#so I just pretended to not see it while swinging around a Halloween scythe

[soweli-musi]

gggrrrrRRRRRAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH

[thorniest-rose]

reddie halloween prompt #3 weapons

The Watcher is younger than he expected. Younger, and scruffier too. Nothing like the nice man that Eddie had met at his new high school. The Librarian with the soft voice and the even softer eyes, who had told him that it was okay, it was fine to be scared. That he was stronger than he looked. 

But no, his Watcher didn't turn out to be the nice Librarian, or the mysterious red-haired woman with burns on her arms who Eddie had seen setting fire to a vampire without even lifting a finger. No, instead it was this scruffy, deeply unimpressive man with the glasses and the terrible patterned shirts, who had introduced himself to Eddie while eating Burger King, a strawberry milkshake in one hand as he offered it to Eddie, saying he knew it was his favourite. Who had been standing outside his high school waiting for him to walk out like a total pervert. 

He was 25 apparently. A little young to be a Watcher. But Eddie hadn’t asked questions. Had liked to pretend he didn’t care. 

They’re at the hideout, a spare room above a noodle bar in Chinatown, that Richie says they’re going to use to train. But Eddie feels dubious. He’s seen the way Richie smokes, and the man's soft stomach doesn't make him think he's doing a lot of crunches.

The weapons rack in front of him is a sadist’s daydream: there are knives, axes, swords, wooden stakes, a pair of nunchucks, whips, even a chain with a spiked ball at the end of it that Eddie’s certain would do more damage to him than anyone else. 

He looks over his shoulder at Richie where he's leaning back against a desk, his arms crossed across his broad chest.  

Not that Eddie’s noticed or anything. 

“So I can... fight with all of this?”

“Sure,” Richie says, “but I want you to tell me which one you want to fight with. Look at the weapons and tell me which one you gravitate to. And I mean, really look at them. Imagine fighting with each one, and tell me which one feels the most real to you. Which one you want to hold in your hands.”

Eddie looks back at the weapons. He doesn’t know which one he wants to fight with. He doesn’t want to fight at all. 

After a moment he points to a heavy axe in the middle of the display. “That one.”

Richie raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth turning up into one of those annoying smirks. “Oh really?”

“Yes, really. You just told me to choose.”

“Are you sure you can even handle that? It probably weighs just as much as you do.”

“Does it matter? Don’t I have super strength now anyway?”

Richie doesn’t look convinced, but he shrugs and pushes off the desk. 

“Okay, let’s try it out then.”

Richie crosses the room and takes the axe from the display. A second later he’s in front of Eddie and without warning, drops it. Eddie flings his hands out, only catching it at the last moment. He glares up at Richie. At his stupid smirk and his thick glasses.

“You okay with that?” Richie asks. 

“Yes.”

“Good. Just testing your reflexes.”

Eddie frowns at him, his hands clinging to the axe. It feels alien in his grip. Like an intrusion, something unwanted. 

Richie's smile turns contemplative.

“I was surprised, you know. When they said it was you. You’re the first male in centuries to have been chosen. That must mean you’re doubly special.”

“I doubt that,” Eddie mumbles. “There’s nothing special about me.”

“Haven’t they told you? You’re-”

“The Chosen One. I know. One boy in all the world who can fight the vampires yadda yadda. I get it, I’ve read the manual, okay?”

And Eddie had. A thickly bound manuscript that the visiting Watcher had placed before him. All about what it meant to be a Slayer and why he had been chosen. When he had been told that it was his fate. That he was the only thing that would stop the world being plunged into eternal darkness. 

Eddie had argued; had spent two weeks screaming and begging and crying, saying over and over that he couldn’t do this, that it had been a mistake. But it didn’t matter. The Watcher’s Council had barely budged, even in the face of his most fiery tantrum, when Eddie had taken one of their oldest books and ripped the pages out of it until he had fallen, sobbing, into a ball on the floor. 

He had grown sullen after that, had hardly spoken. Refused to cooperate. Until Richie had turned up outside of his school one afternoon and told him to stop sulking. 

Richie chuckles, breaking through his thoughts.

“It’s boring as shit, I know. I told them that we should have told you about the origins of the Slayer through interpretative dance, but they didn’t listen to me.”

Eddie almost smiles, but forces it off his face at the last second. Richie didn’t deserve to see him smile. 

“So how does it feel?”

Eddie fumbles with the axe. It felt awkward in his hands. Cold, and heavy. He couldn’t imagine swinging it. Could hardly even hold it. All he wanted was to drop it the floor and run all the way home. Away from Richie. Back to his house in Derry. Back to mamma and her microwave dinners, to his bedroom and his math homework. Anywhere but here. 

“It feels okay,” he says. 

“Oh yeah? Then why are holding it like that?”

Eddie glares up at him. Suddenly wants to use his new strength to punch him right in his aggravating, stupidly chiselled jaw.

“How is it supposed to feel? All I’m going to do is kill things with it, right? It doesn’t have to feel good.”

But Richie shakes his head. "That’s not it. You’re not a killer, you’re the Slayer.”

“What’s the difference?”

“There’s a big difference. Come on, let me help you with that.”

Richie circles around Eddie until he comes up directly behind him. 

“Here,” he hears Richie say softly, his breath making the small hairs on the back of Eddie’s neck shock up. “This is how you hold it.”

Eddie jumps a little when Richie's lowers his hands to rest on his forearms, directing them down the axe until he's holding it properly. He swallows. Eddie’s only wearing a thin t-shirt, and in the chill of the room Richie’s skin burns where he touches him. 

He expects Richie to draw away then, for the cold to hit his back when Richie steps away, but to his surprise, Richie doesn’t. Instead his hands ghost across Eddie’s shoulders, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe.

“You need to relax, okay? You’re too tense.”

Eddie nods, but he suddenly can’t speak.

This close, Eddie can smell him. Richie smells like cigarette smoke and some kind of cheap aftershave, but beneath that he smells warm and woodsy. Eddie realises with a jolt that it’s a nice smell. Comforting. And he realises that he likes the way Richie smells. That he likes the way Richie feels. 

“How’s that now? Better?”

“A little,” Eddie manages to say, hating how thick his voice sounds. Syrupy.

“Why did you choose the axe?”

Eddie shrugs. “It looked like it was the best thing to choose. The most powerful.”

Richie huffs, and the sudden gust of breath against his skin makes Eddie shiver. 

“It’s not about what looks good, remember? You’re thinking about this too hard. You need to feel it. Look at the weapons again.”

So Eddie does. He looks back at the rack and slowly draws his eyes over the weapons where they're displayed like some brutal art exhibit. He tries to imagine himself fighting with each one, but he can’t. In his head he sees himself dropping his chosen weapon, or sees it being taken from him as he struggles. Sees himself being hit, stabbed, beaten. And there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Relax,” Richie reminds him, voice pitched low and soft. “Relax and feel it.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Eddie’s eyes focus on a small sword at the far end of the rack, almost hidden next to a huge scythe. It’s small and slim, barely more than a dagger, but there’s something elegant about it. Neat and simple. And it looks sharp. Like the thorn on a fairytale rose. Like it would make blood well on the tip of his finger if he touched it.

“That one,” he says.

And this time he means it.

Richie follows his line of sight, and Eddie can almost feel the approval radiating from him. From this strange, older man in his pink shirt patterned with wiener dogs wearing hotdog buns. With his dark hair and weird glasses, and his habit of telling awful jokes.

“Very good," Richie says. "Let’s try that.”