#i imagine the other harbingers would be secretly jealous too... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stargazer-balladeer · 3 years

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Jealousy [Genshin Impact]

Characters Included: Aether, Albedo, Childe, Scaramouche, Xiao & Zhongli

Notes: Ngl,, this is a mess 🤣🤣 just like my mind- ;;w;; hope ya’ll like this!

Reader’s Gender: Neutral

Warning: swearing in Scara’s part :(

Tagging: @genshin-obsessed

Aether isn’t a jealous-type at all, he trusts you that you won’t go behind his back. When he does get jealous, it’ll be either because he’s tired or someone interrupted his precious time with you or he just got back from his journey. But the one thing he hates the most is someone interrupting your date.

His time with you is precious, every hour, every minute, every second, he cherishes them all. After all, he doesn’t know how much time he has, so he tries to make up every second in time with you. So if someone tries to interrupt his precious time with you, he’s pissed and pouty-

He’ll have a pout on his face as he glares at the person talking to you, wanting them to go away already. He doesn’t care if you reprimand him for scaring that person away, he doesn’t care if that person was important (like Jean or Diluc-), they're all the same in his eyes. When that person goes away, either scared or amused (Kaeya), Aether would immediately bring you into a hug as he peppers your neck with light kisses.

If Aether sees that you are having fun with someone else, he can’t help but let his insecurity rise up. What if you left him for that person? What would he do with the shattered pieces of his heart? He’ll have a dark and sad look on his face, like a kicked puppy- he’ll walk away with his head hanging low. You better realize that Aether is gone or I swear I’ll--

Overall, his definition of jealousy is just being pissed by someone-

“Tsk. That person really has the nerve to try to take away my time with you… I’m not jealous.”

Albedo, at first, would be confused at the sudden foreign feeling inside him when he sees you getting friendly with the other Knights. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling at that moment. Should he go there and drag you away? Why the sudden urge of kissing you in front of them? Why is his chest twisting painfully inside him? He really doesn’t understand-

He would consult Sucrose about it, and Sucrose concluded that he might be experiencing “Jealousy”. At first, he rejected the idea, saying it was a childish thing to experience. And that he has no time for that. But as the days pass, he soon realizes that Sucrose was indeed correct.

Whenever someone would approach you, he would be staring (more like glaring) at them in the distance. His eyes would narrow if he sees that person casually touching you. But Albedo would only intervene if someone took it too far or if he sees that you’re uncomfortable.

Albedo would never tell you that he’s jealous. It is kinda hard to see him jealous but the slightest change of his eyes and how his lips quirk into a dissatisfied frown made you realize that he’s jealous. Also, his mood sours if he’s jealous. He might ignore you for a while, don’t worry, he’s not mad! He’s just a bit pouty because he was just right there, why were you talking to that person?

Overall, won’t admit he’s jealous and might ignore you for a while.

“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you go back to that person? It seems like you two were having a pleasant conversation after all.”

Childe, similarly to Aether, is not a jealous type of person. Even if you try your best to make him jealous, it wouldn’t work. He can always see through your plan, so making him jealous purposely is always gonna fail.

But here’s the thing. Childe is good at hiding his true emotions, the mask he has now was carefully carved and shaped by him. So he’s good at hiding his true motive, good at hiding his emotions, good at hiding his thoughts. This means that you wouldn’t know that he’s jealous. Though he’s still rarely jealous. He has a high pride towards himself that he wouldn’t get replaced easily. If there was ever a competition, he would happily compete with them for your heart- (competition and fights are what he lives for-)

He wouldn’t get jealous of you simply hanging out with someone, but if he sees that you’re having fun with the person. His jealousy meter is rising, he would hide in the shadows as he watches you and the person happily talking with each other. Once his jealousy meter reaches a certain meter, he would casually appear beside you and drag you away from that person while exclaiming that you two have something to do.

Like I said earlier, even if he was jealous, you can’t tell. So it’s 9 out of 10 chances that you were able to see his jealousy. If you tease him about it, he would just shut you up with a kiss- Also, there’s also this 50% chance that he’ll make out with you in front of the person. And he wouldn’t stop, he would just continue. You wouldn’t notice the person leaving, too caught up in your makeout session. When you two pull apart, he has a cocky smile on his face.

Overall, secretly jealous but wouldn’t show it-

“There you are, sweetheart! I was searching for you everywhere! Come on! We have something to do! If you’ll excuse us, stranger, I’m going to have to steal away my (princess/prince)~”

It’s very obvious that he’s a jealous/possessive type. He would glare at anyone who dares to even go near you. No one can steal you away while he’s with you. Those who are stupidly brave (Childe-) will get zap by his Electro as Scaramouche drags you away while huffing.

But he’s like this because he never has anyone to care for him before, your love is the only thing he has. Never has he experienced being loved before. He was despised by his fellow Harbingers and Fatui. He was hated by almost everyone he met. No one showed him any sort of affection unless they were simply using him for their own gain. You, who was undoubtedly naive and stupid to trust a Fatui Harbinger, manage to not only befriend him but make him fall in love with you.

He gets jealous easily. Even if you two are the same gender, he’ll get jealous. He’ll immediately appear by your side and whisk you away, ignoring your complaints and the stare of the person. Sometimes, if someone is flirting with you, he’ll make out with you in front of them. Even though he doesn’t like kissing you in public, he will make this time an exception. The flustered look on the person’s face brings him such satisfaction-

Scaramouche would glare at that person who you’re talking to, doesn’t matter if you were the one who started the conversation, he would be seething with rage. How dare they talk to you?! Your attention and time should be spent on him! You might need to talk to him about his rather alarming behavior. After that, he’ll mellow down a bit. But that doesn’t stop his glares on that person.

Overall,, even though he manages his anger issues, he’s still jealous if you spend time (even if it’s only a minute) on another person-

“I told you to stop associating yourself with those low-life people, my beloved. You shouldn’t waste your breath on them……. Of course, I’m fucking jealous! You should’ve seen how they eyed you! I wanted to kill them on the spot for looking at you-” (chill scara- do you want some snickers-?)

Xiao wouldn’t admit it but he’s jealous. He would rather die than ever admit that he’s jealous of you hanging out with your fellow mortals. Especially if you are on your way to meet him and a person starts to talk to you, somewhere, Xiao is glaring at the person and you are talking with a small pout on his face. He might not appear to you at all unless you decided to give him some Almond Tofu.

Similar to Scaramouche, he never felt love before and doesn’t care much about it. He thought it was weak to love somebody, imagining giving everything up just for one person? Gross. But when Xiao met you for the first time, he thought time stopped. At that moment, he knew he would make you his. You manage to capture his heart just by appearing in front of him, so take full responsibility-

You can immediately tell if he’s jealous because he has a scary face on with an (adorable) pout. He’ll glare half-heartedly at you, grumbling that you should go back to whoever that was. Even though he acts like a baby at that moment, he was just insecure. You were a mortal, he was an Adepti. You can die any time while he lived for millennia now. Wouldn’t you prefer to date a mortal like yourself? One who will grow old with you, one who isn’t as cold-hearted as him? You might need to reassure him again-

Xiao trusts you, yes, but he doesn’t trust the mortals much. He actually prefers if you spend your time with someone like the Traveller, one he knows and trusts. He’s just being wary and cautious. Don’t worry. Even if someone decides to corner you in an alleyway or somewhere, Xiao would be there immediately, raging with fury-

Overall, an overprotective, insecure baby that gets jealous if you don’t notice him-

“Did that mortal harm you? I saw how they grab you.. They should pay for their sins- how dare they hurt someone like you.”

Zhongli is also not much of a jealous-type. He trusts you whole-heartedly and allows you to talk to anyone freely. He would only be alarmed if that person makes you uncomfortable or decides to harm you in any way. But other than that, he lets you be. As long as you return home in one piece.

But he would be annoyed if someone (its always Childe-) decides to interrupt your date. He prefers having alone time with you because he is constantly busy with work. He would not-so-subtly try to shoo away that person. But if you intervene and let them stay, he decides to let them be. But be prepared to have another date tomorrow to make-up the date ruined.

Even if he’s jealous, you couldn’t tell. He just his usual face on, with a rather malice smile on his face. If you look away for even a second, the person you’re talking to is already gone when you return your head. You blink, a bit offended at that person for suddenly leaving in the middle of the conversation. While Zhongli besides you just pat your head. (shh.. You don’t need to know that he scared off that person,, it’s our little secret-)

BUT! His jealousy will only show if you spend the entire day with another person, and completely ignoring him- when you return home, prepare for your punishment for spend your day with another person and not giving him his daily dose of kisses-

Overall, a rather calm guy that rarely gets jealous

“How rude. You’ve been ignoring me the whole day, and yet you spend your entire time with another. I’m your lover, am I not? And to add to the wound, you forgot to kiss me. Oh well, guess it’s time to get them now.”

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#im sorry if this seems rushed #WHAHSHSHSHSH #MY MIND IS A MESS AND IDK WHY SHSHH #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact headcanons #aether #aether x reader #albedo #albedo x reader #childe #childe x reader #scaramouche #scaramouche x reader #xiao #xiao x reader #zhongli #zhongli x reader

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sending-the-message · 7 years

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Tobias by Ilunibi

The one drawback of Dead Coyote keeping himself clean-ish was that his social circle collapsed in on itself like a dying star. The regulars I’d grown up with were pretty sour that Dead Coyote kicked them to the curb after his first relapse, when he realized that their mere presence made him regress back to his old, self-destructive self. People who’d demonized him when he was a known dealer were incapable of wrapping their minds around the fact that he could turn over a new leaf, and very few were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s not even to start in on the folks who wanted him to “go back to Mexico” when they realized that he was approved for disability because of all the emotional backlash of overcoming his addiction, accusing him of stealing their hard-earned money when he “probably doesn’t have a green card.”

He chose to find humor in it, or tried. Still, you could tell that he was jonesing for something a bit more substantial than a hit of heroin, and it got worse when I went to college.

His girlfriend was dead. His princess was an hour away. His family wasn’t really on speaking terms with him. The most companionship he usually had, surprisingly enough, was my mother, who’d stop by from time to time just to make sure that he was eating. After all, he was the surrogate father to a daughter she hadn’t got a chance to raise. Even if she still had nagging thoughts in the back of her mind that he was a dirty junkie with impure thoughts about her little girl, nine years of committed babysitting had secretly won her over.

Me? I worried. Even at the age of eighteen, and even having seen Dead Coyote in less-than-flattering situations, I still had this very childish, idealized view of him in my head. He wasn’t perfect, but I always thought of him as strong and unshakable and unbreakable. He’d overcome demons and hexes and curses and heroin, and did things no sane man would do without batting an eye, succeeding more often than not.

But that’s not really Dead Coyote. Dead Coyote is a perpetually exhausted, well-meaning man who made bad choices when he was my age because he lost all hope that he could do better. Dead Coyote has impulse control problems and anger issues and spends a lot of his time depressed and worried. He’s a human being who puffs himself up because he’s never been given the option of being weak, but he’s actually scared of a lot of things he stands up against. And he is hurt that he was essentially abandoned by everyone he ever knew, right down to Cheryl overdosing in her apartment.

My sixth sense tingled every time I talked to him on the phone. He began to sound more hopeless and listless, and I was terrified that he’d either wind up back with a needle in his arm or I would one day get a call from mom that they found him with a bullet in his head. Life without DC in it just seemed impossible and hollow, and I spent a lot of time crying over the thought.

Fortunately, it seemed the stars aligned just right enough for a single, solitary person to show up in his life. Or rather, reappear. He called me, confused, the weekend before finals week and told me that he’d heard from an old friend he hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Tobias,” he muttered, flabbergasted. “Of all the fuckin’ people, princess, it was Tobias.”

Now, Tobias was Dead Coyote’s best friend before he moved away from home. I’d heard a lot about him but never met the man because, well, Maryland was a pretty good distance away and I was under the impression that he was about as broke as either of us. Travel wasn’t really an option. But I did know that he taught him a lot about magic, he was the person responsible for the nickname “Dead Coyote,” and that he was eerily good at predicting things. Apparently, their old crew gave him the alias “Seer” because of it, and some people outright stopped talking to him because of how accurate he wound up being, accusing him of being the harbinger of everything he foresaw.

Not that he was psychic, no. When I suggested that on the ride home from campus for a summer of black magic and beer, Dead Coyote just laughed at me and shook his head. Psychics, he said, aren’t real, but spirits are. Tobias was just very, very good at reading omens and signs and was dedicated enough that he built up quite the rapport with a particular demon by the name of Vine.

Vine is, essentially, an oracle who takes the form of a circus lion. You think I’m joking, but what else do you think of when you imagine a big cat on horseback? Silly as that may sound, he supposedly knows all things past, present, and future, and doubles as a one-spirit demolition crew when riled. Allegedly. I can’t think of a time I’ve ever heard of a building toppling and immediately wanted to pin it on an archaic demon, but the capability is recorded in the old grimoires and just the thought of somebody being good enough at what they do to build up a working relationship with that was both terrifying and impressive.

The first few weeks of summer break, I was treated to quite a few stories of the good old days, Dead Coyote making it perfectly obvious that hearing from somebody who wasn’t me or my mother had made his goddamn life. The part of me that would have been jealous had pretty much died, because more than anything I was just happy to hear him happy. His one complaint was that he wished they could actually meet up. Phone calls are nice, but they’re nothing compared to sharing shitty beer in person and loudly complaining about said shitty beer.

“Maybe we could visit,” I suggested. He liked the idea and we tried to figure out the logistics of it in a drunken, emotional haze that eventually turned into an in-depth discussion about Beast Wars. Still, the seeds had been planted and we almost had a pretty good rough draft in place for our first ever unorthodox family vacation.

But, we never got to act on it.

A few days after our discussion, I woke up to the sound of somebody knocking, loudly, on the door. It was the kind of knock that instantly makes your heart leap into your throat: heavy, hard, and relentless. Not knuckle knocking, but side of the fist, open-this-goddamn-door-right-fucking-now knocking. It startled me so much that I took a spill off of the couch and waited in the floor, hopeful that I’d hear Dead Coyote shuffling around upstairs. That was obviously expecting too much. The man could sleep through the apocalypse.

My first thought was that it was somebody from the housing authority. They had a tendency to be assholes and I was bad at keeping track of the pest control regimen or the quarterly inspections. Maybe it was a very aggressive postman with yet another official letter from yet another person to whom Dead Coyote owed money. I crept toward the door, peeked out the peephole, and didn’t even have a chance to say anything before a voice boomed back at me.

“Where’s Angelo?”

I blinked. Nobody called Dead Coyote by his real name, not even the people at the complex’s offices. I actually forgot he had a real name.

I stood in silence on the other side of the door, holding my breath and trying to make sense of what was going on. I couldn’t even see anyone on the other side of the door. The opposite end of the peephole was covered, like whoever was on the other side had leaned in close trying to see their way in.

“Know you’re there. Know you’re not Angelo. Where is he?”

As deep and terrifying as the voice was, it wasn’t angry. I decided to take that as a good sign. Realizing that Dead Coyote wasn’t waking up and that I was now an adult who had to handle scary adult things myself, even if it was potentially a home invasion, I made the not-so-wise decision to open the door a crack. I only undid three of the locks, though, leaving the chain in place.

Hair a mess, glasses crooked, and still in my pajamas, I glanced through the gap between the door and the jamb and stared wide-eyed at the man on the other side. He had dreadlocks for days, half-tied back and half tied down with a bandana. He looked like a cross between a fortune teller and Medusa.

“You’re Seymour?”

I stared at him blankly and tried to close the door. He stopped it with his foot. I suddenly had a lot of regrets.

“Tobias. Where’s Angelo?”

And so, I met Tobias.

Tobias was strange. He was the human equivalent of a Clydesdale horse with dark skin, bright blue eyes, and a withering expression that just seemed to be his default. I also couldn’t peg what he was supposed to be for the life of me, beyond human. You could look at Dead Coyote and tell he was Hispanic, or look at me and tell I was Celtic as fuck, but Tobias just was.

Uncomfortable as it was, we sat and made small talk as we waited for Dead Coyote to drag himself up from his hangover and ooze down the stairs. He was polite enough, if a bit blunt and quiet, though it seemed less out of a sense of awkwardness than the fact he had too much on his mind. Halfway through our on-and-off conversation, he reached into his pocket and fished out a deck of playing cards, shuffling them and cutting them as though it was a nervous tic. His eyes never left the floor.

By the time Dead Coyote finally decided to join us, Tobias had cleared off the coffee table and laid out a chaotic spread of cards that began as a game of solitaire and turned into something like a tarot spread. The only thing that interrupted him was seeing his old friend, the two exploding into a series of excited yelps and overly manly hugs. According to Dead Coyote, Tobias hadn’t changed a bit. According to Tobias, though, Dead Coyote looked like he’d been crushed in a dumpster sometime between the ages of nineteen and thirty.

“How did you find me?” Dead Coyote finally asked as they cracked open a couple of morning brews and I sat awkwardly on the sideline. Tobias shrugged.

“Not a lot of people with the last name ‘Sepulveda.’”

“And why come all this way, man?”

Tobias gestured at his cards. I had no idea what the hell any of it meant, but Dead Coyote looked at the weird arrangement like an art connoisseur sizing up a painting. With each card he glanced over, the more concerned his expression became. Before I could ask what was going on, Tobias began to speak. It was as though he knew what I was going to ask.

He said he’d come because his readings and rituals were beginning to become more and more focused on Dead Coyote, seemingly out of nowhere. When he slammed into an actual coyote with his car and killed it--an apparent rarity in his parts--he took it as a sign from Vine and tracked down his old friend through a mixture of good old fashioned asking around and even more old fashioned divination. A few calls didn’t ease his worries, so he’d chucked a fair chunk of change for a one-way Greyhound ticket and had come to figure out what in the hell was going on.

“Knew you were bad when you left, but you didn’t set off the alarms. Now you do. Worried me.”

Despite the somber tone, I honestly didn’t have a damn clue what was going on. The only thing I knew was that almost every card in Tobias’ reading for Dead Coyote was a spade. When Tobias finally left, albeit reluctantly, he gave us a single warning to watch ourselves. Something was very, very wrong. His gaze lingered on me a bit longer than I would have liked and I shrank away as he disappeared out the door.

“I don’t get it,” I said, once the apartment was quiet and we had settled on the couch. Dead Coyote inhaled deeply and immediately fished for his cigarettes.

“He does cartomancy, princess. If it were anyone else, I’d think it was bullshit, but it’s Seer, so… you know.”

Cartomancy, he said, was like tarot but using a deck of regular old playing cards. It’s more direct and less interpretive, and the cards all had set meanings that made them more believable and less sketchy than the vague readings tarot spat out. Typically, Dead Coyote laughs at anyone who takes that sort of thing seriously, but Tobias had used cards for as long as he’d known him to tease out concrete answers from the powers that be. It was one of the many ways he interpreted signs and omens, because it was honest, quick, and handy. There was no specific store to buy them in or any hocus-pocus “relationship” you had to have with the deck. If you needed them, you just picked some up from the dollar store and got to work.

And spades? They’re bad. Very bad. I hadn’t gathered heads or tails of the reading Tobias had laid out on the table while Dead Coyote was asleep, but it predicted everything from debilitating depression to disruption in the apartment to death. I didn’t have a goddamn clue how one person could get all of that out of a game of solitaire, but Dead Coyote was shaken to the core of his being. It bothered me to see that sort of uncharacteristic weakness, to see him reacting with anything other than anger or apathy. The only thing that seemed to bring him back down to earth was reminding him that Tobias wouldn’t have come and told him if he didn’t think something could be done.

Honestly, I needed to hear it, too. Seeing him freaked out did nothing to help me calm down, and the fear was so overwhelming that my brain could only process it as anger. That night, I laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling and wondered aloud to myself just what in the fuck was going on and who the fuck Tobias thought he was. The prediction of “death” loomed over me like a storm cloud and I tried to think of all the ways something could happen to Dead Coyote and what I could do to stop it, if anything. It became a borderline obsession, this nagging fear, a paranoia more powerful than when I just wondered if his loneliness would drive him to self destruction.

The next few days were a blur; I couldn’t bring myself to pay attention to anything, especially when Tobias would stop by to do his wellness checks. He was a distraction, an unlikeable distraction whose “man of few words” act was beginning to grate on my last nerve. Even though Dead Coyote would light up and temporarily forget what fate had willed for him whenever he stopped by, I couldn’t find it in my heart to like the guy. When I looked at him, all I could think about was where the hell he’d been when Dead Coyote needed him most, why it took so long for him to realize his friend was in trouble, and whether or not they could even still be considered friends after not seeing each other for years and years.

I could stomach it for about a week. It was a week of watching Tobias pull spades repeatedly, knit his brows together, and pull them again. It was a week of watching him do nothing to try to figure out where it was coming from. Seven entire days of looking up from whatever I was doing to see him glaring at me like somehow this was all my fault. All I could think of was how desperate I was to prove Tobias wrong and how offended I was that--if he was correct--he was doing nothing but the same thing over and over, like an idiot, to try to “fix” things.

I had had enough.

Dead Coyote had gone to bed, drunk. I tried, but I couldn’t. Yet again, I lay on the couch and conversed with the ceiling until I felt this urge throughout my entire body to get up, a horrible and uncomfortable twinge in my legs and arms that compelled me to move. I stood, I paced, but I was still so fucking restless. And angry. And fed-up.

And scared.

Being a dumb eighteen-year-old is both magical and puzzling, because to this day I have no idea why the hell I decided to go steal Dead Coyote’s phone out of his room. He was snoring on his mattress, shirtless and tangled into a drunken mess of limbs, and for all intents and purposes he was dead to the world. I snatched it off the charger, snuck back down to the kitchen, and sat at the table in the corner staring at his contact list debating whether or not I should call his little friend. You know, just give him a little ring and demand he tell me what needed to be done to reverse fate and who in the screaming hell he thought he was bringing that kind of negativity into our apartment.

I wanted to tell him fortune telling was bullshit and that I didn’t believe he was as powerful as Dead Coyote had told me. I wanted to face down that giant of a man and threaten to kick his ass up one side and back down the other. I pressed the button, let it ring twice, then disconnected with a furious growl. Phone calls and voicemails didn’t seem like they would send a powerful enough message. I needed to tell him to fuck off in person.

I knew where he was, too. He was at an Econolodge just a few blocks away on the edge of the complex, holed up with a dirt-cheap weekly rate that I hoped he wouldn’t have to use for another week. It was dark and it was in a bad neighborhood, but I’d lived in that neighborhood my entire life and I’d wandered around at later hours. Granted, I usually wasn’t by myself, but I was a dumb college kid with renewed belief that I was invulnerable, just like when I was a kid. Old enough to have the confidence, young enough to be stupid.

I quickly threw on a bra and jeans, slipped on my shoes, and slipped outside.

For as much as I talk about growing up in the projects, I don’t think I’ve ever given you a good idea of what it looks like. During the day, it’s almost nice aside from the bars on the windows and the grass growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, the only real eyesore being the fact that people clutter up the stoops to their apartment with more bikes and junkyard trash than any one family would have a use for. At night, though, it’s like a scene from some kind of movie: dark with flickering street lights, and dogs barking on chains attached to the window bars, kicked out of the house now that the housing authority office was closed and their owners didn’t have to hide their undocumented pets. It’s unnerving with somebody, let alone by yourself, and had I not been propelled by a combination of sheer idiocy, desperation, and anger, common sense might have kicked in and told me to go back home.

But, it didn’t. I soldiered on, hands rammed in my pockets and glasses sliding down my nose, hair a mess and mouth held in such a powerful scowl that my entire face hurt. Hell, it hurt behind my eyes and the entire back of my head felt like it was being crushed. I’d never had a rage migraine before, and I hope I never have one again.

I could see the lights of the Econolodge sign when things took a sharp turn south.

You see, it had been years since Joseph Shepherd, the charming man who tried to molest me as a kid, had graced the neighborhood with his presence. Being a dick who chases his girlfriend with battery acid is overlookable, I suppose, but touching a little girl is not. Mean as he was, the neighbors just couldn’t tolerate him popping his face up in their territory any longer, and after his release he was treated to a few choice ass-kickings. Dumb as he was and as vicious as he played at, after a couple of years it finally sank in that it was only a matter of time before something more than his tires got slashed and he skipped town.

His place had been taken, oddly enough, by a kid I grew up with.

Adam Emmert was almost my friend once, though that “almost” should be bolded and underlined for effect. I was a lonely child and he had seemed lonely, too, though I was too young to realize that he wasn’t a young, neglected kid like I had been. No, there was something deeply wrong with Adam in much the same way there had been something wrong with Joseph. Trade in throwing grade schoolers in front of a bus with threatening kids with broken glass and poisoning the neighborhood dogs for fun, and it seemed as though our lovely complex actually upgraded in terms of their local villain. And he only got worse as he got older, when he realized how much he hated anyone who wasn’t white.

I knew to avoid him, everyone did. I was not, however, expecting him to be sitting outside on the sidewalk with a crew of fellow miscreants at two in the goddamn morning. To be honest, I didn’t even really register who it was at first, stomping by with my eyes focused on the no-tell motel where Tobias was hiding, waving their cigarette smoke out of my face as I passed. No, it didn’t even occur to me who the ringleader of the group was until I heard his voice, unusually loud and echoing in the abandoned streets.

“It’s Seymour!”

It was almost a singsong. I stopped, turned, and short circuited. He stood up from the curb, grinning with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looking at me from underneath the brim of his trucker cap. He was the epitome of white trash, and had a dangerous gleam in his eye.

“Who?” a dazed girl asked.

“That fuckin’ wetback’s whore.”

I didn’t answer because I suddenly lost the ability to do so. All I could think of was, in the previous week, I had developed quite the knack for being an idiot. I should have never been out alone at night.

“She fucks that greasy fuck? Jesus.”

I realized I had forgotten my phone and Dead Coyote’s phone in the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah. But why are you out now, Seymour? Side job? Meetin’ up with a John, eh? Guess crazy money doesn’t keep your little fuckbuddy on his feet very well, huh?”

What was in his waistband? What did he reach for? It was shining. Was it a knife? I thought of Joseph’s friend, the alley, the threat of being stabbed. I always thought a knife would be worse than a gun, but I was having second thoughts realizing that what he was holding was most definitely not a cheap folding knife.

“Maybe she needs a real man,” one of his toadies offered.

My brain was white noise, television static.

“She’ll have to pay first. What do you say, Seymour? Wanna walk crooked for the next few days?”

Amid their laughter, I found enough clarity to run, dead in the opposite direction of my apartment. I bolted for the Econolodge, faster than I think I have ever run in my life. A gunshot cracked through the night and I swore I could feel something whizz past me as I stumbled over my feet and landed on my palms. The asphalt scraped away the skin but I ignored it and sprinted, bleeding and crying, all the way to the lobby office of that shitheap motel.

Blood and dirt smeared the glass as I forced the door closed and twisted the lock. I’d lost my glasses somewhere between point A and point B, so finding my way to the desk was an adventure in and of itself. The attendant was nowhere to be seen (not that I could see), so I slammed on the bell until he came ambling out like a tired old dog, his voice shaking when I finally coaxed him to speak. That is, if you can call screaming hysterically that somebody was trying to shoot me “coaxing.”

“Tobias!” I yelped. “I need to speak to Tobias!”

“What’s the last name, ma’am?”

I could tell from his tone he really wanted to help me, but there were rules. So many damn rules. I didn’t have a surname or a room number, and my demands were so quick-fire and desperate that calling the cops seems to have been the last thing on his mind. I was my own worst enemy, a distraction from real help, scaring a poor middle-aged hotel clerk so badly that he seemed to believe that finding my “friend” was the only way to solve the problem.

He was about to offer to call him, refusing to give me the room number, when I heard a tapping on the glass. Somebody tried the locked door. I couldn’t see worth a damn to figure out who it was and every part of me was convinced it was Adam. Even when the clerk let out a sigh of relief, every nerve in my body buzzed with adrenaline.

“Oh, thank god.”

It was Tobias. With my glasses, no less. Apparently, I had lost them just out on the sidewalk.

Even if I had come with the intent of laying into him with all the fury of a particularly whiny hurricane, in that one moment, I could have kissed him. That all went away when, after he handed me my glasses, he didn’t even bother to ask what happened or if I needed help. He looked at my bloody hands, reached into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out that same goddamn deck of cards he’d been carrying the whole time he’d been visiting. Instead of a spread, he drew just one and stared at it, intently and with mounting worry. I stole a peek and saw the ace of spades staring back at me.

He didn’t say a word, not to me, not to the desk attendant. He just hurriedly crammed his cards back into his pocket, turned tail, and ran back in the direction of Dead Coyote’s home.

I followed, like the idiot I had proven to be. Panic was the primary motivator, Dead Coyote’s voice ringing in my head. He’d said that spades were bad, very bad, and if the whole suite was awful wouldn’t the ace card be worst of all? I thought of Adam and his cronies, and it sank in that after I hit the Econolodge they never showed up at the lobby. I had spent a good five to ten minutes shrieking like a banshee about how somebody was trying to kill me. They had more than enough time to catch up.

So where did they go?

Even though I am built for strength, not speed, I did a pretty decent job of keeping up with Tobias for a while. I noticed that Adam wasn’t where he had been and my mind came to a screeching halt when I realized that that wasn’t exactly a good thing. Had I locked the door to the apartment when I left?

I hadn’t. For the love of fuck, I hadn’t.

Despite being a straight shot from the Econolodge to Dead Coyote’s apartment, I couldn’t really see far enough ahead to see if my fears were founded. My vision was blurred, people’s stoops were stacked high with bullshit, and there were more than enough overflowing garbage cans dotting the sidewalk. Eventually, I even lost Tobias in the maze of trash, panting and lagging behind like an old race horse. Even fear couldn’t keep me going forever, I guess.

I only stopped running, though, when I heard a gunshot. Then a scream. It was too high-pitched to be Tobias or Dead Coyote, though, and I thanked my lucky stars for that. Still, when home was finally in sight I didn’t expect to see a gigantic mass of dreadlocks and hate sitting on top of the neighborhood psychopath beneath the bottom step of our stoop. Nor did I expect to see Adam’s less-than-loyal cronies scatter past me like roaches.

Yet, there he was: Tobias, in all his glory, pinning Adam down to the sidewalk with his sheer weight. Adam squalled and lights began to turn on one by one, heads poking out of windows, people stepping out onto the street. I walked up behind Tobias, wheezing and gasping, waiting for him to make some kind of idle threat to Adam, but he just sat there in almost infuriating silence, eyes boring holes into Adam’s skull.

Then I heard Dead Coyote. I glanced up to see his head dangling out of the window, his hair a mess and his eyes squinting against the street lamps. Right as one of the neighbors demanded to know what was going on, Tobias calmly looked up at his good friend and huffed in exasperation.

“Call the police. Asshole was trying to break in.”

Calling the police made Tobias a sort of pariah, just as it had done to Dead Coyote briefly all those years ago. Not that he cared. It was the only way to make sure the threat was gone for a good, long while and he had a sneaking suspicion that they may have been what he was seeing in the cards and omens and dreams. And it was something that I had inadvertently triggered, he warned me, by leaving Dead Coyote alone and alerting the neighborhood ne’er-do-well to the fact.

He told me I was really dumb. Dead Coyote glared at him, but honestly? I agreed.

“Dunno what they’d steal,” Dead Coyote groaned, hiding from the living room lights as Tobias sauntered in, sat down on my couch, and began to lay out his cards. “Not like I got shit.”

“Car. Television. Five dollars in your wallet,” Tobias answered, making a gun with his fingers and pointing it at Dead Coyote. “Also, you’re brown with an accent. Enough for him, I think.”

I watched, transfixed as he spread the cards in the same chaotic pattern as before. I was still shaken, I was nauseous, and a part of me still wanted to kick Tobias in the throat, but as I saw the cards being drawn, my emotions began to settle.

Not a spade in sight. One red card after another, which he kindly explained out loud when he noticed me gawking, palms still bleeding and tears in my eyes. Success and unexpected good fortune and health and support from friends and family. All of it was really wishy-washy, but it brought a smile to my face.

“King of Clubs and Queen of Diamonds. Huh.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, Dead Coyote yawning on the floor as Tobias quickly shuffled his cards back together.

“Mm. Nothing bad. Not just Angelo’s reading, I guess.”

I won’t lie and say Tobias and I got along immediately. I also won’t lie and say that his residency didn’t end up being pretty permanent. However, in that one night, I realized why it was that Dead Coyote respected him so much, and I fell asleep wondering just how good of a connection one had to have with a demon to get that skilled at what they do. Tobias is kind of a jerk, but he’s also fairly amazing.

Even if, in the deepest parts of my heart, I still think cartomancy is full of shit.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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