#( answered ) / * ghosts and devils come callin' . | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deniigi · 4 years

Note

Jack and the other folks at the gym; how they met, what their relationships are like, how they are with Matt etc.

For you, anon. I have an old fic that answers all of these questions.

It’s written from the perspective of Jack’s best friend and sparring partner Rudy DeLuca.

Title: Tape

Summary: There were two generations of devils at Fogwell’s Gym

Warnings: child abuse, physical abuse, references to drug use and suicide/suicide attempts, and foster care

-------------

There was a famed baby at the gym at the moment and Rudy was scheming how to get it into his arms when the old man caught him leaning on the front desk and told him that he had two whole grandbabies waitin’ for him at home.

Matty took that moment to fly in from the back room where he’d been harrassing the shit out of the new ‘clerk’ (as Fogwell called him) to ask if Tina had finally popped.

Rudy was caught off guard by the image of Tina beating the shit out of Matt for that and then by the wave of nostalgia that the kid’s sudden enthusiasm bought.

“Well, look who’s here?” he drawled instead, slowly turning around towards the beast. “Where you been, neighbor?”

Matt beamed at him.

He looked good.

Happy.

Far, far too happy.

Rudy squinted.

Matt waited a beat, then scrambled back into staff entrance and knocked shit over on the desk back there in his haste to go hide behind Fogwell.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

That’s right, troublemaker, go hide behind Grandpa. He’ll protect you, you little shit.

The new gym baby was a full two months old. He was fat and grumpy and his papa’s pride and joy already. Rudy managed to snag an opportunity to get the thing into his arms when Bert and Kenny came in, signaling for the youths that the senior citizen shift had begun.

Fogwell was the most distinguished of the senior citizens, but, of course, he would wait his turn until the rest of them had finished lavishing attention upon his fiftieth great-grandbaby.

Baby’s papa was proud as a peacock.

“His name’s Henry,” he told Rudy, while Henry wrinkled his nose and eyes up at him.

Henry.

Ehn.

Terrible name.

“He looks like a John,” Rudy said.

Papa, who Rudy had forgotten the name of at least six times since he’d joined the gym, laughed.

“I thought about callin’ him Jack,” he said. “But my girl drew the line there.”

Ah.

Right.

This was that kid.

Kenny had gathered everyone into a group huddle in the changing room the other week to explain seriously how they all needed to avoid the fuck out of this guy. He’d said in a whisper that the guy was one of them people into vintage shit.

A hipster, he meant.

A fuckin’ hipster in their midst.

God, there were more and more of them in the gym every day.

Rudy lifted an eyebrow at baby Henry.

He didn’t deserve to be called Henry. He really did look more like a John. But, for the sake of the dead, Rudy decided that he’d squint for as hard and long as it took for him to become a Henry.

---

Fogwell’s had been legendary back in the day for producing pro boxers out of good-for-nothin’, trouble-makin’ guys with no other prospects.

Fogwell was that general from Mulan who made men out of boys (and the occasional girl. And the most recent kid who said that they weren’t a guy or a gal and if anyone wanted to throw down about it, they were posting their number on the cork board by the front desk).

Back in Rudy’s youth, that had been appealing as hell. And so he’d had a swagger on into the place, thinking that maybe he would pop his guns a bit in Fogwell’s direction and get the polishing he needed to make enough money to buy his girl a ring.

On the upside, Fogwell had, in fact, noticed him. But the downside was that Rudy had had no fucking clue what that actually meant, and so three years later, he’d found himself smoking only twice a week instead of every day, drinking goddamn protein shakes, and doing a daily fuckin’ jog like a military brat.

Fogwell had no time for dumb shit. He didn’t care if you wanted to kill yourself slowly with whatever vice you picked from the basket, but if you walked into the ring with his name on your back, then you would disgrace that name on pain of divine retribution.

It was way easier just to get one step ahead of the guy’s nit-picking than to suffer his judgemental silence.

That had been Fogwell back in the day, and that was still Fogwell in the now.

But as with any force of nature, even if the old man had planted his feet and announced his intention to rest there in that place for the next two millenia, the world around him still carried on spinning around.

Fogwell’s wasn’t just a facility for churning out pros these days. It wasn’t just legendary, now.

It was a fuckin’ institution.

God help them.

They were a tourist destination. Ghost hunters, folks on buses, sports fans, teen girls with a mighty need for a vintage-lookin’ selfie. You name it. They pressed their noses up against the yellowed glass to watch the people inside break their bodies down to build them up into something money-making.

It wasn’t an unwarranted curiosity, to be fair.

Fogwell had produced twenty pro boxers in the last several decades who’d really made it. Like, really, really made it.

Bert was one of them—to literally every one of the senior citizens’ surprise.

Bert had been a empty-headed wise-guy with a porn-stache at best way back when. And like, don’t get Rudy wrong, he was still an empty-headed wise-guy. He was just an empty-headed wise guy with a head like a helmet and a whole lot of money now.

Not that you’d have known it from lookin’ at him.

Bless him.

He was paying college tuition for all his kids and he was helping the older ones vet kindergartens with tuition or what the fuck ever, doing all that he could so that those babies didn’t have to live life out of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese boxes like him.

Bert had made it. That was the dream.

The dream was just that, though. A shot in the dark. A drop in a bucket. Kenny had done alright, just like Rudy had done alright. They’d had their ten minutes of time in the spotlight. Had made enough to get by. Had made enough to be comfortable in Hell’s Kitchen. To retire and become personal trainers or sports commentators or whatever the fuck opportunity jumped up in their faces.

A lot of fellas hadn’t made it, though. And then there were the Almosts.

Jackie had been an Almost, god rest his soul.

This new hipster kid at the gym with his baby had latched onto Jack’s image, found in old magazines and grainy footage, and had decided that that whole vibe fit the image that he wanted to live in.

It made Rudy sick. It made Kenny angry—hence the group huddle.

There were about seven of them left who’d both known Jackie and who still used the gym on the regular. Eight if you included Fogwell.

Nine if you included Matty.

Jesus fuckin’ help them.

This dumbass hipster kid didn’t even know who Matty was. Most of the newcomers didn’t. He was just some bright, perky blind guy to them. He was Center-Left-Second-Back bag. That was his bag.

And he was good.

He was a curiosity to the newcomers and the people pressed against glass—one of a handful of middle-weights in a sea of heavyweights. He didn’t look like everyone else. He wasn’t packing muscle like everyone else. He was lithe and coiled and looked, honestly, a little out of place to folks who didn’t know the gym as Home #2.

He was interesting to the newcomers mostly because he was 100% Fogwell’s favorite. Fogwell doted on him by ribbing him and bullying him viciously, by bumping into him and throwing him off mark left and right, and all the while, Matty just beamed.

The newbies thought he got preferential treatment because he was blind. But that wasn’t it. Matty got treated that way because that was how his grandpa told him he loved him.

---

Before Jake and Carlos and Omar and Matty, Jack had been Fogwell’s favorite up-and-coming rookie.

It had been no secret. Well. To most people.

Jack had been horrified when he’d found out.

No one wanted to be Fogwell’s favorite. That’s how you went pro whether you liked it or fucking not.

Jack had pleaded with Kenny for hours to take his place, but there was nothing that could be done. Jackie was the youngest and Jackie had come from a shit home life and Jackie would do anything and everything Fogwell told him to do because he was just that kind of sweet and respectful.

Fogwell could smell Jack’s lack of a father-figure on him like Chanelle No. 5.

He could smell it miles away.

Jack had actually been at the gym before Rudy had joined up. He’d been around since he was about seventeen. He’d come in on the heels of his big brother who wanted to go pro.

It quickly became apparent to Fogwell that Tom Murdock didn’t have what it took to be a boxer. He was just a bully. But that little brother of his, Tom’s punching bag, now he had some talent. He had the diligence and respect that the game, in Fogwell’s opinion, was severely lacking.

So Fogwell did what he did best and drove a wedge slowly between Tom and baby Jackie, separating the two of them so that he could get his mitts on Jackie and do something with him before Tom and his junkie sister took Jackie down with them.

Rudy had met Jack soon after Jack’s eldest brother had been arrested for murdering his wife and stepdaughter.

The kid was a wreck. He’d just turned 18.

He didn’t talk. He just fought and fought and fought until he cried and cried and cried. All on his own, from 5pm to 1am, at Center-Left-Second-Back.

Fogwell let him.

Fogwell came over to put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed when he finally dropped from exhaustion.

It was hard to watch.

The older guard at the time had bared their teeth and clenched their jaws as Jackie had pummeled his heart out against that bag.

No one could help him.

Everyone but Rudy, at that time, had seen the man he’d walked into the gym with. They’d seen this coming a mile away. And over a few days of that, it become clear to Rudy that Jack didn’t have a home to go back to that didn’t scream at him from morning until night. At that time, the gym for him was Home #1.

---

It took about a year, but Rudy eventually got to know this weeping, heartbroken boy from the worst side of the Kitchen.

Rudy learned from the others about the Murdocks.

They were sinners and drunkards and addicts, word had it. The police were always in and out of their rooms, taking one of the five kids or one of the parents to jail for some damn reason or another. Neighbors wasted their hard-earned money on phone calls to the police for domestic disputes and violence and so on and so on. Everyone on the streets said to be careful of the Murdocks, especially them boys.

They got the devil in ‘em.

But not Jackie, Rudy learned.

He was shy, bless him. He wasn’t suited to those others’ kind of life.

Rudy actually had felt, for the second time in his life, strong brotherly feelings around this kid. He and his own sister didn’t get on until someone threatened the other. Then it was no-holds-barred, bear-like feelings. Just them against the world.

But Jack was different. He had puppy eyes with a constant black one and perpetually chapped lips. It had never occurred to him that he could spend a buck buying chapstick. It had never occurred to him that he could have friends that he didn’t have to smile at until his face hurt.

He didn’t really get what it meant to have relationships with other people and for the first six months of their acquaintance, Jack refused to meet Rudy’s eye, much less say more than five words to him.

He was more than respectful.

He was skittish.

The other guys, who were happy to haze Rudy, warned him that he if so much as looked at that kid, Fogwell would break his bones and his career would be over before it even started.

It had definitely turned into a kind of spite thing.

Rudy had absolutely been that kind of shithead back then.

He’d started by offering to hold Jack’s bag while he worked out his aggression. That had been a mistake.

He’d caught Fogwell snickering at him about ten minutes into it, after trying and failing that whole time to find a way to plant his feet that would let him actually hold onto the bag.

Jack had noticed.

Jack had gotten flustered and freaked out bad enough that Rudy had been forced to leave him be or else he’d hyperventilate or go hide in the backroom in a cupboard or something in self-flagellation.

It took some practice and some muscle, but they got there in the end.

Jack was a great sparring partner because he did not fucking go down. It was like trying to fight a pine tree sometimes. He would, could, and did take hit after hit without batting an eye.

And when it was his turn for offense?

Rudy was well aware that he’d signed up to be a human punching bag, but this? This was a lot.

Fogwell critiqued the fuck out of Jack’s everything.

His form.

His posture.

His aim.

His drive.

His commitment.

His tape.

His fucking hair.

Jack thought he was like that with everyone.

Rudy loved that kid like a brother, but he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. Not by far.

That had become more clear when Kenny joined their mottley crew and, aggravatingly sharp, had taken to teasing Jack. That was more frustrating for Kenny than anyone else because Jackie didn’t get a single joke or jibe.

No, Jack didn’t know Seinfield. Or Friends. Or Charlie’s Angels. No, he didn’t know anything about cars. No, he didn’t know about physics or chemistry or math. What the fuck was English lit? Wait, what’s the difference between books and literature?

God.

Bless.

That.

Kid.

He wasn’t unintelligent, he just wasn’t academic.

He was sweet about it, though. The youngest of five, he had no choice but to be sweet because all his siblings called him hopeless and useless and stupid, so he had to be something and so pretty it was.

Rudy had never met someone who performed so well under pressure and around two years into their friendship and, suddenly privy to the full extent of Jack’s honestly horrific, borderline surreal upbringing, he finally got it.

But then along came Grace.

The Lord’s agent herself.

Jack was a good Catholic boy who saw a nun and dropped his eyes, but for some reason, this novice caught his gaze and he was gone.

He got dopey and dreamy the night after she and some friends had snuck out in their novice habits to see a load of guys in desperate need of the Lord hitting on each other.

It was tooth-decaying the way Jack swooned for that girl.

Her name was Margaret, she told him saucily at the church one street over from the one he’d grown up attending, but he could call her ‘Grace.’

Jack banged his melon on a locker a week later at the gym and the jolt make him realize that he was in love with her.

He cracked his head a second time with everyone watching him in a mix of pity, exhaustion, and indulgence and then scurried off to the bathroom to hyperventilate over a urinal.

“Someone go keep Baby M from drowning in a sink,” Horace Whalin, a professional beast at the start of his career, had sighed.

Everyone had looked right at Rudy.

---

Grace was the worst thing that could ever have happened to Jack.

Everyone at the gym knew it. Fogwell hated that girl with a cold passion.

She made Jack stupider than usual. Bolder than ever.

She made him think and made him question things and like, that was probably a good thing in terms of Jack’s life experience and mental health, but in terms of boxing?

Not good.

Fogwell was openly dreaming up schemes to break them up the day Jack came tearing into the gym and announced that he was getting married.

It took everything in Rudy not to start cackling right then and there. The entire gym’s necklines bulged with the effort not to fucking laugh. Fogwell went silent and blank.

He’d waved Jack in close and and when he came—because he would always come to Fogwell, no matter what—the old man set a hand on Jack’s shoulder and told him that if he brought that woman into the gym he’d kill him.

Jack stared up at him and said that they were getting married in a church, Coach. Why would he bring her to the gym?

At that point, it would have taken a saint not to laugh and the gym was full of only sinners.

---

Grace was the worst thing that had ever happened to Jack, but Matty was by far, the best thing.

Fogwell, after being vindicated upon Jack and Grace’s abrupt and tragic separation, found that Matt could be used as a motivator for his up-and-comer.

Matty, of course, played the part beautifully.

He was unfairly cute with those delicate, whispy red locks and them big hazel eyes. He was bubbly and chatty. An unrelenting troublemaker. Just a barrel of laughs.

Fogwell took to letting Jack put Matty’s carrier on a bench next to the ring or on one of the metal bleachers around the mats in the weights and sparring room. He found that if Matty started whining or crying, that Jack got twice as motivated to finish whatever task was at hand with maximum efficiency.

Matt was the best thing to ever happen to Jack’s boxing career, truly.

He also immediately became the gym’s darling because all the veterans there at that point were dads. Rudy himself had had his first girl Tina the year before, but unlike Jack, the rest of them had childcare arrangements and the money to maintain them.

---

It was just natural for people to gravitate towards the baby. Out of paternal instincts, yeah, but also because Matty was a source of constant entertainment.

He called everyone uncle until he was seven and he needed to be negotiated with to leave Fogwell be until he was nine. Fogwell didn’t mind him. Fogwell had unwittingly adopted him.

Matty didn’t meet his own uncles and grandpa. Jack couldn’t bear that. He took Matty to meet Bill, Jack’s eldest brother—the one who’d killed his wife—in jail and afterwards had been heart-broken and anxious for days.

Grace did not approve, it turned out.

Grace, who went by Maggie at that point, and who had given up her rights to be the mother of Jack’s child, remained one of Jack’s closest and dearest friends.

They still loved each other, and in Fogwell’s very correct opinion, that was nothing but trouble. He snatched Matty at every opportunity and informed him softly but firmly that he was not going to fall in love with a nun when he was big or there would be consequences.

Matt seemed to have come to understand this rule over time, but he never seemed to put together pieces as to why Fogwell was so insistent about it.

---

When Jack turned up murdered, everyone at the gym decided that it was their fault.

It was surreal.

Unbelieveable.

He’d been right there, just fine, laughing and smiling the day before. Rudy had held his bag and Jack had told him to tell the girls and Mel that he missed them.

And, in a moment of crushing realization back then, Rudy had understood the implications of those words and then remembered how good Jack had always been about smiling at people.

He knew how to make himself seem okay and unimportant. He knew how to fade into the background.

Fogwell took it hard.

He blamed himself for not recognizing how bad things had gotten at home for Jack and Matty. He blamed himself for not booking him for more jobs, for pushing him harder and harder on his form lately.

Matty was taken away by social services and his absence from the table at the gym the next day finally brought out the tears that Rudy hadn’t been able to let fall.

He tried.

He tried, he did.

Over the years, Matty had become a brother to Tina, Angie, and Penelope. He fit right in that two-year gap between Tina and Angie. Rudy had him over when Jack worked and Jack had the girls when Mel needed a break from the screaming and crying. And really, by then, everyone’s kids were everyone’s at the gym.

It wasn’t a matter of who belonged to who, it was more of a matter of when someone belonged to someone.

Rudy tried to get custody or at least foster rights. Mel gave herself an ulcer over it, trying to think of how to arrange things to make their home safe for Matt. Trying to think of how to make space for him. He could share a room with Tina. They were still young. They probably wouldn’t mind after some growing pains. But social services said that that wasn’t possible. Matt was too high-risk for them. They didn’t have enough experience with ‘his type of child.’

Which was bullshit.

Matt wasn’t high-risk, Matty was traumatized and scared and with people he didn’t know, who didn’t know him.

That was what made him high-risk.

He knew Rudy and Mel’s house. He knew their girls. He knew their neighborhood.

Still, nothing.

Fogwell himself tried. Shocked the shit out of everyone at the gym, but Social services sadly shook their heads.

By then, Matt had been placed out already.

---

Matt disappeared for five years. Just vanished completely. There was no sight of him until one day, Tina came home and said that ‘oh yeah, I saw Matty today’ while playing with her food at the dinner table.

Rudy and Mel had set down their forks.

Tina sighed and said that he was taller now, but he didn’t look good.

He looked sick, she said. With dark rings around his eyes and broken sunglasses. He’d been sleeping, leaning against the side of some stairs out in his school uniform at the Catholic highschool a few blocks away.

She’d poked at her chicken and then set down her fork and excused herself.

Rudy stroked her hair that night as she cried into her pillow for her lost brother.

---

Matt was, by fifteen, a troubled kid.

Rudy heard shouting one day from Clinton Church and stepped out to see what was happening. He was shocked to see that familiar ginger mop struggling in the arms of two cops, swearing that if these people took him back to wherever he’d come from, that he’d kill himself. He’d do it. Don’t try him.

The priest was called.

Matt was forced down to the ground and handcuffed, still fighting.

It was--it was a whole lot to see. Kenny swore softly behind him and Bert left them to go back inside. He went to the bathroom and didn’t join them out on the mats for a while.

---

Fogwell decided around then that enough was enough.

He went to the church and asked if he could borrow Matt for a while. He needed some help getting his accounts together and he knew Matt was a bright kid. Giving him a little work experience in a familiar and disciplined setting would be good for him.

But Matt wasn’t there.

---

The hospital didn’t allow anyone to visit Matt. He apparently hadn’t earned the privilege of visitors from anyone who wasn’t on his care team.

Rudy felt numb at the front desk.

Jack’s boy had tried to kill himself. He’d warned them all that he would do it.

He’d apparently screamed himself hoarse that he wanted to be with his dad in the ground.

He was still screaming.

This wasn’t the first time he’d done any of this, Rudy came to learn through a few whispered conversations with some nuns from St. Agnes.

Grace had found him after the three attempts the nuns knew of. This last one was just bad enough that she couldn’t bring him back from the edge.

Grace’s eldest younger sister had committed suicide. Grace had found her and then left home immediately become a novice. To find her own son as she’d once found her sister was cosmic and divine cruelty—enough that even Fogwell shook his head and said it just wasn’t right.

---

The first time Rudy saw Matty after the whole situation, he looked exactly as Tina said he did. Tired. With dark circles. Thin. His clothes threatened to fall off of him. They were threadbare and had holes in them here and there.

Matty didn’t talk.

He moved his head around a lot and jerked when anyone spoke to him or brushed against him, and he scrambled back and tripped sometimes if he was touched directly.

It was like looking at a smaller, thinner version of Jack all those years ago—this time with tightly bound wrists and a hospital bracelet that looked like it had been stretched and torn and chewed on.

Fogwell asked Matt if he thought he could do something with the accounts.

Matt said nothing.

Fogwell gave him a box of receipts and bits and bobs of payment cards and IOUs and Matt had frowned and put his hand into the box to touch its feathery contents. He’d lifted his face up in Fogwell’s direction and sneered.

“You can’t seriously live like this,” he’d said in a voice that almost brought tears to Rudy’s eyes. He’d heard Kenny clear his throat behind him.

---

Matty was the smartest person Rudy had ever met.

He set Fogwell’s accounts into order in an afternoon and then he fucked off for a few days, only to come back and digitize the whole thing after making the Big Man himself sit with him and read everything out individually to him as punishment for his nasty, twentieth-century ways.

Matt was disgusted with Grandpa’s living conditions.

He banged into every object in the backroom and swore like a sailor, loud enough that the folks hitting shit in the front room could hear him.

It was hard not to laugh.

“WHY?” Matt finally raged at Grandpa. “WHY. WHY. WHY?”

Grandpa shrugged.

Matt flailed at him in agitation at the lack of verbal answer and told him to get into the fartherest corner of the room and to get a pen, they were going to organize.

Matt was the reason that Fogwell’s Gym had survived for long enough to become a tourist trap.

Matt put every document in that place in order, ready for an audit. He made computer systems for payments and receipts and direct debits. He singlehandedly bullied Fogwell into the new century and made him get a card machine.

He bitched and moaned and belly-ached until Fogwell had interviewed a handful of tax people with actual, non-criminal reputations and picked one and once he was done with all that, Matt harrassed him to invest in a deep clean for the place and to make it accessible by ADA guidelines—the whole nine yards.

Matt, at fifteen, breathed new life into Fogwell’s Gym and it was kind of amazing how the place went from barely hanging on to a decent business once more.

---

After that, Matt seemed to be doing a lot better.

He didn’t have any more foster home placements. He didn’t try to hurt himself again. He decided, instead, that he was going to graduate highschool. He’d failed a fuckload of classes, though. Rudy found him despairing in the backroom over these and settled in across from him and asked to see the reports.

They weren’t good.

Matty’s teachers wrote constantly that Matt was extremely bright, but failed to participate in class or turn pretty much anything in for a grade. He slept in class. He seemed dazed. He didn’t ask for help or give any indication that he needed it.

His assigned para said that she found him challenging to work with. He was resistant to questions and seemed to be angry or, at best, uninterested in her speaking to him.

He was way behind.

Rudy had tapped the reports against the table back there and had taken a deep breath.

“It’s okay,” he told Matt. “We’ve got two years. We can make this work.”

And Matty’s head had jerked up from the table.

“We?” he’d asked in a small voice.

---

Matt really, really struggled with high school. Not because he wasn’t smart enough, but because his experience was so wildly different from other kids. He didn’t go home like they did. He went to St. Agnes’s. He didn’t play video games, he read books. He didn’t smoke cigarettes or joints. He didn’t drink. He was under constant surveillance.

He was bullied. Relentlessly.

Fogwell was quietly furious when Matt came in a few times a week to type away at the desk, inputting receipts for the new secretary to deal with later. Matt was always hurt. Always fighting.

He got his classwork done out of spite, seemingly, but then went home to the orphanage and got harrassed the whole way.

He fought his peers like the devil himself.

It was…

There was…

Something not quite right with him.

---

Bert pointed out when Matt was seventeen that he didn’t always use his stick like other blind folks. He forgot it sometimes and wandered around the gym like anyone else.

He didn’t trip over anything or keep fingers touching the wall like he usually did in other places.

They all chocked it up to him having grown up in the place.

Matt asked Fogwell to let him train.

Center-left-second-back.

That was Jack’s bag.

That was his son’s bag.

The veteran boxers all cycled through teaching Matt how to box. He knew—they all knew Matt already knew how, but there was always shit to learn.

Except that sometimes there wasn’t?

Matt seemed to already know everything that they taught him, including the nit-picky, little things. He listened to their descriptions, let them manipulate his hands and arms and hips, and then did what they asked immediately and with perfect form.

It was eerie.

It just wasn’t right. There was just something about it that wasn’t right. Rudy couldn’t put his finger on it.

---

Matt graduated highschool the year after Tina and it was only when Rudy saw the draft of the commencement program slip out of his bag on one of the benches that Rudy realized that Matty hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.

He picked up the program while Matt was attacking his bag and considered it, then did what was done in the gym and handed the program off to Fogwell who, in a booming voice, told Baby M to get the fuck over there, front and center.

Matt clung to his bag in terror at the sound. He, unlike his daddy, had the good sense to be reluctant to follow Fogwell’s orders. Eventually, with his tail between his legs, he skulked over and had his nose shoved in the program.

He pawed at it when Fogwell made him acknowledge it and mumbled something about not going.

Which was absurd.

“It’s not a big deal,” Matt said. “I’m not valedictorian or anything. It’s just highschool. And no one’s got time to go anyways, so what’s the point if it’s just me?”

God, this kid.

---

Matt’s graduation was very Catholic. Far more Catholic than Tina’s had been, but when Rudy looked over his shoulder, he was pretty sure that even a school this Catholic hadn’t been prepared for the influx of nuns hurrying down from Clinton’s church, all bustling and excited about young Matthew actually getting his diploma.

Between those four (aw, Grace. Look at you trying to play it smooth) and the seven boxing families who’d shown up, Matt was embarrassed to the point of tears. He’d hidden behind his mortarboard for the thirty minutes it took for people started calling folks up on stage.

He didn’t want to come out to take any pictures afterwards, but Tina wasn’t letting that happen. Her sisters leapt on board with the program and Rudy had managed at least one picture of the four of them smiling. Even better, he had one of Matt trying desperately to keep a smile while Fogwell stood stiffly next to him in stone-faced approval.

---

Matty was the first in the gym’s kid’s generation to graduate college, and then he was the only one to go on to law school.

It was only at that big graduation that Rudy finally saw Matt beaming like a loon—like he had up at Jack as a baby, but this time at the long-haired, chubby guy next to him.

This, legend had it, was the Roommate.

The one Matt refused to speak about to anyone at the gym.

Period.

At all.

There was no discussion.

That is, until he was forced by Fogwell standing menacingly over him in silent demand for a hug, to introduce them all to Foggy.

Foggy Nelson.

And then, just like that. It was exactly Jack all over again.

Veins bulging as everyone tried desperately not to laugh at Fogwell’s face at the realization that Matty had gone out and found a better, nicer Fog-person to be friends with.

---

Foggy Nelson—Edward Nelson from the hardware store’s son—was not fucking good enough for Matty, Fogwell decided. He’d begun a stoic campaign to introduce Matt to every available boxer’s son and daughter in the city in the hopes that a little nudge would get Matty away from all them conniving lawyer-folk. That was all fine and well with Matt because Matt, they’d all learned after a few years in his company again, was a horrendous flirt.

God, this boy.

Incorrigible.

He flirted with Tina and Angie and Penelope and got slapped every time.

He flirted with Bert’s daughter Becka.

He flirted with Becka’s husband.

He flirted with Kenny’s son’s best friend at the son’s wedding.

He flirted with the new secretary’s sister-in-law.

He was completely unstoppable.

Kenny approved.

But Kenny also asked Matt pointedly if he and his roommate had worked things out yet and that sent Matt scowling and shuffling off to go hide behind Fogwell, wherever he was, for emotional support.

---

Matt was Daredevil.

He had to be.

Everyone in the gym suspected this.

He was too good at fighting. To flexible. Too sturdy and relentless and angry to be anyone else. They all recogized his shoulders in those little blips of videos people posted online. They recognized how close he got to people from the way he get up in his bag’s imagined face.

He had some kind of superpower—some kind of 360 degree awareness was the best Rudy could describe it.

He felt like he remembered Jack freaking out about something like this a million years ago. Nattering on about super-senses in the aftermath of the accident.

Fogwell was the one who’d brought it up again after he’d noticed that Matt liked to come in at night and spar on his own.

One time, just once, he’d left one of the security cameras on, concerned that Matty might get mugged in the night on his own there.

But Matty wasn’t getting mugged anytime soon.

No, for real.

Matt was…maybe something a little beyond them.

The video Fogwell had shown the older guys before deleting it and telling everyone to mind their own fucking business had shown Matt throwing his weight at the bag—throwing legs and fists—in complicated, almost choreographed movements that spoke of lethal intent.

He moved like a weasel. Like a predator.

Like a devil.

God knew where he’d learned those moves. The boy had lived a lot of life in those few years he’d fallen off of the gym’s radar. There was no telling who he’d met or how he’d learned to be as he was, but things made a lot more sense after that.

Jackie had had a devil in him. It only made sense that his dramatic-ass kid had one, too.

Matty had made something more of himself than his daddy. In so many other things, but in this, too.

Fogwell’s Gym was protected. It was home to a devil in disguise.

---

The hipster Jack-fan appeared with baby Henry a few more times before Bert asked him if he knew that his hero’s kid, who’d lived the life baby Henry was currently living, was actually a regular at the gym.

Hipster-kid gaped and fell over himself trying to ask Bert if he could meet the guy.

Bert smirked. And then waved across the place over to where Matt had just slithered in with absurd orange sneakers that he was very proud of. He was clearly on the hunt to go show Fogwell so that he could be disgusted.

He froze when Bert called his name.

The hipster’s jaw dropped.

“Matty, come tell this man about your daddy,” Bert said.

Matt stared.

Then made a sad, aborted gesture with his free hand that said that he had very important annoyances to make of himself, so could this maybe wait?

“You’re—you’re--?” the hipster stammered.

“Matt Murdock,” Matt said hurriedly. “Great to meet you? You’re the one with the kid, right? Congrats. Have either of you seen Fogwell?”

The hipster blinked.

“Uh?” he said. “Not today?”

Matt scowled.

“He’s not escaping these,” he said, tapping his way angrily back to the door. “I got him a matching set. No one is escaping them.”

The gym at large watched him stalk back out the door, tapping away furiously, no doubt on the way down the block to Fogwell’s house.

“That’s Matt Murdock?” the hipster asked.

“Man, I thought he’d be taller,” another newbie said.

“Kid, that is the least of your problems when it comes to Matt Murdock,” Bert laughed. “Now, all of you, back to work. This ain’t a dog and pony show. Go on.”

---

#daredevil #fic #ficlet #jack murdock

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sacklerscumrag · 4 years

Text

Part III of III: Stay With Me Series

Clyde Logan X Female Reader

Summary: A Halloween party at Duck Tape and meeting Clyde’s family? This was going to be one hell of a night.

Warnings: fluff, smut, PIV sex, vaginal fingering, oral sex

Word Count: 2.2K

Part I Part II ao3

Halloween was tomorrow and Boone County certainly seemed to look the part. The streets were decorated with dense foliage in stunning colors of crimson red and burnt orange with pumpkins on every corner. Your mind was still buzzing with memories from your date with Clyde the other night when all of a sudden, your phone buzzed, snapping you out of it. It was him.

“Hey Clyde” your stomach jumped when you answered the phone.

“Hey Darlin, how’s yer day goin?” the sounds of glasses being set down could be heard on the other side of the phone.

“Not so bad, bookstores been busy with Halloween being so close”

“That’s actually what I was callin bout. Wanna come to a Halloween party were throwin here at the bar tomorrow? We do it every year, it’s a lotta fun and everybody gets real dressed up n all” you could hear him clear his throat, it warmed your heart knowing he still got himself worked up over you.

“That sounds fun, what time?”

“Well I gotta be there earlier to set up n all that but ya can come around 10 if ya want. Is that alright?”

“Of course, I’ll see you tomorrow then” you smirked while fiddling with the pages in your book.

“See ya tomorrow beautiful” you hung up the phone when it hit you. You had less than one day to put together a costume. Shit.

Clydes POV

Clyde let out a deep breath as he hung up the phone and continued drying empty whiskey glasses. No matter how many times he spoke to you, it never failed to make him nervous. He continued wiping down the bar, losing himself in his thoughts about you. He was sure you had the most beautiful smile he had ever seen and the way you crinkled your nose when you laughed just a little too hard, well that just about made him melt on the spot. And you smelled so good, god how did you smell so fucking delicious all the time, that was beyond him. His thoughts lingered before memories of the other night flooded his mind. The way it felt to have your body enveloped in his, the warmth of your skin under his palm, having you squirm in his lap while making those beautiful sounds was enough to make him cum in his pants.

Clyde could feel himself getting hard in his jeans, quickly reaching down to adjust himself, thinking to himself dammit Clyde ya gotta get yer head on straight before Earl comes back in here n sees you. Quickly he grabbed a crate of decorations and headed to the entrance, a smile playing on his face at the thought of seeing you again tomorrow. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

Readers POV

Scrambling around your house, you finally figured out your costume for tonight. Putting together a red halter top, red shorts, some fishnet stockings, your favorite heel ankle boots along with some horns for your Devil costume. You grabbed your phone, laid out your outfit on your bed, and snapped a picture to send to Clyde.

Decided on a Devil for tomorrow night, too much?

Yer gonna be wearin that tomorrow? Jesus Darlin, ya tryin to give me a heart attack

Just wanted to make sure you liked it, but I guess I got my answer haha

Can’t wait to see it on ya. I’m gonna have to try to keep ma hands to myself, won’t make any promises though ;)

I hope you don’t :) see you tomorrow, goodnight Clyde

Goodnight beautiful ------------------------------------------------------------

It seemed like everyone in Boone County was at Duck Tape tonight. As you walked into the bar, your eyes immediately found Clyde’s. He ducked under the side of the bar and walked over to you, cupping your face with both hands and bringing you into a searing kiss. He tasted like bourbon and burnt bacon, your favorite. “Hey baby, you look amazin” he said as he kept his forehead pressed against yours, your noses brushing against each other. You wrapped your arms around his neck and looked up at him.

“Hey, handsome”

Clyde quickly released you as he saw more patrons making their way inside. He kissed your forehead before stepping away and into the bar. You sat on one end, watching as he moved so flawlessly along the bar, making everyone’s drink, greeting all the regulars, never missing a beat.

“Well well well ya must be Clyde’s new little lady” startling you, a man sat down next to you.

“Now Jimmy don’t go scarin the poor girl. Hi sweetie, I’m Mellie, Clyde’s sister and this here’s my idiot brother Jimmy” she reached out her hand to shake yours. Clyde being as busy as he was made his way to your corner of the bar.

“There he is the man of the hour. When were ya gonna introduce us to yer new girl here?” Jimmy gestured to you with his beer bottle, teasing Clyde. You looked over at Clyde who was giving Jimmy a death stare if there ever was one. Placing your hand over his, you brought his attention back to you.

“Can I get a drink baby?” you said trying to diffuse the situation. Clyde let out a breath, smiled, and nodded before walking over to where the bottles were sitting to make you your drink. You could hear Mellie and Jimmy giggling behind you, it was going to be a long night.

------------------------------------------------------------

You spent hours sitting with Mellie and Jimmy, laughing at all of their nonsense, hearing stories about Clyde when they were younger, the Logan siblings making you feel right at home. After all those stories and one too many beers, they decided to call it a night and head out. Even the regulars started to make their way home as the night dwindled. You and Clyde had been making eyes at each other all night, spacing out while Mellie told you her wild stories to look at Clyde. Watching him bartend was getting you more worked up than you cared to admit. Having to adjust yourself in your seat every so often, you could feel your arousal forming. Clyde thanked Earl for the help, and he waved to you as he left. Clyde put the last of the glasses away in the storage closet and made his way back out to you. You were standing facing the bar when you felt Clyde’s hands wrap around your waist.

“Hey Darlin, you ready to head out?” he whispered in your ear as you turned in his arms and placed your hands on his chest. He looked down at you, eyes scanning your face with a smile. “Not quite” you said as you cupped his face in your hands and brought your lips to his.

“Darlin, are ya sure? Now?” you nodded, biting your lower lip, tiptoeing to bring your face closer to his.

“I want you, Clyde Logan. Right here. Right now.” You whispered to him. That was all the encouragement he needed before his lips were on yours again. His hands moved to your waist, pulling you closer to him and you could already feel his erection pressing up against your thigh. He moved to take off your tank top disposing of it on the floor. The kiss grew hungrier as he walked you back towards the bar. Clyde cupped your ass, moving his hands under your thighs to hoist you up onto the bar top.

Wrapping your legs around his waist, you moved to undo the buttons on his shirt, tearing it open, wanting to feel as much of him as possible. You were glad he decided not to wear an undershirt tonight as you ran your hands all over his sculpted chest down to the waistband of his jeans, working to undo his belt. Clyde placed hot, wet kisses on your neck, working his way to your shoulder. He hooked his thumbs on your shorts, sliding them down along with your fishnets. Reaching your hand around, you unclasped your bra, throwing it to the side while he continued his kisses.

“Ya looked so fuckin hot tonight. I had to stop looking at ya to stop ma self from getting hard at the bar. Fuck you’re so beautiful” he said in between placing kisses on each breast, pinching one nipple between his fingers while taking his time nipping and biting the other one. His hand made its way down ghosting over your panties, feeling the wet spot that had already formed.

“Mmm you’re dripping all over my bar baby” you moaned as he removed your underwear. Clyde swiped two fingers along your folds, collecting your slick, teasing you. The sensation making you shiver, your aching clit begging for attention.

“Ya like that don’t you Darlin? Had ya cumin all over em the other night” you nod, trying your best to hold back your moans.

“Please Clyde”

“Tell me what ya need baby girl, ya gotta use yer words” continuing to run his fingers along your cunt, not quite touching where you needed it most.

“Please Clyde I-I need you” you whimpered as he pushed two thick fingers inside, before pulling them back out.

“Gotta taste ya first baby” he motioned you to lay back, keeping one hand flat on your stomach and throwing your legs over his shoulder before burying his face in between your thighs.

You ran your hands through his hair, guiding him further into your core until you felt his nose press deliciously on your clit. The pressure making you buck your hips towards him. Clyde’s movements started to speed up as he focused on that sensitive bundle of nerves. His tongue working, teasing you while keeping his steady rhythm. Making you moan louder than you have before.

“Ya taste so good. So fuckin good baby girl”

Your grip on his hair tightened when your orgasm crashed over you. Clyde lapped up all of your juices, taking his time until you came down from your high. You felt him pull away and step back to slide his jeans and briefs off in one move. His lips and beard glistening with your slick.

“I have a condom in ma pocket”

“Don’t bother. I’m on the pill” he smiled, kicking his pants and briefs to the side.

His throbbing cock sprang free from the confines of his briefs, the tip slick with pre-cum. The size alone had you drooling at the sight. You immediately felt your cunt clench on nothing from just looking at him as Clyde made his way back to you. Placing your hand on his chest, you stopped him.

“Lay down on the bar” you whispered in his ear, sending a shiver down Clyde’s spine, all the way to his cock. He looked at you, before climbing on the bar and laying down. You followed and straddled Clyde, your heated cunt grazing over his cock making it twitch. His eyes darkened, full of lust as he watched you coat him in your wetness before sinking on him slowly.

Clyde’s mechanical hand rested on one of your thighs while his other hand cupped your ass as he watched you take all of him. The feeling of him filling you up, stretching you like never before almost being enough to bring you to your second orgasm of the night. You started to gyrate your hips, finding your rhythm, his cock hitting all sorts of new angles making you both cry out. His hands held on tight to your hips, guiding you as you rode him on the bar.

“Clyde I’m so close. Fuck, you feel so good” you moaned when you felt him slide his thumb between both of your bodies to rub your throbbing clit.

“C’mon baby. Gotta cum one more time fer me” he applied more pressure as you picked your pace. Both sensations sending you over the edge as you came hard on Clyde’s cock. Your cunt fluttering and pulsating squeezing him around him, squeezing him so tight. Panting your body fell flush on Clyde’s chest. He placed his hands under your thighs, pushing you slightly forward just enough for him to plant his feet on the bar top before he started pounding into you. The sounds of skin slapping filling the bar as he mercilessly fucked you at an agonizing pace. Clyde couldn’t take his eyes off of you, the way you were writhing in pleasure as your breasts bouncing with every thrust. He plunged into you one last time as far as he could go before reaching his own orgasm and filling you to the brim with his cum. He held you close, panting until he came down from his orgasm.

Clyde caressed your hair, his chest rising and falling, covered in sweat while you both laid there, bodies satisfied and spent. You put your chin on Clyde’s chest looking up at him, his eyes dazed with pleasure and a goofy grin across his face as he looked back at you.

“I love you Clyde, and I know it may be too early for that and now might not be the best time. And it’s okay if you don’t feel it too, I just had to say it before it drove me crazy”

“I love you too Darlin. Have fer a while now, just didn’t want to scare ya off and say it too soon. But I do, I love you” you didn’t think twice before pushing yourself up to kiss him. Leaning your elbows on either side of his head, letting your fingers run through his hair as you kissed him deeply. You wanted to stay in this moment forever.

#clyde logan #logan lucky #clyde logan x reader #fall series

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pettyelves · 6 years

Text

Death at the Crossroads

It was much too late for the children to be out and Eilonwy dragged her feet with her fist balled up in her mother’s coat. Further back, Karkah stared around though at least she kept pace.

There was a chill in the air of Dead Sun that crept up the back of Eilithe’s neck and out in front of her. She froze, only for a moment to look sharply around.

“Min’da..” Eilonwy muttered. “You gotta go, huh?”

“That’s right, Kal’allah,” Eilithe offered quietly, before she went to moving.

At home, Karkah went off to bed without a word, but Eilonwy clung to Eilithe’s side.It her nightgown, the girl laid with her head on Eilithe’s chest. Out on the sofa, Eilithe stared at the wall at the shadows that shifted around. Her summons was finally upon her, and not a night too soon-- the salve that guarded her weakened body was gone. Sleeping was not an option, and she would keep herself awake until the moment she had to leave.

“Min’da,” Eilonwy mumbled, her eyes blinking off sleep. “One story?”

“Which one?”

“About the land and the sea.”

The girl had heard it thousands of times by now- a story of two lovers who were separated by tragedy and the moon’s kindness. It had been Eilithe’s own favorite as a child, and the very reason she’d chosen her daughter’s name.

“And so, Mother Moon smiled upon Eilonwy as the woman mourned her dead husband, begging that Elune take her too so that they might never be parted. But instead, the Goddess saw fit to make his body land and her’s the sea- so that when the Moon rose and pulled in the tides, the lovers would embrace each night.”

Eilithe held Eilonwy a few moments after she’d gone to sleep, until she was ready. Leaving her daughter in her own bed, Eilithe did not make for the bedroom she shared with Kurel. Instead it was the front door and cut her hand open on the front porch.

“Gra’Dighet,” she spoke the name clearly, and with intent. “I bind you here, let no harm come to the souls in this house.” On the door she wrote a sigil in blood, a crude anchor for the beast within her shadow. The bundle of sticks and basket of stones in either hand, Eilithe made for the tree line. The last thing she did, before she disappeared from view was tie a red cloth to the trees she tucked into. If things went wrong, Velerodra would know what to do with that.

“Hurry, hurry! You’ll be late.”

The woman’s voice followed just behind Eilithe, as though it were in the trees itself. She dared not to look at it. It was pitch black nearly, the canopy covering any moonlight that might’ve leaked through, but she walked straight, without deviation. An hour, and she kept walking. Two then, but she still heard the stir of beasts. Three, and it was almost most quiet and at the half mark towards the fourth half, she stopped.

Stillness. No bird, nor cat, nor man, nothing but Eilithe and the ghost or devil within the trees.

“Cast off your clothes and build His mark.”

If exhaustion wasn’t licking at her heels, Eilithe might’ve complied faster. Every pull of her leathers, buckle and snap was heavy.

“Fight it. Fight the sleep. They will devour you out here alone. Make the circle. Hurry. Hurry!”

Eilithe pressed her fingers into the hollow of her eye, groaning against the silence as she fought through the pain. Each stone was placed side to side in a perfect circle. Next she built up the ‘x’, twisting the sticks into the shape she wanted.

By the time she was done, her creation was simple-- too simple, she might have thought as she stood there, nude and chilled in the night air. “Now, I burn it,” she said, to the voice that followed her.

“It’s never so simple.” The voice answer, like a whisper to her ear. “Show no fear. Show no weakness. Call to him. Call to the Lord of Deals.”

Like hands urging her to walk forward, Eilithe knew what to do. The crack of wood as she climbed onto the intersection in the center, balanced there carefully. Armed with a book of matches, she kept her eyes open.

“He comes to the lost- and to the desperate. But it is only the strong that walk away with deals. Do it. Do it now. Say his name.”

Eilithe struck a match and held it to light the untouched matches, sparking the entire thing. “Saakes of the Crossroads, Lord of Deals- show yourself to me.” The book fell to the wood beneath her feet and engulfed the cross unnaturally- flame climbing up Eilithe’s legs, burning against her feet. Agony, but she had faith.

It was unclear how long she’d been caught in the purgatory of half-burning half-not, resisting pain that she could not discern was real or not. No, it could not have been real, she would have passed out. Unless she’d been passed right along into death, now victim of torture of her soul for some unknown’s amusement.

Faith.

And so she had it, not in any man, nor any god, in herself. She called again. “Saakes of the Crossroads! Lord of Deals! I command that you show yourself.” It was no request nor incantation, it was an order, with clear intent.

The red was the first to bleed out of world, then oranges and yellows. The fire was gone. So was the pain. Then the blues and greens went, leaving only black, white, and grey.

The Other Side.

“You got’ lotta guts zulfi,” the voice of a troll rumbled with a laugh. “Callin on me like dat.”

Under her feet was the cross she’d left behind, black lines on the ground going North and South, East and West. For eons in all directions. From that spot she couldn’t move, even as the creaking of the troll’s bone moved around her.

“Ya surprise Saakes tho’- makin’ it dis far without much help but from one those what owe Saakes debt.”

Eilithe looked at him then, massive tusks protruding out and hair down his back- broad shoulders and impossible in height. He looked like many trolls she’d seen in her day. What made him different were the things he carried. Six shrunken heads on either side of his belt- though strange to Eilithe their eyes were not sewn shut, as was tradition. From his hair hung down baubles, crude gambling dice, coins in various different currency. Trinkets of gamblers and drinkers. Of dealmakers.

“Ya come here wantin’ power ta hold yaself ova’, but whatchu’ bring Saakes, E’leet’?” He jammed a nail in between his teeth and picked.

Loa were dangerous, on whole- even the benevolent ones- but those that walked the line in between were far worse. A dealmaker all her own, she knew the game. “Do not insult me, I have come to trade service for service. No more no less,” Eilithe opened up her arms, “Ward me, Saakes of the Crossroads, from the dead who would inhabit me. Restore me to my former power. Name your price.”

It was the last part of her request that game him pause. A disgusting grin exposing his jagged teeth. “Ya don’ mean ta before ya Harbinga’ found deat’, ya mean before. Dats a task- ya got alotta voices screamin’ for ya soul. Price be steep ta fix’ya.”

“Then let it be steep, name it.”

A rumble came from Saakes, before he paced around her and towered behind her. “Ol’ Saakes don’ get a break here. All dem souls what get lost along da’ whey- lost from Bwonsamedi, and tryna’ get ta’ Mueh’Zala. Tell ya wha’. You like ta’ make bets don’cha? Lez’ bet instead, ya like ya odds Eleet’?”

Eilithe sneered at him, “Name your terms, dealmaker.”

“I give ya numba’ you bring dat numba’ here, before ya deat’ an’ ya get off free from ya debt ta’ Saakes. Enjoy da’ peace o deat’ with ya brood kids an’ ya mate. In life ya have Saakes’ powa’, guidance, and ya have ya earn ya inna’ strengt’ back.”

The deal was simple and enticing, but she knew better. “And if I fail?”

He left out a loud and shrill ‘Hehe’. “If ya fail Eleet’ ya take Saakes’ place here, makin’ deals wit’ da lost and desperate.”

“How many.”

He answered her in a whisper and number that was surprisingly fair. Fair unless she met an untimely death.

“Do we have a deal, Eleet’?” His hand came out and offered a shake, but Eilithe could only look- calculating for a moment. Risk eternity, gain power and gain some semblance of relief from the weight she carried. Alternatively, she could turn back-- and risk being devoured by beasts that haunted her.

“We have a deal.” Her hand went tentatively to shake with his, but he snatched it and squeezed. Into her back, she felt a brand- two sticks crossed at equal lengths on all sides, seared into the flesh of her back. It was so sudden that she had to stifle herself- but she did not scream, nor cry.

Left in ragged breaths, when he let go, she felt something left over in her hand. A band in silver, and a black stone Eilithe held it in a shaking hand. “What.. What is it?”

“A new pet from ya new Patron,” he let out another shrill laugh, “Saakes is a generous God. Vrede will serve ya well, protect ya” He waved a hand, “Now go back ya got work ta do an’ rememba’ when ya need ta come back, Saakes like gold, an’ rum, ya?”

He laugh echoed and the world bent around her before it was black entirely.

It felt like minutes, but when she awoke it was unburnt in the center of the stone circle, a blackened ‘x’ beneath her body. The ring closed in her right hand, and a searing pain across her back- she stood. It was still night... or perhaps, it was the next night. With now way to tell, she made for the trees.

@kurel-andiel @velerodra-valesinger for mentions

#It Walks Among Us #Saakes

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joeysharku · 6 years

Text

The Orc March - C1

Pain.

Every waking was the same; the Pain smote Zûbûk like a mule’s kick. His eyes burst open and, seeing the blinding rays of the noontime sun breaking upon the canvass of his great tent, shut again. Over him - shaking him - was his bogga Dûgla. Bittersweet, that. She alone could safely interrupt the sanctity of a full day’s sleep, prized above all the metals and powers of the Firstborn by her hob. Only in sleep was there escape from the Pain. In fact, he’d accidentally beaten a bog to death for this very crime.

He’d been a naughty boy anyway.

But Dûgla was his favorite, his eldest, and she alone among his boggarts had never felt his blows. He started counting, eyes still closed, to quiet his murderous temper. She was speaking but he couldn’t yet hear for the ringing in his ears. Some mannish traders had told him once they felt something like the Pain after too much drink but he doubted it compared. While “hangovers” ended in time, this did not. Sleep could quiet it, and fighting or fucking made it almost pleasant, but many were the little boggarts who chose death over coping before they were waist-high. Wakings like these, Zûbûk regretted not doing the same.

“- inna day, too!” Dûgla’s screeching suddenly snapped into focus. Zûbûk opened his eyes again and saw his bogga’s terrified face. She was lovely, like her hobba, complexion wrinkled and nose bulbous. “Hob!”

“Wazzit?” he growled blearily and rose to rest his head in his hands. The pounding in his temple faded, sounding now less like wardrums and more like rolling thunder.

“Der’s urks ousside! Loss! Issa Thundra!” Omens.

Zûbûk snapped to attention. Ûgakûga. The Thunder on the Steppe. Here.

Like Zûbûk always knew he would be.

He coulda least been decent enough to come friendly, he thought. At night.

A deep voice bellowed from outside, “Zûbûk! Get yer arse out ere! Less ya’d like me comin in?” This threat was punctuated by a menacing chuckle.

Zûbûk pushed his bogga aside and sprang to his feet, pain and fatigue forgotten. He started digging among the discarded furs and bones of his chambers for his handaxe before he noticed Dûgla holding it out for him. He took it but was little comforted. At night with the element of surprise he still would not dare to hope for victory against the Grandhob. Surrounded and under the triumphant sun?

He wrapped himself up in his blanket, covering as much of his flesh as possible. He entered the main chamber of his tent but there paused. He turned back to his bogga. Dûgla stood in the far corner, clutching shearing scissors. Tears ran down the winding trails of her cheeks and she looked desperate for some sign that everything was going to be alright. Zûbûk only managed a slow, deep breath..

“Zoooo-bûk! Ah ain’t askin. One. More. Time,” the terror mocked.

Zûbûk closed his eyes and stepped into the inferno.

Immediately the sun-sickness struck him dizzy and nauseous. The heat of the mid-fall day pierced every pore of his flesh and the thick oil of his sweat pumped forth in desperate fear. The sheepskin only kept the most terrible burning at bay. He could hardly see anything at all for the blinding glow, but only a few yards away the sheer mass of Ûgakûga sat in the center of his vision like a great fat fly. To his right and left were several stooping figures draped in heavy robes - orcs, no doubt, and Zûbûk wondered if even their many folds of spider-silk could really stop the howling fury of the evil eye.

“Ah, ere he is!” the great inkblot of Ûgakûga spoke. His voice was deep and warm. “So gooda ya ta see us in dis early hour.”

“Ûgakûga. Watta you doin wakin me inna middle of the firstdamned day?” Even speaking made Zûbûk feel faint. Both his sight and hearing lost focus.

Ûgakûga laughed. “Times were ya was always happy ta see me, Zûk.”

Zûbûk grumbled but dared not speak the threat cooking in his mind. Instead he threw his arms up in a massive shrug and barked, “wazzit then?!” He staggered back and forth.

Ûgakûga laughed again, or perhaps he’d never stopped. He took two great strides forward and set his massive hand heavily on Zûbûk’s back. “Wazzamatta, shark? Ya been stayin upta sneaka grog, eh?”

Zûbûk could see the Thunder clearly now; after all, he blocked the entire firstdamned sky. Ûgakûga towered over the smaller orc, eight inexplicable feet to Zûbûk’s otherwise impressive five. His eyes gleamed red behind his iron helm below which his famous jowls and unmatched tusks jutted forth. It was hard to notice much about the Grandhob besides his gargantuan physique, but Zûbûk could swear he hadn’t aged at all in the sixty years they’d been apart. The only difference was his flesh - its usual moss-green had turned gray and crusty under the hated star. Zûbûk remembered the scorn and contempt their village had for the troll-slime running in Ûgakûga’s veins. Then it had struck him as insipid provincialism. Now he understood how convenient discrimination could be for hate’s sake.

Zûbûk wondered if he was about to die.

“Say,” Ûgakûga continued, “ya memba da day fore we sacked Feldor’s? Ya had no problem stayin up fer dem sweet lil dancers, didya?”

Despite fear, Zûbûk rolled his eyes. “Older now, Ûga. Don’t much botha wit dancers or sacks, either onna field or between me legs.”

Ûgakûga laughed more genuinely now. “Oh Zûk! Ah sure hope yer wit’s not all dat’s lefta ya. Imma need both dose sacks inna few moons.”

“You tease,” Zûbûk grumbled. The First damn this brute. What packa snags pissed him off this time - and why does he need me for the killin?

Ûgakûga continued, “yer da best shoota Ah’ve ehva seen, Zûk. Imma need ya - and yer trainin - ta take the Ashlands.”

Zûbûk threw Ûga’s hand off him and stumbled backwards. The effort would have knocked him out if his outrage didn’t burn so hot now. For his part, Ûga was surprised the smaller orc could move any part of him. “That’s it?! You wake me n make me come out inta this hell so you can sell me that old oil again?! First’ll take your eyes, o Thunder, before you ever set foot on them plains! If the ashers don’t break your bandits n ranchers then their spooky masters will! Ashlands. Feh!” Zûbûk spat. “No, no, I’ll have no parta it.”

From where he was Zûbûk could no longer make out Ûga’s features. If he could, he may have held his tongue for he would have seen his visitor’s face slowly transform from surprise to bemusement to bloody rage. Just as Zûbûk finished, the Thunder shouted, “HA!” and lifted the startled orc up by the skull with one hand. With the other he tore the blanket off - and was only just in time to catch Zûbûk’s swinging arm and stopping the axe it held from splitting his skull. His bodyguards sounded uselessly behind him and produced swords and bows, ready to raze Zûbûk’s ranch to the ground to make up for their redundancy. For his part, Zûbûk struggled no longer. Between the agony of the sun on his naked, steaming flesh and the abominable strength of his foe there was no point. He closed his eyes and thanked the First that the Great Sleep was now upon him and asked without hope these bastards would kill poor Dûgla unspoilt.

Nobody moved or spoke for a spell. Zûbûk’s flesh sizzled. Then Ûgakûga laughed yet again, a slow chuckle growing to exuberant guffaws as his attendants glanced nervously at each other. “Do ya see now, lads?! Now do ya see why we hadda come alla way out ta dis hovel? Dis here’s an orc’s orc, more propa than any one-a ya!”

Zûbûk moaned disdainfully. No Great Sleep then.

“When’s da last time ya saw an orc ‘is age take a swinga me?” Ûga continued as he set his captive down, gently. He took the axe from Zûbûk’s yielding hand and tossed it behind them, casually. Zûbûk fell flat on his ass and then curled onto his knees without shame, covering his scalp under his blistering hands. Ûga crouched beside him and said, “dunno bout me eyes but whateva happens to em, yer gonna be dere, Zûk. Ah’m callin on all me lords n ladies. Alla Steppe gonna pay me da service, da respect, Ah’ve earned n together we’ll unite alla kind unda me banna. No more devils, no more ghosts, but an orc! Don’t ya want dat, Zûk? Times were ya was always squawkin bout dis shit.”

Zûbûk’s voice, muffled by the dirt he was kissing, answered, “Older now. Don’t bother wit dreams.”

“Well dat’s just too firstdamned bad,” the Thunder rumbled. “Cause if yer not gonna dream dis dream wit me, Ah’ll be happy ta bring ya da nightmare instead. Ah’ll make ya watch as Ah use n burn all ya’ve made ere, includin dat sweet bogga done made ya soft. And soft ya are, Zûk, make no mistake. Ya might think yer hard but Ah memba tears n wraths to shake the world. Ah think dere’s new dreams fer ya yet, shark.”

Without stirring, Zûbûk mumbled, “I’d be thrilled to join this glorious crusade, o Ûgakûga, Thunder of the Endless Skies n Master of Blood n Fire.”

Ûgakûga chuckled one final time. “Even when ya don’t mean it, nobody kisses ass like you, Zûk.” He rose then and turned to leave. “Glad ya see it my way. In three nights my shootas gonna come by n yer gonna join em. Dese are yer boys, General. Ah expect em ta live up ta yer legend.” His voice was fainter now, almost out of earshot. “Ah trust an orc wit yer spirit can see hisself inside. Until we meet fer war, Zûbûk.” Then he was gone.

He was wrong, however. Zûbûk could not see himself inside. He could not even uncurl his corpse-stiff limbs from his dead-spider huddle. The sun’s fire was in his very flesh and he thought, not unhappily, that he was going to roast to death before it fell. He was only barely conscious when Dûgla crawled over him, herself covered by many blankets. Over a dozen miserable minutes, she slowly roused him and together they crawled back into the great tent. Once inside, Zûbûk crawled over to the nearest dark corner but not before the rushing Dûgla set several blankets down for a bed.

“Good girl,” Zûbûk mumbled as he buried his face in coarse wolf-fur.

“Ye, Hob,” she answered as she threw a final blanket over his body. “Sleep now, aye?” Then, a few seconds later, “Hob?”

Zûbûk poked a single ear out of the coming oblivion of sleep. “Hm?”

“Ah’m sorry Ah woke ya up, Hob.”

Zûbûk said, “is okay. Yer a good girl,” and knew no more.

#orcs #the orc march #feedback appreciated!#i know tumblr isn't the best place for prose but i just wanted to post the first chapter and get some feedback #not tolkien #*wink*

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