#which means you can't yell at me btw I'm innocent u.u

[naivesilver]

Hmmmmmmmg how about something for Leroy and Lampwick from the found family asks? You can choose the prompt :^)

😈😈😈

Found Family Prompts

I care about you and I will always care about you.

"I'm gonna kill him," Leroy snarls, with a fury he hasn't felt in what he thinks might be decades.

To her credit, Nova, his kind, shy Nova, doesn't seem particularly miffed by his outburst, and holds her ground with admirable steadiness, her arms crossed tightly against her chest. "You will do no such thing. I won't see you landing yourself a jail cell because you can't keep a cool head."

"A cool head?" The man's arm swings open, pointing somewhat accusingly at the teenager sitting on their couch. "You take a look at him and tell me how you're keeping cool right now, go ahead."

Lampwick doesn't even lifts his head at being made a topic of discussion, which is bad on many fronts, because the kid doesn't do meek and quiet, usually. He's a menace, that boy, loud and bothersome and sticky-fingered, and Leroy loves him to bits, sappy and shameful as it might sound, and his blood boils at the thought of what was happening right under their nose.

See, there's the flip side of it. All in all it's a good thing that Lampwick isn't looking up, because it means Leroy doesn't have to see more of the bruises mottling his face, which would send him into a rage with near certainty.

Not that he really needs the push, though, to be honest. "You know what? Fine," he concludes, already striding over to get his jacket. "If Emma wants to throw me in jail, I'll let her. Or maybe she'll wanna join me, who knows-"

"Don't. Please."

The voice is so soft and muted that it's a wonder Leroy even hears it over his own ranting, but it makes him freeze up all the same, hand raised halfway through the air. He finds himself frowning, puzzled, and turning to the couch again. "What?"

Finally, Lampwick glances up at him, eyes red rimmed and pleading despite the blue-black ring circling one of them. "Please, don't- just don't go. There's no point."

He sounds small, when he talks like this, small and terribly young, and it melts all the anger out of Leroy in a second, leaving space only for thick and uncharacteristic regret. "Alright," he says after a moment - he's not sure who he's even talking to, to be honest, if it's himself or the boy. "Alright."

He moves to sit down beside the kid, with deliberate slowness, and in the corner of his eye he catches Nova breathing a sigh of relief and doing the same thing, perched on the opposite armrest. He manages to conjure up a faint grin and holds a hand out to cup Lampwick's head, albeit not as roughly as he usually would. "Why, you wouldn't want to see me in a cell? Thought you might find it funny."

The boy doesn't meet his eyes, and only shrugs distractedly instead, as though it didn't really matter one way or the other. "'S not funny if it's because of me. Not worth it."

"Course it's worth it." The dwarf gestures vaguely at Lampwick's sorry state, at his split lip and swollen eye and dejected state. "Look at this. This is some bullshit. I just wanna make sure he's not doing it again."

"He's not, alright? The sheriff said I don't ever need to see John anymore if I don't want to. It's not gonna change anything, what he does next. Why do you care so much?"

"I care about you, you little idiot." Leroy takes him by the chin, gently and yet unrelentingly leading Lampwick to meet his gaze.

"Got it? I'll always care about you. We both will. So if you say you don't want me to go, then I'm not going anywhere. But if that guy ever so much as thinks about touching you again, I'm breaking all of his fingers. Understood?"

The boy doesn't reply, nor does he nod or shake his head, the barest hint of an acknowledgement. Rather, he seems almost taken aback by Leroy's passionate reaction, bewildered, really, as though he'd never witnessed anything close to it, and he didn't want to believe it in full, either.

Leroy, for his part, can't bear to look at that ruin any longer, so after a moment he relents his hold and instead pulls the kid in for a hug, wrapping his arms tightly around Lampwick. He expects some sort of resistance, from past experience, and he does get the tiniest bit of stiffening, but soon enough the boy is returning the hug, hesitantly, slowly, but still there, burying his face in Leroy's shoulder and going limp and shaking like the child he sometimes still looks like.

Better that than refusing to speak, Leroy reasons, after the rough night Lampwick's gone through. Better he lets it all out here, with someone holding him and Nova soothingly stroking his head, than going off at the man who's caused him so much grief and getting himself into trouble. That's for grown-ups to handle. That's for Leroy to handle, once he's gotten the kid settled and he's worked out a way to make John get a taste of his own medicine.

He used to be an habitual customer of Storybrooke few cells, after all, back during the curse. Not the most pleasant of places, but if he ends up there once more...well. Not that high a price to pay, if it keeps the boy from shattering into pieces again.