whyweonlyseeeachotherat

[whyweonlyseeeachotherat]

Daddecember Day 3: Accidents Happen

Glass on the tiles like stars. So pretty for something that meant Meg was so, so fucked. 

“I'm sorry!” She babbled, tongue running away faster than her mind could keep up with as her knees hit the ground with a hard thud, “I'll clean this up, and I'll buy another one, I’m so sorry, I’m such an idiot–” 

Cath stared at her blankly from where she stood by the sink. She blinked her heavy lidded eyes a few times, perfect cat’s eye liner all pointy and intimidating looking. She tipped her head back, swallowed the small handful of pills she’d been grabbing from the organiser on the side, and yelled, “Em, Meg’s freaking out again.” 

“What are you doing,” Meg hissed as her heart rate, already racing, decided to go for gold, “He doesn’t need to know, I said I could deal with it.”  Her hands shook, sweat slicked her fingertips as she piled up the tiny little fragments of glass and piled them up in her palm. 

“You are literally having a panic attack because you broke a glass,” Cath drawled, “Of course I’m telling Dad. We all need the reminder that I’m not the only fucked up one around here.” 

 A sharp pain blossomed across Meg’s hand and blood welled up.

Meg gave a slight shrill laugh, “Guess whatever he has to say probably won’t be worse than my mum making me illegally sell twixes that are specifically ‘not for individual resale’ at a dubiously significant markup to seven year olds to replace her favourite Winnie The Pooh mug.” 

“Heinous,” Cath commented.

“Our teacher pretended to call the police when she caught me,” Meg said, “She got her husband to come in dressed up and everything.” 

“Not even the most fucked up,” Cath said with a dark grin.

At the sound of Steve’s approaching footsteps, she tossed her mess of dirty blond hair over her shoulder, “See you later, fuck-up.” 

Steve walked in then. Or Emrys, she supposed. Seeing as that was his actual name. 

She bit the inside of her cheek as he took her in. Silence stretching like cling film over uncooked turkey - awkward and bulging in uncomfortable places. 

Damnit, someone had to pierce it. “You’re still Steve in my head,” she said, “Sorry about that.” 

He blinked. Most of that amnesiac stupour was gone, he was clear eyed and bushy tailed and no longer prone to wandering naked through the woods of strange fantasy lands. At least, as far as Meg knew. 

“Why… Steve?” He said slowly, “I never asked you that. But I suppose it was my name for a good half a year there. I should like to know your reasoning.” 

“It’s from Minecraft.” 

Steve did not look like he knew what Minecraft was.

“It’s a game where you wander round the forest and punch trees.”  She explained, because it seemed the most relevant thing to mention.

“How… peculiar.” 

“Yet, if your experiences of waking up in a forest with no idea of how you got there are anything to go off, shockingly realistic.” 

He still had scars on his knuckles from that particular experience. He glanced down at them, surveying them under the kitchen light. “Quite.” He looked down at her again, and her heart decided that, in spite of some unfortunate mid race setbacks, it was still in with a chance at winning the whole damn thing. “You’re bleeding.”

She cringed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break it, I just have butterfingers, you know? I’ll make sure to be more careful next time, I–” 

“Megan,” He interrupted, “I do not care about the cup. I am concerned for your wellebeing.” 

Oh.

“Come here,” He said, crouching, then helping her stand. “I mean it,” he said. “These things happen to all of us. A cup I can replace easily, your sense of safety is not so interchangeable. This is not your mother’s house.” 

“I hate you,” she muttered.

He looked perturbed, “Did I upset you?” 

She scowled, “No, but if you keep making me cry I don’t have any motivation to get as good at eyeliner as Cath.” 

@daddecember

[whyweonlyseeeachotherat]

DadDecember Day 2: Sick Day

Cold concrete. Copper taste. And the aching… like she'd sprained every muscle in her body. Like her bones were rotting and crumbling beneath her flesh. Like death himself had sunk his fingers beneath her tendons.

A single tremor crawled over her flesh and the cold sunk in, then another, and then she couldn't stop the shaking, trembling, sick feeling.

The sound of an iron bolt sliding. The reinforced steel door scraping the cellar floor. Footsteps.

Too heavy for Emrys. Gareth, then.

“Are you hurt?” He said, crouching next to her. She could imagine the worried crease between his muddy brown eyes. The way his hair slumped down over his face when he hadn't time to style it. His hand hovering over her, afraid to touch, desperate to.

Do it, she willed. Hold me. Reach out, clutch me to your chest, chase the whole world away.

She supposed he was her brother now. Sinful, to think about him like this. But she'd done worse. Was sleeping with an abusive arsehole who turned you into a werewolf worse than wanting to sleep with your newly adopted brother? Probably.

There was something wrong with her. Very, very wrong. Where was Emrys?

“Cath?” He prompted.

She didn't want to be in this body. It sickened her. It was all the things it wasn't supposed to be.

“I'm f-fine,” she managed. Voice slurring and stuttering, just those two words took more effort than she really had to give.

“Oh, shit, you're cold, one sec–” something warm draped over her. A blanket. “There. Can I– Can I lift you up?”

So gentle. Like she hadn’t spent the past year screaming at him to stay out of her business. Tentative. He didn't want to be here.

She nodded.

He wasn't that strong, but she was underweight. He struggled, but he managed to get her off the concrete floor. Up the stairs, into the bathroom where a plastic chair was already set up in the shower.

“It’s not perfect, but I wasn’t sure if… well. You can't, so it's a null point really. Um.” he set her down on the chair.

She stared up at him, blanket slumping off her shoulders.

“Should I… go?”

She could barely speak. Nevermind turn on the shower. Nevermind scrub the blood from under her nails or the dirt and dust from the soles of her feet.

Why couldn't Gareth have been a sister? Emrys a mother? Where even was their dearest adopted Dad?

“I want…” Pause. Break. Breathe. Gareth was practically vibrating at having to wait. “Bed.”

His face fell. She could imagine cogs turning in his head with ‘help Cath’ and ‘be a good brother’ and ‘don't bother Emrys’ written on them, all of them grinding to a halt, snarled up by guilt and the realisation that he hadn't actually asked her at any point what she wanted.

“Shit,” he said, “Alright. Okay. Yeah. Let's–” he scooped her up again. A few short steps, and she was sliding under the sheets into bed. Clean sheets. The maid hadn't been since Thursday, Gareth must have changed them himself. It was surprising he could still do that, he'd been Emerys’s ward since he was eleven years old.

“Is there anything else?” He asked, lingering, awkward and out of place, at the foot of her bed.

She squinted, “Where is he? He…” God, she didn't want to say this. “He promised he'd be here.”

Gareth swallowed. “Get some rest, Cath.”

She struggled to sit, holding the covers over her chest. “Gareth, don't… don't mess me about. Emrys doesn't break promises.”

His hand tightened on the doorknob. “Please… later.”

She shook her head. “Bastard.”

He left.

Emrys wasn't coming home, was he?

Context for this piece can be found here

@daddecember

[whyweonlyseeeachotherat]

DadDecember Day 1: 'Cover Your Eyes'

A knock on the cupboard door. “Dylan?” Emerys’s voice.

The rotten meat stench seeped in through the crack under the door. Dylan was going to be sick if he didn’t get out of this goddamned shithole soon. Fuck.

He tried to will himself to move, but it was like the floor was super glue, or one of those crazy magnets that could lift cars. It wasn’t like he enjoyed being stuck in a cupboard. There was a mop, still damp, resting against his shoulder, and the stink of chemicals leaking from plastic bottles made his head pound.

“It’s alright, lad, it’s over.”

No. How could it be over with that smell? “Liar,” he hissed.

“I’m not lying, son. You’re safe now.”

There was still blood on his Nikes. Every time he shifted, he could hear it crackling as it peeled up off the dirty lino. Another waft of rotting meat and ammonia. His stomach rumbled. His mind drifted to Maccies. There was one down the road, plasticy cheese and flavourless beef, but hot and filling after– after—

He retched, once, twice, muscles heaving, throat twitching. Nothing came up. He stood there, hand braced against the cupboard door, shaking and gasping for breath. He coughed, retched again. Groaned.

“Talk to me, Dylan,” Emrys said, “What’s going on?”

His teeth were chattering. God, he was pathetic. Actual human wretch. “Th-they’re still out there.”

“No, lad. They’re gone. The ritual worked.”

“Not…” He coughed, grimaced. Christ, the senile old bat wasn’t gonna really make him say it, was he? “Not the demons.”

Silence.

Dylan swallowed the salty bile taste at the back of his throat.

Then, “Alright. How about you close your eyes, and I’ll walk you out of there.”

His whole face was hot. He was being an idiot. What kind of pathetic little baby needs his daddy to come and walk him out past some- some-

“Okay,” he croaked, screwing his hands into fists.

“Alright, you just shut your peepers, and I’ll open the door.”

Dylan did what he said, and stood back from the door. Emerys's wrinkly, wizened hands gripped his arms. “Alright. I’ve got you. It’s going to be alright.”

And for a moment, Dylan almost believed him.

Context for this project can be found here

@daddecember

[whyweonlyseeeachotherat]

Contextttttt

Below is the basic backstory of the snippets and extracts I will be posting to this blog - this is mostly just for fun, may turn it into something at some point, but not rn

Emrys is a super powerful wizard mentor guy - he's old and powerful. In times of crisis, the magical world turns to him, and he turns to the nearest convenient orphan/child with a troubled home life that he can recruit.

The first of these was Gareth, who got 7 books worth of wholesome family friendly adventures to defeat the dark lord, at the end of which Emrys was killed in a heroic sacrifice, leaving Gareth as the sole inheritor of his estate.

Of course he wasn't actually dead, just kidnapped by vampires until Cathy, in the middle of a teen supernatural romance rescued him (and picked the werewolf). She got adopted too, because of course her own parents got turned into vampires and now want to kill her on sight.

After that came Dylan, who in the tradition of ultra violent horror books written for preteens from the noughties (looking at you Darren Shan), kickstarted a bloody demon apocalypse by accident. They stopped the apocalypse of course, with Dylan getting adopted somewhere along the way, and Emerys again dying nobly and dramatically.

This was when Meg entered the picture. Kicked out by her homophobic mother, Meg went running to her great uncle Emerys. Of course, she didn't find him, instead coming across her three adopted cousins in the throes of varying levels of mental ill health. Meg quickly noped out of there via a portal in the bathtub. Of course, she found a magical land, under the tyrannical rule of a dark lord, and an amnesiac Emyrs wandering the countryside in his birthday suit. She rescued Emerys, defeated the dark lord, kissed the princess, and came home in time for tea.

Back in his normal world and faced with Dylan’s continued demon-murdering exploits, Emerys came to the swift conclusion that there was an underground cadre of demon summoning rich people. Naturally, he took the opportunity to recruit a toxic rich kid polycule to take them down, which is how he met Jack. Jack read enough demon-related classics and engaged in enough homoerotic psychosexual angst with his besties to make Donna Tart blush, before being ultimately betrayed by the toxic polycule, discovering his own dad was behind the demon summonings, and having to kill him before being properly adopted by Emrys.