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boots-with-the-fur-club · 7 months

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Chapter 9 of the reincarnation au! Happy Halloween!!

@daboyau

@rottmnt-background-screenshots

Everyone starts going into a panic.

“Give me your hands, now!” Donnie demands.

Leo makes no move to do as he’s been asked.

Mikey leans over and grabs him by the strap, tossing him towards Raph who immediately catches him.

Donnie quickly holds his hand. He’s taken aback when the ninpo doesn’t seep into him as well like it did with Mikey.

“It’s not working! Why isn’t it working!?”

“We have to call April! Draxum! Could Big Mama help!?” Mikey’s hands shake so badly he can’t even type in his passcode.

Donnie let’s go of Leo and immediately starts scanning him.

Raph hugs Leo tighter, his breathing starting to get erratic.

“Gram-Gram! She’ll know what to do!” Splinter suggests, turning to go back to the room.

That’s when Leo can hear a voice. It almost sounds like someone is whispering the solution to him.

He quickly realizes that it was in his head, the same voice that had explained his first dream of memories.

The ninpo wasn’t going to hurt him.

It was guiding him.

“Raph.” He says almost quietly.

“Wh-What is it?”

“Do you trust me?”

“H-Huh?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course!”

“Then you need to let go. Please.”

“But Leo-“

“You have to.”

Raph takes a breath and let’s go.

Leo smiles at him before grabbing his sword.

Splinter, Mikey and Donnie stop their personal freak outs to collectively panic about what he’s doing.

Leo allows the ninpo in his hands to transfer to his weapon and then slashes open a portal.

The portal pulls all of them in.

There’s a lot of screaming before they land in a field, one by one.

It was nearly pitch black all around them.

Donnie slams down his goggles to use the night vision.

He immediately scans around to see if anyone was hurt.

“Leo! Are you okay!?”

Leo was laying in the grass, staring up at the stars.

He lifts his arms up.

“I’m fine! It’s gone!”

Donnie sighs heavily in relief.

“Good, now you can tell me why you sent us to a random field in the middle of nowhere!”

“Aoi was telling me to! I think he was the ninpo in my hands being all weird.”

“Wasn’t it daytime a second ago?” Raph questions.

“We must be in some country that’s multiple hours ahead of New York.” Donnie answers as he types away at his wrist device.

Leo continues to stare at the stars.

“Home. We’re home.”

Mikey looks at him in concern.

“I’m pretty sure we just left our home?”

“Our other home.”

Donnies looks up as his eyes widen.

“Japan!? You sent us to Japan!?”

“I haven’t been to Japan in many years….” Splinter says quietly, glancing at the sky wistfully.

“There were always so many more stars in our memories. We can’t see them in New York.” Leo eyes sparkle.

“Please tell me that’s not the only reason you want to be here.” Donnie sighs in frustration.

“There’s something else!….I just don’t know yet.”

“Raph? Are you okay?” Mikey suddenly pipes up.

The others turn to look at the both of them.

Raph was staring off into the field at something that couldn’t be seen in the darkness.

He stands up and starts walking in that direction.

“Red! Where are you going!?” Splinter quickly follows him.

The others start doing the same right after. They have their phone flashlights on to avoid tripping on anything.

It was a fair amount of walking before Raph finally stopped.

“Alright, what was so-….important….” Donnie trails off as the light shines upon a tombstone.

It had his name on it.

Not his current name of course. It was his 1,000 year old name. The grave still being there after such a long time was surprising, but not as surprising at just seeing it at all.

“Are….these our….?” Mikey asks softly.

“Not mine.” Raph responds.

Leo shines his light over the other tombstones.

There’s only three in total.

“No, yours has to be here somewhere, it doesn’t make any sense.” He starts searching all round the area.

Raph gently places his hands on his shoulders to stop him.

“Leo, it’s okay.“

“It’s not okay! You have to have one!”

“Not if there was nobody left to bury me.”

Leo goes still.

That sentence left something burning in his chest.

Sadness? Guilt? Sympathy?

Maybe a mix of everything.

He hates imagining that Tora was left alone.

Leo starts shaking.

“There’s…..writing on here. More than just the names.” Mikey carefully traces the etched in letters on his tombstone with his hand while using his phone’s flashlight in the other.

“What do they say?” Donnie walks closer.

Mikey carefully starts reading it. It was strange seeing kanji outside of his dreams and memories.

“Mine says….here lies Kosuke of the Sakai family. His light illuminated every dark corner of the world. One of the greatest warriors ever known, he laid down his life against an impossible monster. He did it with a smile to protect his family and to make the world safe for them. May he reunite with the fallen once again in the life after.”

Donnie frowns at that before looking at his own.

“Here lies Tomo of the Sakai family. Another one of the great warriors to give up his life. He allowed time for the people of this village to escape. May he reunite with everyone he lost, and finally forgive himself. He never had to earn it, but he did, over and over again.”

Leo looks at the last tombstone, his tombstone.

“You don’t have to read it if you can’t handle it right now.” Raph insists.

Leo shakes his head and shines his light.

The engraving on his was far shakier than Kosuke’s or Tomo’s.

He quickly realizes that it’s because Tora must have done it by herself, maybe even using her claw weapons.

She must have been less prepared for his death.

“Here….here lies Aoi of the Sakai family. One of four great warriors, he engraved the phrase “me before anyone else” into his soul. He fulfilled his promise. May we have more time together in the next life. Don’t worry until then.”

“You were first.” Mikey nearly whispers.

Somehow it didn’t bring the comfort he thought it would. He feels guilty that Tora had to go through it.

Maybe that’s why it had been his turn this time.

He just drops his phone and pulls Mikey and Donnie into tight hugs.

Raph stands to the side, a deep feeling of loneliness begins to spread through his body.

It was like when he started to freak out about being alone and without his brothers.

Is that….how she felt?

Donnie grabs at Raph’s hand and pulls him into the hug as well.

The icy pain in his heart is slowly replaced by the warmth of everyone around him.

Splinter had placed a hand on his shell. He was gently, soothingly rubbing circles into it.

Raph takes a breath.

“If we’re going to stay here a while, we need somewhere where humans aren’t gonna catch us.”

“I doubt any of the places we lived in are still around or in good enough condition to hide us.” Donnie insists.

“Anybody up for leaving it to me again?” Leo raises his weapon.

“You can do it, Aoi.” Mikey gently pats the dull edge.

It lights up in their hands.

Leo slices open another portal and they all get taken to the inside of an incredibly old looking building.

“Does it look familiar to you?” Splinter questions.

The turtles glance around while using their flashlights.

“I think….this is one of those places we fixed up to stay in.” Mikey answers.

Leo suddenly gasps loudly.

“It’s not just any place we fixed up! I know exactly which one it is!” He rushes deeper into the house.

The others follow him to a sliding door which he slams open.

Outside was a hot spring surrounded by overgrown plants.

“Wow! I can’t believe this place is still abandoned!” Mikey comments in awe.

“It’s likely that someone remembered us through the decades and marked off this entire area as culturally significant.” Donnie explains.

“Which means we’ve got it all for ourselves! Hot soup!” Leo slips off his medical supply packs and drops his swords before diving into the spring.

There’s only a second or two of hesitation from his brothers before they follow suit, jumping in with varying sizes of splashes.

Raph’s was the largest, making their father who was caught in the crossfire look like a drowned rat.

He grumbles slightly but decides not to say anything since his sons deserved to act their age after everything they’ve been through.

He sits on the edge of the ground and places his legs in the hot spring, sighing in relaxation.

It had been some time since he could go to a hot spring. Of course he had been in plenty of hot tubs because of his career, but they weren’t the same, and even then that had been so many years.

Raph is sprawled out in the water like a starfish. His eyes are closed as he enjoys the warmth seeping into his limbs.

Mikey and Leo started splash fighting each other basically the moment they resurfaced. They laughed loudly the whole time which in turn got water in their mouths, making them cough and laugh at each other even more.

Donnie kept only the top part of his face above the water, pretending to peacefully enjoy the water while secretly getting in splashes at Leo.

Eventually Raph also joins in, getting in the biggest splashes against anyone and preserving his title as splash champion.

After several hours of splash war they all leave the hot spring.

There obviously weren’t any towels to dry off with so they shook off the excess water as they did when they were kids after swimming in the sewers.

Once back inside, Donnie decides that if they fixed up the place once, they can do it again.

He uses his ninpo to reinforce various structures throughout the house. There’s also the matter of setting up lights, a TV, and most importantly, wifi.

Leo helped by using his portals to bring in materials from Donnie’s lab. He also brings in blankets, pillows, pajamas and any other items needed for sleep.

That of course included Raph’s most important plushies.

Putting everything together started bringing back more memories. Not just of the first construction, but also the ones the house held in it.

When Leo was setting up a bed area for them to all sleep in together in the room that Donnie had some cleaning robots to over, some visions flashed before his eyes.

They were mainly of the exact room he was in. Apparently he chose the same one Aoi did back then because what he saw a lot of was his siblings sleeping.

Leo always had a habit of checking up on them even before the invasion. He thought one of the funniest things to do was to get pictures of them sleeping. He had separate folders for each brother.

It gave him something to do when his insomnia was bad too.

Aoi seemed to stay awake sometimes just to make sure they were really sleeping and not….something else.

He couldn’t get comfortable unless everyone was first.

Leo glanced at his swords laying on the floor and stood them up in the corner.

He knew that realistically they were the same person, Aoi wasn’t in his weapons. He was just the ninpo he channeled into them. He was him.

Still, it made him feel just a little better if he could imagine that Aoi would be allowed to watch over them again.

While he was doing that, Mikey was in the next room. He had been getting little feelings that seemed to draw him to different places in the house.

He mainly found some very old coins that probably rolled under furniture, but there was something pulling him much harder in this room.

After some searching he stumbled upon a frame covered with an extremely thick layer of dust.

Once he’s finally got it off his breath hitches slightly.

There was a photo that was almost too faded to even make out. He gets a memory of when it was perfect.

It looked a lot like the family drawing he made for Karai.

He frowns at knowing what happened right after he gave it to her. He also frowns at the fact that the drawing was so ruined.

He wishes it had lasted longer.

His attention is drawn away when Leo announces that the bed is ready.

He takes the drawing with him and places it at a table near the front door before heading to the room.

Once everyone has come together there, it’s still a while before they actually sleep.

Several pillow fights kept them up.

Splinter was the winner and made sure they knew he always would be. He made his pillows seem like kunai.

Finally, however, they were all in an exhausted pile on the floor.

Splinter had already began snoring loudly.

The turtles were so tired though that they were quickly nodding off.

They held each other a little tighter than usual as they fell asleep.

They felt luckier than ever that they still could.

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bluebeardsfinalgirl · 8 months

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#girls who return to their hometown because of child murders only yo discover dark secrets about their siblings death from years earlier ❤️#girls haunted by the past and forever stuck in the worst parts of childhood and adulthood ❤️#sharp objects #fnaf #charlie emily #camille preaker #fnaf novels #fnaf books

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lonelone-ly · 1 year

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I totally didn’t write an abo vashwood angst fic where Vash lies to Wolfwood about being on bc and regrets it’s but then Ww dies and he has to raise the kid without him and suffers tremendously as the child reminds him so much of wolfwood.

Not at all.

And it’s totally not titled after a Hozier song… absolutely not.

Anyway here’s the real description:

Vash wished he could call it a subconscious decision or something that just happened in the heat of the moment but It wasn’t. It had been lingering like a phantom in his mind for all the years that he’d been in love with him. His alpha, his mate, Nico.

Just thinking about how upset Wolfwood might be…He wanted to undo it all, but he didn’t. Wolfwood had unknowingly convinced him. With his jovial smile as he played with the kids of Hopeland Orphanage...By how he smiled at the picture of him and Livio as kids.

It was a shame Wolfwood never saw the outcome of it all. The outcome of their love.

#trigun #trigun stampede #ao3 works #vashwood #major character death #not really spoilers past tristamp 12 I just kind of made up future events #omegaverse #no undeath…unless?#jk undeath…unless??#child ocs #Meryl and Millie are wine aunts #Vash and Knives being semi normal siblings #knives redemption #vashwood fic #trigun fic #tristamp #trimax

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lultimagoccia · 1 month

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@crvptd is calling, pick up phone!

Factory Reset ! ( either for her remembering and him not, or some sort of interaction from before they actually met? 👀)

he should be grateful to be alive.

ungrateful. selfish. lazy. unworthy.

so much had been sacrificed to ensure he was still around to see this day. another day behind a pane of glass, sunken down within his own skin, watching the world transpire around him as he simply moved through it. no more than a ghost.

you should be grateful.

peppino spaghetti, barely aged past 20 years old and looking far older, flicked a cigarette carelessly into the underbrush before crushing it under his boot. he often escaped into the woods just north of town to be alone. not alone in the sense where the nights were too quiet without a second series of breaths to fill the empty air or alone in that the bus seat next to him was never offered and never taken, reserved for a passenger that would never again arrive to fill it.

alone as in. no worrying looks. no grandfatherly wisdom that he doubted he'd make much use of, useless and numb as he'd become these days. no joyless comforting smiles. just him. and his fists.

his body lived on, even when his mind and heart felt half - dead or TOO alive with sensations and panic and terror and absolute foaming, drooling, shaking FURY. his body had demands, food and rest. his body could be disciplined for failing to break, when everything within it had shattered to pieces.

couldn't even give your life to save his. couldn't live right. couldn't even die right. coward. worthless. die. die. die. die.

one, two, one, two. a pattern of fists, driving into splintering wood again, again, again again until the trunks of the trees he was punching so brutally inevitably gave way and collapsed. then it was on to the next tree, or the next stone to punch for hours until he was exhausted, bloodied, and sore.

at least he felt something, piercing and deep. something that stayed.

he sank down to a sit, at the end of the latest session of destruction, fists a mess of slashed skin and blood. he ached all over. but, like the first chill of a winter morning, it only sank so deep. his anger, his sorrow, his regret still bubbled below the surface of that impenetrable icy layer.

fingers grazed over damp locks of hair atop his head before seizing the curls in a furiously tight grip, peppino's body beginning to rock back and forth. he could scream. god, he could just SCREAM, but like everything else it sat deep within his chest and refused to be drawn out.

so he just sat there and bled.

useless.

#;v: past #;meme response #crvptd #self harm tw #sibling death tw #suicidal ideation tw #blood tw #( a chance encounter in the woods! )

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izzydaninja · 2 months

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Summary: "One moment, he’s on his own, debating on taking Rouge’s offer to join her and the others for Sonic’s birthday party, and then the next, the sky’s ripping open with some strange looking portal, and he’s being pulled in. Everything goes white, and when he comes to, he’s in a very familiar, long, metallic hallway."

*No stealing!* Thank you!

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strifethedestroyer · 10 months

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my uncle died. hm

this is the first time i've ever reached the tag limit. the last word is meant to be funeral.

#text #interesting experience #i mean it was expected he's been suffering for a couple of months now. he got a lot better at one point and everyone was like woo you're-#-gonna survive! you're not gonna be like before but you're not gonna die but eh voila he died #like a week ago he was sent to the hospital because his kidneys just failed and the doctors said nah dude he's on his deathbed. better #just die at home rather than dying in the hospital alone so they took him home and they've been waiting ever since and here we are #personally i barely know shit about the guy. he used to deliver us bread and he shook my hand once and smiled at me. radiated a good aura #but i dont know anything. dad says he really respected and loved my brother and i so ill take his word for it #but man for the past like month its all you hear about. like i dont mean this in a derogatory way i completely understand dont get me wrng #but its just death death death all around #an hour or so ago i was walking my dog with my mom and brother and i just said i wonder if uncle's died yet #20 minutes afterwards my mom gets a call that he's died. uncle was in a different room from the rest of the family so they couldnt know #exactly when he died (we went to visit at about 5 pm today and he was alive but asleep) but my parents think it must have been around when #i said that. dad's superstitious and all and says that uncle sent me a sign. like i said apparently uncle loved me a lot. im not #superstitious but i'll take his word for it - uncle sent me a sign before he died.#i feel a little bad now. he seemed like a good man. im just replaying my only memory of him - that time when he shook my hand and smiled #like smiled very brightly. he and grandma look so alike. like ofc they do they're siblings but they look so alike #im very worried for my parents and grandma though.#espechially grandma. she's been at his house almost all week becuase she knew his time was soon #when we visited today we were supposed to pick her up and bring her home and then return her tomorrow but once we arrived she apparently #said (idk i didnt go inside i just wandered outside and pspsed at cats #that she didnt want to come home becuase he was very ill. she knew man she knew.#i dont know how she's going to handle this i just hope she'll be okay we'll do what we can to help her #i hope my parents are going to be okay too. me and my mom's relationship is rocky and i dont like my dad much #my dad returned from europe yesterday to stay with us for a month and i was really not looking forward to it. i always dread his visits #like dont get me wrong i love him just like im supposed to i just dont like him very much #but nonetheless i hope they'll be okay #as far as i know my brother also didnt know my uncle very well so i dont think i have to worry about him #he and i will just have to do our best to support our family i guess #about like 30 minutes ago my parents left for uncle's house and they'll return early morning tomorrow and then go back immidietaly for the

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meteoritesystem · 10 months

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kind of insane reading through or just looking back on old stories i wrote and seeing how pretty much every main character i wrote had abusive/neglectful parents and how i tried to get in the minds of + understand/rationalize the parents' actions....... like every story was in at least a small way a case study for a guy i made up as if it would help me interpret my actual real life

#text #like damian's parents saw him as a monster & a bad person for a mistake he made (male!bisexual!no magic!elsa au FJFJDFJ)#mae's mother saw her as a reminder of past trauma she was already struggling to deal with #theos brother thomas was secretly drinking to cope with his parents' deaths + becoming essentially a parent to his siblings #et cetera.#I WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL . STILL HAVE NOT BEEN IN FACT .#ok well theres your self analysis for the day 👍#abuse tw

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gamerbot-22 · 2 years

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Arcana LIs Tending to Red Plague Trauma Flashbacks (Part 2: Julian & Muriel)

Part two to the following request by @dameschnee123!

Feel like we need to ramp up the angst so when you can piggybacking off of my last request, M6 when MC has a horrible flare up ft. a lengthy bout of high fever + memories/hallucinations of being burned at the Lazaret. For a lil fluff the first thing they do when the fever breaks is call for the M6.

I would also like to thank @starry-eyed-wolf for giving me the motivation to get this wrapped up finally!

DNI

C & TWs include:

All: Angst, sad/bittersweet endings at best, discussion of trauma/traumatic events. Julian: Hallucinations, mild descriptions of the feeling of burning alive Muriel: Anxiety

Part 1 | Part 3 (WIP)

🩸 Julian (x)

"HERE! I’M HERE!”

The shop rattles as Julian stumbles in through a back window, nearly falling flat on his face when his foot catches on the windowsill. Malak crows in alarm, soaring in over the doctor's head and flying in circles around the interior of the shop. His heavy black wings shake hanging gems and bundles of herbs. The air fills with the smell of the distressed herbs and the dry screams of the raven.

Any other night, Malak would have perched himself on the skull on one of the back shelves. Julian would have a glass jar full of soup in one arm, a smile on his face, ready to share dinner and a few stories with you. Now, both creatures are full of fear.

Julian staggers to his feet, accidentally slamming the window behind him shut just a tad too hard, causing the frame to rattle in place once more. "MC!" He calls into the shop, dashing through the curtains of the back room he stumbled in from and into the main room of the first floor. "Be quiet, Malak!" He scolds, half-heartedly swiping at his companion as he continues his restless flight around the room. "MC!"

Malak squawks once more before landing on the counter, hopping from side to side and restlessly shifting his wings against his back. Once he settles, it's oddly quiet. There's no sign of life aside from the gently swinging wares that Malak had bumped into earlier. Julian stands at the foot of the stairs, a hand on the banister as he looks up. He doesn't realize that he's holding his breath until he hears the wooden floor above him creak. "MC?" He calls, much softer this time but still tinged with worry.

Upstairs something crashes and the doctor shifts back into high gear, quickly ascending the stairs with his coat flowing behind him like a heavy shadow. Malak follows after, cawing once he reaches the top of the stairs and zips in through your open bedroom door ahead of Julian.

"Stay back!" You yell as Julian rounds the corner after Malak, stopping the doctor dead in his tracks. You're propped up against the bedframe, breathing ragged and panicked, and face red and wet with sweat. In one arm you wield Asra's old traveling staff, aiming it right at Julian's heart. Your grip is shaky, like your arms could give out at any moment and send you crumpling to the floor. "Don't touch me!"

Julian raises his hands in defense and takes half a step back from you. "Won't! I won't! I'm over here." He assures you quickly, speaking against the growing lump in his throat.

Malak settles on the end of the traveling staff, folding his wings and staring down his beak at you. The sight of him sends a jolt of fear up your back and you drop the staff, shrieking and falling backwards onto the floor. The raven quickly takes flight before he can hit the floor and crows in panic, flying into yet another fit of going in circles around the room.

"HEY. You quit flying around this instant!" Julian hisses, raising his hands towards the ceiling and swatting at Malak a few times. The bird's cawing mixes with your panicked screams and Julian's heartbeat throbbing in his ears; it's all unbearable. After a few futile attempts Julian manages to land a light but firm hit to the side of Malak's wing, disrupting the bird mid-flap and finally getting the message across that Malak needed to leave.

The distressed cawing quiets as Malak makes an exit, soaring out to the hall and down the stairs. Julian doesn't even stop to think of whatever might be happening now that his companion's fit moved to the shop, all he can focus on is you, laying flat on the floor of your bedroom, struggling to find the strength to prop yourself up.

"MC, please, hold still," His voice is still shaky with annoyance, but his tone is vastly more serious. His coat trails behind him when he kneels beside your head and it takes every ounce of restraint to not just pick you up. You very clearly did not want to be touched, and he wasn't about to distress you any further unless it was completely necessary. "What's happening, what do you see?"

"Stay back," you wheeze. The fight still rages in your chest, but your body doesn't follow through on your effort to get up and run away from the shadow looming over your side. You were used to the doctors in their blood stained white frocks, their sickly-sweet or macabre monotone voices, and their horrible tools you saw them brandish at both you and other patients. Was this a new doctor? A change in staff? Something entirely worse? "Please don't take me downstairs..." You plead against the hot tears welling in your eyes.

Julian's heart sinks at your tone. He balls both hands into fists and rest them on the floor beside his hips and rocks backs away from your face. "You don't have to go anywhere you don't want to, MC," The doctor says firmly, trying to keep it together. The last thing you need now is to have him openly panicking, too.

"What are you seeing, MC?" The shadow's voice echoes in your head, making your head throb like a beating drum. Tears are freely falling down your face now. Your body feels like it's on fire and your vision is res and blurred at the edges.

"A s-shadow..." You rasp, trying to roll onto your side away from Julian.

"Hey hey hey!" Julian carefully takes you by the shoulder and you twist against him, whimpering as two big tears roll down your cheeks. "I know, but you shouldn't move," Julian orders and slightly tightens his his grip.

The gears in the doctor's head are turning at double speed, trying to sort out how he's going to help you. "Where's the shadow?"

"Y...You."

Ok, so you're hallucinating. "Is the shadow scaring you?"

"Yes..." Your body shakes as you cough. Slowly you start to curl into yourself, trembling hands clutching at your clothes to simulate a tighter space.

"Hey, I don't want to scare you," Julian drops the Big Doctor voice and sits upright, still gently holding your shoulder. "I'm not scary, I just want to help you."

You don't respond outside of a miserable whimper. The beating in your skull is getting louder and the reverb feels like it's spreading out to the rest of your skeleton, shaking you down to your marrow. It all hurts so much.

He wants to ask you more questions but you're clearly in no shape to speak now. Carefully and quietly, Julian unfastens his coat and lets it fall to the floor behind him, then sets to work removing his heavy gloves. "You're sweating a lot. Are you warm? You can just nod."

Julian watches you closely as you tilt your head up and down slowly. "Can I touch you? I promise it won't hurt you. Nod if yes."

Another soft nod follows. Julian sighs in relief and pulls off one of his gloves, holding it in his other hand so he can reach for you. Portia always told him he had the coldest hands, and he wasn't about to leave you like this, so maybe this would help you to cool off while you regained your strength.

You flinch against the shadow's fingers when they touch the back of your neck. It's cold, freezing even, compared to the burning heat that threatens to consume your entire body. "Does this help?" The shadow asks behind you. It's voice sounds familiar now, but your head still hurts too much to think about it. "Yes," you respond through grit teeth.

"I can cool you off more if you come with me," Julian assures you, not moving an inch from his spot on the floor. You seem to be responding better to him now, so he feels more confident in suggesting further relief. "I can get you some cold water we can put on your forehead, and there's medicine I can give you downstairs."

Instantly the heat comes searing back, frying the ends of your nerves and threatening to roast you from the inside out. With a panicked sob you try to scramble away from the formerly comforting shadow. "N-No! Not downstairs! You can't make me!"

Julian stares in surprise for a second before scrambling to his feet. "Hey, hey! I won't make you go anywhere!" He insists, once again stifling the urge to just pick you up and hold you. "You just need your medicine, please--"

"Whatever medicine is downstairs you can keep to yourself..." Your words drip with a venom so potent it almost stops Julian's heart completely.

Your heart sinks as you look over your shoulder and find the shadow's shoulder slumped, the hand it had pressed to your neck half extended towards your crumpled shape on the floor. An unknown guilt constricts your throat alongside the smoke that rises from your stomach and you wish desperately you could take back what you said.

Both Julian and you stay in place, frozen stock stiff and silent as death. The weight of your words hangs like a sword over your heads, and it feels like an eternity before Julian finds the ability to speak.

"I know you're confused," he speaks slowly, cautiously stepping close to you, "and very scared. Very very scared." Julian kneels once more, keeping his ungloved hand outstretched to you. "But whatever you're seeing isn't real, MC. I'm here and I want to help you."

You tremble against the side of the bed on the floor, one arm thrown over the top of the mattress and clutching at the blanket. The fearful beating in your chest starts to slow to a more reasonable pace as the shadow in front of you speaks. As it speaks you swear the voice becomes more and more familiar.

"There's nothing downstairs that will hurt you. And if anything tries, I'll be there with you." Julian gently touches his fingertips to your trembling hand. You aren't as hot as you were earlier, and his shoulders relax in relief. "Please, MC, let me help you."

The uncomfortable warmth living in your hands retreats against the shadow's cold touch. Your head throbs once or twice more before seemingly relaxing, clearing the edges of your vision. Everything still seems strange still, a little otherworldly, maybe, but the fear starts to leave as the shadow fully takes your hand in its own.

"Y-You promise it's safe?"

"On my life, MC." Julian gently takes your other arm and lifts you to your feet, propping you against his chest before your legs can give out and send you back to the floor. "Come on, I'll keep you safe."

The two of you quietly move from your bedroom to the hall to the staircase. Julian's sure grip and comforting promises of safety keep you steady as you travel down the stairs. By the time you reach the landing, your headache is almost completely gone and your body doesn't feel like it's cooking from the inside out anymore.

"You sit here, I left my bag in the back room." The shadow helps you settle onto a cushion near one of the shop windows. He presses his bare hand to your forehead, feeling out any remnant of the fever. "Seems almost normal now, but you should still take some medicine. I'll just be a second."

The shadow turns away with a flourish, the image of a black coat coming through clearly in your eyes. A little stunned, you rub your eyes and look towards the doorway to the back room, but all you catch is a boot sliding between the shutting curtains. You look over the room and slowly start to recognize the familiar sights and smells of your shop. On the shelf behind the counter sits Malak, having long since calmed down from his panicking from earlier. If Malak is here, then...

"Julian?" Your voice is strained but loud enough to get his attention. The doctor's tired face pokes out from behind the curtains and he lifts his arm, showing off the cloth bag of medicine he's started to take with him everywhere.

"Right here, my love," he smiles. You see that his eyes are a little watery as he strides back over to you, easily producing a small vial of an orange-ish medicine from his bag.

"What happened?"

"It was just a bad flare up," his assurance seems a little flimsy as he kneels beside you on the ground. Without breaking eye contact with you he opens the glass vial with a satisfying pop! "Open, please, this'll help kill that fever."

You take the medicine from Julian and down the dose in one swig. Your whole body shudders against the artificial taste and you involuntarily stick your tongue out like a child.

"It's awful, I know," Julian chuckles, taking the empty bottle from you and dropping it back in the bag.

"Ilya, I'm so sorry," you sigh, leaning against his chest. You feel his torso stiffen under you, no doubt his face red with a blush at the sudden contact. "I said that awful thing to you... and I almost hit you with the staff..."

Julian freezes, pondering what to say. Truly he's at a loss for words to comfort you. Finally he just wraps his arms around you, holding you as close as he can manage, letting your warm body settle against his. "It's alright, MC, it's alright..." You can feel his chest puff up a little before he continues "It wouldn't be the first time I was threatened with a staff, after all. Doubt it will be the last. Did I ever tell you that story, MC? About the marauders I met outside of Firent?"

You chuckle against his neck, "No I don't think you have." The adrenaline wearing off from that whole experience has left you completely wiped, and a story would definitely help your descent into a comforting sleep. "Tell me about it, would you?"

"It would be my pleasure, love."

🐻 Muriel (x)

You had been getting progressively worse for the last few days. It wasn't anything new to either you or Muriel, but you could tell by the way he stood just a little closer to you than normal and gave you a little extra soup every evening that he was worried. He always stayed close to the hut, making sure your window was open and he and Inanna were in earshot at all times and every day or so he would tell you how the neighbors were doing.

Today was actually a very eventful day for the neighbors, as the latest round of chicks had just hatched. After the chicks had some time to get acclimated to the world around them and rested with their mothers and a few handfuls of feed as a bribe, Muriel gathers a few chicks together in his hands and brings them back to the hut.

The man is brimming with excitement. You've always taken an interest in the neighbors (even if it was a little annoying when you first insisted on helping feed them,) and seeing the newest additions to the family was sure to lift your spirits.

Muriel carefully cradles the chicks in his hands, speaking softly to them about how nice you are and how happy you're going to be to see them as he shoulders the door open. As soon as the heavy wood gives way and creaks inward, Muriel is greeted by Inanna shoving her face against his arm, jostling him so hard he almost drops the chicks.

"Inanna..!" He quickly raises his hands away from the wolf, sheltering the chicks against his chest. Inanna wasn't the type to jump on anyone, least of all him, without reason. Instantly Muriel begins to worry. He didn't hear you say hello when he opened the door, and the fire in the fireplace sounds like it's gone out since he started it earlier that morning.

Inanna snuffs against Muriel's arm, a low whine rumbling in her throat, then steps away and trots over to your bedside. Muriel's shoulders drop when he turns to see you. Your face is drenched in sweat, tears leaking from beneath your eyelids and hands clutching at the fur blanket so tightly you could pull the fur out. Your chest heaves with each shallow breath, the occasional groan of pain a dry creak that barely makes its way past your lips.

Quickly Muriel follows Inanna to you, still holding the chicks in his hands. He frantically looks around for where he can put them before settling on putting them in a hand-carved wooden bowl on the shelf above you. Once they're all in he sits beside you, carefully sliding one arm under your neck and lifting you up to lean against him. Your face is burning hot against his chest and hands, but he doesn't let you go. Inanna leaps up onto the mattress and lays across your legs and hips, putting as much weight as she can manage on you to try to steady your breathing.

"MC?" Muriel asks softly against your head. He carefully brushes your hair out of your face and wipes the sweat off your forehead with his calloused fingers. "Hey, MC, wake up." His voice begins to shake.

You stir against him and Inanna, a dry rasp the only thing that escapes you. "Stay there, Inanna," Muriel sets you back down against the pillows. You could talk just fine when he left for the chickens earlier. Had you been yelling for him? Or were you just dehydrated from a flare up? Muriel couldn't decide which was worse while he hurriedly checks his shelves beside the fireplace for the medicine he's been making for the past month or so. In his search, a few pieces of earthenware get jostled from their spot, with one bowl sliding all the way off the shelf and crashing to the floor, shattering on impact. The hermit curses under his breath before kicking the fragments away. He can clean it up later.

Finally, hidden behind several other jars of herbs and home-made salves, Muriel finds the little jar of cooling salve sitting pristinely at the back of the shelf. He snatches it quickly and in just two strides he's back by you and Inanna.

The wolf is laying entirely over your legs, her head resting on your stomach now to try to spread out the weight. Her yellow eyes are focused on your face and nothing else, and she hardly acknowledges Muriel outside of a slight wag of her bushy tail.

Muriel carefully opens the glass jar, immediately getting hit with the strong smell of peppermint and ginger. Inanna huffs from her spot on top of you but doesn't move. "I know, Inanna, but it should help." Normally he would've gotten some kind of tool to help apply the thick salve in the jar, but he wasted enough time already trying to find the thing. He knows you probably can't hear him, but he still gives you a small warning before applying the medicine to your cheeks and forehead.

You flinch away from Muriel's touch at first, but it doesn't stop his effort. He just waits until you settle again before trying again, going as long as you'll let him before turning away again. It feels like it takes hours before he's finished spreading the salve across your skin.

Muriel sits on the floor beside you, setting the salve aside and resting his chin on the mattress by your shoulder. Inanna shifts her weight slightly, occasionally wagging her tail or huffing to keep herself awake and aware. At the very least the medicine seems to keep your fever down, as you aren't sweating as much.

For a while the three of you stay in place, totally silent until a soft peeping from the shelf above you reminds Muriel of the chicks he brought specifically for you to see. With a grumble Muriel stands upright and reaches for the bowl he put the chicks in, taking care as he leans over you and Inanna. Only one of the three chicks is awake with the other two curled up close at the bottom of the bowl. "I suppose you three want to go back to Mama, don't you?"

"I'll be right back, MC," he touches your shoulder shyly before stepping back outside, carrying the chicks carefully in his arms. Muriel's head is clouded with thought as he makes his way to the neighbors' nest. He knows the path so well he can navigate the uneven terrain perfectly while he thinks of you back at the hut, throat strained and hands tight with pain. Inanna is with you, yes, and he trusts her with everything, but he still worries that something might happen more while he's out.

This will be the last time he leaves the hut for a while, he decides. There's plenty of food in storage and anything else he needs he can get on the way back from delivering the chicks. Speaking of, he pushes through the underbrush of the forest and arrives just before sundown to the chickens' little haven in the wood. He kneels near one of the nests, gently rubbing the chicks' backs before laying his hands flat on the ground and letting them back to their mother. The experienced hen barely lifts herself to let them squirm under her feathers to join their siblings, clucking softly as the last one manages to squeeze in.

"See you," Muriel nods before rising back to his feet and turning back towards his home. Occasionally he stops to gather a few herbs and wild vegetables, but in he end he only returns with maybe a handful of vegetation total.

He pushes through the door once more, this time it opens much easier. Inanna's ears perk up in acknowledgement as Muriel arrives, but she otherwise remains still, her eyes still fixed squarely on your face. At least your breathing has seemed to steady while he was out.

Muriel set all the herbs away in the sacks he keeps in the corner for food and finally gathers up the shattered pieces of clay from earlier and sets them carefully on his workbench. The container should be easy enough to fix, and it's not like he has plans to go anywhere else for a while. It'd be a nice project to work on while you all wait for the flare up to subside.

After everything is set in its place, Muriel just sort of stands in the middle of the hut, shifting his gaze between you and Inanna. Inanna just stares back at him occasionally, her mouth settled squarely in an almost puppy-like begging face as she looks between her two humans.

Minutes of silence pass and are only interrupted when Muriel's stomach growls with the ferocity of a caged tiger. It would be amusing if it wasn't suddenly so uncomfortable. He should probably make some food... Maybe the smell will help ease whatever is on your mind as you rest. The hermit turns back to the fireplace, re-lighting the wood that's already there and adding more kindling to it. The pot hanging over the new fire is empty, ready for a whole new stew from last time.

Inanna likes lamb the most out of all the meet Muriel has already, and he had some carrots and potatoes, so that's the obvious choice. Also probably the easiest. Alright, that'll be what's for dinner.

It's quiet as Muriel prepares everything. Inanna doesn't huff or whine while everything is cut and seasoned, having fallen asleep by the time Muriel made his decision for dinner. The only sound in the entire hut is Inanna's occasional snore, you turning against her weight, and the stew bubbling once Muriel has it over the fire.

As the thick soup cooks, Muriel sits back down beside you, this time pulling the chair from his worktable over so he's not just sitting on the floor. He gently rubs Inanna's head, waking her up from her heavy slumber. Her ears perk up and she looks sideways at her companion, a concerned whine squeaking past her jaws. "I know, Inanna," Muriel sighs, smoothing her coarse dark fur. "They'll be alright. I think you're helping a lot."

Her tail wags softly with a half-hearted pride and fixes her eyes back on you. Your breathing has steadied and your sweat seemed to have lightened up. Muriel quietly thanked Asra for his help with making the salve.

"Do you want some stew?" Muriel asks no one in particular once he smells the spices in the pot. Inanna carefully lifts her head, tilting it in interest when Muriel gets up and shuffles over to the fire. As he readies three bowls for serving, his mind starts to wander. You had been quiet since he gave you the medicine and Inanna got settled on top of you. One side of his brain was calmly reassuring him, drawing the conclusion that whatever was upsetting you earlier had past, and now you were just getting some well deserved rest. The other side, however, was starting to settle into full panic mode. What if he somehow made it worse with that medicine? Was the smell too much for you? Is Inanna too heavy? Did you call for him while he was gone and he wasn't there to comfort you? Were you ever going to wake up?

Muriel freezes in place by the fire, just staring into the flames while he tried to make sense of his thoughts. He didn't even realize how much it was hurting his eyes until he felt Inanna press her cold nose into his hand, shaking him free. "Thanks, Inanna," he breathes, setting the half-full bowl of stew in his hands on the floor for his friend. "I'll watch MC for now." She licks his hand once before turning to her dinner, immediately going for the biggest chunk of lamb.

He's barely made two steps towards you before you toss in your sleep, taking the first deep breath of consciousness. "Muriel...?"

"'M right here." He sounds a little more frantic than he means to as he slides across the dirt floor to be right by your side. Inanna disregards her food entirely and trots over beside Muriel, shoving her cold nose right against your cheek and huffing affectionately.

"Oh--" you groan, gently pushing Inanna out of your personal space, "Hello to you, too, Inanna." You push against the mattress and sit upright, Inanna and Muriel watching you closely the entire motion. "What happened?"

Muriel's breath hitches. "I... I don't know. I wasn't here." His heart lodges in his throat and he tries to fight back a few tears, "I wasn't here but I should have been. I gave you some medicine and Inanna watched you for a while but I don't... I don't know what happened."

Your eyes widen with surprise, maybe a little guilt, too. You don't remember much from past this morning when Muriel went to check traps and visit the chickens. The only thing you can piece together from then and now is the weight of what must have been Inanna on your chest and a cool feeling on your face and neck. That was probably the medicine Muriel was talking about.

"Hey, it's alright." You rest your hand over Muriel's. A few tears run down his scared face and onto your knuckles when he takes your hand in his and squeezes. "I'm glad you were here when I woke up."

"M-Me, too." He breathes, more tears welling up in his eyes.

You both sit in heavy silence for a moment before Inanna takes it upon herself to break it. She puts her front paws on the chair Muriel is sitting in and licks the side of his face, wiping away tears but leaving some wolf slobber behind in the process.

"Aw, Inanna," you laugh, letting go of Muriel's hands so he can wipe the thick spit off of his face.

The wolf barks once, unashamed of her actions, before turning tail and walking back to her bowl of stew. Once Muriel is finished cleaning himself off, a tight chuckle escapes him. "I don't suppose you're hungry after that big nap."

"Are you kidding? I'm starving."

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eldritchaccident · 7 months

Text

Timing: After [this] Dash Convo

Location: The Jones House

Feat: @mortemoppetere & @eldritchaccident

Warnings: Past implications of child death tw and sibling death tw

Summary: It's a surprise for Emilio!

The building was already there. Technically, both of the projects Teds had been working on were, but this particular use-to-be-old storage shed was the important one for the slayer. For the surprise Teddy had called him over about, and the cause of the stupid grin on the ex-demon’s face. Emilio Cortez had been antsy, stuck in place just about as much as if he had been goo-ified. He’d expressed interest in starting up cases again, and to do that, Teddy thought, he might need a place to start from.

The multitude of temporary jobs Ted had taken on had left them with a multitude of strange skills. More than that, it left them with a vast web of contacts in nearly every profession. Upwards of half with a favor or two stored up, which Teddy cashed. Helped in a pinch like this when the deadlines were short and the vision was strong. The result? A professional place for a professional detective.

“Took you long enough to hobble over, old man.” The smile never left Ted’s lips, even if there was a mischievous glint to it as they watched the slayer approach from the main house. Even this late in fall the gardens seemed to bloom, giving a backdrop worthy of a renaissance oil painting, Emilio as the central subject. Aglow in the evening light, the sounds of the ocean gently washing up in the distance, and just– okay Teddy had to shake themself to get back to the moment. It wasn’t oggle at roommate hours. It was time to show off their latest project.

Which all started with a flip of a sign, from closed to open.

—

The aches the warden had left him with hadn’t quite faded, and probably wouldn’t for a while. The leg, in particular, was a nuisance; even before his latest altercation, the limb had been a source of constant pain, but since the other hunter’s foot had made contact with his knee, it felt far worse. Walking was difficult, standing was a chore. And if asked, Emilio would still insist that it was worth it. Even though Teddy hadn’t been thrilled about the revelation, even if his paranoia had taken a turn for the worse since waking up from that drug-induced nap in the forest floor, even if everything seemed heavier now. The euphoria of vengeance, even if it wasn’t as much as he might have liked to exact, outweighed the rest of it.

Especially when that vengeance was for Teddy.

It was hard to say when they’d become a person so important that avenging their tail felt just as important as killing the vampires who’d hurt Wynne in the basement of that barn, but somewhere along the line, it had happened. He thought about Teddy, terrified and tearful in the floor of their kitchen, and he couldn’t muster up an ounce of regret for the way his blade found purchase in another hunter with such ease. Not even Rhett’s anger could chase away his satisfaction.

It felt good. Good enough for him to have no problem entertaining the ex-demon’s whims without much complaint. “I think you are older than me,” he pointed out, leg practically dragging behind him as he made his way over to the out building where Teddy stood.

He didn’t pay much attention to the things around Teddy’s house; as paranoid as he was, he didn’t want to pry when it came to someone who was offering him a place to stay with no real expectation of getting anything in return. He’d assumed the building was storage of some kind, maybe housing Levi’s leftover shit. Now, he wasn’t so sure. There was a sign on the door; Teddy flipped it from closed to open, and Emilio raised a brow. “What’s this?”

—

“You’re not wearing the brace.” Finally the cheshire grin simmered to a scowl, if only for a second. Teddy had made sure the thing was easy to put on and that it was comfortable enough to wear. Even to run in, though it was becoming evidently unlikely that Emilio was going to put it on himself without Ted’s intervention. Hell, maybe not unless Teddy slipped the damn thing on his leg themself. “It will help Emilio, also, you act older than me so I can call you whatever I want.”

The tone was light, but stern. An attempt to convey the concern they held for the man and his less than stellar joint. Ted knew Emilio well enough at this point to know he’d come up with every excuse in the book. Obstinate and stubborn as a brick wall. But maybe, just maybe if he could see how much support the brace would give, he’d understand why they were so adamant about him using it. In a way, a very deeply buried way, it would be like Teds was the one giving Emilio that upper hand. That support. In a way, their telling him to stay safe was just another method of saying ‘Come back to me alive.’

With a sigh, Teddy spun around, threw an arm around Emilio’s shoulder and gestured toward the door. Specifically, toward the lettering on the frosted glass pane. Axis Investigations. Looking decisively like an old Noir detective’s door. But that was just the beginning. Inside wasn’t huge, but it was an upgrade to the situation Emilio had before. It was separate from where the man didn’t sleep, and didn’t eat, so it could be its own private space. A boon for both the man and all his clients. Ted’s hand opened and dropped a jingling set of keys, hoping that Em’s reflexes would be quick enough to grab them before they fell. If not, it’d be funny anyway.

“Wanna check it out?”

—

“I don’t like the brace,” Emilio replied, stubborn as ever. On a logical level, he knew Teddy was right because he knew Teddy wouldn’t suggest something they knew Emilio would hate without confidence in their ability to prove him wrong. If he put the brace on, it would help. He’d ache less, he’d feel better. But there was a block there, a quiet inability to follow through. Maybe it was the perceived weakness of it all — the fact that wearing the brace would offer physical proof of his inability to function on his own, as if what he was doing now could be called functioning. Or maybe it was something else, something a little more self-destructive. If Emilio hurt, it was because he deserved to hurt. That was the lesson he’d grown up learning over and over again, a thing that had been ground into him.

Teddy didn’t believe it, of course. They weren’t the first one to challenge the ideal — Wicked’s Rest in particular was full of people who seemed adamant that Emilio was worth more than he actually was — but they had certainly become one of the most vocal. Like if they said it loud enough, they might be heard. Like if it was screamed, it could become true. Emilio didn’t know how to explain to them that you couldn't make a man worth something just by believing it hard enough; he didn’t think they’d listen to reason. They rarely did. “I act older than you because you act like a child,” he hummed, though there was an undeniable fondness to his tone. “Acting older than you isn’t hard.”

He allowed Teddy to throw the arm around him in spite of everything, even leaned against them just a little. Not enough to make them take his weight, but enough that it would be noticeable. He leaned in, looked at the lettering on the door with a furrowed brow. Axis Investigations. Turning to Teddy, he tilted his head just a little, as if asking a question. Then, they were dropping a set of keys and he was reaching out instinctively, grabbing them from the air.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “All right. Show me.”

—

“You don’t like a lot of things, Cortez. You didn’t like me at first either, and now I’m asking you to wear the damn brace so you can walk, pendy joe.” One might think after all the smiling they had done, the mischievous beaming expression of Teddy Jones would not possibly be able to get bigger or more shark-like. This would, however, be an incredibly wrong assumption as there always seemed to be an extra tooth to be found somewhere in their maw, adding to that dangerous hundred watt grin. (That somehow always looked too sharp. Despite, of course, being very normal and human teeth now. Unremarkable except perhaps the small chip on the outside of their front right tooth from a sledding incident when they were twelve that they had kept through each shift because they thought it looked cute.) Now, Teddy knew how to say it. They had heard the proper pronunciation from the mouth of the very man they’d turned the curse around upon. But that wasn’t half as fun as watching his expression shrivel as they used it back at him. Amping up the cursed part of the curse word. Pendejo. Pretty much exactly what they were being right then.

This, in turn, exemplified the sentiment that Emilio had expressed. Teddy was very immature. And it was exceedingly obvious that this had become something that Emilio found endearing. Or at least amusing. Teds never really clocked the exact moment when that changed, but it only served to entice them more. To embolden the whimsical nature of the ex-demon. It did not need emboldening, but here they were anyway.

Emilio’s weight leaned against him and Teddy swore to whatever higher powers in the world that allowed them to be in this position that they were going to stay respectful. To not pry or pull whatever had the slayer always fiddling with that wedding ring from him until he wanted to talk about it. Respectfully, Teddy nodded and gestured for the man to open up the locks, a right of passage the detective himself should get to do. Respectfully, they did not speak a single word of how their chest fluttered at the contact. At how they tightened their hold because they didn’t want Emilio any farther away than where he was right then. Respectfully, they did not confess the way the golden hour made him look radiant. Like a painting of an old Greek hero. (Well, a damn hot beautiful Mexican hero done up in the style of those Greek statues or oil painted portraits you’d see up in the Louvre.) Even more respectfully, they didn’t even imagine what he might look like under the five layers of sweaters that he absolutely had stolen from Teddy’s wardrobe as soon as the weather started to turn.

—

“You ask me to do a lot of stupid things,” Emilio pointed out, grumbling. “And I can walk just fine, I don’t need —” He broke off as the ‘curse’ registered, his expression shifting from one thing to another like that of a man experiencing all stages of grief in one fell swoop. He looked at Teddy, blinking slowly as the irritation settled back in, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. “I think I still hate you, actually. Pendy joe.” He mimicked the failed attempt at Spanish in his best version of Teddy’s accent… which was about as bad as Teddy’s attempt at pendejo. “You know that isn’t right. You do this just to torture me. Pendy joe. I’m going to trip you.”

Still grumbling under his breath — a widely unintelligible collection of mumbles with a few distinctive repetitions of pendy joe popping up here and there — the detective slipped the key into the hole and tried not to think too hard about the warmth of Teddy’s body where he leaned against them. Emilio had always run colder than most, his base temperature a few degrees below what might be considered the average. He didn’t know if it was a slayer thing, something tied to the way his blood burned on vampires’ tongues, or if it was just an Emilio thing. He’d never cared much to find out. It didn’t matter why. It just meant that, in the winter months, he was shivering and angry more often than not, glaring at the world from underneath however many jackets he could get away with wearing. His mother had hated it, of course. As a child, she’d ensured he only owned one coat; anything more was a weakness, and he was so weak already. Since her death, he’d stocked up. Leather jackets fished from thrift store bins, a few discarded hoodies from the dumpster outside his building and, since moving in here, a number of sweaters he’d stealthily acquired from Teddy’s closet. He was wearing one now, hidden beneath the zipped-up leather jacket that he tended to default to.

But when they were like this, he could almost pretend he didn’t need it. Teddy seemed to radiate like a furnace in comparison to Emilio’s cool skin, like a space heater pressed against his side. It was dangerous to be this close; Emilio knew that. In tight quarters, there was too much of a chance that Teddy might recognize something. Something like the way Emilio’s heart fluttered, something like the way his pulse picked up pace at the physical contact. He told himself none of it meant anything, of course, because it couldn’t. Because Teddy had been through Hell, and Emilio had a bad habit of dragging people right back down into the flames. He resisted the urge to twist the wedding ring on his finger, that physical reminder of what happened to people Emilio grew close to. Teddy wasn’t going to wind up bleeding out on the living room floor, because Emilio wasn’t going to let that flutter in his chest mean anything.

Still… he couldn’t keep himself from leaning into that warmth. Moth, meet flame.

(Burning didn’t sound half as bad as it used to.)

—

The door opened, and a neatly decorated waiting room awaited his eyes. One big leather couch, a couple square ottoman style chairs, a tv, a coffee table with one of those single cup coffee makers, some tasteful decorations and two doors that lead in deeper. It was something Emilio’s apartment/office situation had lacked. A proper place for folks to sit down away from where he was working so that he could get his head together before having to meet up. There was even a desk all prepared for best secretary ever Nora, along with a shiny name plate and everything (with a ridiculous fake name upon it, obviously). Behind one of the doors was a simple bathroom they had installed. The plumbing was a little bit of a hassle to get done in such a short time but Ted thought it necessary. The bathroom itself was nothing special but it was really there so Em wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to the house if he wanted to… relieve himself. (Teddy would probably lie, say it was to save the bushes a bit of ‘landscaping’ that way the slayer wouldn’t feel some manner of guilt about it. He was so very good at feeling guilty for things that truly did not matter.)

The other door led to where the real work had been done. Much like the front, the interior of this office had been done up to look straight out of a 1940’s Noir. Specifically like a detective’s office from one of the old old movies Teddy made him watch, the one he actually liked. (Nearly sat through the whole thing! Only two smoke breaks!) It had a few bookshelves with some titles that might just look impressive, and a hell of a lot more that would be useful to Emilio’s work. As well as plenty of file boxes that he could actually start organizing with, if he so chose.

The desk was a nice dark wood, a custom piece Teds had an old buddy put together, paying extra for the rush fee and helping add the stain themself once it arrived. But the thing Teddy was maybe most proud of, were the framed newspaper articles. Clippings from as many stories as they could find about people helped by a certain grumpy detective. Emilio hadn’t ever been interviewed for any, and Teds could only guess why, but there had been quite a few tales to be found. They wondered, briefly, if he’d ever seen the articles before. Ever knew how much he touched those people’s lives. The shadow boxes, Teddy figured, would be a good reminder either way.

“We can fix anything you don’t like, I know I have a problem when it comes to interior decoration. I go hard. Like one of those HGTV shows. So if you don’t want any of it that's okay too, you didn’t ask. But–y’know. You’ve been saying you wanted to get back to work, and I figured you deserved a good place to do that from. Something that reflects how good you are at your job.” Teddy stepped back for the first time, leaving his side so they could watch Emilio’s expression for any hints as to how the slayer felt. “Sorta… started on this as soon as you moved in. Whoops.”

—

He swung open the door to the building, unsure what to expect. Part of him wondered if this was a practical joke of some kind — if he would open the door to find piles of garbage stacked up in the shape of furniture or empty bottles forming internal walls as a dig on how bad he’d let his apartment get. It would have been the kind of thing he’d have rolled his eyes at but ultimately admit to being amused by, even if only to himself. But that wasn’t what he found on the other side of the door. Not even close.

Instead, it was… tasteful. Sleek leather furniture in a style he hadn’t realized he liked until he saw it, a desk for Nora to sit at with a nameplate reading Robin Banks that she’d doubtlessly love. A waiting area was something that seemed obvious now, but not something he’d ever really considered before. Emilio reached out experimentally, touched the sofa. It felt like it would be comfortable to sit on. The kind of thing that might make someone up their one star review to two.

Slowly, he moved to the first door. The bathroom was just a bathroom, but it was still somehow nicer than the one he’d had in his apartment. Tastefully decorated, like the waiting room. It’d save him the effort of having to walk back to the house while he was working, something he knew his leg would thank him for even if he’d never say as much, too afraid of perceived weakness to point it out.

The second door was clearly the more important one. It was clear in opening it that a lot of thought had gone into the room inside. From the decor, which looked an awful lot like the detective movie Teddy made him watch that he’d admit to not hating, to the functional pieces like the bookshelves and file boxes. Even the fake P.I. license Nora had gotten him was hanging on display. And then, there were the articles. Emilio paused at the first one, reading it over carefully. Slow going, of course — though he wouldn’t admit it, he barely knew how to read at all, and reading in English was far more difficult — but he made it through. The story was a familiar one; an interview from a teenager who’d gotten caught up in some vampire den, whose friends had hired Axis to find her and bring her home. It was clear that there were parts left out — the story didn’t mention a single person turning to dust, and Emilio distinctly remembered killing at least three — but the vague outline was there. The next was more of the same. He hadn’t known the articles existed, and Teddy had gone out and tracked them all down. It must have taken time; all of it must have taken time.

For a moment, Emilio just stood there. It was hard to gather his thoughts, hard to make sense of it all. No one had ever done something like this for him before, something so… big, so personal. Teddy had taken the time to consider what Emilio might like, despite the fact that he knew his ‘style’ was on an entirely different spectrum than theirs. And they’d been right in what they’d chosen, despite the fact that Emilio had never told them anything about this stuff before, never even thought about them himself. And he hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t expected it. Teddy just… did it.

(Emilio kind of wanted to kiss them. He quickly shook away the thought, chastising himself for letting it occur in the first place.)

“No, it — It’s great.” He struggled to keep his voice from breaking, struggled to keep the lid on his emotions. “I love it. I — You know you didn’t have to do all this, right? I can — I can do what I do out of a cardboard box. You didn’t have to… Christ, how much did this cost you?” Had Teddy spent a fortune on this, on him? There was no way it would be worth it. Spending money on Emilio was like sinking your savings into a car twenty years past its prime. It was better for everyone just to get something new, something that would last longer. But he wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t mean something to him. He wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t like it. Teddy deserved to know that they’d hit the nail on the fucking head here. “You know nobody’s ever… I mean, you’re the only person who’d do this. For me.”

This time, he couldn’t stop his thumb from spinning the ring on his finger. He loved Juliana, loved her still, but she would have told him that all of this was stupid. She would have rolled her eyes, waved her hand. A little kid playing dress-up, Milio, that’s what this is. This isn’t how you’re supposed to help people, you know. Maybe she’d have been right for it. Maybe he was fooling himself, trying to be something more than a rusty blade. But it was nice, wasn’t it? To have someone think he could do it. It was nice.

—

Every language on earth had a term for one so endeared. Καρδιά Μου, came to mind. The Joneses had spent a lot of time in Greece, quite a bit in Turkiye too, where Balım would have been thrown around. Lieveling, Chen yu luo yan, Kochanie, Süsser, Petit chou, Golubchik, Tamago gata no kao, all had a certain ring to them. Some had a more distinct and “silly” meaning behind the phrase, but roughly the same sentiment carried along. They meant you were close to someone. That you felt as if they were an inextricable part of your life. Bonded.

Expressions shifted through every shade the human face had to offer, and Teddy soaked it all in like a little prideful sponge. This, they thought, This is what the detective deserves. Detective wasn’t the word that flitted through Ted’s mind when their thoughts turned to Emilio Cortez however. They couldn’t ever settle on one word or nickname. Everything rolled around but nothing took root, not yet. None were quite… enough.

Despite the fact that it couldn’t really be… that.

Teddy could be anything, would be anything and everything Emilio needed. Their own expression softened at each new glance. Each time the detective looked around and found some new spot to settle on, inevitably turning back to the ex-demon as if to ask if it was real. Somewhere in the back of their mind the whole room swirled into a hazy dream of a smoky corner of a jazz club. Hearing the soaring tunes that reflected the symphonic swells of their heart. As if the pair were sitting across from each other sipping at whiskeys and staring into the other’s eyes as if they could possibly be thinking the same thing. Fantastic, but unrealistic.

But that’s all it could be, a fantasy. One Teddy would hold dearly, sure, but a fantasy all the same. They could pretend something like that could ever happen with Emilio in the same way they could pretend that those glances were more than just appreciation of their work. Of the efforts of a good friend. But there he was, saying he loved it. Saying that no one had ever done anything like this before and suddenly Teddy wished they had a billion more things to show him. Suddenly Teddy wanted to give him the whole world. Show the detective how much he meant to them by any means necessary. They basked in the glow from the slayer’s sweet small smile like it was sunshine. Warm and blanketing. Filling them up with fuzzies and giddy joy. They never wanted it to end.

“Oh you haven’t even seen the best parts.”

With all the excitement of a child on Christmas, Teddy grinned with their tongue poking out between their teeth and bounced on over to behind the desk. From the big plush chair, they reached under the desk. Started pulling knives from random magnetic anchors, all hidden around. Each of them looking decidedly… familiar to the detective. (Teddy had in fact, been systematically stealing any and all of the man’s knives that he didn’t actively use all the time. They even went back to the apartment to rescue more from becoming a permanent part of the mineral.) “And then there is this–” With a whoosh, the chair rolled over and backwards, towards one of the bookshelves behind the desk. Ted stood and pulled at one of the books, one of the few that stood out amongst the titles as a bit different. It was “The Adventures of Frog and Toad”, two amphibious fellows who were also… friends.

The book didn’t quite come out all the way though. They tilted it until a clunk sounded from behind the bookshelf. It shifted, opened like a door and Teddy stepped through, disappearing into the small nook beyond. “We already had the passageway, I just figured you might like the secrecy of it. I know I like the drama.”

—

Teddy’s excitement was palpable, a fluttering thing that placed a candle in the center of Emilio’s chest and warmed him from the inside out. It was a contagious thing, a dangerous one. Deep down, he knew that. He looked at them, and it was like… forgetting. Like the moment when you first wake up from a deep sleep, the moment before the world slots back into place where you have no thoughts and no memories. In that moment, for a heartbeat, you got to forget. You got to forget the feeling of blood on your hands, the taste of it on your tongue. You got to forget your own name and the weight it carried, the things your hands used to cling to. Your hands didn’t shake, in that moment. Your grief didn’t strangle you. In that moment just after waking, everyone in the world was the same.

But that moment always ended. Your eyes always opened, and the world always came crashing back down around you. It was part of why Emilio avoided sleep so adamantly. It wasn’t just the nightmares that plagued him — it was the cruel forgetting that masqueraded itself as kindness. It was the way that, every time that moment ended, he lost the things he’d lost all over again. The scars opened themselves back up, the wounds became fresh and new. He forgot only so he could remember again. He remembered only so he could ache.

And that tangible excitement rising up from Teddy felt just the same. Light and airy and full of the ability to forget. The moment they looked away, the grief would be new again. And how was he supposed to carry that? How many times could you bleed out from the same wounds? He was tired of keeping count.

So he looked away. He focused on the room around him without letting himself think about the person who’d put it together or the fact that they’d done it for him. He looked at the books on the shelves — some with titles that seemed useful, others he was pretty sure Teddy had added as a joke — and he looked at the desk and the leather chair and at his shoes on the floors and he tried to pretend that that excitement was less contagious than it was, as if he could force it away from him by ignoring it.

But it was impossible to keep the faint smile from his face as he turned back to Teddy, even as he tried to outrun that excitement that would end the same way it always ended. It was impossible not to react at all to that odd flutter in his chest, impossible not to feel it. “Show me the best parts,” he said, the words so much softer than his usual tone.

(His mother would be furious if she could see him now. A dull blade, no use to anyone. As much a disappointment as he’d ever been.)

Watching Teddy circle around the desk, Emilio leaned forward a little as they produced knives from beneath it. He’d noticed his knives disappearing, of course — he had a very accurate count of them in his head, and mental notes of where he’d left them all — but given the conversations he and Teddy had been having, he’d assumed they were collecting them to practice their throwing. It was part of why he hadn’t said anything; he wanted Teddy to get good at tossing blades, because he wanted the security of knowing that they had some defense even without the demonic attributes they’d lost in that ritual with Levi. He wasn’t upset to have been proven wrong. If anything, he was fascinated.

Circling around the desk himself to stand beside Teddy, the detective reached under the desk to inspect the contraption. Later, when his knee hurt less, he’d crawl beneath it to better investigate the setup. Emilio liked knowing how things worked; it made it easier to trust that they wouldn’t fail. For now, though, he removed the knives and put them back a time or two, feeling the magnetic pull of the anchors. It was satisfying. It was useful. He’d be able to reach these with much more ease than he’d be able to pull the ones from his pockets, if need be.

Turning back to Teddy, he watched them pull what looked like a children’s book from the shelf, tilted his head just a little at the way it moved and the hollow clunk it made. Carefully, he followed Teddy into the nook, glancing back warily to ensure that the shelf door would stay open. The nook was a tighter space than he liked, but it was hard to deny its usefulness if he needed a quick getaway. “Where’s it lead?”

—

Colors washed in and around, painting the scene in vivid watercolor. The edges where things began and ended blurred leaving only one in focus. Only him. Emilio had a way of doing that to Teddy. Narrowing their gaze to such a tiny pin prick of a thing. They had seen the world. All seven wonders and so much more. But no sunset, no waterfall, no canyon or mountain, river or ocean could ever hold a candle to watching the corners of his mouth slowly curl upwards. To see a glint in his eye like life had just begun again. To know that they had been the one to do that.

Eyes normally so full of distance were close, softer. He was open in a way Teddy hadn't ever really seen before. They'd caught glimpses, but nothing like this. The ex-demon couldn't peel their own gaze away. Each new surprise brought a new delight to those eyes. And in turn, made Teds all the more giddy and giggly. The detective seemed to like the magnetic hide-aways. There were more, all over. Because why not, right? Half of the bookshelves had secret compartments that Teddy would allow Emilio to find on his own. Detect them out, if you will. Part of a game.

The nook behind the secret door was small, enough so that Emilio had to once again pull in quite close for the next surprise. Teddy felt his breath bounce off their chest as he asked where it led and the only way to stave off some dramatic confession right then and there was an equally dramatic reveal. "Goes down." With a wink and a flourish, Teddy pulled a lever and the door shut behind them, the floor began to shudder slightly, just enough to know they were moving. It quickly descended about fifteen feet until they were in a dimly lit corridor with another big door at the far end. "That one goes right into the basement. Near the uhh– the circle from the ritual with my dad. Then to the room with the big movie projector."

Teddy stepped off the platform, and held a hand out like Emilio was some royal princess about to step off a carriage, despite the thing being flush with the floor down there. "This way you can come in and out whichever way you want. Don't have to go outside in the cold, and if anything ever tries to pull some bullshit while you're at the office, you can pull some shit of your own."

The walls of this corridor were something of an armory. Old swords, new ones. That scythe that Emilio liked so much from the boat. A bunch of throwing stars and daggers and even some metal cards because Teddy sure did have a phase where they had the biggest crush in the world on Gambit from X-Men. There were wooden stakes, silver coated blades, and iron too. The Jones family, while willing to work with everyone, made enemies of all sorts too. Not everyone appreciated Chuck's methods, nor the curses they got from the wares it sold. Teddy too, made enemies here and there. Maybe not quite as many, they much preferred to make as many acquaintances and garner as many favors as they could possibly save up. That didn't mean Teds didn't just like collecting weapons. They were a bit of a nerd after all.

"To be honest I'm surprised you didn't sniff out this room, being a professional blade loving Dick and all. I half expected you to find a way to phase through the walls at some point just to grab that one." A laugh bounced out of Teddy, who gestured at a very ornate great axe. Something that looked like it should be wielded by a massive orc in a fantasy movie.

—

He could feel Teddy looking at him. Their eyes locked onto his face, their attention focused solely on him. In the past, being the center of anyone’s attention had never been a good thing. His mother’s approval was a thing that came with quiet neglect; when her eyes were on you, it was a bad thing. By the time he’d met Juliana, he associated attention with harsh correction. His wife had worked to correct it as best she could, but Ana hadn’t been any more well versed in positive attention than Emilio had. They were hunters from similar backgrounds, after all; her parents had been just as strict as his mother. Often, the kindest thing they knew to offer one another was indifference. Affection was such a quiet thing then, a whisper. A moment of looking away.

But Teddy was loud. Teddy made Emilio the center of their attention, and they made it feel as though it wasn’t a bad thing. He and Juliana had loved each other like glass already cracked, just a strong breeze away from shattering. It was gentle, but… maybe too much. Their collective touch was so light, that often neither felt their hands at all. It was like that with most people from before. With his siblings, with Rhett, with anyone who knew him well enough to tiptoe. That was the strange thing about the after, he guessed. He’d closed himself off so much that no one knew what to avoid. It led to bad moments, sometimes. To things too loud that sent him into a fighting stance too quickly, to touches that felt like threats instead of embraces, to phrases and words that sent him spiraling into a thought process he didn’t know how to easily claw his way out of… But there were good moments, too. Things that never would have happened otherwise.

This was one of the good ones.

At least, until the door shut. A flash of panic crossed over Emilio’s face, the passageway suddenly feeling too small, too tight. He pushed it down as best he could, gritting his teeth against it. He trusted Teddy, and Teddy was in here with him. No one was trapping him anywhere. The door wasn’t locked, he didn’t have to wait for someone to eventually choose to open it from the outside. It was fine, he reminded himself. He kept the mantra going so intently that he only half-registered the descent.

When the door opened again, he took Teddy’s hand and stepped out almost without meaning to. He had to remind himself to keep his grip from being too tight, had to repeat silent commands to his hand not to grasp with all his strength. The last thing he wanted was for his childish distaste for tight spaces to cause Teddy any discomfort.

In any case, the pounding in his chest was mostly forgotten at the sight of the weapons lining the walls. He recognized the scythe from the boat, reached out to run a finger along the edge of the blade. There were other things, too. He knew the gleam of silver when he saw it, the glint of iron. Wooden stakes that looked to have been sharpened by hand, throwing knives with polished points. It was clear from the expression on Emilio’s face that he was a fan, probably predictably so. He glanced back to Teddy, looking half-amused.

“Didn’t seem nice to poke through your house when you’re letting me stay here for free,” he commented, eyes pulled away quickly by the ax they’d pointed out. “Could do some damage with this.”

—

“Elevator works mechanically too, even if there’s no power it’ll go just as fast.” It was hard not to notice the shift. Even if it was so slight. Teddy was watching out for every detail, something like that wasn’t about to slip through the cracks. They hadn’t really seen him in tight closed spaces before but should’ve guessed. Should’ve anticipated that it was going to stir something rotten up. They just hoped the speed and efficiency of the platform was enough to counteract. The lack of doors that made it technically more of a dumbwaiter than an elevator wasn’t quite enough to make it not a small confined cube, if only for a few seconds.

But he took their hand and held it. He kept it too, as they walked through the hall. Stopping to admire certain pieces. The smile returned and Teds squeezed back as tight as they could. After a moment of consideration, or perhaps a moment to throw consideration away, they laced their fingers in between Emilio’s. Just a little closer. Couldn’t hurt, couldn’t hurt. Dancing on glass. The void below waiting with open arms to swallow them up when rejection came, it always did. Always sat just beyond the threshold. Emilio wasn’t like everyone else, they knew that. Knew there was something special about him but that didn’t mean he wasn’t susceptible to their curse. To finding out one day that the silly antics and obsessions weren’t fun anymore. They were just annoying. They were too much. It didn’t matter how many rooms they re-arranged, presents they bought, or adventures they planned. Everyone left in the end.

Even if that wasn’t the case, Emilio had a bigger bridge to cross than most. A dead or somehow otherwise gone spouse. It wasn’t fair of them to ask for him to pull up all that hurt, and for what? So some childish crush could crush them both. Ruin whatever this… friendship was. Teddy didn’t want that. Having him around for now, having it be light and good was a good thing. They could enjoy what was here without messing it up. Still, it was hard not for things to bubble up from time to time.

“Hey, look at me, Em. What's mine is yours. Feel free to peep whatever you like.” Teddy replied warmly, still holding onto Emilio’s hand, still holding on like it was a lifeline. Like what they had said aloud was code for ‘I’m yours’ instead of what it was. The imposed language barrier Ted had invented for shits and giggles wasn’t the only thing stopping them. If they had turned around and exposed their fluency in Spanish tomorrow it still wouldn’t patch the problem. Teddy couldn’t talk about their emotions. They were no better at it than Emilio. Emilio, who could absolutely do some damage with that axe.

“Like to see you put it to some use. Dad said it’d only ever gather dust.”

—

He knew they’d notice the way he tensed up when the doors shut, no matter how quickly he tried to chase the expression from his face. Emilio might have been the detective among the pair, but Teddy was a lot better at picking things up than they’d likely admit to being. They always seemed to know when something shifted within Emilio, always seemed to understand his quirks and his tells better than most. He hadn’t told them much about himself, but he always got the sense they knew. At least some of it, at least to an extent. And it was a scary thing, being known. It was enough to make him sweat. But… maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe there were worse people who could have figured him out.

So he didn’t drop their hand, even as the pair stepped away from the too-small space. He didn’t comment on the way their fingers intertwined with his, didn’t pull away. They must have felt the ring on his finger by now. Part of him wanted to ask what they thought; another part was too afraid that if he did, he’d end up telling them everything. And where would that leave them? Teddy liked Emilio now, but he didn’t think they’d see him the same way when the truth came out. He didn’t think anyone really could. He wanted to pretend this was something it couldn’t be, just for a little bit longer. He wanted to close his eyes to it, to close Teddy’s, too, even if only for a moment. He wanted to.

Teddy said look at me, and Emilio turned towards the words, drawn just as quickly as the magnet strips that pulled the knives from his fingers and released them just as easily. They said look at me, and he didn’t know how to deny them that, so he looked. It’d hurt when he looked away; it always did. But Christ, wasn’t there something to be said for the moment of looking?

He shifted his weight as they spoke, the gravity of their words bearing down on him. It was too much, wasn’t it? It was all a little too much. The way Teddy wanted to share everything with him, the way Emilio couldn’t even manage to offer the barest details of his past in return. Teddy was giving so much more than they were getting, and Emilio knew they deserved more than that. But he still didn’t know how to say any of it, so he only shrugged. “You don’t have to do all that. Done enough already. Wouldn’t ask you for more.” But he touched the ax’s handle anyway, imagined holding it. “Maybe I use it in front of you sometime. Give you a show. Least that way, you get something out of it.”

—

“I do. I have to.” Ted simmered into a soft smirk, dark eyes wandering around Emilio’s features, trying their best to hide whatever else was in there behind the fondness. Behind the concern. “Because no one else ever has. You said so yourself. I just wish you could see how much you deserve that.” Wishes were a fickle thing. Fleeting as a warm breeze mid autumn in Maine. A wish for everything to be alright could fundamentally change who a person was. How they saw the world around them. Change how they felt about others, how they felt about themself.

If wishes came true, Theodore Jones would take Emilio Cortez by the hand and make all of his heartache melt away. They’d find whatever it was that could help him process through all of the shit that happened to him, they’d help him realize he was allowed to grow. Allowed to move on. A man is not made of the things that happened to him. Keep the memories, hold the happiness they brought while letting go of all the ache they piled in.

But wishes didn’t work like that, they rarely ever worked at all.

Emilio would feel guilty, he’d turn around and deny, again, that he ever deserved the good things life so rarely afforded him. Teddy would be left again, stomach in a knot, wondering what the right combination of words would be to ease that ache. To finally help stitch the wounds they kept fumbling open over and over again. All of it was a far off dream, they knew. One they might not ever get to realize. But for now, it was two friends alone in a dim hallway, lined with weapons that had barely ever been used.

“Alright. That’d be quite a show, Cortez. What’s the biggest undead thing you’ve ever taken down?”

—

Teddy said it like it was simple. Like it was true. They were so confident in it that Emilio could almost pretend he felt it, too, could almost let their words outshine what he knew. He deserved it, they insisted, deserved nice things. It was a nice lie to cling to, but he couldn’t find any way to adjust his grip on it to keep it from slipping from his hands. He couldn’t find any way to hear it and make it sound true. He looked away, shrugging a shoulder and shaking his head, because Teddy would argue if he pointed out the truth and for once, Emilio didn’t have much interest in the bickering. It ached a little too much, the thought of why Teddy was wrong. And in this moment, he thought… In this moment, in the basement of a building they’d designed for him, one that was connected to the home they’d invited him to stay in indefinitely without any expectation in return…

In this moment, if Teddy asked him why he didn’t deserve half the shit they’d done for him, Emilio would tell them. He could feel it, right on the tip of his tongue. If they asked, he’d answer. And the spell would be broken, and they’d see him as he was, and it would all be over. The way they looked at him, the way they thought about him, it would change in an irreparable kind of way. They wouldn’t kick him out — they were too kind for that — but their perspective of him would be changed. He could tell them everything, he could. But where would that leave him? He liked the way Teddy looked at him. He liked the way they seemed to think he was something strong, something worth keeping. He didn’t want that to shift. He didn’t want to go from being the mysterious detective to the worthless husk of a man who hadn’t even had the strength to keep his daughter alive. He didn’t want to turn from a protector to a failure. If Teddy asked him, he would tell them, and he didn’t want to tell them so he looked away. He said nothing.

(His mother always said he was a coward. He’d always known she was right.)

The subject changed, and he was glad for it. He’d rather talk about killing. He understood it better. He knew the ax, if he took it off the wall, would become an extension of his arm the same way his knives and stakes were. He knew he’d be able to put on ‘quite a show,’ just like Teddy said. When it came to the inner workings of his own mind, Emilio was fucking clueless. But he understood the weapon on the wall, even if he’d never held it. A blade knew a blade.

He hummed at Teddy’s question, still studying the ax. “By myself, or with…” He trailed off, finding that he wanted to talk about Edgar and Rosa and Victor just about as little as he wanted to talk about the rest of his past. So he cleared his throat, moved past it. “You ever see a lapir? They get big. Took on one the size of a car once, just me and my stake. Nearly ripped me in half, you know, came close. Picked me up and dropped me while I was getting the lid off my holy water, probably knocked a few more screws loose. Got it in the end, though. Soaked it down with holy water, pushed the stake through.” He flashed a small smile. “Passed out in the woods for a while after, but made it through in one piece.” Not unlike how his fight with the warden had ended, though he wouldn’t bring that up to Teddy again. The less Teddy knew about the details of that, the better. “Would’ve been easier with something like this, I bet. Slayers, we don’t usually fight shit like that on our own. But I think me with one of these,” he tapped the ax with a cocky grin, “is worth three slayers. Don’t need backup if I’ve got an ax.”

—

Of course the question was there, it burned at the front of Teddy's mind. Hotter than the surface of the sun and twice as brightly. Of course they wanted to know what had him jumping at shadows and staring off in the distance when words failed. Why the detective so thoroughly believed himself unworthy of basic needs, of joy, of love, it was all part of the same root wasn't it?

They wanted to know everything about him. It was easier to ask than to stay their curiosity. But it wasn't fair to bring up, right? If Emilio wanted to talk about it, if he wanted to share he would, right? Just like… how Teddy sure did talk about that whole mess with Parker. A sigh rolled out of the ex-demon as they wrestled with the morals of it. Which was better, which would make Emilio feel better in the long run?

What happened to you? A brave person might ask. What happened to them? They might follow up. Emilio asked, even when Ted clearly didn't want to bring it up. And they… they felt better for it, didn't they? It wasn't as jumbled up in there. Wasn't as tightly bound around their heart. Somehow, Teddy expected, this wasn't an issue they could go out and steal a pinky from. Likely wasn't something that could be fixed at all. So where did that leave them? What was the right thing to do?

"You can t–" Teddy's throat tightened, they chickened out, again. It'd been such a nice day, why ruin it all? It was just like the Canadian fiasco. The same awful selfish cowardice that tinted everything they did. "You can take anything you like from here, 'kay?"

Whatever was left of the sigh from earlier exhaled in defeat. "Any time." They hummed, trying to turn their imagination from potential histories to potential futures. Teddy did not know what a lapir looked like, had only read about them once, a long ass time ago. But picturing Emilio out there like Conan the Barbarian taking down some massive beast that normally took up to three slayers to down. Well that was a pretty good alternative.

"Bet you could take one down in one good chop, let's go find one, hey?" Teddy winked, back to their usual silly bullshit, because they weren't strong enough to do what was best. What would help. Just like always. A pretty bandaid at best. Nothing that could actually make things better for anyone. Let alone someone as hurt as Emilio.

—

For a moment, he was so sure the question was going to come up. He wasn’t looking at Teddy, wasn’t letting himself look at them, but he could almost feel it on the tip of their tongue. He thought he’d felt it there for a while now, since the first time he’d barged into their houseboat and their face had lit up with curiosity at the sight of him. Teddy was curious, and Emilio was an endless hallway of deadbolted doors whose keys had been lost a long time ago.

He waited for the question, for the way the truth would undoubtedly spill out of him and stain everything between them as a result. But it didn’t come. It didn’t come, and the relief tasted like ash on his tongue, like acid. It was a terrible thing, he knew, to continue pulling the wool over their eyes. Emilio had never been much of a liar, but every word he spoke to Teddy carried something untrue within its syllables all the same. Their entire dynamic, he thought, was one big lie of omission. It was an endless pattern of Teddy offering up honesty — telling Emilio about their childhood, about their biological parents and adoptive father, about the hunter who’d taken a piece of them and left them terrified — and Emilio giving vague shrugs and changed subjects in return. It was an unfair imbalance, but he didn’t know how to change it when the relief felt so much like a flood.

So Emilio swallowed around the lump in his throat and pretended to be something better than what he was. It was a familiar mask, at this point; he’d been wearing it for years now. It came with walls too tall to climb and trenches too deep to escape from. It was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t fathom taking it off. It was like a bulletproof vest — clunky, heavy, and hard to wear, but it’d keep him safe when someone began firing off shots at his chest. It’d let him walk away bruised instead of bloody.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take you up on that. You’ll come in one day, walls will be bare.” It was easier to talk about this. He felt more at home in a basement surrounded by weapons than he ever had in his own skin, found it easier to relax between walls of knives and swords than laying on his own fucking mattress. It was better that Teddy didn’t ask. It was better that Emilio didn’t tell them. They had enough of their own problems weighing them down without tying the anvil of Emilio’s issues around their ankles and trying to keep their head above water.

It was easier to talk about the lapir. It had sucked at the time, sure — he nearly died, felt empty when he didn’t, spent weeks recovering due to his own inability to sit still long enough for his injuries to heal — but it was a matter of pride now. Physical pain was an easy thing to forget once it ended. The memory of it never hurt as much as it did in the moment, numbed more and more as time went on until it was nothing, until all that remained of the battle was the glory and the pride. Not many slayers could take down a lapir on their own, and Emilio held on to that. He pretended it was something his family might have been proud of, pretended he wasn’t at least part of the reason that they could no longer be proud of anything at all, pretended he’d been more than a disappointment to them when they were alive. It was a good story. He liked telling it.

And maybe it meant something that Teddy liked hearing it, too. Emilio flashed a sharp grin, looking at the blade with appreciation and nodding his head. “I’ll give you a hell of a show,” he promised. “We could go now.” As if he was in any shape for it, barely standing and all. But somehow, with Teddy looking at him like that, all bright grins and winks, he felt a little invincible.

—

"Yeah." They agreed, a fondness too hard to hide apparent in their smile. Teddy looped an arm through Emilio's, linked it tighter until their shoulders brushed. "We'll go out and get another one the second you put on that damn brace, asshole."

#wickedswriting #mortemoppetere #eldritchaccident #past implications of #child death tw #sibling death tw (mention)

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