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mor-beck-more-problems · 3 years ago

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Turn to Loathed Sours || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours, even in the moment that we call them ours.

Morgan’s senses aren’t the only thing about her body that’s changing, and she can’t avoid facing it any longer.

CONTAINS: medical blood: references to first aid, stitches (not described)

Morgan’s arm healed from her injuries at the coffee shop eventually. But the ones she had collected that evening (a tiny burn from the pan and cat scratches from playing too roughly with Anya) hadn’t yet. That was over a day ago. And now she had new injuries. Serious injuries she couldn’t hide or brush off. A stupid fenodyree who’d gotten comfortable under the stairs at the bookshop pulled her ankle and bit the side of her foot. When Morgan prised it off (it hadn’t liked the taste of her after all), it bit a chunk off her forearm out of spite.

She sat in her car on the driveway, still trembling with fright and pain. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get home. It probably had something to do with urgency, and not looking at the damage done. Underneath her torn sweater, her skin was whiter, deader than she’d ever seen it before. There were fresh, sickly looking waves of green and yellow marbling along her blue and purple tones. The skin around the injury felt thin and dry, and what flesh she could see under the surface looked...wrong. Or at least wrong for her. She’d eaten enough animal corpses to know what rotting tissue looked like.

Maybe she needed to switch to a human brain to get herself back into shape. Those were more filling anyway, right? Maybe she could call Erin, tell her it was an emergency, and she’d do the hard stuff, she just needed a point of contact, a name, something. Or maybe she could try eating a supernatural brain, that might do something different. She hadn’t tried bies before. Maybe they were more...fortifying, somehow. And if her body was getting a little less magical, maybe some mundane treatments could help. A little Advil, a little neosporin, and a heavy duty band-aid could go a long way. Plus, stitches, if she really needed them. No one she passed during the day would think much of her sporting fresh stitches.

But as Morgan tried to bargain out a solution with her body, a small, tired voice inside her asked, What if there’s nothing? What if this is how you have to pay? What if it doesn’t stop?

No. There was a way to fix this. She just had to find it.

Bracing herself, Morgan limped out of the car and came inside her house. She dropped her keys in the bowl and made a beeline for the kitchen. She would stop being a baby about losing her zombie pain tolerance, patch up her injuries, eat, and figure this out. Everything would be fine. In fact, everything was already fine, she just didn’t know it yet. But it was. It was.

Neglected under her journey to New Zealand, Deirdre’s garden was repairing itself nicely. Her lilies had come into bloom along with her wine-coloured dahlias. Carefully, she cut herself a bouquet, eager to show Morgan her work and ease whatever guilt she might’ve felt for letting the garden fall into disrepair in the first place. The cats, lazing by her feet in the garden, rose first to signal Morgan’s arrival. Deirdre followed them with a smile, dirt under her nails and more on her overalls. Sweet floral notes lifted from her bouquet, intertwined with her scent of earth and sweat. When she greeted Morgan, she did so with a running kiss, pressed gentle and eager to her cheek. Then with a large step backwards, extending her bouquet. “You should take a smell--” Her delight was simple, clear. In the moments that followed, it withered.

“My love,” Deirdre urged, eyes drawn first to her torn sweater, then back up to her face--paler than it ought to be. She was bluer in the lips, more purple around the eyes. She considered where they were--the kitchen--and concluded that Morgan had come for a meal. Sometimes she forgot to eat, it wasn’t often, but in her new state of feeling, perhaps the joy of coffee and pastries had overwhelmed reminders to feed as a zombie ought. Deirdre decided she should worry. She smiled again, wider, thinner, nowhere near her eyes. The flowers were set down on the kitchen island. “Are you…” Okay? The word wouldn’t leave her lips. Okay? The word was a gurgle in her throat. Okay? A twitch in her lip.

Her eyes fell back to the sweater; the strange way Morgan moved, like her foot was asleep. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “...okay?” She said finally, knowing there was no way to avoid the question.

Morgan hadn’t meant for Deirdre to see her like this. Of course it would look bad. In the instant her love approached and kissed her cheek, Morgan tried to hold onto her, murmuring, “Hey, how’s my farmgirl? Your flowers look beautiful, and the--” the smell was lovely. Earthy and powdery and fragrant in a way people only called floral because there was nothing else like it in the world. But before she could try to put any of that into words, because if she just held onto this moment, everything would be fine and Dierdre would know it was fine and she could figure things out as she went, listening to her love talk about her day. But she could only hold onto Deirdre so much with one arm, and before she’d even pulled back Deirdre saw everything.

“Yes!” Morgan said, shrill and too quickly. “I just, um…” She searched for the words but she struggled to find words that didn’t imply VERY NOT OKAY. “There was one of those staircase fae, at the bookstore? The little furry guys that like to yank you down and eat your feet? And so I took a little tumble and he took a bite out of my foot, and he didn’t like how I tasted, but he didn’t like being pulled off either, so he took a little more when I pulled him off, but he’s fine! Totally, completely fine! I was startled, so I threw him kind of roughly, more than I meant to, but he definitely got up and scrambled back safely on his own!” If she focused on the stairs and the fae, she wouldn’t have to talk about what was much more obvious: that she had lost whole pieces of her at the two story bookstore, a half hour drive away, and her wounds were still fresh.

Morgan shuffled away, intending to make a very normal stroll to the fridge and see if feeding herself everything they had in there would make a difference, but as soon as she put pressure on her foot, she went rigid and gasped with pain. “It’s fine!” She said, struggling to get her air circulation back in her lungs. “Definitely nothing serious. I didn’t even lose my toes! I just, uh...haven’t finished healing yet.”

Why was it always fae? Deirdre frowned, she wished there was some way to tell all of them not to hurt this one person (the times she did try, she was met with a lot of “well, all humans look the same”). She wanted to fixate on the faeness of the attack; she wanted to apologize for her people and explain that she really was trying to tell as many fae as possible not to eat her girlfriend. She wanted the words that left her mouth to agree, she wanted the smile to remain. “The bookstore?” Instead, she said this. “...which one?” Instead she frowned, she shifted, her fingers twitched at her side, desperate to reach for Morgan and soothe a problem that didn’t exist. The closest bookstore was a comfortable ten minute walk; a small place with an adequate selection of new releases and classic novels. It didn’t have stairs. Morgan took her car, Deirdre knew this because the beeping lock was what had perked Moira’s ears up first. There was another, about a five minute drive, smaller than the first. It sold mostly board games and housed a small case of used books. There was one stone step to get inside; gapless. The big one with two floors was half an hour away. It had the kind of wooden staircase with the empty space underneath and the big gaps between the steps.

Deirdre didn’t care much about what happened to the fae that bit Morgan, but forced herself to smile and nod anyway. Really, it could’ve been a ten minute drive if traffic and law were ignored. Which Morgan must’ve done, feeling famished from all the missed meals in favor of coffee and pastries. Though, hadn’t she just seen Morgan eat some brains yesterday? No, no, must’ve been another meat. How could she know? She wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was just a nibble; nibbles didn’t count. Morgan stumbled and Deirdre rushed to her side, quick to loop her arms around her love. “Of course,” Deirdre smiled, “but let’s just...let’s just have you lean on me a little, okay? I think there’s some leftover brains in the fridge from...whatever you were cooking, right? And there’s more in the freezer! I found a moose, so that’s there. And it’ll be cold and unseasoned but it’ll be…” Deirdre’s voice cracked and she swallowed the nervous tic away. “Come on, my love,” Deirdre assured softly, opening the fridge with her free hand. “We’ll get your food, and I’ll take you over to sit and...well, maybe you just need a bandage and some rest. You had to drive all the way over here, and that--maybe that’s why--you should eat, right?”

Morgan hated that she’d promised herself not to blatantly lie to Deirdre. It made answering direct questions she didn’t want to a special kind of painful. “The...big one.” She squeaked after a silence. The big chain bookstore with fancy staircases with little gaps that were just fae-tastic, a half hour away if she took the interstate. Morgan didn’t look at Deirdre as she answered. She didn’t want to know what it looked like as she put the timeline together. She didn’t want to see Deirdre grow worried. If she did, she’d want to comfort her. And she could only comfort her so much without lying.

She leaned on Deirdre as she was asked and gave her a little squeeze, and thumbed the flannel shirt she’d appropriated from Morgan’s own closet. Her overalls were a little damp and cold, there were grainy flecks of earth from the garden work she’d been doing. She was as soft all around as she was within, and all Morgan wanted was to rest there until everything stopped hurting and her body snapped back to being its old self. But Deirdre’s voice was growing thin. Morgan thought she could almost hear cracks of distress spreading over her heart.

“Yes! Yes, that’s perfect, my love,” she said. “Just get me to the great room with the first aid tub, and I can patch myself up from the couch, okay? And you can heat up the leftovers we have and everything else in a bowl. It’s too cold to have them raw. And then--” Then there wouldn’t be anything left in their power to do tonight. Then the future would keep going, smooth as ever, or it wouldn’t. Morgan’s lips trembled as she searched for the certainty she so desperately wanted. She stilled them with a kiss to Deirdre’s cheek. “Then you’ll sit with me, and tell me how the garden is doing, and let me smell those flowers. Just one thing at a time, okay?”

The big one. Deirdre wore worry in her eyes, smile pulled thin. The big one, she kept repeating it in her head hoping it would become less true. “That’s…that one is quite a drive away, isn’t it?” There had to be something said about asking questions she already knew the answers to. She didn’t say anything more about it, and simply nodded as she helped Morgan into the great room. When she was safe on the couch, she fished free their first aid supplies and placed them on the coffee table, then she pushed the table closer to Morgan. “You shouldn’t do it yourself, my love,” Deirdre said softly, “it hurts more when you do it yourself.” That wasn’t a claim founded by any science, but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from running around and spewing question and worry and question. “Just…” she sighed, leaning down to press a quick kiss against her girlfriend’s forehead. “…if you need stitches, let me do that. You must be in so much pain and…” Deirdre trailed off. She marked her exit with another kiss and said nothing more.

The kitchen was silent except for the whirring of the microwave and the sizzling of brains in a pan. Occasionally the sizzling would change in pitch and tone as Deirdre moved the meat around, trying to get it cooked all the way through. It seemed absurd—to be cooking the brains—but it was all Deirdre could do to keep from pacing around with questions and fears and worries and questions and running and crying and questions. The microwave beeped like an alarm. Deirdre was burning the meat. She shut the heat off and fished the leftovers from the screaming kitchen appliance with little mind for how her fingers scorched under the hot ceramic bowl. She topped it with her extra too-brown cooked brains and carried it to Morgan in a tray with a few of the flowers arranged nicely to one side, as if she were bringing Morgan breakfast in bed. “Here, my love,” she smiled as she set it all down. She offered Morgan the bowl, and a fork, and sat down next to her. “The garden is coming along nicely.” Deirdre was wringing her hands. “You should see the hydrangeas. The snow really confused them, for a bit, but I’ve got everything covered and heated and I was thinking of getting a greenhouse built. We have that space there, and as much as I like the outdoor garden, the weather can be so sporadic here and…” Deirdre rambled on, her story of little consequence about the state of their garden went on with stutters and stops. Skips and repeats. When Deirdre forgot which part she was at, she went back and told it all from the beginning, starting with the hydrangeas, which Morgan really should see. When the sound of her own voice began to sicken her, she picked at the dirt under her nails and said nothing for a moment. “I can still see where Anya scratched you.” Deirdre was looking at the floor; it was all she could do.

While Deirdre cooked, Morgan rushed to cover her injuries. She shimmied out of her sweater and bit down on it to cover her little screams when she doused her skin with disinfectant. She dabbed at everything as much as she could but there wasn’t much to wipe without any blood circulation to make a mess. But there was plenty to see: her arm looked like a kid had attacked it with squiggly scissors and her foot wasn’t much better. Morgan laid gauze patches over her foot and taped the whole thing up in a hurry, but it couldn’t completely hide the altered shape. As for her arm, she really did need more help than she knew how to manage with one hand and the pain every time she touched it was starting to make her head feel funny. Morgan laid her hanging bits of skin over the injury in an approximation of where it should go and gave herself a headache trying to will her body to heal itself. But there was nothing. Maybe even less than nothing.

Then Deirdre was back and Morgan had to drape her sweater over her chest so the extent of her discoloration didn’t look worse than it really was and eat her crispy food and listen to Deirdre’s story. It made her whimper with pain, but Morgan stretched her injured arm so she could take Deirdre’s hand into her own and thumb patterns onto the back of her hand. She tried to help her along soothingly, “A greenhouse sounds lovely. We could turn the back porch into a sunroom and attach it there. We could sit out in the rain with our tea and never get wet. Yes, the hydrangeas, my love, I want to see them. Soon, alright, soon…” But the only thing that came soon was the end of Morgan’s desperate meal and Deirdre’s last fatal observation.

“Oh, that.” Morgan tried very hard to sound dismissive. “I see it too, but I think it’s starting to scar over, don’t you?” But it wasn’t. And even though she had faithfully eaten everything on her plate, she was still hurt and in pieces and unmistakably dead. “It’s—“ Nothing to worry about, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t lie. She’d promised herself. “I’m—” Fine? Still? Really?

Morgan set her plate aside on the end table and reached for her love with her strong arm, rotting flesh and all. She stroked her soft hair and the side of her cheek. “I’m here,” she said plaintively. “I’m right here, babe.” Her voice choked and snagged and she had to swallow several times before she could speak again. “You still feel like a miracle. Like a chilly peach, only you never get wrinkled. It’s gonna be at least a hundred years before someone thinks you’re older than me, huh?” She forced a laugh and a smile. “Will you, um,” She inhaled stiffly as she upset her arm. She could hear how desperate she sounded, how frightened. She was fine, she was really fine right now in spite of everything wrong. But fine was a burning thread; it would finish without her and the fear of what would be left in its wake made Morgan tremble. “…Will you sit a little closer? W-will you hold me?”

Deirdre maintained her gaze away from Morgan, even as it hurt. There were many lies about how interesting the floor was swirling in her head. She burned to look at her, she desired to. Still, her eyes remained locked on the cracks in their hardwood. “A sunroom sounds nice. Are you sure you’re okay with covering the porch up?” She nearly sighed with relief as it seemed she was offered an excuse to look some place beyond the floor; she turned to stare at their porch. Soon, Morgan said. A lump formed in her throat. Soon. She turned back to the floor, blinking rapidly. Soon. Soon.

She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to. If their conversation could’ve carried itself to magical completion, she would’ve let it. Was it so wrong to want the okay and none of the in-between? Then she was in Morgan’s arms, and it was very, very, hard not to look at Morgan. Like refusing light; opening blinds just to shut them again. The sun sat beyond the curtains, she just had to pull them back. So, she did. Deirdre relaxed, relented, and turned to Morgan, wrapping her arms slowly around her love. Morgan’s futile sweater-cover-up was squished between them. Deirdre didn’t look at Morgan’s arm, but her gaze did drift to the misshapen lump of her ankle. Then up, to the bowl of brains, all finished. Deirdre pulled back, pressing her palm to Morgan’s bicep. Morgan was paler than her; banshees were always meant to look and feel corpses. Zombies were the living dead for a reason, the dead living were not meant to be paler than her. Deirdre’s hand fell. Soon. Morgan sounded more frightened than she was. Soon. It would be something like a century before Deirdre started to show any effects of aging. Soon. Soon. Deirdre chased a kiss, pressing herself gently to Morgan. “We’re going to get married sometime, you and me. And we’re going to have a family, even if that family is mostly feline. And it would be a special kind of cruelty if you never got to see my hair turn white, so you are. You are going to. All of this.”

Deirdre’s shoulders slackened, her arms snaked lazily around Morgan. “Will you let me look at your arm now, please?” One note shy of begging her love, Deirdre leaned in for another kiss—soft, slow, lingering. Almost as if she wasn’t worried about losing them one day.

Morgan closed her eyes as Deirdre settled against her chest. It was so rare to be gifted with having her like this, and even rarer to feel it, that for several moments she let the bubble of their world shrink down to the size of this one moment. Deirdre smelled like flowers, oncoming rain, the forest, and cherrywood. She was soft, almost plush, with her hair bunched in a ponytail and Morgan’s own flannel shirt ticking her skin. Morgan pressed her gently and kissed her head.

“Yeah, we can cover the porch. Maybe we’ll put in a glass wall there, and a skylight, so we can still watch the stars from there if we want. In the summer we can make s’mores right before the rains come and run inside to eat them and still feel like we’re half outside. And I know you like to nap on the window seat in the cat room, but we can put in a bigger one, just your size so you don’t have to curl up your legs.” Morgan gave her love another chaste kiss and laughed. Her voice was bright with false hope as she spoke and it was almost enough to convince her body that she was really okay. This was just another soft moment in the week, an ordinary gift of time, abundant as the flowers Deirdre tended so lovingly.

But there was nothing ordinary about getting married or making another family. Morgan tensed with longing. She could see them so clearly: curled up on a couch in a dark cottage somewhere, a baby in her arms, making light of the child’s screams for attention, and being interrupted by three new cats or one absurdly happy dog. She wanted it. She wanted it as badly as she wanted to get better. Much as she cherished her life with the girls, she knew how fleeting it was, and there were days she felt more than eager to leave White Crest behind. As Deirdre kissed her, she was sure she could taste it. But what if you don’t? What if you die here without doing any of this.

“Hey,” she sniffled. “Hold on, we can’t talk about marriage stuff too much when I haven’t even proposed. Or you haven’t. Or maybe we both should, because I want the whole thing: an engagement ring to shove in everyone’s face, a pretty dress too impractical to wear any other day, cheesy music, and the chance to do a grand romantic gesture since you got the last one.” Her voice snagged on her longing again and she hid her face against Deirdre’s. She couldn’t imagine doing any of that in her state. She couldn’t imagine having the time. White Crest would claim her body for its own before she had the chance, wouldn’t it?

“You can go ahead and look if you want. But it’s—” Bad. It’s bad and I don’t want you to know just how bad. I can carry this myself. I can figure this out. “You don’t have to. I didn’t get around to taking care of it, but I can.” She nosed Deirdre’s cheek and kissed her again. “I love you. Have I said that since coming home yet?”

A covered porch. A skylight. S’mores. Marriage. Family. The reel of future domestic delight played in Deirdre’s head; each piece of film, one after the other. A fancy engagement ring. A daughter. Their library finally fleshed out. A sunroom with a skylight. A big telescope. Tea surrounded by flowers and plants that she tended. Five hundred years; would the world deny them this? “Maybe we both should…” she repeated. She could imagine it; one big gesture each; two rings; Deirdre wanted to show hers off too. “But…that future…” Deirdre pulled away again, wanting to look into Morgan’s eyes and find answers in their shimmering blue. She raised her hand to Morgan’s cheek and held her tenderly there. “We can’t have it if we don’t accept reality as it is; if we can’t work through things together. My love, nothing is ever so bleak if you’re still with me…and you are. You are.” The question of how long hung in the air, but Deirdre didn’t ask it. It would have to be long enough. It would have to be five hundred years, at least. It had to.

When given permission to look at her girlfriend’s arm, Deirdre nodded and then laughed. “You might’ve,” she turned her head and kissed her again. “Sometimes saying it is just like breathing, I think it happens all the time and sometimes without a sound. I love you too, of course. So much.” When she leaned back, she pulled the sweater-shield away with her, gently placing it on the table in silent thanks for its service to Morgan.

Morgan didn’t have to say it was bad, though Deirdre wished she had. “Bad” was a kind understatement to the torn up decaying flesh that she was looking at. Her cold fingers pressed softly around the wounded area, as if trying to coax out some secret remedy. There was no blood to stop from gushing free; no sense that Morgan’s body remembered how to repair itself at all. She looked as she was: dead, and no different from any corpse Deirdre might otherwise gleefully stumble across. The kind of wound a medical examiner would find redundant to try and patch up. She supposed it was a good thing she wasn’t Regan. “Stitches?” Deirdre looked up at Morgan. “I don’t know if painkillers will help you, but I don’t imagine trying them would harm you. We could maybe try numbing the area with ice—or I suppose my hands might work—first; it’ll hurt very badly, trying to close it up. But I think we should try.” Her eyes moved to the scratch Anya left; just the same as Deirdre saw it yesterday. She looked at her own hand, Anya’s work from an hour ago—when she wanted to be fed earlier than her usual time and Deirdre tried to distract her with play—had vanished as though it was never there. Her gaze moved down to Morgan’s ankle. “How’s that?” Deirdre asked. “Is there anything that needs to be done there, do you think? A bone to be popped into place?”

Deirdre looked over at her girlfriend again—future fiancée, future-future wife. Two rings. Maybe they’d try a cottage for a decade or two, a proper mansion for some other ones. If they got lazy one lifetime, maybe they’d get a chic condo in a bustling city’s downtown. Maybe they’d get several and hop around. One daughter. A son. Grandchildren. Wasn’t it novel to be able to live to see generations of their own family? Their kindness passed on. Cats. Dogs. Cows. Chickens. Neighbours that wondered how they stayed so young-looking. People who thought Morgan married for money, a nice fur coat and a wink to make them think they were right. Friends who’d known them a century ago. People to make jealous of their ever-lasting love. A wedding. Two rings. Maybe she’d wear a dress, maybe a suit. Why not both? “Don’t do it by yourself, Morgan,” Deirdre said, finally giving way to tears that once remained politely inside. “I love you. I love you so much that I don’t want that. I don’t care how scary it is, it’s worse if we’re not…”

Morgan didn’t want to look at reality as it was. Not this one; not with Deirdre. She could hold two worlds in her head just fine, and if the true one was just her secret, a little wrinkle she could iron out herself, then it hadn’t really been so dire in the first place. And wasn’t this what she had been conditioned for? To carry suffering and pretend like she wasn’t? She exhaled stiffly as Deirdre shifted and examined her arm. When she kept it still, the throbbing was dull and steady enough to be ignored. But, much like reality, the gash burned fresh with even a little close attention.

“I don’t know what to say about how things really are,” Morgan said quietly, stiff with restraint. “I haven’t found anyone else this is happening to. I haven’t read of anything like this being possible.” Technically, that meant that whatever magic was running its course could be merciful, for all they knew. Maybe the undead really could get sick, and this was just an awful zombie flu that would run its course and leave her alone. And maybe this would end her, or make her so vulnerable that something else would all too easily.

She couldn’t watch Deirdre do her examination. It felt too much like failure, even if it had been the fae’s fault more than hers. “We can try to close it some, yeah. Maybe just bandage the rest. I can put it in a sling if moving it still makes things worse,” she mumbled. “I wrapped up my foot without any problems, but you can double check me. We’ll do whatever you think is best. Although I…” It took Morgan a few seconds to find her nerve. Things were bad enough already, adding to the pile seemed cruel. But Deirdre would find out on her own, and it would only be worse if she realized Morgan had been sitting on more information than she’d given. “After what happened at the coffee shop, I tried some ibuprofen. It didn’t take. I healed in a couple of hours, but it still…” she shook her head. “We don’t have to waste any pain-killers on me, okay? I’ll numb the spot with an ice pack and I’ll be okay.”

But Deirdre didn’t want her to do it herself. Try as Morgan might, she had already failed in keeping this contained to herself alone. It was happening to Deirdre, too, and her banshee, who already carried so much suffering, was left helpless by everything Morgan tried to do to make things better. Morgan brushed away her love’s tears with her strong hand. Usually, that helped. It was like wiping something clean. No more sticky sadness, only comfort. But in this moment, it felt like peeling away her last bit of protection. If Deirdre was already hurt, then she already knew. If she already knew, then there weren’t two worlds to hold at all. Just the one, frightening and miserable and shrinking around her existence until it crushed her. There was nowhere to turn her gaze with distraction. No place to hide. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her own tears starting to flood her lids too. “I’m sorry. I was trying to make it better, I’m sorry. I love you, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be hurt, or disappointed…” She buried her face in her shoulder. “I didn’t want you to be scared too.” She swallowed down a sob, sniffled, and kissed Deirdre’s cheek. “Don’t worry about hurting me. Just patch me up as best you know how. Whatever you think is right. I’ll deal. I’ve already had a few days to build up my tolerance again. Okay?”

Once, Deirdre was sure she knew everything about Death; it was her birthright, her gift. By extension, her knowledge of the undead was extensive—similarly once considered whole. She stopped thinking she was right the moment she realized humans were quite loveable, the rest of her inaccuracies piling up. But she wished it all back; all that arrogance of knowledge. This was unlike any drug she knew of, any common disease. If it was a spell or a curse, she had no way of knowing. If this had something to do with the out-of-season winter, she didn’t know. She couldn’t know. The only thing she did understand was that none of this was normal, and that she should be worried. “It’s like you’re fading away,” she said. “You were pale yesterday, and all sorts of discoloured, but I know you ate. And you ate again just now. And you’re even worse today. And that’s just besides the whole…” Deirdre gestured to her arm. She pointed frantically at her foot. “If I let fear talk, it feels like you’re dying again. Or being more dead. Or—Fates, who knows what it’s like? But it is scary, my love. It is even without an injury. What does hiding it from me do? I can see you. I can see it. I should’ve said something sooner, but I thought I was being paranoid. I’ve been waiting and worrying and watching ever since you woke up that day. If you start doing this all alone, then I’m going to worry all alone. And that’s what it’ll be for us. And if this is some end—which it’s not, it can’t be—but if it was, then it’ll happen alone. And I don’t want…” Deirdre’s voice cracked; she sniffled. “I don’t want us to be alone anymore, my love.”

In silence, Deirdre worked the wound; icing with the cold of her hands, stitching and trying not to wince or cry and wrapping everything up tight, but not too tight. She’d only ever been used to doing this sort of thing on herself, but she didn’t tell Morgan that; Morgan already knew. She wanted to work fast, so the pain wouldn’t last, but not so fast that the pain was unfair. She wanted to worry, but not so much that Morgan cried along with her. She wanted to love, and this alone she could do without fear or limitation--no matter what, pretending she loved less, cared less, would not make the pain of loss any worse. So why bother? When she was done, she pressed a kiss to Morgan’s bandaged arm and looked at her with a smile. She had done her best to be gentle and where Morgan ached, she ached. Where Morgan was pained, she was pained enough to find a way to be more gentle. They existed in a see-saw, striving to find balance upon the fulcrum. “You don’t have to ‘deal’,” she said, noting the hypocrisy in saying it. “My love, with anything...whatever pain...I wish you’d let me carry it too. I wish you’d think of yourself not as one person--not as one damaged vessel taking in water--but as two people. Two boats. And then one--one big one. Both of us. I care about you more than I know how to say, and I love you just the same. As much as it might be convenient to pretend we are two people devoid of each other's pain, we are not. In your hands--” Deirdre took them in hers. “You carry not just yourself, but the chronology of us, and my heart. What I mean is: I love you, and inevitably, where you ache, I ache. And one day, though I won’t mention it much, when we’re married, everyone will understand that you’re the woman I love most--that I would spend eternity with, if only I lived that long. And that day, I hope that’s a truth that comes like breathing to you. I’d promise it. If you’d let me, I’d promise so many things to you.”

It took everything Morgan had not to scream as Deirdre stitched her arm together. She hissed, gasped, whimpered, and strained her hand gripping the throw pillow she’d bitten down on earlier. But this was her world, her life, and the cost of feeling like a whole, connected person again. She would not scream like some hysterical kid in the face of it. Especially not with Deirdre, who had suffered so much worse for reasons far more terrible. There were tears in her eyes by the time Deirdre finished. Her love’s hands weren’t cold enough to take out the sting completely and the skin around her arm was strained trying to make up for what was missing. But she returned her smile with relief, mouthing, Okay, okay, okay, when her voice proved too frail to speak. She took Deirdre’s hands and brought them to her lips. She let her cheek rest on them, and kissed them a few times more: one for apology, one for affection, one for adoration, one to appeal for absolution, one for abundant gratitude.

“I am yours, as you are mine,” she whispered. “And you don’t have to promise, not out loud. I feel it. Even more so now.” She hiccuped a laugh and released Deirdre’s hands, nodding that it was alright for her to carry on with the rest.

With a smile, affection and praise unspoken except for where they shone through her eyes, Deirdre turned to Morgan’s foot. “Thank you for wanting to protect me,” she said, unwrapping the haphazard bandaging. “I wish you wouldn't be sorry about it; I would’ve done the same thing and I understand what it means.” Her ankle wasn’t as bad as her arm, which prompted a sigh of relief in Deirdre. Good things were possible, perhaps. But the ankle was still swollen, giving it the appearance of a foot bent wrong. To the bite mark, which she surmised didn’t need stitching, she cleaned delicately and wrapped everything up as her mother had taught her was appropriate. She’d watched Morgan heal greater wounds in half the time. “I love you, you incredibly strong woman.” Deirdre leaned up to kiss her girlfriend, peppering her first aid with affection rewards and whispers of how good Morgan was being. When it was all over, all that was left was Morgan’s good behaviour to claim. She could only guess at how badly it hurt, and was eager now to replace pain with comfort. “Are you worried?”

Morgan tried to relax as Deirdre finished with her foot. It helped that her hands were soft and careful, that her lips were tender, and she assured her that she was being good, so good. Somehow with all her stupid deceptions, Morgan had managed to face this and be good. “I know you understand because you have done the same thing before. And it hurt. It hurt so awful that you wouldn’t let me in, it felt like you didn’t really trust me, like I hadn’t done enough for you. If I’d thought more about you and less about my own stupid fear, maybe I would’ve figured that out.” She tugged on Deirdre’s sleeve and overalls, silently asking to be held over her lap. “I should have known not to, but I wasn’t thinking about it right. I don’t want to make you feel the way I did. I trust you more than anyone else. You’re the only person I’ve been able to bear telling so far. It was just...as soon as I told you, I couldn’t hide from it. Not even a little bit. It wouldn’t be some little thing I can solve on my own before you get home and turn into a story with a happy ending.” She breathed carefully, shuddering through a rising sob. “I love you too, and I admire you, and you are so good to me…” She nuzzled her way into the crook of her neck.

She owed it to Deirdre to be as honest as she knew how to be. But worried barely brushed the surface of what she felt. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I mean, I know I’m decaying in spite of doing everything I’m supposed to. I know that makes me more fragile. And I feel all of it, everything. But I don’t know why or how. None of this should be possible, and I have begged the universe so many times to let me feel like I’m a part of life again, even just one day more so I would know not to take anything for granted. But that was just grief. I never thought it would happen. Because it shouldn’t. I’m dead and it shouldn’t. And now…” She shivered and kissed Deirdre where she was closest for strength. “It just seems so cruel. I feel like I’m being punished and I can’t tell if I deserve it or not.” She shivered again, harder, as she stared down the heart of the dark inside her. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a plan. I don't know how I should even make a plan for the plan. I don’t know anything except that whoever’s done this to me is powerful enough to break the laws of magic I thought I understood. And when does this stop? Do I get to keep my mind whenever it does? Is that something I should even want? Is that something we’re going to be able to bear? I don’t know. I don’t know anything, or how to learn better. That’s what scares me most of all, not knowing.” She squeezed her love and took comfort in all of her.

“You smell like outside. And cherries, but an orchard of them, and the sandalwood candles my dad burned to cleanse the rooms after a fight or an outburst,” she mumbled. “Now you. Tell me where you’re at. If we’re three ships in a storm you can’t carry your pain by yourself either. Let me at least be good at listening. Please?”

Once tugged, Deirdre obeyed, scooping Morgan into her arms. “My love,” she mumbled softly as her girlfriend spoke. She kissed her where she could; the top of her head, the side of her face, all careful not to interrupt the delicate flow of her words. “Don’t say that,” Deirdre scolded softly as Morgan found peace buried in her shoulder. “You deserve more credit than that. The desire to hide pain away isn’t a bad one, and it isn’t even one so easily disregarded. I understand, Morgan. I understood. Don’t blame yourself for wanting that. You didn’t break a vase and then try to sweep it under the rug, and even if you had that’s…Hey…” Deirdre shifted, pulling Morgan’s face up to meet hers. “I love you so much, my Morgue. No matter what.” And then she kissed her, hoping to seal that chapter away and move them on to the next page.

The next page being, of course, the bigger problem to tackle. “You feel yourself decaying?” Deirdre frowned, even as someone who enjoyed the feeling, she recognized well how unnerving it must’ve been to feel it; for Morgan to feel herself dying and fading, slowly and without pause. Deirdre whined at the thought. “Is it fair to say this is magic, then?” Deirdre tried, “if you pick an angle, and then chase one set of answers…even if the conclusion is that it’s not magic, it’s more than either of us knew before. So, what I mean is, would it be helpful if we looked into this? We could split it up? You could try the magic thing and I can…see if there’s some undead disease that does this? I think I’ve ruled any kind of drug out; I asked around and it doesn’t sound like anything in the market here. But if it turns out it’s not magic, or disease, then we’ll have to revisit that. Would this make you feel better? Would this feel like a plan?” It certainly made Deirdre feel better—she enjoyed being actionable—but it mattered more what Morgan was comfortable with; what she wanted. “I know you’ve had to research enough magic used against you for one eternal lifetime but…at least so we don’t have to dance around each other with library trips and…journeys to dark alleys and damp basements trying to look at someone’s collection of drugs. Sometimes they don’t let you leave without buying something. I have so many magic mushrooms; I don’t even like them that much.” Deirdre tried to laugh, the sound pittering off quickly. It felt funny in the moment, with the sneaking around and the stuffing mushrooms away where no one would look. It was a little less funny when some fae accused her of hoarding the substance. Not so funny when a spriggan tried to fight her until she relented and gave mushrooms away. Really unfunny when a group of fae congregated outside their house, demanding mushrooms. And finally, horribly inconvenient to constantly pretend as though she were filling up a glass of water when in actuality drugs were being dealt and high pixies had to be swept off their porch. All of it meant a lot of glasses of water, a lot of peeing, and naked leprechauns passed out in their bushes. And that none of it was really funny in the end. Morgan could be dying, and some fae thought their backyard was the hot new party spot.

With a pause, a sigh and a kiss, she explained all of that to Morgan. “And every morning I wake up at four just to shoo the fae away and tell the brownies—which are fighting, by the way—that we’re uninterested in letting one stay in our house. Which then starts up this whole thing about how our house is so big, we should let more fae inside. And then the pixies get on this thing about ‘are the mushrooms ethically sourced’ and I don’t know! I know I should’ve asked but I wasn’t thinking about asking, I was thinking about saving your life! And now I might also have mushrooms that were stolen from pixies and I’ve inadvertently supported the trade of unethical magic mushrooms.” Deirdre groaned, pressing the palm of her hands to her eyes. “And you’re fading away, and you might be gone for good. And the best I can do is deal drugs from our porch and get glasses of water which I feel so bad lying about that I do drink them all. Every glass. And then the constant toilet trips are just…” Deirdre sighed, throwing her head back against the couch and then turning to look at Morgan. She laughed again, longer and louder and true. “None of this is fair to you, my love,” she reached out for Morgan. “That dying meant you lost feeling. That having it back means this. Just one nice thing, without cost, that stays…it would be nice to have that. Mostly I’ve been worried about you; only so much cherry and sandalwood smell can make everything else okay. Watching the delight and wonder you have tasting and feeling and smelling things…Fates, I wish I knew how to tell you how good it is to see you happy. And this specifically, this thing I’ve seen you grieve over. I want that feeling for you forever, that kind of happiness. But no matter how badly I want something, it just…” Deirdre tapped her finger against Morgan’s forearm, observing again how pale she was and where decay bloomed. “I just want you to be happy, for a long time. A proper long time. Five hundred years, at least. And I want the shape of that happiness to be exactly as you dream it.” Deirdre looked up at Morgan and shook her head. “What’s been the best part so far? With everything to feel and taste and smell…”

Morgan listened rapt as Deirdre spoke. Her blue eyes were murkier than they had been before, but they sparked with an intensity that went beyond the simple spectrum of life and death. She laughed when she couldn’t help it, and tenderly brushed her love with her fingertips. The game was the same: how lightly could she touch without losing feeling? But it was more fun when she knew her fingers sometimes tickled and sometimes ‘accidentally’ found a spot that made Deirdre shiver or pause in her telling.

“I might be partially to blame for the newfound interest in ethically sourcing.” She cut in softly. “It’s one of their newest vocab words, along with organic, fair trade, and Willowbud and Appleseed may or may not have spoiled everything at Took’s that didn’t have one of those kinds of labels on it recently.”

She peeled Deirdre’s hand from her forehead and thumbed the little worry crease forming between her eyebrows as she went on until the desperate absurdity of the whole thing overwhelmed them both into laughter. Morgan smothered hers with little kisses. She didn’t need another reason to cherish her love, but she was happy to have one nonetheless. “First of all, no more fake-real glasses of water. If we can’t find a nice leprechaun cave or pixie hovel to donate your stash to so they can deal with the others, we’ll have to have regular business hours so you can get some sleep.” She arched a brow, beaming with her usual bright determination.

“Secondly, none of this has been fair for you either. You’ve sacrificed and suffered so much, and nothing I’ve planted for your happiness has grown without weeds and thorns. And I want ease for you, so much. I want a whole garden of joy for you, joy and love and nothing else. But the world we live in is too complicated for that. We live on a wheel, and it always turns. If it stopped completely, it wouldn’t be life at all.” Morgan draped her arms around her love’s shoulders. “So, we can’t always be happy so long as we’re in the thick of the world and we can’t make the wheel turn at our pace. But we can be in love. And I would take that any day, if I really had to choose.” She kissed her, soft and lingering to emphasize the point. It was easy to be confident and wise in the service of comforting Deirdre. Maybe that was why sharing the load was always better. The strength they saved for each other was so much more resilient than what they could summon for themselves.

Morgan kissed the tip of Deirdre’s nose. “Lucky for me, at least fifty percent of the shape of my happiness looks a lot like you. You are a wonder of a person and you do so much for me. I never know how to tell you or show you what it means.” Slowly, she brought their foreheads together and let them linger like that for a while before speaking again. “I like being soft again. That’s my favorite. Our pillows, our sheets, snow on my skin, the cats, your hair, your body, all my sweaters, and the wind when it’s gentle. And frozen yogurt, pudding, cream pastries, and pomegranate juice. I can feel everything that’s gentle, and I can give gentle back. I’m a part of it. I understand it. There’s no adapting or thinking or concentrating. I just connect like I’ve always belonged. Wonderful doesn’t begin to describe it.” She teased her lips around Deirdre’s skin to prove her point. “And there’s getting to try everyone’s favorite everything. And being able to hug the girls and know what they really feel like for the first time. Then there’s laying with you and not thinking about anything, and not having to ask you to do anything but be. And all the little in between touches and pressures I’ve half forgotten. Your teeth, cat claws, leather, the Subaru, hard candies. And the sun. It’s a shame it’s been so cloudy, because the few times I’ve run out in time, the sun’s warmth is so…magical? It’s so unreal I don’t really know what to call it.” Morgan kissed her love again and smiled against her lips.

“What’s happening to us right now isn’t balanced or fair. But we have a plan. And if I am fading away, for now, for a while, maybe—” Or maybe for good. The thought hooked through her voice and she stopped before persisting. “I want to steal as much life and as much good from this as I can. Whatever this is already wins if I don’t.”

With the truth spoken so clearly, so simply, the brambles in Morgan’s mind cleared and Deirdre’s plan materialized like guideposts on a path. The way out shimmered just out of sight, any day now the right turn would take them there and it would be funny to look back on how long it took to figure everything out.

“I know time is screwing us over again, but I want to take an hour from it. The house is empty, you’re already holding me, and we don’t know how many more good days we have. So be with me, right here. Take me. We can hole up in the library after, and I’ll make soup for dinner when you’re hungry, and we’ll stay up reading as long as we can. But after. I want you first. I want to feel alive with you. And I promise, I promise, we will do whatever it takes to fix this and make it to our wedding.”

Deirdre’s eyes remained far, staring forward. Her gaze narrowed on the wall. “Is that why the pixies suddenly have such great vocabulary?” She turned to Morgan. “You know I had an actual discussion with Willowbud about commercial farming; I didn’t think she knew anything about it. You should know the concern is with freeing all the cows and trampling the humans and that…” Deirdre continued in her best imitation of the high-pitched dialogue of the pixies. “Like ten pixies can ride a cow at once, so much better than a cat AND cows are herbivores—also a word you must’ve taught them.” And then she laughed again, because it was absurd, but mostly because she loved Morgan. And she was happy being kissed by her love, touched by her love, held and listened to. Her body felt light, as if in their laughter, they’d lifted up from the couch and away for all that pulled and pushed on them; abducted by happy aliens who only knew paradise and utopia. A nice beach, Deirdre figured.

If Morgan said there would be no more glasses of water, then Deirdre could believe it--she saw them replaced with piña coladas sipped through colorful straws. The memory of fae clamoring for free mushrooms was eaten by the waves, crashing harmlessly against the shore. But life existed on a wheel, and just as soon as the vision of a beach lived by Morgan’s words, it too was washed away. It was just them and their house now, trying to live in a world that would turn and turn and turn and never spare a thought to who it crushed. The beach didn’t possess the nuances of their life but this terrible, spinning reality did. Anyday, Deirdre would also choose being in love over uncomplicated happiness, but she didn’t understand why there had to be a choice at all. Morgan made her uncomplicatedly happy all on her own, it was the world that spun and pricked with its thorns. Was it so wrong to hope for the beach?

She could believe that Morgan was happy. She could believe that the two of them together would always find a way to be. But as long as the world was spinning, something would get left behind--that was the inevitable truth. Deirdre smiled, she wanted to coast along Morgan’s delight, but knew it was about to be knocked off the wheel, one way or another. Deirdre leaned into each touch, shivered where Morgan brushed her skin and hummed where she was kissed. One day when the world spun them out of existence, she hoped that feeling of love would still persist: if just one other person could know what it was like to be loved so completely, cared for so wholly, and held so warmly. If someone else could know a word brighter than bright, maybe something could exist beyond the spinning and the weeds.

Deirdre just wished it could be them.

“You said that last time, my love,” Deirdre shook her head, laughing the observation into the casual. “And you--we--say it so often. I know it doesn’t make it any less true--that we should steal our moments where we can--but...aren’t you tired of stealing? Can’t we just have?” Deirdre shook her head again. “I’m sorry,” she leaned up into Morgan, kissing her and lingering. “I’m sorry. I want you. I want to make you feel alive. I want you here, right now. And I want--well, I’m not going to accept that promise.” Another laugh. “Those don’t end well, but I believe you and I understand you and I love you.” Another kiss. “And we’ve got a wedding and a life and a family to get to one day. Right now, we’ve got an hour.”

“Of course I want to ‘have’,” Morgan said. She’d wanted to ‘have’ all her life, and it was the bitterest truth of all that she couldn’t cash in her suffering for a pass to a kinder world where pain never cut too deep. “Badly, Deirdre. I want it so badly. And maybe someday we will. Maybe we’ll figure out the balance, or maybe we’ll find the softest, quietest place to hide as long as we want. We’ll make our world real. Maybe after this is over we’ll rest easy for months and it’ll be almost as good.” Morgan didn’t know if she believed her own words, or if she should. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt so badly or feel so hounded by the world if they accepted these turns as part of their fate. Maybe they could have a more reliable sense of safety, if they accepted that they never truly would be. But Morgan had never excelled at playing safe with her heart.

She eased them slowly down against the cushions of their prickly-soft couch. She touched a finger to Deirdre’s lips and lifted her eyes to meet her love’s. Just let me say one thing more. I know we’re losing something every second, but one thing more. “Don’t be sorry for wanting to ‘have’. And don’t ever think for another second that I don’t want that too.” She combed Deirdre’s hair down so it fell down other their faces and blocked out the room, the world, the whole stupid thing that wouldn’t let them be. She was a meadow of the finest grass and silk and simmered like the sun over an earthy river; proof that their world could be touched and maybe kept. Five-hundred years was a long time to try. “We’re just not there yet,” she mumbled, thumbing open her overalls one button at a time. “It’s on the other side of this mess. Now take me there.” Take me, while there’s still a me left to take.

#turn to loathed sours #wr deirdre #wr chatzy #wr deirdre chatzy #medical blood tw

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 8 years ago

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rule of three - chapter 31

THE RULE OF THREE CHAPTER INDEX HERE.

Stiles shoots—fucking misses—and shoots again. And then Matt’s down, gargling as blood spews from his throat, and oh god, that’s disgusting, but Stiles doesn’t have time to think. Because Kali is advancing on him, keeping the couch between them, and her aim is a hell of a lot steadier than Stiles’s.

How many bullets in the magazine? Standard government issue Glock. That’s fifteen, right? Fifteen, and maybe one in the tube. So sixteen. And Matt used one when he killed Thing Two, and Stiles has used two, so that’s twelve left, maybe thirteen. It seems like a lot of bullets, but at the same time nowhere near enough.

Stiles fires at Kali, and hits the ceiling instead.

Eleven left, maybe twelve.

This is nothing like a video game. This is hard, and terrifying, and his hands are slippery with sweat, and he’s shaking, and he’s going to fucking die here. No respawning. No do-over. This is not a game. This is the reason Stiles always got a curl of fear in his gut whenever he told his dad to have a good shift. This is the real thing.

Behind him, over by the bed, he can hear Deucalion and Isaac struggling. But he can’t look, can’t take his eyes off Kali, who’s smiling at him with her head on an angle like he’s just the cutest little thing, and someone needs to tell this psycho bitch it’s not a game. Or maybe it is to her, because she’s just so sure she’s winning.

Matt gasps and chokes on the floor, smearing blood everywhere as he flops around like a landed fish.

Kali levels her gun at Stiles.

He fires again, she jerks back.

A bullet hits the floor beside him, so close he can fucking feel it.

He’s got no cover here at all. He’s just kneeling on the floor, and she’s taking aim again.

I’m a leaf on the wind, Stiles thinks. Watch how I soar.

He fires again, and how does he keep missing? He swallows down a sob of panic that makes his hand shake more.

I am one with the force and the force is with me.

And yeah, he’s probably going to die just like those guys, right?

He tries to fire again, fumbles it, and drops the fucking gun.

Drops it.

Panic slices through him like a knife through a bladder of water, and Stiles is going to drown.

No.

Worse.

Stiles is going to die like Thing Two did, blood and brains and shards of his skull splattered on the floor behind him. Everything he is, he was, and he ever will be, snuffed out in an instant as the bullet tears through him.

Isn’t he supposed to be calm or something? Isn’t that a thing? That moment of cold clarity before death? That moment of acceptance.

Here I am, and there is nothing I can do. In this moment I can only be.

A leaf on the wind.

One with the force.

Staring eternity in the face.

***

“No!” Deucalion yells, and why is Stiles still alive? Except there’s a body shielding his. It’s Isaac. And Deucalion might be a crazy fuck, but he won’t let Kali shoot at Stiles when Isaac could get hurt.

Isaac and Stiles both scrabble for the gun.

“No!” Deucalion yells again.

And then Isaac is being wrenched away from Stiles, Kali’s fist in his curls, and the muzzle of Kali’s gun is pressed against Stiles’s forehead.

“Stiles!” Isaac gasps, eyes wide with terror.

Stiles’s heart freezes.

***

Bang.

For a moment Stiles thinks he’s dead, and he doesn’t understand how his eyes are still open, how he’s still seeing things, how nothing has gone black.

Bang bang bang.

A burst of noise—not gunshots—and suddenly the door to the warehouse flies open.

Parrish? And Laura? And vests that say POLICE. Yelling, and shouting, and get down on the fucking floor now!

And Kali steps back, her hands up, because maybe she doesn’t actually want to die for Deucalion, or spend the rest of her life in prison, and Laura is all over her, taking her gun, twisting her arms behind her back, putting her on her knees, and then face-down on the floor, snapping on the cuffs.

Stiles tries to remember how to breathe.

And his dad is here too, and Chris and Peter, and who gave Peter a gun? Stiles wants to laugh at that, because Peter’s preferred method of dispatching his enemies just has to be poison right? The sort that comes from some exquisite lily that only grows in the moonlight for one day of the year on a secret Indonesian island or something, and is almost entirely undetectable to standard forensic tests. A gun is so banal.

And Stiles must be in shock, because he wants to remember to tell Peter that later, because he thinks it will make him laugh.

His dad is hurrying toward them, and all Stiles can do is watch him come and wonder how he’s not dead yet.

And Matt’s gun is still on the floor, and someone is reaching for it, and Stiles blinks and sees too late that it’s Deucalion.

“Stiles!” his dad yells.

There’s a flurry of movement, and Stiles scrambles back. When he twists his head to look, it’s Isaac holding the gun. He’s got it jammed up under Deucalion’s chin, his hands shaking.

“Isaac,” Deucalion says.

“Isaac,” his dad says, and it’s him that Isaac’s gaze flicks to quickly, before it fixes again on Deucalion. “Move away, Isaac. I’ve got him covered, okay?”

Peter drops to his knees beside Stiles, tugging him away further. He’s strong, and safe, and for a second Stiles forgets how to breathe again.

His dad is holding a gun on Deucalion. It’s shaking as much as Isaac’s.

Chris is right beside him, steady and silent.

One of the deputies is standing with them.

“Isaac,” his dad says again. “Move away, kid, please.”

Isaac is still kneeling in front of Deucalion, the gun still shoved up against his throat. He’s crying.

There are a thousand ways this could go wrong. Deucalion could grab the gun off Isaac, and turn it back on him. Or he could grab the gun and shoot Stiles’s dad, or Chris, or anyone else in the room before he’s killed himself. A gun, a shaking kid, and a man who’s still pulling all his strings. A thousand ways it could go wrong.

But mostly, Stiles thinks, it could go wrong if Isaac actually kills him.

“Isaac,” his dad says. “I know you think you want to do this, but I promise you it’s a mistake. Don’t let this man ruin your future as well, please.”

Revenge isn’t the same thing as justice.

And revenge carried out in a room full of deputies…

Maybe, with the right lawyer, Isaac won’t go to prison if he pulls the trigger. But maybe he also doesn’t need to see bloodshed every time he closes his eyes. Deucalion deserves to rot in hell, but Isaac doesn’t deserve to be haunted by him.

“Isaac,” his dad says again. “Son.”

And Isaac moves as though that one word breaks whatever spell he’s under, pushing himself away from Deucalion.

Chris and the deputy step forward, guns trained on Deucalion.

Stiles suddenly remembers how to breathe again, and Peter tugs him close, running his hands over his limbs like he’s looking for injuries. He stares intently at Stiles’s face, his brilliant blue gaze sharp with fear.

“I’m okay,” Stiles whispers. “I’m okay.”

He looks over at his dad, who’s crouching beside Isaac, arms wrapped around him.

“I’m okay,” he says again, and starts to shake apart.

***

His dad rides in the ambulance with them, growling at the paramedic who tries to make him ride up front. Stiles and Isaac each have a tinfoil shock blanket wrapped around their shoulders, and they’re sitting on either side of Stiles’s dad on the gurney in the back of the ambulance.

They’re not injured. Right now that seems even more miraculous than Stiles can process.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac whispers, flinching away from Stiles’s dad. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I went to the house, to…” He shudders.

His dad exchanges a searching look with Stiles, and Stiles knows he’s on the hook to tell the whole story later, and then puts an arm around Isaac. “Isaac, that doesn’t matter, okay? What matters is that you’re safe. You’re both safe. Whatever happened, we can talk about that later, but you’re safe, and he’s not going to come near you ever again, okay?”

Stiles leans against his dad. He’s bone-weary and jittery at the same time, like he’s been up all night drinking Red Bull. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but his dad insisted they both get checked out.

And he probably is in shock or something.

Whenever he blinks, he sees Thing Two’s skull coming apart.

Also, he only notices he’s crying when his dad wipes his face for him.

***

Stiles is sedated at the hospital, which he hates, but Melissa, Scott’s mom, is the nurse who administers the dose, so he doesn’t freak out too much. And his dad promises to stay in the room with him at all times. He and Isaac share a room.

Stiles wakes up sometime the next day.

It’s bright.

It takes him a moment to remember where he is. His dad is snoring in the chair between their beds, and Isaac is still sleeping too.

It takes Stiles a moment to realize what’s woken him: Melissa is checking his chart.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him in a soft voice.

“Okay.” He has cotton mouth but, on balance, he’s not going to complain about that.

“You have visitors,” Melissa tells him in a whisper, checking to see his dad is still asleep.

Stiles throws the blankets off, his heart pounding. “Really?”

She puts a finger to her lips.

“Oh.” Stiles scrambles out of bed and then tugs at his hospital gown. “Can you help me not show my ass to them?”

Melissa produces a couple of safety pins from her pocket with a smile, and Stiles tries his hardest not to bounce from foot to foot as she makes him decent. Not that he’d mind Chris and Peter seeing his ass under other circumstances, but… well.

By the time Melissa is finished with him, Stiles is blushing.

Melissa points him down the hall.

Chris and Peter are sitting in a dreary waiting room at the end of the hall. There’s a vinyl couch, a couple of sad magazines, and a television that’s muted and playing some awful soap opera. But somehow it’s perfect.

“Hey.” Stiles smiles, suddenly shy.

They both stand at the sound of his voice, and for a second Stiles hesitates because not only does he not know what to do—handshake? hug? celebratory blowjob?—he doesn’t know which one of them to approach first, and his indecision cripples him.

Is that what every interaction will be like with them?

Will he have to keep a tally in his head of who gets what, like dividing up a treat between toddlers?

How is this supposed to work?

In the end they solve it for him, by approaching at the same time and sandwiching him in a warm hug. Stiles sinks into the embrace and then, not caring if anyone’s watching, brushes his mouth quickly against Chris’s, and then Peter’s. And then Peter’s again, and then Chris’s.

“Thank you for saving us,” he whispers to both of them. “Also, plus side, it’s going to be really hard for my dad to hate you after this.”

Peter shakes with silent laughter.

Chris looks slightly pained.

“I mean, he’ll try,” Stiles clarifies, “but he’s fighting a losing battle.”

That gets what looks to be an unwilling smile out of Chris.

Stiles rewards him with another brief kiss and remembers that time he told them he never wanted to see them again. Turns out Stiles was fighting a losing battle on that front too.

He’s never been happier to be wrong.

#a/b/o dynamics #teen wolf #fan fiction #stetopher

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