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lxpinwrites · 4 years

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Sitcom College AU Pt. 1

(yes, that’s the title)

This was a ridiculous version of a “sitcom” I wrote involving mine and my partner’s characters. Of course I made it into an actual story, so I’ll be (Regrettably) posting it here. In general, it follows the story of four characters - Dante, Zacharus (my character!), Lucian, and Edwin. Below is where the chaos unfolds and where I expose my sins

Dante shuddered as he signed into Blackboard, praying to any god that would listen that he hadn’t missed any assignments in his search for his idiotic roommate, Zacharus, whom had been missing for over a week. He couldn’t continue to avert the calls from the Dean of Students - eventually, someone would realize that the damned fool was missing.

He wasn’t entirely sure where Zacharus had gone. He awoke one night - the first night he had actually slept in a week - to find the bathroom light on. He had groggily watched, though his attention had been gathered when the shadow of two footsteps turned to four, as if Zacharus had dropped onto the ground. He had carefully slid out of his bed, padding silently to the bathroom door to find that it wasn’t even fully closed. When he had placed his hand on the doorknob to check on Zacharus, however, the door slammed shut and he heard Zacharus inhale so sharply that it sounded like a snarl.

“Go the fuck to bed,” Zacharus had ordered, his voice harsh and rough. Dante had left him in a huff, though he began to question his decision to leave Zacharus to his problems when he heard the front door open and close.

And that had been the last time he had heard of Zacharus Mays.

Dante tipped his head back and made a guttural, frustrated sound when he realized that he had a large paper due in less than a day. Typically, he would be fine with writing papers - hell, he had graduated with a 4.0 simply because he loved to learn. However, today he found that he had lost that same motivation to succeed, yet he refused to let his grade drop over something so trivial as a missing roommate.

Dante stood, holding his laptop as he made his way to the next dorm over - where Lucian and Edwin lived. They had immediately met on the wrong terms due to Zacharus’s wild behavior, though Dante hoped that he could perhaps convince Edwin to help save his grade.

He just hoped that neither asked about the whereabouts of Zacharus.

The door opened moments after he knocked, and he was met with the cautious and slightly-annoyed face of Lucian Daggerford. Though he tried to be polite, the tension was obvious - Dante and Lucian hated each other from the moment they had met. Lucian fluttered his eyes as he breathed, trying to force himself into a more pleasant manner, to which Dante almost laughed at. “Hello, Dante.”

Dante’s eyebrow twitched upon the name, though he was unsure why. These days, Dante had grown to dislike his name, and even saying it left a sour taste in his mouth, as if the person named Dante was no longer him. Though, it could be due to-

“Do you need something, or have you come to stare?”

Dante fought the urge to knock Lucian’s teeth out. Instead, he smiled tightly at him. “Is Edwin home? I need to talk to him.”

He didn’t think he imagined the way Lucian seemed to pale, his eyes darting towards somewhere in the dorm that Dante couldn’t see. “He… is, but I don’t know if he wants any guests today.”

“And why is that?” Dante asked, leaning on one foot as he tried to peak through the door. Lucian closed it just enough that Dante couldn’t see past himself, though for a minute, he thought he heard sniffling.

Lucian hesitated, and Dante could almost see the uncertainty in his mind. “I don’t know if I can tell you. It - It’s a rather private matter, and I don’t want to insult Edwin by-“

“Who is it?”

Edwin emerged from the dorm, peaking out from behind Lucian. Dante fought the urge to stare - Edwin was much paler than usual and his eyes looked sunken, as if he hadn’t eaten in days. His eyes were bloodshot, and his nose was red.

Dante found that he didn’t know if it was a sickness, or something worse.

Edwin paused when he saw Dante, though he knew that Edwin didn’t hate him yet. “Hello, Dante. Did you need me for something?”

If Dante had perhaps been a nice person, he would have turned back, leaving Edwin to whatever was currently haunting him. However, Dante didn’t get called a bitch in high school for nothing. “Yes. We’re in the same business class, and I forgot about the paper that’s due soon. I’ll pay you to do it for me - just this once.”

Lucian looked as though he wanted to kill Dante for reasons he didn’t know, though Edwin looked less offended. “How much?”

“I’ll pay you twenty for it.”

Edwin, who Dante had presumed to be much more kind and patient than Lucian, looked up at him with angry, almost unhinged eyes. “You want to pay me - twenty dollars - for a six page paper due tonight? Go - Go fuck yourself.”

Edwin made to slam the door, and had Dante’s foot not been in the doorstep, he would have succeeded. Dante winced as the door nearly crushed his foot, though he held strong. “Fine. Fifty.”

“No.”

The door made to close again, and he held it open with his hand, not wanting to deal with a broken foot. “Seventy.”

“We knew about this assignment since last week. If you cared so much about your grade, you should have done it before today,” Edwin said, his eyes threatening to water from either the confrontation or from what he had been previously dealing with. “Why did you not do it?”

Dante sighed, not wanting to admit that he had spent the past week searching the town for someone he claimed to despise. Instead, he grabbed his fine leather wallet, removing two hundred dollar bills. “Two hundred.”

Edwin let the door swing on its own as he stared at Dante’s hand in thought. After several minutes, despite Lucian’s whispered warnings, Edwin took it. “Give me your log-in information and it will be done.”

—

For the hundredth time that week, Dante drove along the far streets of the town, certain that wherever Zacharus was, it wasn’t simply in a downtown street. He had tried contacting any of Zacharus’s relatives, but the damn idiot didn’t have anyone in his contacts besides a ‘Motherfucker’ and a ‘Weed Guy’. Somehow, he didn’t think the latter would be much help.

He hadn’t wanted to use Zacharus’s phone. He felt pathetic even searching for him - for all he knew, Zacharus could have simply dropped out. His gut, however, told him that something else was occurring. He knew he couldn’t avoid the college administration for much longer, so, sighing in defeat, he called whoever ‘Motherfucker’ was.

The phone rang for nearly a minute, and when Dante finally considered hanging up, ‘Motherfucker’ answered with a cocky sounding snort. “I knew you’d come crawlin’ back once that preppy kid shit failed. What, you couldn’t find any better than me? I-“

“Hello to you, too.” Dante’s voice made ‘Motherfucker’ shut up fast. “I think you’ve realized that this isn’t Zacharus. I’m his roommate, and Zacharus has been missing for nearly a week now. I had no urge to call someone like you, but you were the only other person in Zacharus’s contacts - for whatever reasons, I’m not concerned. However, I’d like to get the damned administration off my back, so if you know anything of his whereabouts, I-“

“So he finally ran off.” The harsh tone of ‘Motherfucker’ softened, though Dante knew he couldn’t have been too saddened by how he had initially addressed him. “I’m not surprised - the fucker always had a habit of running when things got bad. You think I give a shit, though? I don’t know where the hell he is.”

Something in Dante grew angry, though he didn’t know why. “If you dislike him so much, then why was he in your contacts?”

He snorted. “I made him put my number in, or else I’d tell the school what happened.”

“I presume that’s why you’re called ‘Motherfucker’ in his contacts. It’s a shame your real name isn’t shown - I’d have found you and beaten you half to death for the way you talk.”

“Hey, don’t get mad you can’t dick your boyfriend down now that he’s lost in God-knows-where. But if you really want a fight that bad, when you find him, tell him to bring you to Alex.”

Dante was met with a long tone by the time he tried responding, and he tossed the phone into his backseat angrily. He had all but forgotten where he was going, and by the time he paid attention to the road again, he was on the outskirts of town by the edge of the woods. Dante cursed as he looked for an exit back to the college - there was no reason for someone to be spending a week in the woods, and even Zacharus didn’t seem that insane.

As Dante was searching his phone for his map, he looked up just as something black darted onto the road, its eyes reflecting yellow from the headlights. Dante shrieked as he slammed the breaks, hitting the creature as it yelped.

Dante realized just what had happened when the car ran into the ditchline, finally screeching to a halt just feet away from the creature that was still on the pavement, blood pooling around it. He wasn’t too concerned with the animal until he heard something snap, and he looked up to see the animal trying to stand, only for its front leg to have broken from the crash.

He wasn’t entirely sure why, but Dante left the safety of his car to enter the stranded interstate, approaching the creature cautiously as it whined, another bone snapped. His flashlight shone on black, cracked claws that were bleeding from the tips, and he fought the urge to run back to his car and abandon it entirely. If anything, though, the experience would give him something to jot down for his English class.

The creature - no, the wolf - turned towards Dante as he stepped closer, and he froze in place. It was glaring at him with the same expression he had thought he saw once before, though he struggled to remember where. The wolf sat up before whining again, blood pouring from its mouth, staining impossibly sharp canines that looked as if they were-

Dante shook the thought from his head, thinking that perhaps the stress of the semester was finally weighing on him. He looked back at the wolf after several minutes, nearly jumping back when his flashlight shone on now-grey eyes that he knew were once yellow. He opened his mouth to speak, or perhaps to scream, but the sound of bones snapping and the sight of something he had once thought impossible silenced him.

Where the wolf once was, Zacharus emerged, collapsing - naked - on the asphalt, cursing as he clenched his bruised, swollen wrist. “Goddamnit! Fuck - how fast do you fucking drive? God, fuck - why don’t rich kids ever watch the damn road?”

Dante collapsed on the ground, backing up until his back was pressed against his car, staring unblinkingly at Zacharus.

“What the fuck is your-“ Zacharus’s face dropped, then, as he wiped off the last of the blood running from his nose. “Oh. You saw, didn’t you?”

—

Of the things that shocked and angered Dante the most, sneaking a naked, injured college kid up twenty-eight flights of stairs to his dorm was not the worst that night. Throughout the entire trip back - in silence, mostly, as Zacharus rested and seemingly reverted back to his human thoughts - Dante tried to not look at him. He tried to not look at the dozens of cuts and bruises on Zacharus - some of which he had caused from his reckless behavior. He also tried to not look at Zacharus’s dick, which he made no effort at hiding.

He all but dropped Zacharus onto his bed, tossing some jogging pants and a t-shirt at him as he covered his eyes. “For the love of God,” Dante said in exhaustion. “Stop being naked.”

Zacharus snorted in a way that reminded Dante of Alex, and he felt his blood boil again at the sheer thought of him. Zacharus seemingly noticed, because once his pants were on, he took on the first serious tone Dante had ever seen within him. “I’m sorry you had to find me.”

Dante shook his head in exasperation, sitting down at his desk as he chugged his coffee. “Finding and dragging you back is not the issue.”

“Then what is?”

Dante ignored how Zacharus stared at him in fear, as if he was reliving some similar horror. “The issue is that you were planning on spending the entire godforsaken year acting as though you aren’t a werewolf.”

“Excuse me for not wanting to tell some random rich kid the only damn secret I got,” Zacharus retorted, watching his arms as the bruises began to fade away.

“I suppose your weed dealer and your ex-boyfriend aren’t secrets, then?”

Zacharus looked up at Dante in such a way that he immediately thought of that wolf glaring at him from the pavement, and he tried to ignore just how cold it looked. “I don’t think you want to call Alex that again.”

“You’re not refuting the same-sex implication,” Dante said, grinning as Zacharus’s eyes widened in horror. “Don’t think I care. I’ve caught you checking Edwin out before.” Before Zacharus could respond, Dante realized that it had been hours since his paper was due - meaning that the results were likely in. He signed onto Blackboard, read the results once, and then was storming out of the dorm towards Lucian and Edwin’s dorm.

He banged on the door, not caring if Zacharus followed him or not. Lucian groggily answered, though his eyes widened, looking past Dante at the still-shirtless Zacharus, who winked at him. Dante rolled his eyes at Lucian, pushing past him and ignoring Lucian’s protests. He found Edwin by his desk, and before he could punch him, Lucian was holding him back. “What the fuck did you do, Silvercrest?!”

Edwin grinned, leaning back in his chair. Dante only briefly noticed that he looked much better than before, though he didn’t know how he could have changed so quickly. “You wanted an unethical practice performed with little pay and a short deadline, so I made your paper as unethical as you wished. Enjoy your F, Amor.”

#sitcom college au #zacharus #dante #lucian #edwin #my writing #oh god #fantasy #dark fantasy #comedy #lgbt #lgbt writing

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lxpinwrites · 4 years

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Prompt Fill/Interpretation

“[Hero]… I need you here…now.”

“I don’t come at your beck and call, [villain].” They were on the verge of hanging up before the ragged breathing down the phone gave them pause. “...what do you need me for?”

“To save me.”

(prompt by @gingerly-writing)

(CW - cursing/vulgar speech at times by Zacharus)

The dorm had even filled with thick silence, seemingly coating the room with a dust that Zacharus couldn’t stand. He spent most of his days in Edwin and Lucian’s room, trying to drown out the chilling lack of sound on the other side of that stone wall with whatever he could find to do. Sometimes Edwin got sick of him - other times, Meri came to visit, and when that happened, Zacharus and Edwin found themselves stranded. Zacharus came back to his own dorm to get clothes, having discovered that he wasn’t able to sleep beside that bed anymore. It didn’t matter. He spent most nights in someone else’s bed anyways - whether their partners knew or not.

Zacharus came back just before dusk, feeling and uncharacteristic chill prickle through his skin as the sun lowered in the sky. The full moon was only hours away, which meant that he was kicked out of Edwin’s room for the night - unless he felt like wrestling a gigantic fucking wolf.

He wasn’t really feeling up to it tonight.

Lucian asked him concernedly what he would do, and he even offered to spent the night with him - innocently, of course, Meri would rip him to shreds in Zacharus even thought of touching him. Zacharus declined despite the loneliness at the edge of his mind. He knew the two had a date and he refused to be another burden on someone.

He could handle one night alone in the room. He wasn’t a fucking pussy.

Zacharus fiddled with his phone, looking out of the window momentarily before throwing the shades closed. He wouldn’t admit it to Edwin, but the moon made him sick sometimes. It made him sick more times than he would like to admit, but he didn’t want to admit that maybe he wasn’t as in control as he liked to think.

It didn’t matter anyways, whether he shifted or not. He had called up Morveus a few hours ago and picked up what Edwin called “the marijuana”. Zacharus couldn’t help but to snicker as he settled into the shower, stuffing the vents before shutting the door. Catholic school really fucked Silvercrest up, he thought. The poor kid didn’t even know what weed even was until he met him.

Zacharus tried not to think about how he ruined him, just like how he ruined most other shit in his life. Just like how he ruined the only real friendship he ever had.

His lungs burned after a few moments, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t too far gone to have imagined his phone ringing from the bedroom. If he was lucky, it was Virion demanding a booty call. If he was unlucky, it was Lucian calling to say that he had misplaced a very hungry, very angry Edwin.

He couldn’t decide if it was luck or misfortune when he looked at the screen and read the name ‘Fucking Asshole Shit Motherfucker Dick Eater Magic Prissy Bitch’.

Zacharus should have ignored it. Better yet, he should have pitched the phone out the window and cursed his name to the goddamned moon itself. Maybe the asshole taught him a few lessons on pettiness, because Zacharus decided to answer anyways, just to make him regret calling.

The ringing stopped. Zacharus was short. “What.”

He didn’t expect Dante to apologize - that wasn’t in his nature. But he didn’t expect to hear a barely-audible muttering, muffled as if his mouth were way too close to the phone. “Zacharus - I need you here - now.”

Zacharus’s voice dripped with venom as he replied, disgusted that he was still expected to just wait on him like a goddamned servant. “I don’t come at your beck and call, Amor.”

He was on the verge of hanging up before the ragged breathing down the phone made him pause. He was being idiotic - Dante didn’t need him for shit, and he sure as hell didn’t need Dante. Still, the way Dante breathed, wheezing painfully, made him stop. He winced as he spoke, as if ripping open a bandage before the wound was ready. “What do you need me for?”

A notification made his phone buzz. Zacharus barely glanced to see that he had sent his location. “To save me.”

The phone clicked before Zacharus could reply, yet he was already screaming into an unresponsive phone, trying to understand the wheezing, the heavy footsteps audible just before the click.

Zacharus didn’t know what the fuck Dante had gotten himself into this time, and he knew that, after what he had done, Zacharus shouldn’t have cared. Yet he still found himself wasting the blunt and pulling on his jacket, hesitating long enough to grab his switchblade.

He started down the hall to tell Lucian, though he paused when he heard prowling footsteps and angry huffing. Edwin had changed early.

“God fuckin’ damnit,” Zacharus said, calling Lucian as he slid down the stair railings, not caring about the hall monitors that saw him and shouted for him. He was in the lobby by the time Lucian answered.

“H-Hello?” Lucian said, out of breath and rushed, as if-

Zacharus heard giggling from somewhere on Lucian’s line. He had, yet again, successfully cock blocked him. He made a note to use it as ammunition against him later, and then he was getting to business. “Dante’s in trouble.”

The phone was muffled by the rustling of clothes, and then Lucian said, “He certainly is, the next time I see him. Though, pray tell, tell me that you didn’t just use an emergency call to bitch to me. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but-“

“Yeah, I know - you were about to get some twink ass and can’t be bothered.” Zacharus found himself snapping at Lucian harder than he intended, and he wished he could blame the moon for feeling so raw. The moon didn’t fuck with him like Amor did, though. No one did.

He forced himself to take a breath, his legs shaking as he looked again at the location Dante sent him. He didn’t even know where that street would be. It sure as hell wasn’t on campus, that was for sure.

He became vaguely aware that Lucian had been speaking, to which he said, “Fuck - sorry, it - Listen. He sent me his location. Someone’s got him, I think.”

The line was silent for a moment. Meri wasn’t even moving when Lucian said, quietly, “You know he’s stronger than me, right? That anyone who’s overpowered him - Anyone who could even hold against him-“

“It’s bad. D’you think I didn’t think of that already?” Zacharus asked, that edge returning to his voice. “I sent you the address because I don’t know where the fuck he is, but you’re from around here.”

“I’m from Boston, firstly - it’s an hour’s difference, and yes, the difference matters.” Zacharus wanted to smack Lucian every time he got that tone. Lucian continued despite the annoyed sound he had made, though this time, he sounded sincere. “Are you sure you should be going? You seem a bit - a bit more like Virion, to be honest. I thought the moon didn’t affect you.”

“It’s assholes like Amor that do,” Zacharus lied. “Now get your dick out of Meri’s ass and tell me where the fuck to go before I start flipping my shit.”

He heard Meri mumble something about him sounding moody, and then Lucian was speaking again. “It’s - It seems that it’s on the Northern end of town, just at the edge of Boston. I’m not seeing any houses on my end - just a street. Could it be wrong?”

“No.” He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew, but Zacharus knew that even if Lucian led him to the middle of a street, it would be the right place. He also knew he was short on time. “How far is it?”

“Twenty minutes if you drive like Edwin,” Lucian said. After some hesitation, he said, “Ten if you drive like Dante.”

“Five, then,” Zacharus challenged, feeling in his pocket for the key to the car that Dante had long abandoned.

He was about to hang up when Lucian said, “I’m coming with you. Where are you?”

“Check up Meri’s ass,” Zacharus retorted. “I’m dealing with that bitch myself.”

Lucian scoffed, and then Zacharus was ending the call, hurrying for the parking garage nearby, where Dante always parked. If he was lucky, the car would still be there.

The parking garage was empty save for a few stragglers, and at the far end of the garage - in one of the reserved spaces for the rich kids - was Dante’s car, dusty from misuse and ice cold. The fact that Dante had abandoned even his precious car was perhaps what shocked Zacharus the most. He had been so adamant on not letting anyone use it, and yet he had left so suddenly that the keys were still on the counter when Zacharus had returned to an empty dorm.

He had meant to ask Dante about it, meant to tease him about the prospect of stealing his car, but Dante never returned.

Zacharus had thought of stealing it - Lucian and Edwin even said that he should. He had walked to the parking garage a few times to take it for a joy ride, to maybe even crash the damned thing and walk away from the crash without a scratch, but he found that he couldn’t even look at the thing without getting blurry eyes and feeling more idiotic than ever.

This time, he did what he had never done - he unlocked the car, forcing himself to sit in the driver’s side, trying to ignore how the air was too still, too unused. The car was immaculate as always - the carpet was as clean as usual and no trash could be found. Zacharus found himself thinking that it felt like he was driving to a goddamned funeral.

Zacharus was never any good at directions, but he had to be this time. He kicked the car into drive, speeding out of the garage a little recklessly, grinning when he hit the curb.

He hit eighty before he was off campus, hoping that he got a ticket because it would be Dante’s to pay for. He knew the money wouldn’t be an issue, but it would piss him off nonetheless. The moon was high in the sky by the time he hit the highway, and he tried not to look at it. He found himself wondering where Virion was, whether or not he would get himself into some trouble with the coven again.

Some time had passed before Zacharus’s phone alerted him that he was nearing the location, to which he nearly called and bitched to Lucian that he had gotten it wrong. All of the houses on the street were abandoned, so much so that he had, for a moment, thought that he somehow was back in Georgia, back in his run-down town that he had run from.

It was hard knowing which house to inspect first. He felt like he was picking numbers for a lottery, except the lottery was whether or not he would fail to save his - to save Dante. In the end, he chose the one house that didn’t have any lights on. It seemed creepy enough for someone to bring their kidnapping victims.

Zacharus parked on the side of the road, far enough from the house that he wouldn’t attract any attention, and then he was crossing fearlessly, feeling an anger that he wasn’t sure who it was directed to. He found himself wishing that he had brought Lucian along, knowing that he would get his ass kicked if it was a magic user he was fighting. He had jokingly asked Lorth once to teach him magic, but it turned out that he didn’t have an ounce of magic in him - save for shifter magic. He couldn’t cast the first spell - not even beginner ones - but he could shift on command, and apparently that was unique enough.

Zacharus prowled around the house first, not stupid enough to try the front door first. It wasn’t his first break-in, that was for sure. All of the rooms that he could make out were abandoned, covered in either broken furniture or dust. He was about to give up when he saw a basement window at the back of the house - and the room was lit.

“It’s always a fuckin’ basement,” Zacharus muttered. He dropped to the ground, peeking into the room, though he nearly lost his nerve when he saw Dante, sitting on the floor, his hands bound. He didn’t know much about magic, but he doubted Dante could do much without his hands.

Zacharus briefly thought about sneaking in and just grabbing Dante, but he was too fucking angry and impatient for that. He stood up, bracing himself for the next idiotic thing he was about to do, and then he was sliding on the ground, slamming into the window and shattering it.

Dante shrieked in surprise, and Zacharus crashed onto the hard concrete, knocking the breath from his lungs and snapping something else. He thought maybe he had hit his head, because when he looked up, Dante’s hair was white.

He blinked, shaking his pounding head, though when he opened his eyes, his hair was black again. Zacharus stood up shakily, dusting the glass from his jacket and picking it out of his hands. He tried to ignore how Dante was staring at him like he was a goddamned savior.

“Let’s see what a concussed shifter and a useless witch can do,” he said, his voice shaking.

Dante blinked, then, in a voice that was too soft to be his, said, “I’m not a witch. And you didn’t hit your head.”

“Thought your hair was white for a minute,” Zacharus said, making conversation like Dante didn’t go missing for weeks, like he didn’t just fuck him and leave. “I must’ve hit it and fucked something up.”

Dante seemed to hesitate, and then he said, “Yes. I suppose I didn’t see it, after all.”

Zacharus looked towards the stairs leading to the rest of the house, trying to think of what to do. The window he broke was too high to just climb out of, so they would have to meet whoever had taken him.

He moved for Dante, cutting his hands free and helping him stand, though his hands felt like ice. “You’re colder than shit,” he remarked. “What’s wrong with ya’?”

Dante didn’t answer for a moment, looking at the ground, clearly haunted by something that Zacharus couldn’t understand. After a moment, he said, “I didn’t think you’d come for me.”

“Why?” Zacharus asked, a little angrily. “Because you fuckin’ ghosted me?”

Dante winced, though he shook his head. “Did - You haven’t heard?”

Zacharus was confused, but he said, “All I’ve heard is that no one’s heard from you in god knows how long. Was I supposed to know what you did? Why you left?”

Footsteps from above silenced them, and Dante looked up worriedly. Zacharus had never seen him look afraid before, but in that moment, he did. “They’re back. We’ll have to leave some other way.”

“Why?” Zacharus asked. “I cut your hands free. Just - I dunno - magic them to death or something.”

“I can’t,” he said, a little annoyedly.

“Why?” He asked again, feeling like a goddamned child that didn’t understand a thing. “Can you not do it anymore or some shit?”

Dante shushed him when the footsteps got a little closer, and then he was speaking quickly, quietly. “They do magic - a different kind that just… counteracts all of mine. I tried fighting back and they seem to have cut off all sources of magic in this house. Save for their own.”

“What the fuck.” Zacharus couldn’t even pretend to understand a word of what he was saying. “Can they do that? That sounds fake.”

“Are you an idiot?” Dante hissed. “Necromancy is a form of-“

He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wide with realization at what he had finally revealed. Zacharus was shocked for a moment, but not truly. He had known that something was different about his magic, different in a way that made him sneak around.

He just couldn’t understand why it made him disappear.

“You’ll forget I said that,” Dante said - threatened. “You won’t speak a word of it outside this house.”

“I’ll tell whoever the fuck I-“

Dante moved to slam him against the wall, but Zacharus was quick and instead pinned him against the railing of the stairs, holding him tightly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Zacharus asked. “Why did you leave?”

Dante smacked at him, but without magic, he couldn’t break free. Finally, he said, “You couldn’t begin to understand what I’ve gone through, what I’ve had to do.”

“Dante,” Zacharus said, exasperation in his voice. “Alyssa fuckin’ disappeared. She left a week after you did, and it was up to me to tell you, and I couldn’t fucking find you. Your little girlfriend could be dead for what we know.”

Dante stopped moving, though the expression in his eyes was something unreadable. Zacharus thought it was grief, so he said, “I hate to tell you like this. I know you liked her, but-“

“I loved her,” Dante said, his voice strained. “You couldn’t find me because I wasn’t in a position to be found.”

“You abandoned everyone you said you cared about,” Zacharus said, releasing him with a sense of finality. “I’ll break you out of this bullshit, but afterwards, one of us is leaving.”

He moved for the staircase, not looking to see if Dante was following, knowing that he was too desperate to not follow. He kicked open the basement door fearlessly, wanting nothing more than to just go home and sleep.

Voices of surprise filled the musky room he had broken into, and then a white wisp of magic was lighting the entire room, revealing several people that he had never seen before - all magic users.

“Who are you?” One demanded, blocking Zacharus’s way to the front door. “Do you know just who - just what - you’re breaking out?”

“Y’all kidnapped my roommate,” Zacharus said uncaringly, tossing his jacket to Dante whom was trying to tell him something. “I’m getting out of here whether you like it or not.”

He cracked his knuckles, waiting for it to come, though nothing happened. He hesitated, looking at his hands and trying to shift his nails - the first thing he had learned to do.

Nothing happened. He couldn’t even feel the wildness under his skin.

The woman who had been talking to him chuckled, and then she said, “You must be a werewolf. All dark magic is blocked here - you and him are as good as human.”

“Oh, fuck me!” Zacharus said, turning back to Dante irritably. “A little warning next time?”

“I was trying to tell you and you wouldn’t listen!” Dante argued.

Zacharus pointed at him angrily, nearly turning back to the woman before he caught a glimpse of a curly haired boy and his goth boyfriend outside.

Meri.

“So, uh-“ Zacharus said, struggling to buy time for them to hurry up. Even if Lucian couldn’t do magic, he knew that Meri was something far different, meaning that, maybe, they were saved. “What kinds of magic isn’t blocked? Like, what are y’all?”

The woman crossed her arms, though she still spoke. “You’re not going to charm me out of leaving, but if you’re so curious, I’ll tell you. We are a Druid circle dedicated to eliminating unnatural and dangerous magic - such as vampires, necromancers, and so on.”

Zacharus nodded, trying not to grin. He didn’t know what the fuck a druid was, but it sounded like something Meri said once. He looked out the window again, sighing when he saw that they were going the wrong way.

He turned to Dante. “We’re going to have to buy some time.”

Dante’s brow twinged, though he eventually saw Lucian and Meri. “How?”

Zacharus grinned again, though he felt his heart lurch at what he was about to do. “Fuckin’ disgusting them, is how.”

He grabbed Dante by the ass, to which Dante said, “I’m going to kill you later. Mark my words, you will be an example of-“

He kissed Dante, though he was a little disgusted when he felt just teeth on one side, though he knew Dante wasn’t that bad. He grabbed Dante’s face when he knew that he finally understood what he was doing, though he jerked when he felt something wet and disgusting on his hand. He opened his eyes, though he saw no cuts.

The front door slammed open. The druids shrieked, and so did Lucian. Zacharus was propping Dante against the wall at this point though he nearly threw him off when their saviors came, wiping his mouth.

“We’re discussing that,” Zacharus said.

“Agreed,” Dante said, sneering in anger and disgust.

Lucian drew his dagger, though he paled when no magic came. Understanding quickly - to Zacharus’s surprise - he opted for just holding it out as a weapon.

“Who the fuck are you?” The woman asked again.

Meri looked up at her, his cheeks red from having walked in on something intimate with Zacharus and Dante, though he eventually said, “Um, we’re coming to get them.”

“No you’re not,” the woman said sternly. “As druids of the Hidden Circle, you’ll not touch them.”

“I’m a druid!” Meri finally said. Zacharus and Dante groaned. He was dumber than he had anticipated.

The woman laughed, clearly not believing him. “Really? And can you show me this druidry of yours?”

Meri looked at the others, rubbing his hands a little chaotically. Lucian’s eyes widened in terror, feeling the air crackle around him, static making Meri’s curls fuzzy. “Meri - Meri - That’ll kill us!” He said, hearing thunder from above.

The druids looked up, eyes wide, as purple lightning struck the center of the house.

Zacharus and the others fell back from the force of the strike, feeling the heat of the charred floor below him. His ears were ringing from the explosion, and he rubbed his eyes sorely.

He must’ve blacked out, because by the time he was shakily getting to his feet, the druids were gone - or fried. He wasn’t sure. Lucian had covered Meri before the blast, though when they were safe, Lucian removed him from his side to scold him.

“Really, Meri! Of all the things Lorth taught you, you picked the one spell?”

Zacharus tuned them out to turn to Dante, whom was still unconscious. He knew he wasn’t so injured to be hallucinating, yet the white hair had returned, falling into Dante’s white face messily. He looked at the rest of his face, noticing a deep gash near his cheek that he had felt earlier. Another gash revealed his skull near his teeth.

Lucian and Meri had stopped bickering to eye Dante in silence, fearing that he was dead. Zacharus moved closer to him, feeling for a pulse that was not there.

His blood ran cold. He felt again, waiting for the rise and fall of his chest to signal that he was alive. Nothing came.

He stared at the body in silence, stuck between screaming and crying when, out of nowhere, Dante’s eyes - or, eye, since one was completely white - opened.

Dante shot up so fast that he had smacked into Zacharus, stumbling as he crashed into a nearby closet. Moments later, he emerged, his hair black, staring at them with normal eyes.

“You could’ve killed us,” Dante said to Meri coldly.

“You’re already dead.” Dante turned to Zacharus, whose voice was flat with disbelief, his face pale with shock. “You didn’t have a pulse. You weren’t breathing.”

“You must’ve imagined it,” Dante said, though before he could fully dismiss him, Zacharus was swinging for him. Free of the druids’ spell, Dante caught his hand in a wave of green magic, holding him still. “You’re hysterical.”

“Fuck yeah I am, you piece of - fuck!” Zacharus screamed, his voice growing more rough by the minute, though it wasn’t by anything more than tears. “You think I’m an idiot and I am but - fuck! I know what I saw! You did something and now you’re completely wrong-”

“You’re glamoured,” Lucian said, looking at him with a mix of wonder and fear. “Right now, at least. I wasn’t aware that was something you could do.”

Dante briefly considered what to do with the fact that four people now knew his secret. Perhaps it was weakness, but though the thought of killing all of them flashed through his mind, he barely allowed himself to consider it. He tried to tell himself that it was only because it would leave more tracks to cover, but he knew it wasn’t true.

“It’s new.” That much was true, Dante could admit. He had barely learned how to glamour when he had been killed. He could hardly recall how it happened - he only remembered claws ripping into him rather unexpectedly.

The first thing he had thought when he came back to life was that an animal attack shouldn’t have happened indoors. And that’s what made him assume it was Zacharus - the only shifter with enough control to shift indoors to only kill one person in broad daylight.

He had left that day. He didn’t even pack his belongings, nor did he wait for Zacharus to be home to leave.

“What are you?” Lucian asked, snapping him from his thoughts. Dante realized briefly that part of his glamour was starting to fuck up again, just from the fact that he had lost his concentration for only a moment.

Dante looked up at him, at Meri who wouldn’t meet his gaze, at Zacharus who stared unblinkingly, free of any guilt. Just like how Alyssa had stared.

“Has Lorth taught you nothing of necromancy?” Dante asked, partially insulting him and partially curious. At the mention of necromancy, Meri seemed to pale. He was so sick of self-righteous druids.

“Lorth practically banned the mention of it,” Lucian said. “I’m not sure why, but he refused to tell me about it - save from the occasional threat, of course.”

Dante paced around the room slowly, looking over the burnt room that reeked of magic. “You’ve known my magic is different from yours, and you’ve known that my magic helped the coven at one point. But you don’t know how I helped them, do you?”

Lucian began to shake his head, then stopped, looking up at him, his voice barely a whisper as he said, “You brought them back. You brought them all back.”

“I was only practicing at the time,” Dante said. “I didn’t know who Cirric was, nor why he wanted so many people resurrected. I just saw an opportunity to practice on something other than animals. Apparently I was good at it.”

Lucian gave a bitter laugh, one that made Meri hold his hand in concern. “I suppose you were, since I had to discover myself that my - that Farcan was alive. That he died again.”

“Would you have told your friends that you were doing necromancy? It’s not like you were exactly eager to tell me about your pact with Asmodeus,” Dante snapped. “Eventually I began thinking about preventing my own death. And I did.”

“But how?” Zacharus asked. Dante glared at him, fighting the urge to grab his phylactery protectively.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I protected myself from it, and now I’m a lich.”

“Lorth won’t be happy,” Lucian said. “He - I don’t know why, but he hates necromancy.”

“Most do,” Dante said, perhaps a little regrettably. “Most react in one of two ways - they try to kill us like these druids did, or they run.” Dante’s glamour had completely faded now, judging by the faint reflection of white in the window beside him. “Sometimes they kill you before you can even try to explain.”

His eyes met Zacharus’s in the window, but he was sick to find that he didn’t look guilty - not at all. “Could you blame me for running, Mays?”

“Who killed you?”

The question was so sudden that Dante flinched, and he was angry to find that Zacharus was the one asking, acting as though he would try to avenge him. He didn’t know Zacharus was so good at falsehoods. Dante turned on him suddenly, thinking that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea to leave no witnesses. His hands alighted with green magic, his own fury acting on its own.

“An interesting question, isn’t it?” Dante asked. “A better question - when did you last shift?”

Zacharus’s brows furrowed momentarily, confusion in his eyes as he hesitated. “A week ago? A month? I’ve not felt like it.”

“That’s your answer.”

It dawned on Zacharus, then, just what Dante was accusing him of. And, looking at the deep gashes on his face that could have been claw marks, he didn’t blame him.

But Zacharus knew himself better than that. He thought Dante knew him better than that.

Just as Lucian was about to ask something, Zacharus was approaching him, his knuckles cracking with anticipation as his nails ripped into claws. He came closer, closer until Dante’s back hit the window, and then he was pressing his clawed hand against Dante’s face.

“Tell me, lich bitch, how could I make claw marks three times my size? With one go? How would I have lost control to have killed my best friend?” Zacharus’s voice shook, but he didn’t move until Dante looked at his hand, until realization dawned on him that no, it wasn’t Zacharus who killed him.

“It wasn’t Edwin either,” Zacharus said, letting his hand return to normal as he stepped away, picking his jacket off the floor. “It wasn’t a wolf that killed you, and it wasn’t a knife.”

Dante’s mind was racing as Lucian began speaking to them, but he wasn’t listening. He was desperately trying to think back to when he was alive, but everything seemed impossibly hazy, as if the memories belonged to someone else entirely. He remembered the night before, in a bed that wasn’t his but beside his. He remembered someone knocking on the door when he was alone to talk.

The door had opened and it was someone too short for him to notice, and then they became all too noticeable as the talk escalated. And then something was knocking him to the floor and ripping into him.

He had woken in a pool of his own blood, staining the floor, the walls, the furniture. One arm was numb, and then he looked at it and his stomach lurched. He wondered how his killer had managed to leave just bone.

Zacharus was swinging his keys back in the ruined house, making his way for the door and looking at him expectantly. “I’m driving. I don’t trust that skeleton arm.”

Dante nodded blankly. Lucian mentioned that they were going to make sure no one had heard the commotion. Dante made to leave, though he nearly overlooked Meri, whom was staring at him in horror.

“We’re even, then?” Meri said. Dante had no idea what he was talking about. “I killed you, but I saved you, right?”

A realization dawned on Dante, then. So it hadn’t been a wolf that killed him after all, but a bear. He grinned, and he realized that Meri was shaking. “Yes,” he said, though he knew he was lying. “I suppose we are.”

#druids can wild shape #excerpt from something I made longer #prompt fill #fiction #fantasy #lots of cursing #sitcom college au #zacharus #dante #edwin #lucian

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