runningwithhellhounds

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o o o o spikeface?? the family of things spikeface? im pleased you think so! i dig the family of things, i dig all its little markers such as theo mis-calling a body 'it'. you're so good at pulling the reader's attention together with scott's, lending it on theo. scott's animalesque instincts towards him become sensible. like, i would do the same. i dig characerising moments like stiles thrusting a blanket at theo, but clumsily so. i also really appreciate it when other charcters provide indicators about the protagonist's mental state. it seems so carry attentional verisimilitude: it seems good and correct that scott's attention is on describing external circumstance rather than his own experience. and then lydia says, scott, watch the road. or when stiles says to scott, you barely smile these days. i am digging the hotel vibe of theo sitting for breakfast across from lydia. i dig the part when lydia says, it's obvious, give us some credit, and scott says, it's not about that but you're wrong, theo is just- scott's sense of theo's otherness and intrigue is communicated so well here. i love stiles's attempts to navigate conversations with theo. i love which emotions you chose to write about. scott apologising about liking theo and lydia saying, what do you mean, sorry? i dig that theo smelled like the night air and himself. this comes so vividly to me. gives me windswept mental imagery. also the poison scene caffeinates me. thank you for that. imagine this real life scene: twin sisters talking about the family of things while having 11pm toast in their university managed flat

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Theo, across recent timescapes. Theo x life: a series of impressions.

Theo is an invasive agent in Hayden's sensory collection. She's trying to not pay him any mind.

She also tried to erase his self-importance by pretending he didn't exist when she knew he watched with his bridge-burn eyes as she and Liam kissed. Found success in his uncharacteristic silence in a moment that was ruinable.

They are standing in dappled shadows on the forest ground, waiting for Liam, who ran ahead to make a call out of Theo's earshot. Theo is sitting by a tree with his knees up and loosely spread, with his hands in between them. His hands, chained: it's simplest hazard control. Effective, though. Hayden feels spiteful as she's walking left to right, throwing a palm-sized rock from hand to hand. Theo looks bored, irked.

''Where are you going to, little Red Riding Hood?'' Theo addresses her, smooth to self-entertain, making her stop mid-throw, causing the rock to hit her palm and fall on the ground. She picks it up and mimes throwing it at him. Success unfound, in how he doesn't flinch. Success unfound, in how he's making this into a story about a little girl and a sneaky wolf.

She considers him. If answering at all would cater to his amusement, or lesser his situational unpleasantries, which she's trying to avoid. But Theo is in the midway of doing nothing and determined to draw attention to himself, the way he has been.

''We're out of flowers, I'm afraid. Would you like some redwood wood, instead?'' Theo offers in a made-pleasant public service voice. Hayden notices that he's siding with the forest, here, scuttling into its floors where he has found purchase through extended stay.

''You know all the tree species?'' Hayden asks. Takes a bite and wills it into a treat for herself, rather than bait. Theo probably meant the tall and non-wiggly tree he's sitting against; Hayden wonders if he ever studied forestry, or if this is werewolfery knowledge.

''I know better things, too. If you come closer, I'll whisper them to you.'' He grins. Lifts his chained wrists as he adds, ''No pressure, though.''

Hayden considers him. Again and again. This is, she guesses, learnt prudency; a refined taste for justice, maybe. Guesses resurrection does that to you.

''Warning, beware of dog,'' she says.

Theo looks at her, eyes hooding and mouth neutralising. He shrugs, looks sideways. Attention, lost. Trade, declined. Secretful threat traded for blankness, if anything. Hayden, it seems, does not entertain in Theo-ways.

—

Theo Raeken, it turns out, has a finitude to his spread of catastrophe. Sheriff Stilinski watches cross-armed as running-mouth-boy exposes the culprits of murder; aggravates them like it's his best expertise until they say things they tried not to say and so saves his own slate from police-worthy additions.

Stilinski watches as Theo, for some inexplicable reason, lingers in the police department. Theo is sitting on one of the reception benches, eating a bag of mixed nuts from the vending machine. One would think it's ill-advised, that as soon as Parrish released him, Theo asked Parrish to buy him some goods from the vending machine, said he was detained unfairly. Deprived of food for this short but uneasy time. Didn't have his belongings on him. But it mustn't be nonsensical; it must be some behavioural tactic of making himself appear unconcerned. As having clear consciousness, innocence, all of those.

Stilinski resumes watching through the screen as Theo's chewing slows down when an officer with a police dog walks to the machine. He watches Theo's frowned, suffering, doubtful expression, staring into the dog's eyes like he can't take the dog seriously. The officer stops fishing change out of his wallet with a metal scoop in his cupped hand to shoot Theo a questioning look.

''Everything alright, son?'' the officer jingles the change in his hand, looking Theo over.

Theo's gaze doesn't even change when he looks up. Doesn't turn into a stranglehold of a gaze, either. ''Does your dog bite?''

The officer considers Theo, the sagged, unruffled spectre of him.

''No need to worry,'' he assures. Starts inserting the coins. He then turns to Theo in an afterthought. ''Is someone picking you up? You need anything?''

''Oh,'' Theo breathes, ''for real? Would you? Just something to eat? I've been stuck here waiting.''

Stilinski watches as Theo picks up a protein bar from the machine drawer. Flavoured water, a second later. Probably, apathy comes easily to him. He must not think in any understandable way; rather, he must think unfeelingly. Kid's got— not a care in the world.

—

Liam is holding a bouquet and inspecting its flowery contents. Frowning at the petals he's scraping at, glowering at the buds he's poking.

In the aftermath of the ceremony ran on the anniversary of Liam's school in the decorated sports hall, his mother is standing by the chairs in unison with another boy watching her son.

She knows him from a photo Liam showed her, a boy new in the school, softly named: Theo. It was evident that Liam took the photo discreetly, which she commented on and which Liam denied. She notes the distance at which Theo keeping and approaches him.

''Don't worry, he's not keeping secrets from his friends,'' she says. ''He doesn't have a girlfriend, at least not that I know of. I was the one who gave him the flowers.''

''Oh?'' Theo says. ''I see.''

He puts his hands in his pockets. He's probably shy. This happens sometimes, with high-school boys, they can become clumsy with themselves. She feels motherly talking to them in moments like this; motherly and pleasant in her efforts to engage adolescents when they are dithering.

''I think he's reconciling masculinity with flowers,'' she comments.

He smiles. Smirks, more like it. They must be close.

''Good colour choice,'' he comments on the orange of the flowers.

She nudges his arm. ''Go talk to him when they're done taking photos.''

Theo shakes his head, shrugs once. ''Nah. I will be leaving soon, anyway,'' he says, and she drops her hand from his arm. He's probably a little shy.

—

Mediterranean sunrise comes with a surprise: a man awakening on the ground a few steps from the barely-formed footpath. A man, or maybe younger, his Mediterranean awakening accompanied by the smell of fig trees, and all. Kind red soil.

He's naked. He's slowly wiping a hand across his lips. You know, suddenly, that this is a complication. The circumstance makes his body looks like an involuntarily stripped body. Perspective changes: red soil is now needled soil. Acrid tones sour the sunrise.

''Hey,'' you call, stepping closer in your sandals and a coral-printed towel around your neck, feeling unsuitable for the demands of the situation. ''Hey. Are you okay? Should I call the police?''

He's pushing himself up. Not looking at you. Not mindful of the resin at his back. This is indicative, you think, of something, because you're mindful of the way road dust is making your hair dry and webby, while his attention is this narrow, or overall absent.

He looks up, then, at you. ''What?''

A surprise gifted by a foreign agency; not Italian, then. You switch to English and try to make it not clumsy.

''I'll call the police for you,'' you assure him. Scramble to find your phone in your tote bag.

''D'n't call th'police,'' he says. He isn't trying to cover where his body is exposed.

''I don't want to assume anything,'' you say, feeling odd and performative. ''But— Look. I can just call the emergency number and they can direct you to a centre for sexual assault.''

Body, bodily manuscripted into the soft soil. He looks like he's processing slowly. Gets distracted inspecting his hands. Is that blood, you wonder, realise, really, it all just getting worse and fraughter. In between his fingers.

''Don't call th'police,'' he says. ''Was jus' drunk.''

''Is that blood? On your fingers.''

''I jus'. D'n't call. Did s'me things I shouldn't have.'' He reads your face, then says, ''Not like that. T'myself.''

Heat is lowering to the grounds of the morning and your sandals are light on your feet, escape-hairs pleasant, pine trees your favourite. And the hostility-seen boy is trying to act alright.

''It's okay,'' you say, wondering if it is; something complicated about the okayness of not-okay. You squat down, to balance the eye heights. ''I can call the hotline for—''

''No, n't—. Just stupid, no police. Please.''

''Do you want some water,'' you say, taking it out of your bag, and he takes it. Uncaps and smells it, blinking with his nose above the bottle opening, before he shakes his head a little, and starts drinking. Your phone is still in your hand, but you're unsure. You give him your second non-swimly shorts and wait until he overcomes his hesitance and gingerly takes them.

''You don't have to tell me,'' you insist. ''But I'm sure that there's someone who—''

''Thanks. It's okay, you can go now.'' He starts moving to get the shorts on, then swiftly straightens his back, inhaling deeply and looking up. Must be avoiding some hidden ache.

You hesitate, phone in your hand, legs starting to feel stiff from the position.

''I could drive you someplace. My car is ten min—''

''Thanks, but I'm okay now. You can't help,'' he interrupts. There are cases like this one, right, people using caustic means for secret-maintaining ends.

''Are you sure?'' you press. ''I could go away while you're talking to—''

''You're not helping,'' he says, monotone now, now operative and controlled to be alkaline. He's looking at your eyes fixedly, and you stop hesitating. ''You should go.''

Ground gives. You shake your head and start walking away, leaving him with your shorts and thinking then good fucking luck, honey.

You turn back one more time. He's looking at you leaving with unfocused glossy eyes, and you wonder, surely not for the last time, how deeply and stickily swamp-lodged he must be.

—

A hot guy is walking in the chest-high sea and doing little dives. Grazing the water surface with his fingertips in between and wiping salt from his eyes, before diving again and re-salting his eyes, like some deliberately mindless-seeming cyclical mechanism. Salt for maintenance, salt a nuisance.

Now he bends his knees and only submerges up to his chin, and you imagine he's sensing freshness at his nape.

''You just have to relax,'' you say loudly from where you come to stand in the water to your ankles, ''and you can probably hold your breath for longer than that.''

He stands up and turns until he spots you. You walk closer until the water is at your waist and he's looking at you like someone unexpectedly interrupted. Unexpectedly perceived, unfortunately. A popular kid being addressed by an unpopular one.

''You wanna teach me how to swim?'' he asks and smirks a little, and you shrug.

''If you feel like you can't stay underwater for more than five seconds, it's probably because you're panicking. You can hold your breath comfortably for at least fifteen seconds, I dare say.''

He looks at the glistening in the water, looking weary.

''Can I,'' he says, more of a response made to be unrevealing than a question.

''One thing I'll say,'' you say, untying your hair to avoid breaking it when it will be wet and to be casual, maybe; mitigate the upfrontness and possible insinuation, ''is that your body looks mad functional. Don't take this in any funky way.''

''I won't,'' he says.

—

Theo is in no space. Some telephone line space.

Should I be taking this personally, Liam texts him. He knows that Theo has been straightforwardly ignoring his messages. He hopes, actually; hopes Theo hasn't run into any of his long-known non-friends who see his face as a face, fanged, and not eyes, often confused, tongue, often tied, responses, often belated. Hopes that Theo isn't not answering because of some surviving anachronism from his past, but rather because of something new. That would be more manageable.

He also hopes that Theo isn't not answering because he is succumbing to his self-damaging instincts, even though that would mean simmering resentment towards Liam; even though that would likely be the best possible option in the precarious array of options in Theo's life.

Liam texts, did you know that if space was infinitely big and infinitely old, it would be white? I don't really get why, do you?

—

You have a boy couched in your living room. His name is Theo. Picked him up on a staff-only fire escape. It would be a leisurely sight, now, a tracksuit-hoodie-boy sitting right next to a drying rack, which he said he didn't mind. If it wasn't for your rapid heart. Heart: heated, speaking in unit-free measures. Heat: a smooth, unfibrous thing.

''May I,'' he murmurs, and you lean in.

It's a classic student situation: a breathless undertaking to the backtune of wine in tea mugs. He selected a Sierra Nevada mug with a setting sun. Came with the flat.

''Add me on Facebook,'' you say. The two of you haven't even done much, but you feel so hooked, by the fire-escape boy who moves in a way so self-assured and touches indoor objects warily. ''Or Instagram. Wherever you want.''

''I don't use social media,'' he says. He uses his hold on your hand and your finger to push his hair out of his eye. You like the way it parts and hits his temples.

''Phone number?'' You suggest, more joking than not. Exchanging phone numbers feel more joke-like than not.

''No phone number,'' he says. Must see your expression, shrugs and says, ''Guess I'm too old for technology.'' He smirks at the dry look you shoot at him, knowing your age of twenty-three to his twenty-two. He's saying too old and you don't buy it. He carries no weariness in his jaguar body. He takes his lower lip in his mouth. ''What if,'' he then says, ''I'm a vampire.'' He touches the tip of his tongue to his upper teeth.

''My favourite paranormal activity,'' you say.

''Too bad,'' he says, grinning. You look at his ajar lips and think: too bad.

''Your canines are sharp, though,'' you say. ''At least.''

He grins wide. Pointedly and slowly leans towards your neck with an open mouth, until teeth make contact. You feel your smile dropping when his phone beeps. He hesitates for a beat and then leans his forehead on your chin, just breathing there, and you know you are both thinking about him saying no phone number.

''But none for me,'' you say. Because of all the places your bodies have been touching, a beat of silence means: five heartbeats of him staring at his phone, engulfed in the jacket he discarded on the floor by the couch, and you staring at him. And then he leans over, easily shifting your weight, until he can kick the jacket, some, not really achieving anything.

''Another vampire,'' he says, then, on the side of unapologetic. Luckily, you are known to be unresentful. Good at not taking things personally. ''From another brood.'' He places his hands back on your hips.

''Hm,'' you say.  It's fine. The monomania of the green-eye boy is temporary. He's hot, but your desire never lasts, anyway.

—

There's a guy on your bus ride, on the opposite side of the passage, one seat forward. Your age. You noticed the generic niceness of his face.

He's drawing a sinusoidal curve on the fogged window. Moves his hand further right, where the window is still fogged. Starts drawing vertical lines, carefully, some methodology to it, the lines parallel to each other. He pauses after he draws four. Huffs, twists his smile into one that is hiding and downturned. He crosses the four lines with one that is horizontal, then adds another vertical line to the side.

You feel yourself smile. He drops his hand, shakes his head a little. Looks through the window at the frost-covered barren brown fields, away from his prisoner day-count. It's funny. He's funny. You look away.

—

It's a short, crude thing. Like this:

A fictitious boy stumbles out of a bare-walled building. Languid, unrestful body. Unleisurely, water-logged body. A tired backstreet play-doh thing. Young.

''Hey,'' you call. ''You. You good?''

The night is warm, humid. A post-rain road construction night. A night for cicadas, if you drive further out.

He inhales in the way of catching breath. Squints at his watch, eyes go glassy. Looks at the moon overhead, then squints at you. And you— you feel awake now.

You look him over, the sugarburn boy with a backwards baseball cap. The trouble of a tooth cavity, which means: okay, if you have some money. Some reckless uncare, too. He's watching you. You inhale slowly, but it turns out all tell-tale anyway. He must see the appeal you feel, in how he licks his lips and tilts his head.

''Interested?'' he asks.

You hesitate. Feel for your jacket pocket with your wallet in it. Lift it without taking it out, clear enough.

He nods. Clears his throat.

''Can you play nice?'' he asks. Teasing, but also not.

You can.

He nods. Looks at his watch. You follow him.

—

You pick up your pretend-sugar fake-care service by a closed ice-cream stand, its inviting light sign shining red on his face. It's raining lightly when you pull up and he doesn't have his hood up like he knows the wet hair strands sticking to his forehead make him look good. In the car, he has no song requests when you ask.

''How can I service you?'' he asks.

—

''What should I call you,'' you ask.

''No need to call me,'' he says.

''What if I want to,'' you admit. Not subtle and elusive. If I may be so bold as to in the back of your mouth.

He pauses, thinks. His gaze is saccading empty spot to empty spot and you know the only type of name you'll get is a fake. You'll take it, as a consolation purchase.

''Theo,'' he says.

—

Alec answers the knock with a toothbrush in his hand.

''Theo. Jesus,'' he breathes.

''Hello,'' Theo responds, overly carefully-crafted for the simplicity of a greeting, but Theo has never carried himself as though he was simple. ''I brought you those,'' he hands Alec paper sheets folded in half. ''I got my hands on some werewolves. Could you give those to Scott?''

It's more automatic than not, when Alec takes and unfolds them. They are black-and-white prints of photographs of ID's.

''You did?'' Alec says, still dumbfounded, still in the act of being interrupted. Habit-mindedness sliced in half. ''How?''

Theo shrugs. His face furrows for a beat, then he fiddles with the door handle, pushing it down twice.

Alec looks at the goods in his hands: a toothbrush, werewolfy profiles. ''Do you want me to tell him that they're from you?''

Theo looks conflicted. That's fair; it's a conflicting state of circumstances, or what is it that Liam told Alec. Maybe Theo turned to Alec because of the implied similarity: both well-accustomed to doing what it takes. Maybe Theo is finding some comfort in that; like Alec would recognise that Theo is a runaway object, or a throwaway one, only having made himself a weapon because he had been made into one first. Like Alec would recognise that Theo is trying to pay his dues. Or maybe Alec is misjudging and Theo isn't seeking comfort at all, which is what Malia thinks. Guess Alec is a little soft for softer scenarios.

''Jesus,'' Alec says again. ''You were gone so long. You didn't say anything. Have you—'' He hesitates, frowns a little. ''Does—Ah, well, you know. Does Liam know?'' He was going for tentative with this one before he swerved. Tending to the habits of skittish wolves.

Theo is looking past Alec's shoulder, distanced and glassy. Alec thinks of dolls, their eyes amiss in that they are unseeing and custom-built. It's a thought too cruel, unless it's sympathetic.

Theo shakes his head, slowly, and exhales, touches his temples with his index fingers, then drops them lower and presses them over his jaw muscles.

''TMJ pain?'' Alec asks.

Theo drops his hands. ''What?''

''Oh. The jaw joint,'' Alec points to his own.

Theo shrugs. ''It's just tender. This muscle,'' he taps.

''Have you been stressed? TMJ problems are common for young people. Can happen because of stress. Stress can cause teeth grinding.'' A clumsy explanation, but Alec can't re-order its parts now, just hopes Theo takes it. Hopes Theo makes his skin onion peel and shows something less dry underneath. And Theo:

Theo looks at him expressionlessly, for a beat, and then exaggeratedly sad-faces. Pouts, closes his eyes, nods slowly. ''I've been stressed,'' he says.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32225941

10 Tips On How to Enjoy Internet Quizzes About You and Werewolfery While Knowing They Have No Construct Validity

Three years later it becomes clear: squid-boys never stood much of a chance breathing on land.

''Is he awake? The tranquilizer is loosening. Oh, he moved. Did you see? Left fingers.''

Your shoulder – right, you hit a rock. A set-up of metal walls glistens in the corner of your vision. You can't move. Some wetness in your throat makes you despair, makes you cough, involuntary and chokey and wet. Your muscles just don't move the way you want them to.

''Hey. Are you awake? Back away, I think he's scared.''

''Binary gender is a construct,'' a voice says, light, somewhat serious, somewhat self-aware.

''Oh, I'm sorry. Are they awake.''

Fuck you, you think. This happened just fifteen minutes after waking up. If this were to happen later, maybe you would be less out of it and more situation-wise, more windbreaking skin. More teethful. Wetness should be at your side and not pool where it shouldn't. Wetness should drown things when you willed it to.

They carry your limp body into the metal box, as you knew that you would, carried to the truck door and packed away neatly. Your body feels particularly insensitive, even when gloved hands touch it, maybe in the enlightenment of death, or something death-like.

In the box, the only way to look is upwards at the glass cover plate. It doesn't move when you push against it, and none of the other walls do. When the light in the space of the truck is cut off, you stop pushing at the upper plate, because it makes you feel flattened, or something that can be flattened with force, in the way of soft-tissues invertebrates. It makes the air in your chest twist into impossible illusion shapes, looped into themselves.

And then the truck screeches to a stop. When it does, abrupt in the way of accidents, you think of the gods you've been learning to despise in the practise of eighteen years. You would think your spite is more polished by now, better refined, with how raw and disgusting it has felt. But now your ears are ringing with divine working in one's life shall become apparent as an ineffable experience; divine working—

Your ears are ringing with Andrew and eyes burning with the image of the hell-made saviour of him. You hear shouting. The truck sways with the force of something, and you go with it, like unrooted watergrass. If this is Andrew, he must be sating the hunger of his hyper-grin. A new image blazes into you: out of water, in the air of land, bloodied hands remain bloodied. You are used to water washing blood from your skin, the skin remaining stainless, shedding impurity and grime and violence right off. If this is Andrew, he must look like a terror.

But there is a godly part in this. If this is Andrew, he has brought what you have always wanted: difference without novelty and novelty's stomach-digesting discomfort. The truck sways again and you are still holding your breath.

*

It has been over a week since Andrew removed his arm from around your shoulders, and you both fell in the water of a flooded basement, comrade-like, collapsed and breathing fast in the aftermath of things. He dragged himself to the staircase and spread over the length of a step, legs up on the railing, the weight of his cement-bag body sagging. The thump of his head falling back against the wall made you want to urge forward. But you didn't. His clothes were soaked past his waist, black jeans abyss-black. His head lolled to look at you and you felt all too transparent, like he could see right through your skin and muscle, liver and intestines and all your soft organs. You were still spiked-up, body still ready to rush. Too tender when he was looking like this.

It has been over a week of you dragging your body through the ecosystem of the basement. The water is shallow enough to make the basement a crawl-space. You crawl around the pillars, wondering if you can do it in an utterly random pattern. Don't think too hard. You think you're going crazy. From aloneness. All the other beings in the flooded basement are small and timid. Don't think too hard.

Andrew comes every day, every second day, every few days. Irregularly. He brings stacks of food.

''It's not this dark outside,'' you tell him the next time his boots settle with your eye level, ''The windows are tinted. It's darker in here.''

He brings you a flashlight. You don't use it. To what, target yourself? A predator with nothing to prey on. A predator with nowhere to go.

He sticks his feet in the water and reads with your flashlight. He brings you games of multiplication and these little metal wire shapes to disentangle. You get better than him at chess quickly. It surprises him. It doesn't surprise you.  You have been thinking about mathematical perfection and formal proofs your whole life. You have spent your whole life over-chewing your people's stories; it makes you a good social learner; a learner from mistakes, yours, others'.

''I am going to promote my pawn,'' you observe. He brings his hands up, all fingers meeting in a point aligned with the centre of his chest and then he pulls his hands apart and spreads his fingers into something open and empty-handed.

''I don't care,'' he says, then huffs and laughs meanly until he swallows it down, and then bolts upstairs. You can hear him rage there, the thumping of what you imagine is hands hitting the frame of a doorway as he enters a room, pushing empty drawers shut, throwing himself on a bed. You don't understand his theatrics, or his rage.

Most of the time he is gone, though. It would be okay, that nothing ever happens, if nothing happened inside of you, too. You just feel disused, as a person. Your skin is pale without bruises and your head is empty. Andrew has brought you a waterproof phone, a metal little thing. He's been gone for days, and you've been existing amongst clutter, a being in the ecosystem, an object in stasis. This water tastes different. It leaves a dirty taste in your mouth that you try to get rid of by licking your lips. It doesn't work, but you keep catching yourself doing it anyway.

You call him.

''I feel sick,'' you say.

He brings you aspirins, more food, a radio.

He hasn't been saying much. This isn't what satisfaction looks like, you think as he expressionlessly tears a second packet of salt into his food box. His quiet leaves you feeling alone in un-novel ways, even though most of your aloneness is new. To be fair, you have only found dissatisfaction to be unkind; not intrinsically, not out of necessity, but out of something more spiteful – maybe stubbornness. Anyway. Anyway, maybe you shouldn't think of quiet as unkind. What else can you expect. Being low-maintenance feels kind of right.

*

Somebody is in the house.

When the steps come, they come slow, and with foreign wilfulness. You still. You watch your breath skate over the surface. You know that you wear suspicion the way Andrew wears the relaxed slope of his shoulders, but you're right, you're right.

You are right. After minutes of soft thudding, a corrosion-of-a-boy appears at the top of the basement staircase and deflates in front of your eyes. He peeks downwards quickly, then half-turns, his eyes again jumping around in the way of sweeping: thorough and clearing. The semi-dry sepia shrubs outside the window, the unopening front door of abandon, the end of the hallway you only saw once. He stops. He deflates. He exhales, exposing the wear of him, then covers his eyes with his wrist. He stops like that.

You are watchful. You make yourself unseeable and now that he doesn't see you by how he continues walking downwards. You watch as he crouches his anaemic-looking body on the last step above the water, looking around in a glazed way, with clumsy attention. His eyes are shadowed by the downwards tilt of his head, so you set your gaze to the tight pull of his shoelaces and the triple knots of them. Slow enough to be soundless, you lift some more of your body out of the water.

''Psh,'' you say, and the boy stills. Stops breathing, until he leans his head forward, a little, squinting, and you think about a fish hook.

''Merman?'' he asks, stupid.

He looks a thought away from bolting, a distraction away. Haunted? you wonder. Fast as someone would be if they had something sharp snipping right by their neck. For a moment, you worry that Andrew has installed cameras, but he wouldn't.

''Are you with Andrew?'' you ask, and have him scrambling up – and it rolls a terrible terrible sense over you. A sense of Andrew's hyper-grin. A sense of his red-dripping hands. An unpunctuated question of things Andrew could do.

You don't want him to go. ''Wait, wait. Do you have an aspirin?''

He stops in something surprise-like. Continues looking undecided. He looks like a person who only trusts himself. Who wonders whether he himself is trustworthy.

''Black hair,'' you address him. It seems to stagger him further.

''I don't,'' he says, then clears his throat. ''I have needles. Some alcohol?''

''Alcohol is a very ineffective drug.'' Drugs know you, you know drugs. You say this to skirt the edge of things, because some basicity is growing inside of you. Psychotropics have always meant skirting things, for you. People have always only responded to the wrong ugly aspects of you using them, and they have responded in an ugly way, when they did.

''Is he the one keeping you here?'' the boy asks lowly, with horror. Andrew wouldn't. The boy probably doesn't know Andrew specifically. He is probably just wary. Trustless. He absently wipes a hand under his nose and looks at his hand as it comes away clean.

''No, no. He helps,'' you say, throat wound up in a familiar way.

The boy's gaze doesn't linger on the un-land-suited parts of you. What must you look like? Hiding in a vacated house, now un-vacated, now a whole new ecosystem. You dragging your body around it purposelessly in the manner of dethroned kings. In religious stories, evil is described along the image of decadent, scorching beauty, or ugliness, never ordinary. What are you? Stale, now; touch this – this; ah, pfh, in the hold of gloved hands. Are you ordinary. Can you be unordinary in a good way. Please. Suddenly, you feel the crash of some alien plea, fully, mouthfully in a way extraneous things can't be.

The boy stands up, scanning the basement around you, the misplaced wooden boards and pillars and the handles of some exercise equipment above the water level. The place you scavenge. The place where electronic devices make your eyes hurt. The boy shakes his head.

''Does Andrew—'' he starts, then reconsiders, ''did Andrew—'' stares at you wordlessly, before he glances over his shoulder and grips the strap of his bag with both hands.

''Are you in a hurry?'' you ask.

His eyes are a little wild when he turns back to you, and his nodding is shaky. ''He will be back, right. Andrew.''

The air isn't right. You twist your arms under the hunch of your shoulders. ''Are you really?'' you ask after a moment.

''I don't know how to tell the truth differently,'' he evades the question; you notice things like that. You stare. You stare. He sharpens under your gaze. His grip on the strap tightens. His eyes narrow when yours do, and his face is tightening up with something wild and exposed and almost breathless.

''Look, I'm just asking, okay?'' you roll the words out carefully. ''You don't have to, I won't— It's just me here, okay? But are you— are you—do you know Wes—''

''No. No. I'm. I'm Neil and I don't know anyone here,'' he says, then runs back up the stairs, and you think: fuck.

*

''What have you done,'' you accuse Andrew right as the door at the top of the staircase gapes wider, more late-afternoon orange light seeping in. You don’t know if you should tell him about Neil. Andrew halts and untenses with a controlled exhale before he even fully tenses. He turns his head before he turns his body, the slit-eyed mechanism of it.

You watch him pull down his large brown-knitted sweater from where it has creased at his waist. This is the softest you have seen him. In his mechanical way. He walks down.

''What do you mean,'' he asks blankly. You lift your eyebrows. You don't want to prompt his answer. You want to squeeze out his hiding space until he is forced to expose himself. Something tells you he has not been sufficiently challenged, lately, that he has been glaring his way through people's curiosity until they took their questions back.

''I will stay here now. I needed the foster address to get a job. I don't need it anymore.''

''You work?'' you ask, dumbfounded.

''Warehouse stock control. I'm getting machinery training. Forklift truck. Vroom vroom'' his tone mocks himself. He doesn't answer your question. He lifts his mug above his open mouth and nothing pours out, which he must have known before he lifted it and did it anyway.

''So what did you do,'' you ask. You imagine he squints his eyes, but he doesn't do anything, really, you just see the questioning of it.

''I left and now I'm moving here. What do you think I did? Oh thee who inquires with an accusatory tone.'' He sits down, then stands up enough to pull a pen from the pocket of his black jeans. ''What will you charge me with, officer?''

''Okay,'' you say carefully, raising your hands. ''Were they bad? Wherever you were staying.''

''Sure.'' He gives a not impressed look at your raised hands, then pulls a sudoku from this jacket pocket, and you think: how can this be the thing that bores you the least. He has this unasking about him: he doesn't wonder about your life, or about its past, or about its pastness. How you sometimes wanted to be one of the little beings that scuttle inelegantly, instead of a self, and how you now drag your body around in patterns. You still don't know to where he disappeared for two years, and he doesn't ask about the gelatinous ways in which life unfolded in that time. He doesn't bite into pasts. It's very uninviting.

''So why were they bad?'' you ask, then watch him build things inside of himself. Stories, lies, napkin-houses that fold the dirty sides inwards.

''They don't read social cues,'' he says, finally. You wonder how carefully crafted this answer is. But who are you to judge? You haven't told him about Neil.

''And I read things fine, for you?'' you ask.

Andrew's eyes trace the line of your shoulders. You turn a little, into something more invisible, and Andrew nods a little.

''You wear your body like it's soft,'' he says.

You feel a strike of something pulpy. You look down at your body, water surface wavering around it. The stricken feeling is illusionary; it reminds you: Andrew's curiosity is just selective. Just one of the on-off things he switches, like his energy and benevolence. It's selective in the way of not knowing things that are easy to know, like knowing to list your body organs, and on the other hand saying, you wear your body like it's soft.

''This doesn't work,'' you say. Twitching your head sideways to indicate the space of the basement.

''I know,'' he says after a moment, taut. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

''I can't even move.''

''I know,'' he says. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

*

Andrew should be sleeping upstairs when you hear a crash, some crashing, and then quiet. An accident, you imagine immediately, your mind attuned to likely narratives, bad things, extrasensory things.

''Andrew?'' you ask tentatively. It's something bad. It's always something bad. But then the quiet is broken with more crashing, scrambling, the noise of something desperate. The sound has moved down the hallway, where you can hear more clearly. Andrew is saying something through his teeth, softly, melodically, always teethfully. You hear a gasp.

''Neil?'' you say.

''Neil?'' Andrew pronounces carefully. He pushes the weight of something unwilling to the basement door. A hand in Neil's hair is pushing his hand backwards, harshly, and a knife glistens by his throat artery. Andrew isn’t grinning, but you can’t unsee him grinning.

''Why did you come back,'' you say to Neil, who is forced to look at the ceiling, one hand around each of Andrew's arms.

''Come back,'' Andrew repeats blankly, looking between you and Neil.

Neil uses both hands to push at the arm with the knife and suddenly knife is held by them both, away from their bodies and struggling for a swing, both breathing hard with faces sharp. You imagine red-dripping hands. You don't want the knife to swing. You don't want it fiercely.

You open your vocal cords in the right way and a shrill blooms from the resonating spaces in your cheekbones, outwards, hitting Andrew and Neil with the force of soundwalls breaking. It's piercing to your ears, too, and you know it doesn't even compare. You're the predator, then, and they are prey-like. Neil falls down the stairs. Andrew falls to his knees and elbows, hands closed around his ears.

Neil is staggering, touching his ears, spitting water away from his lips, wild. You offer a hand and he stares at it, then moves further back. He bumps into a pillar and startles, before walking around it to take another step back.

Andrew cracks his neck sideways, both sides, glaring at you, then slowly takes two steps down to pick up the knife.

''Neil came back, Aaron? Is there something you aren't telling me? Try not to lie.''

''What,'' Neil asks, then covers and uncovers his ears again, panicked, looking between Andrew and you. His hearing. It probably hurts. It's probably disorientating.

Andrew snaps his fingers three times. Neil doesn't respond. Andrew keeps snapping rhythmically; the more times he does it, the higher up the clog of eeriness in your throat climbs. Neil pushes his hair out of his face, breathing hard at his reflection. He's cupping his ears, shaking his head, shaking the ringing out, until he looks up at Andrew, and Andrew stops snapping and drops his arm.

''What?'' Neil asks again, quick, twitchy. Andrew tilts his head. Neil takes another step back. ''Who are you on the market? Are you resistance? Is this how you know?'' he looks at you.

''The market. Food?'' Andrew says, just as you ask, ''Criminal?'' Neil is talking about the criminal market. He is talking about prized items like you. You know from stories; you just hear big names, as a lesson for avoidance. There is nothing familiar about the way Neil looks. But his hauntedness; it might look like something familiar.

''Liars, liars,'' he Andrew smiles, syllable by syllable. ''You're staying, then,'' he says to Neil. ''You have overshot your runaway runway, huh? We have something to talk about. I see we'll be dining finely tonight. The plentiful company of the three of us.''

Andrew carries himself like a punchline, when he talks. It's annoying.

''He's patronising to everyone. Don't think you're special,'' you tell Neil.

Neil smoothes his hair back and wipes the water off his face. ''Who are you?'' he asks tautly. ''Resistance? Nobodies don't hide Others in abandoned houses.''

''Your turn to share, squid boy,'' Andrew says, both reappearing and coming down. Neil is in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic. Andrew ceremoniously offers a metal fork to Neil, and then hands out a plastic one to you. You pull it out of his hand.

''We are not. You both. You both say these statements. As if you knew. Nobodies don't do this. Nobody knows anything for sure, okay? Tentativity can be enjoyable sometimes.''

''Pescatarian, anyone?'' Andrew asks, pleasantly. ''Come, Neil. You can't stay in wet clothes. We'll talk.''

They disappear upstairs. In the way of denouements, you feel a resolution unfolding. Or hoping for one, anyway. You press the feels of your palms over your eyes. They will probably talk about you, too. And then Neil will appear in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic, and it will make you think of the cosiness of monochromatism, of how homewise it is. It will make you think of when your cousin was glancing at you with a frown and your aunt told her, leave him, he's just brooding, and the cousin still went to him, calling out Aaron Aaron Aaron.

They keep sneaking glances at each other. Neil's dark hair and Andrew's face so much like your own make you think back in time, back to the few days before the metal box and dismal circumstance. I like your hair, you signed to the girl the name of whom you had been trying not to think, drawn to things that are too dark to shine. She was lingering by the mosaic in front of the growth of your rock opening that you had deliberately let become overgrown, something one pushes through with spicy feeling. Thank you, she signed, I like your face. That sounded like a really bad comeback. I do like it, it's very symmetrical.

Neil and Andrew's eyes meet, and you think: you two assholes are too self-absorbed to not do this staring contest.

*

Andrew's phone rings. He turns to bore into Neil's eyes. He moves the phone away from his ear, and says: ''Nathaniel?''

And Neil panics.

In the way of narrative complications, the three of you end up in Andrew's warehouse car.

You are in the backseat, covered with two blankets, feeling yourself frown as you readjust your grip on the four two-litre water bottles you are hugging to your chest.

''This is clearly idiotic,'' you inform them, again, because apparently neither of them senses the threat of a looming climax. The so many things that will go wrong, because nobody has any sustainable plans.

Andrew is loosely gripping the wheel with faux laziness and Neil glances around full-bodily, alert, before returning to zooming in on google maps on a new phone he just had in his bag. He destroyed Andrew’s.

''This doesn't work,'' Andrew repeats your words so wholly blankly that it is no-doubt mockery.

''Not nearly the stupidest thing I've done,'' Neil mutters. Andrew flicks his eyes at Neil. You squint as you flick your eyes between them. Andrew is tapping his fingers on the wheel. Neil is hunching low in his seat, scowling at the screen. Andrew reaches over to Neil's side to pull sunglasses from the glove compartment, and Neil leans away to make space without looking from the screen.

''So you two are friends now?'' you ask, something strange and foreign tinting your tone. ''Or have you guys started—''

''He's a benefit,'' Andrew interrupts. The sunglasses render his thoughts further invisible. He is a thing of well-fitting black placed within American-spaced property and nothingness. He evades the friend part with his answer. Like so often, he is making himself into invisibility and insinuation.

''You smell like excitement,'' you tell him and watch as his face jumps a little.

''You can smell feelings now?'' He snatches the phone from Neil's hands, maximally zooming into the location that Neil has been inspecting for minutes. Neil keeps looking in the empty space of the phone, hands hanging around phone-shaped air, before he drops them and buckles his seat belt. And you think: theatrics on the road.

You shrug. You can still sense Neil's panic.

''You smell like wet,'' Andrew retorts, looking who knows where. Having learnt from exposure, you know Andrew looks down on things he feels, and you soak in them. Leave him, he's just—

''Just start the engine,'' Neil says.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099911/chapters/35012867

sister and i; a moment without a need for sharability; that post that says you ever drink coffee so strong it instills transcendemce in you for the entirety of four minutes

Tasting; Ambivalence; Skepticism; The Age of 22

Shiro, championed.

He is a tale, he knows. But he doesn't feel like one, he is way too roomless, way too thoughtless, only a tablespoonful of a something.

The tale should be fractured, he thinks. It shouldn't be about victory, it should avoid being this spurious. It should have stones. Bricks. Maximal damage. Minimal effort. He wonders if pain should bring him clarity. Yes; the tale can have this too. How creaturely he feels when in pain.

He is on his stomach, the cheek on the table half closing his eye. They have taken his spinal fluid again.

''Don't you have this already?'' he asks, voice unsmooth, the heavy door creak of it. ''You've taken it yesterday.''

They look surprised. They say something in a language he doesn't know, and don't do anything. Not anything in response to what he said.

He looks at the suited figures, feeling himself hazing. He wonders if he has missed some essence of their subjectivity – he has only been thinking of them in a plural way. Do they hesitate? Do they worry? Feel individual things? Maybe pluralising them is unjust. But then his mind clears up one more time: he will wake up in one of the small square rooms, where he has been waking up lately. Roomlessly, thoughtlessly, creaturely.

*

He has been having recurring daydreams. And wanting, recurringly, in a compromising way, in the way of wanting being his single antibody.

*

Four years from now, Shiro will watch coffee grounds swish around his french press. He will feel content at the uneventfulness of it, and call it laziness, call it something slow and nice, like a sleepy cat.

''That's fine,'' Someone will say, ''more attention to a french press than to me. That's fine.''

Shiro will walk around the counter and plop down into the couch. He will move uncaringly. He will move caringly in the right way.

''My cushion balance,'' Someone will complain. ''You disbalanced me.''

''It doesn't bother you,'' Shiro will say.

''It doesn't,'' they will admit immediately. Then, tone joking: ''I just think it's funny that—'' They will smile, with mouth corners turned downwards.

Shiro will nod a little at the joke, then scoot closer, with one leg over their legs. He will cover their eyes with his palms. Then breathe. Get close. Hover close. Breathe into their jaw.

A hand will tangle in his hair. It will make him feel wild with possibility; some tangled nerves pulled separate into their fitting paths, re-sparking. He will feel lightheaded, but not in a dizzying way. In a love way, perhaps.

''I was joking. It wasn't funny,'' Someone will murmur to clarify, opening the palm in Shiro's hair, then closing it again, tugging at Shiro's content. Shiro will make a mhm sound, the vibration of it, and place his closed lips to the corner of their mouth. He will wonder if it's expectation alone that sustains him, feeling both their breaths do billowy things on his eyelids. It would be understandable, he will think, consistent: sometimes he takes a single sip of coffee and it makes him feel much better immediately. He shakes hands with placebo.

''My heart,'' Someone will say, whispery and squealy – good, like dying for a good cause. Moving lips to talk will make them kiss; make them kissed, make them the passive subjects of kissing.

*

They don’t talk back to him.

''You don’t talk back to me,'' he says, and thinks he sounds pleasantly non-accusatory. They talk to each other, he knows. He wonders if this is his humble sacrifice for humanity, if humanity, thanks to him, knows about aliens, if it has gone father than ever before. If that guy whose video he watched got to walk on Europa, if the icy surface really did creak underneath his feet, if he really could hear it cracking, tidally stretching, when he placed his head to the surface.

Maybe he should be living mindfully, now. Maybe this will uncatastrophise his life.

He thinks about his perceptions. He feels thirsty. Maybe dehydration will hit the pacemaking cells of his heart and he will die. He focuses. He watches things that glisten. His knuckles are cold and his heart feels warm. A warm creature that bites. He thinks he shouldn't call himself warm-hearted. It's wrong. This is wrong.

*

Four years from now, Shiro will place his hand over Someone's chest.

''Your heart. My eyes, if only you could see what I'm seeing. My heart. My lungs. My spleen'' Shiro will say, and Someone will hook their arms under Shiro's, fingers pressing onto the muscle on his shoulders, and it will feel nice, and Shiro won't mind leaving his thoughts somewhat unfinished. Now his lips will be pressed on their cheek under the uncovered eye.

He will remain motionless, to see is something will boil. To explore the peculiar properties of the two of them. Eyes closed, he will feel their breathing faster than it was. He will feel good about that.

''I could start hiccupping from the emotional stress,'' Someone will whisper, hooking arms around Shiro's body, hooking and not snaking, expressing some crushing liking. Their flirting won't snake, serpent-like.

''No stress allowed,'' Shiro will whisper back.

*

Maybe he is wrong and he'd rather be less present. Daydream more. He has been having a recurring daydream.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27387220

what if,,, a gentle suggestion since you wish for PROMPTS,,,, you wrote a little fic,,, just a little humble fic,,, about a humble kiss,,,, you have never explored the matters of the Kisse, baby,,, never,,, you know that,,, make readers' blood boil and evaporate,,, start a cycle of heating and cooling,,, like a self-sustaining heat engine.,,,

<3 <3 have written, will post <3 <3

Am i allowed to use your fanart in a video edit! I will credit your tumblr in the caption! I couldnt find anything anywhere

yes 🐿️🐿️🐿️ send me the video when you post it? ❤️

bro I love your writing style so much

🦔🦔🦔 i think hedgehod emojis are a good shot at expressing the keysmash of how meaningful you writing this is to me. you literary energy drink!!! i love having a sense of writing for someone to feel it!!! you can send me a prompt, if you want; the most uncomfortable situation you can imagine, for me to resolve in a short fic; the juiciest prompt you can imagine; an unwritable situation for me to write; an idea that was poorly executed in your dream

Lance doesn't lower the rifle.

Maybe it's because he joined the army late that he tries to think it a yet – doesn't lower it yet.

The soldier is crouched by the sandbag mount, on their side of the mount, the exposed side. Lance was alarmed at first sight; thought a scatter of things at once: theft attempt, attack? Desperation, dying? Lance has become micro-attuned to helmet colours. He saw the alarm of bronze. The soldier removes his face clothing. Breathes through the mouth. His arm slips from his knee to the ground. His other arm is missing.

''I don't feel so good,'' the soldier says. He sounds somewhat apologetic. Is this war conduct, Lance thinks. The soldier seems impossible, like stygian blue. The red around his missing arm seems self-luminous.

Lance has his hands adjusting his grip. It's so quiet around them. Snowflakes drift lightly onto the barrel of his rifle. The sky is white and slow and soft. It's so quiet.

''I don't know,'' the soldier says. He's blinking rapidly at the ground. Shifts his weight like he wants to sit down. Lance likes how his German sounds.

''Aren't you—'' scared, Lance despairs. Of me? Of war?  ''Scared,'' he finishes.

''Yeah,'' the soldier says. Like it's an allowed simplicity, to say it like that. ''I don't feel so hot.''

''Is this wordplay,'' Lance asks, horrified, ''do you think you're funny? You look like shit. Soldier.''

''Yeah,'' he says, to something. ''Shiro.''

It takes Lance time to realise this is a name. But now he can't unname the soldier. Now all the circumstantial parts are named; hair clumped to his forehead under the helmet frozen white: Shiro; the knot of the tied sleeve where an arm is missing, hitting Lance's stomach wrongly: Shiro.

The air inside Lance is whirling. The air in his tiny air sacs has been whirling lately, and  it is now, but differently, Lance knows. More breezily. It has been somewhat abstract, but now he is winded. Now it is personal. Lately, he has been dreaming he hates himself, and he has been waking up, thinking: but I don't.

Sometimes his chest blooms, or turns into something with a low boiling point, or turns into octopus ink; and he thinks he is grieving himself.

Which must be self-absorbed. He is on the side of alive, and has both arms. Maybe it's because he joined the army late, but he doesn't know how he could offset the death of something with a name.

''Don't just give me your name,'' he says. The soldier moves his legs from under himself, instead folding into something seated, leaning back on the sandbags. He has seated his momentum. He moves his jaw. Like something relaxing, or something in pain, or something defunct.

''I don’t think it matters now,'' the soldier says.

''It matters,'' Lance says. Says immediately; he feels very immediately.

''Want to see my picture, too?'' The soldier fumbles through his jacket. All right, Lance realises, then re-realises: wait. This might be too much to know. Lance shakes his head. Lance shakes his head but goes despite himself, thinking, you don't feel like a target? You feel like a human shield.

The soldier pulls a photo from an inside pocket. On the photo, the soldier isn't dressed like a soldier, and looks very clean, standing by someone shorter, wilder, messier, their arms thrown over each other's shoulders. The image is blurry, but the soldier's eyes seem strangely defined. They seem strangely defined now, too.

''Love the blur of you,'' Lance says.

''Thanks.''

Lance feels himself nodding at the picture, like a body on a spring. Maybe he is nodding to stall, to drag out his indecision. He needs to think. If Lance doesn't shoot, that's Shiro winning rightfully, isn't it? It's survival by selection, successful.

''Did you treat it?'' he asks, and the soldier looks confused, so Lance nods in the direction of his arm. He realises his rifle is waist-high and lowers it to treat the dissonance.

The soldier falls into a coughing fit, which turns into a thing with no sound, just spasming. Snowflakes are drifting. It's so quiet. The soldier lifts his hand towards the missing arm, then halts the motion with the back of his hand to his mouth. Lance imagines they swallow simultaneously.

''Like this. But I think it would extend my shelf life. If it were better.''

Lance is afraid he won't say anything. Lance has been not knowing what to say, leaving him with the spice of depersonalisation. Sometimes he still hates the human silences in which he is forced to live. Them make him feel spindly. Now they are less miserable, less of a crisis. He handcrafts a lack of a self, and now he's handcrafting a silence.

''My hand. Fingers. I can't f—'' the soldier starts coughing again. Leans his head back. It's quiet again. It's been quiet for days. It's even quieter tonight. This is the first time in the month Lance has been in the barren Isonzo highlands without a snowstorm's loudness. He has gotten used to them. To all the noise. He has been falling asleep over cannon shots. He recognises missiles by sound: calibre 152 whistles; calibre 75 creaks; calibre 305 howls.

''Where's your base? Unit?'' Lance wonders if the soldier could be a spy. He is so undefensive, though. His face shapes into something knowing and tender and seeing Lance. Lance sees it: the soldier won't tell. Lance imagines  a hostage situation, then unscrews it from himself like something rusty and illness-causing.

''What's with—'' the soldier starts, but trails off, and Lance interrupts with the same wording, on some strange but fierce and untamed instinct.

''What's with your shelf life? Freezing won't increase it.''

''No. Maybe I'm recyclable?'' the soldier says. Now it's evident that moving his face is difficult, some orchestration undercooled.  Lance doesn't really see the relevance. The soldier says this with no grief. Some grief? What does grief look like? Lance imagines himself on a timeline. He imagines that in a hundred years someone will be swimming in the lowland river under an arch of rocks and see his helmet, washed with rain and time from the highlands, then caught in between two rocks, in between something unmovable under the force of things that move slowly but ferally.

But he is in the now. He rests his rifle against the sandbag wall, feeling the soldier's eyes track him. He pulls the glove off his left hand, and throws it, aiming for lightly, at the soldier. The soldier's face furrows, a little, but Lance is delicately attuned. The soldier is trying to pull his wet glove off with his teeth. It's slow and looks uncomfortable. Suddenly, Lance is angry at discomfort. He sinks to his knees and crawls to the soldier. He holds the soldier's arm, while the soldier is out of breath. It feels like giving in, like a decision making itself; he's pulling the soldier's glove of, finger by finger, the way it goes; he's pulling the soldier's glove of worrying: am I doing this too slowly?

Peripherally, he sees the soldier watching his face. One time, Lance's sister said to him: you are in my emotional space. Now Lance thinks: you are up my aorta!

I know you don't know what to do, the soldier's eyes say. I know you know that, Lance's say back.

This silence doesn't feel miserable. It feels a little unreal, like windless snow, like the faraway quiet. It feels a little awkward. Lance backs away, maybe out of the soldier's emotional space, and crouches, hands on the ground. His left hand is painfully cold. Good. This isn't awkward, the soldier is ferociously unwell.

The soldier has looked away. Into nothing, squinting strangely. Time passes, and Lance lets it. Lance watches it. He starts squinting at the soldier, until he notices, blinking like head-clearing.

''Do you ever look at afterimages?'' the soldier asks, hazedly, obscured with a veil of dreaminess. Or maybe this is terminal tranquillity.

Lance's bughotel mind is lagging. ''What?''

''Spots,'' the soldier says. ''After.''

''After what,'' Lance asks.

''Images. Colours. Something dark in the snow.''

Images; Lance recalls the pocket photo. The blur of Shiro. Images, colours, something dark in the snow. Lance likes this. He likes triads, he thinks. Stone, mist, hair undoing. Salt, ferocity. Something.

''Shiro. Shiro?'' Lance calls. Shiro pulls his legs closer to himself. Snowflakes are drifting, the dusk is white and light with snow. A film of snow is covering Shiro's shoulders.

Freezing unthinking; unworded observations; undoings. Lance decides, then, with determination he doesn't have, or maybe, after all, the determination he has: he knows the next step, and it's undoing the freezing unthinking. His cavern is his, too, after all. He can go inside. He will bring Shiro inside.

This is how they go: Lance is holding his rifle in one hand, relaxed at his side, a just-in-case, a warning, the other arm in the air and open. Shiro is breathing behind him. Lance opens the door, slowly, tactically. Like an ambush?

''Alright, now,'' Lance starts.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27092113

Ah. It's a joke. The joke of the meadow. The location for the economy of life choices: a bright and blossoming meadow. You feel played already. Stale air, too hot, and your distressed feelings. The chilling lightness of butterflies.

You're not here as a joke. Nobody comes here as a joke. Calling coming here a summoning has been a fatal insult. You wonder if all your tension is in the tissue around your nerve cells, making you slow. Invisible, you hope. You've heard of someone who went to make a deal, then never returned. Someone who made one, then never woke up in the morning.

''You can use yarrow for tea,'' the fae says, making you spin, springing backward, feeling the grip of the keys in between your fisted fingers. ''Ribwort plantain, too.''

''I come accompanied by friendly spirit to make a deal,'' you say, the words having looped around your mind for weeks, now feeling your heartbeat in your fingers. ''I bring an offering and hope not to trespass across the separating—''

''It's easier to make tea,'' the fae says. He looks your age, maybe; it might be unsayable, because of the smudgy quality about him. Light hair, some dark knowing in his light eyes. Shorter than you, you feel played. A dream make-believe. One just accepts the indefinition.

''I offer five years,'' you say. Rehearsed. Determined and inwardly desperate.

''Five years,'' the fae is nodding ambiguously, agreeing or not. You can't tell. It's stupidly performative. Very flashy, the fae whispers: ''Are you lifting a curse?''

You aren't really lifting a curse. Or is that what it is? It is: avoiding eye-contact. Meaningful sighs, the wordlessness you hate. Running, we’re nothings. Abram, do you hear me. You know you can’t build anything here. Anything anywhere. Running, then midday crashes like narcan, like countering opioid overdoses. Crashes. Crashes. Lingering in dimmed half-underground spaces, thinking I can't think, writing lists of protologisms, for what, thinking I can't think, not finding what you need.

You hate it, and there's more: faulty cause and effect, infinite repetitions, chronic secrecy. Look at the shape of that finger burn, someone laughed, passing you kitchen serviettes. That's not how you meant it, right? That's nonsense. It's funny, actually. It's like a nursery rhyme, look. You didn't find it funny. You are a not-being. A nothing. You look for devices of sense and only find devices of nonsense. You can't think.

''Can you help me?'' you ask.

The fae sits down. Seemingly unbothered by the sun, seemingly unbothered by the power relations implied by the difference in the height of your eyes; by looking upwards and you looking downwards. Of course, though. Of course the implied power is foolish. A pretense. A guise for your amusement. You shield your eyes from the sun.

''What can you offer if you die tomorrow,'' the fae says, not a question enough, eyes too still to be really questioning.

''Wait. Wait. Can you—'' you didn't know the fae can tell, nobody has said, you don't want to know, you don't– the fae deals in life years, you know that, anyone like you knows that; after all the leeching on life, nobody knows how old he is. But nobody's ever said anything about prophecy.  ''Since when can—''

''Just asking,'' the fae shrugs. You exhale like okay. You breathe out like alright alright alright. Stabilising yourself.

Breathe in, breathe out. ''Can you help me?''

''Are you sure that would help you?'' the fae asks. He tilts his head. Actually, he fits – with the butterflies. It's eerie. He fits with the sweet-smelling meadow into a single morph.

''Do you take the offer,'' you correct yourself. Again, you think the asphyxiating presence of omissions, of avoiding eye contact. You hate it.

''No,'' the fae says calmly, and you say, ''What?''

This isn't how the word goes. The word goes: you come, you deal, you die younger. Win some lose some. Sometimes you lose some more, things you don't foresee. As a bonus, a little treat. You've come prepared, you’ve always expected it: an early death; it’s heavy in your pockets, it’s the shape of a butcher knife. But you won't – do that, you won't lose to inaction.

''I'm not giving you more years,'' you bite. And then you sneeze, which feels greatly innapropriate. ''Allergic to pollen,'' you say, somewhat angrily, distantly, empty-handedly.

''So indoors would be more suitable next time,'' the fae is nodding. ''Here, I'll give you a phone number.''

Whose, you think, and feel like dying a little. You think about more disposable phones before you think: I’m not doing that.

''I'm not asking you again, and I'm not giving you more years. That's five years for you. Do you take it?'' You sound unnerved. Not calm. You don't want that to flatter the fae.

''No. You can pick the spot. I'll show up, probably. If I'll be interested.''

''I think you'll ditch,'' you say, maybe against some recommended judgement, maybe to be interesting. ''A cafe,'' you add.

The fae shrugs. ''Text me.''

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281928

you think: this is stupid. you're caught in a levitation trap between the elevator and the third floor. this is stupid, because you saw him by the staircase and you took the elevator. it's stupid to take the elevator in a four-storey building when you're you. it's stupid that the action-reaction of you and him has had something in between. a few-meter distance. it's not even ignoring when it's so overtly an investment. when you adjust yourself like this. it's stupid.

you think, right, and press the fourth-floor button.

you step out, all wire, when he's two steps from the top. he stops, looks around slowly, then shuffles to the top.

you don't live on this floor, he says.

not new: you reducing the distance. stepping in the way. adjusting yourself back to pre-adjustment. you can call it adjustment, because otherwise you don't call it at all. he probably doesn't. this is the form of investment.

you look around, in imitation, in need a mirror, motherfucker? then look at him. yeah, you say.

he raises his eyebrows. yeah?

okay, you say. okay. let’s play a game. we exchange information. i say something, you guess whether it's true, you say something, then i guess.

he just looks at you for a moment. in stasis.

nope, he then says. no, nope, nope.

what? you feel your face scrunch. come on. why not?

nope, he repeats.

and you think: why not fall all the way in, huh? you've heard a song say distracted on the edge of falling in, and the falling seemed like something to want. and you have wanted, and here you are. disappointed but not surprised. stepping in the way. here you are.

i know your schedule, you say. it's not because – you shake your head aggressively, do a cut, over, redo motion with your hands. restart: it's because my friends study the same—whatever. doesn't matter. whatever. i know you're ditching now.

you inhale, gust-large, and watch him inhale, barely there in his in-stasis-if-you-blink-right.

creepy? he says, a corner of his mouth smiling, and you think, you absolute idiot. you fool. where is your literacy? do you need it spelled out? pulled into the lines that you could read? think confessions wear lipstick like in american films?

so what lecture do i have now, he asks. he glances at his watch with his suburban business gesture, which also says i dress differently on weekends from school days, and it also explains you having told him your shoes would be bad in an apocalypse. and now you look at his shoes and can hear the clicking of him walking up the stairs, and know your steps would be silent like an oath.

why would i make up something like that, you say, with good disgust. literally.

is this blackmail, he squints his eyes.

yes! it's blackmail, you say.

he's still holding his bag, like this is a part of going home. you think at him: it's not! i would put five hundred bags down. i would untie my shoes. this is a thing in itself. you absolute idiot.

okay, he says. what do you want?

what? you ask, on reflex. it floods over you, wetting all your clothes: the fuck it, guess that's it you felt when you restarted the elevator. how your sneakers turned into combat boots, and you stepped out soundly.

i'll think about it, you say, voice coming out strange.

you'll think about it, he repeats. he is again hinting a smile, like he does, like directness is something lesser. and you think, it might be, huh. here i am. he says: then why say that now?

then why say that now, you mock, but it comes out bad, and you cough a little, and shake your head a little. wouldn't you like to know, you say. i have my reasons. the time will come.

he just stands there, calmly. doesn't say anything. frame-freezes, calmly, like he does. and you can't tell whether he's doing deliberate masking or this is what his insides look like. you do like the contrast, though. admittedly. this is not what your insides look like. the appeal of the unknown, huh? certainly when it almost smiles like that. finally, he says: okay.

okay, you repeat. your shoes are sneakers again, so you say: bye.

bye, he says. you blink, inhale, run down the stairs.

okay, then.

@ilgaksu, i too am kicking at the darkness

lance from this witchtrials au

The year is 1672 and Keith Kogane is accused of witchcraft.

This can’t start with a dialogue. It starts like this:

Lance is cutting across a meadow to the forest line, and then stops when he spots four village men on the footpath. Two men are holding onto a boy's upper arms, whose eyes are downcast. Whose stride is purposeful.

Lance passes the bucket of peels from one hand to the other. Hoarfrosted grass cracks under his feet. The men couldn't see him from the road unless they really looked, with the hazelnut trees covering him, and the men are not looking; one of them tugs an arm and the boy's rhythm breaks. The boy doesn't look up.

He knows this moment will be replaying in his head in empty moments. Because it came as on overthrow when he expected an underthrow. At eighteen years old, Lance has learnt the shortcuts, because he wants a faster way through, because repetition has started to calcify his body and he wants a faster way through.

When things like that happen, they happen like secrets: everyone knows and cares in the way one cares for secrets. People don't really care.

Except. Except Lance knows the boy is eighteen-to-nineteen; doesn’t wear a hat when he goes outside; except Lance knows his name, because Lance knows things, because his mother calls him curious and it's different from nosy.

Because people talk. People say: Keith is an illegitimate child, born out of wedlock in a tavern or a stall or in the shadow of a cherry tree, and left to grow in the dust of the streets.

People say: Keith is Shirogane's brother, by roof-sharing and hands clasped on shoulders and shoulder-punches and everything not blood. Shirogane had enough space in his heart to make up for the absence of space in his hut for a boy who never says hello on the streets. Shirogane has joined the Habsburg Imperial Army and threw a fit when he had to leave Keith behind, walked all the way to the tenant-in-chief, and then wrote a letter to the chairman of the state himself.

People say Keith knows the forest better than the village and couldn't get lost off forest trails. Lance has seen him at the mouth of the forest, a hatchet swinging in hand. And Lance has hesitated at the forest line, sunlight ending on his back, thinking others' words: it's not safe.

Now Lance sees him from close and sees tufts of hair falling in his eyes. Notices the face mark – and then it makes sense. Isolation and being different aren't safe. Lance knows things and he knows who the men are.

Keith is eighteen-to-nineteen and he will not have even come of age by the time Lance will.

Lance stands hidden from the pathway, bucket handle still cold in his hand.

*

He keeps wondering, though. He wonders whether he'd see Keith's house trashed if he walked by. Whether Keith was something to hunt down.

He wonders if Keith is so ghostly because he's always in the shadows; Lance's own darkened skin would explain that. Lance is the colours of a breaking autumn, that is: somewhat behind. The tautology of his thought has been somewhat behind, but now he is wondering about Keith, anew. He bets Keith's hair doesn’t get lighter in summer.

Two days later, he hears someone else mention the trial. It’s like this, some people mention it and some don’t. Maybe because of the uncomfortably thin line between knowing and being. Lance feels uncomfortable.

During Confession, he lies and doesn't feel bad about it, then feels bad about not feeling bad. Maybe he shouldn't, though. Priests who have been coming to their church, with city accents, say quite honestly and call that honesty.

He receives his absolution and then steals the pastor's keys.

*

Going before nightfall is a simple choice. Lance can feel the blue hues of dusk on his skin, and people might still be around, but – darkness blinds, alright.

He notices he’s trying to walk soundlessly, and that is false stealth. Revealing stealth. Shut up, he thinks at his boots, and steps on a twig.

It’s there: the bare-brick church extension that Lance has seen used for funerals. For storing bodies with soulless mouth curves and walnut pies and poppy seed bread, pretty things. What a cut-throat irony.

As he walks, he stretches his sleeves over his fingers. Like he's cold; not like he's clutching a set of keys. They feel like rusty metal, which makes Lance loosen his grip. He knows of a woman who has died from an axe cut.

What a cut-throat irony, huh.

He passes the church entrance and steps off the beaten path, onto grass and dry mud. This contrast: mud and bricks. Mud fits with death and funerals. Bricks, though. Should be too luxurious. For death sentences. Four keys are attached to the key ring; he'll have to test them one by one. Maybe the one with a smoother surface is—

And he falls hard.

The door slams into him and he falls hard – falls with the door atop him, the boards breaking apart.

He hadn’t, but he could have imagined it just like this: a body is framed by the doorframe, like a saint statue in front of stained glass. Lance would recognise just the outline.

Keith takes a step back.

He’s breathing shallowly, and Lance wonders which one of them seems more real to the other. Lance is fixated as Keith’s gaze sweeps the surroundings, and starts when Keith looks at him again.

''Sorry,'' Keith says and starts striding away.

''Wait,'' Lance says. Keith doesn't turn. Keith's arms encircle his body as though he was guarding his possessions. He starts running, and Lance runs after him. ''Wait, I'm helping you.'' He holds up the keys.

Keith stops. Nothing falls out of his arms uncoiling when he turns.

''Thanks? I need to—'' Keith blinks at his unfound words and then gestures at the church.  Lance needs a moment to realise Keith isn't pointing at him. Feels like a flinch at being pointed at. Them standing like this, eye to eye, creates the duality: Keith, edged, Lance, an idler. It's not true. It's not nice, to dispute someone's truthfulness just by being nearby.

Lance opens his mouth, but Keith walks off, again. Across the meadow, making Lance think, this is what we are, huh, stretched across a meadow.

''Hi, uh. I'm Lance. What’s your—'' he stops, because he thinks Keith so loudly.

Keith ignores him.

''Hey. Hey. Where are you going? It's too dark for the forest. Hey. Walking right—'' Keith turns suddenly, and Lance almost crashes into him, the energy in his fisted hands vanishing too slowly. They both take a step back.

''Look — why are you following me? Stop.''

Your senses are innervated all wrong, Lance thinks.

''I'm trying to help.''

Keith glances at Lance's hand enclosing the keys. ''I don't need it. Thanks.''

''Literally,'' Lance starts, stops. ''Where are you going, the forest?''

Keith tries to kick the mud off the soles of his shoes, face scrunched up. Some flies into Lance's legs and Keith’s face smoothens a little. Still doesn't look at Lance.

''What about bandits,'' Lance says.

Keith shakes his head. And then moves so slowly, barely perceptibly, but Lance picks it up; the slow bent of knees, into a maybe-fighting stance. A ready stance. And Lance processes it slowly like pressing on a pressure point, wishing for a skilled reflex. Instead, he grabs a handful of soil. As defence. As an explosive projectile.

Keith breathes out before abruptly stepping away. He looks surprised.

''Wait,'' Keith says. ''I'll just walk away. Okay? I can’t give you anything.''

''Wait,'' Lance says, and it ends up being a repetition, but it's not. ''Wait. I don't want anything.'' Jesus. A hypocrite. His own judgements about senses are obviously beyond his judgement. Get the hell attuned. Listen for a damn second.

''Okay,'' Lance says slowly. It feels like placating, and that’s rich coming from him. ''You live on, like, the other side of the village. I live closer. There,'' he points.

The silence feels long, thickening, the breathing of Lance's heart quickening. The soil in his hand feels stupid. He resists the urge to look at the grass that's caught in it. Keith shakes his head.

''No what,'' Lance bites, and Keith looks at the forest.

''They took my jacket.'' It's pushed through his teeth.

''I have a jacket,'' Lance offers.

Keith shakes his head again but doesn’t divert his gaze, and Lance thinks, there's something there.

''This isn’t a joke,'' Keith says lowly. ''What do you want?''

''Nothing. I don’t know,'' Lance replies honestly. ''But I can give you a jacket.''

Under the weight of Keith's consideration, he hopes he looks truthful. The meadow is at this time is short and mud-clamped and faded and dead.  The grass is dying with winter and things are waking up under Lance's skin.

He's angry. Angry, maybe, or maybe canceling the falling quality of his organs, and now everything is in his chest. He's the promise of a glint of a sickle. Not a joke, yeah. He lied because of this.

''If you call anyone,'' Keith starts. Then exhales, and Lance thinks, yeah. He is too all half-finished thoughts. He would too be in trouble. Please. They’d both be dead. Watch him.

''I won't,'' he says, seriously, and it’s a promise.

*

They walk in silence. Fast and intentional, and Lance wonders whose intention is more defined. This feels like pretending, which is again a lie of a feeling. He feels on the edge of his silence. Too many questions to ask. And Keith — who knows? He has the confidence of nobility but a tongue too tied.

Maybe this is why Lance says: ''We're building a chimney,'' when they step over the stones in their yard. Keith doesn't say anything. Lance speeds up, arms folded.

Once inside, Lance watches Keith take in the rosary on the wall and the sunflower on the table.

''Wait here,'' he orders, or requests, or maybe he still feels the unrealness of his act. He can figure it out. He pulls his second jacket out of the chest in the loft, with a hole on the elbow. Brings water for both. He can figure out how to help. Even if Keith doesn’t know what he needs. Lance is good at picking up the sides of people unknown to them and make it a gift when he wraps them right and they're accepted with a crooked smile and eyes spelling enchanted—

But Keith has just not been saying anything.

Lance brings bread, a little too dry, and a handful of dried apple slices and shoves them at Keith until he offers his palms. God. Keith is just looking at him. Lance shoves too many into his own mouth.

''What are you gonna do?'' he asks around them.

''Go somewhere. Away,'' Keith answers, looking like he knows what he's saying is inescapable anyway. Should Lance be feeling more of, what, empathy? Less fizz, maybe. Keith doesn’t look like he wants empathy. Lance is good at reading people.

Lance nods, with his whole body, bouncing, feeling like he's stalling. Keith eyes the jacket in Lance’s arms.

''Can I,'' Keith starts and hesitates until Lance almost says just say it, can you what. ''Can you give me a knife,'' he says, not entirely a question, a little skewed, a little far from the side of questions.

''A knife?'' Lance repeats, somewhat alarmed. ''To what, skin dormice in the forest?''

''Well, yeah,'' Keith says, immediate, and Lance thinks, okay, alright. ''Look, you could go to my house and take something. The house isn't mine but you can look if you find— I'm not sure I have anything though.''

''Yes, you do,'' Lance says instantly, stubbornly. Because if there wasn't anything about Keith, they wouldn't be looking at the large air hole in the bread Lance is holding halfway out. Because he imagines a tint of sadness. Because of the vicarious blandness.

''So what do you want,'' Keith asks. A little darkly.

''Nothing. I don't want anything. Keith,'' Lance says. He pushes the jacket into Keith's hands and starts buttoning his own.

''What? You can’t come with.''

''Well, but I am, aren’t I,'' Lance says, with a forged copy of confidence. He couldn't say, but I’m hooked. But this feels irrevocable. But you’re real and I feel real.

Keith licks his lips and turns his gaze to the side, away from Lance. Lance sees it, he does, why it was him. The line of reasoning goes like this: it starts with destroyed crops. In winter, crushed buckwheat tastes like a broken oath, which is to say, it's not something to taste at all. Keith is somewhere in the middle. It ends with the law: harm inflicted by witchcraft is to be compensated by burning at the stake.

*

They walk to the forest. Lance doesn't know why. He has heard people have gotten impaled on a stake and left to die. Some people have gotten sold into slavery.

They make a fire, which they probably shouldn’t, but Keith just goes for it, while Lance blinks through the – something. A magnitude. They sit down on dry leaves and ivy and moss and lean on waist-high rocks. Lance thinks: are we supposed to relax now?

''What about bandits,'' Lance asks, again.

''I’ve seen their tents,'' Keith replies, and Lance thinks, that’s not great, is it, but then Keith adds: ''They’re not here.''

''Okay,'' Lance says. Makes his shoulders untense, but it’s cold, so he sits back up, tight.

He has a million questions. All welded to his breaths. How does he breathe them out? It keeps being just breathing.

He rolls a leaf of a deadly nightshade between his fingers. It grew on the way, the jaws of the forest. He holds it up.

''It makes you see things,'' he tells Keith.

''What things?'' Keith asks. Not with reciprocated caution. Not secret-like.

''Do you think I'm a—''

'I don't believe in witches,'' Keith says.

And Lance realises: the way Keith holds his gaze is a form of caution. No – it’s very deliberate. A secret in itself.

''Okay,'' he says, again.

Here is a secret: Lance knows more about hallucinogenic plants than a magician priest. He knows about ointments, but – he doesn't know what to believe in, and – doesn't use them, either, with no belief-ground to stand on. He calls that stagnant knowledge.

It's something he doesn't tell his family. His sister has put a forked stick in his hand and said, draw on the ground how much you love me. Lance stores village rumours to tell as goodnight stories, and he'd burn the whole of cultivable land for them. Breathe in the ashes. Of course he'd coat a foul interest in something nicer. Of course he'd keep his mouth closed.

And now he's telling Keith. Because Keith stands outside of law? Because the fire is melting Lance's better sense, huh. Huh.

''It would be easier for you if you went to church,'' Lance decides.

Keith shrugs, inspecting his laces. Something about that is so bothersome. ''It doesn’t matter, I guess. I didn’t confess. I got out.''

The way Keith looked at the keys in Lance’s hand. Lance says: ''Anyway. It’s a travesty of justice, anyway.''

Keith raises his eyebrows at him.  And Lance is caught thinking about how he used to ask his mom to sew collars like royalty onto his shirts. He thought Keith’s silence translated to stupidity, thought that he saw through. Stupidly, an hour ago, he thought: Keith, temptation, Lance, redemption. He had felt good using words like travesty. But now he thinks: what does that translate to?

''Do you believe what they tell you? That—'' Keith looks at the flames and Lance watches them flicker in Keith's eyes. ''I don't know, buying indulgences?  And talking to toads, and that.''

Lance throws the night shade into the fire. Maybe it’s really not the fire, with how much Keith feels like causality.

''Because you say things like that,'' he says. ''You can't just say things like that.''

''That's why I don't,'' Keith says, then frowns and looks sideways.

There's something compelling about the flames, transforming matter like rebirth that light-boned boys like Lance yearn for; flickering and cracking in a pattern no man with a diploma from Vienna can predict. It makes Lance not matter, and not mattering okay. It feels like — like the first night-chilled breath that fills your lungs when you step away from an overcrowded room, through the door, and let your body fall into resonance with cricket calls. It feels like relief.

''So what’s the plan,'' Lance asks. All bare this time.

''What's my plan?''

Yeah. Nosy. Lance? He’s a bit weird. Intense. Nosy.

''That's what I asked.'' He watches Keith watch the flames.

''I don’t—'' Keith shakes his head. Lance nods.

''You could be imprisoned,'' Lance says absently. Keith looks at him slowly and it takes Lance a moment to register the weight. ''No, I'm just telling you. That's how it is.''

''I would be burned,'' Keith says, plain as a field. ''Sacrilege and all that. Purification and all that.''

Lance, a collector of pretty things, thinks of that: how extravagantly these words fall down a tongue, the sound of them a luxury Lance haven't had the chance to chase, always burning away getting soil behind his nails, always mudding his clothes, leaving white shirts to Sundays and making him hate how they feel like play-pretend—

''I'll find Shiro,'' Keith announces.

''You couldn't,'' Lance says. ''How?''

''Watch me,'' Keith says, and it works as an answer.

Keith touches the back of his hand to the wound on his cheek, then with his sleeve, and Lance says, ''You should clean that.'' Clears his throat. Keith narrows his eyes at him.

''I'll do it,'' Lance says then, too quickly. Looks at his fingers, dirty, and his shirt, the same. He clears his throat, and it feels like again. Pulls his handkerchief from where he has it tucked under his waist, and then he thinks about that, and then he doesn't want to think about it anymore.

''No, never mind, do it yourself,'' he tosses the handkerchief into Keith's lap.

They both watch the burns on Keith’s hands. Not overawed, shut up.

Lance thinks: this is empathy. Don’t call it— don’t call it what it’s not. Dreamy reasoning, that is, the reasoning of a boy asleep. He is not, okay. Unlike what people think: that he acts without the thought of consequences. But it’s all so deliberate. And they are bullshit deducing.

He has found a word for himself, the sifted form of his mother saying head in the clouds: wishful.

They both watch the burns, and Lance thinks: so we have that too in common, huh.

Keith just doesn’t– ask anything about Lance. It’s frustrating. But he’s scowling, hugging his knees, and he has lived alone, word has it, and he has burns on his hands, and these must be things Lance doesn’t understand.

''We could,'' Lance offers, revealingly tentatively, ''wait until dawn in my house. It’s safer. And warmer.''

''I can't sleep in your house,'' Keith says.

''I'm not giving you my bed.''

Keith bites his lip and Lance has to stop himself from mirroring that. ''Look— what's your name?''

Lance freezes. A wave rolls from his core up. He is – so sick of feeling like the wrong superlatives.

He stands up, but is tugged back by his sleeve. ''Sorry, I just, I wasn't paying attention. Sorry. What’s your name?'' Keith looks flustered. ''Sorry.''

Lance pulls his arm back. His voice is steel. ''Lance.''

Now he is the one to raise his eyebrows. Thinks: how funny.

''Lance. You have a family. You can't be serious.''

''I’ve told you before.'' Steel. But he’s thinking: told you what? I don’t know.

''What,'' Keith breathes. In a small voice.

''Whats your problem? You can't be serious –it’s my house, not an— not an, I don't know, a cathouse, I'm not inviting you into my bed, so I don't get what your problem—''

''Bark beetle,'' Keith jokes. He stands up. Lance stands up, too.

Keith shakes his head – but goes, because he's eighteen and without a name that would give him anything.

*

Lance holds out the blanket. ''Here.''

''Hello,'' Keith says absently, dumbly, and then he takes it. He unfolds it, shaking it, and brings it to his nose; and Lance is suddenly aware it must smell like smoke, but so does his and—

''Ouch,'' Keith turns to look at the wall at his back. It must be a nail, Lance knows there are nails hammered into the walls of this stall, in places that don’t make sense.

''Watch out,'' Lance says in reversed causality. Then sneaks out, sneaks back in with his hands full.

''Bread and milk, baby,'' he says. Keith makes a mhm sound. Lance thinks: okay.

The air of the stall is irritating. Keith looks surprisingly calm. Lance – feels hyperaware. The undercurrent of this space contains so much of his life, and he has Keith in it. Lance has carved an L into one of these walls to self-permanentise.

He wants Keith to be interested in him.

''Are you not—'' he starts, then stops before he says something deleterious. Makes a fatal mistake.

''Am I not what?''

Keith's small frown is all in Lance's mind, and Lance is obligated not to look away, because that would be telling. He needs to stop not having reflexes. He's stumbling too much. Never knows how to catch himself.

''Nothing,'' he says, thinks, damn. Keith raises his eyebrows and Lance extends his hand in front of Keith's face front of his face, and Keith flinches back, and Lance flinches, too.

''God, sorry,'' Lance realises he touched the hurt skin. He lightly touches the skin around the wound as remedy, on impulse. Keith is still, again with that dumb spacey expression.

Lance leans back heavily. The silence is something that burns with smoke and he's caught on that spaciness. It's so intriguing.

''That feels nice,'' Keith says, gaze fixed on the hand that Lance withdrew. Lance catapults.

''The unpredictability of it, right?'' Lance says. A fatal mistake.

''Oh? '' Keith voices smugly. Because he seems to take it as a compliment, in a way Lance doesn't understand, and now Lance is half-dead.

Everything about this. He has the last few hours playing inside him, all at once.

''You could buy an indulgence,'' Lance jokes.

Keith's eyes sparkle and Lance feels his chest curve inwards the way it does when he's watching the stars.

''Bullshit,'' Keith says, and his eyes sparkle, and — Lance finds himself seeing more and thinking what if's as if Keith was a damn sky, and maybe it's the strayness of shooting stars he's drawn to. Maybe it's the life he doesn't have.

Lance makes a little hay-nest for himself and watches out for nails. Him and Keith fall quiet. He can’t fall asleep.

*

In the morning, Lance panics. He wakes to a hand shaking his shoulder and his name hooking right into his brain, and he ghostly opens his eyes. The thumb on his collarbone is just a pressure, static, and shouldn't feel like that; like his collarbone is a rewarding body part to have. Then there is a quiet and distanced thump and Keith drops his hand and Lance panics.

Keith stands up steadily, in the way Lance has learnt, too quickly, to take as reassurance. Reassurance that throws his heart rate over the steep rock face and into expectation. He notices Keith has folded his blanket, placed atop a hay bale, centred and aligned with the wall.

The thump must be his mother awake. It must be handling pots. Maybe she's pushing her sleeves up right now, the way she always has and the way that had little Lance imitating, possibilities on the tip of his mind. Maybe she's dividing her hair into two and twisting both sides, then tying them together and turning them inwards and the way that mesmerised Lance ever since he remembered to pay attention one day when he was thirteen. Maybe she's squishing her cheeks in the way that makes Lance think that longing is contagious.

She must have noticed Lance wasn't home last night. She must worry.

''You're not going,'' Keith tells him, reading into something that Lance thought he folded between the fabric of his own blanket, ''you have a family.'' And Lance, who has waited a lifetime to prove something, says, ''Watch me.''

They could study in Vienna, or Prague, or Bologna. They could become knights.

His sister has called him a misfortune – Lance, a boy among his five sisters. Lance, with the length of whose legs there's never quite enough space when the six of them sit on the fireplace. His grandmother greets them by where are you, vermin, and thinks she's hilarious. Lance has a lot to leave behind.

Keith biting the inside of his cheek is all the unbeautiful words Lance has never liked. Lance is intrigued.

''Are you going to — are you going to say something to them?'' Keith looks uncertain. Lance sees so much sympathy, the sole observation insults village rumours, or maybe the rumours insult him.

''Nah,'' Lance says. He can't.

At the end, he doesn't take anything from home; the payment day is in five days, and increased tax has been flowing into military defences. Lance works on the field, so he knows. Shiro is gone, so Keith knows.

''Keep the jacket,'' Lance says, and Keith shoves his hands deep into the pockets, like it's something dear, and it makes Lance's heart ache. He's turning around, looking for a way to ease the hurt while Keith just watches him, looking calm and taut at once. Keith glances outside, and Lance gets it, he does. He ends up pulling the hay from where it's bundled and arranges it into a smile on the floor, as a message, as easing worry. He feels better once they step outside.

They are waiting by the road, just outside of the village. Lance knows of a man that rides out a few times a week. If today isn't one of the days—

''I don't know,'' Keith sounds irritated and it surprises Lance. ''Like, I guess I don't get it. I'm going to Shiro and you just—'' he drags the backside of his hand over his cheek, looking away instead of finishing.

''We could go to the city,'' Lance says, not wanting to think about that, could like helium, like head in the clouds. ''Have you been?''

''I’ve been,'' Keith replies and drags the tip of his shoe through the dirt, leaving a line. Self-permanantisation. Says it like it's nothing. Like city curfew laws aren't intriguing, being something that can be broken.

''What is it like?'' Lance asks, casually.

''You know,'' Keith shrugs, like Lance would know, like it's nothing. ''I don't understand German.''

''Oh, damn, that's right. How will we communicate? And we'll have to find a way to pay for things.''

''Lance.''

''But I guess communication comes first. Like, you have to say what you want to pay for. Not that you want to. Or maybe the city people take the pay first, and don't—''

''Not everybody in the city is from the city,'' Keith says, finally facing Lance fully, like a bayonet to the gut, but not bad at all. ''Lance.''

''I know what you want to say,'' Lance snaps. ''You don't have to say it, okay? Thanks.''

*

At the end, he lies again. They are sitting on a cart with barrels. It almost didn't work, convincing that someone will be awaiting at the city gates with payment. A dubious but possible eventuality. The lie is all his. He wonders if Keith feels bad.

Lance's acts are deliberate, even when his wishfulness overtakes him; or maybe sometimes they are not when his wishfulness overtakes him. They are watching the road elongating under the wheels, and Lance is carefully watching Keith. He watches Keith like everything he wants to tell him. Like leaving home and stupid comparisons.

Keith glances at him suspiciously and Lance turns back to the road, eyes unfocused. He tries to relax. This is a familiarity: no matter how heavily he sits, he's always on the edge of his seat, always—

Keith looks at him again; Lance sees it in the corner of his vision, honesty to his previous lie. Keith looks twitchy, but he blinks away, shaking his head.

‘’What?’’

Keith suddenly stands up, sways until he regains his balance. Keith nods at Lance, as if that explained anything. Lance stands up, looking around, feeling uncertain. And then Keith is in his space, and Keith's hands caught on his jacket, and his eyes very close and getting closer. And then still, waiting.

Lance swallows. ''I don't know what I want.''

Keith half blinks and it's almost ridiculous, and then he's blinking rapidly, fluttering, eyebrows furrowed, eyes on Lance's cheeks. It's ridiculous. In how deliberate it looks, and Lance would bet such awareness is not something Keith even thinks about.

Lance thinks, he likes my freckles, and then swallows around that.

''What are you saying,'' Keith whispers. Lance swallows around that whispering, too.

''A warning.''

And then Keith pushes him off the cart.

It's like the church again, but Lance's reflexes don't lock him in: his hands drag Keith down with him. Both fall on their sides. Keith's eyes are squeezed shut and when he opens them they stare at each other.

And then Lance sprints to the cart and pulls himself up, seeing Keith follow. They both plop down.

Keith is breathing heavily, looking down at his lap. Cranes his neck backward, covers his eyes. Lance waits for him to say something, but Keith doesn't.

''Keith.'' His voice is permeated with indignance, with hurry, with coming to a stop. It's unfair that Keith gets to hear that, a liar – he just stood by Lance while he lied to the rider. Retrospect leaves such a nasty scrape burn.

Keith shakes his head. Just continues not saying anything, so Lance pulls his hands from his face, leaving Keith blinking at the ground.

''What,'' Lance says, voice too high. I tried helping you.

''I don't know, okay.''

''The hell,'' Lance hates how upset he sounds. ''The hell do you not know, Keith.'' Keith looks to the side, at the growing distance from the village.

''You're not thinking straight,'' Keith says.

Lance keeps swallowing, keeps breathing, feeling brittle and like something that wobbles. Feeling an indescribable magnitude of something inarticulate.

''I said I wanted to go. I thought we were past this, you fucking jerk.''

''I changed my mind.''

But Keith has joked. He has said watch me.

''You could have said just. You could have just said, like, now. If you didn't want me to go with.''

Keith shakes his head and frowns, still not looking at him. Lance feels it: a fissure in coherence.

''I can't believe you. I wanted to go. You're just— you were just there.'' He can't even tell if he's lying. He had all this – hope.

''They're your family,'' Keith says, tender, and Lance can’t.

''You do not get to sound like that. Shut up.'' He hopes Keith will resent the resent in Lance's eyes. He hopes for Keith to burn.

''What are you gonna do now,'' Keith asks, again sounding tender. Keith could have just said if he didn't want Lance to come with.

''Shut up, I'm in the assessment stage. I haven’t figured it out yet.''

''You decide,'' Keith says and Lance just looks at him, breathing shallow, contempt compact in his throat. ''You decide. Not figure out.''

''Shut up.'' Lance is horrified. ''Oh my god.''

*

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24413080

howl