If I can understand how a poisonous gas works, it’s easier to develop a cure, and that’s something I could certainly bid off to interested parties in the Underworld, or maybe the Revolutionaries would be willing to make me an offer.”

After the way he’d been acting, he was sounding a little too reasonable, instantly raising alarms in her mind. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“After everything we’ve been through tonight, you still doubt me?”

“Yes.”

He frowned briefly but didn’t seem surprised. Then again, he’d just lashed out at her over a misunderstanding—he’d be an idiot to assume she’d blindly trust his word. “I appreciate your honesty, at least. I suppose I’ll just have to find a way to prove myself.” Picking up the ledgers, he playfully tipped his hat. “Of course, I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t trust leaving these with you. You might do something stupidly noble like destroy them before I can get what I need.”

“And what exactly is it you need?” she pressed.

As he opened the door, he grinned over his shoulder. “Now I’m not sure you’ve earned that information, Nami-ya, but you have time to change my mind. If you manage to show me I can trust you by the time we reach the Isles of Grimm, I’d be happy to discuss it over dinner. I’ll even concede the bet as a show of good faith.”

Much as she wanted to argue, the navigator knew better than to risk sailing back into a storm. Law had proven that night that he was loyal to those he worked with and wasn’t completely without honor. On the other hand, he was still willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted, and anyone who got in his way would suffer his wrath. He had his own morals and plans—ones that might not coincide with hers.

Most importantly, he had the book on the shichibukai. It was clear he wouldn’t let her near the ledgers if he thought she might use the opportunity to double-cross him. If she had any hope of getting the information she sought on Jinbei and Kuma, she’d have to play nice and not rock the boat until she had her opening.

“Fine. But you’re going to have to work a little harder at earning my trust too, Trafalgar. I mean it when I say I don’t want any of those weapons specs finding their way to the Black Market.”

“A reasonable enough request. Now get some sleep, Nami-ya. If those marks haven’t faded in the next twenty-four hours, come to the infirmary for more salve.”

On that doctorly order he closed the door, leaving a concerned and confused navigator to stew over the night’s events.

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echoise · 5 years

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those things will kill you, you know. (vague flystep. trans m!sidestep (Avery!) character study thingy, tw: suicidal and self-harm imagery) 1,419 words

iii. “Those things will kill you, you know,” he says, skin glistening in the merciless sun, smile perfect for a toothpaste commercial even with a tooth missing and another cracked. He’s youth and energy and optimism, snuggling up to you, gentle knuckles rapping against the heavy walls you’ve hidden behind. Chipping away at them one clink at a time, knock-knock-knock, who’s there?

“What won’t?” You counter, inhale the sweet smoke, fill your lungs to the brim with it. Drown yourself in tar and nicotine, welcoming the slow death, because you don’t have the guts to let go and just live. Arsenic and lead and benzene absorbing into your bloodstream, coursing through your veins, into your heart and out again, spreading from limb to limb until you’re blissfully numb to the world around you. Poisons, yes, all of them, but they’re yours. Your choice, a voluntary harm, not one forced upon you.

Maybe it’s silly. Maybe it’s foolish. But it burns so good.

ii. “Those things will kill you, you know,” says the little old lady, flicking her lighter and offering you the flame. Her face is wrinkled like a deflated balloon, bumps and dimples galore, discolored skin hanging freely in places and stretched in others. A hairy mole on her cheek that she scratches idly before taking the cigarette out of her mouth, whistling out white smoke that smells like good advice and bad examples, tsk tsk, take it from me, kid.

“I’m not that easy to kill,“ you assure her, blow out a smoke ring of your own, watch it dissolve within seconds. Unable hold form on its own. You look at your hands and know you’ll share that same fate if you don’t find something to anchor on, something brace yourself, something to build upon. Something more than the white flash when you stump a cigarette on bare skin, scars all over your hands and arms, little girl’s first cross-stitch. Some mold to fit yourself into because you discarded your last one, deviated from their blueprint. Became something, something you were never meant to be.

Death doesn’t scare you, it never did. But disappearing...

i. “Those things will kill you, you know,” the woman chides, snatching the offending burning plant matter from the man’s hand. He sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets, muttering something, getting consumed by his anxiety from the second he lost the kiss of that sweet nicotine. Missing the comfort of a cloud of smoke that obscures the world just enough to be bearable, yes honey, i know honey, i’m sorry honey.

“We’ve had this discussion,” the woman continues. You keep tabs on them as they start walking away, strain your powers to follow them until the pinpricks of their minds frizzle and disappear into the vast ocean surrounding you. Then the usual drivel fading back in, shopping lists and petty arguments and lovestruck idiots and all sorts of mundane things you’ve only ever heard about and never understood. Why does it matter if she’s late for work? Why did he say he doesn’t have any change when he just felt some in his pocket? Why is she crying looking at that poster? Why? Why? Why did the man find such comfort in the cigarette smoke?

Dulling the senses. Dulling the world. You understand years later.

iv. “Those things will kill you, you know.”

You look behind you and are blinded by blue skies and golden wheat fields. Twin ponds under merciless sun. A prince wearing bright sapphires and his golden crown. A bunch of other dumb metaphors your thumping heart supplies without you asking, your foolish traitor of a heart that always got you into trouble and clearly has not amended its ways. It seems even death can’t make you learn from your mistakes.

Herald, Daniel, Danny, Dan, many names for many faces. Herald snarling and charging at you, not knowing who’s under the armor. Daniel wishing you good morning at the Ranges HQ, practically beaming. Danny panting and sweating in a sparring match, a competitive glint in his eyes.

Dan tracing fractals on your skin, pressing soft kisses on the lines as if that could make you hate them less. Hate yourself less.

“I’m counting on it,” you mutter, and know he’s heard you even without sensing the chill making home in his bones. You take a long drag on the cigarette and blow the smoke out slowly. It dissipates fast in the high winds up here, on Dan’s rooftop. As familiar as your own apartment now, maybe even more so. You like it more, too: it reminds you of some old haunts from your Sidestep days, not unlike this one... just not quite this high up. Or this fancy. Or this easy to get to.

Dan hesitates just a bit before stepping over and sitting down next to you, legs dangling over the edge. It’s less dangerous for him than it is for you, but you suppose it’s a concession of sorts. Better than any of the other options in his mind, all of which make you grind your teeth. He broadcasts his thoughts too easily, way too easily, because he thinks you can’t tell. There’s another lie you’ll have to come clean about sometime.

He sits there for a minute, watching you from the corner of his eye. When he speaks, his tone is hesitant. “Are you... okay?“

“I’m not going to jump, if that’s what you mean,“ you retort with a smile, but there’s no warmth in it. Hollow like your puppet. Meant as a joke but neither of you is laughing. “If I was, you’d already be too late.“

You’d never really do it, you think. You don’t have the guts. You’ve been through it many times: you can hold the gun, you can stand at the edge, you can sharpen the razor, and every time you know you won’t do it. You will never find the will to pull the trigger, you will never brave the last step, you will only ever make horizontal cuts. That’s just not you. You always survive, somehow.

Even when you don’t want to.

“Avery...“ Dan starts, but goes quiet when you stump the cigarette. For once on the ground - well, edge of the roof, in this case - and not your hands. You don��t need to, not when you have this: the feeling of the city below you, pulsating, breathing like a living being. The long strings of people like blood flooding through its veins, giving you a rush like no amount of self-mutilation could ever. Watching the lazy afternoon happen just outside of your reach, through the glass you’re always trapped behind, looking down past your legs that you’re slowly swinging to a rhythm only you can hear. Remembering broken bones and twisted limbs and shattered hearts.

Knowing that you won’t jump, because that’s just not you.

“I know,” you say, replying to nothing. You pull yourself up and step away from the edge, feeling the relief coming from Dan in waves as he floats up and joins you. There’s a tentative smile on his face and you try to match it, know it falls flat, keep it up anyway. You reach for his hand and nod toward the rooftop access. ”Coffee?”

“Already brewing.” He kisses your hand briefly before steering you to the door, some tension still in his shoulders every time he looks at you, his feelings in his chest like a tangled ball of yarn made of worry and sadness and confusion. Swelling and swirling until they’re a braided cord around your neck, tightening so slowly you barely notice it, making you the proverbial frog in the boiling water.

You close your mind in an attempt to cut yourself loose, claw at your throat to ease the pressure. A desperate struggle of his desire to protect you and love you and save you against your need for retribution, your compulsion to self-mutilate, your inability to give in. His stubborn belief that there’s something he can do, that all of this isn’t already decided and just waiting to unfold. Alea iacta est, a name for what you’re feeling, useless data in your head that was put there by men and women you hated and have tried to forget but it clings to your very cells.

Those things will kill you, you know.

They will, you muse as you follow Dan to the stairwell and back down to his apartment. But not yet.

You have things to see through first.

#fallen hero: rebirth #fallen hero: retribution #fh:r #writing #mine #my disaster children #avery #character study thingies #idk what this is #herald #flystep #the numbers denote timeline btw

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keelywolfe · 6 years

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Drabble: Rubes

Summary: Cool is better

Notes: I feel like a better summary would ruin the joke. Stretch is better at being funny than I am. ^_^

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By Any Other Name Masterlist

~~*~~

From his bedroom window, Stretch placed a pinball on the winding metal track. "ready?"

"Go for it!" Jeff called up to him from the ground, waving two enthusiastic thumbs up.

He gave the pinball a gentle shove and down the track it went, traversing the spiral and zooming past a weather vane. The metal rooster on top of it spun around, its tail knocking into a level that activated a pulley. It sent a wee hot air balloon on a downward trajectory, the basket landing on rubber chicken.

The chicken let out a honking squawk, sending another pinball loose from its mouth to travel down another track. It shot past a lever that sent a match dragging against sandpaper before stopping beneath a string. The tiny flame burned quickly and the string broke, sending a cascade of army men into a bucket. It sank beneath the weight, pulling open the lid of a box.

From the depths of the box came a tinkling song and up rose a pair of skeleton puppets, jerking and dancing as the strings attached to their limbs were pulled. One of their flailing hands caught a switch and with a dramatic fanfare, the pitcher beneath them tipped and chicken feed fell from it into the trough. The eager chickens darted in, clucking and chirring as they scarfed up the feed.

Stretch had shortcutted down the ground a bare moment after setting down the first pinball and from behind Edge and Antwan, he exclaimed happily, “tada!”

There was silence, broken only by the scuffling of the chickens.

Edge looked up at the motley collection of junk pieced together over the coop. "What did you say this was called?”

"it's a rube goldberg machine," Stretch said brightly.

Jeff was grinning just as wide. “We designed it! Well, Stretch designed it, I provided creative input.”

Edge nodded slowly. “How long did it take you two to do this?”

Stretch frowned, considering. He and Jeff leaned in together, conferring in soft whispers. He straightened up and announced. “two weeks.”

“It takes two minutes for you to feed them," Edge said, carefully, like one might to a confused child. "You only need to put the feed into the trough."

“yes, but this way is cool!” His enthusiasm was deflating, his excitement melting into a glare. “cool is better!”

Edge shook his head. "I bow to your expertise in the area of cool.”

"you aren’t appreciating this properly!” Stretch announced, tossing his head in annoyance. “antwan! appreciate for us!”

Antwan only looked confused. “Don't you have to come down every morning anyway to collect eggs?”

“argh!” Stretch stomped away, “i’m calling papyrus, he knows fucking cool!”

"I'm sure it’s very cool!" Edge called after him, "Very, very cool!"

"don't patronize me!" The sliding door closed loudly behind him.

Jeff glared at both of them, arms crossed over his chest, “That wasn’t nice, he spent a lot of time setting this up.”

“It’s inefficient…” Edge started defensively.

“It was fun!” Jeff snapped. “Look up the definition of Rube Goldberg machine. Sometimes, efficiency isn’t better.”

He stalked away, leaving Edge and Antwan to stare at the device. The chickens were still scuffling through the feed with enthusiasm, paying no attention to the metal tracks or the skeletons still dancing to the song even as it trailed to a stop.

Edge sighed and turned to follow them into the house. He found Stretch in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and texted furiously.

“go away,” he muttered as Edge came in. “i’m busy telling twitter that my husband is an asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Edge said, sincerely. Carefully, he pulled Stretch into his arms. He didn’t resist, but stood stiffly against him. “I misunderstood the purpose of your machine.”

“it doesn’t really have a purpose,” Stretch grumbled. He leaned against Edge the tiniest bit.

“No, it did,” Edge corrected, “It made you happy. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate that.” He pressed a gentle kiss to Stretch’s temple. “It must have taken very precise calculations to time all that correctly, did you want to walk me through it?”

Stretch sighed, sagging into his arms. “you’re an asshole, but luckily, you’re good at apologies.”

“One should always cultivate necessary skills,” Edge agreed. “Come on.” He pulled Stretch out into the living room and came up short. On the sofa, Jeff and Antwan were kissing, a little too enthusiastically for being on someone else’s sofa.

“looks like antwan apologizes better than you,” Stretch murmured.

“Lawyers are excellent at arguing,” Edge muttered back, then louder, “All right, enough. Jeff and Stretch are going to walk us through their Rudy Goldberg machine.”

“Rube Goldberg,” came out in a chorus and Edge flapped an impatient hand.

“Yes, yes,” he sighed. “Allow me to appreciate how cool it is.” Stretch gave him an enthusiastic hug and darted back outside, Edge at his heels.

“okay, first we had to come up with a collection of stuff,” Stretch began, bouncing on his toes, “half of the challenge is making do with what you can find—"

Edge nodded along, watching him, and if he didn’t quite understand the inefficiency of the contraption, he could appreciate the results. Fed chickens and a delighted Stretch. That was worth the effort.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underswap papyrus #underfell papyrus #by any other name

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laur-rants · 6 years

Text

Fic Update -- Wolfbann

Chapter 8 - With Wealth of Knowledge

Fandom: Dishonored Ship: Corvo/Daud, Past Jessamine/Corvo Rated: Mature Chapter Synopsis: Corvo learns things and, predictably, jumps to conclusions.

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Corvo wanted to say later that the boat ride back to the Hound Pits Pub had been quiet and uneventful. That he was left unbothered; that he, Sam and Geoff had all kept to themselves and that he had gotten plenty of rest along the way.

He wanted to say that, but Geoff Curnow was a Watch Officer to the bone. And that meant Corvo had to endure an interrogation before enjoying any amount of shut-eye.

“So Callista is still at the pub?”

“Yes.”

“And you met her there?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago, exactly?”

“I don't know. A few days now.”

“She was the one who said to come get me?”

“No Geoff, a little sparrow told me.”

Geoff frowned at Corvo's reply; Corvo simply folded his arms in tighter and tilted his head at Geoff. He was so tired. He wanted to ignore the itchy thrum of his limbs and the annoying questions of a Watch Captain and instead go to sleep. But if the look on Geoff’s face was anything to go by, he wasn't ready to let Corvo go just yet.

And so, the Lord Protector sighed.

“Anything else, officer?”

Geoff shifted, self conscious, but kept his frown in place and his eyes on Corvo.

“Just a few questions. Who did you speak to before we left the Abbey?”

“Oh, you were awake for that?” Corvo's eyebrows shot up in light surprise. He cleared his ruined throat before continuing, ”He’s an Overseer named Teague Martin. He'll be joining us later at the pub.”

“Any reason why?”

“I helped him, so hopefully he'll help me. Besides, I have something he wants.”

Corvo fished out a small black book from his belt satchel, holding it up between his fingers.

“Isn't that Campbell's?” Geoff inquired, eyes narrowing on the worn leather and yellowed pages. Corvo nodded before lazily twirling the book and storing it away on his belt again. “And just what has become of its original owner?”

“Campbell’s alive, if that's what you're asking. He probably isn't too happy about the state of his belongings right about now, though.” The ghost of a smile crept over Corvo's face; he may have left Campbell in one piece but he certainly hadn't been kind about it.

And with the evidence Corvo had, the High Overseer’s days in power were numbered.

“So it’s true, then? He planned on being rid of me?”

Corvo nodded, eyes sharp in spite of his weariness.

“I discovered a glass of poisoned wine in your intended meeting room and an audiograph that incriminated his actions. I have it, if you'd like to take a listen later.” Corvo let his lips pull further into a wicked grin. “For a High Overseer, that man certainly has a lot of skeletons.”

“Well, when you're close to someone like Hiram Burrows…” Geoff muttered, clearly agreeing even without the evidence. His eyes then widened and he jerked back to Corvo.

“Burrows... Corvo!” he gasped, a finger pointed the Royal Protector. Sam looked between them, surprised by the action. “I know -- it wasn't your fault the Empress died. I know that it was Hiram, he set up the hit on Jessamine. I overheard his plans while traveling the Isles with him; you were falsely framed. You're as much a victim as Jess was.”

Geoff made the statement like a revelation; as if the puzzle pieces had finally fallen into place, like he finally remembered why Campbell was trying to kill him in the first place.

Corvo, of course, knew he was innocent. Sam and Callista did too, or at least believed it well enough to not inquire. But there was a huge difference in personally knowing his own innocence and hearing it aloud as fact from a third party. Corvo felt himself sag, letting go of the air in his lungs like a deflating balloon.

“Thank you,” Corvo rasped out softly, his damaged throat catching painfully on the words. He didn't know what he was thanking Geoff for; Curnow didn't seem to know either,blinking in astonishment at Corvo's response. But Corvo didn't care.

It was nice to simply be reminded he was innocent.

There was a beat between the three of them. Corvo could feel himself drifting from relief, the whisper of the Void already strong in his sleep-deprived ears.

“Ah,” Geoff started, his voice keeping Corvo above the surface. “You're welcome, I think. But I always knew that Hiram was lying about you, because I caught him mentioning the real assassin to the High Overseer months ago.”

A giant, scarred, shadowed wolf. A pack of smoking dogs that scattered like ghosts. A river of red, running hot down Corvo's arms to pool collectively with the blood of a dying Empress.

Corvo was up so fast Geoff jumped in his seat. His jaw clenched, his whole being tightening like a spring as his body fought for control against the beast under his skin. His expression darkened; Geoff leaned back, worry coloring his features.

“That assassin,” Corvo growled out. “Who is he? Who did Hiram hire?”

“I--” Geoff stuttered and swallowed, eyes glancing to Sam for backup. “You didn't know?”

“A name,” Corvo snarled. “I need a name.”

“He's known simply as Daud,” Geoff obliged. “The Knife of Dunwall and head of the Whalers group.”

Daud.

The name crashed down on Corvo like a wave. He felt his chest heave, felt the wolf lunge and fight for release. He remembered now; Hiram uttered the name just once in Corvo's presence, back when he was fever-wracked and newly turned and his life was a blur of pain. Of course he hadn't realized then the significance of the name, couldn't put two and two together when he could hardly remember who or what he was.

But now…

The assassin's title consumed Corvo’s mind in a way he didn't understand as he committed it to memory, saying the name over and over again like a horrible prayer. As he did something else, someone else answered, reaching out to Corvo's thoughts, coming as if called to him, to his very mindspace --

“Lord Corvo.”

Corvo managed to look up at the gentle pull of his name. Sam was there, offering him a hand, blocking Geoff from any possible backlash. Corvo's eyes flicked from Sam to Geoff; the Watch Officer’s face was pale in the moonlight, his hand defensively resting on the hilt of his sword.

“Corvo,” Sam softly repeated.

Corvo breathed. He swallowed and stilled his racing thoughts. He flexed the claws clutching deep at the fabric of his old Protector coat. He didn't recall letting them grow out.

“I'm here, Sam,” he muttered out. “Apologies, Curnow.”

“No need, Lord Corvo,” Geoff replied, but his broken voice betrayed him. Corvo swallowed again, evening out his breath. Claws and fur burned away and disappeared: Geoff eased off his weapon as well.

“Daud,” Corvo parroted out, the only thing still on his racing and confused mind. Again, the whisper of a consciousness brushed against his thoughts at the name, followed by a bone-deep ache that had nothing to do with weariness. Corvo shivered before meeting Geoff's face once again.

“Yes, Daud,” Geoff carefully added. “he's got quite the reputation with the Abbey and the Watch. Some eyewitnesses once reported him as a Wolf of Men. Didn't ever think that description would turn out to be so… literal.”

Corvo snorted and shook his head.

“At least I have something to look for,” Corvo said, bemused. “Thank you.”

Geoff nodded, his face still holding a hint of unease as he looked Corvo over. “Of course, Lord Protector.”

“And--” Corvo choked out, finally attending the one question he most feared the answer to. “Do you know -- have you heard -- anything on Emily?”

Geoff’s face fell into a look of near pity, the sadness there cinching tight around Corvo's heart.

“I'm sorry, Corvo,” Geoff said, his sincerity causing Corvo's throat to painfully squeeze shut. “I have no idea what happened to the Empress’s daughter. And whatever Burrows planned for her, I never learned.”

Corvo looked down and away, only managing a nod as he settled back into the boat. He expected that sort of response, but knowing he was still no closer to Emily left him more drained than ever.

They fell into silence. Despite needing to rest, Corvo's body was too wired from the discussion to sleep. His limbs itched to be used and he fidgeted the whole ride back, unable to stay still. Before the boat was even tied down he was leaping free of it, his shaking legs carrying him to the building and up a flight of stairs before their pitying looks could even hope to stop him.

He wasn't present for the Curnow family reunion. He didn't want to be; instead he settled for listening to hear their muffled voices, watching them through the Void from the second story landing. Callista had stayed up late waiting for them to return; she broke into hysterics as she saw her uncle, throwing herself into his arms upon seeing him whole and healthy.

Corvo huffed and looked away, letting the Void leak out of his vision. From down the hall, a door jostled and creaked open.

Corvo froze.

A groggy servant poked their head out from behind the door; Callista's cries must have been loud enough to rouse them, even at this witching hour. Corvo eased; the worker was a young woman with disheveled brown hair and heavy eyes. Her angry grumbles morphed into a nervous squeak she caught sight of Corvo on the landing, leaning against the railing. Immediately she flushed and muttered out an apology, trying to pull herself back into her room as quickly as possible. Corvo blinked, his stomach going cold.

“Wait,” he whispered out. She jerked and didn't meet his eye, but she did as she was told. He licked his lips, choosing his words carefully has he strode over.

“Can I ask what your name is?” He tried to sound as gentle as possible, but his ragged voice made that goal next to impossible. The girl's eyes darted up to him before looking away again.

“Cecelia, sir,” she muttered. “Please, I don't be meaning no trouble--”

Before she could continue, Corvo pulled a heavy purse out of his coat and held it out to her. She looked at it warily and didn't move to take it -- not until he shook the bag slightly, the soft jangle of coin making the contents obvious and unmistakable.

“There will be a few more people staying at the pub soon,” he whispered to her, gently setting the purse in her outstretched palm. “This should be enough to cover any inconveniences or amenities during their stay.”

Cecelia gaped at the weight of the coin suddenly resting her right hand, her left furiously wiping the sleep from her eyes. She tested the weight and checked the money inside, looking back at Corvo in a sort of bewildered awe.

“Sir--” she croaked out. “Sir, I can't accept this--”

“Get it to your boss, then,” Corvo shrugged. “And make sure it's distributed to the other workers. Just consider it compensation for -- for dealing with me.”

“Thank you, Lord--” but he was gone before she even finished the sentence.

Stopping time was still a new sensation for him -- incredibly draining and empowering in one fell swoop -- but he used the power to get away regardless. He didn't need to hear her sincerity and frankly he didn't really want it. He just wanted to sleep. His brain still spun with what he'd learned on the way back from the Abbey; he needed time to digest, to be alone.

And he needed to get rid of the insistent pressure at the back of his skull that felt entirely foreign and not his own.

He closed the door to the attic and resumed time; color returned to the world and from somewhere a few flights down he heard a surprised gasp, no doubt Cecelia processing the fact that Corvo had -- to her perception -- suddenly disappeared. He huffed out a small laugh and turned to the room proper; as soon as he found the rickety old mattress he fell on it, fast asleep and unaware of the gracious mutters lingering in the hallway just outside.

------

Karnaca spread out below Corvo, just as he remembered it.

He knew this had to be a dream; he hadn't seen the city in near two decades, even if he knew the feel of it all the same. The sun burning on cobbled stone, the dust billowing on the horizon, the sticky smell of bloodfly amber -- this was the Karnaca he memorized long ago, able to pull it perfectly out of his memories even as the Void curled at the edges of the city and his wolfen body gave him a new perspective.

His memory served him well; all the same paths and winding alleys were exactly as he recalled, all the secrets only he and his sister were ever able to find. He leapt from hard stone to choking vines to winding wood, the trees at Karnca’s edge encroaching like they never had in real life, unruly and wild and overpowering. The warmth of the wood under his claws resonated with him; he was alive as the city slept, the city where he was born and raised and became the man he was today.

Corvo wound through the branches like a furred snake, all confidence and deadly elegance. But he wasn't careful; even his mind had a way of pulling tricks on him. He took a too-sharp corner and stopped dead in his tracks the air suddenly shifted.

He was no longer in Karnaca. The scents throttling his nose were nothing like the hot sand he recalled of his youth. This was heavy industry and smoke; sea and salt and the bitter tang of processed whale oil. In the distant sky -- obscured by cloud and high above the city line -- a whale keened, the sound shifting between high and low, between sadness and anger. The song of it made the fur of his neck bristle, his very soul shaking under the weight of it.

He was in Dunwall. But unlike Karnaca it was twisted, warped by the very capriciousness of his dreams.

Corvo.

His chest lurched as something hooked deep into his very core; pulling and yearning for him, calling him by name. His claws dug painfully into the wood as he tested the air, his mind reeling. His body shuddered and shook before he was off again, leaping from the rooftops to whatever pulled so powerfully on his soul.

It was long before he found his answer.

A huge, hulking form. Black fur and blazing blue eyes. A long scar marred the right side of his face as he turned to face Corvo.

Their gazes locked. Rage boiled up. Lips curled back and fangs flashed and Corvo screamed.

The force of his howl shook the very fabric of his dreamscape, rippling through the air like disturbed water. Still, the assassin wolf didn't move, didn't react, just stared Corvo down as he leapt, racing to where that other wolf was, to where he stood and --

The world shifted. Rocks shot up. The path changed.

And the wolf of Daud was gone.

Corvo panicked. The ache of his chest worsened with his rage and he clawed forward, searching for a way past his new blockade. The world tilted dangerously, warping under his very feet and throwing him off-balance. Dunwall was quickly changing into something dark and terrifying, the wind whipping up and chilling him to the bone. Yet the powerful tether maintained it's connection. Daud still called to him, but from where, he couldn't tell.

Corvo clawed his way over stone and concrete, finally reaching the surface only to find the world dark, the songs of the whales morphing into distant rumbles of thunder. The scent of rain on the wind overwhelmed him and he turned, trying to get his bearings.

“Corvo?”

The voice was soft and small, barely audible.over the whipping wind. But still Corvo's sensitive ears caught the word, and his throat choked on a stifled reply. It was too good to be true -- and yet, he couldn't mistake that voice, her voice, like the whisper of springtime bells, like innocence lost to a bygone age.

He jerked and turned, ears swiveling, focusing on the sound.

“Corvo!”

And then he saw her; she turned to him and she shone like a star, beckoning him to her.

Emily.

She beamed, and it felt too perfect to be real -- yet there she was, whole and well and waiting for Corvo with outstretched arms.

A shadow passed between them.

Like a ghost, the wolf smoked back into his vision, eyes burning like whale oil in the night. Corvo stopped, his gut going cold as Emily smiled and reached up to run a hand over the giant hound’s gnarled muzzle.

Emily! No!

But she wasn't listening anymore. She wasn't even looking at him, too busy petting the snout of the monster that had killed her mother, fangs so close to snapping her up too --

Corvo lurched forward but stumbled, stuck in place. Vines had crept up around him, long and thick and twisted, their thorns piercing his skin and fur. He yelled and cried; the weeds just wound tighter around his legs and dragged him down, away from the one thing that mattered above everything else.

No, nonono EMILY!

His claws left gouges in the wood as he dug at those inky vines trying to wake him. He fought desperately to stay in the dream, as if he could somehow get to Emily, even while asleep. But the vines were insistent, intent on dragging him back to the waking world.

All the while those cold, scarred eyes never left him.

I will find you, Corvo snarled threateningly back, praying for a reaction and getting none. I will find you and I will find her, that is a promise!

Good, was the single reply, so deep and loud it shook Corvo to the core.

His concentration faltered.

The thunder rumbled.

And the vines dragged him away, and Emily and the Knife of Dunwall were gone.

------

Corvo shot up in his bed, panting and shaking, his entire body screeching at him. It soon became apparent why; at some point in his sleep he had started turning, his limbs burning and smoking as hot fur covered his arms and shoulders. He breathed in and his ribs painfully cracked as they expanded; his face was stretched and his teeth too large and his fingers too long and it was all too much and wrong, so wrong.

It hurt like it did back in prison, back when he had no idea what was happening and it took all his energy to not return to that near-panic state. Not in Coldridge he reminded himself over and over -- on the back of his clawed left hand the Outsider's Mark still burned bright, backing up the logic of his thoughts. He took a few breaths, stilling his shaking limbs and willing his body back to normal. It took a few tense seconds but finally the fur billowed away, his joints realigned and the magic returned him back to fully human again.

He twitched and shook, more now from residual adrenaline in his veins than from any panicked exertion. Corvo’s jaw clenched; he thought he was past this. Apparently, that was just wishful thinking; this was only his second day with the mark, after all. But that mark was supposed to afford him some control over his mess of a being -- if he couldn't have that, what was the point?

Corvo growled, clenching his fist and calling to the Void. His mark flared, tingling against his skin as his black claws reemerged-- he immediately willed the claws away and his hand obediently returned to human once again.

He flexed his fingers and sighed, repeating the process until he was satisfied. Whatever had happened in his sleep didn't seem to affect him while awake. As long as he was conscious, Corvo could still pretend to be normal.

He got up and dressed as silently and as quickly as he could. He had no idea how long he had been asleep or what time it was; nobody had come to collect him this morning, and outside the sky was overcast, threatening an afternoon rain. He opened the window and sniffed; the air certainly was heavy with a humidity just waiting to be broken. Corvo frowned, closed the window until just crack remained open, and then left the stuffy attic to join the rest of the residents downstairs.

As soon as he entered the pub, every face turned to him. Corvo stopped in his tracks, alarm rising in his chest -- but then he caught Callista smiling at him over coffee, Cecelia’s flushed cheeks as she caught sight of him from behind the bar, Geoff's warm and encouraging nod. The atmosphere was anything but threatening; instead it was welcoming, as if requesting Corvo's presence instead of rejecting it. It was different. It was nice.

It made Corvo want to run away all the same.

He swallowed the urge, entering the pub proper. He caught Sam sitting in a booth reading the Courier; he made for him, hoping to join him for his quiet familiarity -- but the booth across from him was already occupied. Another man took up the seat, a man with dark hair, a sabre at his side, and robed in black and silver.

“Ah, Corvo, good to see you awake.”

Teague Martin leaned back in the pub booth, eyeing Corvo as he neared. Unease crawled up Corvo's spine at seeing Teague in the daylight but he nodded back just the same, sending a brief smile to Sam who beamed goodnaturedly back.

“Glad to see you made it here in one piece, Martin” Corvo offered. “Was it much trouble for you?”

“Hardly,” Martin said with a wave of his hand. “Overseers are allowed into quarantined areas with little question; in these chaotic times we've been offered more power than most.”

“I see,” Corvo said darkly, trying to not think of the implications of Martin's words. “Sam, is it alright if I sit with you?”

Sam smiled gently and folded the newspaper up in his hands. “Take my seat; I'm heading out to visit Piero anyway.”

Corvo shifted, uncomfortable. “Are you sure? I don't want to intrude or--”

Sam stood up and simply patted Corvo's shoulder before moving past him and outside. Corvo watched him go, unsteady from Sam's show of easy solidarity.

“Are you just going to stand there all day or are you going to sit down?”

Corvo jerked back to Martin, who watched him quizzically. Corvo’s frown returned and he sat across from Teague, studying the man carefully. He smelled clean, but in that sort of way that left no discernible scent behind. The back of Corvo's neck itched.

He pulled the small black book out of his jacket regardless, sliding it across the booth to the Overseer. Martin's eyes lit up at the sight of it, intact even after everything Corvo went through to get it. His eyes flicked briefly to Corvo's face before reaching out and taking the journal, gloved hands running across the corver before opening it and idly flicking through the pages.

“Outsider's eyes, you really retrieved it.”

Corvo hadn't shown Martin the book before they parted at the Abbey, opting to make sure the Overseer would actually show at the pub and stay true to his word. Now, Corvo leaned back in the booth, arms crossed as he kept a suspicious eye on the man across from him.

“After everything you witnessed last night, you really doubted my ability?” Corvo asked, incredulous.

“Honest men are hard to come by in this city, Corvo,” Teague replied smoothly, raising an eyebrow while scanning the journal’s pages. “You know this well, seeing how you tested me to see if I was worth the trouble.”

“You came for the book, Teague -- which means you're predictable, not honest.” Corvo growled back. “But you're here now. So now I get to ask; are you willing to help me?”

Teague scoffed and smiled a small smile. “What does a heretic like you expect from a man of the Abbey like me?”

Corvo tilted his head, eyes narrowing as his leg bounced under the table.

“Campbell works very closely with Burrows. He always has; they've been close for years, but since my priority was the Empress and her daughter, I paid no attention to it. Maybe if I had, well...” Corvo trailed off rolling his tongue over his teeth. Martin’s eyes followed the action, gaze going back to his eyes as Corvo sneered, and continued. “Either way, Burrows is the reason Jessamine is dead. He hired the assassin Daud to do the job, a fact he mentioned to Campbell. You have incrimination on Campbell and I'm looking for all the evidence I can get. What can you offer me?”

Martin's grin flashed wide but he said nothing, idly flipping through the book. Eventually, he came across an interesting page; he dog-eared it, bookmarking the placement for later.

“Campbell has many secrets, all of them damning and most of them of little interest to you,” Martin started cooly. “As shocking as it sounds, the religious elite love cavorting with devils.” He laid the book flat, his hands neatly over it.

“Campbell has been looking into heretical artifacts and individuals for years while systematically killing those who pose no real threat to the population.”

Corvo's jaw worked as he tried not to be surprised by this information.

“So he's been killing people falsely accused of witchcraft to keep heat off of himself?”

“More like keep the heat off his own pets, ” Martin corrected smoothly, “But yes. He's a big fan of the Royal Executioner -- who, despite being a rumored heretic wolf himself, has never been accosted or arrested. That's just one example of many; he picks and chooses his allies carefully and avoids those who could cause him consternation. Clearly he wasn't careful this time, not if Daud is involved.”

Corvo bristled at the name but did his best to keep his expression neutral.

“Daud; what do you know about him?”

Martin laughed.

“More like, what don't I know about him? The Overseers have been doing undercover investigation on the man for years, but he's so elusive most consider him a myth. Campbell destroys topics on him like he’s avoiding the plague; whenever he discovers an Overseer has made a personal project of trying to capture Daud, he burns any evidence. There are not many surviving documents in the Abbey on Daud. I've not met the assassin personally but whoever he is, he's not someone Campbell wants to get on the bad side of.”

“Do you think Campbell is working with him -- burning evidence that points to previous business transactions?”

Martin shook his head, flipping through the book again. “No, no, I'm certain Campbell does it out of fear -- or, to protect Burrows. Campbell is interested in the occult so in a twisted way, Daud is a competitor and not to be trusted.”

“A competitor?” Corvo asked, his head tilting curiously. Martin just gestured nonchalantly to Corvo's left hand.

“Yes, for the Outsider's favor,” Martin told him. “Campbell's been obsessed for years. I'm hoping his journal will confirm what I've already suspected; that Campbell met the Outsider once but walked away from the encounter with no favor. Since then, he's collected quite the collection of charms and runes in a bid to understand the god of the Void better.”

“I did find more than one artifact in his chambers while I was gathering information,” Corvo mused, thinking of the locked vault he had snuck into and ransacked for his own devices. “So this does add up. And it's plenty to incriminate Campbell when the time comes.”

“Oh it's only the waterspout of the whale, Corvo,” Martin drawled easily, his grin still eager and triumphant. “Such as how he enjoys slipping away to the Golden Cat every Tuesday to practice his wandering gaze and wanton flesh.” He laughed as Corvo grimaced at the thought.

“How do you know all of this, anyway?” Corvo growled out, apprehensive of the answer. Martin just shrugged and smiled.

“I wasn't always an Overseer, and I didn't join via the conventional means of being hand picked as a good boy candidate.” He flipped to a page idly, scanning the contents. “I have so many reasons to want to see Campbell kicked off his high horse, most of them my own. Perhaps one day I'll tell you why but for now, just know it gives me great pleasure to be able to bring about the High.Overseer’s downfall.”

Corvo went silent, chewing over all that Martin had provided. He didn't know how much of it he could believe, or what was even worth remembering. He didn't care about Campbell, not like Martin did. With or without the knowledge of his occult obsession, Campbell was now a dead man walking. But what Martin had said about Daud, how even Campbell seemed to fear his wrath… those were facts worth remembering.

“Speaking of the Golden Cat…” Martin added, almost as an afterthought. He trailed off, prompting Corvo’s attention again. “They say half the girls who end up there are dropped off by nobles who need to cover up getting a pretty tramp pregnant on Fugue and soiling the family blood with unwanted heirs. Nobody believes a whore when she's forced to work in prostitution.”

Corvo's brow furrowed. “That is a popular rumor, yes, but I'm not sure what it has to do with anythi--”

“There's also a rumor that Burrows has strong connections with the Golden Cat--” Martin said, a little more forcefully. “--and that he's visited the establishment more frequently than usual since the Empress died. Some say it's for stress relief, with the young Emily missing, and all.”

Corvo stared at him, his mouth snapping shut.

“It's just a rumor, of course,” Martin finished, casually shrugging. “Could be nothing.”

Martin raised his eyebrows at Corvo and the gravity of his words finally hit him like a brick.

Luckily, the Lord Protector didn't need explaining to twice. With a heavy swish of his coat Corvo was gone from both the booth and the pub, searching out his loyal boatman even as the distant thunder rolled the rain threatened overhead.

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hollywoodx4 · 7 years

Text

Sticking with the Schuylers (37)

I’m still not fully back from NYC yet and I’m not sure I’ll ever be-my life is about to become a constant loop of planning trips-but I did manage to find some sense in this part so I’ll celebrate that!

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1112 I 13 14 15 16 17 18A 18B 18C I 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 I 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Tagging: @ellzabethschuyler, @butlinislin

Warnings: This story is pretty heavy on mentions of both physical and emotional abuse.

December 25th

For once, I want to live;

To feel the breath of air,

A sense of anticipation accompanying each adventure

As if every day is new and exciting

The days are new and exciting

For once, I want to live.

I see the sun and she is mine; wrapped in a warmth that stretches out with the call of my name through gloss-dusted lips.

The errant patterns of weather suffocate my sun.

The shadow her brilliance in malicious streams of fog.

The black smoke billows in bouts of days where she sits on borrowed time,

Before everything reverts to the shadows again.

A hurricane.

She lives in the midst of a wild storm, ripping the peace and the bliss and the place we once knew;

Jersey sheets. Borrowed time. The silk of her laughter finer than the red she had torn off in hunger.

A hurricane.

It consumes me as it had my hopes-my dreams-my town-

My mother.

The darkness which consumes her rolls steadily toward me, hot and taunting, reminding.

I could not save my town.

I could not save my mother.

I can not save Eliza.

A hurricane;

Darkness, doubt, depression. She is my sunshine.

I do not want to live.

…

There is a silence unlike any other, one which suffocates and consumes and envelops Alexander in a darkness he hadn’t realized the room had been cast in all along. The running of the shower sends static through his mind-eyes clouding over the same spot he had been staring at with a grainy fuzz and the whirring of technical issues. He can still feel her, if he tries. Closing his eyes she is there beside him, laughing through half-closed eyes and a dream-thick voice. Maybe she is on her side, letting his body frame hers in a comfort their tired bodies need. But then, that wouldn’t be Eliza. She would be on top of him, limbs stretched over limbs and hands pulling at the blankets. She’d kick him a few times after she’d fallen asleep. Maybe, in the midst of a dream, she’d bump the pillows from their bed. Alexander wouldn’t mind. He’s hers. She could give him a black eye in her sleep-induced flailing of limbs and he’d wear it proudly the next day.

He doesn’t see her go-his eyes are unfocused and blurry, mind devoid of any possibility of a coherent thought. He’s not sure what time it is when he finally blinks, realizes that the static has gone and the room is an echo of his heartbeat and his shaking hands. Alexander rises from the bed, rubbing his eyes and pulling on a pair of boxers from his drawer. The red of her dress stands out against the darkness cast around the room like a target, an attack. He holds the silk in both hands, hanging it back on the hanger over their closet door. It would have gotten wrinkled. It can’t be wrinkled.

From his place by the closet door he can’t hear anything. The creaking of the apartment floors, the running of the tap…his ears ache for the sound of her symphonic soprano humming along to whatever song had been stuck in her head all day. He is met with silence. Alexander crosses the apartment, searching. And then, there’s a plate.

On the counter, one of the square white dinner plates sits full and waiting for him. There’s leftovers wrapped neatly in plastic, alongside the plate of extra treats she had baked for the parties they’d been to. And hidden between them, a note;

Alexander,

I love you. I’ll be home tomorrow. There are so many things I wish I could say to you, but my head isn’t clear and I just need some space to breathe. You are wonderful. You are so good. I won’t blame you if you aren’t here when I get back. I understand. But it’s not you-it could never be you. I need to put my feelings into words but just know that I have never loved anybody more than I love you.

I love you,

Eliza

He holds the paper in his hand. Her handwriting is shaky, and the pen had run out half way through where she had scratched the sides of the paper with it. He isn’t sure what he has just read, can barely decipher the words though the fog that has consumed him. He reaches for his phone and dials, the ringing drawing itself out like the long bow of a violin brushing against its strings.

“Hello?” Alexander can hear the voice on the other side; groggy, clearing their throat. He opens his mouth to respond but nothing comes out. His voice is broken. Cobwebs barricade the vocalization of his thoughts so instead they appear as ragged breathing. His limbs are numb. His head is spinning. The voice on the other side repeats itself-clearer, more confused. It articulates his name with rising volume and he chokes out a sound in response. There are no words. Somewhere between the lump in his throat and his ragged breathing he squeaks. The voice intensifies.

“Alex?” It’s John-he’d dialed the number so surely, so out of his own head, that it didn’t bring about much shock upon deciphering it. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“It’s happening again.” A bristling of nerves hits like a water balloon exploding against bare skin. Sharp and pricking, it then fades into a pain that lingers and spreads throughout his entire body. He wants to move. He can’t move. Fear consumes his ability to form a coherent decision. The grasp Alexander has on reality is slipping through his panic-stricken fingers.

“I need you to come right now.”

“I’m on my way.” John’s response is immediate, through a voice hardened by concern and a knowledge of past experiences. He asks no questions-he’s smarter than that now, knows the pressure a string of inquiries can send. Instead, he launches into a story about his night. Emily had burnt the desserts. Luis and Sarah were fighting. Amaia had gotten everyone sweatshirts with the hospital logo on them. A typical collision of family drama hits Alex in waves as he stands shock still in the kitchen, letting John’s voice ground his feet on cold hardwood. The singular candle is still burning. He watches the flame flicker, flashes of orange and yellow melded together in a hesitant sort of form. Having lost its intended aesthetic it is only a muted reminder of what had happened just moments before.

There is only silence when John finally arrives, out of breath with snow-soaked shoes. He pounds on the door, ignoring the time of night and the ritzy neighbors and anything else that doesn’t involve getting to the other side of the door.

“Let me in, Alex. Come unlock the door and let me in. We can talk-or not, that’s fine too. I mean knowing you there will be talking involved, but,”

The lock clicks and John pushes the door open with a heavy hand. His eyes search the apartment rapidly until they settle on the sunken frame standing on unsteady feet at the kitchen counter.

Alexander is dressed only in his boxers, with hair standing in all directions. The muscles in his back press clear against his skin along with the lines of his shoulder blades. He is leaning on the counter, on arms bent at the elbow clearly supporting most of his weight. John calls his name but there is no response, verbal or physical. It is as if he is not even there. He crosses the apartment in two even strides, appearing to Alex as an apparition-a reminder of the light wrapped in the reason of darkness.

He is both elated and upset upon John’s hand patting his back. His voice is clear, and soft, but it is not silk. He is calm without meditation, half a symphony. There is a thankfulness in his sunken eyes but the smile he attempts to show cracks at the corner of his mouth. It is unfamiliar, and immediately paining.

“She left.” They’re the only words he can muster. John follows the trail of his eyes to a candle set on the counter, its flame quivering with the deep exhalation of Alex’s breath. He lets the silence linger, treading on the situation with trained trepidation. With a shaking hand Alex reaches for a paper folded haphazardly and discarded on the counter. When it lands in John’s hands Alex leans further into the counter, resting his head on its chilled marble surface.

John looks over the writing with care; the loop of her letters, the way her words would have been narrated in her smooth and nurturing tone. He understands the situation in pieces, but is unable to fit them together without the clues that lie between the lines. What had happened to cause Eliza to up and go-and on Christmas? Alex is destroyed, deflated. Through the muffled tone of his head against his arm, John just barely makes out the thickness of his voice.

“What if she never comes back?”

She climbs shivering into the cab. It had taken three tries to bring one over to her spot on the curb, and Eliza felt the ends of her dripping hair beginning to freeze from the cold it’s enduring. The driver nods at her as she climbs in, but says nothing as she directs him just a few blocks away. She’s unsure of just how she looks, but she can imagine; her hair is wild and dampened against her head. The thick coating of makeup she’d put on is almost all but washed off, save the tints of red that linger still after the boiling of the shower. Her teeth are chattering. She’d practically run out of the apartment, throwing on Alexander’s sweatshirt and sweatpants. There is comfort in his scent. It doesn’t last long.

She’s sure she’s tipped the driver too much but she is so thankful to see her destination that she no longer cares. Hood up, Eliza’s feet carry her without conscious awareness the eight flights up, to a door she knocks on with weakened power. There is no answer. She pulls her phone from her pocket with shaking hands and dials.

“Please let me in.”

“Eliza? What time is it? Are you-you’re here?”

“Just-I-just open the door.”

She is a flurry of limbs, colliding with Angelica in a force that has her stumbling, bracing herself on two feet as her younger sister grabs at the fabric of her shirt. Eliza’s body is pressed as physically close to hers as possible, and Angelica responds with a hold tight enough to stabilize her. She shakes. Her knees buckle beneath the sudden release of emotions and the older Schuyler leads her to the couch. It is too much to bear the load of the night standing up.

Angelica is a well-masked flurry of panic; an arm around her sister as her lips are drawn into a carefully crafted line. She searches Eliza immediately, eyes scanning the minimally exposed spaces of skin for clues-for signs of damage. There is not much to see besides the well-worn Columbia hoodie, drowning her body as her hands tuck into sleeves too long for her arms. Only the audible manifestations of grief are clear; Eliza has stopped attempting to conceal herself. The presence of her older sister is a chemical reaction, persisting and pushing her through the beginnings of catharsis.

She does not speak when she has caught her breath, nor when Angelica brings her a glass of water. She downs the liquid to replenish what her tears have taken. There are a few hiccups-catches of breath in her throat that have her older sister’s ears perked and ready to listen.

Angelica is met only with ringing. John emerges with her cellphone in his hand, squinting as his eyes adjust to the light. She takes it with a roll of her eyes, and at first he’s offended by it. Then, she gestures with a flick of her eyes to the couch. Eliza cradles the empty glass in her hand, a finger tracing its rim. Her lower lip quivers but she no longer cries. Her eyes are focused on the glass, even upon John’ entrance-as if he’s not even there. She is wrapped in the realm of her own thoughts.

Concern plows over John as he observes her. In his eight years with Angelica, he had also been blessed with eight years of Eliza. She was immediately accepting of him, moving dousing the nerves Angelica had set aflame with words of reassurance and love. He’d taken to her as an older brother would; flying to her defense by Angelica’s side at each turn of events that high school-that being a senator’s daughter-had brought along. To John Church Eliza is breath of air, a cheer when he’s down. She’s grace, and kindness, and support. Now, however, she is just empty.

He wonders what is going on but does not want to pry; to bother her more than she already seems to be. So he sits, leaving a thin line of space between them, and settles his hands in his lap.

“You had better have a good explanation for this, Hamilton. Because I swear to you if I find out you’re behind this? I’ll wring your fucking neck.” Angelica is practically screaming through the phone, anger audible through sharp diction and words in terse staccato. There’s a long pause-Eliza has lifted at the sound of the familiar last name but her eyes remain trained on the rim of her glass. It is both a hope and a shock of pain, settling her back down once more in a flurry of emotions. Angelica nods, running a hand through her hair as she glances over at her little sister.

“…I never meant to push her…I-I asked, I asked every time, and I just…it was amazing. And then she just…” He chokes back his words, the noise carrying a physical pain which slams into the oldest Schuyler with brute force, squeezing her heart. His words narrate the scene before her, in which Eliza has leaned into John with a prolonged sigh and closed eyes.

“I don’t know what to do…I don’t want…I can’t lose her.”

“Alex…”

“She’s there, right? She’s safe?” It takes a moment for Angelica to answer. The initial inquiry, the knowledge of where Eliza is…there is conflict. One side of herself is so thankful, so at peace with the thickness of Alex’s voice and the way his words slow with the thought of her. But then there is safety. She does not doubt Alex, but herself. Above everything else, there is Eliza.

“Please.” Alex’s voice cracks, his sentence stopped mid-way by a ragged breath she can feel herself take in a mirror of his own. “I just need to know that she’s alright.”

“She’s safe. She’s here.” Eliza finally glances up from her glass to watch Angelica nod through shining eyes. When the conversation ends, after a few more words of appeasement, her older sister passes the phone from hand to hand, watching her own actions in a moment of rest.

“He says that he loves you.” She shakes her head as her own eyes fill with emotion-with the loss of serenity between two of her favorite people. “-and to take all of the time that you need.”

Eliza nods once, slow and methodical, as the words digest. They linger in her mind, even as Angelica and John lead her to the spare bedroom. Their voices murmur back and forth in a conversation she is unable to understand. Their words are a foreign language to her mind, which is numb and aching and unsure of what has happened. Suddenly she is laying on the futon, wrapped in a blanket with Angelica beside her. Her eyes search Eliza’s, one hand brought to the air-dried tendrils of soft brown which frame her face.

When they were children, Eliza often begged for these moments. There was an unspoken rule between them-all three of them-that came with Angelica’s open bedroom door. There is no trace to a beginning of this pattern, as if it had simply been written within their mismatched DNA. Her bed was a refuge; a place of serenity when the world seemed to close up around them. At three and six it had been thunderstorms; pudgy feet barreling across the hall and diving underneath colorful, ruffled sheets. There they’d lay pressed nose to nose, Angelica reciting make-believe stories as Eliza giggled along.

At twelve, nine, and six, Peggy was in the middle, always the first to sleep. Angelica told Eliza what it was like to be in middle school. She calmed worries with stories both embarrassing and bright, amplifying her own triumph in hopes of granting her sister some courage to face the new school. She had told her not to worry. Eliza never worried with her older sister around.

At seventeen and fourteen, when Peggy had been away at camp, Angelica had given Eliza the sex talk as they shared covers and pillows. She told honest stories; she and John had been in the Hampton’s guest house, their parents at a gala, Eliza with a friend at the pools. She made sure Eliza would be prepared.

“You don’t owe yourself to anybody.” She’d pushed soft strands of brown from her little sister’s face. Even then, the brush of Angelica’s hand against her cheek had been a relief. “You need to love yourself as much as you want somebody to love you.”

At twenty and twenty-three, Eliza and Angelica lay nose to nose in the futon in Angelica’s guest room. The walls are warm with a mocha colored brown, the sheets a soft cotton left made for whenever a sister would come to visit. Angelica runs her fingers through Eliza’s hair; watches as her sister takes shallow, evened breaths.

“He probably hates me.” She whispers the words though the dark, admitting them as a worry she’d rather keep hidden away. But under the covers with her sister the anxieties spill easily through the air between them.

“He doesn’t hate you. Alex could never hate you.”

“I would hate me.”

The words stab Angelica as they come so easily, so hushed and drawn back from her sister’s lips. Eliza’s eyes are red, and puffy. She holds back her tears with the swallow of a lump in her throat. She is hushed by a hand on her cheek; by blankets drawn further to her chin. Eliza sinks into the comfort, body numbed and drained of its last leg of life. Even here, in the serenity, she craves Alexander. Her body pulls to him, imagines that he might be there although she knows he will not come tonight. He respects her too much-she’d asked for this space. She needs this space, and yet his name is the thought on her mind as she relaxes into Angelica’s protective touch.

“I need help…I’m ready for help.” She breathes the admission as her eyes finally shut, succumbed to a sleep induced by exhaustion.

#mine: SWTS #hamliza #hamliza au #now i sleep #i'm still drained #and i have jobs 2 and 3 this week too so #dead

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thatsparrow · 8 years

Text

rules of the game - chapter nineteen

SUMMARY: Your breath is catching in your lungs and your heart is pounding so hard in your chest you feel like your whole goddamn body is shaking. Your world has narrowed to the anger and fear-induced tremble in your limbs and the rough and relentless hold of Negan’s fingers on your skin and the amused, expectant look he wears on his face as he looks down at you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck —

–

After saving you and your group from a pack of walkers that would have guaranteed your death, Negan has you down on your knees with a barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat in your face and a decision to make: surrender everything you own over to the Saviors, or join the Sanctuary and agree to work for him.

And even though he’s acting as if you have options, there’s really only one choice you can make.

FANDOM: The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV) CHARACTERS: Negan, Original Female Characters, Original Male Characters, Lucille, Saviors ADDITIONAL: Reader-Insert, Mild Gore, Slow Burn, Road Trips

[read on AO3]

[first chapter]

Your shadow is a smudge beneath your shoes when you get out of the car, a black brushstroke of paint sitting under your boots as you stand in the weeds on the shoulder of the road. After following the same two-lane highway for the past fifteen minutes or so—blindly trusting Negan's intuition after he’d turned off the main road—the two of you had pulled off the cracked blacktop and parked the Ford under the shadow of the trees bordering the pavement. By now, you figure the serpentine stretch of tarmac must have wound its way behind the town you’d left this morning, putting you at the intersection of—god willing—the path Chase might have taken after he left.

That is, if he even made it out at all.

“Alright, sir," you say as you lean back against the closed passenger door, throwing the words over your shoulder to where Negan is pulling Lucille from the backseat. “What’s the plan?”

“Best start praying to whatever god you believe in, sweetheart.”

You turn on your heel, letting your elbows rest on the roof of the sedan as you look Negan’s way.

“That an order?”

“Consider it a friendly fucking suggestion,” he says, glancing up briefly to meet your eyes. “Given that Plan A is to comb through miles of woods and back roads for some dumb fuck who does not fucking want to be found, I’d say praying would be a smart first step.”

And you don't really have a response to that, so you settle for checking the gun at your waist and the knife at your—

“Oh, goddammit.”

“Fuck’s the matter?”

You look up at Negan, giving him a smile that has nothing to do with amusement and everything to do with your own thoughtlessness.

“My knife,” you say, frustration sharp in your words like broken glass buried in a sandbox. “I dropped it back in the CVS. Fucking of course.”

“What about the gun?”

“Still works fine, far as I can tell. Out of bullets, though.”

Negan gives you a brief nod before rounding the car to pop the trunk, pulling the supply bag from the back and dropping it at your feet.

“There’s a box of ammo in the bag — might as well reload while we’ve got the time.” He flashes an easy smile as you kneel down to unzip the duffel. “Surprisingly enough, that gun ain’t actually too fucking useful without any bullets.”

“Well, shit. You don’t say.”

You’ve got your head lowered and fingers busy reloading the gun as you respond, not even bothering to look up at Negan as you toss out the words on an impulse. And with his face out of your frame of vision, there’s a moment where you have to wonder if your sarcasm just crossed another line. But then you hear him let out a slight laugh—that low, back-of-the-throat chuckle that spills out like sap dripping from a maple—and it’s a reflex to let the corners of your mouth turn up as well, a slight smile sitting on your face like a sideways parentheses.

With the gun reloaded, you zip the bag shut and pull yourself back to your feet, tucking the metal piece into the waistband of your jeans.

“Ready to go?” You ask, loading the supply bag back into the trunk and clicking the latch closed.

“Just about,” Negan says, setting Lucille down against the side of the car before his hands reach down to his belt buckle.

“…For the record,” you say, tone dry like blistered sand as Negan undoes the metal at the front of his jeans. “When I asked if you were ‘ready to go’, that’s not really what I was referring to.”

“Mind out of the gutter, sweetheart,” he says, looking up at you with an amused expression as he pulls the leather out of his belt loops until he’s unhooked the knife holster hanging at his hip. As easy as anything else, he extends the sheath in your direction, handle pointing towards you.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a knife,” Negan says, one eyebrow quirked. “Didn’t think that part would need elaborating.”

“It’s your knife,” you say, brows drawn together slightly in response. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“Think of it more as a loan than a gift.”

“Don’t you—fuck, I don’t know—need it?” The words feel hollow as soon as you say them, especially with walker blood puddling on the cement around Lucille's barbed-wire barrel. Still, this is Negan's knife you're talking about, and you can't even begin to reconcile the image of that weapon in your hand.

Negan rolls his eyes, setting the blade and holster on the back of the sedan as he rethreads the leather of his belt back through the loops at his waist. “Fuck’s sake — listen, sweetheart, we both know that out here, you only pull a gun when you’ve hit your very worst case scenario. I’ve got Lucille while you’ve got one handful of ‘jack’ and another handful of ‘shit’. You need a knife, I have a spare. It’s not fucking complicated.”

“You sure—“

“You know, all of this sounds an awful lot like you questioning me. That what’s happening right now? You really gonna throw a fit and blow your shot over me trying to do you a good turn?” Negan shakes his head slightly, wearing an exasperated look you were sure was reserved for someone looking after a three-year-old.

“No, sir,” you say, tone hesitant but compliant as your fingers close around the hilt of the knife.

“Fucking better,” Negan says, picking up Lucille from where he'd left her leaning against the tail lights. Feeling like a kid playing dress-up, you weave the holster onto your own belt, painfully aware of the almost too-heavy weight of the blade at your hip and how laughably oversized it is on you, built more for gutting something feral or fitting into the palm of someone like Negan. Still, you can’t deny there being a certain comfort in that serrated edge—sharp like sharks’ teeth—sitting just within hand’s reach.

“Now that we’ve got that fucking ordeal over with,” Negan says, swinging Lucille up onto his shoulder, “time to get moving.”

“All joking aside, what is the plan here?”

“Jokes aside? Christ, sweetheart — the fuck is the fun in that?”

You don’t respond, choosing instead to fix Negan with an unamused look.

“Always so serious,” he says, not entirely under his breath. “Well, seeing as how this has all been one big fucking game of guesswork so far, why the fuck stop now?” He looks up and down the road for a moment, consideration lingering briefly in the lines of his face.

“Here’s the way I figure it — assuming loverboy headed out of town moving away from the direction of the Sanctuary, assuming he headed in a relatively straight line, and fucking assuming nothing killed him on the way, he should’ve ended up roughly here. But all bets are fucking off whether he decided to keep going through the woods or stick to the road.” Negan frowns slightly, exhales like he’s still trying to make sense of his thoughts. “Current plan—or as close to a plan as I can come up with—we’ll check the woods and see if we can find some sign of him. If not? Keep heading down the road and hope we pass him. We still come up with fucking nothing? Stop the car, rinse, fucking repeat.”

It hits you at that moment how completely fucking pointless this is. Honestly. Because you can’t come up with a plan better than the one Negan just proposed and because you’re no damn tracker and, short of a sign in neon spray paint, you’d never recognize a trail Chase might’ve left through the woods. Truth is, you’re running pretty damn low on hope right now, your reserves of optimism like a gas gauge ticking steadily towards empty.

But, however slim it might be, there is still a chance of finding him.

And—fuck it—you’ll hold fast to that slender string even as it frays like unraveling thread in your palm. Wrap your fingers around the last scraps of optimism you can see, even as you gain nothing more than a handful of paper cuts.

“All sounds good to me,” you say, wearing a smile that doesn’t reflect how you feel. Tone cautiously light because fuck letting Negan know that all his negativity and realism might be getting to you. “You ready?”

“Might as well get fucking to it.”

And, hand hovering loosely at your side, Negan’s figure the overwhelming factor in your periphery, the two of you head side-by-side into the trees.

Predictably, the next few hours turn up less than fucking nothing.

Which, all things considered, is about what you expected. Chase's trail went cold the minute you chased the wrong voice down the wrong road, and ever since, you’ve been clinging to a train of reasoning that amounts to little more than finely woven bullshit. He didn’t leave a trail because he doesn’t want to be found. He didn’t bother with breadcrumbs because he’s more than ready to lose his way — because as far as he’s concerned, his story might as well end in a witch’s oven.

At this point, who are you really still searching for? Who is this really about?

Are you actually out here for Chase, or are you doing this for yourself?

The sun is starting to sink like a deflating balloon when you reach a signpost for another town a few miles up the road, the first indication of anything established since you’d gotten back on the highway. And it’s as close to a lead as the universe is willing to offer, more of a sign than any of the crushed leaves and broken branches you’d tried to pretend to make sense of when you and Negan had explored the woods.

“What do you think?” You ask Negan as the Ford passes the sign, metallic backing shrinking quickly in the rearview.

“Guess it wouldn’t hurt to check things out,” he says, tone unreadable. “If nothing else, sundown’s a little too fucking close for comfort and we need somewhere to hole up for the night.” His eyes flick down to the clock on the dash, one hand coming up absently to trace a line over his jaw. “Can’t do jack for loverboy tonight, but we should have time to find something a little fucking better than sleeping in the fucking car.”

“Not like I’m complaining,” you say, taking the time to stretch the stiffness from your shoulders. “I can honestly say I’ve spent enough nights in shitty backseats or the goddamn trunk to last a lifetime or two.”

“Fucking amen.”

The shadows are starting to stretch a little too long across the pavement when you finally reach the town, the main road cutting through a small strip of quiet downtown as the sun finishes its final descent below the trees. And it looks quiet enough—empty streets and abandoned cars parked against the curb and the occasional silhouette or two of a walker—but you’ve been running these lines long enough to keep your guard up as the wheels of the Ford ease over the tarmac. Not a thought but a habit to keep your eyes skimming across the storefronts, ears tuned for the sound of an undead cluster hidden down an alley, muscles tensed and ready for the worst.

But things seem alright, and even if you know how deceptive that can be, it’s getting late and you and Negan need to start making some quick decisions. Keeping close to the main road, he turns the car down a side street and parks parallel to one of the buildings, windows un-shattered and walls mostly free of bloodstains.

“We’ll head in through the back door,” Negan says as he turns off the ignition, inclining his head towards the brick facade. “Don’t want to spend the whole damn night clearing the building, but it looks secure enough so fingers-fucking-crossed it doesn’t take too long to deal with whatever shit is waiting inside. Grab the supply bag from the trunk and follow my lead.”

“Yes sir,” you say, voice slightly absent as your eyes skate a restless back-and-forth over the building, tracing a path between the windows while you look for those familiar signs of trouble. But the shades seem undisturbed and you can’t spot anything worse than a thick layer of grime and you find yourself a little less tense as you climb out onto the sidewalk, fingers hooked around your backpack straps. You can see Negan's silhouette as you make your way to the trunk, pulling Lucille and his own shit from the backseat as you unlatch the back and hoist the duffel over your shoulder. Hanging back a few paces, you follow his footsteps across the sidewalk and over to a side door set into the bricks, playing lookout as he works at the hinges stuck fast with rust. And then the door is creaking open—a little louder than you’d like—and it’s nothing but dim shadows and faint outlines and the beam from Negan’s flashlight cutting through the dark like the bright white warning of a lighthouse.

“Ready?” He asks over his shoulder, voice low, adjusting his grip on Lucille as your hand drops down to the hilt of your borrowed knife.

“Ready enough.” You answer in a similarly quiet tone, eyes glancing up only briefly to meet his.

“Then tally-fucking-ho.”

And with that, there’s nowhere to go but forward.

It’s not the first time you’ve had to do something like this, but you wouldn’t still be breathing if you’d let repetition erase your instinct for fear — if you’d become numb to the sensation of standing on this tightrope. Staying alive has never been anything less than a balancing act, and you’ve seen too many slip off that wire from not giving the undead their due.

Cities don’t get decimated by an inconvenience. The whole fucking world doesn’t fall by the hands or teeth of something inconsequential. There will always be so many more of them than there are of you, and the day you forget that is the same day you pull the pin of a grenade and drop the explosive at your feet. At that point, dying is only a matter of time.

And you can feel that same sharp edge of uncertainty in your stomach as you tiptoe on bloodstained boots into the shadows, that familiar bitterness on the back of your tongue. But you’ve got the broad shoulders of Negan’s frame standing in front of you like a battering ram, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel a little more secure—Jesus, a little more safe—with him there.

You can’t tell whether it’s funny or unsettling, that you could put Negan and safe in the same sentence without the trace of a joke. And, honestly, you’re not sure you really want to find out which one it is.

It doesn’t take long to sweep the two-story building, for you and Negan to trace a Pac-Man pattern through the back offices of the small accounting firm, taking out a few walkers still outfitted in their pencil skirts and button downs, knotted ties hanging loose around withered necks. But other than a low-lying feeling of sadness—an occasional sting at the sight of family photos pinned up on cubicle walls—the building offers no surprises and soon the two of you are setting up camp in the break room on the second floor. And as far as small-town break rooms go, it doesn't offer much — walls painted an unexciting shade of taupe and secondhand appliances on the Formica countertops and coupons pinned to the refrigerator with cheap magnets.

Still, you’re thankful for its relative cleanliness. Even more thankful for the windows offering a vantage onto the street, and for the couch sitting along one of the walls, weathered cushions parallel to a couple half-empty vending machines. And with a couple battery-powered lanterns and flashlights suffusing the room with a dim glow, you could almost call it homey.

“Got any preference for first or second watch?” Negan asks after the two of you eat a simple dinner, stretched out on the sofa with his boots propped up on one of the armrests.

“You’re really giving me a choice?” You say, tone skeptical as you sink down into one of the chairs around the break room table.

Negan gives you an easy smile in response, sitting up just enough to shrug out of the sleeves of his jacket. “Not like it does me any good if you pass out halfway through your shift. Remember, sweetheart, my first interest is always in keeping myself alive.”

“At least you're consistent,” you say, answering the amusement on Negan's face with a wry look of your own. “I’ll take first shift then.”

“Fine by me.”

It’s quiet as the two of you settle in — you cleaning walker gut off the knife blade with take-out napkins from one of the drawers, Negan shifting slightly on the couch cushions.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” You've still got your head down as you throw your question to the room, almost like you're talking to the blade in your hand rather than the man on the sofa.

Negan doesn’t bother turning to look your way, but you can see that half-smile curving up the corners of his mouth at your words. “Shoot.”

“It’s not like you really want to be out here, right?”

He tilts his head in your direction, tone even as ever. “Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

It’s a thought that’s been sticking in your mind for the past couple hours, a curiosity crystallized at the sight of Negan’s tall frame stretched out over a too-small makeshift bed.

“It’s just…” you break off, eyes dropping down as you try and figure out how to phrase it. “You can’t be enjoying this — you can’t be wanting to put up with this shit. You don't, do you? Wouldn't you rather be back at the Sanctuary?”

Negan props himself up on one arm, gives you a steady look that’s equal parts patronizing and exasperated.

“What are you trying to ask here, sweetheart?” He fixes you with a level stare, eyebrows arching up slightly. “You're really wondering if I’d rather be here — freezing my fucking balls off on a beaten-up couch with more stains than a motel bedspread, or back in my apartment — lying on silk sheets in a king-sized bed getting blown by one of my wives.” He inclines his head towards you. “That the question you need answering?”

You duck your head for a moment, sure there’s a slight flush in your cheeks as you meet Negan’s amused look. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t have phrased it in exactly those terms — but, yeah?”

“You honestly telling me you cannot figure that one out for yourself?”

“Then why are you here?” You ask, the words blurting out before you can think better of them. It's tempting to look away, but you make it a point to keep your mouth set in a firm line, to meet Negan's eyes as he watches you with an expression you can’t quite parse.

“Curiosity is a dangerous fucking thing, sweetheart,” Negan says at last, the weight of his gaze heavy as you shift slightly in your seat, one knee pulled up to your chest. “One of these days it might get you into trouble.”

“Is that day today?”

It's heads or tails whether he'll answer with anger or amusement, and you feel nothing but relief as he lets out a slight laugh at your words, the tension dissipating from the room like water slipping down the drain. And you can see him smiling, seeming in spite of himself, as one hand comes up to massage his temple.

“Fucking christ — you do not know when to quit.”

You're tempted to say something else, but you wait, almost certain that Negan's got a few more words waiting on his tongue. And you can't tell what it is about this moment—whether it's the lack of adrenaline in his system or the simple fact of having his feet up that's got him so relaxed—but you're somehow sure that you haven't burned through his reserves of patience just yet.

As if acting in response to your thoughts, Negan pulls himself upright, back propped up against the armrest and shoes sliding to the carpet as he shifts his body until he's facing you. "Do not fucking take this to mean that I value your persistence, or some shit," he says, giving you a disgruntled look that doesn't feel genuine, "but purely in the interest of getting you to shut up so I can enjoy a few fucking moments of peace and quiet — fine, I'll give you two reasons why I'm out here in Bumfuck, Nowhere rather than sitting pretty back at the Sanctuary.

"Reason number one, sweetheart — I'm still here because I am a man of my word. And that doesn't just extend to bargains or threats with communities who have more canned goods than common sense — no, that holds even for two-bit deals with stubborn fucking assholes who don't know well-enough to stop fighting, even when they have got nothing left."

Indignation rises like a reflex in your throat, but you're the one who asked for his words. You don't get to bite just because you don't like what he's offering in his right hand. And you're sure he can see the way your shoulders tense under your jacket—because he's Negan, and because the smiling bastard always seems to read you better than the big, bold text of a billboard—but he doesn't address your reaction, letting the moment go with nothing more than a half-smile and continuing on that same train of thought.

"I'm still here because I made you a deal and—like your very own fairy fucking godmother—gave you three days to get shit done and because your time isn't up just yet. And while I have not and will not keep it a secret that I find this whole fucking endeavor an exceptional waste of time, as long as you decide to stay out here and haven't hit the deadline, then I am not going fucking anywhere."

Something about his words isn't entirely satisfying, but you know you're lucky to get whatever scraps of truth he's offering.

"And the second reason?"

At that, the half-smile on his face widens into a full-blown grin.

"Plain-and-fucking-simple, sweetheart — because fucking shit, do I want that favor you're offering."

You can't help but feel a little hesitant under the look he's giving you, one that suggests he knows something you don't, like he's read ahead to the end of this chapter and is laughing at the punch line you can't see coming. "You do know I don't really have anything to give you, right?"

Negan just lets that smile linger, the one that always manages to stir goosebumps from your skin. "Wouldn't be so sure of that."

"Should I take that to mean you've already got something in mind?" You want to deliver your words in his same easy tone, but you can't help the slight furrow in your brow or the uncertain edge in your voice.

"Not about to start giving away all my secrets, sweetheart," Negan says, shifting on the sofa until he's lying down again, one arm resting under his head. "Let's just say I've got a couple ideas."

"Anything I should be worried about?" You don't really expect him to respond with any kind of honesty, but your common-sense can't hold back the questions that curiosity has left on your tongue. Besides, by now you know Negan well enough to be cautious of the thoughts he's hiding behind his Cheshire cat smile.

"Guess that depends on what might give you cause to worry."

He's not giving away anything in his tone, but you can't help the places your mind goes at his words — the train of thought you take to all the worst things he could ask of you.

Then—surprising you in the most embarrassing and unwelcome of ways—to the things he could ask for that you're not entirely sure you'd object to.

As if Negan can see the medley of images in your mind's eye like he's flipping through hotel channels, he smiles up at the ceiling. "So tell me, sweetheart — the fuck is it that's got you so wound up? What do you think I want from you that's put such a twist in your panties?" You can hear the grin in his words clear across the room, the one that seems to suggest he knows exactly what's made you fall so silent.

You can feel the flush in your cheeks burn a little hotter, ducking your head even though Negan's not even looking your way. "On second thought, I don't think I want to know what you've got planned," you say, hearing his all-too-familiar laugh filling the corners of the room.

"Not a fan of being on the receiving end of so many questions?" Negan asks after his amusement subsides. "Well, fuck — now who's not playing fair?"

"Hold the phone — you've always gotten the option of not having to give me a straight answer," you say, the corners of your mouth turning up slightly as you lift your head to face him, grateful as anything for the change of subject. "Don't see why I should have to follow different rules."

Negan tilts his head until he's looking your way, a spark of amusement in his eyes you're sure is mirrored in your own. "Think we both know things are not nearly as fucking interesting that way."

"Speak for yourself," you say, still smiling while you give him a shrug. "Personally, I think I've had enough interest to last a lifetime."

It's clear that Negan's got another rapid-fire response waiting at your words, but at that moment you both hear the sound of something knocking against one of the storefronts down the street, and you never get to hear whatever one-liner he had sitting on his tongue. And it's not like the walker is any kind of a threat, but the noise is enough to remind you of why you're here — that you're not trading jokes surrounded by cheap appliances and dusty carpets because you enjoy Negan's company. Picking up the knife from the table and tossing the blood-streaked napkins into a trashcan, you holster the metal at your hip and shift one of the chairs to a spot near the window.

"It's still early enough," you say to Negan, "but all things considered, I'd rather get an hour or two more sleep if possible. You mind calling it a night?"

He gives a noncommittal shrug, letting your abrupt change of pace go unremarked as he eases off the couch and moves to dim the lanterns so the room quickly fades to black. "Not like my day was any easier than yours that I'd object to a little more shuteye." He settles back against the cushions, his figure little more than a shadowy silhouette in the dark. "If there's nothing life-threatening before my shift, feel free to act like I've got a 'Do Not Disturb' sign tattooed across my forehead — understood?"

"Yes, sir," you say, taking the seat at your post by the window, flashlight in hand and shades separated just enough that you've got a decent view of the streets. And it doesn't take long for the rhythms of Negan's breathing to change, mellowed out into the steady white noise you'd grown familiar with from the nights you'd spent on the road with Marie and Chase and Luke and Wendy. Hell — with only the sounds of quiet inhales and exhales for company and your hand hovering close to the hilt at your belt, you could almost forget where you are or who you're with. Could let your mind fall back to a simpler time when you knew the shape of your companions' characters as well as you knew the calluses on your fingertips. When the question of trust wasn't such a complicated fucking thing.

Because that's the heart of the matter that's got you so goddamn confused—the pit at the middle of the peach you've been so careful to chew around—isn't it? That you think you might be starting to be changing your opinion of Negan in ways you're nowhere close to comfortable thinking about.

That—fuck—you might even be starting to trust him.

As soon as you give freedom to even the notion of the thought, you feel like such a fucking fool. Sinking back until your spine is following the curve of the molded plastic, you're tempted to shake your head at yourself — because you should know better than to let your better judgment be swayed by a few easy words and a charming smile. Because you've heard the stories that survivors at the Sanctuary tell about Negan, and if even a tenth of them are true, they should be enough to convince you that no small gesture he makes is worth your confidence. After all, he said it himself, didn't he? And said it more than once, too — that his first and only priority is keeping himself alive, full fucking stop. No room for anyone else in that kind of an equation.

And as for saving your life earlier? Hell — all you can assume is that, right now, you're worth more to him alive than dead. You should know better than to mistake his self-interest for anything other than what it is.

They're uncomfortable thoughts, but not illogical ones, and you'd be deserving of an early grave if you ignored them just because you don't like the way the sharp edges of the truth sit in your stomach.

Rolling your shoulders like you're trying to dislodge the discomfort that's weighing on you, you prop up one foot on the edge of your chair and return your full focus to the world outside the window. Fucking enough wondering about the man stretched out on the couch — why don't you remember what you're goddamn priorities should be and settle for making it through the night.

It's earlier than you expect when you feel Negan's hand on your shoulder, when you hear his quiet whispers urging you awake not long after you'd changed shifts. You need a few moments to blink your eyes open, vision adjusting slowly to the dim shadows and not helping you make sense of the expression on Negan's face.

"What's—" But your words are cut short when he rests a heavy hand over your mouth, shushing you with a slight shake of his head, the calluses of his palm rough against your lips.

"Best if we stay quiet, understand?" Negan asks in his low voice, waiting for your silent nod of assent before he removes his hand. You shift until you're sitting upright, eyes following him closely as he eases his way back to the window, peering briefly between the blinds.

"What's going on?" You say, mirroring his quiet tone as you start lacing up your boots.

"Nothing good." He says, that sharp edge in his words evident even in his whispering. "Think you're gonna want to make sure that gun's fully loaded, sweetheart — looks like we've got trouble."

#the walking dead #negan #negan x reader #negan x you #twd fanfiction #rules of the game #my fic

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