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delimeful · 2 years ago

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a still-glowing ember (2)

warnings: g/t, remus pov-typical violence/gore/innuendo, ignoring one's needs/magical burnout, self destructive behavior, hypothermia, death mention

If Remus didn’t find his brother soon, he was going to burn this stupid forest to the ground.

He decidedly ignored the way the night’s cold was seeping into him, frost biting deep enough that he probably couldn’t even conjure a spark, let alone a flame.

That wouldn’t stop him. He’d figure out how to start a fire the human way if that was what it took.

(And afterward, if Roman’s spark had already extinguished by the time he found him– he would find him– Remus would figure out how to burn to death the human way, too.)

They’d never be able to come back to this valley, anyhow. Remus had snatched three whole territory markers from a shifter as he headed north, using the decision-making process that had gotten him labeled ‘a danger to himself and others’ at his first colony.

What could he say? Roman was the closest thing he had to impulse control.

He’d considered going back for another one– the temperature drop as the sun set was killer, literally– but stealing foxfire was the sort of thing one couldn’t repeat without getting gleefully disemboweled by a pissed-off fox shifter, and who would track down Roman then?

Already planning exactly how he’d make fun of his brother for losing to a measly storm, Remus flapped his wings sharply, sending another wave of warmth through them and ignoring the way the cold pit in his chest deepened a bit more.

It didn’t matter. He’d always wondered what it would feel like to gutter down to ashes, anyhow.

The world’s most torchable forest continued to look the same no matter how far he flew, all thick-trunked trees and mossy undergrowth that he’d normally be eager to taste test. There was barely anything resembling a breeze, so the murmur of rustling leaves had been completely overtaken by the hum of insects and distant calls of night birds.

The lack of wind was just another stroke of bad luck. Normally, without any drafts to coast on, sprites would find a perch to occupy. He couldn’t glide for long, meaning that his half-frozen wings were working twice as hard to keep him in the air.

He had to keep moving. Roman was out there somewhere, perched in one of these identical trees or flitting from branch to branch in his own search. If he actually cared that Remus was missing, that was. Remus’s brain was beginning to suggest otherwise.

Maybe he’s glad to have the chance to get away from you, his mind offered. You should hunt him down and break his wings into little frozen splinters.

There was a heavy thud and rustle nearby, and Remus veered towards it, because investigating things that could potentially murder him sounded way better than listening to the squishy gray matter in his skull.

The source of the commotion turned out to be a sizable bear, shuffling its way down the trunk of a large tree. Remus circled around the scene on quiet wings, taking in the practiced movements of the beast.

Oh yeah, that could definitely murder me, he thought, successfully sidetracked. In a single hit, even. One of those paws probably weighed as much as three of him.

It was a moon bear, he was pretty sure, just barely able to see the telltale sliver of cream fur on its chest in the dark of the night. Not one of the more carnivorous species, boo.

No idea what it had been doing up there, but he didn’t have time to pursue the distraction any further.

With all the turning, his glide had shifted to more of a controlled fall, and he flapped his wings a few times, ignoring the way the bear’s attention shifted towards his direction. The flaps were frustratingly weak, slowed by encroaching icy numbness, and he forced another surge of warmth through them.

His spark pulsed painfully, and in the next moment, his vision blacked out entirely.

His wings flailed out to try and brake automatically, but vertigo had struck like a viper, and he could hardly tell up from down. There was wind in his ears now, which probably meant that he was currently hurtling towards a very splattery end.

He’d always said he wanted to go out screaming and covered in someone else’s blood, but he couldn’t even draw breath to yell, his whole body struggling to right itself amidst the pain of nearly burning himself out.

There was a sudden impact against one wing, hard but thin– a branch? Any semblance of direction vanished as he tumbled head over heels through what felt like an endless stretch of bush. Each stinging lash hurt, but by the time he hit the ground, his momentum had slowed enough to make the impact totally agonizing instead of extremely fatal.

He lay there for a few long moments, stunned or possibly paralyzed. He couldn’t really tell if the snapping sounds had been the branches around him or all of his bones. Slowly, his vision began to fade back in, each blink bringing a new arrangement of black spots.

Distantly, he finally registered an odd sound, one that was gradually growing closer.

Snuffling.

Oh, right. The bear.

Moon bears weren’t particularly active carnivores, but their primary meat intake was carrion. He remembered because he’d thought it was extremely funny, and also an excellent fact to gross Roman out with.

Remus attempted to twitch a wing, and failed miserably. His whole body felt like it had been tenderized into a paste.

… He was pretty sure he counted as carrion, at this point.

Getting eaten by a bear was a cooler death than hitting the ground because he forgot how to fly, at least.

The rustling of leaves intensified as something began pushing past the bush’s branches, presumably searching for him.

There was the sour taste of misery on the back of his tongue, knowing that if Roman was still alive out there somewhere, Remus had abandoned him with not even a corpse left behind. It was his own fault, he thought with a pang of aimless violent fury. If he’d been smarter or quicker or more reserved about his search, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

He was distracted from the impulse to bite down on his own arm– half to vent his anger and half because if something was going to eat him, he wanted the first bite– by the sensation of something soft and warm grazing him.

It was like his body remembered it was freezing all at once. He leaned against the warmth despite himself, his breath catching as a new wave of involuntary shivering agitated every bruise and bump he had, and struggled to think past the sensation.

The thing grabbing him wasn’t a bear mouth, he realized, mildly disgruntled. There were no teeth. Only a bunch of flexible, appendage-like protrusions poking through the brush and curling around him.

The mystery of it all was the only thing keeping his mind off his shrieking nervous system as his battered frame was steadily pried free from the bush’s tangled grasp. He stared down at the fleshy lump settled across his chest like a band and abruptly realized he was looking at a fingernail.

A hand. Had a human somehow grabbed him? Remus blinked, dizzily sinking into the warmth of it. Maybe they could help him with the forest fire. He’d been planning to set something on fire human-style, hadn’t he?

“Try to stay awake. Your body temperature is dangerously low,” a low, measured voice informed him.

Remus hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them to the sight of a considerably larger face looking down at him. Not human after all, going by those fangs and the round, fuzzy black ears atop the stranger’s head. Where had he seen those ears before…?

The stranger had continued talking, not that Remus had caught any of it, and was now levering his arm up between two fingers and pressing on it. It felt gentle, but sensations could be deceiving in the cold, so it was totally possible he was about to watch his humerus get snapped in two. The stranger was staring at him expectantly now, as though a question had been asked.

Remus didn’t have an answer, but having finally figured out just what kind of shifter was holding him, he did have something to say. Inhaling past his bruised ribs, he tilted his head back against the palm he was resting on to make eye contact.

“You’re beary hot,” he managed, and with his piece said, proceeded to immediately pass out.

–

Remus woke up to fur in his mouth.

“Pfah,” he said, coherently.

The fur underneath him twitched, everything swaying slightly as though wherever he was laying wasn’t exactly solid ground. He was also sweltering, which was a great state for him to be in if he didn’t want his spark to go out from overstress. Really though, how much fur did one have to inhale to start coughing up hairballs?

There was a careful oversized breath, and then the surface below him abruptly shifted to something much flatter and smoother. Fabric, Remus realized, his cheek pressed against distinct woven threads.

“Hello,” a voice rumbled through him, large and close. “You’re on top of me. Please don’t be alarmed.”

Remus waggled his eyebrows blearily, still too disoriented to even contemplate being alarmed. Besides, he didn’t startle easily. He was normally the one alarming.

“Did you at least buy me dinner first?” he asked, his delivery weakened by the instant pain that blossomed in his chest. “Ow.”

“My apologies,” the voice replied. “I was unable to reduce the bruising of your ribs, since applying ice would have only worsened your condition. I did not prepare any dinner, because you were unconscious.”

Either this guy had the best deadpan in the business, or the innuendo had completely flown over his head. Remus was delighted regardless.

He struggled to push himself upright, his entire body protesting severely, and a giant hand lifted into his line of sight, hurriedly curving around him as a supportive measure. The feeling was familiar, and Remus went rigid as he recalled exactly how he’d gotten here.

“Where are we?” he asked, all traces of his lackadaisical attitude gone.

If the stranger was surprised by his sudden intensity, he didn’t show it. “My home. It’s a cave near the northwestern edge of the valley, and I brought you here after seeing–”

“You motherfucker,” Remus swore, and twisted to bite down on the stranger’s hand.

The fingers contracted briefly, but surprisingly enough, didn’t collapse down to instinctively crush him.

“Ow.” The stranger’s voice was insultingly monotone about the attack, which admittedly hadn’t even broken skin. “Stop that. There’s no need, I don’t intend you any harm.”

Seeing that his best efforts weren’t cutting it, Remus unlatched his jaw and craned his neck to scowl up at them. “Forget harm! You kidnapped me while I was in the middle of something!”

“Yes,” they replied dryly, “dying. I noticed.”

“How long has it been?” Remus asked, shoving to his hands and knees. “Is it still night?”

There were two hands hovering anxiously over him, now. “Not long has passed. There are still several hours until dawn breaks. Why?”

“Because I’ve got a featherbrain brother to find,” he said, “so sorry to smash-and-dash, stranger, but you’ll have to abduct me to your cave against my will another time.”

The stranger went quiet for a long moment, during which Remus painstakingly managed to push himself up to a standing position, though his wings were limply dragging behind him.

He couldn’t really see very far before his vision went blurry, so he wasn’t sure entirely where the exit was, but he could figure it out. It was a cave, after all: either he’d find the opening or he’d walk endlessly deeper and deeper into the earth like a dumbass.

Before he could successfully balance well enough to take a step towards one of those destinations, though, a shadow fell over him.

“My name is Logan,” the shifter spoke up, “and I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

As easily as a breeze would pick up a leaf, Logan scooped Remus off his feet back into his cupped palm.

“Nobody ‘lets’ me do anything!” Remus snapped back, thrashing as best he could against the grip. Seeing as he currently had the strength of a newborn kitten, it didn’t do much. “Come on, you can eat my corpse later, I’ve got time-sensitive shit to do!”

The comment earned him a minor twitch. “I have no desire to eat your corpse. That would defeat the entire purpose of this venture, which is to prevent you from becoming a corpse in the first place.”

“My corpse, my business!” It was frustrating to know that if they had met in normal circumstances, Logan was exactly the sort of stiff-backed repressed nerd that Remus would have delighted in teasing. Almost as frustrating as the fact that the dork wouldn’t let him go!

With a huff, Remus gave up on avoiding agitating his wounds and threw himself into struggling with no care for bodily harm.

“Listen to me,” Logan tried, sounding slightly more harried. “Your internal temperature is only barely beginning to recover. If you expose yourself to the frigid weather outside for any longer–!”

“Oh, I’ll expose myself alright,” Remus snarled, because what was the point of nonsensical threats if they couldn’t also be saucy? “Roman is out there in that weather!”

“And you’ll be no help to him if you choose to freeze to death out of simple, ignorant stubbornness!” Logan literally growled, the noise vibrating through Remus and lingering in the back of the shifter’s chest. “I will help you search once you’ve stabilized, but until then, you are at my mercy.”

Remus stared up at him, in utter disbelief that someone could make playing nursemaid to a sprite sound so threatening.

Logan’s expression softened, but his grip remained firm. “I refuse to sit by and watch such foolishness. I won’t be made to explain it to your brother.”

Maybe it was the way his words assumed Roman’s survival after Remus had spent the whole night imagining the worst, or maybe Remus was just exhausted enough for a rational argument to have an effect on him for once.

Either way, he clearly wasn’t winning this fight. He let his body flop limply against Logan’s hand with no little amount of petulance.

“If you don’t help me search, I’ll learn how to perform surgery on giants just so I can fill your organs with flesh-eating wasps.”

Logan took the concession for what it was, and only raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to lock me in a room with the wasps? My flesh would be eaten either way, right?”

It was the perfect question to distract himself with. Remus launched into a heated defense of the differences between external versus internal flesh consumption as torture methods, barely noticing as Logan carefully moved his limp wings back into a more comfortable resting position.

The shifter kept asking questions as he cupped his hand against his chest, creating a cushion of warmth on all sides. Remus kept talking even as drowsiness began to set in, a sprite cradled up against the heartbeat of a bear shifter. Heh. He had always wanted to cuddle something that could maul him.

Remus knew the warmth rekindling in his chest was his spark. Still, it felt a little like hope, too.

… Blech, Roman had been rubbing off on him.

He’d have to return the favor once they were reunited.

#sanders sides g/t #fantasy au #ts remus #ts logan #a still glowing ember #asge #my writing #writing #i almost forgot it was saturday. shout out to bk forever

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myapathyhaspeaked · 2 months ago

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Platonic Sides Week Day 1: Found Family

They weren’t related.

Yes they all had the same last name. Yes they all looked remarkably similar. Yes they all went to the same high school, the same college, and currently lived in the same apartment. But they weren’t related.

Okay, two of them were related. But that was it.

The Sanders, as they had gotten used to being called, were enjoying a relaxing Saturday at home. It was approaching evening, the setting sun flooding in through the windows and giving everything a golden glow.

Virgil squinted as the light reached the perfect angle to reflect off one of Patton’s little glass trinkets and hit him in the eye, combining unpleasantly with sitting in front of the computer for the past three hours. Logan was beside him, having pulled one of the dining chairs next to the desk in order to help his friend find a job. The emo was beginning to wish he had gone into something easier, like marketing, though he was pretty sure working a corporate office job would be the death of him. He had gone for a sound production degree, however, in hopes that one day he’d be able to work for a band he enjoyed, so now he was scrolling ad nauseam for a sound editing gig of any kind. You’d think it would be easy; just type in a few keywords into the browser and hit search, but no. He couldn’t even go three LinkedIn links without finding a “we can’t pay money but we would be the perfect jumping off point for your career”.

He had initially asked his friend to assist him with figuring out how applying for a job with actual career aspects worked, because the only occupations he had had so far were stuff cashiering and waiting, stuff that didn’t require a resume or references. Logan had taught him how to format one, what information to include, how to word everything for pique the most interest in whoever, or nowadays probably whatever bot, was reading his application. The assistance eventually evolved to include keeping him calm as thoughts of perpetual unemployment and failure began to fill his mind. He’d have to add “tactile fidget tools most effective at preventing nail biting” to his Virgil journal.

The constant clicking sound of the scroll wheel was interrupted by the sudden sound of the twins shouting in the adjacent sitting area. It seemed that despite what they usually claimed, they actually did have something in common: an almost inhuman competitiveness when it came to Mario Kart. Just an hour ago they had been strongly encouraged (by the threat of putting carrots in their dinner) to keep quiet so Virgil could stay on the verge of having a migraine instead of having one, but apparently this argument was important enough to risk having their meals being tainted.

Logan twisted so he could see better, and noticed that the television was turned off.

“You cheating, scum sucking, deranged son of a bitch!” Roman yelled as he shoved his hand over his brother’s mouth, trying to silence his raucous cackling.

“Wow, what a nice thing to call your mother,” Remus snickered after licking Roman’s hand, causing his brother to immediately gag and rush to wipe the saliva off on the couch. He muttered profanely as he rummaged in the side drawer for a bottle of sanitizer.

“Hey now, there’s no need for such potty language,” Patton chimed in from the kitchen, where he had just put the dinner rolls in the oven.

“Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Remus grinned at his brother, wiggling his shoulders mischievously as he frowned at him. He should honestly just be glad he didn’t start scream-singing Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”

“He turned off the TV so I wouldn’t win!” Roman protested, sending Virgil reaching for some tylenol at the outburst. Noticing this, Janus made a show of grabbing a carrot from the fridge and grabbing a knife, holding them up so the brothers could see them like he had the remote control to a bomb and was threatening to destroy the city. At least a bomb had the potential to be fun, in Remus’ opinion anyway.

“Jan, come on, don’t be like that!” Remus whined, clasping his hands together to beg as his friend placed the vegetable on the cutting board with a purposefully loud thud. “We promise to chill for a whole fifteen minutes, okay? Just put the dildo plant down.” Patton winced at the vulgarity but had mercy on them, reaching over to put the carrot back in the fridge. He wasn’t sure why they had even bought it. None of them liked carrots.

Janus let out a dramatic sigh and returned to stirring the caramelizing onions so they wouldn’t burn. Usually Patton was the only one involved in preparing dinner, besides the few small jobs he sometimes delegated to the others (the twins were banned from anything with heat), but Janus had gotten his law school homework done early enough to come home an hour before he usually did. Despite Patton’s protests that he really didn’t need help and that he wasn’t that tired from his frankly awful day working at the daycare, Janus managed to force his way into the kitchen with a bit of persuasion. Mainly reminding him that there was no glory in suffering, no matter what his teachers in catholic school taught him growing up.

Virgil tried to return to his search, but even with the pain medication his eyes were starting to strain, all the letters turning into one big squiggle that might as well have spelled out “sorry, but you’re really not what we’re looking for” as far as his growing anxiety was concerned. Logan noticed him gripping the mouse tighter, and out of concern for both his friend and the plastic, put a hand on his shoulder. Virgil snapped around to look at him, eyes wide like he had just been pulled out of an awful world that only consisted of blue light and filling out information that was already on his resume. He took a deep breath, trying to focus on the smell of baking bread as it filled his nose, anything that wasn’t the job search, but one can only focus on a smell for so long.

“How about we go set the table?” Logan asked, getting up from his chair before he could respond.

“But the applications! I haven’t finished a single one!” Virgil fretted, still following him to where he was taking plates out of a cabinet. He opened a drawer and began counting out forks. Patton noticed and nodded his thanks before turning back to plating the baked potatoes.

“And in this state I doubt you’ll be any good at filling one out,” Logan stated bluntly, trying to be comforting in his own Logan way as he placed plates in their proper place on the table. “You need a break. If you feel the need, you can get back to it after dinner, or I can help you tomorrow.” Lord knows Virgil would stay up until 2 AM with or without the stress, but Logan actually respected his circadian rhythm.

Virgil frowned, still feeling like he was wasting valuable time, but nodded as he set out the cutlery. He looked over to the twins, and they had gone back to playing Mario Kart. Though they had left the normal game mode and were now doing the challenges. Roman’s face grew almost as red as his fashion statement of a belt as one of his balloons was popped by a dastardly red shell, courtesy of his brother obviously, but he didn’t yell. It seemed that though the threat of being made to consume carrots was no longer imminent, they were still trying to make good on their promise to be quiet, if not out of integrity then probably out of concern for what Janus would do instead. No one wanted a repeat of the Shoe Incident. Don’t ask. Janus had them all sign NDAs.

Remus was biting his lip so hard in his struggle to stay silent that they were beginning to bleed slightly, but he just licked it away. He almost launched himself into the side table as he leaned unnecessarily in time with his go-kart’s sharp turn.

Soon dinner was ready, and Patton called them to the table as he set out the food.

They weren’t related, for the most part.

But they still sat at the table every Saturday evening, chowing down on lovingly homemade food as they chatted about their weeks, the stress fading away, even if just for a moment, as the air filled with old inside jokes. And in their opinion, it was better than any of their “real” family dinners had ever been.

---

@platonicsidesweek

#platonicsides2024 #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders

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