#syndi teller i love you syndi teller

[lucindarobinsonvevo]

[shootingstarcipher-blog]

Before the Monsters Catch Up (M-Dash Fic)

It had been too long since Dash had last turned up on the Tellers’ doorstep unannounced, though Marshall would have feverishly disagreed. The longer they went without Syndi or his parents learning anything about the sneaky grey-haired boy they occasionally saw stealing from the local shops or brawling in the street with some other bedraggled pauper, the better – except that every time he approached him or burst into his house (often without even knocking) was another chance they’d find out they were acquainted.

A small sting of resentment struck him every time Marshall ducked out of the way so as not to be seen with him, or whenever he threw his hand over his mouth to silence him in case somebody overheard him and saw them together. Even Simon had started to be more cautious about where they met up and had become a lot more secretive since the incident with Mr Chaney a month or so ago. While Marshall seemed to want nothing more than to forget it entirely, Dash brought this incident up frequently, reminding him that he had saved his life more than once and to his reckoning, Marshall was therefore indebted to him.

He smirked, contemplating what to demand from him in return, as he raised his fist to knock, only to be startled when the door opened before he had the chance. And in front of him appeared Marshall Teller, the very person he’d been thinking about (in fact, he thought about him a lot more frequently than he would have liked to admit and he was making it his primary ambition never to let anyone find out about that so as not to appear in anyway humanised, and besides, he had no desire to explain his thoughts to anyone, including himself).

The last thing Dash expected was to be invited inside, and for good reason. The door quietly clicked shut as Marshall stepped outside, being careful not to draw the attention from his family members as they were gathered around the dinner table, waiting for him to re-join them. He looked less than ecstatic to see him, the notion of which making Dash smirk a little more devilishly.

His smirk disappeared when Marshall opened his mouth, immediately demanding to know what he was doing there. Because it wasn’t like he ever barged into his home unexpectedly, Dash sarcastically noted. It was how they’d met – with Marshall and Simon bursting into the Old Mill with a video camera, desperately filming everything in sight with the hope of getting footage of the alleged ghost of Grungy Bill. And they’d done it a fair few more times too, with little to no regard of Dash’s privacy (though the Old Mill didn’t technically belong to him).

“It’s freezing out here,” he snapped in response, though that had nothing to do with why he’d gone there. It was always freezing and it had been ever since the day he’d woken up in the Old Mill several months beforehand.

“I know,” was Marshall’s only (and extremely sullen response). He turned away then, towards the door, about to re-join his family in the dining room when the grey-haired pauper made a dash in the same direction, bursting into the house without giving Marshall the opportunity to stop him. He was stronger than him anyway and could easily fight him off if he felt it necessary. Once inside, he had half a mind to suddenly and extravagantly announce his presence to the rest of the Tellers simply to spite Marshall and wolf down his dinner on top of that, but something told him they wouldn’t react graciously to his intrusion and silently headed upstairs instead, being careful not to be seen by anyone else. Closing the door behind him, Marshall stopped and watched him for a moment before returning to his family without another word.

Muffled voices followed. Mumbled snippets of conversations, the majority of which he had no hope of making sense of. At the top of the stairs, listening intently, Dash stared down at the cream-coloured carpet in a peculiar concoction of both awe and disgust. Awe with regards to Marshall’s devotion to the beings he called his family and disgust with regards to the very same thing. Family.

He often wondered if he had one and, if he did, whether they were searching for him. For all he knew they could have been the ones to steal his memories and dump him there with nothing but the clothes on his back. He wondered if they’d ever loved him, if they still did and if he’d ever loved them, because from the moment his memories had gotten lost, he hadn’t been able to imagine loving anyone at all – even family. On occasion, he wondered if they had grey hair too – if his unusual appearance, including the markings on his hands, was hereditary.

When the conversation from downstairs died down and footsteps began leading away from the dining room, he scrambled to his feet and darted into the room closest to him – which turned out to not be a room at all, but a built-in storage cupboard filled with a vacuum cleaner, a couple of buckets, a mop, toolboxes containing things he knew nothing about and an awful lot of dust. This was much more like a home to Dash than the clean, carpeted rooms he’d caught glimpses of downstairs. If no-one (besides a few spiders) was living in it, he decided he might as well.

Remaining still and silent, his senses overcome by the sound of his own breathing, he waited behind the darkness, straining to hear the approaching footsteps as they ascended the stairs. There were two sets now – something he hadn’t noticed before. One went right passed him without a second thought, straight into the room at the end of the narrow hallway. The other stopped at the top of the stairs, as if its owner was waiting for something. A sharp, short hissing sound suddenly seeped in from the other side of the door and, after a brief moment of nothing happening, somebody knocked gently on the cupboard door and hissed again, louder this time.

“Dash!” Another knock. “Dash! Are you in there?” And then, under his breath, he heard him mutter, “If you’ve gone in my parents’ room, you’re dead.”

With a small smile playing on his lips, he pushed the cupboard door open and half-jokingly chuckled, “Why? What’s so important about your parents’ room?”

“Nothing. Now shut the hell up and get in here.” This was the first time Marshall had ever grabbed him so roughly and aggressively and Dash couldn’t help but despise it, though it would have been a lie to say that he wasn’t even vaguely impressed. Violence and hostility was his trademark attitude. Marshall was the compassion and approachability that balanced him out. He was the bad cop; Marshall was the good cop. And he hated it when a good cop tried to play bad.

But he brushed it off and – just this once – allowed him to shove him into the room on his left, which he instantly concluded must have been Marshall’s room. In the corner was the fabled evidence locker he occasionally heard Simon reference (he got the feeling Marshall wasn’t as open about it as Simon was, but he was in its presence now so he supposed he must have gotten over the idea of keeping it a secret from him) and across from him was an unmade bed that looked like heaven compared to sleeping on a dusty old wooden floor like he had been doing. Next to the bed was a desk with an open book lying on it, turned to a page about memory loss. Ignoring Marshall’s command that he kept away from his belongings (probably from a perfectly rational fear that he would steal something important to him) he took a closer at it, glancing at the front cover which explained that it was some sort of psychology book.

Memory loss? Letting go of the book, he frowned, and held onto the desk instead, noticing his hand shaking slightly as he did so. How many other people did Marshall know with memory loss? It couldn’t have been many, if any at all. That book looked like it was designed to diagnose people with psychiatric disorders. Like it was designed to spot insanity.

“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He spoke slowly, firmly, like a shrinking violet feigning extraversion. Trying to convince not just Marshall, but himself. Then his face broke out into a smile, he took his hand – no longer shaking – off the desk, and joked, “I’m mad, but I’m not crazy.” His smile was wide and toothy, like a shark’s, and his eyes dark but sparked with something menacing.

Marshall’s, on the other hand, alluded only fear. “Y- Yeah, I know,” he choked, barely able to speak with Dash’s gaze clawing viciously at his throat, suffocating him with just a glance. “It’s not about you… It’s- It’s Simon. Yeah, he’s been forgetting a lot lately. I’m just trying to help him.”

“Well,” Dash started, his voice its usual low, threatening growl. “We’d better get reading then. Don’t want anything to happen to old Shrimpenstein, do we?”

His dislike for Simon Holmes was Dash X’s worst kept secret; his best being his… whatever it was… for Marshall Teller. This was in spite of Simon being much friendlier towards him than Marshall (or anyone, really) had ever been. He was the one who had first pointed out that Marshall wouldn’t have survived his attack from Mr Chaney had it not been for Dash, as well as convincing him to let him into his home the first time. (He’d only been invited in for a minute or two because Syndi had been due home shortly afterwards, but since then Marshall had never let him into his house and it was plain to see that it had to have been because Simon hadn’t been there to convince him otherwise.)

Yes, he supposed he did acknowledge that having Simon around could occasionally be useful. He also supposed, however, that Marshall would focus a lot more attention on him should Simon to disappear from the picture for a while. Not that he’d ever try and make that happen, of course.

The book did intrigue him and he flicked through a couple of pages, not for Simon’s sake but to indulge in his fascination for what he assumed reflected Marshall’s opinion of him. He’d lied. He probably was crazy – or something like that. He couldn’t remember what. He could barely remember anything.

Even the last few days were a blur. It wasn’t just his entire life from before he’d found himself in the Old Mill that were blocked from his mind, it was nearly everything. Most of what he could remember was just him and Marshall, and Simon being irritating and friendly, which really was just another word for irritating as far as Dash was concerned. The rest was hazy and indecipherable. So, maybe he really was insane. Marshall certainly seemed to think so.

He was watching him intently, cautiously, like a deer prepared to flee at any sign of a sudden movement. Dash returned the favour by slamming down the book and glaring back, eyes aflame with something that wasn’t quite anger, but far from fear and even further from contentment. “I haven’t completely lost my mind yet, Marsh,” he spat, prompting a slow response of relief from him – a sigh that was still hesitant, still cautious, still fearful.

“Yet?” Marshall repeated questioningly. “Yet, as in…”

“As in I’m bound to lose it sometime.” He paused and looked thoughtful for a moment or two, gazing lazily around the room at everything he hadn’t seen yet – books, the wardrobe, the clothes scattered on the floor by the bed. “Speaking of Simon… I wonder where he is. Seen him lately?”

And of course Dash knew that he hadn’t – not because of what he’d done, but because he simply happened to know. No-one would have believed him though, regardless of all the other strange goings on in the town of Eerie. So aside from that one little jab he kept quiet, all the while keeping to himself a peculiar little secret he couldn’t wait to forget.

AO3 Link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/13036314/chapters/29818947