#loftylockjaw

[zombiebabysitter]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “[pm] Hey man. I [......] talked to Caleb. I know...”:

[pm] It wasn't him. You said it yourself. Look, I don't know shit about demons, but I know what it's like to do some fucked up shit when you ain't in control, but he's IN control now. He got... exorcised or somethin.

​[pm] Cool. Fucking cool. After everything.

[rn-zane]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “[pm] Hey. Uh. [...] Leo told me-- I found out...”:

[pm] Come on. Even if they don't have the full story, you know they know who fucked this up. It's what I'm good at. [...] I also kind of expressly told them I would leave it alone and then didn't, so.

​[pm] It was a mess, start to finish, doesn't do much good to wallow in it [user is definitely wallowing in it]. I know we should have left it alone but... how could we? If anything, it feels even more important to get them out now.

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: current, immediately after the threshold. LOCATION: an empty barn in Gaitlin Fields PARTIES: @apaininyourneck, @mortemoppetere, @technowarden and @loftylockjaw SUMMARY: eve and wyatt arrive at the barn to help emilio and confront owen. CONTENT WARNINGS: gun use, suicidal ideation

When Eve knew she was driving to a bad clean, she used a trick from her father. She summoned to her mind a little music box, with a ballerina spinning in the middle. The music slowed as the winding ran out, and the ballerina’s turns became jerky as she slowed down to a stop. Her breathing slowed with the music, her mind centered. When the gentle pings of music finished, the music box closed, with a tiny click of the cheap clasp. She was not driving to the scene where Emilio and Owen were preparing to kill each other. There was a supernatural fight, a victim, a supernatural instigator. There might even be a body. It was the reignition of a to do list from twelve years ago. Hundreds of years of hunter’s blood coursed through her. It had been a while, but Eve had not forgotten what her body was built to do.

She braked her car harshly, not saying a word to Wyatt as she whipped around her carseat to grab her rifle and a satchel, and then she was off, sprinting through the dusted snow, tracking two sets of footprints that had both walked this route just minutes ago. Her running leg hit the ground with a clack with each step - her arrival would not be a surprise, but it did not need to be. 

Eve used the slamming into the door to slow her run, only two steps into the barn before she came to a stop. The flashlight on her rifle flicked across pools of glistening red before settling on Owen, and the knife in his gut. A nonlethal hit, just like the ones she’d patched up a few weeks ago. It hadn’t been enough to spare Nasir. 

Even the sound repressor on the end of the barrel only did enough to stop anyone further afield from hearing it, a gunshot was still a gunshot, even when muffled. The concrete inches from Owen's hand cracked, and then the little red dot slid from the ground to Owen’s chest, the flashlight settling on his face. Even as Eve panted from the sprint here, the dot did not tremble. Here, she found the answer to the question she’d asked herself dozens of times since she’d found Nasir’s body, the question she hadn’t even let herself consider in the car. There was no question in her mind, nor in her heart, whether she could pull that trigger. She wondered if he could see it on her face, better than she could see him in the dim lighting of the mid afternoon dusk filtering in behind her. She wondered if it mattered. Few deaths were perfectly instant. If he wanted to take Emilio down with him, Eve didn’t have the power to stop him, just the power to end him. Everyone in the room could see that. An animal at its most caged was at its most dangerous.  

“Rosel’s not as smart as she thinks. You should hear us out,�� Eve’s voice was unnaturally quiet and steady, after the violence that had happened here. Two cards played. A second pair of footsteps were sprinting up the track behind her, getting in close. If the threat of the gun and the dangling carrot of information were not, she hoped her third card, just a couple seconds behind, would be enough. 

—

She was increasing the distance between them as they both ran, Wyatt’s lungs burning from the cold. He couldn’t keep up, but that was probably okay, right? Eve seemed to have a level head about her, she wanted to talk to Owen before trying anything else. But she was also carrying a gun, which wasn’t exactly a weapon that could easily put someone down without doing permanent damage. And knowing Owen, Wyatt had little faith that staring down the barrel of a rifle would really make him slow down. 

Huffing his way up the slope of the small hill, Wyatt gave a start as he heard a gunshot. Something wrenched itself from his lungs, though it wasn’t quite a cry or a scream, just a strangled, desperate sound as he pushed himself harder, hearing Eve’s voice carrying gently on the wind. He burst into the barn with panicked urgency, eyes adjusting to the dark in an instant, going yellow as he swept his gaze over the scene. Three heat signatures — Eve, standing next to him, and two on the ground. Bleeding. His eyes flicked blue again and he felt his throat closing up, seeing the knife sticking out of Owen’s gut. Emilio was spared a quick glance to make sure he wasn’t dead, and confirming that, Wyatt was then hurrying over to Owen’s side.

He dropped to his knees, staring at the wound with fear in his expression, seeming uncertain of what to do with his hands. “How do I help? How—” He looked up, meeting Owen’s gaze. “Hang on, wait—” He glanced over his shoulder at Eve, realizing that the sight of her gun was now aimed at his back. It didn’t matter. “Just — tell me what to do, and — and listen to her. Listen.” He set a hand gingerly beside the wound, the other gripping Owen’s shoulder firmly. 

—

Dread had never been something the slayer associated with the feeling of steel, or wood, sinking through skin with ease - an ease that had surprised him when learning of it the first time. Less so with the knife, more so when it came to a perfectly sharpened stake. Now, feeling the hilt of his blade slam against Emilio’s skin, the only thing stopping the knife’s force from digging even further through viscera, Owen ran cold with dread. Every morsel of strength and his whole weight had been behind that blade, making things move deceivingly fast when Emilio had shifted. It took a good second to register where the deadly weapon had found purchase, another to take note of the sound of Emilio’s breathing and another still to get distracted by something entirely different, something outside. 

Owen’s grip on the knife had grown limp almost instantly, before it had registered that this probably wasn’t a fatal injury and how much of a relief and a horror that fact was all at the same time. It still didn’t mean this was over - and the irony of his own weapon being returned by way of it being shoved into his abdomen, that part was really the kicker. He’d expected the steel to be cold but those few seconds nestled amongst Emilio’s organs and blood had clearly warmed it up plenty. Owen had only just managed to steady an arm against the ground, now slick with blood, body pivoting towards the threat on instinct (except Emilio wasn’t really the threat, for some reason) when the doors slammed open with a new gust of chilled air. 

Out of all the people he might have expected to see silhouetted in the fading light, Eve wasn’t even among the runner ups. Had she been following Emilio? Following him? Since when? The light of her gun was blinding and he would have raised a hand to shield his eyes if not for one bracing against the floor while the other steadied the knife still delivering a steady throbbing of pain. Moving wouldn’t help but there was no telling years of training that, forcing him to shift under the steady gaze of the rifle. The gesture was rewarded with a round going off, adding the smell of gunpowder to the scent of blood and panic. He stilled reluctantly. To his credit, Owen didn’t flinch, although the shock of seeing Eve here was partly to blame. Also the way his body really wanted to shut down, months of running it even more ragged than usual making a stab wound less than desirable. 

It didn’t sting half as bad as hearing Rosel’s name coming from Eve’s mouth. “How-” His throat constricted, eyes whipped to Emilio, who also looked in the know, the other half of this supposed ‘us’ Owen was supposed to sit back and listen to. No matter how much the two of them knew, it was too much - about her, the lackey work, the murders. The reason for all of it. 

For the first time this evening, Owen did genuinely want to end Emilio’s life, if only to prevent further spread of this secret, this disease. He conceivably could, might manage it before Eve’s finger tightened around the trigger (if she knew, why had her bullet only shattered the ground and not him? He’d lied to her face next to the dead slayer she’d obviously cared about, however superficially. Why the fuck was he still alive if they knew about the trail of bodies? Even if they knew about their convoluted roles in all of this, keeping him alive couldn’t be to protect themselves - their deaths were useless if Owen wasn’t around to live with them). Nothing was sitting right. 

Owen had only ever known how to fight his way out of a situation, even those not designed to fight your way out of. A suicide mission beat whatever was going on here, was preferable to facing this. Blood soaked fingers curled around the handle of the knife, the only weapon within reach - he couldn’t see Eve’s face properly under the glare of the flashlight but figured he’d somewhat managed to make eye contact. To convey some sort of message, he wasn’t quite sure which one. Could have been anything from a dare or a threat to an understanding that she would do what she had to in response to Owen doing what he had to. Only… Wyatt was here now and the only thing that made sense was that Eve had taken the shot and in the last desperate throes of life, his brain was going haywire. Or maybe Emilio owned the killing blow, just the two of them in this barn, soon to be one slayer and a fully dead body. 

Then again, Owen wasn’t sure he had the imagination to conjure up the absolutely gutted expression on Wyatt’s face. A stark contrast to the last time they’d met, the shifter’s features contorted with hurt, sure, but also rage. It made complete sense when Wyatt began his approach, the thought that he was here to seize the opportunity to make good on the recent threats of murder, that thought made sense. In a way, it also made sense that Owen made no move to prevent the bodily harm he was expecting. Like any other half-formed thought Owen had manage to conjure in the last minute (it felt like hours, like a whole lifetime or two), it crumbled just as quickly as it formed because Wyatt was… fuck. 

Everything hurt except the serrated steel lodged inside his body - that was the only thing that currently made sense. This felt like a trick, the looming feeling of the other shoe just waiting threatened to choke Owen. He had thought the current situation with Rosel was the least amount of control he had ever experienced; only this was it. 

“Don’t-” The bloody hand previously clinging to the hilt of the knife for dear life snatched at Wyatt’s wary one when it approached, holding it away from the weapon while simultaneously gripping at it with a level of desperation that felt entirely foreign. Teeth locked together, breath coming out in harsh pants through his nose, Owen finally tore his eyes away from Wyatt to look at Emilio and Eve in turn. The grip on the hand in his own tightened still, gaze somehow managing to stay on Eve despite the whole world now being off kilter. 

“Speak.”

—

It wasn’t particularly unusual for a hunter’s earliest memories to be bloody. Even Emilio’s reluctance to start Flora’s training when he was meant to did little to stop her mother from staining to sofa red after a hunt went poorly and a balam carved a gash in her side or to keep her from rushing to answer the door when Edgar knocked on it one sunny afternoon with his shirt artfully splattered with scarlet and his nose sitting crooked on his face. Red was a familiar color; most hunters knew it intimately, even when they weren’t hunting as actively as they once had. The way it coated Emilio’s hands now was almost comforting. He didn’t understand what was going on with Owen, didn’t understand why his throat felt tight at the idea of killing someone who was a threat, someone he’d hated for over a year now, but he understood the tacky feeling of blood coating his fingers. It was just about the only part of this entire goddamn situation that made any fucking sense at all.

Even Eve’s sudden appearance was, in a way, a mild surprise. They’d planned for this, of course, and he’d trusted her enough to know she wouldn’t leave him hanging, but there was still some shock in seeing her point a gun in Owen’s direction. It made more sense the moment his addled mind reminded him that it wasn’t really for his sake. Eve had been cleaning up the corpses of people she probably liked a hell of a lot more than she liked Emilio for months now, and Owen was the one who’d put them all there. The gun wasn’t here to keep Owen from sticking his knife in Emilio’s throat, though that might have been an added benefit. More than anything, the gun served the same purpose as a broom, a mop, a keyboard: it was ready and waiting to clean up this fucking mess.

Wyatt burst in, and Emilio used the multitude of distractions to put a little more distance between himself and Owen, propping himself on the stable door behind him and pressing a hand against the wound in his gut to slow the bleeding and stain his fingers with more of that familiarity. He watched the lamia place himself between Eve’s gun and a man who probably wouldn’t do the same for him if the roles were reversed, and he thought that Wyatt was probably the only person in this goddamn barn that deserved to have their name on that list. Eve would shoot Owen to clean up the mess he’d made if she had to; Emilio would have stuck that knife in his chest if he hadn’t known backup was on the way. (Wouldn’t he?) And Wyatt would die for him. It might have been impressive if it weren’t so fucking sad. 

There was a moment after Wyatt’s appearance where the world seemed to stand still. Emilio’s breathing was ragged, but he took some satisfaction in the fact that Owen’s was, too. The floor was stained with red, but not all of it came from him. Some part of him remained frustrated in spite of this small victory, though; too much of the blood on his hands was his own, and not enough was Owen’s. His jaw clenched, his fingers twitched. He wished it didn’t hurt as much as it did.

The silence stretched a moment longer before, in something of a dull surprise, Owen was the one to break it. He looked to Emilio for only a moment before his eyes went back to Eve, who was the bigger threat with the gun in her hand. He stayed close to Wyatt, who was the only comfort offered in the dusty barn. And Emilio wondered, with a childish flair of anger, where that left him. Eve was the wound; Wyatt was the salve. Was Emilio little more than table dressing? Playing distraction for Edgar’s intricate plans as a kid had always ended with Emilio cast aside while Edgar and Rosa finished the job, grabbed the glory, and earned their mother’s respect. The idea that nothing had changed in all that time, that he was thirty-five years old and still an unimportant piece to be cast aside the moment it was more convenient to lose him than it was to keep him stung in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend. His throat felt tight. The wound in his gut burned, the sticky blood wet against his hands. Owen said speak and, for a moment, Emilio forgot that he knew how to.

It probably would have been better for everyone involved if he never remembered.

“You’ve been getting played, pendejo,” he spat out, the words as sharp as the knife still covered in his blood and sticking out of Owen’s gut. “Looks like you’re not as smart as you thought you were, either.”

—

Eve watched his hand tighten around the blade in his stomach, her own stomach clenching. He met her eyes, and she saw the decision in them. That, in every way, this had ruined him. Perhaps he’d wanted this from every hunter he’d killed in this town, and none of the others had believed the threat he posed until it was too late, or none of them had been prepared for a human who specialised in killing hunters. Eve believed, Eve had prepared. If either of them saw the grief or understanding in her eyes, it did not matter. To hunt was to do it anyway.  With this weapon, at least she could give him a quick death, and an end to pain. She exhaled, and waited to see the steel start to emerge from his red, sticky skin before squeezing. Her finger tightened, fractionally. 

Wyatt burst into the barn. Eve could not look at him, could not afford to give up the one split second reflex advantage. Wyatt demanded to be seen, rushing past her and crashing to his knees, blocking Owen almost entirely from her view. The red dot slid from the center of Wyatt’s spine to an exposed one of Owen’s thighs. A less satisfying target, but Eve knew first how deadly a blow to the femoral artery could be, and how disabling. 

Wyatt didn’t grapple Owen. His body did not twist into a bird or a wolf or a snake. He did not unhinge his jaw to bite off Owen’s head.  He had told Eve that he was afraid of what Owen might do to his undead loved ones, and yet he pleaded with Owen so softly. She could not see how Wyatt held him, but she saw Owen let go of the knife in his side. Eve exhaled quietly, but her aim only wavered a couple millimeters. Had Emilio known? Had this been part of a plan she’d been kept in the dark on, that they had known something about Owen that Eve had not. A few weeks ago, she had dismissed out of hand that Owen would ever hold a hunter dying in his arms. Seconds ago, the only way she saw to make him listen had been to pin him in place. All it took was a gentle hand. Owen looked back at her, his eyes wild with a raw desperation. His voice had never sounded like that. 

If only Emilio didn't answer first. She couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t look anywhere other than her target, just in case. Just in case. Especially when the words themselves were a knife coated in venom. Eve didn’t even know if the words were a last show of strength in a fading body. She could not afford to look at anything but Owen’s wounded eyes. She could not be the sword and the scalpel at once. She could not be the bleach and the blood-letter. There was only room in her mind for one. 

“He’s right,” Eve followed, her voice clear and emotionless. “The list she gave you, that failsafe? It’s not real. No one is paying attention to whether Rosel lives or dies. There’s no failure-to-contact system in place.  She isn’t tracking us, isn’t tracking Uppsala, she’s only watching you.” Eve tilted her head, looking at him searchingly, giving it a moment to sink in. “There’s no grand plan, no conspiracy, no rhyme or reason to what she’s asking. There’s no plot that will notice your absence, nor hers. She’s just fucking with you. She’s always been fucking with you.” Eve inhaled, and called it shaky because of the sprint in here. 

“You don’t have to kill Emilio. No more protecting seedy vampires all night. No more dead hunters. It can end now.” Her voice tilted up, almost like a question. For as much as her tone and words were just for conveying information, there was just the ghost of pleading, like the memory of an icy fridge and a decaying corpse. It would end here either way. Eve steadied her voice, cocked an eyebrow. “Because, honestly? I’ve seriously got better things to do than cleaning up this barn tonight.” How many times had she said that to him? In anger, in frustration, in eye-rolling annoyance, playfully, and maybe once or twice with a hint of affection. 

—

He didn’t look down as Owen grabbed his hand, freezing in place to see what the other would do, breath trapped in his chest. There was a long moment where they just stared at one another, the grip on Wyatt’s hand strong and desperate like it was the only lifeline the slayer had left — and given the state of everyone else in the room, it might have been. Apologies tried to claw their way up his throat and across his tongue, dragging the pit in his stomach along with them, heavy and uncomfortable behind the barrier of his clenched jaw. 

Owen looked away from him and over his shoulder, and Wyatt’s gaze finally fell to their hands. Owen squeezed him tighter as he demanded an explanation, and Wyatt squeezed back. He could feel Emilio’s gaze burning into him, could tell even without looking that the other hunter was probably both surprised by this reaction as well as unimpressed — he’d seemed glad that they shared a common desire to hurt Owen, had seen Wyatt get thrown out of that bar after screaming at Owen that he was going to kill him, but… here he was, unable to make good on any of that. It would’ve been easy to shift, to let out those long, powerful jaws and crush Owen’s skull with one quick snap. It was still something he could do, fast enough that none of them would have much time to react, but he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. So this, he could only imagine, screamed of failure. Of weakness. And maybe it was, maybe this was something that Wyatt would never be able to admit to his loved ones that Owen had threatened. His inability to choose, to truly give up and let go of someone that meant something to him. It didn’t matter how furious he was, and it didn’t matter that he would have had to do something eventually, if Emilio and Eve hadn’t stepped in. What would he have done, if he’d been dealing with this alone? If it had gotten to the point of having to protect Caleb from Owen. Would he be able to put the slayer down then? He wasn’t sure. Killing strangers was easy. Killing someone who’s smile you missed, who had held you in an embrace not meant for prying eyes, who had shared things with you that they’d never told anyone else… he couldn’t do it. Fuck, he couldn’t do it. This connection they had shared was the only real weapon he could wield. Everything else was a bluff. Words were all he had left, and he was fucking shit with words.

Emilio spoke first, and Wyatt closed his eyes. He squeezed Owen’s hand again, silently begging him to let the childish insult slide. Eve was next, offering a much clearer and pragmatic explanation, but Wyatt recognized that it all hinged on whether or not Owen believed them. He searched the other’s face again, catching his gaze once he was done listening to Eve. “Let me help, Owen.” He wasn’t referring to the knife wound anymore. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted from you — to let me help you. Please.” The hand on Owen’s shoulder moved to the side of his neck, and ignoring the way the extra pairs of eyes in the room made shivers run up and down his spine, Wyatt persisted. “I’m… sorry that I didn’t see it sooner. I’m sorry.” It felt like a weak excuse, but there was genuine pain in his voice as he let those heavy apologies break through the dam. He squeezed the hand in his a third time, hoping that despite everything he’d ever known to be true of the man bleeding in front of him, he’d let go of his fucking pride for one conversation.

—

Emilio’s voice was jarring as it cut through the silence, once again rippling the waters that Wyatt’s quiet plea had just barely managed to smooth. It wasn’t a sharp insult by any means but it carried with it the weight of Rosel, of another slayer knowing about Owen’s intimacy and the subsequent betrayal and manipulation. Whether or not Emilio actually looked smug was irrelevant, that was the expression provided to him in Owen’s mind and he bristled, shifted in a way that failed to be threatening since it jostled the knife and forced out a painful hiss. The squeeze of Wyatt’s hand broke the focus on Emilio, on how much Owen wanted to tear his tongue out, stop him talking shit about things he knew fuck all about. Only Emilio did know, seemed to know more than even Owen did. A realization that had him tensing with fury all over again, contained only by vigour in which he kept Wyatt’s hand on his own, starting to verge on bone breaking intensity. 

Lucky for everyone involved, Eve stole the word before more insults were thrown - not that her dryly delivered statements were any easier to hear. This was the sort of information Owen had expected to find out for himself, before hope had started to feel like a delusion. Except, for all the times he’d wondered whether Rosel was bluffing, he’d never allowed himself to properly go down that road. That meant it was all pointless, every last bit of it. A mind-numbing realization, one laced with a burning humiliation a thousand times more painful than any injury Emilio had managed or the cold detachment in which Eve still had her sights set on him or even the obvious fact that he had done nothing to deserve Wyatt’s compassion right now. 

For a moment, breathing was impossible - was air or blood seeping into spaces previously occupied by lung tissue? A scenario preferable to the reality that his mind was simply folding. The first inhale after the drawn out seconds of drowning on dry land burned, Eve’s words that it could end now ringing in his head. Why hadn’t she just taken the shot before Wyatt had stumbled in here. 

Everything told him to question this, to doubt because there was no wrapping his head around the kindness required to go down this road. How easy it would have been to confirm their safety and consequently get rid of Owen? It had to be tainted in some way. There were an endless amount of ‘whys’ crashing against the inside of his skull - none of the ‘how’ felt important, Eve and Emilio were competent and with Wyatt’s connection to the past, the how seemed obvious. None of the whys were obvious. Why they’d bothered, why he was still alive, why she had returned for this final twist of the knife.

It was Wyatt’s apology that finally broke the trance - Owen had listened and he wanted to unhear all of it, from Emilio’s venom to the plea to be allowed to help. Because it meant they would have been capable of helping all along, of preventing some of the horrors and the words used as weapons against the people currently standing between Owen and instant death. “Don’t you fucking apologize to me,” he finally managed, words devoid of any bite or any emotion at all, really. Only one person in here should have been apologizing but doing so would amount to an admission of how truly broken he was. Wyatt’s eyes were too much, his plea to help was one Owen couldn’t grant so instead he sought out the anger and detachment once again, looking between them for the reveal of the sick twist. There was only the stark reality of what he had done with not even a convoluted moral reason to back it up. 

“You’re sure?” he asked Eve, loathing the choked quality of his voice and the people around to witness it. What a strange thing, to see evidence this clear that he was cared for and still not quite believing it, to feel this strong a mix of absolute loathing and caring towards that many people. (Not love, whatever intimacy he was capable of after Rosel would always be tainted, diluted. What if all the loathing was just reserved for him.) Before he had received an answer, a mutated version of a laugh followed the desperate question, the humorless sound cut short by a sharp inhale. Stupid fucking knife. Owen’s free hand moved to Wyatt’s knee, for a moment unmoving even if he couldn’t meet the shifter’s eye, before he was using the other man to painfully get to his feet with a stifled groan. The man that was simultaneously keeping him together and making the revelation of this all tear him apart more violently. There was still the option of shoving Wyatt away, charging at Emilio and dooming Eve to clean up yet another dead hunter to be blamed on Owen. He stood on shaky feet instead, taking advantage of Wyatt’s presence since he’d already started, even knowing full well it would only add to the growing pit of loathing. 

—

Eve’s delivery of the truth was clinical in a way that was familiar, an echo of the tone she’d used to recount her coverup of the massacre of Emilio’s family. He wondered if it would twist the proverbial knife to add his own two cents in, or if Owen would prefer the familiarity of Emilio’s petty vendetta. Maybe he’d find Emilio’s anger just as comforting as Emilio found the blood soaking his hands. After all, when the world was turned on its head and nothing made any kind of sense, any familiarity at all felt like a security blanket that was a tempting thing to cling to. The obvious follow-up to this thought was the question of whether or not he wanted to offer Owen any sort of comfort. It should have been obvious, should have been laughable to think that it was a question at all. Hadn’t this man had a knife suspended above his throat mere minutes ago? Hadn’t Emilio felt satisfaction when he’d slammed the same blade into Owen’s gut? Why was there any part of him that wondered if there was something he could do to soften the blow while half of his attention had to remain focused on holding a hand over the stab wound in his stomach, trying to keep his life from slipping between his fingers?

(The answer, of course, was a simple thing: because he and Owen were more alike than they were different. Because Emilio had sat in the same position Owen was in now, albeit with a few tweaks on the details. Was there anyone who could understand Owen better than he could? Was there anyone who understood Emilio more than Owen? Maybe that was the real source of the animosity between them; Emilio had never hated anyone more than he hated himself, and Owen had always been just a little too close for comfort.)

Wyatt was apologizing, was pleading, and Emilio let out a short, harsh exhale through his nose. Even Owen seemed to have calmed. There was no real bite to his tone when he told Wyatt to stop, more grief than fury when he asked Eve for confirmation. Eve was calculated, Wyatt was apologetic, Owen shattered. And Emilio, as he always was, was angry. He was the only one still angry, even if he had no idea what the anger was for anymore. It was a familiar thing, anger with no cause, no target. It had been with him for as long as he could really remember. 

Owen got to his feet, so Emilio did the same. It was a struggle — the stab wound was teaming up with the bad leg, the pain surging through him in response to every movement a nauseating thing — but he refused to be in any position that might be considered a disadvantage even if it was painfully obvious that he was in no shape to fight. (Neither was Owen; despite having gotten his feet beneath him, he looked a breath away from collapse. Emilio should have felt vindicated by this; he only felt hollow instead.)

“We’re sure,” he said in a clipped tone, deciding he disliked the way Owen addressed the question only at Eve even if Eve was the person who made the most sense to answer. She had more details here. While Emilio had been focused on providing the distraction, Eve was the one who’d done the bulk of the work. (Christ, it really was like he was sixteen again, wasn’t it?) “There was never any fucking plan. She was fucking with you. She was always fucking with you.” He was too tired to make it a taunt, too exhausted to sharpen it into more of a barb. The truth would hurt enough on its own. Later, he might pretend he’d intended for it to. At the moment… he just didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he’d ever know. 

His legs felt heavy beneath him, and he leaned subtly against the wall behind him to take some of the weight from them. It would have been smarter to stay down, but he wasn’t capable of allowing himself the comfort of a position on the floor if Owen was on his feet. He wasn’t capable of a lot of things. “You can end it,” he offered, almost an olive branch. “Someone can help you end it. Or you can end it on your own.” He had a feeling he knew which option Owen would pick. They were cut from the same cloth, after all. “But either way… only thing keeping it from being over now is you.” 

—

Wyatt’s apology grated Eve’s ear. If he owed one, they all did, and considering that Eve was still debating whether she’d need to put Owen down, she didn’t think that was the case. She didn’t understand how a fighter in the Grit Pit could be so soft. She could not see how he survived wearing his heart on his sleeve. For a moment, Owen said nothing, his harsh, wretched breathing the only thing in the room. They were all waiting. All hoping. This was what hope looked like: a knife stabbed away from an artery, a rifle unfired, a gentle touch. 

Eve nodded as Owen looked at her, supporting what Emilio was saying. They’d spent so long working together, they were finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts. It didn’t feel wrong, exactly. “I have proof, right here, right with me. The kids are safe. Everyone is safe. I even have her location.”

She had just started to lower the barrel of her rifle when he began to move, began to push himself up, a broken man with his joints all wrong, like he did not know how to wear his body with this new information. The red dot found his sternum.

“Owen,” Eve breathed, a plea, a warning. She did not know what a fight ending looked like with everyone still standing. Blood started running down his leg. Emilio was moving too, and she still hadn’t looked at him, couldn’t look at him. They were both bleeding, and gravity  would only worsen it. 

Owen had looked at her before like he was ready to die, and if Eve was honest with herself, he still looked it now. A permanent ending would be easier than the other kind, and why wouldn’t he make one last desperate try, one chance to escape the truth of what had happened here, of what he’d done. Eve knew that temptation all too well. 

Emilio, in a move so shocking that Eve almost looked at him, offered his little olive branch. Despite it, she couldn’t relax. She couldn’t drop the gun, couldn’t switch the sword to the scalpel, couldn't let herself believe that Owen was anything else than the most dangerous he’d ever been. She needed him to say it, and wasn’t that foolish? After all this time, Eve wanted Owen’s word. It was as reliable as her own. Eve tried to logic herself out of it, tried to rationalise that Owen had every moment to do something stupid, something dangerous. He hadn’t yet. Yet. Fuck. “I need you to say what you're going to do.”

The moment he confirmed it, she would throw a medical bag to Wyatt and hurry to Emilio, but until that moment, she couldn’t afford it. 

—

Don’t you fucking apologize to me. It was said flatly, not shouted or hissed or even growled; it came from a place of physical and mental exhaustion, but the lack of a point didn’t spare Wyatt the ache. Dull, throbbing, like the hours following a crack on the head — the kind of ache he’d try to soothe with ice packs or the cold bars of the cage he’d been tranquilized and thrown into post-fight. He shouldn’t have apologized, but he felt responsible. Somehow, he hadn’t put all the pieces together. He’d let his anger get in the way of reason, and he’d allowed (or so he felt) Owen to walk this path for far too long. He should have pushed harder, he should have fought more, he should have been worried instead of angry when Owen disappeared without so much as a goodbye. He should have gone looking for him. Instead, he’d wallowed in self-pity, filling the space left behind as quickly as he could, which had only led to more stupid decisions and more hurt. 

The lamia lowered his chin when Owen looked away, feeling ashamed. He was quiet when Owen asked for confirmation, when he laughed (if you could call it that), and when he used Wyatt to help himself get back to his feet. He was quiet but still moved to support Owen, eyes downcast, allowing the other to lean heavily on him while those dry, unemotional words bloomed like a bruise on his mind. 

Emilio interjected, and Wyatt winced. He liked Emilio, but he wished the other slayer would just be quiet. It seemed like every time he opened his mouth, Owen only got more upset. But… he had a point. They were right, and because they were right, there was an end in sight. This whole thing was in Owen’s hands, now. And even though he’d begged Owen to let him help, Wyatt got the sense that the offer would go unused. He didn’t see a way for him and Owen to get back to how they’d been before, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it. Despite his obedient silence in this moment, he still had plenty of reasons to be angry. That rage had been muzzled the moment he’d realized Owen was in danger, but he knew it would chew through those restraints sooner or later. 

Eve stepped in with an offer of proof, and Wyatt felt his tense muscles relax, if only slightly. Proof was good. Proof was what they needed, if everyone was going to walk away from this alive. The kids are safe. The restraints tightened, pulling his anger deeper into the earth, making its escape that much harder. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault. 

I need you to say what you're going to do, Eve insisted. It was a fair question. Wyatt glanced over at Owen, pleading silently with him to be reasonable. There was nothing more he could really say, not without running the risk of sparking the other’s anger. And if their tempers started to butt heads, Wyatt knew he’d be taking a risk. His fuse was short enough already, he didn’t need to add an open flame to the equation.

—

She was always fucking with you. It made the most sense - there was no higher purpose, no plan. Just malevolence and Owen falling into a perfectly spun web again. At least the first time, no one had been there to witness the desperate and pitiful attempts to break himself free of the strings. Now, he had a captive audience to his demise and Emilio to provide commentary. If only the son of bitch could lose blood faster so maybe he’d pass the fuck out. “You need to shut the fuck up,” Owen threatened, despite being in no position to do so, despite the red dot on his chest and Wyatt’s gaze boring into the side of his face, begging him still. The second time Wyatt had begged, the first instance light and teasing and remembering it now threatened Owen’s already unsteady legs. Emilio didn’t shut up, unsurprisingly, but instead was being… reasonable. The world truly had gone to shit. 

And then Eve. The only one to truly see him for the threat he was. What would this situation have been without Eve’s presence, the only one quietly calculating all of it in a sensible manner? At least as far as Owen could assess, her face was so devoid of any hint of emotion as she made sure to never lose her kill shot. For all the times he’d poked fun at her for not being a real hunter, Eve absolutely was a ruthless killer. Maybe even more ruthless than himself, definitely more so than Emilio. Even so, she hadn’t taken the shot, was somehow managing to rationalize to herself that Owen deserved a chance. He had no fucking clue how she was managing such a feat, pragmatist that he thought her to be (out of everyone present, he truly knew Eve the least - even when her ‘work’ mask dropped, Owen had always noted a ‘thinner but still very much there’ mask to take its place). So she demanded confirmation, promised evidence in return and the safety of people he’d viciously killed for during this last year. 

What was he going to do? The longing to bolt was strong, to scream and thrash around, break things, even if they were his own bones just so that something was as shattered as his psyche. But all of that required energy and without Wyatt - who was silent now which somehow stung more than anything he’d said so far - Owen would have crumpled to the ground. All of this would come back to haunt him, again and again but letting this pathetic display rot and fester in his mind now would also require energy. “I’m done,” he answered blankly, making half an attempt to stand on his own under the weight of that statement but the leg closest to the knife folded immediately, forcing him to cling tighter to Wyatt. At least the shifter was being allowed (by way of no other plausible option presenting itself) to help in this way, something he desperately wanted for reasons undecipherable to Owen. “Except for her. Give me her location and we can be done here.” 

—

Owen snapped at him, as familiar as the knife to the gut and the blood on his hands, and Emilio felt a crushing sort of relief with the animosity. It wasn’t quite as harsh as his tone had been before Eve’s arrival — and Emilio wanted it to be, wanted back the feeling of knowing how this was going to end rather than the sticky uncertainty that had replaced it — but it wasn’t the same strange tone he’d used on Wyatt or the blankness with which he’d addressed Eve following her revelation, and that was preferable. Maybe Emilio was still the only one who was angry, but at least Owen was something close. He leaned a little heavier against the wall, blew a heavy exhale out his nose, tilted his chin back and pretended to ache less than he did. “Why don’t you fucking make me, asshole?” Poking the bear was never something he’d been averse to, but it was an almost sad display now, with the pair of them barely standing and Eve’s laser sight dancing on Owen’s chest. Still, it seemed to relieve some of the pressure in Emilio’s chest. It was something to cling to in a barn full of so few handhelds, so he gripped it with all his sorry might. 

But Owen’s threats were as empty as the rest of him, in this moment; it was obvious from the way he stood that, even if he wanted to, he was incapable of making Emilio do anything regardless of how easy it would have been in his current state. Frustratingly, Emilio wasn’t even sure he did want to. Eve brought up the list, assured him that the people who were on it were safe, and the relief was clear even if he knew Owen was trying to hide it. Everything he’d done had been to protect those names on that crumpled paper, and Emilio’s had been among them. Not an ounce of it made sense to him. He preferred to cling to the feeling of burning in his gut, to the memory of the knife that Owen had put there and the way it had hovered just over his throat a moment before. Wasn’t that the thing that made more sense? Wasn’t that easier to swallow?

Despite the truth still echoing off the walls, the tension in the barn remained. Eve didn’t lower her weapon; Wyatt remained a crutch for Owen, who stood stubbornly on his feet. Emilio pretended his own balance was steady, tried not to show just how much he was leaning against the wall behind him for support. His legs trembled, and he knew it was unlikely that he’d keep his feet underneath him for much longer, but he refused to sit before he fell. He watched Owen, the hand not holding pressure on his stab wound inching towards his pocket as if one of the knives waiting for him there would do anyone any kind of good if Owen decided to go in for a kill on any one of them. Wyatt was closest; if Owen removed the blade from his gut and stuck it in the lamia’s throat, none of them would be able to stop him. If he tossed it towards Emilio, Eve couldn’t be able to pull her trigger quickly enough to throw off his aim. If he moved towards her, she might be able to catch him, but there was a chance he’d throw her off-balance beforehand. Emilio’s mind offered a thousand paranoid possibilities for what might happen next, his body tense as he waited for one of them to come to fruition.

Instead, Owen surrendered. 

It was as if all the air was sucked from the room at once. Everyone seemed to relax with the statement, as if Owen’s word was worth its weight in gold. Had Emilio been a little less… stabbed, he might have protested. He might have pointed out that Owen had just spent months lying to every goddamn one of them, that he’d killed plenty of hunters who’d probably taken him on his word the moment he assured them he wasn’t a threat. But there were spots dancing at the edges of his vision now, and it was taking all the willpower contained within him just to keep from falling over, so he remained silent. His eyes lazily tracked the medical bag Eve tossed to Wyatt, his brow furrowed when he realized she was making her way towards him after. He tensed a little as she got close, the look in his eyes closer to that of a wounded animal than a man. “He could still kill us, you know,” he said lowly, eyes fixed on Owen and Wyatt over her shoulder. “He’s got a knife.” Granted, said knife was currently sticking out of him, but it had been sticking out of Emilio just a few moments prior, and that hadn’t stopped him from yanking it out and using it to his advantage. 

—

Despite arriving together, her and Wyatt had been at odds from the moment they’d both crossed the threshold into the barn, him stepping between her and Owen, him pleading where Eve only had facts. Briefly, they were reunited in inaction, in the terse, breathless waiting for Owen’s decision. Her eyes flicked in irritation at Emilio and Owen in turn. It was the way her brothers used to fight. The thought cracked open the music box, and she slammed it shut with such internal velocity that it almost cost her her balance. Her glance shifted to Wyatt, who held up Owen entirely, who held a battlefield in his expressions that he had not learned to hide the way she had. The fae would have a field day with him, she thought. It was good that she was the warden, and him the shifter, her with her gun, and him who could not be a weapon without touch. What a brilliant weapon he’d been. 

So when Owen confirmed that he was done, Eve’s sight finally, slowly lowered. Owen lied to her all the time, taunted her, tried to trick her. He was no fae (a horrifying thought), and there was something about the empty echoing halls of his voice that could not be faked. She held the rifle bracketed against her shoulder with one arm so that she could shoot if it came to it, but her aim would be wide. With her other hand, she unzipped her satchel, flicking the first med pack to Wyatt’s hands with inhuman speed. Owen made his demand, and Eve grinned feral, all teeth bared. “I was hoping you’d say that. A return to form will suit you. Just one moment.” As long as there weren’t more bodies for her to find. 

The legs which had run her here in the nick of time were not built for the walk over to Emilio, her right leg on tip toes to match the length of the running blade, but she did not turn her gaze from Owen until she was right by Emilio. It was only then that she finally looked at him, her eyes falling straight to the bloodied stain around his middle, trickling down his leg the same way it had on Owen’s. Matching wounds for matching scars. Eve pursed her lips, a tiny movement to bury the way she wanted to rush to him. It was too fucking deep. 

“He could. He won’t. Well, he might, if you don’t get back down and let me see to that. Bleeding out from that wound would be kind of a bummer end to the night.” Eve didn’t reply quietly, and slid to the floor, sitting to the right of where Emilio was standing, unflinching at the pool of blood she settled into. She twisted the mechanical knee a complete 180, until she could bend the knee towards her rather than away, and the  bottom of the running blade became a useful little perch for the rifle to sit on. It could be aimed in Owen’s general direction, but not at him for the moment.  Don’t drop the whole guard, but also take advantage of the rifle’s adjustable flashlight so she could see how injured he was. Eve glanced back over at Owen. “Look at him.” 

With the hand that wasn’t helping balance the rifle on her leg, Eve reached for her phone, and with a couple taps, Rosel’s live location was shared to Owen’s phone. She shrugged, setting her phone back down as she looked at Owen. “I’ll give you a bit of a head start before I start sharing that more widely.” 

“Oh, and Owen? I’ll be watching.”

—

Wyatt caught the medkit that was thrown his way clumsily with one hand, the other busy supporting Owen by bracing itself against his lower back. The relief in the barn was palpable, the immediate threat of bodily harm having passed, but Wyatt still felt sick to his stomach. He wasted no time in guiding Owen backward a few steps, back against the opposite row of stalls. With a huff, he shifted his weight and kicked out a leg, hooking his foot on an empty wooden crate and dragging it closer, then nudging it into place so that Owen could sit on top of it.

He was done, except for Rosel. He was going to go after her alone, and that might be the end of it. Of him. Wyatt hoped not, but he also knew better than to offer his help a twenty-second time, so he decided to let it lie. Owen would do what he wanted, and that was his problem, not Wyatt’s. (It didn’t mean that he was free from worry, though.) “Sit,” he said, his voice hoarse even though he’d not been yelling. Squatting down and opening the pack to see what they had to work with, Wyatt thought about suturing the wound himself without asking, then decided against it. Worst case scenario, Owen would get snippy with him, but he didn’t really want to deal with that. So he just set it on the slayer’s knee, looking up at him with as neutral an expression as he could manage. “I can help, if you want. Or I can wait until you're done, n’ take you home.” That part he wasn’t going to budge on — there was no way, after all of this, he was letting the idiot insist on walking anywhere in this bitter cold where he’d just die from exposure. And although the idea of disrobing and shifting in this weather was miserable, it would quicken his pace and make it easier to carry Owen. He’d consider it a final gesture of kindness. 

He turned his head slightly in Eve’s direction when she spoke, figuring out what she meant through context, then chuckling humorlessly at her promise to keep an eye on Owen. That was probably for the best. His eyes moved back to the knife still jutting from the slayer’s gut, to the dark red stain that had spread so much farther since the time he’d first run into the barn, to the matching stain on his own hand that Owen had been gripping so tightly earlier. He might have been worried about Owen turning that knife on him if not for the way the hunter had resigned himself to his fate when Wyatt was first approaching, not moving to defend himself, certainly thinking that Wyatt was going to make good on his threats in that bar. 

Wyatt had been right. He didn’t want to hurt him like that. He had to hold on to that now, for as long as he could before those restraints snapped and he told Owen what he was really thinking.

—

Trying to put himself in Emilio’s shoes, or Eve’s, was proving impossible (in no fucking universe did Owen have the mental capacity to put himself in Wyatt’s place, even though he knew what sort of response the injured shifter had received before, what felt like multiple lifetimes ago). Why the fuck was she lowering her gun on just his word? Maybe it was simply her belief in his viciousness, the clear need for revenge. A return to form will suit you. If only he still had a form to return to - Owen was utterly bent out of shape and whatever mold he’d previously fit into had shattered amongst all of the revelations. At least Emilio was still a beacon of skepticism, comforting in the same way his taunting had been achingly familiar, but it seemed the blood loss was finally getting to him. Speaking of…

Letting himself get supported over to one of the stables, another low point for this evening, Owen slumped down onto the crate with a barely concealed hiss of pain. The knife needed to go, a priority even if the buzzing of his phone and Eve’s explanation of what it now contained sent a thrum of electricity through him. Owen might not have had the energy needed to fight anyone present but from some deep, dark part of himself that she had helped create, he knew there would be a reserve of strength, saved just for Rosel. Even just answering Eve’s threat, one he knew without a doubt she would follow up on, took effort he couldn’t manage so all she got was a vague sound of confirmation that the message was received. 

Ignoring the insistence that Wyatt was bringing him home, as if he hadn’t already done more than could have been expected of any sane person, Owen wrapped a shaky hand around the knife. It slid out with a wet noise, pulling at insides as it went, body already trying to stitch itself back together around the intrusion. Without adrenaline and the rush of the fight, it hurt like a bitch. The blade clattered to the ground, gauze haphazardly pulled from Eve’s little go-bag and pressed against the steady stream of blood that started bubbling out. 

For a moment, Owen’s head rolled back, eyes closed and focused on the constant throb of pain. Most of his focus at least, the rest divided between the hushed voices of Eve and Emilio as the latter got patched up and Wyatt’s presence, lingering and hoping he might be allowed to help despite knowing Owen well enough for that hope to be a fool’s errand. Which it should have been, only… Owen really didn’t feel he had any pride left to lose and since two out of the three people present had already pulled him back together with needle and thread, might as well go for the full house (full barn?). “Yeah, okay,” Owen breathed, summoning the strength needed to raise his head, meet Wyatt’s gaze and the shit attempt at hiding the storm of emotions visible there. 

“You can help.” It felt heavier than the apology that had been trying to break its way free since Wyatt had said his own unnecessary sorries. As much as Owen didn’t want there to be meaning to this simple thing, to rationalize it as pragmatism, there was no avoiding it. It was absolutely a twisted and shitty way to pay someone back for saving your life (something he could admit to now but would inevitably come to deny at a later point) but it was all he had to offer the other man. As for the two hunters that had also taken part in this rescue mission - and it had never been a rescue mission for Emilio - it would be easier for everyone involved to pretend there was no debt to be paid. Emilio would never admit to actively sparing his life and Eve would chalk her actions up to helping the greater good. Wyatt was the only one here willingly baring his soul to a room full of hunters conditioned to fear that sort of vulnerability. The least he deserved was getting to do the only damn thing he’d ever asked of Owen. 

—

The fight was over now. The tension in the barn was dying down, Eve was lowering her gun, Owen was claiming to be finished, Wyatt was opening a med bag. The fight was over now, but it felt as though no one had properly communicated that to Emilio’s mind. The adrenaline coursing through his body was fading, sure — blood loss would do that to a guy — but his mind still moved a mile a minute, still provided him with more scenarios in which this could go badly. Sometimes, it felt like there wasn’t a single fight he’d been a part of that had ever really ended. He was still on the floor with Owen, a knife hanging above his throat. He was still in the streets of his hometown, his leg twisted in all the wrong directions. He’d never left the factory where Rhett was tortured, never got away from the street outside his apartment where a vampire cornered him with Zane. Every fight he’d ever won and lost was still waging in the back of his mind, and this one was at the forefront.

There wasn’t much he could do about it now, of course. As stubborn as he was, the amount of blood he’d lost was starting to make him a little woozy, though he kept his feet underneath him as he watched Wyatt lead Owen to the other side of the barn. It was only when the other slayer had allowed himself to be lowered onto a crate that Emilio let himself do the same, gracelessly stumbling his way into a seated position beside Eve. He kept his back against the wall and his eyes on Owen, though he let his head drop back a little. His limbs felt heavy; he chalked it up to the adrenaline draining out of them. 

“I’m not bleeding out,” he protested, pulling his bloodied hand away from the wound so that Eve could take a look. He had a feeling there was no duct tape in her med bag; some half-hysterical part of him wanted to ask anyway, remembering the time Owen had stopped him from treating an injury with such. Would Owen remember it if he brought it up now? Did he want him to? The idea of the two of them recalling a less tense time in their relationship just after stabbing each other with the same goddamn knife made his chest clench in ways he couldn’t quite understand, but he hadn’t entirely understood anything that happened in this barn, anyway. He kept his eyes on Owen, snorting when Eve mentioned how he was looking. “Yeah,” he said, raising his voice enough that he hoped it would be heard on the other side of the barn, “he looks like shit.”

Just speaking took a lot out of him, so Emilio fell into an irritated silence as he watched Wyatt take care of Owen across the barn. The fight was over. Maybe one day, it would feel like it. But for now, all he could really do was sit back and let other people stop the bleeding.

—

As Owen finally relented, Wyatt couldn't help but feel surprised. He had expected to receive pushback at every turn, just as he always had, except this time without the undercurrent of amusement. The playful banter they'd always enjoyed, even when Owen was legitimately pissed, was absent. And Wyatt, always able to put on an easy smile and just shrug off the slayer’s temperamental outbursts, didn't feel like he could do that anymore. So he was glad that Owen gave up on being combative, removing the knife and agreeing to let him help.

“Great,” Wyatt said with a small smile, digging out the sutures and ripping open the sterile packaging. He'd done this to himself enough times to feel comfortable with it — his first attempt was when he was thirteen, with his older cousin guiding him. He was quick about it, efficient… just like Marcel had taught him. There was nothing more that needed to be said, which of course left the floor open for Emilio to run his mouth. 

“Okay, peanut gallery,” Wyatt chastised the other slayer without looking up from his work. The quiet settled around them again, and with a sigh, Wyatt heard the wind outside starting to kick up. As he finished the final stitch, he reached for fresh gauze and laid it over the wound, moving Owen’s hand to hold it in place while he ripped off a few strips of medical tape. “There,” he muttered, taping the gauze down and rising to his feet again. The med kit was sealed and slid back toward Eve, and as he turned back to face Owen, Wyatt’s skin was looking a little more scaly. He shrugged off his jacket and kicked off his shoes, hissing in annoyance as the frigid air bit at his freshly exposed skin. The shirt was next, and his tail was trying to cause him problems as he hurried to step out of his jeans and underwear. The rest of the shift was as rapid as ever, during which Wyatt used two claws to tuck all his clothing into the coat that wouldn't fit him anymore. He pushed it over to Owen and told him to zip it up and hold on to it, then scooped the injured slayer up into his arms. Another low, upset growl rumbled deep in his throat as he nosed open the barn door and took a blast of wind to the face, yellow eyes squinting against the onslaught of snowflakes and his head tucking downward to protect Owen from the worst of it.

This was going to be a long walk.

[recoveringdreamer]

@loftylockjaw from here:

Bud... you're SUCH a good egg.

​Thanks. That's a compliment, right? I'd rather be a good egg than a bad egg. [...] But, wait, good eggs get eaten, right? Nobody would eat a bad egg. Because it's bad. So maybe it's better to be a bad egg?

[welcometoparis]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “Are there any people in town you wish to get to...”:

Well that won't do, darlin'. We gotta get you hooked up with some folks! What do you like to do for fun?

​Photography and long hikes through wooded areas. I enjoy the wildlife population that can be found off the beaten path. I forget that humans have more exciting hobbies than what I am used to. I like to laze on warm rocks being heated by the summer sun.

[pollen-warden]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “do u like jazz”:

Yes? That's a dumb question.

​Always happy to deliver.

[raisareigns]

TIMING: Late January LOCATION: The Mushroom Circle PARTIES: Raisa and Wyatt (and a fussy faun) SUMMARY: Raisa and Wyatt (@loftylockjaw) were both looking for a little entertainment, never mind that Wyatt was already entertained when Raisa arrived. CONTENT WARNINGS: None

Raisa stepped inside, the warmth of the bar soaking in compared to the cold creeping in behind her. She took a deep breath, letting the room and its inhabitants wash over her. She wasn’t hungry, wasn’t looking for anyone in particular to inspire and feed on, but something pulled her toward this main room. Normally she’d slip behind that employee door and let the dance floor pull her along with whatever another fae wanted for their night. 

Instead she wandered over to the bar and slipped onto an empty stool. Raisa ordered herself a drink and sipped on it. The grenadine pool sitting at the top was overly sweet. She focused on it anyway. If she hadn’t wanted something sweet, she’d have ordered gin instead anyway. After allowing herself to bask in that moment, Raisa turned on her stool to observe the room as a whole, taking in faces tucked into corners, trying to hide, clearly letting go, and any number of all too human experiences. Nothing like an evening at a place like this to give a cross section of everything.

Eventually Raisa looked a little closer to home and met the eyes of a man sitting two seats away from her. Raisa tilted her head, observing him back. “Not polite to stare,” she teased, though Raisa herself was staring plenty.

—

He'd seen her walk in, and immediately she'd caught his attention. That wasn't to say that there weren't plenty of beautiful people in this establishment, quite the contrary, but it was something in the way she carried herself that piqued his interest. At any rate, it had Wyatt slipping away from the person he'd only met twenty minutes prior, excusing himself for ‘just a moment’ to instead make his way over to the bar. He sat a couple seats over and ordered himself another Old Fashioned, keeping a quiet eye on her as she received her drink and sipped at it, gaze raking over the room of potential company. 

She must have felt his gaze on her because she eventually turned to him, and the little smirk she wore made his heart flutter in his chest. “Beggin’ your pardon, miss,” he offered, tapping a finger against his glass and returning the knowing smile. “Won't do to forget my manners.” He extended a hand to her hopefully, leaning across the empty space between them. “Wyatt Barlow, at your service. Can I buy your next drink as an apology?”

Before she could answer, the young man he'd abandoned came sidling up beside Wyatt, resting a hand on his shoulder and narrowing his eyes at Raisa. He could tell she was fae, because he himself was a faun, and he'd just warmed the lamia up enough to start making a meal of him. The lamia who, of course, was none the wiser. 

“Who's your friend?” the faun asked silkily, to which Wyatt gave a patient but challenging glance. 

“I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name,” he responded, looking up at the man with a raised brow. It was true, which seemed to annoy the faun. He let out a tense laugh, his grip on Wyatt’s shoulder tightening. The tight, polite smile he flashed Raisa's way was more a warning than anything—this was his dinner. 

“I'm afraid he's spoken for, love,” the faun insisted, and Wyatt looked puzzled. This was a first. 

—

Raisa didn’t consider herself easily swayed, but she did give into charm when it seemed like a prosperous thing to do. And this man had charm oozing from every pore. She flashed him a smile and shifted, starting to put her hand out to shake his. Wyatt. A nice name. In her mind’s eye, Raisa could see the way the rest of the evening would play out, the kind of potential it could have. 

Instead a self-righteous fae came crashing into her vision of the night with that possessive little hand on her new friend’s shoulder. Really Raisa couldn’t imagine the gall. He seemed intent on spinning Wyatt back into his web, but if someone escaped once–and so easily–she would have thought he’d had the sense to realize his cause was a lost one. 

She flashed the faun a much more cutting smile to mirror the one he offered her, leaning forward, mindful of those listening ears at the center of this accidental tift Raisa had found herself in. That hadn’t been in her plan for the night, but then again, neither had rolling over to someone a little too mighty for his own good. “Spoken for?” she repeated. “My, I didn’t realize his time was so precious that it was a competition.” Because she could, Raisa winked in Wyatt’s direction, partially because she thought he’d find it funny and partially to rile up the fae. 

“We’re just having a conversation.” This time Raisa did turn her attention to Wyatt. “You’re welcome to stay and join us, but forgive me for assuming that our friend here can make his own choices on who he’d like to speak with.”

—

Beaming as Raisa winked and then came to his defense, Wyatt decided to lean into the bizarre situation, finding it to be pretty entertaining, if not endlessly flattering. “Well don't I just feel like the Belle of the ball,” he chuckled. His bright blue gaze drifted upward to find the faun’s, half-lidded and just daring the other to make a scene of this. “Look, I told you where I work, didn’t I? If you wanna get uppity about losin’ the bid for my attention tonight, take it up with me at the restaurant, hm?” He gave the fae a smarmy grin, taking his hand and pressing a kiss to his knuckles before giving a lazy, four-fingered wave that sent the other away again with an indignant huff. “Ta-ta!” he called after him, sighing dramatically and shaking his head as he looked back to his newer friend. “So sorry about that, ma cherie, I guess some people just don’t take rejection quite so well as others! Now, I think you were about to tell me your name, and that you’d love to let me buy your next drink…” 

—

Raisa watched the faun’s face carefully. As mysterious a reputation as all fae could have, she knew they couldn’t all keep it together. Here was the proof just now as a delicious string of emotions from outrage to hurt to resignation crossed the poor thing’s face. She suspected he wouldn’t have given up the fight so easily, but with the mood soured, he’d have to start his work over anyway. Besides, whether or not he realized it, Wyatt had offered up an opportunity to become a future meal instead. And what a coincidence that he apparently worked at a restaurant when that was his offered up location.

Something about that tugged at Raisa’s memory, and she mentally sorted to figure out what it was. Something about food and Wyatt’s face. As he turned his attention back on her, those pieces slotted together, and she readily offered him a smile.

“I do believe I was,” she agreed. “Raisa. We never had that dinner, but it would seem that drinks are a welcome substitute.” She angled her head to the side, letting her hair drape down toward the bartop. Perhaps some would have been put off by his easy flirting and with the faun in front of her too to get rid of him, but Raisa had never particularly cared about such semantics. She was here to have a little fun. What a pleasure that she’d managed to reconnect with someone else who seemed to want the same.

—

Realization manifested itself as a widening grin and raising brows, and Wyatt seemed delighted by this development. “Never say never, my dear. This is just a preview. And without a fish burger in sight!” He chose that moment to move from his barstool to the one next to hers, settling in beside her with an air of self-assuredness. “Raisa. Raisa, I’ve never heard that name before. Where’s it from?”

Her body language was promising, at least. She’d not gotten irritated at the arrival of the young man now staring daggers at them from across the club, nor had Wyatt’s dismissal of him sent her away from the bar. She was interested, and she didn’t mind a little competition. That was good. Many things in Wyatt’s life boiled down to competition, and vying for his attention was certainly not the least of them. 

—

“None indeed,” Raisa agreed and took another sip of her drink. She considered him for a moment, taking in his features. They suited him well, and he carried himself like he agreed. A charming man if ever there was one. 

“It’s Russian,” she said. “Of which I’m not especially, but through my mother’s side. She picked it more because she liked it than a strong national connection.” The longer she lived, the more she understood her mother’s instincts to pick something that wouldn’t rise and fall with baby name trends. She tried to imagine spending eternity as an Elizabeth. Far too many of them to share a name with these days or any others.

“How about you?” she asked. “Any story behind the moniker?” 

—

“I like it, it’s fun to say.” Wyatt could think of a few scenarios where he’d like to be doing something more than just saying it, but mentioning that this early in the game would be in poor taste. Anyway, she was asking him a question, and he was obliged to answer. 

“Ah, well, my mother had a love for the old westerns, you see, and Wyatt Earp was a common fixture among ‘em. He was a tough guy, but a fair one. Used his gunslingin’ to keep law n’ order in Dodge City and Tombstone. Guess she thought it sounded like a strong name belongin’ to someone who’d always do the right thing.” And for that, she’d been wrong. “And Barlow, hell, that’s a name you’ll hear in damn near every town south of the Kentucky border. And most of us are related!” It was an exaggeration, sure… to an extent. While he’d been the only one of his siblings to survive, he had what seemed to be hundreds of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmamans and grandpappies, all in varied degrees of removal. The family tree didn’t make much sense to him anyway. Besides that, if he was honest with himself, there was a good chance his mother had had another child after he’d left as a teen. Maybe more than one, maybe a dozen, if they lacked the killer instinct he seemed to have from the moment he’d hatched. 

His glass was empty so he waved down the bartender to get a replacement, and one for Raisa as well. “Hey, after I make good on my word,” Wyatt nodded at her glass, “we could find someplace with fewer angry rejects around to… get to know one another.” He wasn’t fully suggesting that they bail on public spaces fully, because he knew how that might appear, but he wouldn’t mind a change of scenery, even if it was just for a different bar. “What d’you think?”

—

Raisa’s fond smile was genuine. “Thank you,” she said, biting her tongue before letting out any innuendos. They were just having a polite conversation so far. It wouldn’t do to be too forward. Instead she listened to the story of his name, chuckling slightly as she imagined him as some kind of gunslinging cowboy himself. She could see it. “Sounds like your mother wanted you to have a name worth remembering.”

Nodding graciously, Raisa took a sip of the new drink as it landed in front of her. She raised a brow at his suggestion and considered it carefully. She could take care of herself just fine if his vibe changed when they weren’t in such a crowded place, but perhaps that was good. As long as they remained in a fae bar, the odds of someone else trying to snoop in probably weren’t small. Plus, his attention had wandered once in her favor. Even if she had the sensibilities to believe she could keep him from doing so, Raisa would hate to give him the opportunity to wander again. “I could be persuaded,” she said rather than an outright yes, but Raisa still slipped off her stool to stand. She took a longer drink, not quite finishing it but making good progress. “Take me where you want to go, cowboy.”

[scavengedlegacy]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “Do you have a good relationship with your parents?”:

That doesn't /sound/ very good.

​Couldn't agree more, but some people have their standards on the floor so all the red flags look green. So, I stand by what I said, it really depends on what you think is 'good.' To me? It's shit. To others? 'I'm lucky to have parents' end quote.

[realmackross]

PARTIES: @loftylockjaw, @realmackross TIMING: Mid-February outside of Hallow Eats SUMMARY: When Wyatt decides to try and take care of a bug problem, with Mack offering him a helping hand, the two are caught in the crossfire of some very strong pollen. CONTENT WARNINGS: Drug manipulation tw (Bumblekára pollen), drool tw (very brief mention)

“Okay, seriously, how does no one else hear that?” His coworkers just looked at each other and shrugged, and Wyatt huffed. Obviously none of them had his fantastic sense of hearing, which was only working overtime right now because he was partially shifted. He worked among other supernatural townsfolk and a handful of humans that were quite aware, but cool about it. His golden eyes flashed as he moved away from his workstation in the kitchen, slitted pupils searching for the heat signature to accompany the buzzing, scratching sound he was hearing. Moving out of the kitchen and into the main dining room (they hadn’t yet opened), Wyatt felt a tiny vibration start to kick up. He moved along the interior walls of the building, but it was proving fruitless. Also it kind of sounded like it was coming from… higher up? 

Heading outside, Wyatt circled the building, his reptilian gaze turned toward the awning above him. Ah! There. A mass of warmth up higher on the structure, just beyond the fire escape that came down from the second floor. The lamia took a running jump at the ladder to grab it and drag it down, nearly losing his grip as it jerked to a sudden stop far sooner than it should’ve. 

Dangling there, the lamia squinted up at the ladder and growled, thrashing his body around to try and knock it loose. That’s when he heard footsteps and felt eyes on him—quickly blinking his eyes back to their more human blue and hoping that whatever scales had been peeking out from beneath his hairline weren’t noticed (probably not, from this distance), he twisted around to look at the person standing at the mouth of the alleyway. 

“Salutations,” he laughed. “Don’t, uh… don’t suppose you’d be willin’ to give the ol’ feet there a tug n’ help me get this ladder down, wouldja?”

—

There had been a lot running through Mackenzie’s mind lately. Situations that continued to replay over and over again haunting her, but also frustrating her. It had been around two months since she had lost control and raged through town, and it seemed like ever since, she had been living in a whirlwind of emotions. Her attempts to move forward and get on with her life was like an ebb and flow and some days were better than others. And of course, the best thing being her new relationship that was forming with Elora. But there were still moments when she felt as though she just wanted to let go. Let loose and not worry. And today was one of those days.

Venturing out earlier than normal, Mackenzie decided that maybe rising with the sun, would lift her spirits some, especially with the days getting shorter. It had been a while since she had made the choice to go eat at a restaurant for breakfast. Most mornings consisted of staying at home and having a smoothie of various body parts (unless it was brain day) followed by a few pancakes doused in cinnamon as a treat. But today, she had decided to go for something different.

As she made her way down the quiet sidewalks of the small town with the few early risers that were already out and about, she had almost made it to her destination when she heard a voice from…up above?

Mackenzie, with one half-raised eyebrow in confusion, cocked her head to the side as she looked up to see a man hanging from a ladder, “Uh…salutations? I’m sorry, the last time I heard that word was when I was like eight after watching Charlotte’s Web…” Blinking a few times, she sighed and walked towards him, “How did you get up there anyways? And what are you doing?” Reaching up, she grabbed onto his shoes and began to tug as hard as she could.

—

“Guess I’m old fashioned like that,” Wyatt mused, adjusting his grip on the ladder with a grunt. “Oh, well, I jumped! I was tryin’ to get the escape ladder down, so I can get up there and see what the heck is livin’ in our wall. But it uh, got stuck.” Feeling her pulling on his feet, he adjusted his grip again and squinted his eyes up at the ladder, willing it to release. Something started to grind, and he could have sworn he was moving very slowly. “Ah! Yeah! Just like that! C’mon, nearly there—” The ladder gave and they were suddenly falling very rapidly, and without much thought, Wyatt let go of the ladder with one arm to instead grab onto the stranger and stop her from cracking her head on the pavement from the sudden inertia of the not-so-little man dangling above her. They hung there for a moment before Wyatt heaved her up so she could regain her footing, then let her go and grabbed the ladder with both hands to start hauling himself up it to get his feet on the first rung. “Many thanks!” he called down to her, a bit out of breath by the time he got his feet on the ladder and could take a short break. 

He leaned back, staring up at the spot where the sound was coming from, blinking again and shifting his eyes back to their reptilian state. The heat signature was there, clear as day, and it looked… yeah, this was a bug problem. What kind of bugs was the question, but whatever they were, they had to go. Wyatt just wanted to know what to tell the exterminator. He was… going to have to get into the wall, probably. Something he’d not considered until now. Damnit. Shifting back to blue and looking down at the girl, his gaze then scanned the alley. Ah. 

“Uh… one more favor, if you don’t mind? Can you hand me that cinderblock over there by the dumpster, ma chérie?” He squatted back down and held a hand out toward her. “I’m Wyatt, by the by. So you know who to warn your friends away from,” he added with a chuckle.

—

Mackenzie listened as she continued to tug, until she felt a slight shift. Her mind had been on not getting squished by the man hanging just above her head, but when the ladder started to drop, the zombie realized she needed to move. However, down they went together — her, the ladder, and the man casually hanging from it. Luckily, like a true southern gentleman, she felt her fall being broken by him, before he was helping her back up. It had all happened so fast that Mackenzie didn’t have time to think, but once she had regained her composure, she was watching him attempt to move up the ladder once again, “You’re welcome…I think. But you said there was something living in your walls? Any idea what it might be?”

Stepping back, she looked upwards with a squint as the sun peered down into her eyes, “Is it even safe to be climbing up there? I mean you are going in without any ideas of what might be lurking.” And with this town, it could have been anything. “I’d just be cautious if I were you.” Letting her eyes fall from the brightness and the pain it was causing, Mackenzie heard him ask for the cinderblock. Now, what is this man up to?

“I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but sure. Hold on.” Going over to the dumpster, she picked up the cement block and carried it back over to the man still standing on the ladder, “Mackenzie. And honestly, right now, it feels like friends are few and far between, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Raising the block up with both hands, she passed it off to him, “What do you plan on doing with that?”

—

“Pests, probably. As for what I’m gonna do with this…” he took it from her, grinning at it in his own hands for a beat. “Why, gonna put a hole in the wall with it, what else!” Wyatt answered Mack as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He approached the spot and, rearing his hand back, prepared to strike with the cinderblock, hoping to break through whatever cheap siding this place had been built with.

What the shifter couldn’t know was that these were no ordinary bugs. In fact, they weren’t bugs at all. They were bees, but not your average honeymakers. And they weren’t supposed to be here, of all places, noticed only thanks to the lamia’s heat vision, since they had been otherwise dormant. It was getting colder out, so that made sense. But dormant or not, the moment the wall came exploding inward right next to their hive, they were awake. And mad. 

The raucous buzzing could be heard even from where Mackenzie stood as the hive thrummed to life, slipping out of their hibernation to defend their home. Residual pollen from the springtime feeding still clung to the Bumblekára’s little fuzzy bodies, and as they flapped their tiny wings an an angry, threatening sort of way, a cloud of that pollen came billowing out of the hole Wyatt had made. The hole he was now pressing his face up to to try and see if it was wasps or what. (No one ever said he had a healthy sense of self-preservation—he was a ring fighter, after all.) 

He coughed, pulling back from the cloud, eyes wide. “What the fuck?” The coughing continued, the pollen irritating his lungs and making him feel dizzy as he stumbled back from the wall, grabbing onto the railing of the fire escape to steady himself.

The cloud sank low into the alley, engulfing the whole area in a thick, colorful, dizzying haze. 

—

“Right? So you’re gonna break a wall and anger whatever’s in there. This should be interesting.” Mackenzie wasn’t worried. She was dead after all. If anything had decided to come out of the hole she watched the man now busting into the siding of the older building, it wasn’t like it could hurt her right? So she stood by with her face aimed upwards watching as he made an effort to beat an opening. It was only then, when he was successful, that Mackenzie could hear what sounded like buzzing. Her ears hadn’t been the absolute best, but she knew bees buzzing, and it was only confirmed when she watched them zip out of the hole bringing a cloud of dust with them.

With the plume of pollen surrounding Wyatt, Mackenzie watched as he stumbled, reacting on instinct ready to catch him if he were to fall, but there was some relief when she noticed him catch the ledge and hang on. However, it wasn’t pleasant seeing the haze seeping downward soon to engulf her in it, only to leave her coughing and trying to fan it away. Great. Something that apparently could affect her. Pollen. But it didn’t take long for her to stumble forward looking for something to grip while the world started to spin around her, “What the fuck?”

Closing her eyes and trying to steady herself was proving to be unsuccessful, “Wyatt! What did you unleash!?! She had been waiting for the stings, but they never came. Instead her mind started to race as if she were under the influence of something unpleasant at first, but oddly turning into something more enjoyable. At least for the moment in time while she leaned up again the building the man had just knocked a hole into.

—

“I dunno…! Bees?!” The lamia tried to take a deep breath to settle the dizziness in his head, but breathing was hard in this damned cloud. He ought to get out, really, but… he was distracted by the way he realized his hands were changing. The fingers grew longer, the skin began to turn a sickly green, and… and… oh. Oh. 

Wyatt gave a small start as he realized he was slipping into an involuntary shift, alligator scales sprouting on his arms, neck, and face, his pupils thinning into slits while the irises turned a golden yellow. But even worse than that, there was something going on with the girl���something weird. Weirder than him? Hard to say. He leaned over the railing, his concern for dropping from such a height gone as the hallucinogenic rampaged through his system. The girl, Mackenzie, was growing horns. Or was it antlers? He didn’t know, didn’t care, except that it was fuckin’ wild and he wanted a closer look. 

Allowing the shift to continue, putting an unfortunate strain on his clothes, the lamia scampered down the steps to the landing where the ladder was connected, staring at her. 

“What’s with the head decorations?” he called, not realizing that he was fully imagining all of it. He climbed up onto the railing, heaving a sigh as the shift rapidly accelerated and left no trace of a human behind, just a reptilian monster that resembled a bipedal alligator, draped in what had once been Wyatt’s work attire. He dropped from the fire escape, landing in the alley with a thud that rattled the nearby windows before standing upright again and reaching for her imagined antlers that were sprouting higher and higher from her head. A quick glance down also revealed to him (or so he thought) that her face was… growing fur? Like his scales, but very much not like his scales.

Wait a minute. Was she like, a deer person? What the fuck?

It was then that the lamia felt his stomach growl.

—

Mackenzie closed her eyes trying to find balance, but the smells…Oh mylanta, the smells of fresh cooked meat had her mouth watering. And as she opened her eyes again, she let her gaze shift until she noticed the alligator plopping down to the ground with a hard thud. Mackenzie startled at first, but suddenly more curious than anything. And as he moved in closer to her, his large gatory arm extending out towards her, she couldn’t help but see it as something battered and deep fried, the tiniest bit of drool seeping from the side of her mouth, until he said something about head decorations, “What? I don’t have anything on my head. Do you always walk around looking like a snack?”

The young zombie had managed to push herself off of the wall as she inched closer, her eyes glazing over to pure white nothingness, but her brain and ability to talk still there. If she had caught sight of herself in a mirror, she would have seen nothing but rot and decay, but apparently her gator friend was seeing something else, “Hey! We should go get hot sauce. Like the hottest sauce known to man. Some of that Carolina Reaper shit that everyone talks about. That long, freshly battered tail you’re sportin’ right now isn’t going to marinate itself.” She wandered over to it and slowly leaned down to lift it up and observe it, “You know…this would totes make a super cute purse too and boots…You could make a lot of money, man.”

—

“I mean… nice of you to notice, but I think I’d count myself as a whole damn meal. Five courses n’ all,” Wyatt countered with a laugh. The deer-girl’s interest in his tail was, mm… hard to describe. Not threatening, because he was big and had lots of teeth, and she was small. And had… probably flat teeth, or whatever deer have. Not a threat. Not a problem. Kinda weird, though. She would make a decent meal…

Pulled from his thoughts as Mackenzie picked his tail up from the ground, the lamia let out a crocodilian hiss of breath, then followed it with a snort. “Yeah, well, I need that tail for things. Things that don’t involve purses, boots, or hot sauce. Ain’t you like a vegetarian, anyway? I know gator is the most scrumptious of the meats, but I never seen a deer eat meat before.” He turned to face her, pulling his tail free of her grip. “Me though… I eat lots of meat. Hell, I live on it. N’ you…” He dropped down onto all fours, ready to lunge at her with massive, gaping jaws. “You’re the one lookin’ mighty tasty right about now.” He recoiled and then sprang, far more agile than a real alligator would’ve been on land, and therefore, far more deadly. Not that he realized his chosen prey was already dead—might not have been interested, if he knew that.

— 

“I bet you would.” Mackenzie licked her lips. Forget the tail, there was a lot Mack could feed on. From his hind quarters to his cute little prehistoric looking arms and of course that funny little brain that kept telling him she was a deer. But her trance was broken, when he ripped his tail away from her and out of her grip. Instead of dwelling, she shook her head a little and looked back at the gator man as a whole, “Too bad, you’re a walking high end designer bag that could fetch a lot of money.” She shrugged.

Turning around, not paying any attention to him down and ready to lunge, Mackenzie started to walk forward and just in time too, because if she had stayed in the same spot, she surely would have been gator food. It was the Bumblekára pollen that had her so carefree and nonchalant about things. So much so that it almost gave her an air of coolness that she only turned on when she was acting for the camera, “And why do you keep calling me a deer?” She narrowed her eyes thinking about the question, before turning back around, “I guess if you like your meat dead and rotting. I mean, I would say I’m more roadkill than Bambi.” She started laughing at her own joke as she turned back around to face him.

—

His jaws snapped shut and caught nothing but air, and he grumbled. That should’ve been… a lot easier. He felt weird. Confused, almost. Obviously it was affecting his ability to hunt. “Because you are a deer—what you mean, dead and rotting? You don’t look dead to me.” Wyatt paused, narrowing his eyes at her and craning his neck forward to give her a good, long sniff. 

Okay, so she didn’t smell like the dead things he normally came across in the woods, but she definitely had some kind of… aura about her. The lamia stopped for a moment, thinking hard about what Owen had said. There were more than just vampires. And—duh! Caleb was dead, too! And he didn’t smell dead. Was this deer girl like—

Oh, wait. She wasn’t a deer. The fur and the antlers were suddenly gone, leaving in their place one very normal looking girl. The lamia huffed out a breath and lifted his head again, rising up onto two feet. “You’re… not a deer. And you’re dead, like my—like a guy I know. Okay. I’m—” God, stringing together a coherent sentence was hard. He glanced up at the hole in the wall where the bees had retreated, and the sky still glittered and sparkled with the haze of pollen they’d blasted out at him. “I think… maybe… we shouldn’t be in this cloud,” he thought aloud. “But… um. I can’t… someone might see.” And if he shifted back, he’d be naked. And he really didn’t want this random person seeing him naked.

—

“No, I am not a deer. And yes, I am dead.” Normally Mackenzie wasn’t so carefree with who she revealed her true identity with, but this guy was a huge humanoid alligator that looked like he came straight out of the Peter Pan cartoon that she had seen many, many years ago as a child. “And you’re a walking-talking alligator.” Mack looked him over once more, until he mentioned the pollen cloud. Letting her eyes glance up, she noticed it was still lingering.

Mackenzie had only ever been high once in her life, and it had been enough for her. Not something she had ever desired to feel again, but here she was, except this time, it was totally different, “I think you’re right.” With the realization of what was causing their hallucinations, life seemed to suddenly start to cut back through and… “Oh…uh. Yeah, I mean, I can offer you my hoodie, but that’s about it.” She looked over to see his other clothes in shreds on the ground. Man this guy must have had a closet full of clothes. And then some.

Quickly glancing around, she spotted a small souvenir shop across the street. Why anyone would want Wicked Rest souvenir’s she’d never know. It seemed like leaving with the scars of what this town could do to you was enough, “I have an idea! Go hide somewhere…like over there in the shadows. And don’t breathe.” Easier said than done, at least for a walking dead person. “I’ll be right back!”

—

“Don’t breathe? You—” But she was off, and Wyatt was left to mutter to himself, hunkering down and hoping he was low enough to keep his head clear before scurrying off to the darkest corner of the alley, side pressed against a smelly dumpster. Clawed hands reached out to cover his nostrils and he begged the woman to hurry, growing antsier by the second. 

His eyes were tightly clamped shut when she returned, afraid of what he might see and how he might react if he opened them. He felt something soft dumped onto his snout and he peeked with one yellow, slitted eye. 

This was far and away from his first choice when it came to fashion, but what other alternative was there? Ugh. The lamia lifted his head and gathered the clothing in his reptilian hands, offering Mack a nod in thanks. “Turn around,” he huffed, wasting no more time in reversing the shift and hurriedly pulling the clothes on—the sweatpants and sweatshirt were ugly as sin, but at least they were comfortable and fit okay. The sandals, while not right for the season, were probably the only footwear available in that place, so he tried not to complain too much about the horrific combination of Wicked’s Rest socks and sandals adorning his human feet as he slipped them on and stood up. As he moved past Mack, he urged her forward with a touch to her shoulder, and the pair quickly left the alley and rounded the front of the building. Along the way, he bent down to snatch up his phone that’d clattered to the pavement after his gator body had ripped through his clothes, annoyed but not surprised to see that the screen had cracked.

Calling up the coworkers he’d abandoned in the building to finish prep on their own, he informed them he was actually taking the day off as something unexpected had come up. Not really caring if that was about to cost him his job, he hung up and looked down at Mack again. 

“Well… thanks for the help, even though that all went to shit.” He paused, considering the girl’s undeadness. “Hey, you like spicy food? I hear that’s the closest folk like you can get to tastin’ anythin’. Got a few recipes I’ve tried out on my undead friend, n’ he seemed to enjoy ‘em. Can make you some, as proper thanks for the…” He glanced down at himself, letting out a laugh. “... incredible ensemble you threw together for me.”

—

Mackenzie had tried to pick out something resembling a decent outfit, but it was no avail, and the frustration that lingered with the options made her want to have a talk with the owner, but she didn’t have time. Besides, it’s not like she had to shop for a naked gator man on a regular basis. Well that was a thought I never imagined would pop into my head. Which led to “3 AM” by Eminem cycling through her brain and was stuck there until she returned to Wyatt, where she successfully dumped the clothes on him.

Doing as he requested, Mackenzie turned her back to him while he got dressed, and by the time she turned back around, what she saw made her burst out into a somewhat ugly laugh, “Oh shit…that’s worse than I thought it would be!” Stifling her continued laughter, she followed him quietly as he retrieved his phone and the pair left the cloud of pollen once and for all. She had felt bad he was going to miss a day's work over this, but it wasn’t often you were in the presence of hallucinogenic bee butt dust. Besides, Mack was also pretty sure he didn’t want to be caught coming back to work dressed like Wicked’s Rest’s biggest fan. How would that conversation go?

“Uh, yeah. No problem. And thanks for not eating me. I don’t think I’d taste very good.” She laughed softly, but her ears perked at the mention of spicy food. “You have spoken the magic words. I, unfortunately, love spicy food!” Mack looked up at him with a grin, “I would very much appreciate that, and uh, you can keep the clothes. Maybe use it as a Halloween costume sometime if the overgrown Alligator costume bit gets old.” She resumed walking, “You been in Wicked’s Rest long?”

—

“Wow, thanks, your generosity astounds,” he laughed in turn, always able to find the humor in a situation… he just hoped he didn’t run into anyone he knew looking like this. “But no… just a few months. Was in Boston for some years before that, though, so it’s not that different… just smaller. And with more… dead people.” He glanced at her. “No offense. Some of my favorite people are dead!” 

The trip to his waiting car wasn’t an especially long one, and once they’d reached it, Wyatt asked Mack to hold there for a second while he reached into his glove box and pulled out a scrap of paper.

“Here,” he said, writing down his name and phone number. “Hit me up when you got a hankerin’, girl. I’ll make sure you can taste your dinner. And… hey, I’ll even cook it up usin’ that offal I hear your kind needs to stay limber, eh? Wouldn’t want you goin’ hungry.” Leaning over the car door to hand it to her, Wyatt offered a charming smile. “Now I gotta get the fuck outta here before someone I know sees me. Thanks again for the assist. Be hearin’ from you soon!”

[vanishingreyes]

@loftylockjaw replied to your post “[pm] I am so sorry Xó. Something happened, I was...”:

[pm] Nothing, babe. Nothing, this wasn't supposed to be about me, I just [......] I got stuck somewhere. I'm so sorry I didn't show up. I should have just gone straight to you, should have ignored-- I have work tonight and I haven't slept in a few days, I'm gonna go try to [....] take care of that. But can I see you tomorrow? I promise I'll be there this time. I promise.

​[pm] It's easier for things to not be about me, sometimes. Okay. I'd like to see you tomorrow. I [...] think I'd like it if you held me, if that's not too weird. Or just. I don't know. Anything.

Maybe we can be on the phone on your way over? Just so I know nothing bad happens to you. No rocks attacked you, right? You're actually alive, right? [ user is absolutely fine and not panicked at all ]

[necrosemancy]

[pm] sorry dropped my phone or something like that but yes, justice for Pluto.

[pm] ... Ça va?

[zombiebabysitter]

LOCATION: Wicked's Rest Trail TIMING: Current PARTIES: Charlie & Wyatt (@loftylockjaw) SUMMARY: While on a hike through the woods to catch up, Charlie and Wyatt run into a Sianach. They have to run for their lives. CONTENT WARNINGS: Talk of grief

“This is fucking terrifying!” Charlie exclaimed from the inside of the lamia’s mouth, though at the same time? This was fucking metal as fuck. “Run, Barlow! Run!”

Time had passed between when Charlie had been stabbed and now. He’d healed enough to be allowed to adventure on his own, but not enough to go back to the crazy activities he had been doing before all of this happened. It was enough to drive him crazy, to make him feel itchy all over because he couldn’t occupy his mind with something other than the grief and loss of his friends. He spent so much time out and about because he didn’t want to have Finn stuck dealing with the emotions that were radiating off of Charlie. He hated it. And so, that’s how he found himself messaging Wyatt to go on a hike with him. If he couldn’t go alone, at least he’d have his muscle wall of a gator friend to have his back in case something happened… again. 

They’d met up at one of the many trailheads to do nothing more than shoot the shit and hike. “See? I didn’t go alone this time.” Charlie had said as soon as they’d gotten out of their respective cars. “I can be responsible. But I’m going crazy being stuck indoors and if I have to stay and rest one more fucking day, I’ll lose my fucking shit, I swear to god.” Charlie rolled his eyes at himself before walking off toward the start of the trail. “It’s good to see you again,” he quickly added, turning around and smiling at his friend. Despite everything, Wyatt was still a good friend to Charlie. Despite everything, they still were. 

Walking was easy, talking about this, that, and the other or falling into a comfortable silence. There were occasional rustles in the trees and underbrush, but nothing to make Charlie stand at attention because, of course, there was wildlife out here. It was nature, after all. Still, he found himself looking over at every little noise, afraid that it would be that guy who came after him, or something worse. 

—

“So proud of you,” Wyatt responded with a hint of sass, wanting desperately to get back to where they’d been before that fucking hospital room. It still hurt, sure, but he was willing to look past that for a sense of normalcy. Following closely behind as they approached the trail, Wyatt lifted his head to meet Charlie’s gaze when he realized he was being spoken to. “Yeah. You too.” The response was delivered with a smile that, while lacking its usual carefree nature, was genuine. Wyatt had kind of been in hiding since the whole ordeal with Samir, finding that his nightmares were taking on new forms. As much as he tried to pretend he was fine, the guilt weighed heavy on his mind, always returning full force the moment he was left alone with his thoughts. It’s why he tried so hard not to be left alone lately, but Charlie had been there. He’d seen it happen. He’d found Wyatt after and tried to console him. Seeing Charlie on the path in front of him now felt no different from seeing him crouched on the other side of those bars. 

Wyatt’s hands were trembling and he shook them out as he cleared his throat and tried to pay attention to the small talk. The silences in between were harder, but not foreign to him. He was trying to just appreciate where they were. Nature, and shit. And also the fact that Charlie hadn’t abandoned him completely, even if that would’ve been the wiser thing to do. 

“So… how’s the new house?”

—

Watching as Wyatt seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, Charlie paused and fought the urge to put out a hand and rest it on his friend’s shoulder. Instead, he nudged his friend gently in the side with a searching gaze in his eyes. He’d noticed his shaking hands, noticed the way that Wyatt wasn’t entirely all-too present with him. But could he blame him? Not at all. “I get if you need a distraction,” Charlie said gently, raising his brows at the other, “but I’m also here if you want to talk, okay? Always.” And after that, Charlie kept walking, back to his chipper self, leading the way on the trail. 

“The house is… sans furniture.” The rockstar finally admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. “Turns out, it’s hard to get furniture and find a style that makes sense. Starting from scratch sucks.” Charlie rolled his eyes as he thought about all the furniture he and Finn were going to have to build together. He wondered if they’d have a good time or end up yelling at the furniture. He wasn’t above yelling at inanimate objects and never had been. “But there’s a bed and a dining table and chairs, so…” he trailed off, then shrugged again. “Better than nothing?” 

Charlie found himself at a fork in the trail, then decided to go right, scuffing his boots against the dirt path before he kept walking, turning around to look at Wyatt for a moment, a bright smile on his face. “Oh yeah! You’ll have to come over and check out the recording studio that was put in the basement! I’ve got a soundproof booth, all my guitars, my keyboards, and a bunch of sound editing equipment. I’ve got a whole fucking setup, it’s amazing.” There was an excitement that entered Charlie’s voice as he began to talk about his music, it was clear that it was more to him than just fame. That being able to play and write music was its own reward.

—

The offer was kind, and of course Charlie felt the need to extend it. But Wyatt was reluctant to accept, knowing that it all came with more baggage than he felt like unpacking. Not on Charlie’s part, not really… most of that luggage belonged to the misguided shifter. So he just nodded in thanks, acknowledging it without committing to anything as he followed behind Charlie on the trail, stepping over a large root that'd grown across the path. 

It was very like Charlie to rush into moving before he'd even managed to furnish the place, and it drew an amused chuckle from Wyatt. “Better than nothing,” he agreed, “but I hope you've at least got a fridge. Actually, scratch that, I bet you're just ordering takeout for every meal, huh?” He grinned impishly, having taken great pleasure in hounding his roommate for always eating out and constantly insisting on cooking them meals to keep in the fridge. 

Brows rose when Charlie started getting excited about his studio, followed quickly by a grin. “That's awesome, man. You're really set on stickin’ ‘round here, huh?” He was… glad, mostly. He didn't love how dangerous it'd been for his friend so far, but he was selfishly happy that Charlie hadn't decided to fuck off to someplace he couldn't follow. “Yeah, I'll for sure come check it out.” He'd never been in a proper recording studio, having fully stuck to the live performance side of things his whole life. It would… probably be intimidating, if he was honest with himself. Ah well. 

—

Raising his hands in surrender to Wyatt’s correct theory of ordering takeout, he shrugged his shoulders with a sheepish smile across his lips. “Listen, man. I can’t cook for shit, you know that.” He was quick to say as they walked. “Like, please teach me the basics, I’m begging. Finn and I can’t eat takeout for the rest of our lives.” Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose with a laugh that was clearly at his own expense. “I’ll pay you, I’ll do whatever the fuck you want, just take me on as your student, I’m begging.” He clasped his hands together and shook it back and forth in a pleading motion at Wyatt. 

“Yeah, I really am.” Charlie then spoke in response to him putting down roots. “Despite it’s weirdness, I like it here. And with my affliction, it’s probably good to stick to an area where I can fit in rather than stick out, you know?” His hand went to his arm, where the bite was, covered with bandaging. His gaze went far away as if stuck somewhere else. Every time he was reminded of the reality of things, he remembered everything he was running from. Running from the death of his friends, the reality that they were well and truly gone. 

“Damn right, you will! If you want to record anything, just let me know, I know people.” He shot the other a playful wink, knowing that he was people. “I feel like things are looking up after everything that happened.” He spoke, referring to the attack of his friends. “Sure, some setbacks with a literal demon stabbing me, but… I’m nothing if not resilient.” Charlie shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the nagging feeling that he was pushing something away, something that threatened to bubble to the surface every night when he was by himself. 

As they walked, the forest took on an eerie silence that not even Charlie could yap through to ignore. “Weird,” he murmured to Wyatt as his gaze looked through the treeline, seeing a few small animals running through the brush, but thought nothing of it. “Huh,” he spoke before continuing forward.

—

“I tried teaching you the basics, and you scorched my fuckin’ pans,” Wyatt laughed, shaking his head. “They got classes for that, man. Burn their shit.” It wasn’t that he really minded teaching Charlie, it was just that that probably meant that Finn would be around, and Wyatt didn’t really want any part of that. He nodded in agreement when Charlie went on to say that this was a place he’d fit in better once he was… undead. Food would probably be easier to come by at least, since Charlie didn’t strike Wyatt as the type to suddenly be okay with killing people for food. His loss.

The conversation turned to Caleb, and Wyatt frowned. He was not making the connection between the word ‘demon’ and the literal, actual thing that existed, figuring it was just a turn of phrase. It felt harsh, but then so was stabbing someone who Wyatt couldn’t imagine had given Caleb any reason to be stabbed. His messages had gone unanswered thus far, but the next time Wyatt saw Caleb around town, they were going to have words. “That’s good, at least. That things are lookin’ up. Hope it stays that way.” 

“Hm?” Lost in thought, Wyatt hadn’t noticed how deathly-quiet the woods had become. He did now, though, and slowed to a stop. “Wait.” He glanced around them, feeling his proverbial hackles raise. There was something out there. Blinking away his blue eyes, yellow ones taking their place, Wyatt used his thermal vision to try and spot anything hiding in the underbrush. There was a vibration behind him, a pretty sizable one, even though it wasn’t paired with a sound that matched. Confused, Wyatt turned and saw the heat signature of something pretty big lurking in the distance, and he stepped toward Charlie. “We should go,” he urged the other in the direction that moved away from the thing he could see, opposite of the trail itself. 

—

Charlie huffed and puffed as Wyatt spoke of his ruined pans. “I replaced them with top-of-the-line shit!” He retaliated with a groan. “And I bought you those premium fuckin’ steaks you had been talking about.” He pouted and stomped his feet in protest as they kept walking. “But fine, I get it. You don’t want me around, it’s fine.” He raised his hands in clear submission, ready to turn to the next subject. 

He watched as Wyatt went somewhere else, but knew it wasn’t his place to comment, not anymore. Instead, he kept looking in the tree line, then watched as Wyatt stopped and his eyes flickered to their reptilian yellow ones. Charlie watched him, then followed his gaze. He didn’t see what the other saw, which wasn’t too surprising. “Uh, what is it?” He found himself asking, unsure what was out there. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around to find out. 

He then nodded his head, deciding to follow Wyatt’s instincts on this, and followed his friend from the trail, but that’s when the large beast moved closer. One moment they were alone, and the next, there was a large deer-like monstrosity with a bright red head. “What the fuck…” Charlie whispered, eyes going wide as he watched it charge another deer, butted it with its head, and the deer fell down, dead. 

Charlie reared back, gripping Wyatt’s arm, frozen in place. They were in serious danger now, but how the fuck were they supposed to get out of here? That thing was fast. “Wyatt… what the fuck?” He whispered, unable to tear his gaze from the mutant deer, lest it charge at them next.

—

It didn't look like either of them were going to be able to outrun this thing, and it was facing them down now. “Don't know,” Wyatt growled, heart beating quickly in his chest as he tried to figure out the best course of action here. Seemed like getting them both the fuck out of dodge ASAP was the move, and that meant he was going to have to shift. He prayed that it'd function as intended this time, none of this half-assed crap that'd been happening in the ring. But the jeans had to go, those were a bitch and a half to rip through. Also he liked them, damn it. “Start runnin',” he instructed Charlie, gaze fixed on the creature. “I'll catch up.” He was already kicking off his shoes, motioning for Charlie to head in the direction of the ocean with a jerk of his head, disrobing in record time and starting the shift.

The red headed deer (why did redheaded things hate him so much?) lowered its head and started to charge. Wyatt closed his eyes and focused, pissed that it took so much concentration lately when it was supposed to be like second nature. No, first nature. This was his natural state of being. Still, his body complied (much to his relief) and the monster barreling toward them started to look smaller as he towered into the air. Without waiting for the whole thing to be done, Wyatt turned tail and ran after Charlie, catching up with him easily. “Hold on!” he shouted as he scooped the musician up in his mouth, careful not to bite down and cause harm. The monster was close behind, thrashing those red antlers around and making a sound that made elk calls sound like soothing lullabies. Wyatt picked up the pace, loping along the forest floor, dodging trees and leaping over fallen logs, all while keeping his jaw locked in place half-open to keep Charlie safe. 

The trees began to thin, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Wyatt realized he could see the ocean. But it was… very far below them. The cliff's edge came up suddenly and the lamia skidded to a stop, sending dirt, grass, and pebbles flying over the edge. He swung his head around to look at their pursuer, who had lost some ground but was not slowing down. 

At a loss, the shifter peered carefully over the edge. Fuck. He let Charlie climb out of his mouth, then held out his arms like he wanted to pull him in for a hug. “... I think we gotta jump.”

—

As soon as Wyatt instructed him to start running, Charlie didn’t need to be told twice. He remembered all of his skipped gym classes back in high school and cursed himself as he sprinted as fast as he could away from the creature with the bright red head. Then, he was being scooped up, holding back a yelp as he realized it was Wyatt helping him out. 

He allowed himself to be carried, though the whole experience felt surreal and made everything feel like an out of body experience. “This is fucking terrifying!” Charlie exclaimed from the inside of the lamia’s mouth, though at the same time? This was fucking metal as fuck. “Run, Barlow! Run!” He shouted, having no other way to help out than shout words of encouragement. 

When Wyatt opened his mouth, Charlie scurried out with a wild look in his eyes, staring over the cliff’s edge, then back at his friend. “I think we have to jump, too.” Charlie replied with a deep breath before wrapping his arms around Wyatt and closing his eyes tightly. “Jump, man!” Charlie shouted, noticing the devil deer running straight for them. “JUMP!” He shouted again before using all his weight with Wyatt’s to jump over the edge of the cliff. 

For a moment, they were falling through the air, and Charlie felt his heart drop through his stomach. Charlie took a deep breath and held it before they hit the water, going under, under, under. They began to float back up, and Charlie gasped for breath as soon as they resurfaced. He opened his eyes, still clinging to the lamia for dear life as he looked back up at where they had jumped to see an angry evil deer staring down at them, but not following. “Holy fucking shit, we lived!” Charlie shouted, letting out a laugh of astonishment. He let go of Wyatt, splashing him with a huge grin on his face. “We fucking lived!”

—

As they plummeted toward the water, Wyatt curled his body around Charlie, twisting in the air to make sure he was going to hit it first. He tried to angle himself to take the blow on his neck and shoulders, finding that to be the sturdiest part of him—no teeth had ever gotten through the natural armor there, after all. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, but he held Charlie firmly against him until he felt their velocity slowing. Then, the lamia released his friend, eyes snapping open and nosing him toward the surface. They broke through the waves, Wyatt sucking in a deep breath and relishing the ache—they'd lived. Charlie was goddamn right. Laughing as the man let go of his head to splash him, Wyatt blew saltwater out of his nose in a misty spray, then swam close again and nudged Charlie with his shoulder. “Climb on, Evel Knievel, I'll get us back to shore.” And then came the long trek back up to the car. Well, it looked like they were still getting their hike after all.

—

Charlie grinned brightly as he was misted by Wyatt, shaking his head as he climbed onto his friend’s back. “I can’t believe we did that.” He muttered as Wyatt swam them to shore. “I mean, for real. That was kinda fucking freeing, wasn’t it?” He found himself rambling on, the thrill of the jump still coursing through his veins. “We’ve gotta get back to our fucking roots, you and me. Scuba diving, ridiculous shit that bonds us together because if we think about the shit that’s going on in our lives, we’ll fall apart.” Charlie blinked, realizing that was the most honest he’d been with himself in a while.

After they got to shore, Charlie climbed off of his friend’s back and patted his arm. “Thanks for the lift, man.” He spoke with a grin. “Guess we’re walking all the way back to our cars, huh?” Charlie pulled out his soaked phone and frowned, hoping it would turn on. It didn’t. “Welp, I have no sense of direction and my phone is ruined.” He announced, looking toward the other for a hopefully better sense of direction.

—

“Hey, you’re the only one fallin’ apart in this equation,” Wyatt argued, even though they both knew it wasn’t true. “Anyway, yeah. We should.” He laughed again as he watched Charlie pull out his phone. “Yeah, and mine’s… wherever the fuck in the woods my clothes are. I’ll get you to your car and go back on my own, in case that big bitch is still around.” Not having his clothes meant he wasn’t shifting back—he’d rather risk someone seeing him like this than he would someone seeing him human and nude. The last thing he needed was another trip to jail, this time for public indecency. Fuck’s sake. 

The pair struck off up the easiest path they could find back to the top of the ridge, Wyatt making sure to give the area where they’d seen that pissed off mega-deer a wide berth. The lamia had to slow down his usual gait, walking on all fours to better match Charlie’s speed as they tramped through the woods. He had a pretty good sense of where they’d come from, and didn’t think the trail head would be all that far off from where they’d come topside, it wasn’t like they’d been hiking for hours when they had to book it. Maybe an hour, tops. “If you’re wiped… I will let you ride me,” the lamia snorted. “Or if your feet are screamin’ for bein’ wet n’ shoved into shoes. Can’t imagine.” 

—

Unable to suppress the smirk that was growing on his features, Charlie turned to Wyatt and looked him over. “You sound like you’re just looking for an excuse to hold me, man.” Charlie shot at his friend with a soft laugh. “I can handle myself, I’m a big boy.” Charlie looked down at his soaked clothes, glad he didn’t wear his favorite boots today. “Can put one foot in front of the other just like you can.” 

As they walked, Charlie let out a tired sigh. It was easier to run away from the grief he’d been suppressing for so long. It was so much easier to outrun instead of face it head-on. Moments of adrenaline with Wyatt led to philosophical thinking that he didn’t need to go through. He’d already been through so much with his friend. God forbid he made it worse. But still, the more he ran away, the more the threat of the grief threatened to swallow him whole. Charlie scuffed his feet against the ground as the pair walked, gaze downward and sullen instead of the usual cheer that Charlie could so easily wear. 

“I’m… struggling.” He finally spoke, only having voiced such feelings to Finn. “Like the grief, it’s catching up with me and I don’t know what the fuck to do.” Charlie let his posture deflate to that of defeat, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I told you that.” He muttered, shaking his head and rubbing a hand over his face. “Forget I said it, back to cheery Charles.” 

—

Maybe he was. Maybe he wished more people would hold him when he looked like this, when he looked the way he was supposed to, the way he’d been born. Maybe Wyatt was so desperate for affection when he felt he was at his most monstrous that he’d lowered the bar all the way to the ground, cracking jokes and hoping people would take pity.

So far, the only taker had been Maggie, and that was almost certainly only because she didn’t know what he really was.

Failing that, the lamia just lapsed into silence. He wasn’t surprised when Charlie broke that silence first, but the chosen topic of conversation did strike him as uncharacteristic. Or perhaps that was just because he didn’t know Charlie as well as he thought, just like he hadn’t known Caleb as well as he’d thought. He probably didn’t know anyone he had ever called a friend down to a very deep level, because he wouldn’t let himself. He almost never let them get that close, for one reason or another. It was his own fault he was alone. 

Charlie was backpedaling, but the gator just shook his head, keeping his gaze on the path (or lack thereof) ahead when he replied. “Let it catch up,” Wyatt advised. “You can’t outrun it. Let it catch up, let it drown you for a while… then come out the other side. Better. Stronger.” He’d gone through it when he’d left his family behind. The moment he ran, he felt he couldn’t stop or else the hurt would find him. But it had anyway, in spite of everything he did to keep it at bay. His anger, his fear, and the sharp, painful ache of longing in his heart when he thought of his mother… “It tore me to shreds. I thought I’d die, I hurt so bad. But I didn’t. I cried and I raged against everythin’ I could find, until one day it just… it just felt like less. And the next day, it was less than that. I put myself back together, piece by piece, and I ain’t ever been that low since.” That was probably a lie—he thought perhaps his time in jail had come close, but that wasn’t part of this conversation. “Let it come. Weather the storm. I know you got it in you.”

—

As Wyatt began to dispense advice Charlie truly didn’t know he had, the rockstar stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the lamia with a face of awe. It wasn’t just good advice, it was the best advice, and Charlie was well and truly shocked. “I…” Charlie blinked, then bit his lip. “Yeah, I know know you’re right. It just…” he trailed off again, shaking his head. “People expect a lot from me. I can’t afford to fall apart.” 

It wasn’t just about him and what he wanted, it was about the people that relied on him to keep a steady paycheck going. He couldn’t take a break because he had a manager, a producer, an agent, a publicist, and so on and so forth. Most of all, there was Finn. Finn didn’t seem to take it well when Charlie wasn’t okay. But couldn’t he feel it? Couldn’t he feel that Charlie was burying it all down, couldn’t he feel that it was there beneath the surface? 

“I’m afraid that the storm will knock me to pieces,” Charlie admitted, slowly beginning to walk again, knowing that if he stopped now, he’d well and truly fall apart. “I think I made… a mistake. A big one.” Charlie wasn’t sure what he was referring to. Was it allowing his friends to go to the cemetery that night? Was it that day in the hospital? Or when he let Finn in that close? Was it letting Wyatt get away? He wasn’t sure. Every day his thoughts swirled into a nasty concoction of guilt and self-hatred that he couldn’t avoid. 

His feet trudged on as he forced himself to walk, that cocktail of self-loathing threatening to overflow. “I’m sorry for everything,” he said softly. “I seem to have a habit of flying too close to the sun and then burning up and falling back down to earth, don’t I? Just a modern-day Icarian nightmare.”

—

“Fuck those people. You gotta stop puttin’ everyone else before yourself,” Wyatt said with a huff. “It's gonna catch up with you one way or another. You might as well be prepared to face it head on, don't let it blindside you if you got the chance.” Wyatt hadn't had that chance, but he wished he had. Maybe he would have gone back home, were that the case. Maybe he'd be playing music in New Orleans and helping his mama come up with new recipes for the restaurant if he'd had this foresight back then, instead of trapped in a town that was too cold, fighting to make money for people who saw him as little more than means to an end. All the people he'd met here would be better for never having crossed his path. Charlie wouldn't have been put in such a hard position, and he'd probably be happier, at least when it came to his love life. 

But there was no going back, so all Wyatt could do was try to convince Charlie to take control of his reality. 

“Don't be sorry. You're gonna make mistakes, but I know you're doin’ the best you can.” He still hadn't looked over at Charlie, finding it much easier to speak openly like this if he didn't make eye contact. “Just… try to learn from it. Like you know I fuckin’ don't.” He laughed bitterly. “Don't be like me.”

—

Charlie stared at Wyatt for a long moment, listening to what his friend was saying and taking it in. Wyatt was right, but Charlie wasn’t sure he was ready to face that pain that was on the other end of things. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be. But he supposed he had to at least try, right? And if it became too much, he could always retreat and go back to the way things have been. Doing crazy shit had given him a rush that rivaled performing. But here was Wyatt, telling him to do what needed to happen, when he couldn’t even do it himself. 

“Well.” Charlie started, pausing as he fought for words he couldn’t quite formulate. “I’ll stop running when you do.” Charlie looked over to Wyatt, a serious expression on his face. “Because I don’t think I can. It’ll tear me apart, everything I lost.” Charlie pressed a hand onto his chest, right where the ring that Gareth never gave him was. “I don’t think I can.” His voice was barely there, and suddenly walking made his legs feel like they were weighted down. “I think I’ll take you up on the piggyback ride,” he decided with a half-hearted smirk. 

As Charlie climbed onto his friend’s back, he couldn’t help but think how surreal all of this was. One of his best friends was a fucking giant alligator. He was going to become a zombie. Finn read people’s emotions when he sucked at it himself, all of it was so surreal. “For what it’s worth,” Charlie found himself speaking after getting situated, “I’m glad that you’re here.”

—

He wasn’t going to argue with a brick wall, and if Charlie felt so certain that he wasn’t ready to face the shadow looming over his head and the storm nipping at his heels, who was Wyatt to push him harder? As Charlie had pointed out, Wyatt wasn’t following his own fuckin’ advice, so it was no wonder that he’d go ignored. Maybe Charlie would feel more ready later, and maybe then he’d think about what Wyatt had said and take it to heart. Or maybe he wouldn’t, and maybe he’d end up as sick and twisted as Wyatt had become. It was out of the lamia’s hands. 

“Sure,” he responded with a breathy chuckle, stopping and lowering himself to the ground so Charlie could climb up on his back. He hadn’t gotten far before Charlie spoke again, and his words made Wyatt’s stomach feel funny. 

“Thanks,” was all he could think to say. “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

[rn-zane]

TIMING: current SETTING: some club™ PARTIES: @loftylockjaw + @rn-zane + Leo the shithead fae (Bex) WARNINGS: domestic abuse mention SUMMARY: wyatt and zane make an honest attempt to help felix get out of their deal at the grit pit

At the end of the day, Felix, like Lockjaw and every other fighter who signed a contract, belonged to the Grit Pit.

A couple weeks of tailing this clown and Wyatt was itching to get to business. Whether or not Zane was picking up on his impatience, the lamia had talked him into confronting Leo tonight. They knew his haunts, so they knew where to wait. It wasn’t a long wait, either, the fae entering the club damn near exactly on time. Wyatt clenched his jaw as he locked eyes with Leo, lifting a hand and waving him over to their spot on the bar. They’d met one another in passing, never really sharing a conversation of any kind of substance, but Leo was certainly aware of Wyatt’s status as a Pit fighter. His knowledge of Wyatt’s fondness for Felix was unknown though, as the pair had thus far kept things pretty well on the down low. No reason to go inspiring the head honchos to make them fight one another, which was the most likely outcome of a more public friendship.

His hope here was that they’d be able to offer Leo something he wanted in exchange for the termination of Felix’s contract. But if it really came down to it, the lamia couldn’t promise anyone that he wouldn’t just try to bite the fucker’s head off, even in front of all these people. He wasn’t sure if Zane knew that, probably not, and that was probably a surprise best kept secret until it was time to pull it out. If. If it was time. Hopefully that time wouldn’t come. He did have something of a temper, though…

—

The waiting and surveying part had been fine. Wyatt was decent company and at least just by tailing someone, there was no way they would get Felix into trouble. Tonight, whether due to unrelated impatience or the fact that Zane had a really hard time not filling the silence out on their patrols, they’d left the safety of just watching. Zane had no idea how obvious it was that this was not his scene, surrounded by loud music and drunk people, muttering apologies to anyone who’d bumped into him on the way inside. At least it was public, less risk of a big blowout. 

His stomach lurched as he spotted Leo, smug looking and insufferable, his skin burning with equal parts anger and nerves. A part of him hoped the guy didn’t remember their last meeting, where Zane had seriously considered punching the man’s lights out, but there was no going back now. Besides, Wyatt would be doing most of the talking, a unanimous decision. Zane was bound to ramble out the wrong thing or start attempting to appeal to Leo’s humanity. Whether or not he had one was debatable. 

“Here goes nothing,” he breathed, glancing over at Wyatt looking cool as a cucumber. Zane reminded himself to ease the grip on his bottle of beer, still full but with the label all but peeled off. A prop but one that he was getting more and more tempted to take a sip from the closer Leo got to their table. 

—

It was hard work, doing what he did at the Grit Pit. The word binds were hard enough, but at least they were usually one-time things. You got someone bound once, with the right turn of phrase, and that was really all it took. Most of them were completely unaware until it was too late. That part was a little fun, really. But the wrangling part took a lot more effort than Leo tended to enjoy. After a long night of working his ass off maintaining a bunch of sniveling, dull, idiot fighters, he figured he’d earned a chance to blow off some steam. A little clubbing and bar-hopping was just the dessert he needed after a nice meal of euphoria from the crowd at the Pit, with the added bonus of being a fair bit more relaxing. 

At least, in theory. Not so much in practice when he glanced up to catch sight of one of his fighters beckoning him over. Leo rolled his eyes, leaning back in his seat for a moment before relenting and hopping out of it. He might as well see what the fighter wanted, right? It wasn’t the worst case scenario, really; Wyatt wasn’t one of the whiny ones, at least. But the guy with him…

“I know you,” Leo raised his brow as he approached. “You’re the guy I caught with Felix in the boiler room. On to bigger and better things here?” He let his gaze slide lazily over to Wyatt, smirking a little. “Probably a step up. I can’t speak for Lockjaw here, but Fe gets a little tiresome after a while. So needy. It’s a bore.” He let his eyes lock with Wyatt’s, head tilting to the side slightly. “What do you need? I don’t really fraternize after hours, you know. Unless you’re buying me a drink. I can give you a hell of a night, if you’re nice.” He looked back to the other man with a wink. “That goes for the both of you.”

—

Leo's reaction to them wasn't wholly unexpected as far as Wyatt was concerned. Even the casual offer of having a little fun together didn't change his expression, which had settled somewhere between light amusement and genuine interest. He'd gotten pretty good at making people think he cared about what they had to say, even though their words were, more often than not, emptier than his own. In this case, he was doing all he could to mask the flare of indignation in his gut at Leo's less-than-kind comment about Felix. It wouldn't do to show his hand, not yet. So he just smiled through it, allowing Leo to lead, prepared to go along with whatever options he offered up to them that might make him more pliable. If Wyatt himself was that option, so be it. 

“What'll you have, then?” He got the fae's preferred drink and made short work of securing one from the nearby bar, taking Leo with him to keep Zane from blowing their cover by having to spend a few minutes with the fae alone. As they made their way back to the table, Wyatt gestured to the seat beside his own. “Please, take a load off.” Once they were all comfortable, the lamia took a careful dip into the topic at hand: Felix. Brought up by Leo himself, so it was less strange now to return to it. Lucky, that. Lucky that Zane had been caught doing something with them in the… boiler room, was it? “Must be frustrating havin’ someone like that under your jurisdiction,” he remarked casually, resisting the urge to glance at Zane and silently signal for him to be chill. “Felix, I mean. My own handler, well… let's just say she's quite pleased with my performance.” He smirked, as if to indicate that he wasn't morally opposed to sleeping with the people who held his life in their hands. It might gain him a little more trust in this situation. “And it's not like I want to leave… hell, I don't know what else I'd do with myself if not for this.” He paused, letting that marinate for a moment. “Been tryin’ to convince my friend here of the merits of the job.” Wyatt did look at Zane now, wearing a confident smile. If Leo knew Zane, if he knew that the vampire and Felix were… something like friends, then his presence needed to be padded. Lies needed to help make this encounter an easier pill to swallow. If Leo suspected them too soon, then they'd be blowing their one chance of schmoozing Felix out of their deal. 

—

This was a bad idea. Wyatt should have done this on his own because there was no way Zane could keep his cool throughout this whole evening, that much became evident the second the smarmy bastard opened his mouth. Fingernails dug deep into his palm and he huffed out something that maybe could have been construed as a sound of amusement. Tense as it was, Zane did manage the smallest of smiles, even as his blood ran cold at what Leo was suggesting. Maybe some acting classes should be his next priority. Since showing any interest in the offer was off the table, even in a fake way, Zane honestly muttered out a “you’re not my type.” Wyatt could take care of the charming part of this evening. 

The second Wyatt led the fae away, Zane deflated, focusing on the angry crescent marks in his palm to gather his thoughts. He dug desperately around for the manufactured sense of calm he could conjure up at work, treating people like Leo, drunk drivers or any other sort of scum of the earth. Tried to remember why playing nice was so important. Even though remembering Felix’s face that night at The Grit Pit spurred more anger, it was of the righteous kind, the kind that inspired focus and determination. So by the time the two men returned back to the table, Zane’s teeth were no longer under threat from breaking by the tension in his jaw. 

And Wyatt was good. If he didn’t know any better, Zane would have truly believed the disdain for Felix painted with those words. Zane’s focus stayed on Wyatt as he spoke, safer than risking another suggestive look from the fae that would all but break his current focus. Nodding along as he was dragged back into the conversation, Zane shrugged, fingers itching with the need to peel more of the beer bottle’s label so he took a disgusting drink from it instead. “Wyatt can be very insistent,” he explained, quirking one eyebrow at the man in question. As if this was a friendly discussion they’d had from time to time, amusing but annoying. “Told me Felix liked to exaggerate, that their explanation of how the place actually works is a bit… dramatic.” Zane steeled himself before he continued, the lie not as effortless as Wyatt’s but hopefully convincing all the same. “They did seem a bit… neurotic.”

He forced down another drink of the beer, the taste preferable to the lingering disgust of those words. 

—

While Lockjaw seemed comfortable enough with the situation, his companion was clearly uneasy. Leo zeroed in on the discomfort, tilting his head and raising his brows as the man — Zane, wasn’t it? — claimed that Leo wasn’t his type. “Mmmm, you prefer the bumbling idiot type? Explains why you were getting so cozy with Fe, at least.” There was an uncomfortable feeling in his chest at the thought of Felix genuinely moving on with someone new. Not jealousy, not exactly. It was more of a… possessive thing. Leo didn’t like to see someone new playing with his toys, even when he was finished with them.

But it wouldn’t last, anyway. He reminded himself of that. At the end of the day, Felix, like Lockjaw and every other fighter who signed a contract, belonged to the Grit Pit. So, Leo let Lockjaw buy him a drink. He ordered something expensive and top shelf, just to push the boundaries a little. He smiled as the lamia spoke, shrugging a shoulder. “Honestly, between you and me? I like it more when they’re not happy with it. Knowing they don’t want to be there and can’t go… It adds a new layer of fun to it all. And Felix…” Leo trailed off, clicking his tongue. “All the shit I put up with when we were an item? I deserve a little extra fun for all that.” 

His eyes slid over to Zane at the implication that he, too, might be interested in joining the Pit. Now there was an idea. The concept of having Felix go up against someone they liked enough to risk talking to in the back halls of the Pit was an enjoyable one, and Leo’s eyes danced with quiet excitement. “Yeah, well, Fe likes to whine. Always has, really. Part of what made it so hard to put up with them.” His mouth twisted into a smile with a few too many teeth as Zane went on, calling Felix neurotic. Leo barked out a laugh. He’d tell Felix all about it later, he thought; recount the conversation back to them, make sure they knew it was true. It was fun to add some variety to the ways in which he fucked with the guy, at least. “You’ve got that right. Try living with them. They’re lucky all I did at the end of it was sign them up at the Pit. I mean, I could’ve done worse, you know? And this way, they get paid. It’s not like they had any other career prospects. No high school diploma, no social skills… They’d be living in a tent if I didn’t have their back, you know? They bitch about it, but I really did do them a favor.”

—

Good cop, bad cop. As planned, or at least as close to a plan as they could muster. Though interestingly, from the eyes of Leo, Zane was likely the bad cop in this scenario. Unhappy with the way the Pit was run, making friends with the discontented fighters, denying the faun’s advances… Wyatt, on the other hand? Wyatt would say anything to gain favor, here. Because with favor came trust, and with trust came the opportunity to make a person more receptive to your requests. Let Felix out of his contract, the lamia thought, take this other nameless fighter instead. There’s less baggage, and they’re a bastard already, so no one is going to take pity on them and try to stage a coup on their behalf. It was something of a threat, when you got down to it. But, given time, hopefully it would prove fruitful. 

So Wyatt laughed and nodded, giving the handler a shrug of his broad shoulders. “True, true… I can understand that. I like fightin’ the ones that don’t wanna be there more than the rest, because they fight more desperately, you know? They know what’s comin’ and they’re afraid of it. Feels like huntin’, in a way. But you’re right, Felix owes you a lot. They wouldn’t fare well bein’ homeless, that much is certain. Me, I got the luxury of doin’ this for pleasure, but…” He gave it a good, long, overstated think, smiling all the while. “I know there’s those fellas that go out n’ capture the beasties, but what of the bonafide fighters, like me? I got a keen eye for folks like Felix… folks that can fight, but don’t want to.” He glanced now at Zane, and his intentions were suddenly made quite clear. False that they were, this was part of the plan. “I could bring ‘em to you, if you like. Offer you up some more of that dynamic you got such a sweet taste for.”

—

Biting back a retort that his type was pretty much anything except sociopathic sadists was hard, so Zane settled for a roll of his eyes and another drink. Better to say too little than too much. His skin was crawling, squirming, underneath that slimy gaze, the callous words. It didn’t much matter whether Leo was sizing him up as a possible fighter, to fight him himself or for other reasons, Zane was having a hard time sitting still - desperately quieting the scratching in the back of his mind that hinted at just how nice Leo’s blood would taste, how much the fae deserved it. On the bright side, aggressively shoving back those thoughts was a good distraction from the disgusting tirade about Felix. 

Wyatt, to his credit, continued to be completely unphased. It was convincing, almost too much so, how he spoke about his fights. Zane pushed those thoughts away along with the rest, grasping desperately at the bigger picture. He was here to help. That smooth gaze turned to him and Zane leaned back in his chair, arms crossing over his chest. They were finally getting somewhere other than simply trash talking Felix. Plus, this new setting that Wyatt was proposing (a heads up would have been appreciated, though) did provide a decent cover for Zane’s barely concealed grim mood. Even if it all felt just a bit too real. 

“And here I thought you just really wanted to buy me a drink,” Zane muttered, settling into this new role, impatiently waiting for Wyatt to string the bait. Praying that Leo would take it. 

—

Leo’s smile could hardly be described as anything short of predatory. His eyes looked Zane over like someone appraising a dog for a fight — an apt metaphor, considering the way the faun tended to think of the fighters under his ‘care.’ The guy looked tough enough. Good muscles, probably knew his way around a punch. But Leo had been in this game long enough to know that there was always a catch. Even someone like Lockjaw, who was happy to ask how high any time someone told him to jump, wouldn’t give something for nothing.

Leaning back in his seat, Leo took a long, thoughtful swig from his drink. “And what’s in it for you?” He questioned, looking back to Lockjaw with the slightest tilt to his head. “You want to make a trade? I get the fighters you bring in, you get… someone else released from their contract? I know you don’t want out of yours.” That was how the Pit tended to work. For most fighters, Leo would have done it without question. But… given the nature of the conversation, he had a feeling he could guess who Lockjaw wanted to spring. And there was no part of Leo that wanted to see Felix walk away free. It would feel like such a waste. He’d put years of effort into that useless cat. He had no desire to see them win. He’d sooner see them put down. 

“I’m not sure this is something that would benefit the both of us,” he hummed. “Especially not if I don’t understand why you want it. I know you’re not sleeping with them. They don’t put out enough to be worth this kind of effort.” 

—

Oh, how his hopes had soared for those few seconds that Leo talked himself through his understanding of the situation at hand. Yes, yes, it’d gone perfectly, and—no. He was saying that it wasn’t enough. Asking questions that Wyatt didn’t want to give the answers to. It pissed him off that he’d come so close to having this fucking thing resolved, only to watch Leo tug the fishing line and reel the bait back. He felt his patience run out. Irritation sparked and bloomed into a burning flame of anger, and the indulgent smile dropped from his face. 

“I wanted to be nice about it,” he said, shaking his head. “I wanted to make you feel good, wanted to keep from havin’ to say anythin’ that might upset you.” He paused, picking up his drink to take another long sip of it. “But the truth of the matter is, that wet cat is pathetic.” His gaze had hardened, brows furrowing as a general look of distaste arranged itself on his features. “And puttin’ somethin’ like that in the ring… I don’t got my panties in a bunch over the morality of it, Leo. But it’s a bad look. The people that come to the Pit don’t want to see their favorite fighters gettin’ all fuckin’ weepy before and after every scrap. And in case you ain’t noticed, since you got so many other better things to be doin’, Felix cries more than a spoiled brat givin’ her toys away to charity. That might do it for you, but it don’t do it for the rest of us. We’re sick of it. There’s the one-shot fighters that don’t wanna be there, that panic and fight tooth n’ nail… and then there’s Felix. Still ain’t dead, still ain’t grown a spine. I’m tryin’ to cut you a deal, here. Let you save face, get you some better names under your belt. So take it.” He paused, the silence between them heavy. “Take it.” Or else was the unspoken addendum to that command, present only in the extreme tension that had settled over the table.

—

And there it was. Whatever sliver of interest that had previously shone on Leo’s slimy face was gone, the smugness replacing it so naturally. Maybe Zane had been spending too much time with Emilio because he really, really wanted to hit him. He didn’t, letting nails dig into his palms once more, ready to leave. Wyatt had done plenty of schmoozing but it wasn’t taking - Leo was too insufferable, too possessive. They’d have to figure out another way to help Felix. 

Zane turned his gaze to Wyatt, surprised to see the anger he felt mirrored back tenfold on the shifter’s face. Oh, boy. He was going on a tangent, spitting out words as a last resort and Zane was finding it really hard to keep his face neutral, keep his eyebrows from furrowing with worry. This was Wyatt’s third little surprise of the evening and Zane wasn’t sure he could handle another. Take it. Swallowing thickly, Zane placed a hand on the shifter’s forearm, giving a squeeze. “Let’s just go,” he said, wanting to plead with the man but refusing to do so in front of the fae. He didn’t care if this wasn’t part of Wyatt’s plan, whatever that even was at this point - the tension between the other two was electric and Zane didn’t want to wait around for it to blow. “Wyatt.”

—

Ah, here it was. Lockjaw’s true colors, shining through like a spotlight. Some part of Leo couldn’t help but find amusement in the tirade, a slow grin stretching across his face. Everything Lockjaw said was the truth. Felix was pathetic, was a wet cat who couldn’t handle what the Grit Pit stood for, what it did. But Lockjaw wasn’t right about everything. He thought he was smart — that much was clear — but there were a few things Leo figured he didn’t have straight quite yet.

“The thing is, Wyatt,” he used Lockjaw’s human name, eyes darting over to the man with him with an amused glint; he’d known it before, on some level, but it wasn’t something he’d bothered committing to memory. Had Zane not said it, Leo wouldn’t have been able to pull it from memory in the moment. But it was so much funnier this way. “The thing is,” he said again, “you’re wrong about that. Some people, sure, they get uncomfortable seeing somebody in the ring who doesn’t want to be there. But some people? They live for that shit. See, most people who visit our little establishment don’t have a lot of power in their day to day lives. They’re human, they’re weak. So they see somebody like Felix, with the big claws and the sharp teeth, doing shit they don’t want to do just to amuse them? Well, that makes them feel good. Which makes me feel good. Ought to make you feel good, too, with the money we put in your pockets.” With a smug smile, Leo laced his fingers together behind his head. “Anyway, I don’t give a shit about ‘better names’ or ‘better fighters.’ That little shit wasted years of my life, you know. Dragging me down, making me miserable… I don’t really care how the fights go. I just like to see them half as miserable as they made me. Fuck knows they deserve it.”

—

Fuck it. Fuck it, Wyatt thought. This charade had gone on long enough. He pulled his arm away from Zane, extending it quickly to grip Leo by the collar. “You did that to yourself!” he shouted furiously, pushing Leo out of his chair and following quickly after, not releasing his hold. “You could have walked away at any fuckin’ time, but you didn’t! No one feels more sorry for you than you do for yourself, you stupid piece of shit.” The people nearest them reeled back from the sudden outburst, giving the pair a wide berth as they scrambled up from their seats. “I’m not lettin’ it go,” he ground out, directing it vaguely in Zane’s direction, though his gaze remained fixed on the fae in his grasp. “You let them go. Let them go! Or God as my witness I will rip out those fuckin’ intestines of yours and make you real fine noose out of ‘em.” 

—-

Shit. Zane should have gripped Wyatt’s arm tighter, should have dragged him out the second Leo lost interest. Instead, eyes were turning and angry hands were wrapped up in the fae’s collar. The chair almost toppled over as Zane stood, no longer caring to hide his discomfort with the situation. Why had he thought this was a good idea? Why had he let himself ignore the way Wyatt had impaled a stranger when he could have just as easily knocked him out? He’d wanted to believe that a part of the shifter was sensible but even more so, even more desperately, had wanted it to be possible to save Felix. 

“Stop,” Zane hissed, grabbing the crook of Wyatt’s elbow, not bothering with being gentle this time. “I know he’s a piece of shit but this isn’t going to help anyone.” He was definitely pleading at this point, even if the words were laced with anger. Wyatt had purposefully let him believe things weren’t going to end this way, that they wouldn’t do anything that might put Felix in danger. “Let’s leave or I’ll make you.” The threat sounded strange coming from his mouth but it was made to prevent harm, not cause it. Zane knew he could drag the shifter out if need be, as long as he stayed like this. Oh, how he hoped they weren’t about to be graced by the presence of Wyatt’s other form. 

—

A hand wrapped around his collar, a weight forced him to the ground. Despite working in a fighting ring, Leo wasn’t much of an action guy. He preferred to use his words rather than his fists, was good with them. Lockjaw attacking him hadn’t been something he’d accounted for. Maybe he should have known better. Some people were into the whole ‘pathetic wet cat’ thing Felix had going on. It was a little surprising that they’d managed to snag Lockjaw’s attention with it, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Leo swallowed, looking up at the angry shifter. “If you kill me,” he said lowly, “you kill any chance they ever have at getting out. That contract won’t end with me. But any chance of release will.”

His eyes darted back to Lockjaw’s friend, hovering nervously behind them both. “If you take him now, I’ll let you leave without any consequences for the two of you,” he promised, careful with his words. “You can walk out, but only if you go now. Otherwise…” He trailed off, tilting his head to the side. “The Grit Pit has plenty of ways of twisting your contract around, Wyatt. I’d hate to see them ruin all your fun. You enjoy the fighting, don’t you? We can make it so that you don’t. Twist it so you lose every time. It’s all right there in the fine print. You don’t need both your arms to be useful to us. Or the tail, or the eyes. I’d be very careful how you use your words.”

—

Wyatt was ready to turn on Zane if he had to, the strong grip on his arm igniting an instinct that was especially hard to control when he was this sleep deprived and this angry. Let’s leave or I’ll make you. He sucked in a sharp, ragged breath, wanting nothing more than to strangle the life out of the smug bastard in his other hand, but then that bastard was talking again, and the things he was saying put something of a damper on the lamia’s temper. Killing him wouldn’t break the contract? What kind of fuckin’ shit was that? He’d been ready to deal with the consequences for killing a handler, but not if it would amount to nothing. 

The threat wasn’t veiled by any definition of the term, and Wyatt felt his resolve breaking. The cogs in his head were turning, weighing the pros and cons of beating Leo to a pulp right here and now. Pros: he’d feel better. Cons: … everything else. A miserable future for him and Felix both. 

“They don’t know,” he finally said, releasing Leo’s shirt. “They don’t know we’re here.” Leo’s words were rattling around in his head and he couldn’t get past the phrasing the fae had used. Without any consequences for the two of you. “They didn’t ask me to—” Zane was dragging him back, probably anxious to just get them both the hell out of there. “They didn’t ask!” He was frantic for the stupid motherfucker to understand that, but there was a deep rooted fear in his heart that Leo wouldn’t care. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. 

Once they were outside, Wyatt kicked the first thing he saw that wasn’t bolted to the ground, sending the trash can (that had been bolted, but evidently not very well) clattering into the street. Another string of curses spilled from him and he paced on the spot for a few seconds before wheeling around and making for the door to go back inside. “I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him.”

—

Leo was… terrifying. He wasn’t just mean or conceited or a bit sadistic - he was cruel. The two of them should have talked to Felix beforehand, should have let them make the case that this really was a bad idea. Zane had half a mind to let Wyatt go, make this bastard pay but it would only sour an already awful situation. And then the shifter relented and Zane didn’t hesitate, forcing the man towards the door even if the desperation in his voice was horrifying. Felix hadn’t asked for this and now a couple of dumbasses had most likely screwed everything up for them. With one last withering glare in Leo’s direction, he finally managed to shove the ball of fury outside. 

Zane deflated while he watched the other man rampage, wincing slightly as the trash can clanged against the street. Anxiety was fully rolling through every cell with a nice accompaniment of guilt. What had they just done? Wyatt gave no warning before rushing at the door - he was angrier but Zane was faster. 

“Stop it!” Shoving the other back, standing his ground in front of the door, Zane glared down at the shifter. “We’ve made enough of a mess. Going back in now is only going to get you in more shit on top of whatever… whatever’s going to happen with Felix now. So back off, kick another trash can or something. You’re not going back in there.”

—

Wyatt let himself be stopped, not really wanting to hurt Zane, who hadn’t done anything wrong except listen to a shit-for-brains shifter who knew too little about the world to make any kind of good decisions. He stood there in front of him, jaw clenched as tight as it could be and trembling from the rage that coursed through him, threatening another unintended shift. His gaze wasn’t on the vampire though, it was laser focused through the door on the spot where he knew he had left Leo to pick himself up off the ground. 

“He can’t—Felix is never gonna get out of that place as long as he’s alive,” he argued. “Fuck, the contract might default to someone else, but they wouldn’t have an emotional investment, right? They might let Felix go if I—if I gave them somethin’ better—” He still didn’t really understand how it all worked, and he was grasping at straws. The only thing he knew for certain was that it was going to take every ounce of mental fortitude he had (which wasn’t very much these days) to keep from devouring the handler on sight. Frustrated and with no place else to channel it, Wyatt finally let his gaze lock with Zane’s. 

“... I’m goin’ to the Pit,” he announced, turning and walking away. The last time they’d met outside a bar, he’d complained that it was too far to walk. Now he didn’t care. Now maybe the walk would do him good, and by the time he got to the Pit, he wouldn’t still be ready to rip apart whatever poor creature they put in front of him. It was his night off, but he’d work for free this time. He needed to destroy something. 

[mortemoppetere]

TIMING: current LOCATION: underneath wicked's rest PARTIES: @loftylockjaw & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: emilio catches wyatt having a midday snack. before he can do anything about it, they become snacks together. CONTENT: suicidal ideation, brief mentions of child death

Wicked’s Rest kept Axis Investigations fairly busy. It was rare for Emilio to go a week without one new case or another landing on his desk, rarer still for those new cases to be the kind he thought normal P.I.s spent a lot of time dealing with. This particular case looked an awful lot like many he’d worked before. There was a woman, and her husband was missing. He’d vanished in the woods, and the police didn’t want to help her. They said he’d run off somewhere, claimed he’d just had enough of her, but she swore it wasn’t true. Given his experience, Emilio thought he might agree with her. There were a lot of things in the woods of Wicked’s Rest that might make a man disappear.

None of them were good.

So, he headed out. On his own, with Nora preoccupied, though he probably wouldn’t have involved her in this case, anyway. He’d rather let her work cases that might have happy endings, and he knew this one wouldn’t. He knew he was probably looking for a corpse instead of a man here, knew there probably wouldn’t be a joyous reunion. But it was better to know. He believed that, even now. It was better to know the truth, even when it hurt. 

The woods were damp, but at least the weather was warming up a little. Emilio still wore his jacket, pockets stuffed full of blades and stakes, but he tended to keep that on year round. He trudged through the underbrush, bad leg snatching away any capability of moving silently. When he heard the smacking of large jaws ahead, he paused. This, he thought, could be exactly what he was looking for. Readying his knife, he moved forward towards the sound.

—

The ranger had been tailing him, pardon the pun. For a couple days now, he'd kept seeing the same woman out and about. First at the Pit, where he won in a fight against a baukbear. Later that same night, out on the street. A coincidence, he thought, not worth confronting her over. She couldn't know he was Lockjaw, anyway. He kept his human identity pretty fuckin’ secret. But then he saw her the next day at the store. And the next, outside a bar. She was tailing him, waiting to get home alone. She knew.

So he let her get him alone. Let her follow him into the woods, let her stalk him like he didn't know she was there. Let her think she had the upper hand. 

The fight was brief. She'd seen Wyatt in the Pit, but that still didn't prepare her to face the lamia's brute strength herself. By herself. Stupid. He'd grabbed her in his jaws and whipped her against a tree, rumbling happily as her limp body fell to the wet forest floor. Time for a snack, he supposed. No use letting it go to waste. And hey! This was a fresh brain for Caleb! He'd love that, probably. Maybe. Maybe only if Wyatt didn't say how he got it. Hm. The head had been severed from the body in earnest, and now the massive alligator creature was tearing what remained of the corpse into smaller, bite-sized pieces, gobbling them down. 

Until someone else happened upon the scene, and he lifted his head from the carnage to squint his yellow eyes in the direction of the sound. The heat signature of a human was coming in his direction and he huffed, preparing himself for yet another altercation. 

—

Whatever was out here would likely hear him coming. The uneven terrain would have been easy enough to navigate in his older days, before the massacre and the injury to his leg, but now? The limb practically dragged behind him, barely serving to support his weight at all, much less do so in silence. But whatever it was was having a hell of a meal from the sound of things, and Emilio had to trust that that would distract it enough to keep it from acting before he could assess the situation. He was out here to solve a case. If this thing wasn’t related to that, and if it wasn’t bothering anyone, Emilio saw no reason not to leave it be for now.

Of course, that plan of action changed pretty swiftly when he saw the situation at hand. A giant reptilian creature eating what appeared to be the remains of a human corpse wasn’t the strangest thing Emilio had seen in this town, but it was the kind of problem he figured he ought to take care of. It was impossible to say, at this point, if the alligator creature had actually killed the woman it was currently making a meal of, but it was better to be sure a threat was eliminated, wasn’t it? And besides that, his client’s missing husband might very well be in the thing’s stomach. He’d need to cut it open to be sure.

He kind of wished he’d brought a bigger knife.

Silently daydreaming about the scythe in Teddy’s basement that he couldn’t carry around with him everywhere no matter how much he wished he could, he gripped the knife he had brought as he approached. “All right,” he said lowly. “We’ll do it quick. Make sure you can’t hurt anybody, make sure nobody finds you.” What Emilio would do to the thing would still be kinder than what someone else might, if they came across it first. A quick death was far less cruel than what most people were capable of.

—

Inner eyelids blinked first, followed by the outer ones as Wyatt sized the man up. Had a limp. Was ill equipped to deal with something as large and tough as he was, he thought as his gaze flicked down toward the knife in the stranger’s hand. Wouldn’t be much trouble, really. Still, there was something in his tone that set him apart from the ranger that had started this whole mess. He sounded almost like he didn’t want to do this, but felt obligated�� on account of the dead human, and all. That was understandable. 

Perhaps this could be solved without a fight. If not, though, another brain wouldn’t be a bad thing to get his claws on. 

Wyatt bobbed his head quickly to send the arm that’d been dangling from his jaws to the back of his throat, swallowing it — sleeve and all — and straightening up, rising to his full height and staring down at the man as he let out a low, threatening rumble. “Like fuckin’ hell we’re gonna do anything quick,” he responded, figuring the hunter probably didn’t expect him to speak. Most didn’t when they saw him like this. “She came for me. You wanna end up like her, you keep comin’, mon cher. Won’t take me but one good snap.”

—

The thing swallowed the arm it had been chewing on and, if Emilio had been a man with a weaker stomach, he might have felt a bit nauseous at the sight. As it stood, however, it was easy enough to stomach. He’d seen far more gruesome things than this, even if this did land pretty high on the list. (Nothing, he thought, could top walking into an abandoned factory to find his brother tied to a post with his leg a few feet away from his body.) Still, it wasn’t exactly a welcome sight, and Emilio spared a moment of sympathy towards the owner of that arm.

A moment was all the time he had, though. Because the creature stood on its hind legs, raising to a height that towered above Emilio’s perfectly reasonable five foot and eleven inches. That was strange enough. More unexpected still, however, was the way the creature spoke. Maybe he should have seen that coming; in a town like this one, stranger things had happened. Still, the slayer took an uncertain step back, bad leg threatening to crumble under the weight he put onto it without thinking. “¡Qué mierda!” He cursed, the creature’s words likely having the opposite of their intended effect as they made him tighten his grip on the knife in his hand. If this thing was something sentient and the owner of that arm it had swallowed had ‘come for it’ the way it claimed, did that make the dead woman a hunter? A bundle of complicated emotions burrowed into his chest. “Can’t imagine why she’d do that, with the threats and all. You want me to feel bad for you?” He was out of his element here. He didn’t even know what this was, much less how to kill it. But Emilio was full of nothing if not false bravado; most days, it was the most reliable weapon he carried. “Don’t think I’d go down easy. Better take a step back, pendejo.”

—

At the suggestion that the stranger maybe ought to feel sorry for the beast, Wyatt gave a noncommittal shrug. It would certainly help his case if the man did. Then came the bravado, and the lamia snorted out a bestial laugh. “Okay, Cujo, better untwist those panties before you say somethin’ you'll regret.” He glanced down at the mangled corpse of the human woman, deciding that he wasn't going to let this uppity citizen interrupt a fine meal. “I was mindin’ my own business when this girly came along. Been stalkin’ me for days. Let her live that long, but she kept pressin'. Pressed me right into a damn corner. I don't like corners, friend.” That said, the gator bit at her torso, jerking his head roughly to get it deeper down his gullet. With the motion came a lovely spray of blood, one that decorated the stranger’s front like the flick of a full paint roller. 

Wyatt paused, mouth full and preventing his laugh from coming out as anything other than a growl. He couldn't rightly speak so he just kept eating, sinking down into a squat. It wasn't like he was going to apologize, anyway. He wasn't the one being rude right now. 

—

This conflict in his chest was a new thing. There’d been a period, once, where a hunter being killed by a thing they’d been hunting was an easy situation, something Emilio knew what to do with without question. You finished the job the dead hunter started, and that was that. Sometimes it was vengeance, other times it was pest control. For Emilio, it tended to be both. But… that was before. These days, things felt more complicated. He remembered the hunter Andy killed, the way he helped her bury the body, the way he told her she’d done the right thing and meant it. He thought of Parker and how angry he’d been when the warden went after Teddy, the way he’d wanted nothing more than to make the man pay. He thought of freeing Ariadne from that van, of his various spats with Owen, of every time he’d butted heads with a hunter in this stupid, confusing town. Things weren’t as black and white as they used to be.

That didn’t mean he particularly enjoyed the spray of blood in his face, though.

Taking a step back, Emilio grit his teeth. The metallic taste was a familiar one, though it was usually his own blood that got into his mouth. He spit it onto the ground, scowling. Enough of this shit. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kill this guy, but he was sure that he didn’t want to keep having this conversation. “I’ve got shit to do, then. I hear about you killing anybody else, I won’t be so nice.” He took a step forward, moving to shove past the creature (and maybe offer a petty kick in the process), but…

His foot was caught on something. He yanked, and sharp pain went through his ankle as whatever it was dug in deeper. Turning back, he saw that he’d somehow managed to get his foot tangled in some thorns. So much for the dramatic exit. Now he’d have to cut himself free. Grumbling, he turned around, knife still in hand. As he got close to the thorns to cut them away, though… something happened. The vines shot out, wrapping themselves around his arm up to the shoulder and climbing up his leg, slicing all the way up. Out of the corner of his eye, Emilio could see the same vines moving towards the sharp-toothed, hunter-eating stranger, too.

—

At first, all the man got in response to the warning was an eye roll, teeth crunching down through bone and cartilage. As he went to storm off, though, he suddenly stopped. Wyatt snorted, figuring this was another intimidation tactic that was falling flat. “‘M shakin’ in my fuckin’ boots,” he said around the remains in his maw, gulping them down. The man ignored him, instead bending down to… oh. Oh. He was stuck. That was hilarious. 

And fortunate, actually. The threat came to the forefront of his mind and Wyatt abandoned what was left of the woman to turn his focus on the living one instead, deciding that he should kill this one as well. It was preventative! And it meant more brains for Caleb. 

Not that he was sentimental, or whatever. 

Before the gator could rush the guy, something else was rushing his way. He gave an alarmed growl, rising up onto two legs and trying to backpedal away from whatever was snaking through the ferns toward him with alarming speed. He glanced over to the stranger only to see him wrapped in thorny vines, and let out a fearsome roar. This was going to be annoying, wasn't it?

The vines caught up to him and coiled around his legs, pulling him easily to the ground. He thrashed and snapped at them, safe from the razor sharp thorns everywhere but the inside of his mouth, which he realized with an angry snarl. Even though the thorns couldn't pierce his hide, the vines they were a part of were doing a great job of dragging him over the ground, pulling him right into the stranger and the both of them toward… toward… what was that? That hole hadn't been there before, had it? He surely would have noticed such a thing. 

—

As he tried to saw through the vines, he caught sight of the reptilian creature moving towards him out of the corner of his eye and steeled himself for the possibility of having to fight the thing while tangled in thorny brambles. It wasn’t exactly an ideal scenario. Even without the disadvantage of the vines, Emilio could admit that he was a little outmatched here. But the vines, whatever they were, didn’t seem interested in disadvantaging Emilio alone. He watched them wrap themselves around the gator, too, tangling him up so completely that there was no hope of him thrashing his way free. 

It didn’t feel like much of a victory, though. Even with just one arm and one leg taken out of commission, Emilio couldn’t do much to prevent the vines from pulling him backwards. And, unlike the shifter, the slayer didn’t have a tough hide saving him from those thorns breaking skin. His pant leg and sleeve were wet with blood now, and struggling only seemed to make the brambles dig deeper. But as Emilio was yanked backwards towards a hole in the ground, he couldn’t stop himself from thrashing. There was no way that led anywhere good. “Oh fuck off,” he mumbled, yanking at his leg uselessly. 

It was all he really had time to say before the bottom dropped out from under him and he was falling. The ground beneath rose up to meet him, knocking the air from his lungs as he just barely managed to maneuver to land in a way that saved him from a concussion on top of everything else. He wheezed, trying to determine if any ribs were broken in the fall. If they were, it would be the least of his problems. A glance up towards the rapidly fleeting light above them told him that the hole they’d fallen through had closed behind them. If not for the slayer-enhanced night vision, he’d be flying blind right about now. He wondered how well the gator could see, wondered if it would work more in his favor for him to be blind or capable. He didn’t think the two of them were on their way to friends, but they might have to settle for allies down here.

Forcing himself to still his movements and prevent any further damage from the vines, Emilio let out a breath. He glanced over to the shape of the gator in the darkness, eyeing him carefully. “Are you dead? If you’re not, and you agree not to eat me, maybe I help get you out of this. But I’m not going to help you if you’re going to try to take a bite out of me. Or if you’re dead.”

—

He’d cracked his head against a rock on the way down, sending him into a brief lapse of consciousness. Would have been far worse if he hadn’t been shifted, of course, but he was stirring again within the minute, hearing the man talking to him. Offering him help. Pushing himself up from the earth with a groan, Wyatt shook off the dirt as best he could with the vines still clinging uselessly to his hide. “Looks to me like you need my help,” the gator rebutted, for no purpose other than being a snarky asshole. “Wasn’t hungry, anyway. Just wanted your head.” He looked around them, long jaws cutting through the dark as he blinked a few times to adjust. His eyes reflected red just like any other gator from the minimal moonlight forcing its way through the brambles overhead, giving him an eerie presence as he stood there in the shadows. 

Now that the panic had subsided (they were just in a tunnel in the ground, after all), Wyatt was able to calmly free himself from the brambles, watching them slump uselessly to the dirt. What even was the point here? To pull them underground? Why? It didn’t make sense. 

He crouched down onto all fours, regarding the thorns that held the stranger in place, and the long plants they sprouted from. “You should pull those out,” he noted unhelpfully, suddenly deciding to be charitable. With a huff, the lamia picked a spot on the vines that had less thorns and closed his teeth around it, grinding it down to a paste to help free the stranger. It was with the bad-tasting plants in his mouth that he noticed thin, tendril-like roots crawling their way very, very slowly. Spitting out the vine mush, the gator let out a warning growl. Okay, so maybe there was more to this than just being dumped in a hole. “Watch out for those,” he grumbled, moving away from them to chew on a different spot on the man’s opposite side, hissing angrily as a few thorns stuck him in his tongue and on the roof of his mouth.

—

For a second, he really did think the gator was dead. He wasn’t moving, and with the thorns all around him, it was difficult to tell if he was breathing. There was a strange mix of relief and dread in the thought — relief, because he was pretty sure the pendejo had been about to eat him, but dread because if the shifter was dead, Emilio was alone here. Alone, in a small tunnel beneath the ground, unable to move… It didn’t do particularly well for a man who struggled with a deep-seated fear of enclosed spaces, even if it wasn’t a fear he’d admit to. But then, the gator shifted, and the relief turned to dread while the dread turned to relief. The two seemed to swap places, and Emilio sighed. Even in his head, things were rarely simple. Maybe especially in his head. 

“I’m doing great, actually.” It wasn’t true. It was never really true, but Emilio liked to say it, anyway. He offered the gator a blank stare at the ‘reassurance,’ blinking slowly. “Yeah,” he said flatly, “well, I’m using it.” He wondered, with an idle horror, if the gator collected heads, if he had some room in his house with them lined up and decomposing. The thought wasn’t a particularly comforting one but, given the fact that the gator hadn’t seemed interested in eating the head of the hunter he’d killed topside and claimed to want Emilio’s despite a lack of appetite, it would make an unfortunate amount of sense. 

The shifter made quick work of the brambles holding him down, and Emilio felt a flush of envy as he began the slower process of freeing himself. His dominant right arm was still gripped in the thorns, so he shifted his left into his pocket to pull out a knife and begin working on it. The thorns seemed to protest their own removal, digging in deeper as he sawed through them with the blade. The way he tensed as the shifter approached didn’t help matters much; he felt the thorns sink in a little deeper with the motion, grimaced as they did so. “Wow, never would have thought of that. You’re real helpful,” he said dryly. Then, those massive jaws were right next to him, and Emilio was pretty sure his mouth had finally gotten him killed, when…

The shifter’s jaws sliced through some of the vines, and he could move his arm more freely. Some of the tension bled out of him (along with a healthy amount of actual blood from the thorns), and he offered his temporary ally a curt nod. “Get my leg loose,” he said, nodding down to it. “I’ll work on the arm.” He didn’t particularly want those jaws anywhere near his arm, even if they did seem to be on his side for the moment. His leg was shit, anyway. Short of chomping it off entirely, he didn’t think the shifter could make it much worse. Warily, he followed the gator’s eyes to the roots that seemed to be coming their way. He could imagine what they were after; he didn’t think it was anything he’d like. “Let’s do it quick, then. Probably going to have to walk around to find an exit. The one we came through closed up while you were napping.”

—

“Napping. Right,” Wyatt grumbled around the vines in his mouth. Once they were chewed down and the rest was left to the human, he straightened up and lifted his head to look at the ceiling of brambles over their heads. “Don’t be a dick, mon frère. I can still leave you here… or swallow you in one bite. Either works for me. And you don’t need your head for neither option.” He lowered his gaze again, not loving the idea of trying to climb through those vines, but knowing that he could if he had to. This guy, though… well. He’d probably bleed out before he made it topside. Which was seeming like it wouldn't be any great loss, but it probably wasn't worth the effort of getting through that insidious tangle of plantlife. 

“Since when is the forest a threat?” Wyatt wondered aloud, sounding put out by the whole thing. “This place… swear I ain't met more nefarious critters like I've met here.” He was speaking to himself mostly, dropping onto all fours again and lumbering down the tunnel slowly, tail swinging dangerously behind him, whipping the sides of the underground structure and, unbeknownst to Wyatt, making it quite easy for the roots of the Miner's Ruin that grew throughout these tunnels to follow them. The human could follow him or not, it didn't make much difference to him. He did however swing his head to the side to regard the man with one eye once he heard him trailing behind, giving an impatient huff. “What you like to be called, man? Also, and more importantly, you a hunter? I don't like hunters.” 

—

With most of the vines sliced away with the gator’s sharp teeth, it was easy for Emilio to cut through the rest with his blade. Getting to his feet was a little less easy, of course. He didn’t like the amount of blood soaking the ground where he’d been laying, scowled at the puddle like it might soak itself back into his veins if he only looked at it sharply enough. Of course, this did very little to actually help the lightheadedness that came with standing, so Emilio figured he was better off using that energy to focus on staying upright. “Ah, I’m always a dick,” he replied, glancing back to his reluctant companion. “And if you do that, you’ll be on your own down here. Might not want that.” There was no telling what they’d run into down here, and while the talking gator probably stood a better chance than Emilio against most things, Emilio did have the benefit of knowledge on his side. It was just about all he had to offer in this state, though he wouldn’t admit to that.

He snorted at the gator’s question, staggering to follow as he walked down the tunnel. He didn’t really want to walk with a guy who’d threatened to eat him more than once now, but there wasn’t any other place to go. And Emilio had no desire to stay in the small opening with the vines that seemed capable of attacking him. “Forest is always a threat. You’ve just been lucky until now.” He had to walk close to the wall to avoid being hit by the gator’s tail, though he didn’t voice this inconvenience. If he did, he had a feeling the guy would only make things worse for him. And, still bleeding sluggishly and concentrating harder than he’d like to admit on keeping his balance, Emilio wasn’t sure he could afford for things to be much worse. “Emilio,” he replied flatly. “And you don’t like me either way, so I don’t think that matters.” He could lie, say he wasn’t a hunter, but he didn’t see much point in it. He had all the telltale signs of being one, from the weapons lining his jacket to the way he carried himself. He figured if he told the truth now, the gator might decide not to eat him. If he lied and the truth came out later, he was as good as digested. 

—

All that Wyatt gave in response to the claim concerning his luck was an uninterested snort. No, he wasn’t lucky. He’d been the most fearsome thing in the swamp back home, and as far as he was concerned, he was the most fearsome thing around here, too. The vines had just been unexpected. And clearly not intelligent enough to know when they’d bagged a meal as inedible as Wyatt. Stupid plants. Nefarious critters were certainly abundant here, but the lamia feared none of them so far. Well… none but the birds. But that was neither here nor there. 

Hm. He wasn’t wrong, certainly. Wyatt had no positive feelings for this man, which was curious considering he’d decided to chew him free of the vines. He hoped he wouldn’t live to regret that decision: there was no doubt in his mind that he could dispatch this hunter if the need arose, but he didn’t feel like expending the energy. He’d just eaten, after all, and he was tired. More tired than he always was, these days, thanks to his shitty dreams and even shittier sleep. Something that he was reminded of as they wandered through the dark and he listened for sounds. There wasn’t much, save the occasional tumble of rocks and dirt, usually a result of him brushing against the side of the tunnel. The air was quiet and still with not a single draught to be felt. That didn’t bode well. 

The tunnel curved this way and that, but for now, it was a singular path. Wyatt was about to comment on how fortunate that was when they came upon a split and the gator halted his march, looking down one tunnel, then the other. He let out a frustrated growl, angling his head again to look at Emilio. 

“Do you feel anything?” he asked grumpily. “My hide isn’t exactly the most sensitive…”

—

The shifter didn’t seem particularly interested in talking and, in all honesty, there was relief to be found in that. Emilio was far too petty to allow the gator to have the last word in any given conversation, but he was spending an awful lot of his focus on staying upright now. He had no doubt that if he passed out due to blood loss, the shifter would leave him behind. Or eat him before he regained consciousness. In a place like this, with the vines that dragged them here still hanging off the walls, both options were death sentences. 

So Emilio focused on holding on to his consciousness, dragging his leg behind him like it was dead weight rather than a functioning limb. At the moment, it was very much true. The added sharp pain left by the thorny vines only seemed to make the constant ache the limb suffered feel all the more apparent. He wasn’t sure how much more walking he had in him, wasn’t sure he’d make it to the light at the end of the very literal tunnel. He grit his teeth with each step, determined to at least avoid making any sound to showcase his discomfort. 

He was so focused on walking that he didn’t notice the shifter ahead of him had stopped until he nearly rammed into the guy. Blinking the spots out of his vision as best he could, he looked at the path ahead of them. Or… the two paths. His slayer abilities granted him enough vision to see pretty far into the tunnels, though neither seemed more enticing than the other. “If there’s anything undead in them, it’s a way’s away,” he replied, not thinking about the fact that he’d just given up the fact that he was a slayer. The shifter had already deduced that he was a hunter; what did it matter what kind he was? “Can’t see anything that makes one look better than the other, either. At least…” He tilted his head, taking a closer look and humming. “One on the left has less vines. I like the sound of that.”

—

The air was stagnant and strangely hot, and while it came as a comfort to the cold-blooded creature, it also was making him very, very sleepy. “But there is something undead around here, is what you’re saying?” A slayer. Great. One more person to worry about. Owen had been a special case, he told himself. Strictly interested in vampires, and as far as he was aware, Wyatt didn’t know any vampires. “Whatever. Less vines sounds good. Let’s go.” His head was hanging low as he plodded along, and he was so out of it that he barely noticed Emilio struggling to match pace. But eventually he did, despite the man’s best attempts to hide it, and grumbled. “What, you low on blood or something?” He knew the answer, he was just being a shit about it. “I’m not giving you a ride if you collapse. I don’t have to be fast, just faster than you.” 

As if something had heard them discussing their current shortcomings, a low, muffled sound came from deeper down the tunnel. It sounded like something being dragged over the dirt and rock, or something… slithering? Hard to say. Whatever it was, it had Wyatt stopping again as he peered into the darkness. “What was that,” he stage whispered, as if Emilio would know any better than he. Well… maybe he would, he was like a Van Helsing type or whatever.

—

Emilio shrugged, grimacing as the motion pulled at the number of small cuts and slices left behind by the vines. If he sat still long enough, he’d probably heal up pretty quick. Slayers were good at that kind of thing. But in this particular situation, it was something of a double-edged sword. If he sat still, the shifter would leave him behind to fend for himself against the vines and whatever else was down here. Emilio had little choice but to keep moving, to trail along behind the shifter as he trudged on into the tunnel Emilio had indicated. “I’m fine,” he snapped, gritting his teeth against the sting of both the wounds and the harsh reminder that he wasn’t exactly among friends here. “I know you’re not doing me any favors. You’ve been pretty clear about that.” It wasn’t hard to be faster than Emilio, even without his current state being factored in, but he didn’t comment on that, either.

He tilted his head a little, straining to hear the sound coming from deep within the tunnel. It was hard to pinpoint which direction it was even coming from, much less what the source of it might have been. Emilio looked out into the darkness, staring as far as he could see, but there was a bend just ahead that made it impossible to see too far ahead. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He glanced back behind them… only to find that the way they’d come from was now overgrown with the same vines that had dragged them here. He hadn’t realized how fast they moved before. “Shit,” he muttered. “We have to keep going. Whatever it is, we’ll just have to… Deal with it, I guess.”

Shoving past the gator, he shuffled forward, looking more like a zombie than a man who killed them. He stumbled a little, approaching the bend and turning the corner. There were… roots. Roots that were strewn over a body that looked unfortunately similar to the photo Emilio’s client had given him. “Goddamn it,” the detective cursed. “Fuck.”

—

The hunter was cursing, and Wyatt rose up into a hunkered stand to see over his head. “What? It’s a dead guy.” Covered in roots. So those roots were bad news. “Kinda looks like they turned him to jerky. Weird.” The roots took notice of their presence, receding from the body to crawl their way instead. Wyatt hissed, taking a step back. The vines were still behind them, advancing. They were trapped. The only option was to try and jump over the roots, which was definitely not something the human here was going to be able to do, given the distance and his leg. Wyatt groaned, realizing that he didn’t really have the heart to leave the poor bastard behind, helpless as he was. 

“Fuck me,” he grumbled, lowering himself onto all fours again and shoving his snout against the backs of Emilio’s thighs to knock him off his feet. He was draped momentarily on the lamia’s head, who growled out a reluctant “Hold on,” before taking as many more steps backward as he could, preparing to bolt forward and leap over the dangerous terrain. The grinding sound grew louder now, but Wyatt paid it no mind as he sprinted toward the danger, bounding through the air and hoping that Emilio had managed to secure his grip well enough to not fall off. 

Something in the distance made an angry noise as Wyatt landed safely on the other side of the tangle of roots. He lowered his head to the dirt so Emilio could dismount, gaze fixed down the dark tunnel. Something was moving. A heat signature was getting warmer as it got closer, and he felt the crawling tingle of the anticipation of a fight crawling up his spine. “We got company.”

—

“Yeah,” Emilio ground out, immeasurably angry without quite understanding why. “It’s a dead guy. Just… His wife was looking for him.” There was a hint of bitter defeat to his tone, the words feeling clunky against his tongue. Probably the blood loss, he figured. Plenty of his cases went bad; it never tended to bother him much. But lately… Every misstep felt apocalyptic, like he was failing in a thousand different ways. Another failure, another stone landing atop the mountain on his shoulders… it felt monumental, and it shouldn’t have. It was stupid. It was just the blood loss, he decided. That was the only thing that was wrong. 

He took a deep breath, tried to steady himself. He needed to get the body. He needed to at least bring that back, needed to give the guy’s wife something she could bury. Ignoring the shifter’s grumbling, Emilio prepared to begin the process of untangling the corpse from the roots with his blade only to be interrupted by the shifter knocking him off his feet. “What the fuck are you —” Instinct tightened his grip against the gator’s scales, keeping him on the shifter’s back as he leaped over the roots. Emilio hadn’t even registered the danger, really; that must have been the blood loss, too. This was why he preferred broken bones. They were so much less annoying.

The movement jostled him, and Emilio grunted as they landed. Something was moving, was coming towards them, but his eyes were still on the corpse. “We have to get him,” he said firmly, taking a step towards the body. “We’ve gotta bring him, too. He’s — His wife is looking for him. She’s — She needs a body to bury. She at least needs that.” There was a desperate edge to his tone, and he kept repeating reassurances in his mind. It was the blood loss. It was just the blood loss. That was all it was. He was still him, he wasn’t broken, there was just too much blood on the ground. “We get him, and we run. We’ll find another way out, but we gotta bring him with us.”

—

Wyatt would have frowned if his anatomy had allowed it, but there was enough disdain in his tone to convey the emotion regardless. “I am not draggin’ a fuckin’ stanky ass corpse outta here,” he argued. Because it would be him, they both knew that. Emilio was in no shape to be hauling a body around—he could barely haul himself around. The desperation in his tone didn't sit right with Wyatt, who felt like he needed to justify himself further. So much so that he was willing to give up information he'd rather not share with a hunter, but… “Listen. I just ate. I ain't full yet but I'm damn near close. What I need is a nap in the sun, mon frére. Not to be carrying two useless humans outta a hole in the ground while some fuckin’ devil is chasin’ us.” He was certainly more sluggish than he would've been otherwise, and his body was complaining about all the movement. He needed to be still to digest without making himself sick, but this whole fucking situation was not lending itself to that. “Leave it. His wife can bury his favorite sweaty ballcap or somethin’.” The thing down the tunnel in front of them was getting closer, and Wyatt felt his spine tingle with nervousness. He wasn't fit to fight right now. “Come on, man! Leave it!” 

—

“I’ll carry him,” Emilio insisted, though they both knew it was a lie. Emilio would be lucky if he managed to get himself out of this situation without the shifter carrying him — and he still wasn’t sure the stranger would even submit to that much. Odds were, Emilio was going to die down here, anyway. The shifter would pat himself on the back about there being one less hunter in the world, and Emilio’s client would never know what happened to her husband. (Would Teddy know what had happened to Emilio? They’d probably be able to guess, but he doubted they’d ever accept it without a body. Probably not even with one.) 

He let out a sound of frustration, though it sounded a little more like a whine. His wedding band felt heavy on his finger, like a cinderblock tied to his ankle determined to carry him to the bottom of a river to rot. “It’s not just — You bury them, and there’s closure. It lets it feel finished. It’s not — She’ll never be finished if we leave him here. She deserves to be finished.” Did he? It hadn’t exactly been his choice not to stick around and bury bodies when the massacre had still been raging as a backdrop to his escape, but he’d never gone back after the fact and maybe he could have. Maybe he could have seen the graves Rhett dug for Juliana and Flora. Maybe he could have dug some for Rosa and Edgar, too. For Jaime. Victor had no grave. Rhett, wherever he’d wound up, probably wouldn’t get one, either. Maybe Emilio should let the shifter leave him here to carry on the family tradition, to fall and die and decay and never let the world see a stone with his name carved into it and his body beneath it. His client would never be finished. Neither would Emilio. 

He deflated like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Whatever was coming was drawing ever nearer. The corpse was covered in roots, and he couldn’t get back to it without the shifter’s help. What was he, then, if not a collection of failures bunched together in the form of a man? Unable to save his family, unable to protect Nora or Wynne, unable to convince his brother to relinquish a decades-old grudge for the sake of a daughter who loved him. He couldn’t even manage to get a corpse out of a hole. What was the fucking point of him, he wondered? What was he good for? 

“His wife was looking for him,” he said again, defeated. “She was looking. She asked me to look.”

His eyes burned. His face felt wet. He blamed it on the blood loss.

—

Jesus christ, this dude looked miserable. Wyatt groaned and rolled his slitted eyes, squinting them shut as he cursed softly beneath his breath. “Fine! Fine. Fuck. But you are gonna owe me after this,” the lamia grumbled, turning around again in the narrow tunnel to face the relatively fresh(ish) corpse trapped in the roots. Had he died of starvation, or…? Wyatt began to guess the cause as he pushed his clawed hands into the mess of vegetation, craning his neck and stretching out as far as could, and the roots quickly slithered over his scales and made him feel… sleepy… fuck. Fuck. Wyatt gave a grunt and opened his maw, grabbing the body by its shirt with his front teeth and pulling backward. His muscles grew tired with alarming speed as the roots tried to gain purchase on him, finding it hard thanks to his natural armor. He backed up as quickly as he could, dragging the body free from the roots and down the tunnel far enough to give them a moment’s peace. There he collapsed, exhausted. “Do not touch that stuff,” he warned Emilio. “Just… need a sec. Ugh.” There wasn’t going to be a good way to get the body out of here unless it went in his mouth (ew), or if Emilio held it in place on his back… not feeling thrilled about the idea of carrying a corpse on his tongue, the lamia gave Emilio an annoyed look. 

“You’re gonna have to ride up top with that thi— guy,” he explained, glancing over his own shoulder at his back. “Keep… him secure while I figure out how to get outta here. Can you manage that?”

—

He wasn’t expecting the shifter to relent. If anything, Emilio figured the gator would leave him in the tunnels with the corpse to die. And that was the kinder outcome Emilio had predicted. He still wasn’t entirely sure the guy wasn’t planning on eating him, after all. But… instead of doing any of that, the gator went back to the body. He pulled at the roots, he yanked it free. The gratefulness Emilio felt was an overwhelming thing, enough to nearly knock him over. (Which… wasn’t saying much right now, was it? He was pretty sure a burst of strong wind could have handled that particular job.) 

He hovered a little as the shifter freed the corpse and pulled it away from the roots, following on unsteady feet. When the shifter collapsed, Emilio eyed him warily, wondering the cause. He glanced back to the roots, some part of him immediately filled with a destructive desire to reach out and brush against them the moment he was told not to, but he resisted the urge. “Any idea what it is?” Maybe Emilio would have known if not for the clouds in his mind and the way it was taking most of his concentration to remain upright, or maybe he wouldn’t have. It was difficult to say for sure.

The shifter was speaking, and Emilio forced himself to follow along. Sit up top? Up top on what? There was nothing… Oh. Right. His eyes flickered to the shifter’s back, jaw set. He wanted to argue a little, but… even if he wouldn’t have to drag the corpse along with him, he would have had trouble walking out of here. This solution was probably the only one that saw even a chance at Emilio making it topside, and he knew it. “I can do that,” he replied, leaning down to grab the corpse and nearly toppling over in the process. He steadied himself, taking a deep breath. Carefully, he grabbed the body under the arms and hoisted him up, dragging him over the gator’s back. The motion served to reopen wounds that his healing factor had already closed, but it also allowed him a moment of independence, and that made it well worth it. He paused for a moment, swaying on his feet and heaving a sigh. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “For… It’ll be good. It’ll be good for his wife to have something to bury. It’s hard to… move on without that.” 

(He tried not to think of Rhett, but it was an impossible task.)

—

“If I did, I wouldn’t have rightly touched it,” Wyatt argued with a huff, forcing a small dust and dirt cloud into the air from where his head sat useless on the ground. He watched carefully as Emilio parsed out what it was he was saying, struggling with the body but eventually getting it slung over the shifter’s back. “Don’t thank me yet, mon frère… we still gotta get outta here.” He couldn’t disagree more with what the hunter was saying about the body, but figured it didn’t much matter at this point. Arguing wasn’t going to help their situation.

Waiting until Emilio was straddling his spine, Wyatt heaved another breath and pushed himself up onto all fours, keeping his head and shoulders a little lower than was comfortable to keep the two humans from sliding off of his back and down his tail. The slithering sound was growing louder, and Wyatt’s heartbeat grew faster. Even with the adrenaline spike, all he wanted to do was sleep. Fighting something, especially something as big as whatever this was, sounded fucking exhausting. 

Yellow eyes peered into the blackness that yawned wide before them as the tunnel opened up into a cavern. The air was damp, the drips of moisture filling what would have otherwise been an eerie silence. Eerie, because they were not alone. Down the craggy stone slope dotted with a curious red moss, curled defensively in the center of the cave floor, was a massive beast. The heat signature was cool, nearly blending in with the surroundings. A snake. A huge fucking snake, with fur that ran along its spine like a mohawk. Wyatt’s interest piqued, wondering if this was another lamia. But god it was massive… way bigger than any he’d ever seen before. 

Wait. He’d heard about something like this before, hadn’t he? He was recalling the stories his father would tell of lamia that had spontaneously mutated after their fiftieth birthday—it was a fate that hung over him like a cloud in his youth, a scary bedtime story that inspired him to do better, to be better… even though his moral standing would have no actual bearing on whether or not he’d end up like this poor creature. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, knowing the bolla was awake, and that that was bad. “Fuck, the poor thing—we need to go. It’s awake. It shouldn’t be awake.” The odds were astronomically against that this happened to be a period of activity for the beast that would easily hibernate for a dozen years at a time. Wyatt moved carefully along the ledge, brushing against the red moss as he went, feeling the rust colored water drip down onto his snout from the stalactites overhead. “Hey, cover yourself. Don’t touch the plants or the water,” he warned Emilio. It didn’t bother him, thankfully — in fact, it was making him feel much better than he had in a while, even before the roots had sapped away his energy. 

The bolla shifted, body writhing and coiling in its defensive pile, eyes locked on the gator and his passengers. Gargantuan jaws parted and the creature let out a hiss, long and loud. Wyatt froze, his whole body tensed and ready to fling itself from the ledge to get away from the bolla. There was a soft breeze and pinprick of light coming from the other side of the cavern… their way out. But the bolla had something else in mind, and started to raise itself up to strike. 

“Dump the body!” Wyatt bellowed, scrabbling backward and out of the way as the bolla snapped at them, snout crashing into the wall of the cavern. It began to unfurl, and he knew what came next—they’d get wrapped up in those strong coils of muscle and be crushed to death. “Give it somethin’ to attack besides us!”

—

“Right,” Emilio mumbled, too tired to argue. People touched shit all the time when they knew it was dangerous, after all… but insinuating that he thought the shifter was probably an idiot when said shifter was also his only real hope of making it out of this mess mostly alive wasn’t really something that seemed like the best course of action right now. Bloodied and aching as he was, Emilio didn’t have it in him to be his usual levels of difficult. It took most of his energy just to get the corpse onto the shifters back, drained what remained of the reserves to climb up next to it. He held the body against the gator’s spine, tapping his shoulder lightly as if to give him a go-ahead to move.

Even though it was expected, the jolt of his ride moving forward still sent a nauseating wave of pain over the fresh wounds dealt out by the brambles. Emilio closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of the lessons his mother had drilled into him as a kid. Pain is a signal. Signals can be ignored. If you pushed deep enough, you could convince yourself something didn’t hurt. Emilio got good at it, after a while. It was hard to do after one blow, but easier after four. Dull pain was simpler to push down, sharp pain was more complex. Something like this took a lot of trying, but you could do it if you tried. Blend it all together, stuff it down deep. You couldn’t keep it up forever, but you could do it long enough to pull yourself out of a hole.

He lost himself in it, in the ignoring of the signal. It took a lot of concentration, and what little he wasn’t using on that was being spent holding on to the shifter’s back and keeping the body in place. When the shifter spoke, voice rumbling across his scales, Emilio allowed himself to believe, momentarily, that it might be good news. A way out, an exit. He really should have known better. Emilio Cortez had never been blessed with that kind of luck, after all.

He opened his eyes, letting out a sigh at the sight of some reptilian creature ahead of them. He sounded more resigned than anything else, like he’d always known this would happen. Already, his mind was writing the end of this story. The shifter would dump him here and leave him behind, and his body would never be found. Nora and Wynne and Teddy would look for him until the day they died, unwilling to accept an uncertain end. He found himself hoping the shifter would take his client’s husband to the surface in spite of everything, give her some kind of closure. It felt unlikely. 

More words trembled across scales. It took Emilio a moment to grasp them, to pull them in and translate them into something understandable. There was desperation in the tone. It was a little surprising. Didn’t the shifter know he could dump the dead weight?

Except… That was exactly what he was telling Emilio to do. It just wasn’t in the way the slayer had expected it to be.

Something gripped his throat tightly, his heart thrumming against his chest. “No,” he choked out, but he knew they were out of options. They could get everyone still living out of this mess, or… 

(Was Emilio’s life worth more than a corpse? Would it be worth it, to deny his client closure but to tell her to her face rather than hope a stranger would deliver a battered corpse to repay a man to whom he owed nothing? There was only one answer here with any certainty. Emilio just didn’t like it.)

“I — I don’t —” He wanted to give her something, wanted to allow her a grave to visit that wasn’t empty or an urn full of ashes that used to be something. But even if the shifter dumped him here, it would be difficult to get the body to the surface without Emilio holding it in place. He knew the best solution. He’d known it since the moment his mind caught up to the situation.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he nodded. He looked down at the corpse, slipped the ring off its finger and tucked it into his pocket. He patted it down and found a wallet, took that, too. A chain around its neck attached to dog tags that lined up with his client’s detail that her husband was a military man. Emilio pulled those off as well. “I’m sorry,” he murmured to the body. “I’m sorry. I wanted to do more, I —” Wasn’t that the story of his life? A thousand mistakes coated in his good intentions. He closed his eyes, shoving the body off with all his might and leaning down to grip the shifter’s scales. “Go.” 

—

Wyatt didn’t need to be told twice. He launched himself forward the moment Emilio gave him the all clear, hearing the bolla turn its attention on the corpse they’d dumped as it hissed again and started to circle around the body, gathering it up for a good squeeze. Well, at least the guy was already dead. Crushed wasn’t a great way to go. 

Scrabbling over rocks and dirt, the lamia made it to the opposite side of the cavern as quickly as he could, toward the light. Slipping into the tunnel and realizing it was far too narrow for the like of this form, he groaned. He was still half-full from his meal, and carrying Emilio out of here was going to be a lot harder when they were roughly the same fuckin’ size. “Pleeaaase widen,” he begged the tunnel, scraping along on his belly and nosing large, loose rocks out of the way. The light was getting closer but the tunnel was getting smaller, like it was one the bolla had made some time ago that was caving in on itself. Wyatt stopped, huffing and puffing and wanting absolutely nothing more than to take a nap. Nightmares be damned. “We’re almost there. Almost…” He was speaking mostly to himself, trying to psych himself up for the partial shift and the discomfort that was going to come with that. “Okay.” Fuck. 

The lamia started to shrink beneath Emilio, taking on a more human appearance, though he remained covered in scales. He got to his feet, gathering the hunter up in his arms and ignoring any protest that he could do it on his own, because that would just take longer and Wyatt did not want to start retching up bits of human right now. His shortened muzzle parted as he let out an unfortunate gag, hurrying along through the horribly narrow passage. The light brightened, the breeze kicked up, and the tunnel finally grew wide again as it sloped gently toward the surface. Wyatt set Emilio down and gagged again, shifting back to his natural form and shaking away the feeling of sick that was crawling up his spine. He wanted out of here, like yesterday, and so he didn’t even ask this time as he scooped the man up into his jaws (gently) and loped the last few hundred yards out of the hole in the ground and to the forest that waited for them. 

—

The shifter jolted forward so quickly that Emilio nearly tumbled off his back, gripping him tighter as he rode out the wave of pain that washed over his body. He’d heal as soon as he let himself sit still enough to do it, but the multitude of small cuts those brambles had left him with had opened and reopened about a thousand times since the start of this ordeal, and it was starting to get to him just a little. He buried his face in the shifter’s scales, biting his tongue to keep from letting out any noise. 

Behind him, he heard the creature — whatever it was — moving towards the corpse they’d dropped. His hearing had been a little worse since that banshee screamed at him in the graveyard but, somehow, he swore he could hear every second of the thing wrapping itself around the body, could hear each individual snap of the dead bones long after they should have been out of earshot. Was it better this way? Kinder, somehow? Emilio thought of his client, waiting for answers. He thought of his wife, and the way he couldn’t imagine her now without seeing her pale and bloodless on the living room floor. He thought of Rhett, and the answers he’d probably never get. He didn’t think there was any kind way to lose someone.

It took him longer than it should have to realize that the shape beneath him was shifting, and his brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of the situation. There was a tunnel. It was small. Okay. They’d have to walk through that, then. That was okay. Emilio was pretty sure his brain still worked well enough to send the signals through to his legs, even if one of those legs was fucking —

The shifted picked him up. It hadn’t felt quite so humiliating when he was a giant alligator, but now that he was mostly human, Emilio took offense. “Hey, I can walk just fine, estúp-” The passage narrowed, and Emilio’s mouth snapped shut. The walls were closing in, everything was getting smaller, and the air was a little too thin. They were going to die here, anyway, weren’t they? They got away from the creature in the tunnels just to suffocate. His throat felt tight. He wondered if he’d bleed to death before they ran out of air, wondered if there was any hope he’d go quickly instead of slowly.

Light broke through as they exited the tunnel, but Emilio remained checked out even as the shifter set him down and jostled the various injuries he’d collected. He was still imagining a slow suffocation, offering no protest as the shifter scooped him up into his mouth. They were out of the tunnel. They were in the forest. Emilio still thought he might suffocate. 

“Gonna eat me now?” He mumbled, trying to ground himself in the moment. Not a tunnel. Not a shed. Not a factory. 

—

Wyatt sank to the forest floor, resting his jaw in the ferns and rocking his head to the side to gently dump Emilio out of his mouth. “God, no. I feel like blowin’ chunks,” he retorted, squeezing his eyes shut and dragging his clawed hands over the top of his maw. Ugh. Ugh, he always felt like shit when he shifted too soon after eating. “Do what you will, but I ain't movin’ from this spot for a while.” He could have asked if Emilio was okay, but he felt he already knew the answer to that—the guy seemed miles away. Besides, he didn't care, right? This was just another hunter. 

All that being the case… a hunter still had body heat to be absorbed. Body heat that would help Wyatt feel better sooner. With a huff, the shifter swung his head to the side and butted it up against Emilio while the rest of him curled inward without explanation, creating a semi-circle around him. The man could get up and leave if he was offended, but the state he was in had Wyatt figuring he wasn't quite ready, either. “Not a word,” he growled. He wasn't about to listen to a bunch of bitching over the situation. 

—

Was he relieved to hear that he wouldn’t be eaten? Some distant part of him thought he probably ought to be. It wouldn’t have been great to escape this whole ordeal just to be swallowed at the end of it, but Emilio was finding it hard to grasp onto much of anything right now. He buried fingers in the grass and dirt he was laying in, tried to ground himself in the most literal sense of the word, but it seemed so far away. All he could manage was a quiet hum as the shifter claimed he wasn’t moving for a while. That meant Emilio should be the one to move, didn’t it? He should get up, should drag himself back to Teddy’s, should see if there was enough duct tape to take care of the worst of his injuries here. Most of it was superficial — there was just a lot of superficial to worry about. Death by a thousand cuts was about as much fun as it sounded, apparently. 

He was lost in some version of thought, laying on his back with his fingers in the dirt and staring up at the sky when the shifter moved again. Emilio tensed a little, but… the jaw didn’t unhinge. The teeth didn’t find his skin. Instead, the shifter pressed against him for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. Emilio lay stiller than he was normally capable for a moment before his usual small movements returned — the twitching fingers, the shaking legs. He hummed again, trying to think of something witty to say. “Your breath,” he said slowly, as if he was testing each individual word on his tongue, “smells terrible.”

—

“Yeah, well, you ain't winnin’ any flower-smellin’ contests, neither,” Wyatt grumbled. “Just shut up n’ be still. You're warm.” That was all the explanation he was willing to give, snorting with irritation and settling in. For now, his exhaustion outweighed the desire to stay awake, and he felt the quiet hush of sleep start to envelop him after only a few seconds of silence, and decided not to fight it. Except there was one more thing… “Hey, great mouse detective… I'm gonna be hittin’ you up for a cut of the pay for findin’ that body. That damn thing almost cost me my life. Twice.”

—

“I smell great,” Emilio argued, still feeling far away from himself. Had he made it out of those tunnels? Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was there now, being crushed alongside that corpse. The thought was almost funny, but he couldn’t muster up a laugh. The shifter settled against him, and Emilio forced himself to be as still as he was able. As soon as his wounds healed enough for him to move without bleeding, he thought, he’d be fine. Until then, he could handle being a space heater for an alligator. He snorted at the shifter’s demand, rolling his eyes. Somehow, even that hurt. “I’ll give you twenty bucks,” he retorted. “Twenty-five if you agree not to eat me later.”

—

“Twenty-five it is,” Wyatt agreed. “Now be quiet. I’m nappin’.” And if he had a nightmare? Eh… that was a bridge he’d cross when he came to it, even if it meant mutilating this sad sack of a man. (He hoped he wouldn’t. But he wasn’t gonna admit that.) The sun was warm overhead, filtered through the little spring leaves of the trees and bathing them in a smattering of gold splotches of light. The forest was quiet save for the chirping of birds and the steady, slow hiss of Wyatt’s breath as he left himself be overcome by his tiredness. 

It was no wood stove in his cozy little cabin, but it would do. 

[recoveringdreamer]

@loftylockjaw from here:

[pm] I might not have meant for it, but I still made it happen. Still my fault. [.....] Appreciate you trying to give me an out, though. [ user feels more hopeful hearing this than he's felt in a long time ]Okay. Yeah, I [....] think we can. There's gotta be ways, right? We can make it matter. [ user is just immensely relieved that Felix is talking to him again ] We'll find ways.

​[pm] You didn't make it happen, Wyatt. You wouldn't have even been fighting him if they hadn't made you do it. Don't let them off the hook. He wouldn't want us to let them off the hook.

Yeah. Yeah, there's ways. You can get away with little things, sometimes. I used to do it a lot more. There's limits, you know, but you can get right up to them. And [...] we can find bigger things, too. Right? We'll find ways. We'll make them pay for it. He deserves that. You deserve that. I think we all do. All the people they're hurting. We make them pay for it, okay?

[welcometoparis]

Timing: Current Location: A lake Parties: Paris & Wyatt (@loftylockjaw) Summary: Paris is basking on a nice rock in the middle of a lake. Turns out it's Wyatt's rock. The Lamias vibe.

“This can be our rock.”

The lake in the middle of the woods was as good a place as any to finally allow himself to relax, to be his true self without the fear of being caught. He hadn’t seen anyone out here, no houses or signs of human life. It was perfect. It was a nice, sunny day out, so Paris had taken himself out in his monitor form to bask on the large rock in the middle of the lake, where the sun beat down on his scales. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was at peace. In moments like this, he thought of his sister Sydney, of all the times she’d taken him out to her favorite basking rock in the mangrove he grew up in. 

With his eyes closed, he could almost pretend he was there, back in his home country, back in his mangrove. But he wasn’t. He was in Maine, in the United States of all places. He didn’t belong here, he didn’t belong amongst humans and their strange customs. He wanted his mangrove that the sun hit just right, kept him well heated and – footsteps. The vibrations were felt from his rock, and the lamia cracked an eye open to see… another lamia. Paris shot up to a sitting position, watching the other with wide eyes.

There wasn’t just one other lamia in this town, but two at least. “I am not taking your basking spot, am I?” He called out, scooching over to give room to the other lamia who was approaching him. “I am Paris.” He introduced, tail swishing about as the other sized him up. “I am new here, so I did not know that this was your basking rock. Hopefully, we can share instead.”

—

The tiny island in the middle of the lake was perfect for uninterrupted sunning. It was small enough that humans hadn’t settled on it, and lacked any features that the lakeside didn’t already have that would have drawn them out here for an afternoon, the isolation aside. And in the middle of the island was a massive boulder, one that created a sizable gap in the trees to allow for shadeless basking, especially midday. It was Wyatt’s favorite place to fuck off to when he wanted to be alone, which was why he was extra surprised to see someone already on top of it. He stopped dead in his tracks, breath catching in his throat. 

The other… some kind of lizard, if he had to guess, was quickly speaking. Introducing himself. Offering to… share. Wyatt remained still for a moment, then resumed his approach to the rock, a little shocked by the other’s politeness. 

New in town. Yeah, that was obvious. 

They gator hauled all eighteen feet of himself up onto the boulder, though his long tail dangled off the edge. He gave the other lamia a once-over, unsure how to proceed. He might’ve been more excited a couple of months ago, but right now, he was aching and just in need of a nice laze about in the sun. Still, he supposed there wasn’t a need to be dickish. “Paris, huh? I’m Wyatt. Live just over yonder…” He gestured vaguely in the direction from which he’d come. He could hear his mother scolding him in his head for the lackluster welcome, and he blinked and shook his head. “But… yeah. We can share.” Lowering himself onto the warm rock, Wyatt let out a low sigh. “... where’d you come from?”

—

Paris watched lazily as the other lamia climbed up onto the boulder that he’d been sunning on, having half a mind to fall back asleep, which is what he’d been doing before he’d heard the other’s approach. “Ah, I see.” He murmured as he peered in the direction that Wyatt pointed in. “I will find a new rock,” he spoke in their accented voice. 

When Wyatt asked where he came from, Paris felt something in him hesitate. Wyatt was another lamia. He was like Anita. “I don’t know anymore,” he finally said, being honest about his situation for the first time in a while. “Originally, China. But then? Japan, France, England, several parts of America…” The lamia closed his eyes and let out a deep, frustrated sigh that he’d been holding in since he first found himself in this entire mess. Years of pent-up frustration rolled off of him in waves.

“But that’s not something you want to hear about, you seem to be in your own slump,” Paris noted, eyeing the other. It was in his shoulders, the way he slumped forward a bit. It was in his tone, the way he didn’t seem to be able to be all that polite or excited. “If you want to talk about it, I can listen.” Paris decided, not wanting to make everything about him. After all, Wyatt seemed to have come out here for a reason.

—

“Quite the globetrotter,” Wyatt remarked, of course not understanding the truth of the situation. Still, it seemed to him that Paris wasn't exactly happy about those travels. That was a nugget of info that he stored for later, peeking at the other with one eye when he made a comment on Wyatt’s own… everything.

The gator sucked in a deep, rattling breath, wondering how honest he ought to be. It didn't really matter what this lamia thought in the grand scheme of things, though Wyatt found himself hoping that their kinship might soften the other’s opinion of him. It wasn't good to alienate yourself from those that stood to understand you best, and he'd already done plenty of that by running away from his family. 

“I work at a…” How did you even describe the Pit? “... place that hosts supernatural fights. As a fighter.” That might’ve been obvious by the old wounds that marred his hide. “Got matched against a friend of mine recently.” There was a long pause, the gator’s gaze wandering. “... he didn't make it.” It was far from the only thing plaguing him at present, but it was certainly the most prominent source of guilt and disquiet. “Guess I'm a little… fucked up about it.”

—

“Not by my own choice,” Paris answered in earnest, huffing as he laid his head back down onto the rock, closing his eyes. “I was something of a scientific spectacle.” It was hard to talk about, even harder to put into words the horrors he’d seen. “Our kind speaks of hunters killing us being the worst they could do. It turns out there is worse, I’ve seen it.” 

Cracking open an eye as Wyatt began to explain what had happened to him, Paris thought to his own violent tendencies, things he wasn’t sure he knew what to do with. “You have every right to feel that way.” He found himself saying after a moment of silence as he forced himself to sit up again. “But if you were in this place to fight, can you really be surprised that something of this magnitude could happen?” Paris found himself asking, looking over to the lamia who was much bulkier than he was. 

The monitor stared out at the water for a long moment, then frowned. “I escaped my situation by tearing people apart,” Paris explained. “One moment I was in control of myself, then next? I was standing in a room full of corpses. I did that.” He pointed a clawed finger to his chest, frowning. “Sometimes I fear what we are capable of when we aren’t in charge of our faculties.” His gaze found the other with a look of deep understanding. “You are not alone in your feelings of guilt.”

—

So much for not sharing, Wyatt thought as he listened to Paris describe a small bit of his past. He didn’t have words for something like that, so he just blinked slowly and shook his large head. Humans really did have the capacity to be the fucking worst, didn’t they? You didn’t see lamias experimenting on them… just… eating them. Huh. Well, who was he to comment on moral responsibility? He was as immoral as they came. 

“Sure, but I can usually reel it in,” Wyatt complained, feeling the frustration start to bubble up again. Paris was right about them not being in control—bad things happened, and apparently the source of the lack of control didn’t matter. Paris had done something similar in order to escape. Was that what Wyatt had been trying to do? He couldn’t even remember anymore. Maybe their kind was violently opposed to being controlled or held captive—it made sense in a lot of ways. But why did they have to black out for it? He cursed under his breath, lowering his head onto the rock. 

“Well, if you just killed a bunch of people that were experimenting on you, you shouldn’t feel bad,” he countered. “I killed a handler. Don’t feel bad about that. Just about my friend. He was a shifter, too. Deserved better. He was a good person.” Wyatt’s jaw scraped on the rock as he slid his head slightly to the side, away from Paris. He was very good at ruining shit for good people, wasn’t he? Maybe he shouldn’t be out on this rock with this lamia, after all. Odds were that he’d only complicate things.

—

Struggling to grasp the concept of killing a friend, Paris truly felt bad for the other. “I am sorry it happened. Losing control is a terrifying feeling.” He spoke, not knowing what else to say other than to hone in on the only aspect he could relate to. “In moments of true terror, instinct seems to overcome us and keep us alive no matter the consequence.” Paris stared down at his hands, then reached out and placed a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “You are not alone in your struggles, never forget that. And you don’t have to leave just because you feel like a burden.” Paris stared at the other lamia before letting their hand slip from the other’s shoulder. 

“In truth, I feel like nothing but a burden to those around me,” Paris admitted with a sigh, head hanging low. “I am a lamia who has always been a lamia, not a human.” He pulled a face, thinking of the fleshy pink form he had to wear just to fit in around town. “It’s easy to put on a facade that shows that we have everything together when the reality is that we’re falling to pieces.” Paris shook his head, then rolled his eyes. “You’re allowed to be upset. You deserve to be able to talk about it.” Paris had a faraway look in his eyes as he stared out at the water, then finally looked back to Wyatt. “Even if we are strangers, we share a kinship. I will help shoulder your burden if you help shoulder mine.”

It was a risk, of course. Allowing himself to be vulnerable with someone just because they were both lamia. But Paris spent so much of his time being truly terrified of the world around him, of the people that could do him harm. To have both Anita and Wyatt, it would feel as if he wasn’t so alone. “I can never go back home,” he found himself saying. “I don’t know where home is. It wasn’t as if I could point it out on a map.” A sigh escaped him, and he looked over to Wyatt. “I need companionship, and it seems that so do you. Even if we only ever meet on this rock, let yourself be allowed to have an escape.”

—

Wyatt wasn’t really sure what Paris was asking for, other than… a friend? He must have been lonely to assume that Wyatt, just because he was a lamia, could ever be a good friend. Hadn’t he listened to the story about how Wyatt killed his friend? Everyone seemed so happy to just glance right over that when they didn’t want to face the reality of who Wyatt was. Which he probably should’ve been happy for, but at the moment, he just felt like shit. He was alone. There wasn't anyone he'd been fully honest with that had ever stayed. The sentiment Paris was expressing was nice, but Wyatt had never found it to be true. 

“If you were never a human to begin with, then why not just always be lamia?” Wyatt asked. It was something he had considered himself now and then, but there were too many things about being human that he enjoyed to leave them behind. Loneliness, he supposed, could drive Paris to try and assimilate. But some part of him was starting to wonder if that wasn't the right thing to do. Maybe they were better off lonely, since they seemed to present such a danger to those around him. Ah… that was all too philosophical for Wyatt. He just liked human music, human food, and human fucking. “But yeah, we can…” He lifted his head, looking at the water monitor. “This can be our rock.” It was half metaphor, half literal. He'd be glad to have someone in his life that understood him better, he thought. 

—

As Wyatt asked that question, Paris’s expression darkened. “Because I was taken, as I explained.” The water monitor responded, tapping a taloned finger against the rock as he stared out into space, his gaze a million miles away. “A hunter is trailing me, making sure I don’t slip up, told me I had to play human.” A hand drifted up to his neck, rubbing over the scar that lay there for all to see. “I value my life, so I play the part.” He shrugged his shoulders, then let out a frustrated sigh. 

Paris smirked at the idea of it being their rock. It was a strange thing, having not one but two other lamia in his life that could help him learn the reigns. This was important to him, having people that he could rely on, even when it seemed impossible to do so. “So when you killed this friend, what… happened? Do you remember?” Paris watched the other curiously, knowing that he didn’t remember when he’d killed all those people. “It wasn’t… just the scientists that I killed. It was also those who were locked up with me. I…” Paris blinked, voice suddenly lost for a brief moment. “I killed everyone.” 

Paris looked away for a moment, shame bubbling to the surface as he remembered how hard he had fought to keep control, the memories of the scientists egging him on to stop being such a coward. Was he a coward? Paris scratched his talons at the surface of the rock underneath him, then let out a low snarl. “I know what it feels like to feel out of control, to hurt people you did not mean.” Paris’s gaze flickered over to Wyatt, a flash of anger in his eyes disappearing as soon as he looked at the other. “You are not alone in your shame.”

—

“A hunter?” Wyatt gave a scoff, letting out a low, angry rumble. “What the hell it doin’ worryin’ ‘bout one lil’ lamia, anyway? Don't it got other shit to kill? Really got you on surveillance twenty-four-seven?” He glanced around them, knowing there was no way a human was here with them now without them knowing, but still. “Sounds like a load of crap to me, cher. Or a shit hunter, either way… someone deserves to be lunch.”

The question about Samir left a bad taste in his mouth, one of warm pennies and regret. “Got freaked out by somethin’. Sent me into a panic, I guess, and I just… blacked out. Wasn't there when it happened, couldn't stop it. Woke up in a cage.” It wasn't the first time he'd lost control of himself during a fight, though that reaction was usually brought on by the sensation that he was about to fall asleep in the ring. This had been different, he'd seen those crows and just… he didn't even know if they were real… Sucking in a sharp breath, Wyatt squeezed his eyes shut. “Startin’ to think I just ain't safe to be around, you know?”

—

Over the years, Ryan had tried so many different tactics to keep Paris in check. And in every scenario, it was clear that Paris would do whatever it took to keep his family safe. So that was Ryan’s biggest threat. “He has his ways,” was all the smaller lamia could say, eyes going far away before coming back to the present and looking over at Wyatt, expression distant. “It’s not as easy as having someone eat him, he has fail-safes, things that keep me in check. Like threatening my family.” Paris shrugged a shoulder as if trying to not let the idea of such bother him. Though, of course, it bothered him. It drove him mad.

As Wyatt told him what happened, Paris’s distant expression refocused, finding something that he could put his attention to instead of his disastrous existence. “Perhaps you’re not,” Paris replied in earnest, turning his attention to Wyatt with another simple shrug. “Perhaps you should surround yourself with people that are equally as dangerous, spare the ones that are at risk.” Paris rolled his eyes, the very idea was preposterous, but it seemed like that’s what the bigger lamia wanted to hear. “You can either learn to control yourself, or you can let the fear win.” Paris patted Wyatt’s shoulder. “I don’t think you want the fear to win.”

—

Ah. Well, that was the cost of family, he supposed. Maybe it was better that he’d cut off contact with them… he hated the idea of them being used as leverage against him. It wasn’t a good spot to be in, and Wyatt did not envy Paris’ problems, not even against his own. “Oh. That’s… I’m sorry,” he muttered, not knowing what else to say. He lowered his head again, just listening as Paris responded to his story about Samir, telling him what he damn well knew, but couldn’t find the strength to adhere to. He shouldn’t be around people he could kill, which… really, who did that leave? This was what he was bred for. Not literally, his mother had wanted him to pursue his love of music, but his cousin had seen to it that his life’s trajectory took a sharp turn for the violent. So perhaps it was what he was raised for. “Maybe not. Guess I’ll find out.” The fear might not be winning this battle, but he had a feeling it would win the war. A moment of silence passed between them, and Wyatt sighed. “Tell me about your family, Paris. Somethin’ nice. This is far too good a day for sunnin’ to be lettin’ ourselves get so down.”