#90's cryptid hunter frenrey au

[antilocaprine]

Frenrey 4? 🥺

(Kiss Prompt List)

I'm stealing the setting of @melonsharks 90's cryptid hunter AU again, this time with a slightly more gory creature fight.

4: ...where it hurts.

Benrey is utterly and unequivocally fucked.

They’ve been at Bubby and Coomer’s vacation cabin in the woods for two days, hunting after some rumored creature that Benrey didn’t pay attention to the debrief of. Since he’s currently in pieces in the trees half a mile from the cabin in the middle of the night, he probably should have. 

But it’s too late now - he’s hurting and bits of him keep falling off, but he has to keep moving, dragging himself through the dark, because the thing isn’t dead, and it’s still going after Gordon.

He sensed it the day before when Gordon was setting up his newest gadget. He was super excited about it, chattering about the infrared trigger and the type of film, and then he nicked his hand on a buckle as he strapped the boxy thing to a tree. 

Benrey’s used to smelling Gordon’s blood - he doesn’t like it, but the guy’s a klutz and it happens a lot, especially since they spend a lot of time wandering around rickety old buildings in the dark. But what Benrey is not used to is other things zeroing in on that blood scent, and he doesn’t like it. He especially doesn’t like that he can’t see the thing, no matter how many eyes he throws out. (Gordon had said it sounds like a ghoul, but Gordon also seemed very uncertain about that, and kept checking his notes.)

Now, Benrey’s struggling to claw together enough of a limb to drag himself forward, because the not-ghoul has just handed his ass to him on a paper plate. He knows he’s trailing toneless sweet voice, off-color hues dribbling from the jaws scattered across his form. He has to hold his breath to track the damn thing - he hurt it, too, but not as bad as it hurt him, and he still can’t see it.

Benrey closes all of his eyes to listen, then gathers himself and lunges for the nearest big tree. He slings several tendril-limbs around the trunk, the bark cutting into his form, but his claws sink into something that gives a raspy shriek and thrashes in his grip.

Slowly, agonizingly, Benrey drags himself around the tree trunk, anchoring the creature by basically nailing it to the bark with his limbs. It shouldn’t be this hard to hold a physical being - the thing must be utilizing some kind of dimensional slide, or something that lets it flicker in and out of existence. 

Even when Benrey finally sets some eyes on it, he still can’t really perceive what he’s seeing. It’s like a fuzzy shape has been cut out of the world, like a negative space, the shadow of a hole. He wouldn’t be able to describe it, even looking straight at it. But it’s still alive, and it seems incandescently furious at having Benrey’s gaze on it. His eyes burn, and he has to close them one at a time just to keep from flinching away from it completely. Multicolored tears of sweet voice drip down his body, his eyes watering in self defense.

Distantly, a part of Benrey that is always paying attention to Gordon registers that the cabin’s door has just slammed closed several hundred yards away. He opens a few eyes in that direction and sees a weak light bobbing through the trees. Instinctively, Benrey starts to hunker down, but the thing in his grip gives a creaky trill and tries to slink out of his claws. When he loops more limbs around it, it curls over and sinks razorblade teeth into his form. One of Benrey’s limbs falls away, landing with a wet thump on the forest floor.

That’s been happening a lot tonight.

Panicking, Benrey drags himself around the tree, trying to engulf the creature in the bulk of his own body. But it’s sliding away again, out of his sight around the trunk, and even though Benrey can still feel it, he knows he’s about to lose his grip. And when that happens, this…whatever it is will be making a beeline for Gordon, just like it was before, tracking his blood from the camera trap back toward the cabin. 

That can’t happen. However this night ends, it will not end with any more of Gordon’s blood on the ground.

Concentrating, Benrey forms two more limbs from his dwindling mass and sinks them into the creature. It’s incredibly strong, even as injured as it is, and he has to lean over it to achieve the leverage he needs to get a solid enough grip on the amorphous form to wrench his new limbs back and tear it in half.

The creature - and Benrey is going to find out what the fuck this thing is just so he can curse it properly later - lashes out with one tattered limb and rakes something claw-like across Benrey’s face. He rears back and hooks a tendril-limb around the creature’s faltering claw, then rips it off as well. The creature gives a shrieking trill, then shudders into silence. 

Benrey rolls off of it, pine needles biting into open wounds as he drags himself away from the remnants of the thing. He’s exhausted and can barely think, but Gordon’s yelling his name and getting closer and shit, shit, what is he going to do? He’s pretty much a formless mass of eye-bedecked shadows right now, hulking shoulders and thrashing tails and too many limbs, and there is absolutely no way in hell that he can make himself look anything like a human right now.

“Benrey? If this isn’t you and I’m about to be eaten by mutant coyotes - fuck, it better be you and you better be okay.” Gordon’s voice is shaking a bit, and as open as he is right now, Benrey can taste the adrenaline-drenched sweat wafting off him. He’s only got his flannel pajama pants on, but at least he threw a puffy coat on over his sleeveless shirt and managed to don his boots before charging out into the dark after a pair of monsters. “Where are you? Benrey!”

Well, he’s had a good run. Benrey really enjoyed being a person, playing human and following Gordon around. More than that, he’s enjoyed Gordon himself: his brilliant insanity, his tenacious quest to find the supernatural in the world around him, and, of course, his attention to detail - which is what’s about to blow Benrey’s cover. He’s managed to drag enough coils of himself into a pile that he could almost be a rock in the darkness, but Gordon is methodically sweeping the flashlight in overlapping arcs, and there’s no way he isn’t going to shine the light directly at Benrey.

“Fuck, okay, this is getting creepy, now - BENREY!” Gordon cups one hand around his mouth to shout, and Benrey flinches. Gordon’s less than fifteen yards away, he’s going to swing the light around and see either Benrey or the creature any moment -

The beam of light passes over where the corpse should be, illuminating churned up earth, split roots, scattered pine needles - and no body.

Benrey makes a noise. He can’t help it. Gordon is right on top of where that creature was, and if it was just playing dead, there’s nothing Benrey can do in this condition to keep it from killing him.

“Hello?” Gordon snaps, swinging the light around - and oh, okay, they’re doing this now. Benrey flinches and squints several eyes as the beam shines directly into them for a split second before it jerks and the flashlight hits the torn-up ground with a thump.

Even if Benrey couldn’t see in the dark, the half-moon gives more than enough light to tell that Gordon is in shock. He’s frozen, hands up in front of him as if prepared to shove away an attack, his mouth hanging open on a gasp or a scream. Benrey knows he’s a nightmare right now, a mass of black flesh shot through with multicolored sweet voice-dripping wounds, other injuries bleeding copper-scented red as he still struggles to change back to something more human. As it is, he’s piled up in a crescent curve, too many legs and too many eyes, and all he can do is wait for Gordon to see him, to recognize the creature he saw as a child in a darkened park and realize that the very thing that drove him into ghost-hunting in the first place has been haunting him all along.

But then Gordon surprises him again.

“No - no, no, no - oh, fuck, Benrey!” Gordon’s staggering toward him, and Benrey gives a ragged cough of surprise as Gordon drops to his knees in the bloody mud and pats frantically at the closest gaping wound dripping liquid light. “What the fuck did you do? What happened - where’s -”

Then he’s bounding back to his feet, lunging for the flashlight and swinging it in wide arcs as he glances quickly over his shoulder. “Is it still here?”

“S’what…still…” Benrey rasps, too shocked to understand. Gordon blinks and looks to the left, where the words emerged from a mouth on Benrey’s torso. Wincing, he closes it and reabsorbs the teeth and tongue back into himself. He needs to cut down on the redundancies.

“The - whatever did this to you,” Gordon replies.

“Dunno,” Benrey gasps, raising one formless tendril to point where the corpse should be. “Thought’t w’s dead…”

Gordon steps carefully over to the broken ground, then frowns and bends to pick up a stick from one of the limbs that had been torn off the surrounding trees in the fight. Keeping his back to Benrey - keeping Benrey behind him, he realizes with a burst of affection - Gordon pokes at the ground with the branch, then swears and flings a scrap of shadow up into the air. It dissolves as it falls, and nothing hits the ground.

“That’s…not a ghoul,” Gordon says slowly, and Benrey can’t help it - he starts laughing. It hurts, and he’s not sure how many lungs he has right now, but at least three of them are punctured, so the laughter sounds more like a busted accordion falling down a staircase than anything else. Gordon jumps and whips around, then drops the stick and falls back to his knees next to Benrey’s head. Instinctively, Benrey curls the biggest limb he currently has around Gordon, not touching, but keeping him tucked close, caging him in.

Without hesitation, Gordon leans back into the limb, and Benrey could cry at this miraculous level of acceptance. “M’sorry,” he rasps.

Gordon shakes his head, hands hovering over a bleeding slash on Benrey’s hide. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I need to check my notes, but - I think that was a hidebehind, and - Benrey, they don’t exist.”

“Packed a punch f’r…sumthin’ that d’n exist…” Benrey’s words slur together, but Gordon understands him. He always does.

“That’s the problem, man. It shouldn’t - they don’t exist. They can’t be observed, by anything or anyone. That’s why it turned to shadow when it died - they literally can’t be seen. Ever.”

Benrey takes a moment to let that information sink in like water, and like water, feels it run right off him and pool in the dirt. “Don’geddit,” he mumbles.

“Fuck, forget about it,” Gordon says, and finally presses one hand to a small section of unmarked skin on what will eventually be Benrey’s chest, if he’s got any say in it. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t - I never would have brought us out here if I knew that’s what it was. You shouldn’t be alive…” He trails off, his hand trembling.

Benrey painfully curls a little tighter around Gordon, humming roughly in the dark. “You’re…takin’ this well…”

“What - this?” Gordon pats at Benrey’s hide gently. “Buddy, I’ve known for…a while. You, uh, you’ve been slipping up.”

“Oh,” Benrey says, and doesn’t really know where to go from there. “So…y’don’ mind…?”

Gordon laughs weakly, shoulders shaking as he leans forward to rest his forehead against the back of his hand. The locks of hair that tumble over his shoulders and brush against Benrey’s torn skin feel like burning silk, and he flinches. Gordon pulls back, his face twisted in devastation. 

“I can’t even help you,” he chokes out, free hand coming up to curve under Benrey’s jaw. He’s down to one mouth, now, at least, even if his snout is longer than Gordon’s torso and still full of jagged teeth.

“M’fine,” Benrey grumbles. 

Gordon scoffs and leans back to shine his flashlight across the expanse of Benrey’s body he can see. Even raised up on his knees, the top of Benrey’s back is several feet over his head. Benrey raises an arm to bar Gordon from leaving the curl of his body as he tries to rise.

“You gotta - Benrey, I gotta check your other side, man, what if you’re bleeding out over there?”

“M’not,” Benrey reassures him, then rotates his wrist to knock Gordon back down. He drops to his knees with a sigh, shuffling forward to tuck himself against Benrey’s hide.

“If you die, I will be so fucking mad,” he says, and Benrey rasps out another horrible hacking laugh. Gordon turns his head and presses a trembling kiss to the hinge of Benrey’s colossal jaw. Stunned, he falls silent, and watches with several eyes as Gordon reaches up to run feather-light fingers along the edge of a dripping gash. He tips his head and kisses the tense skin next to the injury, and Benrey hisses out a slow breath, feeling his muscles relax despite himself. And hey, he has muscles now! Nice. What else came together in the last ten minutes?

Benrey rolls himself a little and struggles to compress his wild form down into something more manageable, whining at the pressure and increased bleeding from his wounds. Gordon slings an arm over his shrinking neck and holds him as he gasps and shudders his way back to something approximating humanity. 

It takes a long time, and it hurts the whole way, but Gordon keeps peppering kisses to the small sections of unmarred skin available to him and murmuring encouragement. Eventually, Benrey is lying facedown on the forest floor, covered in mud and blood and jagged pine needles, his head on Gordon’s lap as Gordon strokes the hair back from his face. Benrey keeps his eyes screwed shut as he takes stock. He’s still got a few extra eyes, but he’s on edge, so that’s expected. They’ll go away on their own. It feels like he’s got the correct number of limbs for a human, and most of the gaping wounds seem to have closed, so he’s in good shape there.

Finally, he opens his eyes. The grey light of dawn is creeping through the trees around them, thinning the shadows and showing more of the trail of mayhem Benrey and the hidebehind wreaked as they battled their way through the woods.

“Fuck,” Benrey whines, and closes his eyes again.

Gordon laughs a bit hysterically and sinks his fingers deeper into Benrey’s hair. “Yeah, you can say that again.” Benrey hears his hair rasp against the jacket as he turns his head and whistles at the destruction around them. “Can I, uh. Can I ask why the fuck you went out to fight this thing in the middle of the night?” 

Benrey groans and buries his face in the soft flannel of Gordon’s thigh. “No.”.

“Benrey…”

He sighs, knowing better than to fight that tone of voice. “Your cut. From yesterday. It was tracking you, so…had to stop it.”

Gordon’s hands have gone still. Slowly, he reaches out and passes a hand across the tender lines of fresh scar tissue on Benrey’s back. “So you’re saying…all of this…was because you were protecting me?”

Benrey huffs and shoves his face back into the flannel folds on Gordon’s leg. “Don’ make it weird,” he mumbles.

“I’m not - dude, of the two of us, I am not the weird one,” Gordon says. Benrey snorts, then drags his arms under his chest and struggles to push himself up. Gordon scrambles to help steady him as he heaves himself to his feet, then immediately tips sideways to slump against Gordon’s shoulder.

“Ow,” he says vaguely, and follows as Gordon wraps an arm around his shoulders and draws him stumbling along toward the cabin. At some point he realizes that Gordon’s puffy jacket is also around his shoulders, the three-quarter-length hem hanging almost to his knees. The increased modesty is appreciated, although Benrey’s still nearly black with gore and dried viscera. The poor coat will never be the same again.

“Can we…let’s put this one on a list,” Benrey says, and Gordon looks at him in concern.

“Put what on a list?”

“That…thing. Put it on a list of…’fuck no’ things. Blacklisted.”

Gordon chuckles. “Yeah, okay, no more hidebehinds.”

“No more woods,” Benrey adds, plucking pine needles from between his fingers.

“Some more woods,” Gordon cautions. “We’ll have to stay out here for a bit, at least.”

Benrey frowns at him. “Why?”

“You’ve got some, uh…” Gordon gestures weakly at Benrey, then tightens his arm and shakes his head. “You still have, like, eighteen eyes, man.”

Benrey blinks and realizes that yeah, he can still see even with his eyes closed. He’s definitely still feeling the stress of the last twenty-four hours. “Oh is that, uh, s’that not normal?”

“Well,” Gordon pretends to think as they round a curve on the path and the cabin comes into view. “Y’know, there might be some places in San Francisco…”

Still bickering, they drag each other up the steps and into the warm cabin, the door closing gently behind them. After a few minutes, white smoke begins to drift from the chimney, and more laughter can be heard from inside, startling a chickadee from a nearby tree and sending it spiraling up into the sky, rising with the first bright fingers of light from the morning sun.