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delimeful · 11 months

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down that desolate road (7)

this one pivots from comedic to intense so quick, take care! also always remember that this is angst with a happy ending <3

warnings: arguing, defensive behavior, PTSD, tons of miscommunication and accidental harm this chapter, blood and injury, mild strangulation, dissociation, cliffhanger

Virgil should have known better.

Even worse: he had known better, and he’d done it anyway.

Leading Patton out of the forest was one thing, he’d been able to maintain his anonymity as a mysterious cloaked figure, and he wouldn’t have been able to leave the Side lost even if he’d wanted to.

After all, the longer Patton was left to wander around the woods, the more likely it was that a Shade would pop up to take advantage of the opportunity.

So he’d guided his best friend out of the forest without a single word, and watched him find his way back to the marked trails with a gut-churning mixture of relief and misery.

Just the sight of him had soothed some of the deep, simmering fears in Virgil’s chest. Nobody seemed to have changed too much, but that didn’t keep him from worrying. The encounter proved it was unfounded. Even without Anxiety’s presence, Patton was the same friendly face as always.

The interaction should have stopped there. He should have let it be enough.

He should have ignored the frequent detours Patton would make to that little clearing, or even warped the forest into something a little more blatantly menacing, something that would scare him off.

Instead, like an idiot, he’d sat himself in the crook of a tree at the edge of the clearing and watched Patton sunbathe and weave flower crowns, enjoying the familiarity of just quietly hanging out together in one place.

And then a Shade had nearly killed Patton, because they tracked Virgil’s paths just like Liv had said, and if he’d been the slightest bit slower—

But Patton had been fine, not a scratch on him, and Virgil should have vanished back into the forest to maintain his cover, maybe added an ominous threat for good measure. Except instead he’d had an embarrassing blubbering meltdown in Patton’s arms, because even not knowing who Virgil was, he’d tried to comfort him.

Patton’s hugs felt exactly as relieving as always. Even with the consequences bearing down on him, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to regret accepting them.

He’d known that Patton wasn’t the type to notice subterfuge or keep secrets, so he wasn’t surprised that their encounter had become common knowledge.

He was surprised that apparently the information was interesting enough to prompt the entire collection of idiots into trekking out to the clearing with Patton.

Surprised and horrified. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile from five measly people, and yet somehow every single one of them had turned up to poke their nose around in his business!

Patton was shuffling uncomfortably near his usual spot, casting guilty puppy-dog looks at the trees. Roman and Remus were tweaking the wildflower arrangements and coaxing some thorny weeds into borderline-sentience respectively. Janus was lounging on an embroidered picnic blanket, his body relaxed as though he wasn’t totally peering into the forest through his nearly-closed eyes.

Even Logan was there, scanning the forest’s treeline with an intent acuity that could only mean he was searching for something with his usual stubborn dedication.

Virgil stomped down the bit of him that was practically purring at having all of them in one place right in front of him, reminding himself that the combined forces of Thomas’s Sides was nothing to sneeze at, particularly if he wanted to get out of this situation with all his secrets intact.

(He wasn’t great at deception, not when Janus had hoarded that particular trait all to himself, but there were ways to work around that. There were far more important things at stake here than himself, after all. It didn’t matter that he hated lying, especially to them. What mattered was keeping them all safe.)

There was nothing to be pleased about, especially considering that this many Sides in one spot was almost guaranteed to lure some Shades out of the woodwork.

The mere thought made the glass shards of his function flex painfully, and Virgil took a deep breath. This was his fault, yeah, but his regret wouldn’t do anything to fix the situation, so he set it aside.

What he needed to focus on now was how to get rid of them.

Except, as Thomas himself would probably say, that was easier said than done.

Passing all his actions off as a villainous ploy would work on Roman and Remus, but probably not Logan or Janus. Negotiating a deal, such as information in exchange for them returning to the Commons ASAP, would be more appealing to Janus and Logan, but offensive to the twins that this realm actually answered to. Genuinely telling them they were in danger and asking them to leave (and leave well enough alone) would only work on Patton, and only if he thought Virgil was safe.

Virgil dragged a hand down his face. It was like that riddle about the fox and the hen and the sack of grain, except no matter what solution he tried, there would always be someone ready to tear his story to shreds.

If he ever got to talk to Thomas again, he was going to have a serious talk with him about curiosity and cats, with a new addendum to the saying to emphasize that unlike metaphorical satisfied cats, people die when they are killed.

… That settled it. He’d been spending too much time marinating in the subconscious instead of sleeping.

He would definitely address his near-delirium at some point, preferably after he dealt with the huge clusterfuck unfolding in front of him.

While he’d been freaking the hell out, the others seemed to have been deliberating, or maybe they’d just gotten tired of waiting, because now three of them were approaching the forest’s edge while the other two remained over at the picnic blanket.

They’d split the party. He should have known. This was what happened when Virgil wasn’t around to remind them about the basic rules of self preservation. They went full Scooby-Doo on his ass.

The approaching group was composed of Logan, Roman, and Patton, because of course it was. The three of them were wearing familiar expressions of curiosity, suspicion, and worry, ones that had appeared all-too-frequently whenever they’d had to deal with someone they only knew as Thomas’s Anxiety.

Virgil felt a little like he’d been flung back in time. Oh wait. He had.

Except this time, he didn’t even have the benefit of being part of Thomas. As far as they knew, he was a construct, an errant figment of Thomas’s imagination, about as real as a summoned puppy.

About as threatening as one, too, which was probably why Roman was entirely fine with two of the least battle-hardened Sides coming with him to face a total unknown. Even one of the Creativities was enough to handle most denizens of the Imagination, let alone two. Before, even Virgil himself would have been hard-pressed to imagine an enemy that could threaten five of Thomas’s Sides at once.

That was before. Now, imagining it was far too easy.

Enough that he had to blink away gory afterimages as they drew to a stop at the treeline.

“Um, V?” Patton asked, shifting to his tiptoes to peer through the foliage. “It’s Patton, from yesterday! Can we talk for a second?”

There was an uncomfortably long pause while Virgil tried to think of a plan and failed miserably.

“We know it’s you, Vendetta!” Roman added in his playacting voice, his air of impatience betrayed by the excited way he was bouncing on his heels. “Come out to face our interrogation, or face the consequences in our next duel instead!”

His preference was obvious. Half a field away, Janus visibly facepalmed.

“An interrogation implies that there’s a specific piece of information we’re searching for,” Logan mused. “Really, a better description of our current venture would be a general scientific inquiry.”

“Psh, yeah, if you want to sound lame,” Roman retorted with a frown.

“Don’t listen to him, dork! Yours sounds way creepier,” Remus hollered, giving him a nonreassuring thumbs up.

Okay, so despite splitting up, the others were still close enough to supervise. Virgil inhaled deeply, counting down in his head before releasing it. He just had to take this one step at a time.

He knew exactly how stubborn these dumbasses were. If he tried to leave or avoid them entirely, they would persist, even to the point of trespassing into Liv’s territory. The mere thought of them venturing down into those tunnels— No. He wasn’t getting out of this without some kind of conversation.

Thus, the first step was making sure it happened well outside Janus’s hearing range.

Virgil had to concentrate to warp the Imagination, but it wasn’t as hard as it used to be. Especially not here, since it was both a place he’d hung around often and a creepy gloomy nightmare forest that fit right in with his aesthetic.

In front of the three of them, the tree boughs bent and swayed into jagged arcs, illustrating a clear path forward. There may or may not have been ominous creaking noises involved.

“Oh, excellent, it’s an interactive murder forest,” Roman muttered, before puffing his chest out and drawing his sword. “Fear not, for I have traversed many extremely creepy landscapes, mostly courtesy of my brother.”

(At the sight of the horror movie forest shuffling around to let them in, Remus had lifted his fists and cheered raucously.)

Patton and Logan showed little hesitation in following Roman into the forest’s shade, though Virgil suspected they had very different reasons for their lack of fear.

He was relieved to see that Janus, at least, looked perturbed enough to climb to his feet. It wasn’t the instant bad-idea shutdown that Virgil would have enacted if he’d been with them as himself, but the other half of self preservation was keen enough to disapprove of the sudden detour.

He wasn’t keen enough to prevent the three from stepping into the passage, though, and the moment they were past the threshold, Virgil slammed the entryway shut.

Roman yelped and spun around, but Virgil had already warped the trees into a thorny wall of foliage that Maleficent herself would have been proud of. Janus would need a lesson or two before he could take up Virgil’s idiot-wrangling duties. Just like with herding cats, his first mistake was letting them out of arm's reach.

“We’ve been ambushed!” Roman cried. “With literal bushes!”

“I guess we’re not leafing that way,” Patton chuckled nervously.

“Inconvenient, but not insurmountable,” Logan commented, unperturbed as always by the macabre or frightening.

Virgil grinned despite himself. Man, he’d missed them.

The path continued to bend itself into existence in front of them, and sure enough, it didn’t take long for them to decide to keep going rather than sink out or otherwise abandon their goal.

With Janus pacing agitatedly in front of the forest and Remus gleefully but ineffectively bashing at branches with his morning star, step one was officially complete.

Step two, step two… Uh. He hadn’t thought that far.

In his defense, this was literally not his job. He didn’t do the planning, he was the ‘poke holes in plan until it wasn’t as stupid and reckless’ guy!

(He was beginning to feel a little sorry for all the planners he’d done that to. Having good ideas was way harder than pointing out bad ones.)

Okay, focus. Villains isolated the heroes for a reason. It would be much easier to play the roles expected of him if he was catering to one-on-one audiences. They’d recount their experiences to the group, obviously, but with Roman’s tendency for exaggeration, Patton’s habit of rose-colored recollection, and Logan’s inclination to focus in on the details that he found interesting, they’d have a difficult time figuring out what was real and what was someone’s biased perception.

Princey was more likely to rush ahead than let someone wander off without him, so Virgil opened up a side path and let himself drift across open ground just long enough to be spotted. Roman took the bait like he was auditioning for the role of the first victim in a horror movie, and sealing the path after him rendered Logan and Patton unable to follow.

He spent a moment setting up the landscape to lead the pair in a dizzying series of turns to stall, and then stepped out behind his errant prince.

“Boo,” he said, because he had to take the stress relief where he could get it.

Roman whirled around with a shriek, his blade slicing through the air harmlessly. He glared petulantly at Virgil, who was admittedly smirking under the shadow of his hood. “Don’t do that, V for Vexing!”

“I wouldn’t be throwing around orders if I were you. After all, you’re the one in my territory,” he said, letting his voice tilt towards threatening.

Roman waved the statement off as though swatting a gnat. “This isn’t about our kingdoms, Vendetta, otherwise I would have dressed for the occasion.”

“Oh?” Virgil valiantly resisted the urge to make Barbie comparisons, though Roman would probably take it as a compliment. “What do you and your little friends want, then?”

He must have been leaning too hard into the menacing tone, because Roman stiffened the way he hadn’t at an implied threat to himself. “Don’t you dare hurt them,” he commanded, fingers tightening around his sword’s hilt.

“They’re fine,” Virgil assured him, and then tacked on a “for now” for good measure. “You and your merry band of irritants picked this fight, not me. I’m only interested in finding out why ‘scientific inquiries’ are being made about me.”

“You’ve become a bit of a hot topic between the Sides,” Roman answered, lowering his guard enough to prop a hand on his hip. “You should feel flattered! It’s not often that a denizen manages to intrigue so many of us at once.”

Virgil did not feel flattered. Virgil felt like screaming. Virgil was going to do so much bitching and moaning about his life later.

“My secrets are my own,” he managed to say, his scowl audible in his voice. “I don’t need or want nosy Sides poking into my business.”

Roman was nodding along with his words without paying them much attention at all, edging closer in an entirely unsubtle manner that Virgil still didn’t register as a threat until he was lunging.

A hand closed around his wrist. A half-second later, there was a mental poke at his existence.

If he’d been an actual construct, the prod would have earned Roman a peek at his ‘code’, the little bits that he was composed of. It would have been mildly uncomfortable at worst, and more likely, he wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

If he’d been in his standard state as a Side, it would have been a blatant and rude sensation, like someone jabbing their finger into your gut, but not actually harmful.

With the half-shattered state of his function, it was more like someone jabbing their finger into a gut wound.

Since he was self-preservation and didn’t react well to threats, it was like someone jabbing their finger into a gut wound that was also full of glass.

All the blood drained from Roman’s face as Virgil’s defensive aura snapped down on his mental probe like a bear trap, sending him an involuntary surge of fear that would lock his joints and send his heart racing, a screaming instinctual warning that he was totally screwed.

Virgil yanked himself away from Roman’s stiff grip, wrapping his arms around his chest as though he could physically hold himself together if he tried hard enough. He felt like a mortal injury had been carelessly jarred, a knife twisted in an already-bleeding wound.

He had to resist the impulse to immediately drop into the Subconscious to numb the pain, reminding himself that he wasn’t done here, and more importantly, that the others weren’t safe without him. He couldn’t lose time when they could be attacked at any moment.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he gritted out instead, hating the way terror looked on Roman’s face. “Get out of here.”

He twisted a path back to the clearing open, and sunk back into the forest instead of watching Roman flee.

No time to recuperate. He wanted them out of here before anyone else got hurt.

His chest was still pulsing with pain as he pushed through a few branches to stand in front of Logan and Patton, but he managed not to visibly stagger, which he was counting as a win.

“V!” Patton said, brow furrowed with concern.

“You must be– oh my. Are you alright?” Logan asked, stepping forward. He wasn’t reaching out, but Virgil shied away anyhow.

“Don’t touch me,” Virgil told him, managing to keep the worst of the bite from his voice. “Keep away from my territory and stay out of my business.”

He swept his hand at the trees to start opening a path back, intending to vanish back into the trees and sink away, but a glance at the way Patton’s expression crumpled was enough to weaken his resolve.

“It’s not safe,” he added in a softer tone.

“Because of the Shades,” Logan replied, adjusting his glasses. The motion did nothing to conceal the glint of interest in his gaze. “That’s why we’re here. If something dangerous has manifested here, it’s important that we know about it. For our safety and Thomas’s alike.”

“The Shades are my problem,” Virgil snapped back. “You shouldn’t get involved, not with them or me. I’m handling them.”

“Are you?” Logan asked. “We haven’t seen them before. You seem to be the only one who knows anything about them.”

We only started seeing them once you showed up, Virgil heard, and resisted the urge to snarl.

Patton stepped closer, and Virgil’s body shuddered back without his permission. It was stupid, it was Patton, who would never hurt him, but his brain had thought that about Roman, too, and look what had happened there–

Patton’s expression was going crumpled around the edges again, but he kept still, not pressing against the clear show of weakness. “Do you have to handle them alone?” he asked.

For a moment, Virgil hesitated– the others could help, he would mess up on his own, they were supposed to be a team– and then his gaze caught on a dark, spreading spot on Patton’s shirt. He blinked it away, grounded by the reminder.

“Yes,” he retorted vehemently. “So stop–,”

There was a distant crackling, like several branches being snapped in swift succession, and Virgil abruptly realized that the foreboding feeling in the back of his mind wasn’t just a memory.

He summoned his scythe and dove forward in one smooth movement, sliding past a pair of reflexive flinches to meet the Shade as it burst from the shadows, lifting the long handle of his scythe just in time to block its bite.

“Run.”

Virgil could only barely hear the thudding of feet past his heartbeat in his ears, but he didn’t have time to double check. Wrestling with a Shade was a losing game, and he could already see the sinuous body twisting itself a few new limbs, so he shoved back the mouth full of too-many too-sharp teeth and rolled free, following the momentum of the movement to drive his blade through a good chunk of the beast.

With a short yank, he swung the Shade in a brief arc and flung it past Logan into the trunk of a particularly thick tree.

Wait. Past Logan?

Virgil’s heart sank as he realized that only one of the two people he needed to protect had managed to bolt. Patton hadn’t hesitated at his directive, but Logan had never been one to blindly follow orders.

Maybe he couldn’t follow them. A quick glance showed that Logan seemed almost frozen, staring at the Shade with a bone-deep fear that looked out of place on the logical Side’s face.

The Shade that Virgil had just stupidly tossed between him and the way out.

He swore loudly and darted forward, slashing at the Shade again and again, giving it as little time as possible to recover.

It foiled all attempts to be corralled, oily limbs lashing out with sharp needle-like protrusions on every side, forcing Virgil to jump back or be pincushioned.

He didn’t realize that Logan had moved until he caught a glimpse of him from the corner of his eye, looking more composed but also far closer to the Shade than Virgil would ever want him.

“Back off!” he warned, swinging just in time to catch the beast’s next blow. “It’s dangerous!”

Logan was reaching out with one hand, a visualization technique they’d all used at one point or another to summon or unsummon something. He was making the same mistake as Roman, trying to unravel the Shade as though it was little more than a standard construct.

“No–!” Virgil tried, but the briefest contact was enough to send Logan stumbling back as though hit, and the Shade instantly tried to take advantage of the lapse.

‘Tried’ being the key word there.

Virgil jumped to meet the lunge, and the next few seconds were a frantic blur of skewering and slicing and finally the sensation of the substance under his blade turning to smoke. He dismissed his scythe and swiped the fragment on automatic, the motion barely completed before he was turning to face Logan’s crumpled form.

His eyes landed on red, and it felt like his chest was collapsing to bits.

Between one instant and the next, he was knelt at Logan’s side, meeting open eyes– still alive, not gone yet– before clasping both of his hands over the gaping gash in Logan’s throat and pressing down firmly.

“No no no no no, you can’t, you can’t,” he couldn’t tell whether his begging was in his head or out loud, couldn’t feel his face or his legs or any part of him except for his palms pressed against the injury, growing more stained by the second, trying to hold the lifeblood in through pure force of will.

Logan’s mouth was moving but no words made it out, only a wet, frothy sort of sound. His fingers tried weakly to pry at Virgil’s own, it had to be uncomfortable but he couldn’t let go, he couldn’t fail, he couldn’t watch it happen again, it would shatter him to bits.

There was a noise, loud even though it seemed to come from far away, and Virgil lifted his head with his teeth already bared, entirely prepared to shield Logan from another Shade with his own body, mission be damned.

It wasn’t another Shade.

It was the others.

They were stopped a few yards away, held back by all of Janus’s arms spread wide, staring at him with open horror on their faces.

Virgil’s mind felt like it was churning in slow motion. Why weren’t they helping? How could they just stand there? Didn’t they see what was at stake?

“V…?” Patton asked, voice trembling. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” he hissed, but when he dragged his gaze back to his task, his hands were entirely clean.

There was no blood dripping out from beneath his palms, no ragged edge of flesh beneath his fingers, no horrible gasping breaths full of fluid.

Logan was conscious, staring at him with wide eyes, each of his inhales strained and hoarse, as though he was barely getting enough air in.

Because there were hands wrapped around his throat. Because Virgil was strangling him.

His hands flew up as though magnetically repelled, and he almost expected to see the slash reopen before his eyes, worse than before.

Instead, all he saw was splotchy red marks, the beginning of bruises forming in a ring around Logan’s neck.

Logan started coughing, his face scrunching in pain, and Virgil pushed unsteadily to his feet, backed up without looking away, something fracturing in his chest.

He’d done that. There hadn’t been any real danger, and then he’d become the danger.

The moment he was out of immediate striking range, the rest of them surged forward, crowding towards Logan like– like he’d just been viciously attacked.

If the others hadn’t showed up, would he have– would Logan be–?

Virgil stumbled further back into the shadows, already desperately grasping for the Subconscious.

Someone called out to him, but he was already gone.

#sanders sides fic #ts virgil #ts patton #ts logan #ts roman #ts remus #ts janus #down that desolate road #dtdr #my writing #writing #>:)#bthb

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avvail-whumps · 9 months

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@badthingshappenbingo prompt: homesickness requested by: @whumpatize-me-captain word count: 1.4K

content warnings: mention of multiple whumpers, defiant whumpee, captivity, homesickness, panic attack, knife threats, gun violence, gun wound, blood, mention of punishments

Leo didn’t know when it started to happen, but a horrible, crippling feeling had started weighing heavily on not only his heart, but his mind as well.

He was curled up on the sofa with a blanket tucked around him, mindlessly staring at the television. He found he did that a lot nowadays, just to shut off from the grisly situation he had found himself trapped in. Luckily, for now, he was by himself. Roy was occupied somewhere upstairs after a particularly violent confrontation between him and the other mercenaries. Mainly Bran, of course.

Joey had offered to take the car so they could cool off and spend the evening away and stay at a hotel for the night, and Roy had been okay with that.

Leo had been okay with it too, since he didn’t want them anywhere near him.

The television flickered in front of his eyes, but it was hard to take anything in. None of the odd shapes and colours were registering in his slow, occupied brain. All he could think about was how quiet it was now.

It reminded him of his own home, after moving out of his childhood house in order to fulfill his life away from his grieving father. It had always been so quiet when it was only him who lived in it. Small, cozy, decorated how he liked it with paintings and little plotted pants to clear the air. He had this tea tree air freshener he would plug in, the memorising aroma greeting him after a hard day at work.

Leo anxiously picked at the blanket. Roy’s house wasn’t like that. It wasn’t cozy. It didn’t smell of tea tree. If he’d been at home, he would have switched off the mind numbing television and filled the room with the notes of his precious violin instead.

It was too quiet.

This wasn’t home. He wanted to go home.

The very thought slammed into him with a dizzying force. It suddenly felt as though his lungs had dried up, and his hand landed on his tight chest with a choked gasp. His thoughts were growing too loud in his own mind, the sickening feeling of homesickness sinking into his cells and ripping out his nerves.

Leo gasped violently for breath, staggering to his feet. All at once, the world seemed to tip and spin, causing him to bump into the coffee table and send his glass sprawling onto the ground. He was sure he heard a distinctive shattering, but his ears had become too fuzzy to tell.

Tears burned at his eyes, stumbling into the kitchen. What was he even doing? Why was he sitting around complacently in the house of the man that had kidnapped him, instead of finding a way home? Even if he went covered in blood, kicking and screaming, fighting tooth and nail, why wasn’t he doing anything?

Being alone in his home had once brought Leo a sense of vivid loneliness. But now, he would do anything in the world just to be back there. Just to touch his violin and sleep in his own bed. To freshen up his plants with a spray of water.

The secretary choked on a sob, barely able to see what he was doing through the blurriness in his vision. It was getting too hard to breathe, even as he felt his fingers fumbling dramatically in the kitchen drawer. They somehow managed to tighten around the hilt of a knife in his panic, doubling over with the countertop to brace him.

He sucked in a ragged breath, shaking his head viciously. He would do anything to be home right now. Even to see his father; to hug him, to hold him, to hear his voice again. What if that never happened? What if he was truly going to be trapped here forever?

“Hey, lion,” a voice called out by the kitchen door, and Leo squinted through his rapidly blurring vision to see Roy. He swayed on his feet as he shakily raised the knife, pointing it in his direction. The table was separating them, and for that, Leo was glad.

Roy’s expression morphed into that of weary amusement. A sigh escaped his lips as he spoke. “What are you doing?”

Leo scrubbed away the tears sliding down his cheeks, trying to steady his rapidly increasing breaths. Somehow, throughout it all, he managed to do just that enough to speak.

“I want to go home,” he choked.

Roy raised a brow, moving slowly around the table. The secretary jerked into action, circling in the opposite direction, just so the table remained in between them. The thought of a punishment hadn’t even occurred to him. He was too overwhelmed by the thought of his home. His sweet home.

“I’m willing to be nice and forget about this if you put the knife down, lion. You’ll do more damage to yourself than to me.”

Leo felt a fiery spit in his chest. “Screw you!”

His heart sank straight to his boots the moment those words tumbled from his wobbling lips, but he just couldn’t help himself. Roy’s expression seemed to lose all sense of amusement in seconds, his eyes suddenly becoming cold under the light. A quiet sigh left his nose, and he reached under his jacket and into his belt.

“Come on now, lion,” he hummed, stopping where Leo had originally been standing. The secretary was in the doorway now, and he couldn’t keep the knife from shaking uncontrollably in his own hands, breathing through the pained sobs wracking through his bones. “I think you should hold your tongue.”

“I-I want to go home,” he pleaded shakily, blinking away the onslaught of tears that just wouldn’t stop coming. “Please. I need to go home.”

Roy’s lip quirked up into an unamused smile. A hand gun had been residing in his belt, and he had no problem pulling it out and pointing it at Leo in turn.

“You know that isn’t going to happen, lion.”

The gun went off with a jarring bang, and Leo felt a searing pain explode in his forearm. A horrible, gut wrenching cry escaped his lips as the knife clattered to the ground, hand gripping the gushing, bloodied wound. His vision went white with static for a moment, but the sudden rush of adrenaline forced him into action once he realised Roy was much closer than a table length.

Leo’s shaking legs managed to jerk himself out of the doorway, and he twisted into the stairway with heavy, thundering footsteps. His knees could barely even support his own weight as he darted with a terrified sob, threatening to buckle under his feet.

He could hear Roy behind him, the familiar clicking of the gun, and then—

He staggered into the wall when another gunshot soared past his head, herding him up the second flight of stairs without a second thought. Leo knew that if Roy had wanted to hit him, then he would’ve, and he wasn’t willing to risk that chance.

He threw himself into the first door he got his spinning eyes on, and slammed it shut behind him. His bloodied fingertips only just managed to slide the lock into place, before a loud bang vibrated the entire wooden door, making him yelp and slide pathetically to the floor. He pressed his back against the wood and curled his legs close to his chest, letting out a harrowing sob at the state of everything. He could barely feel his arm through the numbing pain, and the disparity shuddering through his spine.

“You’re making this worse for yourself, little lion,” Roy sang from behind the door, where he didn’t seem to be attempting to be making any efforts to force it open. That was scary in of itself. “The longer you stay in there, the more painful your punishment will be.”

Leo screwed his eyes shut, letting out a groan through his clenched teeth.

“Please, just let me go home,” he sobbed, biting back the pathetic whimpers in his throat. “I just want to go home…”

Roy was less than sympathetic.

“Making it worse, lion.”

Leo cursed under his breath, letting the back of his head rest against the door. He didn’t need a clear vision to know he’d managed to lock himself in Roy’s room. The only place that he wasn’t allowed; that completely violated the rules. He knew that with each second he spent with the door locked, the more painful his time in the basement was going to be.

His heart ached at the very thought of being down there, and subsequently splintered at the conflicting thoughts tearing his mind apart.

It smelled of Roy in here.

He was devastated it didn’t smell of tea tree.

#bad things happen bingo #homesickness #original work #ask #guns for hire special #whump #whump writing #whumpblr #whump fic #whump series #whump community #whump scenario #whumper #whumpee #leo and roy #my writing #writing #avvail whumps #bthb card

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lauronk · 3 months

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can i make a fic about jellyfish just as long as a fic about plants?

well i'm sure as shit gonna try

#jelly fic #still doesn't have an actual title yet #this one is like tlou with a sprinkling of stardew valley #dance of the moonlight jellies #all these words and there's been mentions of jellies but no actual jellies yet #maybe in another 2k words or so #this one might be out by the weekend #because my weekend plans just fell through bc my partner got the rona again so when i'm not at work i'm stuck at home #wearing a mask at the computer while he is locked in our spare room because i'm showing as negative #tl;dr i have lots of writing time now and i intend to put it to good use #gonna finish jelly fic #gonna work on what the original jelly fic was but now is a fic of its own #gonna work on bus fic part 5 #on the road again (there i go)#gonna do some more brainstorming for bthb #just so many things to do #i'll shut up in the tags now though #night night #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #joel and ellie #fanfic struggles

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set-phasers-to-whump · 11 months

Text

skymed whump list

description: “Follows intense character journeys and high-stakes medical rescues, heartbreaks and tribulations of budding nurses and pilots flying air ambulances.” whump refers to various recurring male characters (unfortunately not all of them are in the pic, but from left to right are Tristan, Chopper, Nowak, and Bodie)

overall notes: apparently you can find the show on paramount plus but I pirated it so I can’t say anything for captions or availability. it’s a little silly sometimes but it’s way more interesting than a lot of your average medical dramas imo.

Pilots And Nurses And Bears, Oh My! (1x01) - Jeremy: stabbed, stitches Wheezer: plane crash, unconscious, bloody face, carried, broken back Bodie: upset

Line Indoc (1x02) - Bodie: at gunpoint, hit in the head with a gun

The Kids Are Alright (1x03) - Wheezer: in the hospital

Where There’s Smoke (1x04) - Wheezer: on crutches

Bushwhacked (1x05) - Wheezer: walking with a cane Jeremy: hit by a car, in the hospital Bodie: leg caught in a bear trap, carried, in the hospital Tristan: upset, crying

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (1x06) - none

Daj Mi Buzi (1x07) - Nowak: overworked, tired, crashes his car, cut forehead, in pain and struggling to get out, relocates dislocated shoulder by himself, two panic attacks Jeremy: in medical transport, upset Trevor: upset Bodie: upset

Frozen (1x08) - Nowak: panic attack while flying, upset, fight with Bodie Chopper: panicked Bodie: fight with Nowak Jeremy: cold

Leave It All On The Ice (1x09) - Wheezer: gagging Jeremy: stumbling, shot, upset at himself Pierce: trapped under a shelf, reveals he’s going deaf, internal bleeding, in the hospital, upset at himself Bodie: crying

NEW!! Season 2:

Return to Base (2x01) - Jeremy: argument with Crystal Tristan: mildly electrocuted, argument with Nowak Nowak: argument with Tristan Wheezer: scared Chopper: in an explosion, unconscious, impaled with shrapnel, cardiac arrest, field medicine

Spun Out (2x02) - Jeremy: upset, argument with Crystal Wheezer: slip and fall, emotional conversation Chopper: unconscious in hospital, waking up, groggy, arm pain, upset, collapse Bodie: upset Nowak: upset

Things That Matter Most (2x03) - Chopper: upset, can’t use his hand much, hand bandaged Nowak: upset Bodie: plane crash, emotional conversation, crying Tristan: plane crash, broken rib Jeremy: plane crash

Turbulence (2x04) - Chopper: in pain from his injuries, limping, upset, crying

Code Silver (2x05) - none

Little Lies (2x06) - Jeremy: upset, doubting himself Wheezer: stressed Nowak: upset, angry

Old Wounds (2x07) - Tristan: upset, crying Nowak: guilty, panicking, vomits Wheezer: upset, worried about Haley, argument with Haley, angry Bodie: in trouble for breaking rules Chopper: in trouble for breaking rules

Before Sunrise, After Sunset (2x08) - Bodie: upset

Out With a Bang (2x09) - Nowak: upset, trapped by a broken elevator, revelation of past trauma, crying, unconscious, carried, in hospital with ruptured diaphragm and broken ribs Wheezer: sick, delirious Tristan: upset, crying, worried Bodie: in hospital after kidney donation

#i say things #skymed #whump list #it’s not the highest quality out there but it’s interesting and pretty cool #also for those interested wheezer is played by aaron ashmore so…..#also the show is set in the canadian north which is a much more interesting setting than like. the city or whatever #and there’s a strong focus on indigenous communities which I really liked #I doubt it’ll get another season tho but I’d recommend it if you’ve got free time and don’t mind something a little soapy a little silly #the fandom for this show appears to be like ten people and a bag of chips so like. please.#(btw I’ll be writing my last bthb fic for this)#(sorry to disappoint by not doing one of my usual fandoms but I have an Idea)#oh there’s a gifset of nowak in 1x07 somewhere around btw #that’s the top whump ep imo. physical and emotional with lasting talked about consequences #cannot believe we got a second season

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hopeintheashes · 9 months

Text

been trying to swim with both my hands behind my back

The Bear. Sydney and Carmy. Immediately post-2x10. for the @badthingshappenbingo square "Caught in a Storm"

"Oh," he says, voice distant. "It's really fucking raining." "Yeah," she says, instead of I told you so. Wraps her arms around herself. The wet bandana is still in her hand. She's going to have to do something with it. She can't for the life of her imagine what. It feels like she's thrown up all of her resolve. Like gravity has given up. Like she's untethered from the floor. He turns around suddenly. "You can go, you know. You don't have to—" He's a mirror of her, arms wrapped around himself— "Stay," he finishes like it wasn't what he wanted to say. She can see the headache in the pull of the muscles of his face. "Well," she says, and it's quieter than she'd meant. "It's raining. So." He looks up from under his hair where it's falling in his eyes; looks impossibly young; looks like all of the sinews of his entire self have been wound tight like over-tuned piano wires and at least a third of them have already given way.

Read it below or on AO3.

The rain comes all at once. Without warning, if you haven't checked your phone in the last three and a half hours.

She decides her stomach is going to have to be able to handle going inside.

Tina hands her water on her way in the door and pats her shoulder sympathetically, then goes back to making sure the last touches of the kitchen cleanup are done. Gary's shaking hands with a guy with some sort of… chainsaw? and showing him out the door. Marcus and Richie are nowhere to be seen.

Natalie appears around the corner, and she's smiling but her eyes and her mouth are complicated, a little bit sad. She wraps Sydney up in an unexpected hug and then pulls back like she's afraid she might have gone too far, and Syd smiles at her reassuringly.

"We fucking did it," Nat says. Sydney nods, holding her gaze and then breaking it to look at the destroyed walk-in door.

"Carmy's out?" she says, even though obviously Carmy is out, because it's easier than any of the other questions she could ask about that.

Natalie presses her lips together, worrying them between her teeth. "He is." Eyes flicking toward the office.

"Okay." She can see Pete through the window into the dining room, waiting for Nat. Infinite patience, that guy. Baffling, but in a sweet way. Sydney looks at the office door, then back at Nat. "I've got him. You go."

So uncertain, so young: "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Yes." She can still taste the stomach acid on her tongue. "Go. I'd say try to beat the rain, but I guess it's already here."

Nat blinks at the front window like she hadn't realized. "Oh. Yeah. Okay."

Pete holds up two umbrellas through the window in the door, smiling like he would be happy to wait there all night.

"Go," she says insistently, and Natalie pulls her in to kiss her on the cheek, and then she's back through the door and Pete's got his arm around her and is trying to put up one of the umbrellas before they're even out the door. Nat swats it down and she's laughing, head tipped against his, arm in arm on their way out into the rain.

The kitchen is clean. She should've helped. Guilt twists in her gut, and she breathes through it, because she does not want to end up back out in the alley again.

Tina appears beside her again and Sydney starts. "I'm going to go," Tina says, and Syd nods on autopilot. Somehow everyone else has disappeared. "They're predicting floods and shit. Make sure you get out of here safe, okay?"

"Okay."

"You did good, Chef," Tina says, peering up at her until Sydney meets her gaze.

Sydney makes herself nod again. "You too, Chef. Good night."

-- -- --

She hesitates in front of the office, and then goes inside.

Carmy's pacing. One hand in his hair, the other holding an unlit cigarette. Putting it to his lips like he's gonna risk burning the whole place down. Pulling it away again.

"You're out," she says.

"I'm out." Doesn't look at her. His ears and his eyes and his nose are rimmed in red. "What the fuck happened out there?"

"We made it work." She's going for confident, but the panic is back, the acid in her throat and the shake in her hands and the goddamn fucking ticket machine printing again and again—

"Syd." He touches her arms between her wrists and her whites and it's the ice of his skin that pulls her back, grounds her, eyes locked with his, and she swallows hard and breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth.

"Yeah," she says, "No, it's okay, I just, I was just—" she gestures with a grimace— "throwing up everything I've eaten in the last three years and I thought for a second it was gonna happen again, which doesn't seem like it should be possible and yet here we fucking are, but. Yeah. I'm good now. So." She breaks off and he's still got his hands on her, his eyes on her, and she swallows hard and bites the inside of her lip to keep from rambling any more.

"Syd." Impossibly serious. "You have my full attention. This has my full attention."

She blinks at him. They're the right words, and yet something feels wrong. "Okay?"

He doesn't say anything else, just looks toward the doorway like he's not sure whether it's safe to leave the room.

"Everyone else is gone," she says, stepping back from his touch and running a hand over her hair. It catches her bandana, wet from the alley. She pulls it off. Shakes out her braids. "It's raining."

He looks at her like that explains nothing, but pulls a hand down his face. The cigarette is still between his fingers. Waiting in this uncertain in-between.

"Okay," he says. She's still a little dizzy from nausea, but he looks a little dizzy like he hasn't been breathing right: shallow, barely getting any new oxygen in his lungs. It's the carbon dioxide, says some far-off voice in her head that for some reason sounds like Richie. When you hyperventilate during a panic attack. Not enough carbon dioxide. Counterintuitive but true.

She steps away from the door and he goes out like a man in a dream into the empty kitchen. The empty dining room.

"Oh," he says, voice distant even though she'd followed him there. "It's really fucking raining."

"Yeah," she says, instead of I told you so. Wraps her arms around herself. The wet bandana is still in her hand. She's going to have to do something with it. She can't for the life of her imagine what. It feels like she's thrown up all of her resolve. Like gravity has given up. Like she's untethered from the floor.

He turns around suddenly. "You can go, you know. You don't have to—" He's a mirror of her, arms wrapped around himself— "Stay," he finishes like it wasn't what he wanted to say. She can see the headache in the pull of the muscles of his face.

"Well," she says, and it's quieter than she'd meant. "It's raining. So."

He looks up from under his hair where it's falling in his eyes; looks impossibly young; looks like all of the sinews of his entire self have been wound tight like over-tuned piano wires and at least a third of them have already given way.

-- -- --

She changes into the spare clothes in her locker; puts the gift from Carmy (fuck, Carm, what a gift) away carefully and doesn't close the door, just drapes her bandana over the top of it to dry. Goes back out to the darkened front of house to watch the downpour.

Carmy's back, cigarette smoke and the smell of rain on pavement clinging to his clothes. "My shoes got wet," he says, and Sydney looks down and he's in his socks; shoes left at the door between the kitchen and the front. The sidewalk is a river in front of their door. Lightning flashes in the distance and they wait, breathless, for the thunder, and exhale when it finally comes.

She steps out of her own shoes. Feels the floor through her socks. Clean enough to eat off, right? That's the deal.

The rain gets louder. The lights flicker, but stay on.

The walk-in is fucked. More fucked if the power goes out.

Carmy steps up to the window with her. Shoulder to shoulder. She can hear him breathe.

Another flash of lightning, and the eerie blue light of a transformer in the distance blowing to hell.

"Fuck," she says, at the same time as Carmy pulls in a ragged breath and the same time as the thunder hits.

They're in the dark.

Carmy's hand brushes hers, his knuckles against the back of her hand, just this quick reassurance that he's still here. Still freezing. Still here.

She's mentally going through all the food they've got stored but there's nothing they can do. Only good thing is that there wasn't that much left after service. If the power's still out when their next shipment is due, that's when they'll really need a plan.

"Fuck!" He's clearly just finished the same calculation.

She doesn't tell him it's okay.

He jackknifes at the waist, both hands in his hair, breathing still ragged and getting worse; comes back up dizzyingly fast; turns to pace and runs right the fuck into a table and a chair, the corner of the table sharp into his hip and the chair leg unforgiving against his unprotected toes.

She holds her breath against the oncoming scream-shove-crash of furniture to floor, but there's just a bitten-back moan. He curls in on himself away from the table and sinks to the floor, backlit from the kitchen by the dim emergency lights. He sucks in a breath and drinks in the pain like it's medicine, bitter on his tongue but nonetheless what he needs. What he thinks he deserves.

Same table.

The one from before.

She lays a hand on the wood, stepping carefully through the darkness between it and him. Sinks down beside him as he lays onto his back: knees in the air, hands clasped over his eyes, elbows out. She sits down cross-legged and leans back on one hand, studying him in the little bit of light.

"I fucked up," he says, and she just nods, even though he can't see her through his hands. "I fucked up," he says again, like she's supposed to say something, here, and she just sighs and slips down next to him on the floor, sliding forward toward the kitchen until they're mirrored like puzzle pieces. Rotational symmetry. That's the word.

"I mean, yeah, calling the fridge guy would have been a good idea." There's so much more she could say. She bites her tongue.

"No." He's digging the sides of his clasped hands into his eyes. "Before that. And after that. Just like— everything." He takes a breath, and lifts his hands so he can open his eyes, and rolls his head sideways to look at her. "I wasn't there, and I should have been, and I'm sorry." He looks back up at the ceiling and drops his hands back onto his eyes. "It won't be a problem again."

She wants to give him shit about it but there's something in his voice those last few words. "No?"

"No. Claire and I are done."

"Oh."

"You don't have to pretend you're not happy about that."

"I want you to be happy, Carm." Spoken to the ceiling. Barely audible over the driving rain.

A sound of disgust, but not directed at her. "I don't think happiness is compatible with what we're working toward, here."

"Yeah." She flips her gaze over to him. Still covering his eyes. "Hey." He doesn't look at her, so she taps his elbow. Once he's looking at her: "But what if it was?"

He just shakes his head and puts his hands over his eyes again.

Silence, for a while. The place feels weirdly empty without the background hum of machines. The only sound the cars sluicing by on the street. Honking at each other at the intersections where the traffic lights have gone out.

"I couldn't do it," she says into the darkness. Feels him shift beside her. Moving his hands behind his head. Looking over at her sideways. "Richie had to expo. I just…." She shakes her head. "Froze." Another breath. "Drowned."

"I'm sorry," Carmy whispers. All those promises. I'll be there. You won't be alone. I won't let you fail.

"He was fucking good at it, too. Which should make me feel better, but…"

But somehow it's just salt in the wound.

"Not sure if Richie's gonna be talking to me anytime soon." He picks his head up and scrubs his fingers through his hair. Pulls his palms down his face.

She waits. Just more silence. "Say more?"

"We both said some shit through that door that there's no taking back." Tucks his hands into his armpits like he's trying to stay warm.

"You're family. He'll come around."

"You say family like it means something other than pure fucking chaos. Than the people who know exactly where to where to slide the knife to cut you wide fucking open and leave you bleeding out on the floor."

She rolls onto her side, one arm tucked under her head. He's trembling, just a little, in the low, low light. "Nat's not going to cut you open."

"No, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't sew me back up."

She puts her free hand on his shoulder, tentatively at first and then with some weight when he reaches up across his body, other hand still tucked in against himself, and catches her fingers with his own. Still far too cold.

She wills warmth through the touch, and takes a breath. Lets it out. "I think maybe this is something we either do broken or we don't do at all."

He blinks fast through threatening tears. Bites his lip. Another car swishes by through the rain.

He squeezes her hand. Sirens in the distance. Out on the bridge.

She squeezes back. The tracks are flooding, all the trains called off. Who knows what the city will look like at morning light. Maybe better, maybe worse.

She watches shadows on the ceiling of this place, this island in the storm, and breathes, and listens to him breathe beside her.

They don't let go.

#the bear #the bear fx #the bear fx fanfiction #carmy x sydney #sydcarmy #you can read it as platonic or romantic your choice #by:hopeintheashes #my bthb fics #badthingshappenbingo #fandom: the bear #trope: caught in a storm

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loserdiaz · 1 year

Text

I'm so in love that I might stop breathing

buck/eddie | teen and up | 5.5k words

After a few bites he starts to heat up even more and it might show on his face because Eddie shoots him a couple of confused and concerned looks but otherwise doesn't say anything. He shakes his head and coughs around the tickle in his throat that wouldn't go away, that is only getting stronger. Buck reaches for his drink again and coughs into the cup, unable to take the long drink he wanted.

"Baby, are you okay?" Eddie is now resting a hand on Buck's cheek and it feels cold against his heated skin. His boyfriend is looking more and more concerned by the minute and his parents join, looking at Buck with knotted eyebrows and pursed lips.

Fuck. This night was supposed to be perfect and Buck is ruining it with his stupid cough. or: In which Eddie's parents come to visit, Buck is an idiot and as always, a family dinner goes wrong. BTHB Prompt: Allergic Reaction

read on ao3

#bad things happen bingo #bthb prompt #buddie #tv: 911 #eddie diaz #evan buckley #evan buck buckley #buck x eddie #buddie fanfiction #buddie fanfic #buddie fic #911 fic #911 fanfiction #911 fanfic #my writing #april writes #911onabc #911 on fox

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sunshinediaz · 1 month

Text

i like the way you scratch my itch | 2.9k, teen

fill for @badthingshappenbingo—hives

A loud bang resounds through the house and Eddie knows it’s Buck on the other side of the door because the motherfucker likes to kick instead of knock, a bad habit Christopher’s picked up on, and he’d be considerably more pissed off if he wasn’t actively on his death bed but, as it is, he simply sighs and gets up off the couch anyway. (It’s poison ivy. He has poison ivy. He’s not dying, but he feels like it. He itches everywhere—the tips of his fingers and between his toes and behind his ears and in the small part of his back where he can’t reach no matter how he screws his arm up. He’s not being very brave about it.) He opens the door and there’s Buck, arms loaded with reusable bags and grinning toothily, ear to ear, like he’s in on a secret and he’s not sharing with anyone. The sun halos him from behind, painting him yellow and orange and bright white; his shirt’s inside out and his hair isn’t brushed, sitting on top of his head in big, loose curls. He looks cozy and comfortable and gorgeous. Eddie kind of wants the world to swallow him whole because he’s in no mood to shove down how much he’s in love with Buck right now. His scalp itches, for fuck’s sake. He can’t handle much more before he starts crying. “Hi, Buck.” “Hey, man.” Buck smiles like the sun shines just because he asked. “You look like shit.” Eddie guffaws and hangs his head. “Thanks,” he mumbles, stepping aside to give Buck plenty of room. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” Buck just hums and beelines toward the kitchen, where he sets the bags down on the island. “Cap let us go early and I stopped at the store for some supplies,” he says, as if he didn’t hear Eddie—or he’s ignoring Eddie, which is more likely. “That’s a lot of supplies.” “Hen made a list of things that might help you and I went a little wild at the store.” Buck shrugs, like this isn’t one of the most romantic gestures in the whole wide world, and pulls out several bottles of calamine lotion and a large container of oats. “I brought stuff to cook, too. Figured I’d make us an early lunch while you take an oatmeal bath.” Shivers crawl up Eddie’s spine and he scratches the rash on both of his hips absently. “I hate oatmeal baths,” he says, every bit the pitiful grown man he is. “And then we can get you down to the walk-in for a steroid shot in the ass.” “I hate steroid shots in the ass.”

read the rest on ao3

#have a silly stupid little fic since it's spring and i'm gonna be fighting for my life against poison ivy soon!#911 #911 fic #eddie diaz #evan buckley #buddie #buddie fic #my fics #bthb fics

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hoodie-buck · 1 year

Text

bthb: ambush

happy birthday pt. 2 for @swiftiediaz who demanded asked me to finish this vampire fic for her. and bc i can’t tell my wife no….here ya’ll go!! ❤️

rated: t | words: 6.5k | read on ao3

summary:

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

It took a few more moments, but Buck finally shook his head, eyes turning that glowing red as he looked down to his hands, almost as if he were seeing the gory site for the first time.

“S’not—not mine.”

Athena gave a shake of her head, slowly approaching Buck.

“That’s ok. Can I take a look at it?”

The blood smelled familiar, the scent often lingering around Buck.

“Buck, who’s blood is this?”

She could feel Buck’s hands tremble in her own, Buck seeming panicked, pained. His tongue jutted out like he was going to lick at his lips, but then remembered and thought better of it.

“It’s-it’s Eddies….Eddie’s blood.”

—or—

Vampire!Buck and human Eddie get ambushed on their first date

tagging squad below, just lmk if you wanna be added or removed <3

tags: @buddiextarlos @swiftiediaz @mansikkaomenabanaani @confetti-cupcake @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @howardmisteraprilhan @loveyourownsmiilee @justsmilestuffhappens @swiftiebuckleys @honestlydarkprincess @zainclaw @eddiescowboy @djdangerlove @bifirefighters @mr-and-mr-diaz @blaidddrwg1982 @buddierights @crazyfangirlallert @monsterrae1 @wh0re-behavi0r @panicatthediaz @princessbb @jacksadventuresinwriting @eddiediazisascorpio @stanningsky @screaminghowls @buckaroo118 @angelwiththeblue-box @spotsandsocks @elvensorceress @alyxmastershipper

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distinctlywhumpthing · 9 months

Text

In League — Nightmare

Masterlist

Summary: August still feels out of place in the house after trying to escape run away but a nightmare has him seeking Wyatt's comfort...

(This was in the Google Drive Black Hole until @peachy-panic's This Could Be The Moment and @hold-him-down's Not Ideal inspired me to polish it in the spirit of Bad Nights. If you haven't read these pieces (& entire series) yet, you should plan on getting zero work done this week because you now have more important things to do.)

CW: Late-19th century, indentured servitude/classism, explicit language, past-noncon implied, power dynamics, carewhumper/sympathetic whumper. Beta read by @alittlewhump!

August didn’t like sleeping alone.

He missed being allowed to sleep in the chair, knowing all night that Wyatt was near, working at the desk or asleep in the bed. He would’ve kept to the chair forever if it had meant he didn’t have to be alone at night, in the dark where Keats could still find him.

The nightmare hadn’t been anything novel. He was always struggling to regain some ground, all the while only digging himself deeper. Sometimes Fionn was there, hurting. Keats would lay a trap and August would walk right into it. Without fail. Hopeless, thoughtless, thankless. He was too slow, too dim-witted not to fall for the tricks every time, even in his own dreams.

He’d awoken to his heart beating like a drum between his ribs. Chest both gnawingly hollow and achingly tight. The room was pitch-dark, with no moon or stars shining through the window. Even the fire had died in the hearth like the night was snuffing out all light. He’d played the unwitting accomplice, banishing any chance of warmth by casting all the blankets and even the pillows to the floor in sleep. He wrapped his arms around himself tightly, shivering.

There were still many things he didn’t understand or trust about his place here and the older boy who had given it to him. But Wyatt had a way of making Keats feel like a small, distant memory and that was exactly what August needed right now.

When he’d asked to stay—or rather, accepted Wyatt’s invitation to stay by way of needlessly asking his permission, Wyatt had insisted August take his bed. A laughable stipulation, considering how much worse he’d had than an armchair by a warm fire, but Wyatt had insisted. So, August had Wyatt’s room and bed to himself at night while Wyatt slept in the spare bed in Theo’s room down the end of the hall.

August paused at Theo’s door, leaning around the frame, the corner of the wood pressing into his collarbone. Wyatt was alone, sleeping with his back to the open door. Theo’s was probably among the voices that occasionally rose from downstairs, a sliver of bright electric light seeping from under the parlour door and trying to climb to light the stairs. It was just enough brightness that August had been able to avoid the creakier of the floorboards in the old house. After hovering in the doorway uneasily for five full minutes to confirm Theo wasn’t coming upstairs, he tiptoed in, chilly air nipping at the strip of bare skin between his stockings and underbreeches. The rest of the house was always freezing in comparison to Wyatt’s room. August had eventually learned that none of the others ever bothered with fires, a realisation that had made heat spread through his chest like the very warmth Wyatt kept him in.

It was hard to distinguish Wyatt himself from the bedcovers, fabric from skin, where one stopped and the other began, in the darkness. The bed itself and the man on it a single unbroken silhouette, carved from shadow marble. His even breath the only sign he wasn’t stone. August felt even more obtrusive standing over him. He crouched instead, not sure if he should sit on the edge of the bed without being invited and reluctant to kneel on the cold floor.

He hesitated countless times, hand hovering in the open space between them, heart sprinting in his chest. What if he was given more than a hand to hold, the warm embrace he sought? Even in the face of the vows Wyatt made during the day, August had never met a promise that didn’t have a trap door. And coming to Wyatt’s bed like this in the middle of the night was as good a reason to use it as any. His nerves rose steadily until it was like his heart beat between his ears and it was all he could hear or feel, swaying in the darkness to the tide of his own pulse.

A clatter from downstairs almost had him bolting back to his borrowed bed, ill dreams or not, lest someone else catch him out of it. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he’d rather it be Wyatt than anyone else, when the tables finally turned.

Now or never.

He reached out, brushing his fingertips over Wyatt’s bare shoulder. As faint as the hope he clung to that this would be no different than any other time Wyatt had comforted him. “Wyatt?”

Wyatt grumbled, turning onto his side to face August but not opening his eyes. He let his arm fall open, extended out toward August.

His heart hammered on in his chest as he held his breath waiting for more of an indication from Wyatt. More of an invitation or a dismissal.

Was that space meant for August? Or was Wyatt only reaching out his hand?

They’d never lain side by side before but Wyatt was always looping an arm around his shoulders during the day, swift to pull him into an embrace in those embarrassing moments when he lost his composure.

Or was Wyatt simply fast asleep?

August twisted his fingers in the fabric of the nightshirt Wyatt had given him, knees starting to ache from crouching. He’d disturbed Wyatt enough thusfar. He ought to leave him in peace. But the thought of leaving had him swallowing a lump in his throat and blinking away tears, as though Wyatt were truly sending him away, rejecting him. An unwarranted, invented ache.

It was for the best that he hadn’t roused Wyatt fully. He should feel lucky that he hadn’t gotten more than he bargained for. That Wyatt wasn’t the sort to thrash him simply for the disturbance. At least, he hadn’t shown himself to be that sort yet. August uncurled his fingers, pulse throbbing in his fingertips from how tightly he’d bound them in the fabric in his fists. He swiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand and rose.

Wyatt sighed, fingers at the end of his open arm curling away from August, beckoning him closer.

August’s heart faltered in his chest and against all reason, his tears fell with renewed urgency. He sniffled and fruitlessly wiped at them again before ever so gently, lying down at Wyatt’s side.

He settled on top of the bedcovers since Wyatt hadn’t lifted them. It wouldn’t matter anyway once he was closer to Wyatt, in his arms. His heart still felt like it was beating too heavily in his chest. As though he were stealing something he didn’t deserve, hadn’t earned. He took a deep breath, forcing the air in past his galloping heart and chased away the memories of his nightmares and of Keats. Wyatt was nothing like him, had only ever welcomed him with open arms.

August inched closer, resting his forehead against the older boy’s shoulder, hands tucked up between them. Wyatt’s breath tickled through his hair, in and out. If August flattened his hand, he could feel Wyatt’s steady heartbeat, its comforting metronome. He—

Wyatt drew in a sharp breath and shoved August back. He crashed to the floor, yelping as his head cracked against the corner of the solid bedside table.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, scrambling off his back as Wyatt’s shadow sat up in the bed, looming over him.

Wyatt didn’t move, didn’t dignify his feeble apology with a response. But he had to be furious for how hard and fast he was breathing, for how rigid his shadow was, as though he truly was stone.

August’s heart carried on beating erratically in his chest. It didn’t feel right. It felt like it would swallow him, end him from the inside out, compounding his fear with each consuming beat. “I’m sorry,” he repeated lamely, voice shaking. He didn’t know what else to say. When Wyatt still didn’t acknowledge him, he inched forward, reaching out—

“Don’t fucking touch me.” Wyatt stood and August cowered back with a whine, hands coming up to protect his head. He couldn’t do anything right, perpetually reduced to crawling back like a puppy who’d been kicked but was too stupid to learn its place.

It was all he was, broken, desperate. Exactly as Keats had made him. “Please, sir. I beg your pardon.” He hadn’t called Wyatt that in weeks, had been able to rise just a little bit in his esteem, and even his own. Until now. He started crying in earnest, the tension from his uncontrolled heart and the open fall of failure overtaking him. “I’m sorry, sir. Please—”

Wyatt skirted away from him, bringing his hands up to his head in his rage. As far as possible from the pathetic mess of a boy who’d overstepped his welcome. He would have run if Wyatt hadn't been blocking his way to the door. Sobs halted his apologies so he pulled his knees up to his chest and waited, never taking his eyes off Wyatt.

But crying would not constitute an apology, hiding from punishment even worse, and he needed to fix this. If he wasn’t dead in a day on the streets, Keats would find him. To remain in this house, even chained in the basement, was preferable. He would offer anything, surrender any part of himself, to stay with Wyatt. Make himself smaller, bend, break to counterbalance this fault, to regain what standing he’d had. He had brought this on himself and he would face the consequences. Prove––

A light in the doorway silenced his undeserved tears and he held his breath.

“Wyatt?” It was Theo. And no one behind him, which was a small mercy, though it didn’t promise anything about what was coming for August. Theo lifted the candle, scanning the room until his gaze fell on August.

A whimper escaped his lips and before he could sort himself to make some attempt at apology, Theo was moving. He couldn’t help himself, he covered his head again.

Only Theo paid him no mind, just went to the chair at the foot of the bed and gathered Wyatt’s clothes in his free arm. He thrust them at Wyatt with enough force that August heard the impact, pushing them at the unmoving statue that used to be Wyatt until he was forced to take a step back and finally brought his arms up to cradle the clothes.

“Go on,” Theo said, keeping his voice low.

Wyatt didn’t move. August couldn’t see his face from this angle but after a moment it became clear that something was transpiring. Something excluding August.

“Get some air. Don’t worry, I’ve got him.”

His stomach dropped. He didn’t want Wyatt to leave when things were like this, when he hadn’t told him that he hadn’t meant to be so much trouble and that he would face the consequences well. But he couldn’t find his voice.

With one more moment’s hesitation but not a second glance in his direction, Wyatt left and August was alone with Theo.

First thing he did was set the candle on one of the posts of his bed. A precarious placement that had once lost August the privilege of candles for an entire month –of bruised shins and stubbed toes– at Elmwood. But Theo didn’t have to worry about things like that. None of the other boys here did. At least, August didn’t think so; even if they didn’t have much, they were all equal. Theo bent down a few paces away, resting his forearms on his knees.

“August, you all right down here?”

He wasn’t sure what to say, or if he could say much of anything without just crying some more. He swallowed, to see if his throat was clear enough for words. It wasn’t.

“I know you’re frightened,” Theo said gently.

That only made the lump in August’s throat worse, sobs closer to escaping his lips.

Theo watched him carefully, as was his wont. August fought shy of meeting his gaze. It made him nervous, how heedful Theo always was. What might he observe and, worse, what might he tell Wyatt?

“You’re not in any trouble.” August couldn’t help but look straight into his eyes now. Watchful as they were, he didn’t find them deceitful. “I promise, everything will right.”

He hoped Wyatt would agree.

“Why don’t you let me help you up? We’ll sort you out, too.” He held out one of his hands. “It’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you.”

When August reached out, his palm shone crimson in the candlelight.

To be continued...

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