#so gross how he got me so miserable last night m way too sensitive n emotional 🫠 i hate boys

[sparklingchim]

sos how do i get over a boy

[caffeineivore]

Moar Spirits for Spirit

Prompt: M/N, Neck

**

At this hour of night, this section of Central Park is all but deserted, which serves the purposes of the two young men meeting there just fine. The older of the two unties the red bandanna around his head and stuffs it into a pocket before stepping out into the light-- the colour is too eye-catching, even at this hour of night, and likely to draw the attention of passersby or the odd passing cop. The star-shaped tattoo on his wrist is a little less noticeable. 

He doesn’t give the other boy much of a greeting beyond a fairly elaborate handshake-fist-bump combination, during which money changes hands, but sits down at the base of the a statue-- fairly new, some dude in a cape holding a sword atop a horse, lights up a cigarette as he counts the wadded-up cash. “That’s a little bit more than what I asked, Trey. Wanna tell me what’s up?”

Trey is perhaps all of fifteen, gangly but baby-faced, shuffling his feet in his battered red high-tops. “Well, I got together some extra. You know. Isn’t that good, Switch?”

The evasiveness of Trey’s body language and his non-answer to Switch’s question makes the older boy lean forward, all but trapping him against the statue’s concrete base. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to get up to some shit, now. I don’t think that’d be a smart idea.”

“I just-- I got a new caseworker. She actually cares. I’ve been going to school and I think I might be able to graduate. She’s even helping me get a part-time job.” Trey’s still too young to know not to babble out sensitive information when he’s nervous, and so he rambles, shrinking away from Switch’s thunderous expression. “I won’t snitch or nothing, I promise. She doesn’t know anything about any of that, and I’m not gonna tell her. I just think I should get out of this so that it won’t fuck up my chances.”

“And you think it’s that easy, huh?” 

The snick of a knife being drawn is all but silent, and yet to Trey, in this still and deadly-silent park, it’s loud as a gunshot, almost as loud as the pulse pounding in his throat. Switch-- short for Switchblade, his weapon of choice, so easily hidden, and yet, flicked open close enough to his face to nick the tip of his nose, so lethal, all the same. “We took care of you when your trickin’ mama couldn’t. And now you think an extra hundred dollars gets you a free pass? An out?” Switch’s face is close enough to Trey’s that flecks of saliva impact against Trey’s cheek with his words, but the boy is too terrified to be grossed out. “You seen what happens to snitches. I guess you about to see what happens to rats going green, too.”

Trey is too scared to do more than yelp and squeeze his eyes shut, but the slash of the knife never comes. He hears a rumble, feels the earth shake in its very foundations at his feet. Maybe this is what an earthquake feels like, or the Apocalypse. Suddenly he doesn’t feel the pressure of a body up in his face any more, and hears Switch screaming.

He opens his eyes, and sees his former fellow gang member airborne, hoisted up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten, arms and legs dangling helplessly. The man holding him immobile is tall and muscular, looking like something out of King Arthur or maybe the Vikings, and has the tip of a wicked-looking sword that makes Switch’s knife look like a toothpick in comparison held to Switch’s throat. Trey has no idea where his mysterious saviour had come from; certainly, he’d not heard anyone or anything approaching just a moment ago. The man turns his face towards Trey, eyes dark and flashing.

“Run, you dithering knave! What are you waiting for?”

Trey jerks into action and jumps to his feet, dashing for the nearest exit. He almost crashes into a woman walking into the park, but manages to avoid her at the last second with a hasty “’Scuse me, ma’am!”. Maybe his new caseworker would help him evade Switch and any of the others who would likely now try to beat his ass. Angela. He’d never met anyone like her before, capable of giving him reason to hope for the better. 

“You’re excused.” Linden knows terror when she sees it, and it’s all but radiating off the boy in waves. It doesn’t take much to ascertain, based on his speed and direction, that he must have come from that particular section of the park, and she quickens her footsteps. She’s not quite prepared, however, to see her noble, impetuous, good-hearted idiot of a knight holding a flailing young man aloft twenty feet in the air. 

“Drop him. Hard enough to immobilize him. Not hard enough to kill him.” 

Nathalán follows her directive, but at that distance, Switch is still immediately rendered unconscious by the drop. Linden kicks away the knife that falls from his hand hard enough that it splashes into the pond, then bends over him, critically. 

“He’ll live. Probably a bit of a concussion and definitely will be favouring his left leg, but he may make it another year. Unless his lifestyle gets the best of him.” She is no fool, and certainly the tattoos and colours are a dead giveaway of his affiliation and probable livelihood. “I suppose he was shaking down the other one who ran out like the hounds of hell were pursuing him?”

“The other one was trying to bow out. Abjure the group which he’d been part of. They’ve been gathering more often, of late, in the park late at night. Selling their bags of powder or pastiles.”

“Kid’s trying to jump out of a street gang,” Linden shakes her splendid, curly head. “He’s lucky to have escaped with his life.”

“Will they seek retribution, then?” Nathalán asks in his blunt, direct way. “He is but a child. Foolish, undoubtedly, but not worthy of the ills they would visit upon him.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten tangled up with the street life,” Linden murmurs. “But I suppose I can’t fault you for having sympathy for foolhardy lads with more bravado than sense.” Nimbly, she clambers up onto the statuary’s base, so that she can look him in the eye. “I daresay you saved his life just now.”

His hand, so rough and inexorable around Switch’s neck, is gentle as it traces her back, pausing over her shoulder-blades where her wings would be when she’s in her most primordial and deadly of forms. “Maybe I see something of myself in him-- a yearning to regain honour that’s been lost. A desire to be worthy, someday, of love and forgiveness.” He dips his head, and the lips that touch her temple are soft and not at all cold, for the moment. “I just thought-- he should get that chance. As I did.”

“You are shameless and incorrigible,” Linden tells him, unable to stop a wry laugh from bubbling up. “I’ll see what I can do, I suppose.”

“I shall keep watch from here, as usual. And let you know if there is news.”

**

Though he was certainly not opposed to being inundated by some very nice drugs, courtesy of the emergency room staff at the hospital, Switch didn’t enjoy being laid up, not one bit. No one believed him, of course, and part of him was afraid that maybe he really was losing it. Certainly there was no freaking way that he’d been plucked off the ground by some statue come to life like something out of a Harry Potter movie, then unceremoniously dropped like a used Kleenex. He’d been found the next morning by park maintenance and by all accounts was lucky to be alive-- between the concussion and the broken leg and the freezing temperatures. Of course the po-po’s had not bought the story of why he’d been there so late, and they’d busted him cold with Oxy’s and two dime-bags of blow. One of the narcos actually had the nerve to laugh at him. “Well, Switch, maybe you wouldn’t be imagining such things if you weren’t high all the time. Funny how these things happen only to people like you.”

He hated the fucking cops.

Of course, there’d be the whole parade of possession charges and court and probie. And then he’d get down to business. Trey, specifically, was at fault for the predicament that he’d found himself in at present, and therefore needed to face the consequences of his actions. He still had homeboys on the street who could take care of a miserable little prick as easy as one-two-three. Just as soon as he managed to get out of this godforsaken hospital, of course. When he was somewhere not handcuffed to a bed.

The TV is set to one of the cooking shows, probably the food network or something, and the hostess is a super hot lady with curly reddish-brown hair and fantastic boobs behind her cute little apron get-up, showing the audience how to make some type of fancy holiday roast thing. 

“The most important part of this is letting it rest. You don’t want to carve it right away, not while it’s still tense from the heat and stress of the cooking process.” The perky hostess explains as she pulls the steaming roast out of the oven with bright-green mitts. Switch barely pays attention to her long-winded explanation, but out of nowhere, the TV starts to flicker, then go to static. Yet, eerily, though the entire pretty suburban-kitchen background of the cooking show disappears into that black-and-white-snowfall-effect, the cooking lady remains, facing him head-on, brandishing a carving knife with casual, deadly expertise in one hand and a knife-honer in the other. She’s got great boobs and is all smiles, but Switch knows, just from the way she’s holding it, that she’s as deadly with a bladed weapon as he is. 

“Rest, now.” The lady’s voice is still sweet, terrifyingly so. “I’ll carve it when it’s ready. There will be enough for everyone, even those who want seconds.” Switch clutches at the sheets and attempts to scoot back, but his bum leg keeps him immobile, as do the handcuffs. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do now. You wouldn’t want to ruin things, would you?” For one electrifying, nightmarish moment, he could swear that the cooking lady’s eyes go red as blood on that television screen even as the ring of carbon steel echoes eerily in the room. Switch feels cold sweat beading on the back of his neck, and on his upper lip, goose-flesh breaking out over his arms. 

“Fuck all this.” Shakily, he hits the button to summon a nurse. “Get that asshole pig in here. I need to talk to him.”