[Rinse]

[nospaces]

NEVER SAW ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland & Ashley Wolfe [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: A chronicling of some various points [break]
in the Wayland boys' lives throughout the years they've[break]
spent together (and the years they haven't).[break][break]

CW: Brief mentions of violence and [break]
homicide, implied attempted suicide [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

They're five and seven. Dane is sleeping fitfully, feverish, with his hand clasped in Dino's. He's spooled in bandages and tape, covered in scratches given by the unhappy raccoon he'd excitedly dragged into the house from the backyard. Another fun pet, he'd insisted, more bewildered by Mona's wild screeching than the creature's chittering fury. Dino wipes the sweaty hair from his little brother's forehead and tries to pull away so he can retreat to his own bed. But Dane's fingers tighten and he lurches in his sleep. So Dino stays.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're six and eight, helping their mother clean up dinner. Dane intentionally drops a plate into the sink too hard, sending soapy water splashing over the side and across Dino's shirt. In no time at all, washing escalates into a war of thrown suds and delighted screams, which Mona only listens to fondly as she wipes down her countertops. Her husband shadows the doorway in her periphery and she lifts her stare to his with waning amusement. He's dressed to go out and she shakes her head. Let me have just a little more time. The boys quiet, sensing the tension and she turns back to them with a thin, sad smile. They apologize for the mess, thinking it's the reason for the tears in her eyes. They'll clean it up. Antonio slips away wordlessly and Mona tells her sons to get ready for bed. Just a little more time. She has so little left.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're seven and nine. Dane is glowering, face pinched with stubbornness as he peeks from behind Dino's shoulder at the two girls before them. He can't understand why they matter so much. Why his dad tells them they have to play with them and play nice. It's Dino that breaks the silence first with shaky, nervous introductions, wiping a hand on his jeans before offering it between them. Across the yard, their fathers talk in low voices. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're eight and ten, crowded together in front of a small mirror as they look over their tattoos. Dino's is a young stag with small, budding antlers, the size of his thumb and positioned on the left side of his chest. He sniffles as he touches experimentally at the reddened, angry skin surrounding the thin, black lines. Dane shoulders him aside, craning with difficulty to catch a glimpse of his own; the head of a fox-like creature, no larger than a dime, centered on his right shoulder blade.[break][break]

They're so cool, aren't they, Dino?[break]
Yeah, but it kind of hurt, didn't it?[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're nine and eleven, watching their father strike bloodied knuckles against a weeping man's face. Blood and spit spill down his chin. Has already soaked through his torn shirt. He babbles incoherently for forgiveness. For mercy. But their father is unrelenting. Dino trembles and Dane's gaze flickers from the scene before them to watch his brother's profile. His eyes are big and wet. He slips his hand into his and Dino clutches it immediately, hard, while fat, fearful tears slip to gather along his jaw. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're ten and twelve. Dane is laughing, rolling in the grass of the backyard with a puppy he created. It's a big, black, fluffy thing with a dopey grin and mismatched proportions. He calls for Dino to look, eager to show him his progress, and Dino lifts his head from crossed arms to watch. Rather than the dog, his eyes are drawn instead to the spots of blood dotting the wrist of Dane's shirt. He can only think of the man they killed. How helpless he'd been when shoved to his knees before them, already bound and hopeless. He recalls the feel of the blade slipped into his palm; the imploring touch of his father's fingers as they forced his own trembling ones around the weapon's hilt. Tears blur his vision, much like they had when he'd been forced to draw the steel across the man's throat not once, but twice — his first attempt too shallow and lacking conviction. The second attempt, he'd been told, was mercy.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're eleven and thirteen. Dane does it for him this time. Dino can feel his father's disappointed, hard eyes across the room as his brother forces the gun from his hand and lifts it before them. The bang of it — the too-loud, jarring shot of it throughout the small, dingy room — makes him stumble back with a whimper. His father, wordless and unflinching, steps out the door, giving him leave to stumble further back against the wall and slide down it, legs weak and numb. Dane remains motionless in the center of the room, head bent and gaze fixed upon the woman at his feet. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twelve and fourteen. Dino hops the fence and, as soon as his feet touch the sidewalk on the other side, breaks into a sprint. He doesn't hesitate as he comes upon the group of much older boys circled around the huddled shape of his brother on the ground, kicking and sneering. He throws himself at the largest one, shoving him to the ground and forcing him to his back so he can slam his fists into his face. Dane's raucous laughter is far louder than the group's nasty jeers. When the others finally retreat, spitting obscenities over their shoulders, he helps his brother from the ground with a hand clasped to his arm. Dane's stupid and delirious, his face busted to a pulp, and Dino has to stifle the urge to wipe the shit-eating grin from his mouth with a punch. He doesn't have to ask who started the fight. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're thirteen and fifteen. Dane has Dino pinned with a knee in his back. He shoves Dino's face into the dirt and leans close to sneer. Do you want to die, Dino! Defend yourself! Dino can hear his brother's anger and, for the fraction of a second, thinks there might be an edge of desperation to it. He let his brother disarm him again. Surrendered his weapon too easily and lost one time too many. Dane curls his fist in his hair and tugs his head up only to smash it back into the ground. Feeling the heat of anger coil in his gut, Dino drives an elbow back into his brother's ribs and Dane rolls off him. They both stumble to their feet and Dane tosses him the blade he'd discarded. Dino catches it and Dane smiles. Again, he demands. He knows that his brother is only thinking that an enemy's hand will be less forgiving.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're fifteen and seventeen. Dino drove Dad's car into the lake. Dane is laughing hysterically as he bails water out long enough for Dino to gather necessities from the backseat. He's gonna kill you! You are so dead! He squeals through tears. They climb out the passenger side window and wade through the shallows back to shore where they collapse, breathless and heavy. Dino lifts himself finally to watch the vehicle finish disappearing under the surface, eyes wide with fear and disbelief. Dane takes one look at him and bursts into a fresh round of cackling, smacking a hand wetly against his back. Eventually, Dino can't take it anymore and laughs too. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're sixteen and eighteen. Dino bursts from the side of the building, sobbing and covered in someone else's blood. He empties his stomach on the sidewalk and scrubs a hand through his hair. Dane breaks through the door a moment after him, tipping his chin up and forcing the tears from his cheeks with swipes of his thumbs. Dino keens, hands coming up to grab at his brother's wrists. They're slicked with blood and Dino can smell it. He tries to pull away but Dane keeps him pinned between his palms. You have to Dino, he says. I can't do it for you this time. His little brother's voice is a plea wrapped in resignation. He's watching. Dad's watching, you have to do it. Dino tucks his chin to his chest and Dane pulls him against him. Lets him sob into him for only a moment before he moves them both back toward the door.[break][break]

It's the last time Dane will call his father anything but Antonio.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're seventeen and nineteen. Dane is sweaty, bound, and locked in the trunk of a car. Put there by a 'girlfriend' who didn't take kindly to him making eyes at her sister. How long he has been there, he has no way to tell. Somewhere between two days and three, if he had to take a guess. He's thirsty, hungry, and soiled. When the trunk finally opens and he cracks an eye against the sudden, blinding sunlight, he is greeted with a sneaking smile and an amused snort. Hey little brother, Dino laughs. Dane has never been happier to see a silhouette. Don't just stand there, asshole, I have to piss.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're eighteen and twenty. Backed into a corner and surrounded. Blood drips into Dane's eyes as he shakes the hair out of his face. He can feel Dino's back against him, solid and unyielding as they circle to appraise their enemies and cover one another's vulnerabilities. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty and twenty-two. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Dane is truly and utterly afraid. Panicked. Dino is convulsing on the bathroom tile, a thick froth trailing from the corner of his mouth and pooling beneath him. Stringing a desperate stream of obscenities, he yanks his heaping, heavy body up by the pits and pulls the both of them in the bathtub, turning the water to cold and rubbing at his brother's chest. Don't you fucking die on me, I'll never fucking forgive you.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-one and twenty-three. Drunk in a packed bar, smiling over a tabletop of empty shot glasses. Dino holds a cold beer bottle against his face, sighing as the touch of it soothes the ache from a fist he'd been unable to dodge. Dane had started the fight, of course, and the dumb idiot was feeling it now. He looked far worse than him, drooped across the table with his forehead pressed against the wood, half-asleep and muttering through a grin. I will miss you, Dino chuckles the words quietly, the drink and his brother's lacking awareness allowing him the honesty.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-two and twenty-four. Dane is with his grieving mother, Mona's head pulled into his lap as she stares blankly and unblinking across the living room. He soothes a hand down her forearm and feels her silent tears slip and soak into the cloth over his thigh. From his periphery, he sees his father slip into and linger in a doorway. Feels his jaw grit at the man's stony presence, wanting very much to tell him to leave. He has no place in the silence that envelops them now. In their grief. Thankfully, the man steps from view without a word. Dane's fingers twitch, somehow made even angrier by the retreat. [break][break]

Miles away, Dino is lying awake, eyes trained upon the ceiling as he begs for the sleep that he suspects will allude him a couple of nights longer. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-three and twenty-five. Dane has a new partner. He hates him for who he isn't. His tattoo has grown, become a nasty, suffocating filth that covers both shoulder blades, edging ever-larger each time he breaks his knuckles on any mouth that dares to whisper Dino's name. [break][break]

States away, Dino is camping under a starry sky, listening to crickets, trying to find solace in the silence and avoiding sleep.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-four and twenty-six. Dane is murdering a Guild defector, his forearms dripping with their blood and ears closed to their pleas. He tries to imagine what their life has been like, knowing he was a relentless hound-dog set upon their trail. What kind of life they could possibly live, always throwing periodical glances over their shoulder. Counting down the days they had until he found them. Where did all that stolen money go? [break][break]

In another city, Dino is cooking a late dinner.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-five and twenty-seven. Dane is dying. Broken real bad. His right collarbone has been snapped neatly in half. His blood pours with uncaring abandon from an opened gut and the rest of him is splintered with cuts bone-deep and aching. He's not sure he'll make it home to his mama this time. He suspects she will be less heartbroken over his dying than Dino's. She had always expected Dane's in a way. Drawing upon what little strength he has left, he lifts his hands to summon his dogs.[break][break]

Far away, Dino prepares for a date. He lets himself entertain the possibility that perhaps he has waited long enough. Perhaps no one is looking for him. Perhaps he can find comfort in the warm eyes of a brown-eyed girl who'd smile at him across the restaurant like he'd never done a thing wrong in his life. Doubt enters his mind, though, as he watches his own eyes in the mirror. He reaches for his phone to tell her he won't make it.[break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-six and twenty-eight. It's Dino's birthday and he's allowed himself this one night. He goes to a bar and gets tanked with coworkers. They lament over how unwise they are, how they will be regretful in the morning, crowded around the breakroom coffee pot while they groan and bitch. Dino hasn't laughed so much in years.[break][break]

Dane nurses a twelve-pack by himself in their childhood treehouse, drinking beers for the both of them. He sees his mother's silhouette, still and small, in the light that pours into the backyard from the patio door. Arms wrapped around herself, talking herself up to joining him. Eventually, she turns away. [break][break]

* * *

[break]
They're twenty-seven and twenty-nine. Walking the same city unaware of one another's proximity. [break][break]

[Dane Wayland]

[nospaces]

I WOULDN'T LOVE ME NEITHER

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Mary Kate, Dane's "girlfriend", [break]
knows how to play the game, too.[break][break]

CW: Heavy abuse themes, violence, and language [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

Mary Kate, or MK, was the closest thing Dane had had to a genuine girlfriend his whole life. [break][break]

It didn't even matter any more that their whole thing had begun as a simple way to get his hands on the Sector files she (unwisely) kept at home, unsecured and tucked just out of view. He'd been in Los Eurosia for almost a year and had been seeing her for only a little less. And, admittedly, he'd grown quite fond of the time they spent together. Some nights, he'd wondered if the entire thing had grown to be less pretending on his part than it'd been in the beginning.[break][break]

But lately, some things hadn't been adding up. He was still managing to bring in Gifted targets using her intel but it seemed that for every few bounties he fought to collect, there was some balancing misdeed to pit against it. A meet-up gone wrong. A busted gathering. A safehouse raided. High-value assets revealed or rescued. The Guild was beginning to suspect a rat and the common thread seemed to be none other than Dane Wayland.[break][break]

Fucking typical.[break][break]

He hadn't truly started to suspect MK until one night, while rummaging through a hallway desk while she was sleeping, he came across a pad of sticky notes. Although the top note was blank, he could just pick out the impression of four, very distinct letters; carved into notable grooves by a heavy hand, presumably when jotting the single word down on the note before it. [break][break]

DANE[break][break]

How many Danes could MK possibly have in her life? He suspected the answer was zero, especially since his name had always been Darren to her. So where had she plucked that name? Or, more likely, who had given it to her? And what had she done with it? Curious, he took a pencil and ran the flat-side of it over the sticky note's surface, highlighting the indented letters and adding a few, cutesy doodle-hearts around them. Then he left the pad exactly as he found it and watched for a change. [break][break]

A week passed as normal. They watched movies. Went out. Made dinner together. Attended a formal party of one of her close colleagues. She'd always been a suspicious, smart woman. But had her pretty, blue eyes always been so calculating? So observant of him? Had he just never noticed before, that her gaze was often waiting to meet his when he looked for her — watching him when he wasn't watching her?[break][break]

It was a wonderful, indulgent delight that he was with her when the chips finally fell. Cozied up together on the couch, floor littered with the clothes they'd taken their time shedding when he'd first shown up at her door, she'd been tracing lazy patterns into the arm bent under his head as he watched her ceiling fan. She admitted to wanting to go see some movie on the weekend and he'd poked some fun at her for it, prompting her to lift her head from his chest and glare. Then she'd leaped from the couch, pulled on half her clothes, and retreated to the drawer in the hall to fetch her notepad so she could jot down showtimes. [break][break]

Finally.[break][break]

He watched her freeze from his spot on the sofa, a sneaking smile of sweet anticipation curling just barely at his lips. Tried to imagine what ran through her mind in the long, stretching seconds that passed before she finally — slowly — turned. "What is it?" He asked innocently, lifting his brow with concern as he levered forward and fished around the carpet for his clothes. "Did you change your mind?" [break][break]

"Darren..." Stepping into his bottoms, Dane hopped to a standing and fixed her with a daring smile, head tipped knowingly. "Come on, babe... we both know that isn't my name." She swallowed. Unable to resist, his gaze dropped to appreciate the bob to her throat. She was afraid. Only a half-hour earlier he'd had his teeth pressed flat against the hollow of her neck and she'd been more than happy with him. Now she was scared. Which confirmed she knew a lot more about him than just his name.[break][break]

He dropped his head with a sigh and scrubbed a hand through his mussed hair; making a show of being unconcerned and disappointed as he moseyed about and gathered his discarded clothes, slipping into his jeans and tucking his feet into his boots. She remained motionless. Silent. Even when he crossed the living room to stand before her and rubbed his hands gingerly over her arms. "Come on, MK. You've never lacked for something to say before. Look — I used you, you used me, cat's out of the bag. And it's fine. I'd just like to know why."[break][break]

It was mostly true. He'd grown mighty curious to know her aim. His first thought had been the Sector, but then he couldn't imagine that they'd sanction the murders of all those Gifted individuals that MK's poorly-hid work detailed for him. Or why — what could they even gain from having him monitored? What did they hope to learn in whatever MK could get her hands on in his phone or his apartment? Guild information was the obvious answer, but... it didn't seem right. [break][break]

When she still didn't speak, or even lift her eyes to meet his stare, he brushed his touch down her arm to grasp her hand in a loose hold. With an almost mocking tenderness, he lifted it and forced her fingers to unfurl so he could press her palm to his cheek. "You're a good actress, you know." He said softly, smiling ruefully as he tipped his face into her hand. "But let's be honest now. Have you always been disgusted by me? From the very beginning? This whole time?"[break][break]

Her breathing changed. He could feel her chest heave in the tiny space he allowed between them. Then she ripped her hand from his and bolted. [break][break]

"Alexa! Ca—"[break][break]

"Play Despacito. Max volume."[break][break]

He launched himself after her and, a moment later, music filled her apartment. How many times had he chased her in a similar manner to her bedroom? His feet bare and their footfalls gentler, accompanied by teasing laughs or flirty threats, not music intended to cover any questionable screams or shouts. [break][break]

The bedroom door slammed in his face cut the remembrances abruptly short and Dane chuffed a short, irritated laugh as he thunked his head against the wood and unfurled a palm to press to the doorframe. "MK. Babe." He gave the knob a testing jiggle and was unsurprised to find it locked. "Open the door. I just want to understand." Even as he spoke, he decided to give her no time to come to reason (or call who she'd wanted to call) and stepped back. With a single, strong, and well-aimed kick, the wood splintered at the doorjamb and the door swung inward. "Let's talk about it."[break][break]

His gaze flit across the room to find her already halfway out her bedroom window. Cursing, he shot forward and grabbed at the ankle still braced against the window sill. With a fierce yank, he hauled her back in and she thudded to the floor with a breathless shout, feet immediately kicking at him as she rolled defensively to her back. He ducked away from the blows and yanked her ungently to the center of the room before settling his weight atop her. Caging her to the floor with his hands braced against both her forearms, he took a moment to note how the panic scripted across her face was cut sharply by... anger. A beautiful, growing fury. [break][break]

She'd been angry with him before. But it was only now, as he watched her struggle and alternated between chuckling and shushing, that he realized that that too, had been somewhat of a lie. She'd only been irritated enough, and long enough, to ensure he never quite gave up on them or called it quits. Never chalked her up as a lost cause and cut his losses. It had been tempered. Calculated. What played across her face now was honest. She wasn't acting now.[break][break]

"Feeling more talkative?"[break][break]

"Fuck you," she gritted out immediately, eyes darting everywhere but his face as she gradually stilled. He hummed, low and amused. "So needy. I've always loved that about you." Her mouth thinned. And he shifted so he could lower her arms, tucking them across her chest and pinning her wrists against her with one hand so he could free up his other. "But let's talk first. Decide how clean our little break-up will be."[break][break]

Though he knew she recognized the threat in the words, she showed no outward display of it. After a moment of waiting and searching for it, he frowned. "You know who I am and what I do?" When she didn't answer, he slipped his free hand gingerly under the nape of her neck and stroked a thumb against the side of her throat. "It's a simple yes or no question, MK."[break][break]

Her eyelids fluttered and, after a moment, she nodded.[break][break]

"All this time?" [break][break]

Another nod. And although Dane had expected it, something within him felt husked by the confirmation. "Did my father put you up to this? Why? Does he think he can control me even more through you?"[break][break]

Her eyes, cold as slate, searched his face. "I kept you out of trouble plenty of nights didn't I? Distracted. Busy."[break][break]

His lips tucked, considering. Then he shook his head. "No, I don't think that's it. Doesn't make sense. You've been causing as much trouble for us as I have for you, haven't you? Sneaky girl." He grinned down at her, genuinely pleased. "No. You're not only playing me. You're... double-crossing the Sector, too." He nodded with certainty as the thought occurred to him, voice lifting along with his brow. MK remained still and silent beneath him, though he thought he caught the faintest twitch at the outer corner of one eye. "Why, though? If not for the Guild, then... Blackstorm? No, would they really be okay with all those Gifted lives being collateral damage?" Would they? He didn't know. Was it possible she was playing a game for herself? One with an endgame not so easily guessed? A motive even less so? It was so intriguing. [break][break]

He almost pouted when she tipped her head away, lips pinching tight. But the urge was quickly followed by an unbidden flash of anger when she ripped her gaze away too. Urgently, and more than a bit unkindly, Dane's braced his fingers tighter against her neck and gave her a small shake. And when she looked at him, her eyes flashing, he smashed his mouth against hers, somehow not expecting the resistance and hard feel of her grimace, being far more accustomed to a reciprocation more pliant and generous. [break][break]

Her lips parted, just long enough for her to fasten his bottom lip between her teeth and bite down. Hard. He made a noise against her — surprised, but not entirely displeased — and his hand skipped from her neck to secure her chin between bruising fingers, stilling her before she could rip back and completely disfigure him. As if she were a dog refusing to give up something they weren't allowed, he pressed a thumb and forefinger forcibly into her cheeks, between her teeth, and forced her jaws open enough to slip free.[break][break]

He yanked back and straightened with a dark, low-throated laugh. The hand around her wrists tightened while he lifted his other to gingerly touch at his lip. He could feel her tense beneath him, trying to remain unafraid even as she anticipated his retaliation. Anticipated some sort of inevitable torture or death as he studied the scarlet that coated his fingertips. His gaze fell back to her, taking in the sight of her chin and mouth red with his blood, and he blew a long, considering exhale through his nose. She stiffened. He could almost see her reach for the little resolve she had left as she tipped her chin. "If you're gonna kill me, then just kill me."[break][break]

Dane clucked. Smiling gently — making it wide despite the protest from his ruined lip — he returned his bloodied hand to the base of her throat. Traced his thumb along the slope of her jaw. Let his gaze raze across her pretty, angry features. "No... no need to make things any messier than this," he whispered thickly, feeling warmth wash from his chin and slip down his throat. "Though you do look fantastic with a bit of blood on you. Especially mine."[break][break]

He released her hands. Watched her face as he slowly stood and stepped from her. Disbelief and wariness gradually crept into the steely emptiness she'd forced upon herself. He watched the considerations flit across her features. The window. The door. The bedside table where he knew she hid a gun. And then finally, her eyes drifted to his face and then the hand he held out to her. "Come on," he breathed and nodded when she slipped a hand into his and let him pull her to her feet. [break][break]

"You can keep your secrets. I think they suit you," he mused, pulling free as soon as she was steadied. With a parting grin, he turned and made to leave. Then he paused. Lingering in her busted doorway, he angled just enough to gauge her in his periphery. "Though, I have to know... did you find me or did I find you?" He blinked. "Which of us is the bigger duped?" He swallowed, brow knitting when he realized — after acknowledging a brief, fleeting squeeze in his chest — that he already knew the answer.

MK shrugged and, when she spoke, her voice was almost apologetic. "I cased you back in Riverside." [break][break]

Dane nodded, just once. "Well then... well-played. See ya around, MK." He moved into the hall, sniffing as he wiped the back of his hand against his spewing lip. Moving quickly, not wanting to linger in a place that had become so falsely familiar to him, he made his way to the living room, collected the rest of his things, unplugged her Alexa, and dipped.

[Dane Wayland]

[nospaces]

ARE YOU READY FOR MY SOUL?

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Dane loses his mother. [break]
Antonio does right by his boy for once. [break][break]

CW: Description of death/killing, loss of loved [break]
ones/grief, guns/knives/animal attacks, blood, language, etc. [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

Dane had been in Riverside for a couple of weeks. Apparently, some local upstart (absolutely stupid and silly for thinking anyone could make a move on the Guild in their hometown) was causing trouble. Making threats, stirring pots, and starting fires. Some of the rank and file had been called home to help deal with it and Dane had — at first — considered the task a slight. Like picking off big, fat rats at a farmhouse with a pellet gun. Something anyone could be trusted to do. [break][break]

But when the upstart decided to put on their big-boy britches and launch an assault on the home of Antonio Wayland, he’d quickly changed his tune. [break][break]


They’d tried reaching his mother and the men who’d been posted to keep an eye on her to no avail. And when he and a couple other boys reached his childhood home, they’d found it in flames. Dane had ripped from the car before it could even come to a complete stop. Practically broken through the gate into the backyard, wild eyes lifting to the fire licking out of his parents’ bedroom window. He tried the patio and it was locked. Tried the window into the lower story’s guest bedroom — it would be the entry closest to the stairs. He was just getting ready to send the nearest deck chair through the glass when someone came skidding around the corner of the house. [break][break]

"Dane! She wasn't inside!" [break][break]

Relief crashed through him like a wave, nearly threatening to take him from his feet. He turned toward the shout and sprinted after the other man when he beckoned. They ran into the Wayland’s vast front yard and Dane noticed a few more cars had quickly arrived; people milling out of them to stand around and gawk. "Mom?" Dane called, pushing through them. As he shoved to the front, two of the men he’d arrived with turned to try and stand in his way. "Mom? Move!" [break][break]

He shouldered past them and stuttered to a stop.[break][break]

Among two other men in similar positions, his mother lay on her side against the lawn, face turned to him, temple pressed to the grass and red-brown hair fanned around her. Even as he looked, he knew it was wrong — the angle of her body, as if she'd toppled forward, and the stillness of her face. But it didn't stop him from barreling forward with renewed urgency. "No... no, no... no no no no," the utterance fell from his lips, growing faster and more desperate. He didn't feel himself stumble or fall but, somehow, he was practically crawling on his knees the last few paces to her. "Get away from her!" He shouted, knocking aside a man kneeling beside her.[break][break]

Her eyes were closed. Her arms were bound behind her back. The hair beneath her was wet. His fingers trembled as he pulled himself closer and gripped her shoulders so he could pull her into his lap and tuck himself beneath her. He shuddered an exhale at the clean, deep cut that turning her revealed across her throat. His eyes, wide and wild, darted about her face. Too serene. Too pale. "No, no, no... Mom?" He brushed the hair from her wound, something in him giving an icy twist at the feel of her blood on his fingers — sticky, not wet. Cooled, not hot.[break][break]

"Don't touch me!" He snarled when a hand fell upon his shoulder and he was suddenly aware of everyone else around him again. The inferno that was his childhood home roared hot and loud and there was the sound of sirens approaching. He heard it all for only one, stretching moment before it faded again as he looked back down and searched her features. He felt himself hollow, as if his thoughts and feelings slowly sunk to the bottom of him and into the dirt. Only vaguely was he aware of the people moving and shouting around him. Of someone coming to collect one of the bodies beside them. He rocked, staring at and past his mother’s pressed lips.[break][break]

"Dane... let u—" [break][break]

Someone reached for her.[break][break]

"No!" He yelled, suddenly angrier than he could ever remember being in his life as the person skidded away to start removing the other body instead. Head still dipped, he watched them through his lashes, face twisting and fingers curling in her shirt once they'd moved from view. Then, with a shuddering sigh, he pulled her the tiniest bit closer and bent forward to press his lips to her forehead.[break][break]

Another hand reached out to him. Someone insisted that they needed to move her. "If you touch me again..." Dane threatened, voice quieter now, but low and dripping with promise. He swallowed. "I've got her." [break][break]

Moving slowly — as if somehow he didn’t want to disturb her — he braced one arm under the crook of her legs and the other around her upper back, then pushed himself to trembling legs. He hoisted her close to him so her head wouldn’t fall over his arm — so it didn’t look grisly. Didn’t highlight the wrong. So it looked like she could be sleeping. Like he might just be carrying her to bed after she drank too much wine on the patio on those nights he spent home. After an unsteady start, he followed the directions of the man walking ahead of him and, hesitantly — not really wanting to — laid her on a gurney. [break][break]

As his arms slipped from under her and she settled, he felt his eyes widen. His breath catch. Looking down upon her, the thought that this could be the very last time he saw her face, so wrong, fluttered at the back of his mind. Before he could really acknowledge it, or before someone could look at him, he turned and stepped away. He was aware of his father’s vehicle pulling into the drive and the man stepping toward the ambulance. [break][break]

They passed each other. Antonio’s step slowed and Dane could feel his eyes, but he only checked his shoulder roughly against him and continued on, his own gaze not leaving the gravel as he continued to his car and slid into the driver’s seat.[break][break]

The car door slammed and Dane sat in silence for only a single second before he screamed. He belted his rage with all that he had, lungs bursting as he slammed the heel of his fist into the steering wheel over and over, then his fist, then his other fist. Again and again, until blood speckled across the inside of his windshield and his hands quaked.[break][break]

Once he was spent, his heart pounding and his head throbbing, he planted his head on a closed fist and seethed. Then looked across the yard and saw the silhouette of his father against the flames; positioned next to his mother's gurney, face tipped as he looked upon her. One of her hands folded in both of his own. Lips tucking, Dane pulled the phone from his pocket to text him, busted fingers making it difficult and painful.

'Find them'[break]
'And set me loose'[break]
'Me'[break]
'JUST ME'

He watched him. Watched as he spoke with the paramedics and they loaded Mona's body into their ambulance along with the other two. He didn't look away from Antonio's face once, even while his father turned and watched the ambulance depart. Only after it'd moved out of view did he pull the phone from his pocket and, after a moment, he lifted his head to peer in Dane's direction.[break][break]

He walked toward him and Dane rolled down the car's window when he neared. Antonio bent to peer at him, one hand lifting from his pocket to lay on the car's frame between them. For once, Dane didn't feel the slightest need to flinch from his gaze. They looked at one another steadily for a long moment, then Antonio pressed his lips in a tight line. "I'll have names by morning. If you stay sober, and you're ready when I say... they're yours."[break][break]

Dane couldn't even muster enough emotion to feel surprised. He only nodded. Then Antonio shot a hand through the window to grab him by the nape of the neck, fingers threading into his hair and gripping just tight enough to make Dane's head tip the tiniest bit back; teeth bared and eyes flashing. But he held his father's gaze, unblinking. And after another long moment, the grip loosened and Antonio smoothed his hand over his hair instead.[break][break]

"Tear them apart."[break][break]

He stepped back and Dane nodded again, just once, eyelids fluttering as he pressed his lips tight. "It should have been you," he said loathingly as he started rolling up the window. [break][break]

His father only put his hands back in his pockets. [break][break]

"I know."[break][break]

* * * * * * * *

[break]

He drove forty miles over the speed limit the whole way back to Los Eurosia, hoping a police officer would stop him. If just to give him something to break his hands more against. But he was unhindered all the way to his apartment, where he made quick work of the place. He took down his bottles of liquor from the cabinets. Smashed them one by one into the laminate flooring and into the walls. Stared at every surface in his home, recalling when his mother had visited earlier in the year — laughed in the sunlight at that table, ate a bowl of cereal and bitched about his nearly-expired milk there, lounged across a counter and claimed loudly she was bored — before clearing them completely with furious sweeps of his arms. Smashed his TV. Splintered a chair against the couch. Raged. And when there was nothing left to break, he left. Before someone could complain about the noise and call the cops. Or word could spread and Gem or Grace decided to check in on him — he couldn't deal with that, not yet. Maybe not ever.[break][break]

He stayed in a hotel in Riverside and it was two days before his father called him with information. Dane hadn't eaten. Hadn't spoke. Hadn't showered. Had barely drunk anything at all and, when he did, it was water. Not booze. He didn't allow himself to feel. To process. To think of anything at all. He simply laid in the hotel bed and waited for the call, sifting seamlessly between dozing and staring at the ceiling. He didn't acknowledge a single message from anyone else. But when his father told him to be ready, he pulled back to life with a methodical calm. He ate and showered for strength. Combed his hair neat and tidy. Visited various Guild safehouses and got himself and his dogs fitted.[break][break]

And when the car came for him, he threw in his shit and settled in the back without a word to Wolfhound in the driver's seat. The drive to the house where the men were holed up, practically quarantined to the block by the Guild, was silent. Occasionally he'd catch Luck's appraising gaze in the rearview mirror, but he didn't care to hold it. He didn't care about anything.[break][break]

When they arrived, he summoned his dogs. Black shepherds with sleek bodies and long snouts. Four of them. That was a good number. Still strong enough to take a good amount of abuse. He slipped their vests — kitted with knives he might be able to reach in a pinch — over their bodies, hoping the kevlar would earn the beasts a couple more blows, and then slipped into his own gear. When he had everything slung where it needed to be, he pulled the phone from his pocket to glance at and respond to his father's texts.[break]

'Four of them'[break]
'None Gifted'[break]
'They know you're coming'[break][break]

'Good'[break][break]

'Do you want back up?'[break][break]

'If you don’t hear from me within 20 mins just send someone to finish up'[break][break]

‘They won’t be leaving’[break]
'If you die, give her my regards'[break][break]

'If that's how it works, we're not going where she is’[break]
'You know that'[break]
'We will never see her again'

* * * * * * * *

[break]


He kicked in the door and quickly side-stepped out-of-view while the dogs rushed in. There was an immediate answer of gunfire. One dog blinked out of existence. He could feel her sudden absence and the redistribution of strength in the remaining three. His lips pursed. Someone had good aim. When the scatter of shots became more erratic and the sounds of snarling and snapping became more involved, Dane moved into the room, crouched low with his rifle braced into his shoulder.[break][break]

He picked the first guy off easily, bullet finding its mark at the man’s temple and sending him crashing through a table. He was a good shot, too. As if in answer, someone — quite possibly two someones simultaneously — tagged him back. Bullets thudded into his Kevlar. One bit into his upper arm. Each one hurt like a kick from a horse and made him stumble back before he could duck through a door and out of their line of sight. [break][break]

There was a sharp, piercing whimper. Second dog, down.[break][break]

Sucking in a long, steadying inhale, Dane stepped back out. Almost right into a man running his way. They were both surprised but the other man recovered quicker, managing to drive a blade into Dane’s arm and yank through the muscle while twisting the gun from his hands and to the floor. They grappled and the man twisted them around; Dane faintly aware of a second man lifting a gun to aim at his back as he did so. A mere second before he could pull the trigger though, a dog leaped to latch onto his arm and he shot into the wall instead. [break][break]

Dane turned his attention back to the man trying his damnedest to get him floored and, with a big breath, brought a knee to his groin. He stumbled just a hair and Dane shoved himself wholeheartedly into the chance — he released his hold to grab one of the man’s arms with both of his and spun, craning it back until he drove it down hard and made him shout. Still holding his twisted arm in place, he dropped one hand to rip a blade free from the man’s own thigh-holster and drove it into the vulnerable space at his armpit. Drove it over and over until the guy weakened. Then another dog was leaping through the air and took him the rest of the way down, jaws snapping for the throat.[break][break]

As he spun, Dane felt the third dog disappear, leaving only the one behind him. He took the shotgun from his back and slunk cautiously forward, only to immediately have the gun forced from his hands when he turned a corner. A man dipped forward out of nowhere to bring something sharp and knifing across the backs of Dane’s legs. The cut was deep and biting, spilling blood in a warm flood down his thighs.[break][break]

He swallowed a curse as he folded, falling to a knee just in time to catch a boot in the chest that knocked him on his back. The man fell forward with a shout, machete arcing over his head in both hands, aimed for his face. Eyes widening, Dane lifted his hands and beckoned a summon. A bear. He imagined its femur first and, before his eyes, the thick, strong bone materialized between his palms. He fastened his grip around the ends of it just as it caught the blade and barely had time to give a hard twist before the bone blinked away. It was just enough to redirect and the machete sunk into his shoulder instead of his skull, cleaving deep and making him spit a loud, agonized gasp.[break][break]

Wasting no time, face twisted with pain, Dane grabbed the man's hands around the blade's hilt and used his full weight to twist and bring him down. The blade ripped free and, for a moment, Dane was blinded by white, but his hand still scrambled instinctively for his dropped gun as he rolled atop his attacker. He straddled him briefly and took a fist to the chin, but still managed to bring the butt of the shotgun to his shoulder and shove his feet beneath him. He buried the muzzle in the guy's stomach, racked, and pulled the trigger. The recoil rocked into his ruined shoulder and he cried out, nearly stumbling backward and then toppling forward as he corrected himself.[break][break]

After taking just a moment to pant, Dane's gaze flickered from the mess between his feet to his last dog bounding directly toward him, lip curled over its teeth and gaze fixed beyond him. Gritting his jaw, he leaned forward and let his hands skip down the shotgun's barrel and curl around the warm steel. He swiveled and swung, catching the man running upon his unguarded back across the jaw with the gun's stock. He could almost feel bone crack under the uncurbed force of the blow; was certain he would have been able to hear it if his ears weren't deafened. The dude went down and Dane held out a hand to silently stop the dog's advance. She slowed to a trot and then a circling, low-to-the-ground slink around him, jaws slathered with blood and spit.[break][break]

"Good girl," he whispered breathlessly, side-stepping the carcass at his feet and nearly slipping on the blood. Eyes lifting darkly to watch as the final man struggled to his knees and then stumbled to a standing, Dane kneeled to pluck a knife from his dog's vest. Blood seeped warm and persistent down his arm, slicking his fingers and dripping a steady stream from the tip of the blade in his grip. But he couldn't stop yet. Couldn't afford to acknowledge the tremble to his sliced legs either. As he strode forward, the man stepped back and lifted his hands. Though he couldn't hear him, he could read his lips as they desperately formed around a single plea, over and over: "Wait, wait, wait, just wait!"[break][break]

"For what?" Dane said quietly. Tonelessly. For him to come up with something witty to say? To take his time and enjoy playing with the guy a bit? He gave a tiny shake of his head. He wasn't here to enjoy. There would be no toying. He was here to kill. To avenge. He was sure the man realized that — saw the certainty of it in his eyes or the twitch of his lip — as he lunged forward. He lifted an arm to protect himself but Dane simply snatched it down and away with his free hand as the blow struck home; blade slipping into the side of the man's neck then ripping forward through his throat a second later with a single, remorseless heave.[break][break]

The guy slipped to the ground, clutching at his ruined neck with wide eyes, and as he fell forward, his fingers arced outward to twist desperately in the ankle of Dane's pants. Gazing down with a marked lack of emotion, he kicked the man away and watched him until he stilled. The knife in his hands clattered to the ground and he swayed where he stood, then slowly lowered himself to his knees before he could fall. He tipped his head back, worked on slowing his breathing, and then cracked an eye when his dog nudged a cold, wet nose into his hands.[break][break]

"Look at you," he breathed through labored pants, the words praising but his tone vacant. He clasped the dog's face between his palms and gave her a half-hearted toussle. "Last one standing. Good job." She whined, wagged her tail, and nuzzled at the side of his face, tongue smacking across her lips as she pinned her ears back. Attempting to urge him into action. He nodded and, using her for support, pushed himself back to his feet. The pair limped slowly through and over the carnage and to the door, where he pushed outside and picked up the phone he'd set aside on the porch-swing with trembling, scarlet-drenched fingers.[break][break]

Nine minutes had passed.

Done

The response came back immediately.

Healer? Room 109?[break]
Yes. Yes.[break]
Sending Viv.

Within minutes, a car — the same one as before — pulled up. Leaning and slipping against the doorframe, Dane squinted against the sun as he watched its backseat empty of men who gathered packs of supplies from the trunk. They made their way to him, faces steeled, and one of them handed off his share to another and wordlessly bent to haul him to his feet, toss his "better" arm over one shoulder, and hobble him to the vehicle.[break][break]

The drive back to the motel was as wordless as the drive from. But this time, Luck didn't once lift his eyes to the rearview mirror.[break][break]

* * * * * * * *

[break]



Dane didn't bother with peeling off any of his clothes as he waited for Vivienne to arrive. He wasn't sure if he could even manage it nor if it was smart to. He simply perched himself at the end of the bed, in the dark, and breathed. Kept himself very still. Counted his pains and tried not to feel anything else. He'd considered texting his father and asking him to send anyone but Viv but he hadn't had the strength. Nor could he imagine what good it would do.[break][break]

When she pushed through the unlocked and slightly-ajar door, she cursed at the darkness that greeted her. Flicking on the lights, she clicked the door shut behind her and swiveled to appraise him. He lifted his weary eyes to her and she matched his level gaze with an unflinching stare. She was tall for a woman. Sleek. Regal-looking. Her skin was dark and her head shaved. Lips painted a deep shade of red, the rest of her make-up pointed and pristine, and dressed as if she were meant for the anteroom of an opera instead of standing at the door of a seedy holiday motel.[break][break]

She'd been employed by his father for over thirty years — salaried and untattooed, treated more like a family friend than an employee — and was the most gifted healer Dane had ever known. Midwife to Mona during both of her home births. And she didn't look a day older than she'd seemed when he was a child. His heart stung in his chest as she watched him and, feeling suddenly foolish and chided, he was the first to look away. As if waiting for just that, she stepped slowly to the bed and crouched before him, hands immediately coaxing his chin up so she could shine a penlight in his face. She lifted her free hand to either side of his head as she drug the light from one eye to the other, mending his broken eardrums and clearing the ring from them.[break][break]

"Always so messy. It'll be difficult to discern what blood is yours and what blood is theirs."[break][break]

Looking neither satisfied nor displeased, she flicked off the light and raised a hand to the ugly, still-seeping cleave in his shoulder. He flinched away, not raising his eyes.[break][break]

"Just keep me from needing surgery. And from dying later. Don't heal anything any more than that."[break][break]

"Darling, I d—"[break][break]

"Please, Viv." His lips pressed hard, nostrils flaring. He blinked in a rapid flutter, feeling his eyes water and knowing a harder blink would spill them across his cheeks. And how long had it been since someone had seen him cry? How long had it been since he had? "I want to feel these. I want people to see." He wanted everyone to know what they'd done to him, even if it was only a glimpse. What he was willing to suffer for repayment. He wanted to hurt.[break][break]

"Oh, I see," Vivienne snapped, voice thick with accent. "And what are you going to do once they do heal? Huh? Find someone else to cut you open and make you bleed so you can pretend that's all you have to feel? Stupid boy."[break][break]

He kept his gaze on the bedspread and sucked in a shaky inhale, fingers curling under the palms he braced himself with. His lip trembled. Twisted. "I don't want to feel anything else... I… can't," he lied, voice sounding foreign to himself as it passed his lips in a weak whisper.[break][break]

Her hand clasped over his shoulder and he clenched his jaw at the sharp feel of bone re-aligning. "Yes, you can. And remembering her through scars is a shitty way to remember her. Going to her funeral in a sling, looking like death, pah." Her disapproval was bitter and sharp but, when she moved her hand further down his arm, he was relieved that he could still feel warmth seeping from an open wound.[break][break]

"Your momma loved you." She started again, voice quieter but no less sharp, as she knitted the flesh of his bicep just enough to expel the bullet from his muscle. "I was there when you were born. When she held you, red and screaming, and said 'look, so cute, my baby bear, ooooh, aaaah, my little baby bear'." Dane shuddered and tucked his face into his shoulder, nails digging at the cheap, thin duvet beneath him. "And I knew she loved you then because you were the ugliest damn baby I had ever seen."[break][break]

He laughed, a moment later the sound of it becoming thicker as he choked. He shook his head. "All babies are ugly when they're first born."[break][break]

"Yeah, but you?" She puffed an incredulous scoff in her cheeks and widened her eyes while patting at his hand.[break][break]

He chuckled again, this time with no feeling behind it, and let another, tortured silence stretch as she sought to mend the worst of him. Just enough, as he requested. The tears welled more and more in his eyes, collecting until he couldn't see through them. Could feel them tremble closer to falling.[break][break]

"Dane..." [break][break]

Vivienne settled next to him on the bed and began easing him out of his vest, making him wince both from his shoulder and the severe bruising the bullets had left behind. His eyes pinched shut and the dam broke, tears rolling big and fat down his cheeks and right off his jaw. He shook his head, mouth parting around a gasp as he realized he’d been holding his breath. "I can't do this, Vivienne. I can't, I can't.... do this," his voice shook and he lifted a hand to clutch at his chest, feeling very much like it was yawning. "She was supposed to bury me." The ugly grimace finally twisted unhindered across his features. "In no right world was I supposed to outlive her. I never even considered it as a fucking possibility."[break][break]

The vest fell to the floor and she pulled him into her with a hand braced around the nape of his neck. Dane clutched at her desperately, fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt as his arms came around her. ”I can’t… I can’t…” he repeated over and over into her as he shook and sobbed, feeling himself splinter open in a way he knew would never quite heal right.

[Dane Wayland]

[nospaces]

BITTER ARE THE WARS

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland & Ashley Wolfe [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: A 100% non-canon/AU write-up of a Wayland reunion. [break]
AKA, this is just me doing some messy Dane venting so I can stop [break]
keeping myself up at night imagining shit like this lolol~[break][break]

AKA 2.0 - Dane being a snotty baby bitch and not [break]
giving Dino a single damn moment to talk~ ♥ ♥ ♥
[break][break]

CW: Lots of language, some fighting, gun, and just a brief [break]
mention of attempted suicide [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

Being partnered up with Gemma on and off for the past year had made for some interesting situations. But none quite so suspicious as her taking him to a quiet room under the pretense of a sensitive assignment and locking him inside while she waited in the hall. But things had quickly become clear when Dane's brother stepped from the shadows and into the center of the room. [break][break]

Oh. Dane frowned. This was what this was about? They were doing this now?[break][break]

Dino looked anxious. Like he'd been chewing his nails and practicing lines. Perhaps playing over and over in his head how he expected this might go. Though Dane tried to keep a straight face, as soon as his brother's gaze flickered to his, he couldn't help the faint flutter of his eyelids. But he recovered quick; steeling his stare, pocketing his hands, and breathing a sigh through his nose while he kept the same, unchanged stride across the room. [break][break]

"What do you want, Dino?" [break][break]

His voice was cold and unaffected as it crossed the distance between them and Dane soaked up the immediate knit to his brother's brow. Even with all the older Wayland's practicing, all his worrying and dread, it probably wasn't quite one of the reactions he'd anticipated or braced for. Had Dino thought he'd blindside him? That he'd stumble to a stop, disbelieving and denying? Did he think he'd blubber and weep? Scream and yell? Dane had no intentions of doing any of that. [break][break]

Dino took a step forward, toward him, and Dane took an answering step back, his head tipping warningly and lips pressing tight while his hands balled in his pockets. He had the abrupt want to laugh derisively as he watched his brother hesitate and stop, whatever confidence he'd talked himself up to visibly slipping from him by the second. "I said, what do you want, Dino? Why am I here?" He did chuckle then, unkindly and with a disbelieving leap to his brow. "Did you tell Gem to wait outside? To not interrupt until we duked this out or something? Hmm. That's funny." [break][break]

Funny, if Dino thought this was something that would just blow over with a brawl. That things could be resolved the way they once had. That they could ever return to how they'd once been.[break][break]

Dane rolled his shoulders. "Ohhh, no... no, don't tell me." He quirked a brow more decidedly, mouth parting around a smirk. "Are you guys like a... thing? You fucking a Gatsby girl, Dino? Somehow that's even funnier."[break][break]

Dino's face darkened with a budding uncertainty, almost daring to look wounded, but a moment later he straightened and tucked his lips in a tight line. When he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. As if knowing that seeming anything but would entice a reaction. "It's... good to see you." Immediately — a little too quick, maybe — Dane rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Is that fucking so? I wish I could say the same."[break][break]

"I'm..." His brother's brow slanted upward in the center, eyes widening, and Dane couldn't stifle the sneer that pulled across his own mouth at the look of it. "Wipe that stupid look off your dumbass face. I saw you last year. I've known for a while, Dino. So let's not pretend this is a big deal, alright?"[break][break]

It had been a huge deal. When Dane had seen him walking Maddison home, right up to the front stairs of their shared building, the world had all but stopped for him. Even in the lacking streetlight of dirty, dark East End, and even with all the disgusting little wrongs his brother had disguised himself with, Dane had seen clean through him. And it'd hollowed him. Prickled sweat across his body and filled him with nothing but cold. It'd taken all he had not to launch himself down the two flights of stairs and into the night, chasing Dino barefoot down the sidewalk, not knowing whether he would try and beat him to death or beg him to get a beer. [break][break]

But he hadn't. He'd simply stepped into the shadows of his balcony, watched his brother depart, and felt nothing but ice. But it hadn't taken long to sniff him out after that. It was Dane's job, after all, to find people who didn't want to be found. Except, Dino hadn't exactly been hiding. It had been laughably easy to seek him when he knew to look. A simple thing to shadow him. To watch as he went to his stupid fucking job every weekday and walked his stupid little dogs. Bought groceries. Went on hopeful dates. Laughed at bars with his friends. [break][break]

Once, he'd queued up behind him in line at a gas station. Hoping his brother would feel his attention. That the hairs on the back of his neck would raise and he'd turn. He'd hungered to see what played across his face as his eyes darted about his own. Wanted to know what would emerge first — fear? Shock? Regret? Wanted to know what he would do in response to whichever one it was. Because he'd never quite decided. And knew he wouldn't be able to until Dino saw him. [break][break]

But Dino hadn't turned. He'd only walked out after making a stupid little joke to the too-nice, too-generous cashier and been none the wiser. And Dane had stopped following him after that.[break][break]

Dino shook his head, clearing the bewilderment from his features and stepping forward again. "I just wan—"[break][break]

"Actually, on second thought, fuck it." Hands falling from his pockets, Dane lunged forward and brought a fist in a swift, merciless crack across his brother's jaw. He bounced back and flicked out his fingers with a fleeting grin while Dino took a long moment to breathe and compose himself. "Okay. I deserve that." Dane snorted and sneered, clapping one hand to his brother's shoulder before driving the other in a hard fist to his stomach.[break][break]

Still, Dino only grimaced and doubled over, sucking in a steadying breath. Dane's amusement thinned. "Come on, Dino," he scoffed, face twisting with a scowl. "If you really want to talk, this is how we do it, right?" The words were spoken light and cheery but even he could hear the bite to them. And Dino heard it, too, because when Dane clenched his jaw and reared back for another blow, his brother caught his fist and struck him in the ribs. [break][break]

Dane chortled around a pained exhale and the pair fell into an exchange that felt distinctly familiar despite the years. Dino had lost his edge. Whether it was because he was out of practice or was just reluctant, Dane couldn't be sure, but the blows were slower and sloppier than he remembered. They battered one another, striking at faces, clutching at clothes, and speaking in a language they knew best how to — curled lips, bared teeth, and cracking fists.[break][break]

Miraculously, Dane was the first to lose his footing. After taking a forehead to the face, he stumbled back and Dino capitalized, sweeping a leg from under him and knocking him on his back. Warmth blossomed from his nose, dripping from the corners of his nostrils and slipping down his cheeks to collect in the hollows behind his ears. Dino's fists curled in the collar of his shirt to yank him forward and he could feel him breathing hard above him. He let his eyes flicker slowly open to watch the steel set in his brother's gaze and the muscle clench in his jaw as he stared down at him. Familiar — finally familiar. [break][break]

For a single, fleeting moment, Dane let the fight drain from him. And unexpectedly, his mouth twisted around a choked sob. It didn't sound like it belonged to him but he could feel the disgusting crop of it in his throat. The bitter, betraying aftertaste of it. He lifted a hand between them to smother across the loose, pained pull to his lips and the blood trickling from his busted nose. Then smoothed his palm up and over his eyes as Dino's fingers loosened and he let him drop back to the floor. Another ugly and unbelonging noise — it couldn't be from him, it couldn't — tried slipping from his barely-parted lips and he had to grit his teeth to bite it back. To keep it trapped. [break][break]

"Mom died," he said simply, once he was able to swallow the cry and manage a breath. It was a quiet admittance. One he hadn't wanted to say. [break][break]

When Dino died, Dane had been like a moon suddenly without the sun. Left in the dark, making the same stupid orbit, day after day, after day, after fucking day. Repeating the same habits. The same endless cycle of mistakes and learning nothing. Going nowhere. Missing the light that'd given him edges; that'd made him a shape that could be picked him out from the inky black that was their lives. When his mother died, he'd somehow become even smaller. Had lost the gravity that'd been just enough to keep him tethered to something. Now he was adrift. Free-falling without aim and only waiting to crash into something big enough to break him into pieces. [break][break]

"I know," Dino whispered. Dane lowered his hand and let his eyes part. Through the blurry haze of his tears, he could see his brother's face had fallen. Softened. And the look of it, the pity... the sympathy and the mirrored hurt... it was wrong. Dane didn't want to share anything with him. Dino didn't deserve to mourn their mother. Not after what he'd done to her. And not a single person in the whole fucking world needed to feel sorry for him. Not Dane Wayland.[break][break]

"What the fuck do you know?" Dane sniffed quietly, voice tipping back toward a sneer as he shoved his brother off him. "You weren't there. You haven't been there. I was there." Dino settled on his knees beside him, somehow still looking patient and imploring, and Dane pushed to his feet and wiped at his nose, wanting to escape him. "You want to know why I didn't reach out to you?"[break][break]

Visibly bracing himself, Dino smoothed his palms over his thighs and tipped his chin. And Dane hated him for his resignation. For the coolness and the calm.[break][break]

"Dad watches me like a hawk. Like a fucking hawk. Like a vulture, Dino." He turned, pacing in a quick circle to hide the grimace that pulled across his face. "Pacing the fucking skies, waiting. For, for.... me to fuck up. Or to, to... to find something he can ask me to do that he knows I will fight him on. Or that I just can't do." His lips spread thin, an exasperated breath slipping from his nose. "Just so he has the fucking excuse to knock me down. To stick the heel of his fucking boot in my back and drive me further and further and fucking further into the dirt." [break][break]

He cleared his throat. Took a moment to reel himself in and push back the hair that'd fallen across his eyes. When he spoke again, his tone was steadier and more decided. Knowing. "If he finds out you're alive, he won't send someone else after you. No, he'll send me. He'll make me kill you. And..." he pursed his lips, tone suddenly light and sardonic but growing gradually pointed. "I'll say no, of course. I mean, obviously I'll say no." He chuffed a small, mirthless laugh and a mocking smile flickered across his mouth for only a moment. Then he frowned. "And maybe I'll last a night. Maybe, maybe I'll manage to hold out for two. Haven't managed to do it yet, but hey," he lifted his hands to either side of him, eyes glittering. "Maybe I can do it for you. But... when he's got me on my fucking knees, crying and begging for the agony to stop... when I'm throwing up and passing out and waking up and passing out and waking..." he shrugged, lips pulling tight.[break][break]

Dino's brow climbed and he reached for him. His fingers brushed against Dane's wrist and he snatched himself away, taking a step back and giving a sharp snap of his head. "Don't."[break][break]

"Dane, I'm sor —" His brother nudged closer, trying again.[break][break]

"I don't want your fucking apology," Dane said reflexively (again, just a little too quick), voice thinning as he took another step back, feeling briefly like a wild animal someone was attempting to corner. Something boiled in him, more desperate and clawing than simple anger. [break][break]

"Please, Dane. Listen to me. I lov —"[break][break]

"Then why didn't you take me with you!?" Dane yelled, louder than he'd intended in his desperation to cut the words short. He watched the sting of it flinch across his brother's face like a slap. Felt the twitching curl to his own lip as he took a single step forward and snarled, the something in him slipping finally through a hoarse throat. "I did EVERYTHING for you!" He spit the words and let them linger. But they weren't enough. His face twisted further, his eyes stung with more stupid fucking tears, and he barreled forward. "I did Dad's dirtiest work only because you couldn't! I brought you back to life when you tried to leave us! I was just a kid, too! You were supposed to protect me, too!" [break][break]

Blinking rapidly, Dino's gaze pulled sidelong, face looking so pathetically and desperately remorseful as his mouth parted and he reached for some sort of defense that just couldn't possibly exist. The sight of it stoked Dane's rage further and he lunged; kicking a shoe to his brother's chest and shoving him back off his knees. He didn't want to hear it. What fucking good could it do him now? [break][break]

"But you left me! ALONE." He sneered the word. Barbed it with the outrage he'd festered for years, half-convinced for the longest time that it was only grief. He watched Dino pull himself back up, unable to lift his eyes and look at him like the pathetic fucking coward he was. "To be ruined in the same shit you were willing to KILL YOURSELF to get away from." The anger split suddenly, just long enough for him to scoff a quiet, sarcastic laugh. He nodded down at his brother and let his lips tuck into a tight, spiteful smile as he shook his head. "What did you think was going to happen to me, Dino? Hmm?" [break][break]

With a shake of his head, Dane turned and hiked his shirt up to his neck. "Look at me, Dino. Look." He glanced over his shoulder to watch Dino's eyes reluctantly raise. To watch the surprise filter across his face as his gaze sifted over the ugly, black ink — the stupid, filthy fucking beast — that covered the entirety of him. "What is there for me now, huh?" [break][break]

"Dane." The voice was firmer. A little more desperate now. And as much as Dane had hated the calm, he hated the sound of this new tone more. [break][break]

"No." He said flatly, letting the shirt fall and turning back with another decided shake to his head. "That's it, Dino. I don't want to hear anything you have to say. You got out. Good for fucking you. I hope you've had a grand fucking time. Now stay fucking dead and leave me the fuck alone."[break][break]

With a parting scoff, he stepped toward the exit but Dino lunged forward to grab at the ankle of his pants. Dane yanked free and whipped around to kick the flat of his foot into his brother's jaw as hard as he could manage in the small space between them. It was enough to send him sprawling back. "Stay. Down!" [break][break]

"Dane, please just... listen." Dino called after him, voice pained and garbled, but Dane was already halfway to the door. Out of reach and uncaring. "Warrick will step down one day. And Gem—" [break][break]

Pausing, Dane tossed his head back with a loud, barking laugh. Then he turned and cut a fast, decisive stride back to his brother, falling into a crouch beside him and fixing him with a wide, wolfish grin; eyes gleaming brightly as he gripped Dino's chin between bruising fingers. "Is that what this is about?" He sneered, openly mocking and horribly amused. "You guys have a plan?" He gave his brother's face an unkind shake. "And do you really think our father is going to take orders from two bratty girls younger than his own shitty, detestable, failures of sons? Hmm? Do you think he ever planned to, Dino?"[break][break]

Dino shoved him away, eyes glinting, and Dane laughed again. Slow and leisurely. "How many times in our lives have you told me to grow the fuck up? And now you're the one playing pretend. Playing fucking house." He shook his head, humming with clear disappointment before he stood and stepped backward toward the door, holding his brother's stare for a stretching moment before he turned. [break][break]

"Then let's kill him."[break][break]

Dane stopped again, rolling his head back while he closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Then he let it slowly go, looked forward, and finally sighed. "Let me save you the trouble of finding out how that will end." He pulled the gun from the holster tucked into his waistband and turned to point it at his brother. Dino's eyes widened as he flicked off the safety and Dane watched him for a long, indulgent moment before he shrugged. "Heart, head, or stomach? You want to go quick or you wanna say bye to your girl?" [break][break]

Dino's lips parted and Dane pulled the trigger. Then again and again in quick succession. Three shots, not giving him a chance to choose. After the bangs finished echoing off the walls and rang in his ears, he grinned wide, watching Dino tremble just beyond the three holes shot into the floor before him. "Woops. Missed. I won't next time."[break][break]

Dino said nothing and didn't try to stop him now as he made his way to the door. It pulled open just as Dane approached and he shoved Gemma aside before she had the chance to look inside, crowding over her and staring coldly down into the terrified, shocked wetness gathering in her eyes. Having heard the shots, she was surely expecting the worst. And Dane was happy to see it. [break][break]

"Not the Wayland you were hoping to see, hmm? Well. I was just making things a little more honest." He breathed the last word with malice, tipping his face the tiniest bit closer when the first fat tear rolled down her cheek. "Goodbye, Gemma." He stepped past her, only giving a tiny shake of his head at the breathy gasp of relief behind him when he turned into the stairwell and started taking the steps by twos.

[Rinse]

[nospaces]

CHARACTER GRAPHICS

Just a place to store some stuff as I make it~ [break]
Mostly lyrical stuff b/c I'm obsessive TuT[break][break]

Tawny Vokes

SPOILER: Click to show

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Dane Wayland

SPOILER: Click to show

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[Dane Wayland]

[nospaces]

A PAST WE CAN NOT GO BACK TO

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland & Ashley Wolfe [break][break]

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Summary: More various, pointless drabbles. Just cause [break]
I do what I want. And maybe they'll help jumpstart my muse~[break][break]

CW: Brief mentions of violence, [break]
drugs, language, car accident [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

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Dino and Dane are pressed tight in the same, small dressing cubicle, looking at themselves in the mirror. Dino kicks the toes of his shiny, expensive shoes together while Dane glowers indignantly at their reflection. "I don't want to look like Dad, these clothes are itchy," he pouts, lip jutting with kiddy frustration as he turtles his neck against a stiff, starchy collar. Dino watches him for a moment, amusement finally sneaking through the dread he's been feeling all day, and turns to face him. He runs a hand through his little brother's hair — immaculately gelled to slick compliance earlier that day by a stylist's hand — and puffs up his cheeks. Dane laughs, eyes narrowing, and leaps at him to mess up his similarly-tamed hair in turn. Then the pair are making faces at one another in the mirror. Jutting out their chests and putting on angry faces to imitate their father.[break][break]

The laughter gets a little too loud and there's the distinct clearing of a throat outside the dressing room curtain. Feeling the dread return, Dino pulls back the cloth to peer up at his father. He's unamused, face twitching at the sight of them, and Dino starts a stutter. Before he can get a word out though, Dane shoves past him and peers up at Antonio, face pinched stubbornly. Dino steps after him, one hand reaching for the fist at his brother's side and the other lifting to try and smooth his hair back in place.[break][break]

"Sorry, Dad, we were just having fun. I'll fix it."
[break][break]

* * *

[break]
Dane brings home a girlfriend for dinner. Her name is Mindy and she's nice. A little ditsy. Her laugh is obnoxious but Dino doesn't miss that every time she brays, it brings the tiniest of private pulls to his brother's mouth. Their mother is beaming. Excited and gushing. Their father is unchanged, making no effort to seem anything but his normal, taciturn self.[break][break]

As Mona passes around the bowl of mashed potatoes, she apologizes that they're cold. Mindy perks, says not to worry, and that she can fix that. Dane makes a quick protest in his throat but the bowl is already between the girl's palms, light glinting under her hands as she heats it with a Gift.[break][break]

Mona's fork clatters loudly to her plate as she lifts a hand to cover her mouth. For a long moment, the air is changed. Silent and tight. Then Mindy quietly laughs, leaning toward Dane and apologizing under her breath. She'd forgotten he'd said they didn't know. Dino searches his green beans, poking them around before he hesitantly lifts his eye to Antonio across the table. He's still. Watching Dane fixedly. Unreadable. His gaze flickers to his brother next to him, staring back with an attempt at similar fixation, though his eyes aren't so steeled. His knuckles are white around the silverware in his hands. Finally, Mona bounces back. She leans across the table with a reassuring smile and tells the girl that everything is okay. She'd only startled them.[break][break]

No one sees Mindy again. Dane never once mentions her. And Dino knows not to ask.
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* * *

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Dino is gliding lazily through the pool in their backyard, Gemma's weight lounged across his back. She hadn't wanted to get her hair wet and he was happy enough to just wade about with her arms looped about his neck. Dane is perched at the pool's edge, arms folded on the concrete as he tries to heckle Grace into joining them. The younger Gatsby is stretched out on a lounging chair and working on her tan, nose upturned and ears deafened to his pleas.[break][break]

"That's a scheming face for sure," Dino whispers, watching his brother's mouth tuck and his brain work. As if on cue, Dane pulls himself from the pool and ambles toward the yard. Their mother had abandoned her gardening — after a whole ten minutes — and among the half-finished mess were the plastic planter liners she'd intended to use for her (struggling) vegetables. He plucks one up and returns to the pool, crouching to dip it into the water.[break][break]

Then, with a steeled calm that Dino couldn't fathom, he ambled toward Grace's lounge chair and let his shadow fall across her. Waited until her eyes opened. Then dumped the bucket of pool water clean over her head. She shrieked and Dane cackled, tossing the planter liner aside before diving back into the pool.[break][break]

"Hey, Gem? What's better than one pissed-off Gatsby girl?" He can feel her knowing suspicion in the bracing hold around his neck. She starts a warning protest but he's already tightening his grip on her thighs and taking a big breath. He stands and falls back, pinching his eyes shut at Gemma's gasp as he plunges them both into the water.
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* * *

[break]
Gemma's grounded; barred from going out or having anyone over. But that's never stopped Dino before. He sends her a text message and shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets, watching her bedroom window from where he's standing in the driveway and waiting for signs of life. Eventually, a light flicks on and the window opens. He beams as he watches her step gingerly through the frame and onto the roof above the garage, then leaps up to brush his fingertips against hers when she lowers herself to stretch a hand out to him.[break][break]

Then he's floating, scrambling through the air without a tether until she grasps at his jacket, pulls him to her, and releases her Gift. His feet fall to the roof tile with an announcing thud and he tries to stifle a snicker as she turns a warning eye to him and lifts a finger to her lips. Then they're climbing back through her window and he's showing her the snacks he's brought. They argue over what movie to watch, finally settle on something scary, and he shrugs out of his jacket before nestling into her bed.
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* * *

[break]
“Hey mama, I just sat down. What’s up?” Dino flops onto the couch and squints into the air curiously when his mother doesn’t immediately respond. He can hear her breathing, the sound of it shaky and uneven, and after a moment he pulls himself forward to perch on the edge of the couch. “Mom? Everything okay?” She blew a long, steadying breath into the receiver and his brow crinkled.[break][break]

“It’s your brother.” Mona says finally, her voice wavering; the tone of it setting Dino’s teeth on edge. He’s immediately moving, grabbing his keys and pulling on a coat as he steps out the door. “He’s in surgery now. They say it can go either way. Can you… can you come up here? Just in case. Your dad’s too busy.”[break][break]

It's hours in a hospital waiting room before they’re allowed to see him. They don’t advise that they do. But Mona insists. And, when they pull back the curtain and glimpse him in his recovery bed, she chokes a gasp and clutches hard at Dino beside her. Dane’s unrecognizable. Only his closed eyes are visible beneath the bandages wrapped around his head, as well as the peek of his lips around a tube, but what they can see is purple and swollen. She tries to approach him, but after a moment, she decides she can’t and turns to let Dino guide her away.[break][break]

There’s not much to do besides wait, so Dino and his mother grab a small lunch (that they both only pick at) and then visit the lot to see the car Dane rolled. It’s nothing but twisted metal, the frame of it bent and smashed in such a way he can’t imagine how anyone could have been pulled from it alive. Mona quivers as she peers into what’s left of the caved-in driver’s side. At the sheer amount of blood pooled around shattered glass and mud. She takes pictures with her phone, claiming (too loudly, trying to comfort herself assertively) that he’ll want to see them. That she’ll be able to show him just how stupid and reckless he was and, maybe if he saw how lucky he’d been, he’d learn.
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* * *

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As he finishes pulling up the long, dirt driveway and lets his car slow to a crawl, Dino watches as Dane — dressed in only his boxer briefs and a single sock, holding the rest of his clothes to his chest — breaks through the front door of the house before him. He almost falls off the porch, loses a shoe (doesn't turn back for it), and sprints toward Dino, who leans across the passenger seat and shoves open the door just in time for his brother to toss his shit inside and leap in.[break][break]

"Perfect timing," he says breathlessly. His cheeks are red, his hair slicked with sweat, and there's blood at the corner of his nose. Dino lifts his brow, half-accusing, half-amused. "I'm guessing it wasn't Jimmy you were hanging out with?"[break][break]

"No," Dane confirms with a scoff, trying to figure out his pants. "His sister. Can we go?" Dino doesn't need to be told again when Jimmy — already built like a refrigerator at seventeen and holding a shotgun — steps onto the front porch. A blonde girl tries to yank him back inside, screaming, but he shoves her off and leaps down the steps. Dino flips the car around and takes off, eyes widening as he watches Jimmy sprint toward his own truck in the rearview mirror.[break][break]

"No, left! Leftleftleft!" Dane cries, too late, as Dino swings right out of the drive and onto the dirt road. "There's no outlet this way!" He only accelerates, thoughts turning wild as Jimmy's headlights gleam behind him, reflecting in Dane's eyes as he turns to look. He's on them in no time, truck roaring. Then, Dino can see the end of the road ahead, just as Dane said. "Cut through the field!" Dane shouts, pointing.[break][break]

"Are you stupid!? This is a fucking sedan!" Dino exclaims incredulously, right before Dane leans across to yank sharply at the steering wheel. The car veers into the ditch, bouncing, and tears through barbed-wire fencing and into a pasture. Dino almost loses his grip on the wheel as they jostle in their seats. "What if there are cows!?"[break][break]

They don't make it far at all. Jimmy's right on them up until he isn't. The truck slows behind them and Dane laughs triumphantly, thinking he's given up. However, it becomes clear why the other man has backed off a moment later, when Dino — watching his rear-view mirror — drives them right into a small pond. The car comes to an abrupt halt and Dane folds into the small space between the dashboard and the windshield. "Fucker!" He cries, voice half a laugh even as he clutches at his head.[break][break]

There's the sound of splashing as Jimmy trudges into the shallows. "Okay, okay... okay, okay, okay." Dane's loosening himself up, shucking his shoulders and rolling his neck; trying to talk himself up to the ass-beating he's about to receive. When Jimmy tears open the passenger door and rips him out into the water, he laughs wildly, "Hey, Jim! At least let me get my pants on firs— ow, fuck!" The jab is cut short by a sharp crack of bone against bone and Dino sighs, craning his head back against his headrest. Then there's the sound of more splashing — another man bounding into the pond — and he remembers Jimmy has an older brother. His eyes flutter open and he sets his jaw. God damn it. He shoves open the driver's side door and steps into the water, shucking his own shoulders in preparation.
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* * *

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They’ve parked the car in an empty field. It’s dark except for the glitter of stars overhead. The city is only a glow in the distance and the only sound is from Dino’s Bluetooth speaker and the bay of faraway coyotes yipping to one another. The Wayland boys are stretched out on the car's roof, hands folded under their heads as they watch the sky and bullshit. [break][break]

As it tended to do eventually, the conversation steers to girls. Dino snorts through Dane’s detailed telling of various hook-ups and conquests. His own stories are tame in comparison — unlike his brother, he’s not one to kiss and tell — but he shares the more mundane things he and Tess have gotten up to and have planned. None of it sounds terribly sincere, even to his own ears.[break][break]

“You’ve got it bad, man,” Dane hums, prodding an elbow into his brother’s ribs. Dino chuckles, lips pulling into a small smile. “No… I mean… Tess is alright, yeah.” He blinked at the stars, eyes flitting between the dots of blazing light and trying to pick out constellations.[break][break]

"I'm not talking about Tess," Dane says slyly and Dino lets his head fall sidelong, pressing a temple to the car's roof to peer suspiciously at his brother's waiting grin and quirked brow. "Shut up," he laughs and gives Dane a hard shove, laughing harder when he rolls off the car entirely and lands on the ground with a shout.
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* * *

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Dane and Dino are waiting for Gemma outside the bar. When her car pulls up to the curb, they both throw up their hands and yell. They're plastered.[break][break]

Dino flings the car door open and squats, hanging off the car's frame with both hands as he peers in at her, swaying; face flushed with alcohol and slipt in a wide, cheek-aching beam. "Gem...ma!" He shouts, her name (cheery and slurred) making his smile (somehow — it almost seems impossible) inch even wider. "Our savior! Our —"[break][break]

"I called shotgun already!" Dane shoulders into him, trying to shove under his arms and into the passenger seat, but Dino falls atop him, wrestling him back. "Fat fucking chance!" There's a struggle. For a moment the boys seem almost intent on sitting atop one another. But then Dino manages a solid seat, shoves Dane out the door, and slams it shut with a cheeky, triumphant grin. The younger Wayland simmers and pouts in his window, then defeatedly throws himself into the backseat, lounging across the whole of it with a happy, drunken sigh.[break][break]

"Shotgun gets AUX privs!" Dino caws out, already tapping at the controls at Gemma's dashboard screen and pulling out his phone.[break][break]

"Gemma, no, stop him. Don't!" Dane rolls into the floorboard to shove his face between the two front seats, then drops his chin to the console with a roll of his eyes when twangy music fills the car. "He's — ugh — he's honky-tonk drunk."[break][break]

Dino cuts him off by turning up the volume dial and lifting his chin to belt. "Maybe we ought to.... kiss a little more, think a little less! Burning up the night like a cigarette! Get you outta this bar, outta that dress." He turns to Gemma, hand clutching at her shoulder as he mimes holding a microphone and attempts his best, drunken smolder. "Kiss a little more, kiss a little more, think a little less!"[break][break]

Dane lets his eyes flutter open with a long, disgusted groan. "I trusted you, Gem. You've let us all down."[break][break]

Dino drops his eyes and his hand to smother at Dane's face, shoving him back into the floorboard before skipping to the next song. Then Dane's hand shoots out in a semi-serious slap to the older Wayland's face, making him shout. He turns in his seat and they exchange a couple of slaps and blows, laughing and clipping curses as both of them aim (intentionally) for the ears.[break][break]

Finally, Dane sits up fully in the backseat and leans forward to throw his arms around Dino's headrest, clasping his hands below his brother's neck and belting out the next lyrics with him. "Gonna marry that girl, like it or not! That's if I don't get shot! My baby's daddy, can't nobody save me from my baby's daddy!"[break][break]

"McDonalds! McDonalds!" Dino points through the window at the golden arches and Gemma cuts across two lanes of traffic in one violent veer, sending Dane tumbling across the backseat and earning a couple of honks from the vehicles behind them. Dino laughs wild and loud, eyes wide, as headlights shine on him through the passenger window, then laughs again when the car hits the approach too hard (with a terrible crunching noise) and everyone bounces a half-foot from their seat.[break][break]

Twenty minutes later, they watch her drive off from the sidewalk in front of their apartment building, blowing kisses with wide, thrown arms and clutching Happy Meals to their chests.
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Songs: [x] - [x][break][break]* * *

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"Just leave him! He's useless right now anyway!" Dane's voice is angry and accusing but Dino is too far gone to even acknowledge it. Even as he tries, he can't make his body stir from where he's pressed to the car door of the backseat. Gemma's imploring, shaking clutch at his shoulder pulls away and Dino moans, managing to slip a bit further down at the sound of a car door shutting.[break][break]

All four of them were on a hunting assignment, far from home. And they'd had a great time. But then Dino had needed something to steel his nerves and, without his usual contacts, had managed to scrounge something up he wasn't wholly prepared for. Now he could barely open his eyes. And the three of them were on their own.[break][break]

He isn't sure how much time has passed when there's the sound of yelling. The opposite door of the backseat opens and Dane lays Gemma half on top of him before letting Grace climb in. Then he jumps into the driver's seat and the car is moving. They're yelling over each other, panicked and lashing out in their panic. Dino is only distantly aware of the warmth seeping into his clothes. Of Gemma's blood, warm and too much, soaking through his jacket and his shirt. He only clutches himself tighter, trying to pull himself smaller, and attempts to nudge closer to the door.[break][break]

It's quiet and he's alone when he comes to awareness again. This time, he's able to move and pull himself to a sitting. Once more, he has no idea how much time has passed. But he can recall the yelling as if it were a dream. He glances at the blood — not his own — soaking his clothes and then peers through the windows. He's in a hospital parking lot. Something had happened. Something had happened to Gemma.[break][break]

The staff of the hospital attempt to turn him away multiple times in the hallways. But he moves through them when they pull at him, peering through windows until he catches a glimpse of Dane dozing in a chair against a wall, arms crossed over his chest and knees spread wide. He turns soft imploration to the nurses tailing him and they finally nod and relent. He steps inside quietly, not wanting to wake any of the three of them.[break][break]

Grace and Gemma are both shoved into the same bed, the younger Gatsby's arms thrown around her sister who is hooked to machines and in a gown. There are bandages around her neck and her face is pale. Dino watches them with wide, wet eyes, before pulling a plastic chair to the opposite side of the bed and settling in it. He hesitates before lifting a hand to slip gingerly into Gem's, his fingers sweaty and trembling. He should have been there. He should have been present. They could easily have lost her. Any one of them could have been killed. And he wouldn't have been there. He shutters his eyes and leans forward, pressing his forehead to the bed and smoothing a thumb over Gem's still fingers.
[break][break]

* * *

[break]
Dino comes to violently, turning to his side and emptying his stomach with a heave. Immediately, he moans, eyes flickering open and closed as he registers the feel of cold, sticky floor beneath him. No, no, no. Not again. He doesn’t know which is worse. The fact he was here once more or the fact someone had pulled him back. Then he realizes his head is pulled in a lap and, when he recognizes Gemma’s concerned, fear-stricken and teary face above him, he’s sobbing. She pulls her head to his chest and he keels, lifting a hand to her bracing arm as he apologizes over and over.[break][break]

“Let’s go somewhere else.” Dino implores softly once he's cried out, steadying his shaky fingers by pressing a palm to Gemma’s cheek. He tries a weak smile as he tucks some hair behind her ear. “Just for a week,” the smile falters, the crinkle around his eyes smooth, and he lets his eyes flutter close. “Pretend no one else exists…” his voice is quieter as his consciousness ebbs. “That we’re not who we are.”[break][break]

On the edge of his awareness, he can hear her yelling. Is somewhat conscious of her slapping at his cheek. But he’s thinking of a vacation. Of sunny, foreign beaches where they could laugh and swim. And he could look at her smiling back at him, wreathed in sunlight, without curbing his want. The nights would be beautiful and warm. They’d dance in crowded streets, under red lights strung between buildings, and among people who didn’t know them. Who demanded nothing of them besides to share in their own joy as they flung themselves around with gleeful abandon. No one would know to be afraid of them. No one would care.
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* * *

[break]
'I talked to Tess. I think I know where he is. It's bad.'[break][break]

Dane grits his jaw as he reads the message, shoving himself through the bar doors and back into the street. No one has seen Dino in four days. He's lost count of how many bars and clubs he's checked. He gets the location and takes off in that direction, sprinting and seething.[break][break]

He moves through the halls of the dark, decrepit building, rolling over people who are lying face-down and peering through dirty rooms for a familiar body. Finally, he finds his brother huddled in the corner of a room that smells like piss; sprawled on a bedroll with a man talking over him, tying up Dino's arm.[break][break]

Dane doesn't hesitate. Throwing himself across the room, he rips a syringe from the man's fingers, turns it in his palm, and jams it hard into the dude's thigh, pressing down the plunger and emptying the whole of it into him with a tight, furious tuck to his lips. The guy shouts and scrambles back but Dane doesn't pay him another second of attention before he's heaving Dino to his feet and pulling his arm over his shoulder. His brother is deadweight. Wearing the same clothes he'd been last seen in four days ago. He reeks of vomit and filth. His head rolls to the side, he grumbles some incoherent protest, and Dane almost can't see through the rage threatening to blur his vision.[break][break]

They've almost made it to the front door of the building when Dane recognizes a figure through another doorway. A too familiar face he's spotted too many times talking to his brother with bent heads and lowered voices. He lets Dino drop to the floor, not caring in the least to be gentle, and leaps into the room to run the man into the wall. His fists curl into his shirt and he pulls him back before shoving him hard again, forcing the back of his skull to crack against the sheetrock before he pulls a knife to his throat. He waits until the emotion across the guy's face has filtered from surprise, to anger, and then finally to fear, before he tips his own close enough to growl.[break][break]

"The next time he comes to you, you walk the other way,” he spoke through his teeth, emphasizing the words with a bit of pressure on the blade pressed to the man’s neck. “If I ever have to see you again, neither of us will like it. No matter how much he begs and cries. If you give him anything… if you but breathe in his direction,” his gaze was unmoving from the guy’s face, unflinching when his eyes fluttered and he whimpered as the knife bit just barely into his skin, “I’ll gut you like a fucking fish. Do you understand?” The guy nods and Dane shoves him to the floor, kicking once at his side before he turns away to force Dino once more to his feet.
[break][break]

* * *

[break]
Dino hasn't been home for months. Dane keeps saying Mom wants to see him. But he doesn't want her to see him. It was getting more difficult to stomach her concern. The strained, begging smiles as she pulled at his stringy, unwashed hair and poked about the sallowness of his face.[break][break] But he figures he owes her one last visit.[break][break]

They talk for hours. About anything, everything, and nothing. Lounged together on the couch in the living room. Dino propped on the counter in the kitchen while she cooked. He even sits outside her bedroom bathroom as she goes through her nightly skincare routine. Throughout both the day and night, he sees her notice the shake to his fingers. Watches her gaze fall multiple times to the sweat at the collar of his shirt. But she makes a tremendous effort to keep her sadness at bay. To keep her smiles wide and understanding and her eyes bright. It occurs to him, suddenly, that Dane had inherited much more from her than the color of his hair and the roundness of his face. Their eyes are the same — pools of dark, dark brown, too good at concealing.[break][break]

Eventually, Mona falls asleep while they're watching TV. And Dino watches her for a long while, letting himself finally be openly grieved now that her eyes are closed. He rests a hand on her shoulder to wake her up. "Mama," he starts, feeling his chest cleave as she hums and her arms come around him. He doesn't want to say goodbye. Doesn't want to end the conversation that he's already decided will be their last. But he does. "I better get going."[break][break]

"Okay, baby," she whispers, sitting up to hug him more securely. "I love you Dino, I hope... you're okay. I hope you get better," she whispers, voice gentle, and she tries to pull away. But Dino hugs her to him tighter, giving himself a moment longer to school the grief from his face. To let the tears brimming in his eyes clear. "I'm going to try, mama," he whispers, knowing that within the week, she'll be burying an empty box in his name.
[break][break]

[Dane Wayland]

[nospaces]

BACK TO THE BLACK AGAIN

ONESHOT for Dane Wayland [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Not long after losing his mother, Dane is visited by his [break]
father, who makes it subtly clear it's time for things to change.[break][break]

CW: Brief mention of drugs [break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

When Dane slipped his key into the deadbolt, he was surprised at the lack of resistance turning it revealed. He hadn't been home for a couple of nights now and his apartment was unlocked. Pausing for only a moment to consider the possibilities of what that could mean, he pushed the door open and glanced inside. [break][break]

Unexpectedly, the air that greeted him was not stale. Rather than sick and sweet with the hoppy scent of beer, alcohol, and wine, it was clean — fresh and citrusy. And seated at the small table by the window, opening a plastic-wrapped set of cheap silverware with a styrofoam container of take-out before him, was his father. His posture was easy and casual and he didn't look up as Dane slowly entered and shut the door behind him. [break][break]

Lips parting, too dumbstruck to find any immediate words, Dane dragged his gaze from Antonio and across the room. The floors and walls were cleaned. The shattered glass, the splintered chair, the mess of spilled liquor and everything else he'd broken or sent scattered about in his rage — all of it was gone. Everything was back in place and wiped down. The windows were opened to allow fresh air inside and the curtains were drawn aside to bathe the apartment in light. His eye traveled back to his father and he noted the slight, barely-there dishevelment of him. The hint of stain on the sleeve of his white and otherwise-crisp dress shirt, rolled up to the elbow. The telltale scuffing on his shoes and at the knees of his slacks. The way his hair had pulled just slightly from the hold of product that kept it from his face. [break][break]

All of it was subtle. Things only a trained eye would even note. But as marginal as it was, anyone who knew Antonio Wayland, knew any hint of disarrangement about his person was misplaced and wrong. That, or an intentional and calculated ploy meant to disarm. As Dane looked upon him, he realized that it was much more likely, in this case, that his father had spent hours cleaning up his apartment instead of calling in someone else to do it. But why? [break][break]

Dane moved further into the room, tossing his keys on the counter and decidedly remaining close-lipped. As if wanting to test who would break the silence first. Who of the pair of them could ignore the existence of the other the longest before something just had to be said. Perhaps a bit more truthfully though, Dane just didn't know what he should say. What to expect or what to make of his father's presence. A long minute passed. And, rather predictably, a discomfort edged slowly into his chest to overtake his need to be stubborn. "What are you doing here? What do you want?" He said, voice already — by default — half a scoff. [break][break]

After what seemed to be another deliberate minute, Antonio opened his tray of food and finally peered up at his son. He lifted his fork and motioned toward the seat opposite him — a chair dragged from somewhere else in the apartment. "Sit down and eat, Dane." [break][break]

"I'm not hungry," Dane answered reflexively, not knowing from where he pulled the defiance, only knowing it was there and bottomless where his father was concerned. His eye pulled to the similar plate of take-out waiting in a plastic bag on the counter beside him and his stomach clenched betrayingly. "And when was the last time you really ate? You look like hell." [break][break]

Dane rolled his head on his shoulders to cast his father a level, hating look. "And you're concerned since when?" Even before the words finished leaving his lips, he was digging the tray and the other package of silverware from the bag and moving to the table. He nudged the chair out with his foot and settled into it, angled purposely away from his father rather than facing him squarely. He glanced up at him through lowered lashes then sighed and flipped the lid of his plate open. [break][break]

He scoffed, a bitter smile pulling just barely at his lips as he studied the rice bed with its mess of assorted vegetables and shrimp atop it. "You remember I'm allergic to shellfish, right?" He asked snidely, closing the lid and nudging it to the center of the table to make room for the arms he immediately folded beneath him. "Or did you..." his lips thinned and he shrugged his shoulders close to his neck, eyes dancing with accusing amusement, "Did you ever know that?" [break][break]

Antonio was unfazed. He looked up at him, lifted a forkful of rice to his mouth, then dropped his eye again to slide a thick envelope across the table. Dane smacked his lips and frowned, then pulled back with a sigh and shrugged his shoulders again. "What is it?" [break][break]

His father took his time in chewing and swallowing. "Deposit slips for the more recent bounties you've yet to receive. Minus Ray Donovan." Dane's lip curled. All of the bounties his father had short-changed him on for the past couple of years, he meant, and wondered why he wouldn't just say it. "And also your mother's phone." His face smoothed, the disdain falling forgotten from his features as he swallowed and lifted his fingers to the package to feel the bulk of it. He pulled it closer to him, eyes threatening to show his surprise. "I've already gone through it and I'm sure there's plenty of photos and videos on it that you'd like to have. You can keep it." [break][break]

Dane schooled his expression back to neutrality, colored faintly still by an irrepressible loathing that he couldn't completely hide away. "Why?" He asked, fingers drumming on the envelope as his eyes danced with suspicion. His father took another bite and Dane had to wonder, despite the deliberate movements and the untouchable composure of him, if he'd only done so to give himself a moment to think over his response. He watched him impatiently, feeling dislike seep deeper and spread wider in his chest with each second that ticked by. Finally, he swallowed. "I only wanted to check in on you. Make sure you weren't going to end up like your brother." [break][break]

"You mean dead?" Dane responded pointedly and lifted his brow. "Or drugs?" [break][break]

"I mean —"[break][break]

Dane leaned the tiniest bit closer, shadowed eyes holding his father's fixedly as he stopped him short. "I wouldn't do that to her." Somehow, his voice had managed to sink even lower, sounding more dangerous growl than anything else. The image his father's words put in his mind — of him, poking his veins full of poison or lying face-down in some disgusting trap house, filthy and drenched — jarred resentment clean through him in a single, mind-clearing bolt. Just what would his mother think, if he let himself slip into that sort of disgusting despondency on her behalf? Watching Dino ebb so painfully slow in those same places had broken her heart. And Dane would never become that pathetic person. Especially when it could be lain so obviously at his mother's absent feet. He wouldn't do that to her, even if she wasn't alive to witness it. [break][break]

Antonio watched him levelly for a moment, seeming almost to be searching, then nodded slowly and resumed his absent poking about the food beneath him. Dane leaned slowly back in his seat, eyes lingering loathingly on his father's face, then finally angled away. As if given a cue, he continued. "I'm not asking for us to start over." Dane resisted the urge to scoff disdainfully and only rolled his eyes. "You will never like me and I will never like you. There is no changing that." As if he were coming to a long deliberated decision, Antonio dropped his fork into the rice and closed the lid of his container, then settled back in his own seat and lifted his cold, honey-brown eyes. "But you are my son." [break][break]

The lids threatened to twitch tellingly over Dane's eyes as his gaze flickered to meet his father's. He tried not to feel anything as he matched his stare, wanting his own eyes to be as cold and ungiving as his. Wanting his father to see that nothing that he felt for him mirrored back. "I'm only asking for a return to competency. You remember that? You were once very good—" [break][break]

"At being your dog." Dane interjected in a quiet sneer, knowing suddenly that he would never be able to match his father's unshakable steel as he felt his eyes gleam and tighten of their own accord; felt his face twist with a loathing he would never be able to hide or conceal behind a cool, unreadable mask like Antonio had attempted teaching both of his sons to long ago. He hated giving him the reaction — it felt so much like begging for one in return, for wanting to be worthy of it — but he couldn't not. [break][break]

Antonio's eyes didn't move. As always, he was unflappable. Unflinching, dispassionate, and resolute. He only waited a moment and then continued, everything about him — his tone, his look, his utter disregard — completely unchanged. "I'm reassigning you. Instead of Ms. Gatsby, you'll be partnered with Wolfhound once more. No more defector duty. No more trifling tasks. I'll be sending you real assignments again." [break][break]

Dane poked his tongue into his cheek and dropped his eyes to the tabletop, trying to get a clamp on his disdain and feeling a flutter in his chest. He wet his lips and smothered his face into a lifted hand; pressing the heel against an eye and curling his fingers into his hair. "I'll give you time to finish healing, of course." Dane laughed quietly, giving a small shake of his head as he pushed his hand harder into his face. "When you're ready, you let me know." [break][break]

His father stood but Dane didn't look up to watch him as he moved across the room to throw away his food and gather his jacket from the counter. He only breathed a hard sigh through his nose and tossed his head back. At the sound of his apartment door clicking open, he turned the other way to squint outside the open window. "Your tattoo can always get smaller, Dane. You know that, don't you? You just have to earn it. Consider this me giving you that chance." [break][break]

"Yeah... and it can get bigger, too, can't it?" Dane called back sardonically, shucking his shoulders with an easy, mocking laugh as he turned his head so he could just gauge his father from the edge of his periphery. Still and straight-backed, looking at him from his own doorway. As he'd done all his life, Antonio lingered for only a long, weighing moment, then slipped wordlessly from view, closing the door softly behind him. Dane laughed again, this time more bitterly, and ripped open the envelope before him to glance over his mother's phone. He powered it on and let his lips pull slightly at her lockscreen's wallpaper — an image of her, head tossed back and lips parted around a laugh he could almost hear, with both Dane and Dino (younger and happier, faces scrunched and screwed with the intent to make the photo as unattractive as possible) pressed on either side of her. [break][break]

"What do you think, Mama?" He smoothed a thumb across the pixels of her face. "Think it's last chance this time?" He hummed thoughtfully, pursing his lips as he swiped at the screen and pulled up her camera roll. "Either way, if you're watching from somewhere... you'll probably want to keep your eyes closed."
[break][break]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

COUCH CONVERSATIONS

ONESHOT for Tawny Vokes & Luck Harris [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: I've decided Luck and Tawny are [break]
friends. And sometimes they talk about things. [break]
What's the point of this? Idk. Just kinda vent-y.[break][break]

CW: Cursing, drinking, talk of [break]
depression, death/loved ones dying[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

"Oh, Luck.... no," Tawny breathes the words almost forlornly as she steps into his living room and takes a long, mortified look around. "We are absolutely going to my apartment instead, this is just... depressing." [break][break]

Luck moves past her, scoffing and casting her a hurt look over his shoulder. "What! Just because I haven't unpacked some boxes?" Her brow leaps, her lips part, and her eyes dart around a bit more wildly. "Yeah! A lot of boxes!" He clucks, face pinching with exaggerated disdain. He can admit... he's been taking his time "moving in". It was proving to be very taxing. "You're the one who wanted to see the new place," he points out, voice adopting a playful edge of accusation. "But okay, let me change and grab my beer."[break][break]

"I have beer at my place," she shoots back, attempting to match his tone. He doesn't have to look back to know she's placed her hands on her hips and he doesn't look back as he scoffs knowingly. "Oh yeah, and what kind of beer do you have?"[break][break]

"I think it's —" he doesn't let her finish. "I'm bringing mine."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

Luck plops down on the couch, settling into the cushions and pulling out his phone to scroll through his messages — or, more accurately, his lack of messages. Tawny moves through the apartment, depositing her stuff on her small wooden table before sifting into the kitchen and out of view. There's the noise of her uncaging her ferrets — though Luck has met them twice now, he knows they will be wildly interested in him still — and then the sound of her rooting through her fridge.[break][break]

"Do you really think I need therapy?" Luck calls out, voice slightly offended. A tiny beast claws its way up his leg and into his lap. He locks his phone and tosses it aside, then busies himself with the weasel between his palms. He doesn't remember the name of the more troublesome of the two, but he is sure it's this one, as it immediately shoves a head in the pocket of his shorts.[break][break]

"Yes!" Tawny shouts back, voice half a laugh. There's a beat of silence and then she pokes her head from around the wall, eyes narrowed. "Sorry, that was a bit of a quick answer, wasn't it?" She laughs freely this time, before stepping into the living room with two beers in one hand. He's been keeping her fridge stocked with his own preference now. "To be fair though, I think everyone should try therapy at some point in their lives. Even if they don't think so and even if nothing is obviously wrong."[break][break]

He takes the beer she holds out to him and lets his eyes — openly suspicious — flit to her face. "Even therapists?" He says seriously, one brow quirking. Her face scrunches. "You shut your mouth."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

Tawny returns from the kitchen in a subtle sway — looking a little tipsy — with two fresh beers. They're already a few deep, it's been a couple of hours, and they're back on the therapy topic. Since he's so adamantly reluctant to the whole premise, she's gotten the "genius" idea that they could practice. "Pregame it", she'd said.[break][break]

"Okay, so," she starts, settling on the couch beside him and handing off his beer (he wastes little time in popping the top off, already feeling his eyes want to roll). "You've already filled out like... stacks and stacks of paperwork. Little surveys with questions you'll probably find awfully invasive and uncomfortable. And I've already gone through them!" She beams, far too cheery. "So I've kinda got an idea about you and why you're here. Yay, presumptions!" The cheeriness falls flat as she takes a swig of her beer. When she begins again, she's a little more serious. "But the first thing a therapist is still probably gonna ask, after all the introductions and stuff is, 'Luck, tell me, what do you hope to get out of therapy? Why do you feel you're here? Is there anything in particular you want us to discuss today?'"[break][break]

She blinks at him expectantly, putting on a smile he suspects is meant to be a bit unnerving. Luck looks away from her, breathing a hard breath through his nose. His brow knits in the center and he licks his lips, mind emptying entirely as he tries to think. [break][break]

An agonizing moment passes. One that stretches far too long before he finally blows out his cheeks and lifts his eyes back to her face. His hands have grown clammy. [break][break]

Tawny blows out her own cheeks in response, her "winning" smile transforming into something almost as amused as it was horrified. "Okay, yikes. Let's forget the therapist roleplay, after all. We'll start a little smaller. We'll just be Tawny and Luck for now."[break][break]

The night progresses in a more natural manner. But every once in a while, she sprinkles in a question. She asks about his mother. He shakes his head. She asks about his father. He only looks at her. She asks about Nate. And when he draws a hand down his face and groans into his fingers, she clucks her tongue.[break][break]

"I don't envy whoever gets assigned you."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

"Your Gift. The emotion stuff that you do. You can tell what everyone around you is feeling." She states it all matter-of-factly. Lining up the dominoes. They're at his place this time. She's been helping him unpack boxes all night and now she's trying to take pictures of the two rabbits hopping around his less-cluttered living room. She doesn't even look up as she speaks. "You have no problem working their feelings out. But with yourself, it's more difficult?"[break][break]

Almost reflexively, Luck reaches for her feelings. As if he might be able to puzzle out how he is supposed to respond using what he finds. [break][break]

Her feelings seep into him and he decides that she's curious but cautious. It feels like a muted sort of... static. It feels practiced. Expert, almost. Spiky... but in a way that, were he touch it, it would give; be soft and pliable rather than poke. It reminds him of a person reaching their hand slowly out to a skittish animal, hoping it didn't bolt and preparing to backpedal.[break][break]

"Yeah," Luck says after a moment, taking a moment to study the bubble-wrapped dish he has pulled from its box. He glances at her and, when she finally looks at him, he lets a bit of amusement filter across his face. "With my Gift, I'm not the one feeling it."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

It's two weeks later when Tawny asks about Renée again. Luck can feel her eyes on his profile. He's sitting on the floor, bent over her low coffee table with a pen held between his fingers; tapping the tip of it over and over in a single, inky spot as he studies the timeline of Kevin Harvick's career that he's scribbled out on the back of an envelope. He's gone on and on about the last race of this NASCAR season — Harvick's retirement race — for the last half-hour. He blames the empty bottles littering the tabletop. There's more than usual tonight. He also blames the beer for the fact that he doesn't simply shake his head and dismiss the question.[break][break]

The pen stops its tapping and he takes a long breath; straightening until his back is pressed against the front of her couch. She's seated next to and above him, one leg drawn up beneath her and the other dangling off the side. He doesn't speak for a long while and eventually, she nudges a socked toe into his ribs. Blowing the breath through his nose, he tucks her foot in the clasp of his palm and nods.[break][break]

He isn't sure what she's asking him. What did he think of his mother? What she was like? What had his childhood with her looked like? [break][break]

When he opens his mouth, it's how she died that springs to his lips. And, because it is where his mind has gone... without needing any direction... he supposes it is what he might need to talk about. He supposes that Tawny is not asking something pointed on purpose. He has to keep in mind that she does this for a living. Sometimes, she makes it a little easy to forget.[break][break]

"I was seventeen when she had a brain aneurysm. I came home after work — I was doing night rounds at the feedlot then — with some groceries and I heard the shower running." A typical night. Until it wasn't. "I called out my hellos, she... didn't say anything. Wasn't... belting along to the Shania Twain that was playing on the radio like she usually was. But I thought maybe it was just one of those 'Harris' days, you know?" He turned to offer her a knowing (somewhat forced) grin, hoping the feel of it would dispel the tightness in his throat. She quirked a brow with an equally-knowing nod and tipped her face just barely into the closed fist of the arm she had propped on the back of the couch. [break][break]

He can't hold the smile, or her gaze, for long, and he looks away. Into his lap to study the snoozing ferret lounging across his thigh. "But uh..." he starts, then immediately stops to wipe at the budding sweat upon his face, "Well... we didn't have a bathtub. Just a walk-in shower. The lip of it was only," he pulls the hand from his mouth, spreading his thumb and forefinger apart to show a meager three or so inches. "Yay-high?"[break][break]

He's not looking at her but he can see Tawny nod in his periphery. The toes still in his grasp curl and he realizes he has begun to squeeze; fingers wanting to clench into his palms. He releases his hold and mumbles an apology, to which she doesn't respond. She just waits. "And when she you know... died... and slipped down, her body kinda —" he hesitates, trying to find the right word — clog wasn't right (his mother wasn't some sort of hapless debris caught in a storm drain) but nothing felt fitting nor appropriate. After a moment, he opts to pantomime instead, placing his hands over one another as his gaze flit with a certain sort of desperation to her — hoping she didn't need him to say a word. She nods, quickly, and he blinks rapidly.[break][break]

When he starts again, the words come quick, almost atop one another. "The drain, you know. She had stuff already set out for dinner. We ate really late. Really late was all the time we had. It's the only time we saw each other. She was always working and so was I. But I got dinner going. Tried talking to her some more. And finally, when she didn't answer, I stepped into the hall and I, I... I stepped in the water. It had soaked down the hall, all the way to the front door."[break][break]

He paused to steel himself, running his palms across the tops of his legs and trying to smile at the ferret that twisted awake with a yawn. "Time slowed down then. Like... each second could have been a minute. I broke into the bathroom. Saw her. Called 911. Did as they said, y'know, the CPR and all of that, but... it was too late. She was gone before I even got home. There was nothing to be done."[break][break]

She doesn't speak for a while. She waits some more. She has to be an expert on waiting, he thinks. But she also knows when to stop waiting. It's as if she can sense that peculiar and very narrow window of time between being unable to speak and becoming antsy at the silence. He wonders, briefly — if he were to see a therapist — if they'd be able to do the same. [break][break]

"Do you find feeling sad cathartic?" She asks finally, quietly, right at that moment he needs her to say something — anything. But he gets the immediate feeling that the question isn't something she'd ask a patient. He can hear there's something else there. A genuine curiosity or, perhaps, something she is truly wanting answered for herself.[break][break]

"What do you mean?" Luck asks, craning his neck so the back of his head is resting on the couch cushion and he can turn his face to her. Her eyes wander from his face and into the empty space of her living room, seeming to search. "I mean... isn't it cathartic? Healing? To feel things in a massive way? Even things that are sad." She shrugs. "Watching sad movies knowing they're gonna hurt. Listening to sad music just to feel how... it makes you feel. I think some people really avoid stuff like that. Because they don't want to feel those things. But I think that... it's good for you. Right?"[break][break]

Luck watches her face for a moment then turns his attention to her ceiling.[break][break]

"Maybe. Is that what you do?"[break][break]

* * *

[break]

Their little play at "therapy" has advanced. [break][break]

"Show me a good memory of you two."[break][break]

The first time she'd asked to see something, he'd been reluctant. In some faraway recess of his mind, he'd been aware that she'd probably taken a peek through his head a couple of times already, but... the first time she'd made it known... he'd been uneasy. And when he'd pulled away, just barely — it had been an irrepressible twitch of his fingers when she reached for him — he'd felt her emotions crack like a whip in response. Although not a bit of it flashed across her face, he'd felt it — and it'd been like shattering glass. A bolt of unexpected hurt, one that she'd braced for and still somehow been taken off-guard by.[break][break]

Immediately, he'd felt regret. And he'd apologized. And this time, at her question, he nods without hesitation. He drops his head against the back of his couch and thinks.[break][break]

They're in his apartment this time. All the boxes are unpacked and it looks like a home now. Not exactly his home — not really — but that would... probably... come with time. [break][break]

He doesn't have to think for long. Though it does take him a minute to choose between the dozens of scenes that leap to mind. Finally, after acknowledging a growing pang that accompanied the remembering, he settles.[break][break]

He pictures the white sands of Anguilla. Of moonlight on black waves. How they'd been the last two people milling around the beach bar at last call and had spent hours there, drinking more than either of them ever did as they talked about anything and everything and laughed at nothing. He recalled the feel of the soft sand between his toes as they ran across the shoreline and splashed in the water, as warm as the air. How they'd giggled and half-carried, half-dragged one another down the hotel hallway, fighting to keep one another upright. Shoes tucked in their fingers and sunglasses crooked on their faces.[break][break]

He nods and Tawny reaches for him with a wicked beam. As he always does, he looks at her the moment her fingers smooth into his arm. As if, this time, he'll be able to see the memory flash across her face somehow. But, per usual, only the fraction of a moment seems to pass before she pulls away and tosses her head back with a laugh. After a moment, her laugh peters to a sympathetic look as she pouts her lip at him, and then she laughs again. He waits until she's exhausted herself and, when she finally pauses to breathe, he quirks a brow expectantly. [break][break]

She sobers, looking mischievous for a moment. "I stopped at the hallway, when you guys finally found the right floor and the right door. Things were starting to get a little wild."[break][break]

Luck laughs himself now, smothering a hand across his face. He can feel it warm. "Yeah... yeah, no, we were menaces that night."[break][break]

She paws at him. "What was that song you were cawing? When you guys were stumbling off the beach?" Luck cocks his head quizzically, gaze drawing to beyond her as he tries to remember. Unfortunately, he'd been quite drunk and his memory wasn't as good as her Gift. Fortunately, Tawny realizes this and begins to hum the tune and bob her head. It only takes a second before the confusion clears from his features and he gestures toward her phone. She opens it to her music app and hands it over. He types in the song and starts it to play. "This it?"[break][break]

Cackling, Tawny nods enthusiastically and leaps up to plant both her feet on his couch. "Yeah! You kept rocking the sunglasses off your head and wouldn't realize you lost them until you started singing the chorus! And every time, you'd both scramble back to find them. Only for it to happen again!" She snatches the phone from his hands and turns the volume up and Luck pulls himself to his feet. [break][break]

"I got my shades on, top back, rolling with the music jacked," he sings, lifting his hands to wriggle his fingers at her. She clasps them immediately and they make their best attempt at a dance before she's pulled him up on the couch as well. Then they're facing one another, she's pretending to hold a mic, and they're bending at the knees as they 'karaoke' at each other. "One on the wheel, one around you baby! Sunset, I bet, there's a chance we can get, sure enough, tangled up, laid back and lazy!"[break][break]

They hop around, he keeps her from diving face forward into the coffee table, and eventually the song is over and they plop back down. "Hey, you know Bridget, right?" Tawny asks, breathless. His face scrunches. "Lacey? Yeah, we've been on a few cases together." Tawny nods. "We've got to get her in on these hangs."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

"So, what went wrong, you think? What was the problem?"[break][break]

Luck doesn't want to do this today. And, he thinks for a moment... that it's perhaps because it's obvious he's in a mood... that she asks. Because she's asked before. She's tried to get her nails in it and pull it up for dissection. But he's never wanted to go here. He doesn't want to go there now. But somehow... it was easier to acknowledge the whole thing when he was already halfway upset. [break][break]

And he thinks it's probably intentional that they're not at either of their apartments tonight. They're seated at a bar. One close to work. It's not even seven o'clock. They're both in work clothes. It had been a bad day for everyone. And, not alone, he's too aware of everyone else in the bar. She knows this is a leap. That, reluctant as always to speak on the matter, he'd be less likely to talk about it somewhere like here... like now...[break][break]

But she asks.... and somehow, he opens his mouth and he speaks. And it's honest. And it's backed by the resentment the whole day has piled in him. And he doesn't think about it. Doesn't overthink about it. It just pours out of him.[break][break]

"It was me, alright? Okay, Tawny?" He says, blinking rapidly at the quick and unkind way it leaves his mouth. She doesn't flinch though. She nods, quickly, as if realizing he might backpedal immediately if she didn't. "Okay." He sighs through his nose. Props an elbow on the bar and presses the palm of his hand into his eyes. "Luck, I think... now's the best time for it," she says, almost as an aside, and he turns in his seat to look at her. As if just to lessen the enormity of unnamable things boiled inside of him, he reaches for her feelings instead. Hoping they can blanket his own.[break][break]

She is braced and solid. And he tucks his lips.[break][break]

"I just..." he hesitates. He doesn't know the words. Doesn't know how to name it. She quirks a brow and dips her head. He swallows and, when he continues, it's in tiny increments. Very small statements, pulled from him only a couple of words at a time. As if constructing the sentences requires meticulous and difficult thought. Which it does. "I just get. So tangled up at times. It can be something small that does it. It can be nothing. And I am... I just get... tuned in on it. I am unable to leave it alone. I... latch on to it."[break][break]

His eyes dart to the people further down the bar. He reaches for their feelings. Realizes he is speaking too loud. One of them feels wary. Like a bristled haunch or a bunched muscle. It compounds the resentment in him. He is doing it now, he wants to admit to her, but he can only grit his jaw. She knows he is doing it now. It's the whole fucking reason she'd asked him at all, and... Tawny shakes her head, tipping into his eyeline to grab back his attention. "And what... you take this out on him?"[break][break]

Luck closes his eyes. Tips away and draws a hand across his mouth. He lifts the beer from the bartop and takes a long draw. "Yes," he says finally, and the admittance feels like metal in his teeth. "And I know. I know it's not fair. And I know that as it is happening. I can feel that he's just worried. I know he's always just concerned at the time. Maybe fucking.... afraid he's done something wrong, even. But he just." [break][break]

He takes a steadying breath. Feels it in his lungs. Tries to focus on the feeling, before he blows it out and finally lets his eyes flicker open. "He'll ask me a question. And then he asks another question. And then another one. 'Is it because of this? Is it because of that? I don't get it. Luck, what's wrong? Help me understand.' And I don't know." He shrugs his shoulders, keeping them raised while he shakes his head and lifts his palms. "I'm still stuck on the first fucking question he asked and I don't know, I don't know, and then finally I'll snap. And then I'm even angrier because of snapping. Mad at myself. But that anger. It just... it translates. On to everything.[break][break]

I don't know why I'm doing it. I don't mean or even want to do it. But now I'm slamming doors. Now I'm ignoring him. I'm pulling away from the hand on my arm. I'm scooching my sorry ass to the edge of the bed when he rolls to face me. Like I'm a broody fucking child. All while —" he laughs suddenly, sharp and snide even though it's just a quick and quiet couple of tones, "All while I'm hoping he says something or reaches for me." The hand smooths back across his face. It's so stupid. It's so fucking stupid. [break][break]

"I'm... wanting... to respond normally. To get over it. To be fine. But even if I... try... as soon as I open my mouth. Everything that comes out is. It's short. It's toneless and it's cold. And I can't stop. I can't not. And with each thing I do, I get worse. I make myself feel. And be. Worse."[break][break]

A bit of the heat leaves him. He has exhausted a bit of it. He can feel that, beside him, Tawny is unchanged. But he doesn't want to look at her now. And isn't that just a testament to how he is? What he's trying to explain? Wasn't it just him showing to her how it was? Isn't that why she'd asked now? Wasn't she just pushing him to show her? He smacks his lips and shrugs. [break][break]

"And I mean... Nate knows me. We've been together." His eyes press closed. "Were together. What, ten years? He knows I'm like that. That I've just got to be left alone. Even if I've already gotten over it in my head and I know it's nothing. And it really is nothing. I still have to... to... stew. To be bristly. To untangle." He shakes his head and puffs a loathing breath through his nose. "But I know, too, that knowing doesn't make it easier when it happens. I do know that. That I can't ask him to not be hurt by it."[break][break]

He did ask him not to be hurt by it, though, didn't he? He simply wanted it to blow over when it was done. To let it pass and be passed. Didn't want to acknowledge it at all once it had. [break][break]

Tawny's thoughts must have been pretty close to his own because, after a moment, she asks, "Do you ever apologize?"[break][break]

The question threatens something fragile in him. "No."[break][break]

"And this last time was... different?"[break][break]

"No. I don't know what it was. It was just... more. A big tangle. One that was knotting faster than it was unknotting. Until it was this big, fucking wrecking ball of a mess in me."[break][break]

"Are you mad that he slept with someone else?"[break][break]

"No," he says, too quickly. He straightens in his seat and rubs his palms against his thighs, trying to keep his fingers from twitching into his palms. "Yes." He shakes his head, brow pulling down at the center. "No. I don't know."[break][break]

She doesn't say anything. She gives him a moment to think. To work it out. Perhaps she's listening after all. He has to wonder if they're Tawny and Luck today or if they're therapist and patient. It's not exactly a fair thought but he tips into it for fuel. Like he does. "I was mad when he told me. I reacted very badly. But then, I know. I know that I pushed him into that. I... made him feel —"[break][break]

"I'm sorry, but let's go, Luck," Tawny interjects, her arm slipping into his as she slides off her seat. He looks at her, sees she's watching the bartender walk toward them, looking stern.[break][break]

* * *

[break]

"Tell me about your Dad." She asks it so flippantly. Like the expert she is, she's sprinkled the probing between dozens of other stake-free questions and laughs. And she's a smart girl, too — she waited until he was a couple of beers deep and completely disarmed by the engaging development of whatever old-ass television show she's put on. [break][break]

He's used to these questions now. It doesn't immediately discomfort him and he doesn't hesitate to snort and cast her a look. "Tell me about your Dad."[break][break]

Tawny scoffs, eyes widening and mouth falling agape as she tips her head incredulously. "You cheeky fuck," she breathes teasingly (once she's recovered). Before her gaze draws slowly — consideringly — to the TV, Luck notes that she looks fleetingly proud. "You first." [break][break]

Luck clears his throat and tips his head back, sucking his lips tight against his teeth as he thinks. He tries to imagine the faceless man. Tawny knows he doesn't know a thing about him. She isn't asking who he is. She wants to know his feelings about him. Wants to be given the means to figure out how the man has affected his life. How he still affects him. [break][break]

"I mean... he's gotta be a rolling stone, right?" Luck finally starts, shooting her a quick, questioning glance (as if it was something she might be able to answer or had any way of really weighing in on). He shrugged. "That's the best version I've come up with, at least. It'd explain my own rambling nature, right? Be kinda poetic? If Mom was alive, she'd be like 'ya just like ya no-good, run-off Dad'." He chuckled lightly, though the sound of it wasn't exactly amused. [break][break]

There's a moment of silence. And he's learned to understand this means she expects more.[break][break]

"No... I like to think he didn't even know about me." That hurt the least, right? That he was the result of some impersonal and loveless encounter. His father might have skipped town, or ducked out of the bar, long before he knew what he was leaving behind. "But maybe he did and he just wasn't the type to stick around, y'know? Couldn't or wouldn't be tied down. Like the wind or a wild horse." Luck swallowed and his eyes narrowed a fraction. He wondered if there were genetic markers for such things. "Or hell, maybe my mom — I swear, I don't know a thing about her sometimes, it's almost like she didn't even exist until me — was the wild one. Maybe she didn't even know who my Dad was. I mean... there's not even a name on my certificate."[break][break]

He didn't like to think of his mother that way. She'd given him no reason to his whole life. But the truth was, she really could have been anyone before him. He just had no idea. There had been no stories of her youth passed down to him by teasing relatives. No family at all to give him a clue. No one in town had even talked about her in a way that was illuminating. "I used to ask her all sorts of questions when I was little but.... I guess you learn to stop after a while."[break][break]

Tawny gives a thoughtful hum but Luck doesn't give her a chance to let another silence stretch. He continues without the need for a goad. "Sometimes though, I would get this sense. This certain... I don't know... gut feeling that he was there." He looks at her again, lifting his brow and trying to convey the severity of the notion. She meets his gaze, her own twitching with that sort of passive intensity she gets when they talk like this. "In that small, nowhere town I grew up in. That he could be someone I talked to every week. Ran into every once in a while. And I just didn't know it." [break][break]

He nods slowly. She nods slowly. Then he lets his lips quirk challengingly and leans forward to grab his beer. "Your turn." [break][break]

She tucks her lips in a frown, made equal parts grudging and sly as she regards him with a narrowed gaze. Then she turns her attention to the TV. Luck watches her for a moment longer, knowing from the set of her eyes that she isn't truly watching the show, but thinking. [break][break]

"While your Dad wasn't around at all, mine was around... too much." She doesn't turn her face to him when she speaks and Luck, with some sort of unspoken understanding, looks to the TV to allow her the privacy of being unwatched while she does so. "He was always there. Always. It was like we had to breathe the same air. That he couldn't exist unless I was in his line of sight. And I resented him for so long for it."[break][break]

She turned to him then, something in her voice shifting as she immediately picked up a hint of verve. "But I'll say this. It's weird, right?" He looks at her, blinking quickly as he answers the curious push with the proper attentiveness. "When we're just kids, we really... only see our parents as who they are to us. They're always just 'Mom and Dad'. Infallible, all-knowing, idolized figures." She moves her hands through the air, as if she is reaching for something more but is unable to find it. Luck tips the beer to his lips. "I don't think it's until we're older, much older — like old enough to have kids of our own — that we really begin to realize that... they're just... people. That, while being our parents, they felt and struggled with things that we're struggling with now."[break][break]

She sips in a breath and pulls her legs beneath her, hand clutching at an ankle while she studies him appraisingly. "Can you imagine your Mom having a conversation like this — like the one we are having right now — with her coworker? While you're at home, asleep in bed, at seven years old?" Luck thinks about it. He opens his mouth to respond but she leans forward and answers instead. "No!" She gives a wild shake of her head, smiling wide for a couple of seconds. "Not when you're seven. But now you can look back and think.... wow," she nods slowly, voice tipping toward something distinctly awed. "They did do stuff like that." [break][break]

Tawny turns away again, face poised into something collected once more as she sniffs. Luck can tell there's more and he waits for it. It's a long moment before it comes. And when she speaks, he can hear the muted hesitance in her voice. "My dad had depression. Although he was all smiles and all love to me, and... I never saw it as a stupid kid... I know now that he was hurting. A lot, a lot of the time. And I mean," her face twitches. "I did see it. Of course, I saw it. But it means something else now... doesn't it? I can... actually empathize and understand it now, in a way I couldn't as a child."[break][break]

Luck blinks at her. For a moment, he struggles with how he is expected to respond, all while wrestling with the unfamiliarity that is her sharing something with him. With the wavering uncertainty tucked beneath her words. The shoe is usually on the other foot and he isn't as accustomed to saying the right thing as she is. But somehow... he feels she needs him to say something. That she is almost begging for it. For some sort of acknowledgment that he understands what she means. Or that he knows her better now for what she has said. [break][break]

Feeling it's inadequate, he licks his lips and finally asks, "Do you wish you could go back? Knowing what you know now?"[break][break]

She looks back to the TV. [break][break]

"Don't you?"



[break][break]

[newclass=.couchconvos span]color:#C776AC;font-weight:bold;[/newclass]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

+ A PHONE CONVERSATION

ONESHOT for Tawny Vokes & Luck Harris [break][break]

Summary: This isn't even one-shot worthy lmao [break]
I just don't know what to do with myself most days. [break]
Tawny is shopping for a new car.[break][break]

CW: Cursing, otherwise none (wow, I know)[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

"Alright, slow down... you did what?" Trying to make sense of the loud, irritated gibberish coming through the speaker, Luck cranes to pinch his cell phone between his ear and shoulder; freeing up both hands so he can get a more solid hold on the big, unwieldy box in his arms. A new vacuum cleaner — the cheap one he had just wasn't cutting it with the rabbits constantly moving their alfalfa around. [break][break]

On the other end of the line, Tawny huffs an exaggerated breath — the clear, aggressive type that visibly lifts and drops shoulders. Luck quirks a brow at the sound of it. From what he has (so far) managed to gather, she was simply test-driving used cars. Finally replacing old, worn-out Oscar (whom he suspected had been on his last set of wheels long before Tawny had started working at the Sector). What was she so pissed about? [break][break]

"I said, I put on the parking brake! Which I have never used in my life, by the way — what's the point of it even — and now it won't turn back off!" [break][break]

"Okay," Luck manages not to chuckle, but he's sure she can still hear the tug of his mouth as he pauses before his apartment door. He lifts a knee and props the box between him and the doorframe, just long enough to fish the keys from his pocket. "And you thought you'd call me instead of just... asking the car guy?" [break][break]

"Yes!" Her answer is almost a shriek and Luck can only blink rapidly in bewilderment. "Ughhhr—aah!" He does laugh now, unable to stifle it, as he unlocks his door and moves inside. "Oh my God. Are you really that frustrated?" [break][break]

"No." The word is spoken quietly — a drastic and unexpected change — and it's followed by a brief pause. "Well, yes. But also, he's staring at me a couple of cars down, so I'm —" her voice grows louder again, re-adopting its belligerent verve, "Trying to make it look like I'm having a really bad argument so he doesn't check in on me." Luck nods with new understanding, mouth tucked into a conceding frown as he sets down his box and shuts the door behind him. "Smart." [break][break]

"I know! You should see the hand movements I'm doing! I'm just absolutely flailing here! He's probably feeing real sorry for you. Thinking, 'Jeez, glad I'm not that guy!' Now tell me how to turn this off!" [break][break]

"It's not a lever?" He moves further into the apartment, depositing his keys on the hallway table and pulling himself free of his jacket. Finally, he lifts a hand to grab his phone and tips his head to stretch the strain in his neck. He drapes his jacket on the back of the couch and turns to settle some of his weight against it. [break][break]

"No, it's a button... handle thing! Next to the steering wheel. It says to push to turn on and pull to turn off. And I keep fucking pulling it and it pops back in place but the light won't go off and it still says 'brake' in big red letters on the stupid dash display!" [break][break]

Luck folds an arm across his chest and drops his head back to blink at his ceiling. "Are you engaging the brake at the same time?" Her answer is immediate, voice the shrillest it has been yet: "Am I what!?" His eyes flutter closed and his shoulders shake with a silent laugh. She should maybe look into acting. When he speaks, his voice is amused and slow. "With your foot, Tawny. Push the brake pedal down and then pull it." [break][break]

There's a stretching silence. [break][break]

"... that worked. Okay, I'm going to escalate this real quick and then hang up on you in my pretend rage. Are you ready?" [break][break]

He huffs a breath through his nose. "Sure." [break][break]

She barks a snide laugh and Luck can just picture her, screwing her mouth super tiny like she does when she's pissed. The tiny shake to her head and the ice in her eyes. He wishes it was a video call. The poor car guy was probably quaking in his shiny, black loafers. "Yeah, you're sure? Are you sure about that? Well I'll tell you what I think —" he pulls the receiver from his ear as her voice climbs, ending the call himself and pulling up his messages to send a follow-up. [break][break]

'A+ performance, well done. Now make sure you haggle. The fella will probably be too afraid of you to try and highball'



[break][break]

[newclass=.couchconvos span]color:#C776AC;font-weight:bold;[/newclass]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

BROUGHT TO YOU BY BEER WHISKEY

ONESHOT for Luck Harris & Tawny Vokes [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Just some more stuff b/c at this point, y not [break]
Tawny and Luck tear up a bar. Luck leaves drunk voicemails. [break]
But first — a voicemail from like nine years ago![break][break]
Voicemail transcripts here.[break][break]

CW: Cursing, drinking[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

NOVEMBER 12TH 2014, 4:27PM —[break][break]

Luck was two hours north of home, trying not to shiver in his gear. He made a slow, anxious spin, hoping he'd put enough distance between him and the scene downhill that the receiver pressed to his ear didn't pick up the noise. As the phone rang and rang, then finally clicked over to a machine, he cleared his throat. "Hey, baby. I know you're probably still at work, no need to call me back. I just wanted to reach you as soon as I could." As he spoke, his gaze pulled back to the mess. [break][break]

Among the dizzying array of emergency lights, a reporter had shown. The sight of their van, parked among the ambulances and police cars, had been what'd sent him stepping away, digging the phone from his pocket. He watched her and her cameraman argue, trying to align themselves so they could get the wreckage of the bucket truck, the milling of shouting paramedics, and the billowing smoke in the sky, all in a single shot. "You, uh... might see some scary stuff on the news. But I'm okay. Didn't want you to worry, in case... someone said something to you or you couldn't get ahold of me. Signal's kinda spotty up here." [break][break]

He cleared his throat again, proud of the level way his voice had so far left his lips. "That's all. And... those guys... the ones that were up there and the ones in the truck. Everyone's gonna be all right." Miraculously, he wanted to add. But didn't. He sipped in a breath and shrugged, eye lifting to the winter sky through the trees that crowded both sides of the narrow road. "But I can tell you when I get home. I'll see you tonight. I..." Luck hesitated, breath catching in his chest. [break][break]

He hadn't said it before. The words felt weighted. Lodged in him. Swirling and unadmitted. Warring with a sudden, jittery fear of... of... what? [break][break]

He'd thought it before. Plenty of times. Surprisingly, he'd thought it very early on — so early that it'd made Luck amused, not scared. [break][break]

The words had swirled in him, such a slow and leisurely thing then, as he watched Nate laugh among people Luck didn't know across the room. With his wide smile, his bright eyes, and his emotions like a ripping river of the most sunlit-warmed waters. Crashing at the banks, spilling over onto everyone around him. Able to be picked out in the room from anyone else's, even though Luck had known the feel of them for only a short, few weeks. [break][break]

It was apparent he'd said something funny. From the way he grinned and the reaction of his friends around him. The way they clutched at him. And though it wasn't a conversation Luck was a part of — though he hadn't heard the joke — he'd smiled, too. He'd lifted his beer to his lips, thinking those silly, infatuated words as he wondered... whether those people held on to him because... if they didn't, they might be pulled under. Might drown in him. [break][break]

He'd thought them again on a moonless night, a couple of months later. His truck parked on the edge of a field, its single cab filled with easy laughter and talk of the lives they'd lived so far. The things they'd seen. What they still wanted to see. How they felt they fit into the world, what they wanted to bring into it, and what they wanted to surround themselves with. Their chuckles petered to eventual silence before Nate popped open the passenger-side door and stepped out. He'd grinned, emotions glinting, and then turned to run. [break][break]

Luck had smiled wide. Yelled a protest. Plucked the keys from his ignition to leave in the truck seat before he leaped out and raced to catch up. Following the faint silhouette of him — his shape made only a couple of shades lighter than the inky night by starlight — he'd thought, suddenly, what it might be like... what he might feel... if he didn't catch him. If he had to chase him, watching only his back, without end. [break][break]

But then Nate had turned to meet him and Luck had crashed into him. And he'd been too relieved, been laughing too hard, to feel the hurt when they hit the ground. [break][break]

Again — laid up in bed, breathless and slicked in both of their sweat. The words then had been edged by the rapid beat of his heart, the lack of air in his lungs, and the thrash of dopamine in his veins. Not so lazy or languid now. Less infatuated and more intoxicated. It still hadn't meant much, then. [break][break]

He'd thought it after he'd said his goodbyes and driven away. A couple hundred miles down the highway, he'd caught his own eyes in his rearview mirror. Recalled Nate and Nadia waving in the same reflection, hours earlier. And then... finally... the words in his chest had seemed a little scary. A little alien. Just a bit misplaced. None of his goodbyes — and there'd been plenty of them — had had the space for them before. [break][break]

Laid up in bed, this time alone, in a room that was only his so long as he paid in-cash every week. Or until someone offered more. He'd wondered about the words, then — watching the ceiling, phone held in his hand. Waiting for that next text. Wondering why he'd left. What would happen if he said he wanted to come back. [break][break]

Watching the highway again. Hoping he wasn't going to arrive too late for the walking ceremony. Wondering, strangely, if Nadia would have saved him a seat — because the words were for her, too. [break][break]

And, months later, in what was beginning to feel like a whole new life, he'd thought those words calmly. There'd been nothing to excuse them or explain them away. He'd known them for what they were. Nate's hand had slipped in his, smile growing wry and coaxing as he tried yanking him toward the performance stage. Luck had dug his heels in, made his protests, and brandished his beer before him like it might save his life. But then he'd taken a long, preparing draw, set it back to the table, and let himself be pulled to his feet. [break][break]

The stage lights had been too bright. The people below and around them too many. Their emotions all too varied, too numerous, for him to bear. He wasn't drunk enough yet to quiet them and a piece of him threatened to quail beneath their weight — to neurotically pick through the feelings of so many strangers, one by one. To find the pieces of him they saw, what they thought, and to obsess over what it meant for him. [break][break]

But then Nate put the microphone in his hand, lounged an arm across his shoulders, and started the first bars; his voice low and emphatic, filling the room and sweeping a fresh, excited shift among the ocean of emotions swirling before them. And, when Luck looked at him, eyebrow raised, he felt the corners of his mouth inch upward. Everyone else faded away, their opinions and thoughts of them suddenly inconsequential. He lifted the mic, eyes darting from Nate's wide smile to the screen before them to find the words he (of course) didn't know. He'd do anything, he realized — to keep that smile there, that face turned to him, and that hand across his shoulders, holding him steady. [break][break]

And he'd thought it again when he'd heard those truck tires lock and screech. [break][break]

Pulse rocketing at the sound of failing brakes and the harsh tear of rubber on ice, he'd whipped his head around and dropped everything in his hands at the sight of death skidding toward him. Too quick, too unexpected, and too sheer for him to seemingly think anything. For him to make himself move. And yet, there'd been a moment — an eerie, suspended second of strangely peaceful and terribly quiet dread — where he could feel everything. Could feel his breath catch. His eyes widen. The hand on his shoulder, bearing down to yank him aside. [break][break]

His brow had knit. His chest had ached and swelled, hurting with the abrupt realization that it was too short, his life. This couldn't be where it ended. Despite all he'd done, the years he'd lived, the places he'd been — it felt like it'd only just started. His day, even, was too short. He hadn't woken Nate when he left. More than he wanted to watch those eyes flicker open in the pre-dawn light and to hear that thick, drowsy goodbye, he hadn't wanted to disturb him. [break][break]

He needed one more morning. Right now — and in that moment that was as long as it was short — one more would be enough.[break][break]

"I love you."

[break][break]

* * *

[break]

JANUARY 13TH, 12:13AM —[break][break]

Luck laughed. In some (dimmed) part of his brain, he was aware it was too loud. Crooning and obnoxious. But he was too drunk to care. Too drunk, too, to keep at bay the emotions of those around him. Too drunk to acknowledge the growing irritation of those select few among the many others who were as equally joyous and uncaring as him.[break][break]

It'd been a long night out with Tawny. They'd started at one bar and ended up in two others. Now they'd just finished a couple of games with a group of strangers and Luck had a sneaking suspicion that he'd taken Tawny by surprise with a couple of his answers. Suspected she might snoop through his head for some clarification on a couple of things he'd admitted to. [break][break]

The woman seated on his other side turned to him, mouth tugging into something that was more smirk than smile. The rest of the table had lapsed into another round of regaling stories and she dropped her voice to something a little more private. Dropped it low enough that Luck had to lean a little to hear. [break][break]

"So, Lucky, tell me more about this ex. Was she pretty? Do you have a type?"[break][break]

After a moment, Luck smacked his lips and then grinned wide at her — a cheeky, almost challengingly chipper curl at the corners of his mouth. Whether it was the name she used (though he was graciously forgiving of it when sober, he hated being called Lucky), the smug, slinky emotions emanating from her like a swollen, pulsing wave, the purposeful glint to her eye and the way she angled herself toward him, or because she assumed "his ex" was a woman — or more simply (and far more likely), because he was awfully drunk and feeling a little belligerent — he felt himself want to poke.[break][break]

Normally, his answer would be something along the lines of not really having a type. But... as he glanced her over... his smile pulled just a little wider — a little more lazy, even while his gaze glinted pointedly. He tipped his chin, gave a long, considering hum, then cleared his throat and straightened in his seat; pulling the cigarette pack closer to him from the center of the table. "Let's see, uh.... six-foot-one, six-foot-two," she was pushing five-foot-three, max. "Dirty blonde. Eyes like a summer sky." Her hair, perfectly curled, was dark, and her eyes were similarly so. "Tans better than me. Has big, strong hands like this," he lifted his palms and spread his fingers as far as they could go, eyes widening with faux awe, then chuckled as he dropped his attention to pull a cigarette from the pack.[break][break]

He could see her mull over the information in the edge of his vision and, when she opened her mouth to speak, he huffed a quick, quiet laugh. "Oh! And how could I forget?" he popped the cigarette between his lips and then clapped his palms together — pulling them slowly apart with a concentrating knit to his brow. "The most beautiful co—"[break][break]

Tawny — eavesdropping — made a strangled noise and leaped sidelong to smother his face; arms thrown around his head and pulling down the brim of his hat. He laughed into the hands that clamped around his mouth and clumsily tried to catch the cigarette — snapped, now — that fell to his lap and then the floor. "Okay, okay!"[break][break]

Experimentally (as if she didn't quite trust him), Tawny slowly released her hold. And Luck, straightening his hat, shot the woman — now thoroughly unamused with him — a wink as he swiped the cigarette pack from the table and stood. "I think I'm gonna call him."[break][break]

"No you are not!"[break][break]

* * *

[break]


JANUARY 13TH, 1:14AM —[break][break]

Luck was lounged across the backseat of his truck, feet propped against the door. He'd be mad at himself for the scuffing tomorrow. The cigarette he'd claimed to be smoking hung unlit from his lips as he stared up at his phone screen and found Nate's name (or the strange lyrics that a woman had changed them to) and number in his list of contacts.[break][break]

Decidedly not second-guessing it, he clicked the little phone icon and pressed the phone to his ear; anticipation coiling through him as he waited for his voice. Even when he got a machine, he couldn't help the slow grin that split his face. At the beep, he started with a low hum. "Hey, baby." Realization and horror lanced through him and the smile twisted. "Oh shit," he pulled the phone from his face and smashed hastily at the end-call button. "Fuck." [break][break]

As the call faded and he was presented with his home screen, he let an agonizing silence stretch. Then dropped his hand to knock against his forehead over and over, eyes pinched tight. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Tawny was right. He was too drunk for this. It wasn't a good idea. [break][break]

For a long time, he remained still, letting the resignation spread through him. But then, with a stab of decision, he was dialing Nate's number again. Listening to the dial tones. Waiting for the beep. [break][break]

* * *

[break]


JANUARY 13TH, 1:29 AM — [break][break]

"... and liking the new apartment?" Luck grimaced, hearing finally how desperate he sounded as he prattled on, reaching for anything to talk about. He tried not to imagine Nate listening to the message in the morning, running a finger and thumb across his brow with strained exasperation.[break][break]

He should hang up. Apologize and hang up. But the thought only made him tighten his fingers around the phone.[break][break]

"Tawny told me not to call, I... think I mentioned that already." He paused, tongue darting over his lips as he dragged his gaze slowly around the roof of his truck. His foot began an anxious tap on the door beneath his sole and he sniffed, mouth pinching and brow knitting. "They're always saying shit like that. Or there's always someone who'll try to... to... to like console me by," he huffed a mirthless breath and shook his head. "Shit-talking you. Like that's going to make me feel better. Like I should want to hate you now. That I could..." he sucked his lip between his teeth, shaking his head again.[break][break]

"But they don't know." He shrugged. "They'll say some shit like... oh, you were young. Uh, Nate... Nate, he was just out of college. You were still kids. It happened too fast, you got caught up, it happens. Like somehow our relationship or," he breathed another laugh, blinking rapidly against an abrupt welling of wetness in his eyes. He rolled his gaze to the window above his head. "The last ten years of our lives... need to be excused. Which they don't. Chalked up as some stupid mistake that just happens? I don't think so." His eyes closed and he let the words settle in his chest before blowing out a long breath. "None of that makes sense. Because we... we were..."[break][break]

He swallowed, letting the irritation in his voice slip away. "I mean... we weren't perfect. God knows we've never been perfect. But I think. For me. It was... it was damn fucking close." He laughed quietly, choosing not to acknowledge how the tightness in his throat strangled the sound. "Baby, I swear. It was damn close." [break][break]

Sipping in a breath and lifting his brow, he barreled on before he could think about it too much. Before he could hesitate. "And I want you to know that I don't regret it. It's not wasted time. It could never be that. All of the happiest, most memorable moments in my life, you're there. In them. A part of them. And I don't think I would ever change that or wish it differently. Hell," he shrugged. "They probably wouldn't be my happiest moments, then. And if, if this —"[break][break]

His phone buzzed and he pulled it from his face to glance at it. On his lock-screen was a text from Tawny, asking where he was, and nothing else. The call had ended at some point. He laughed, more hysterically than before, and dropped his arm to his side. "Of course." He kicked at his door and, after a long moment in which he composed himself, lifted the phone and dialed Nate's number again.[break][break]

* * *

[break]



JANUARY 13TH, 4:42AM —[break][break]

They'd survived. Were safely back in Tawny's apartment. It'd been a near-treacherous climb up the flight of stairs to her floor. A careful, giggling tiptoe through the mess of toys in her hallway. And now they'd laughed themselves out, trading re-enactments of the stupid things they'd done and said, and were stretched across her living room floor. Had lapsed finally into the more quiet and reflective conversation that oft accompanied their eventual wind-down.[break][break]

"Why'd you call? Are you wanting things to be fixed?" [break][break]

Luck sighed.[break][break]

"I feel like..." he dipped his head, trying to muster both the words to explain and the courage to admit them. "If it was going to work out. We would have... fought about it longer." He blinked, then let his eyes shutter closed. Speaking it aloud, into the easy silence of Tawny's living room, was an acknowledgment he was only half-prepared for. "Or fought about it at all. But we didn't. Not really." [break][break]

"You think he didn't try enough, then? Let go too easy?"[break][break]

It was a long moment before Luck answered — before he could beat back that clenching ache in his chest enough to answer — but Tawny waited.[break][break]

"We both did. And maybe that says something about the whole thing, I... don't know." [break][break]

Tawny nodded. "I just don't want you to hurt yourself," she whispered, voice small, and he could feel the graze of her eyelashes against his arm, blinking slow and long. Luck blew a long breath through his nose and bent the arm beneath her to smooth his hand over her hair. "I know," he said quietly, smiling small when she wriggled closer. "But... it already hurts. And it'll hurt either way." [break][break]

She hummed consideringly and he could hear in it how close she was to sleep. Tipping his head to knock against hers, he closed his eyes and reached for the drowsiness as well. Though the roiling in his stomach and the persisting keel of the ground beneath him made him suspect he wouldn't be able to grasp it. He shucked his shoulders with a quiet laugh. "And anyway, who are you to give me relationship advice?"[break][break]

After a stretching moment, she propped on her elbows and looked at him. Luck blinked open his eyes and turned his face, forcing a bit of awareness through his foggy mind as he acknowledged the severe way her gaze searched him — eyes sober, very much awake now, and almost accusing. "What does that mean?" [break][break]

Oh. She was mad.[break][break]

"Come on, Tawny, I didn't mean anything by it." He tried to dismiss it with a roll of his eyes but, when he looked back at her — face stone, unflinching and waiting — he tucked his mouth. It was obvious what he meant and she knew it. The fact she was playing dumb, pretending she didn't have a blatant bias, made him want to be a little stern. He scoffed. "You'd gnaw off a damn limb to escape a relationship. I mean, you've been seeing one guy for over a year now and... who has even met him?"[break][break]

She shook her head, eyes narrowing. "That's different. That's — so what? That's my choice, we agreed on it, and what does that h—?"[break][break]

"I'm not saying that what you have is bad! I'm just saying... you... don't know —"[break][break]

"Don't know what?" Her brow leaped, voice growing sharper. Disbelieving. "What it's like to love and lose? Maybe I just don't want to end up looking like you. You're not exactly doing great right now, are you? Why would I want to risk that? When it's so inevitable?"[break][break]

"Because!" Luck laughed, and he rolled on his elbows as well to gaze levelly at her. "Because it's worth the risk. Don't you want that, Tawny?" He lowered his head and tipped imploringly closer, gaze darting between her eyes. Somehow, in his state, he only half-registered the way they widened — looking a bit stricken or panicked. "All the shit you look at in my head, the memories you have a laugh at and ask to be shown? All of that is..." his brow pinched together as he tore his gaze away to search the air. "This is nothing compared to that. Yeah, I'm a fucking wreck right now. But I'd still do it all over again. Did we have some rotten times? Yeah. Everyone does. But so much more of it was... better than anything."[break][break]

Tawny didn't respond. Didn't even blink at him. After a moment, he sighed and licked his lips. "I know things with your Dad were complicated—"[break][break]

"Stop."[break][break]

"I know practically your whole life he was messed up about your Mom and he put a lot of responsibility... a lot of weight... on you, and that that wasn't fair —"[break][break]

"Stop. Luck, I don't—"[break]
"But Tawny, I'm sure he'd tell you that—"[break]
"You don't know anything about—"[break]
"That heartache and that... that enormous pain was—"[break][break]

"Shut up! Shut up!" Tawny shoved to her feet, shaking her head frantically. Her voice was pitched high. Thin and reedy. She swayed. Looked, for a moment, close to tipping over. "You don't know anything about it! You don't know shit about my Dad, you don't know shit about what it was like, you don't know shit about me and my not real relationship, and I —" her voice cracked and, at the sound, she threw up her hands and looked away from him. "I don't want to talk about it."[break][break]

Luck's gaze followed her as she moved across the apartment, disappearing around a corner and returning a moment later with a blanket and pillow. She tossed both at him (with a little more force than necessary) and Luck didn't move from under them as he watched her ceiling and listened to her quiet crying while she caged her ferrets. [break][break]

He searched for an apology. For where he'd misstepped and how to correct. Then his stomach flipped, he wetly smacked his lips, and was abruptly scrambling for her bathroom.[break][break]

* * *

[break]

JANUARY 13TH, 11:19AM —[break][break]

He woke on his stomach with no pillow or blanket, crammed in the space between the front of Tawny's couch and her coffee table. As soon as he lifted his head, groaning, the cat that was settled on his back launched herself from him — unwilling to be caught snoozing. She was such a particular creature. And a shining example of why Luck far preferred dogs.[break][break]

After taking (painful) account of himself, Luck managed to roll himself on his back and blink despairingly at Tawny's ceiling. Fortunately, the natural lighting in her apartment was very dim. Unfortunately, in his state, it was still much too bright. There were the sounds of pounding feet and the occasional screech of fighting kids in the hallway. One of them was crying. He smoothed a hand over his splitting head. His mouth felt bone-dry and disgusting. Sleeping in his clothes had etched stinging lines across his skin. His lip was tender.[break][break]

It was back to beer for him. Back to DD-duty. If not because of the various aches through him, then for the hazy memories of last night beginning to edge their way into his mind. [break][break]

God. [break][break]

Sniffing, he reached for the phone by his head and angled it to study the single, solid crack across its dark screen — from when he'd fallen on his face out of his truck, trying to drag himself away from Tawny's attack. He opened the phone and looked through the notifications, pinching his eyes shut when he saw Nate's name.[break][break]

Fuck. How bad was it? [break][break]

He read over the messages. Then read them and re-read them again, searching for the annoyance he knew should be there. The dismissal. He couldn't remember all that he'd said, how much of what he'd said had been intelligible or recorded, and — his head hurt too much without thinking about it.[break][break]

Sighing, he lifted his head to peek at where Tawny was stretched across her couch. Her back was to him and she was curled in on herself, snoring softly — more evidence that they'd far exceeded their limit last night. As if he needed more evidence. She only ever snored when she got too drunk. [break][break]

Blowing out a suffering breath and rolling back to his stomach, Luck lifted his phone to take a blurry pic of her, then a pic of himself. Then he opened Nate's conversation, attached and sent the pictures, and (very slowly) typed a couple of messages.

'Proof of life' [break]
'Definitely my last whiskey weekend'[break]
'Not as good at sleeping it off as I once was'[break]
'I am so aware of my kidneys right now it ain't even funny'[break]
'I'm sorry for the voicemails'[break]
'I'll give you a sober ring one of these nights here soon'

He couldn't look at the screen anymore, so he dropped the phone (and then his forehead) to the carpet. After a long moment of trying to fight the pound from his skull, he pushed to his elbows and glanced once more over the edge of the couch. "Tawny." She didn't so much as twitch, so he repeated himself louder, and then again, even firmer. She shifted and, over her shoulder, peeked at him through the crack of one bleary eye. Then she turned back to the cushions with a groan and tossed an arm behind her to settle on his head. "Snooze." [break][break]

He settled his chin on the edge of the cushion, watched her for a long moment, then tipped his head back and forth until her hand fell from his hair and across his face. "I'm sorry... if I said anything that hurt you last night. Or... that I hurt you last night. I shouldn't have. I was... I was just drunk. And really stupid."[break][break]

She didn't respond. But he could see and hear the subtle change in her breathing. His lip tugged remorsefully and he nosed against her fingers, eyes closing. "I don't get my feelings hurt," she spoke finally, tonelessly, and he could feel her stir to peek at him again. "You are such a liar," he breathed forlornly.[break][break]

"Then apologize properly. With coffee. And aspirin."



[break][break]

[newclass=.couchconvos span]color:#C776AC;font-weight:bold;[/newclass]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

THROUGH THE NIGHT

ONESHOT for Luck Harris [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Luck Ubers? [break]
Idk what I'm doing anymore[break][break]

CW: Mentions of alcohol[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

In an effort to hold true to his "no more whiskey weekends" — and perhaps just to fill his time — Luck had taken up Ubering a couple nights a week. In all honestly, it was hardly worth it. Maybe if he drove a more economical vehicle, he could say he was doing it for extra income. But the claim wouldn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny. Truthfully, it was just keeping him out of the bars. And from losing his mind. [break][break]

Though, with the hours he chose tonight, he'd been to and from the bars more than a couple of times already — carting home drunken couples and raucous trios or quartets of friends. Which he didn't mind. He liked drunk people. The (sometimes unsightly) honesty of them. How unashamedly loud and annoying they were. And he liked playing DD — liked being the one to suffer a group's overbearing antics with patience and tolerance instead of the other way around. Being the one to make sure everyone got home safe. [break][break]

Tonight was a little different. After only narrowly preventing a backseat floorboard full of vomit, he'd decided it was probably getting a little too late if he wanted to keep his truck interior clean. But he accepted one more ride. And, just as he pulled back onto the main roads and was moving toward the pick-up address, the Uber app rang with a call. [break][break]

He took one last look at the GPS before pulling the phone to his ear. "Hello?" For a second, there was only silence. Then a woman breathed hard into the receiver, sounding as if she'd just caught herself from falling. [break][break]

"Yeah, hello?" [break][break]

She doesn't sound drunk but she does sound off. Shaky and stumbling. "This is Luck?" she asks, and the tone of her voice — so thin and unsteady — crops a cold sort of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. "Yes..." The woman sniffs before letting him know that, despite the address she'd put in, she was currently walking along the street away from the address. The cold in his stomach twists a little tighter. He asks what side of the road she's on, what direction she's walking, and assures her he's maybe five minutes away. [break][break]

"Okay... see... uh, see you soon."[break][break]

"Wait," Luck protests quickly, tongue darting across his lips as he rolls to a stop at an intersection. Settling back in his seat and watching the red light, he smooths his fingers into his palm and listens to the abrupt hitch of her breath. "Are you okay?" [break][break]

She hesitates. He can hear the start of a pitchy whine crop in her throat before she cuts it off with a tiny, strangled 'no'. The light changes from red to green but only after the car behind him honks impatiently does he accelerate. "Do you want to stay on the phone until I get there?" She makes an audible attempt to even her breathing and doesn't respond. But she doesn't hang up. So Luck doesn't either.[break][break]

He drives until he spies her walking barefoot down the sidewalk, one arm crossed around her middle and the other holding the phone to her face. She is young. She is small and trying to make herself smaller. He pulls up alongside her and, without any preamble or obvious hesitation, she climbs in the passenger seat. Almost reflexively, Luck seeps the Gift from him and feels for her. She doesn't feel hurt but she feels... like a lot. She feels very much like she looks. And she looks like a mess. Her eyes are brimming with tears, her cheeks are already wet, and as he continues down the street, it's a struggle to keep his attention on the road. [break][break]

"I know I put a destination address but, I'm sorry," she chokes out and he feels her hopelessness — her not knowing what to do — flare with the admittance. "I, I.. I can't go there, either."[break][break]

He doesn't say anything. But he pulls his truck off the road and into the nearest empty lot — parking directly in-front of the building's doors and beneath the bright lights spilling from its windows. They cancel the Uber ride and he looks her over as she tries a couple of phone calls, chewing at her nails and muttering under her breath.[break][break]

No one picks up. And with each missed call, he can both see and feel her desperation rise. He isn't sure what he is expected to do. Doesn't know what to suggest when she finally stops scrolling through her contacts.[break][break]

"No one else you can try?"[break][break]

"I could call my mom," she starts, somehow sounding even more tentative than before. "But she doesn't live here."[break][break]

"Okay. Where does she live?"[break][break]

"Nevada. Sandy Valley."[break][break]

He couldn't stifle the leap to his brow, the tip to his head, or the rapid couple of blinks he shot her direction. What were the odds? "I can take you," he asserts simply, before he can even think it completely through. Her gaze shoots from her phone to him, then to the clock face on his dash. "That's like a four-hour drive from here. Don't you have work or... or something?"[break][break]

"It's just a job," Luck shot back quietly, trying a small quirk of his lips. "Sometimes there are more important things."[break][break]

She doesn't look reassured. She drops her eye back to her phone. He can sense some sort of new, fresh panic beginning a frenzied flutter in her and his lips fall. He reaches for something else that might console but she saves him from floundering by speaking first.[break][break]

"I haven't been home in over six years."[break][break]

Luck does well to keep the bewilderment from his features as his gaze pokes slowly about her face. She can't be any older than twenty-three. "I've only talked to her a few times since then." Her wide, stricken eyes lift to meet his stare, blurring with a fresh welling of tears. Her breathing quickens with the visible effort of battling back the grief he can feel clawing through her. It's guilty, shamed, and terribly aching — growing more and more wretched and wrenching as she darts a panicked, searching gaze between his eyes. "She probably wouldn't even pick up. Why would she? I've done nothing but break her heart over and over and even when sh—" [break][break]

"Hey, hey — sshh, stop," Luck interjects, voice as soft as it was firm. Her gaze stills on him and he lifts his brow. He considers reaching out to place a hand over her arm but settles instead on just a ginger shake of his head. "Call your Mom." He nods, just once. [break][break]

She watches him for a long moment, then wordlessly drops her eyes to the phone in her hand. Luck swallows and nods again, more assuredly. "She'll pick up." She releases a held breath and taps at her screen, then lifts the phone to her ear. He can feel her desperation and sorrow, somehow growing both larger and thinner as the seconds tick by. Very faintly, Luck can just pick out the tone of a woman cutting short a ring. [break][break]

And the girl's emotions abruptly snap. She chokes on a shuddering inhale and her face twists. "Momma?" Luck's eyelids flutter. He is almost unable to handle the secondhand ache that overtakes her. Her relief hurts. "Yeah, Momma, it's me." Although her voice is small, it comes out of her almost like a wail as she tucks into herself; eyes immediately overflowing as she pinches them shut and slumps in his passenger seat. "Can I come home?"[break][break]

Turning away and wiping at his mouth, Luck grabs his pack of cigarettes, pops open his driver's side door, and steps from his truck; giving the girl her privacy. He reels his empathy back into himself. Not completely, but enough that he is able to feel himself through the hurricane that is her. He takes his time smoking and steals the occasional, gauging glance in his sideview mirror. There's a lot of crying. Then there's a lot of talking. His cigarette is long finished and the front of her shirt is covered in snot and tears by the time things seem to quiet. Eventually, she raps a knuckle against his driver's side window and Luck turns to open the door. She holds the phone out to him, wiping her other hand under her nose, and he takes it and steps back.[break][break]

"Hello?"[break][break]

Her mother's voice is strained and shaky. She doesn't respond immediately. But then she thanks him. It's obvious she's thinking through what to do. Who to call. How to get her daughter home to her. It's clear she doesn't trust him. And Luck can't blame her. But he makes the point that putting her in a car would be trading just one stranger for another. She'd have to wait until morning for a bus. There weren't a lot of options.[break][break]

"No offense intended, but she says she has nowhere to go right now. Why don't you just let me drive her there?" He lifts his eyes questioningly to where the girl is watching him from across the truck and, after a hesitant moment, she nods. [break][break]

There's a long pause. Luck does nothing but tuck a thumb into his pocket and drop his eye to watch the ground in front of his boots. Waiting patiently. Finally, the voice on the other end of the line sips in a steadying breath. "Luck?" He lifts his head, gaze finding and following the almost drunken flutter of a moth in the corner of a storefront window. [break][break]

"Yes ma'am."[break]
"What's your last name?"[break]
"Harris."[break]
"How old are you?"[break]
"Turning thirty-five here soon." [break]
"Do you have children?"[break]
"No ma'am, I don't."[break][break]

It's a simple back and forth. Given plainly and quickly. But at his last admittance, he hears her blow out another shaky breath. He can't help but imagine her, seated in a quiet, dark kitchen, holding her head in a trembling hand while a pot of coffee brews noisily on the counter. She's so uncertain. She sounds weary. And, before this silence can stretch as long as the last, Luck clears his throat.[break][break]

"What's your name?"[break]
"... Maureen."[break][break]

"Maureen," he repeats, making the subtle effort to put warmth into his voice; hoping she might hear the bit of a smile that pulls at one corner of his mouth. "Maureen, I may not have children, but... I am a son. And I had a mother who loved me very, very much." He swallows, letting the words linger. Hoping they sounded with the sincerity and reassurance he meant them to. "You don't have to worry, I'll get her back to you safe."[break][break]

Maureen scoffs a small, wet laugh and, when she speaks, there's a certain somber severity to her tone. As if she wants to make the words biting but can't find her teeth. "We always worry about our kids, Luck. Not a day —" the severity cracks. Becomes strangled. But it only takes her a quick second to recover. "Not a day goes by where I don't worry about that girl."[break][break]

"I know." He nods, as if she might see it. "I know you do."[break][break]

He allows the silence to stretch this time. Can sense the weighty struggle in it. But, finally, Maureen sighs into his ear and it's like he can hear her loosen the set of her jaw. "Okay. Luck. Bring my daughter home." [break][break]

Luck pulls the phone screen from his face as it buzzes with an alert, then he presses it back to his ear. "Her phone's about to die, Maureen. I'll have her give you a call on mine as soon as we hang up. Then you'll have my number. And we'll let you know when we're close."[break][break]

"Okay. I'll be awake."[break]
"I know."[break]
"Drive safe."[break]
"Of course."[break]

* * *

[break]



He doesn't have to check the numbers on the curb or on the front of the house — the porch light is on and the front door is open. He parks his truck on the street and steps from it, only barely clicking his door shut behind him so as to not wake his sleeping passenger. He stretches, then makes his way across the dead grass of the front lawn and up the porch steps; head lifting as the screen door opens and Maureen steps out.[break][break]

She looks older than he expected. But, immediately, he can tell she's been aged more by stress than years. Her frame is small but she does not look delicate. She looks strong. Hardy. She has a worn countenance, lined severely and (perhaps) prematurely. She reminds him, almost instantly, of his own mother — of love hidden in the planes and shadows of a face that, even when smiling, could never manage to look anything but tough and tired.[break][break]

"She's asleep," Luck says quietly, after a stuttered moment of recovery. "I thought it might be better for you to wake her." Maureen only nods, choosing not to speak, or maybe not trusting herself to speak, as she steps back inside and re-emerges a few seconds later in a pair of slippers. He considers reaching out to her with his Gift, to get a read on her, but something stops him short as he watches her cross the yard. Maybe it's her solid (but somehow stilted) stride. The stiffness to her back. Or the way he doesn't need his empathy to know the strength of her — the strength that she is trying to emanate — is only the tiniest nudge away from shattering. [break][break]

He stays on the porch as she wakes her daughter. Keeps his distance. Only watches long enough to see the girl startle awake and then throw herself into her mother. Then he looks away. Pretends not to hear the shared shattering. Eventually, the pair make their way back to the house and neither of them look at him as they pass through the door, clutching one another. The door creaks closed behind them and Luck is just wondering if he should leave, when Maureen casts him a look through the screen and tells him he can come inside.[break][break]

He says he'd rather not. And she doesn't ask again. Doesn't insist. Which he is grateful for. But she tells him to wait — tells him, doesn't ask. So he waits. And shakes his head after a minute or two, realizing again that she reminds him maybe too much of his own mother. Somehow, he felt fourteen instead of thirty-four, unwilling to disobey. [break][break]

He runs a hand through his hair. Across his face and over his heavy eyes. She leaves him on the porch for what's just beginning to feel like too long, then she steps back out. She looks a little bit more honest now, with her arms wrapped tight about herself. A little smaller and a little more worn-down. No less strong for it. She thanks him again. Tries to give him gas money. But he refuses. And, once again, she doesn't insist on anything even a second time. Doesn't repeat herself. Doesn't make him repeat himself. [break][break]

"Just glad to be in the right place at the right time," Luck says, watching her attentively. As if there is something about her that he is trying to commit to memory. That he doesn't want to forget. Somehow, though she is so steadfastly impassive as she matches his stare, he gets the strange, innate feeling that he can see straight through her. And the stranger feeling that she is aware of it.[break][break]

Feeling that it's almost dangerous, he reaches for her with his empathy. And almost immediately, the touch of her emotions — too much, far too much — has him snapping the Gift back as if burned. It takes tremendous effort, but he keeps anything reactionary from his face.[break][break]

She nods, gaze drawing to the cross around his neck before sifting slowly sidelong. "God bless," she says quietly, angling her body toward her front door and looking vaguely dismissive. Luck — having operated on such wordless subtlety for a good portion of his life — gives a fleeting nod and steps from the porch; starting across the lawn while his hands tuck into his pockets.[break][break]

* * *

[break]




He fills his truck up at a gas station on the outskirts of Sandy Valley that he's been to dozens and dozens of times before. Chuckles at himself as he pushes a couple of Red Bulls across the counter toward the cashier. It all feels so nostalgic. His tired, red-rimmed eyes protesting against the store's bright, fluorescent lights. The pre-dawn blue beginning to creep its way through the inky horizon. The flux of early-risers crawling out of work trucks and dredging through the front doors to get the coffee and breakfast needed to start their long days.[break][break]

But he was a bit too aware that it felt different, too. Wasn't as easy. He was tired, not tireless like he'd used to be when running through the night was his life. His eyes were heavy. He felt heavy. And after he paid and settled back in his driver's seat, all he could think about was how awful it was going to be going to work. He was already going to be late. Going to be chewed out. And then it'd be a dragging long-haul trying to keep himself awake through the day. [break][break]

As he navigated toward the interstate that'd take him home — and that was perhaps the most blaring of differences — he found himself thinking over the reassurances he'd made to the girl in his passenger seat. 'She'll pick up', 'it's just a job', 'there are more important things'. [break][break]

It all sounded a bit hypocritical now. Things he'd said with an unproven confidence.[break][break]

He parked his truck on the side of the road and dialed Nadia. She answered on the third ring, voice thick with sleep. And, not even fifteen minutes later, Luck was turning down an even more familiar road and texting his supervisor that he wouldn't be in until tomorrow. [break][break]

She greeted him at the door, had a pot of coffee already brewed for them, and he spent another forty-five minutes recounting how the bizarre night had gone. Then she'd let him go to sleep. And Luck almost forgot to toe out of his boots before crawling into the guest bed, his last thought being how grateful he was that no one else had stayed with them in the past couple of months. The linens and pillowcases hadn't been washed and they still smelled, very faintly, of Christmas.









[break][break]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

FRIENDS DRIVE FRIENDS TO THERAPY

ONESHOT for Luck Harris & Tawny Vokes [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: Luck goes to therapy. Lots and lots [break]
of dialogue. More sloppy, useless vent-y stuff looool~[break][break]

CW: None![break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

"Remember, it is just an hour. And though you can leave at any time, I'll be really pissed at you if you don't give this an actual try. Jo's doing me a favor." [break][break]

Tawny's voice is like a reprimand but Luck ignores the warning as he studies the building front they're parked in front of. Already he can feel a bead of sweat threatening at the center of his back. He swallows and glances at the clock. Only a couple of minutes until his appointment. He puffs up his cheeks and shakes his head, ready to fight some more as he looks to her in the driver seat. [break][break]

She meets his stare with severity and lifts a brow, shaking her head. "Yep. Better get going. Joanna is ah-mazing but she doesn't tolerate tardiness. Especially on the first session. By the way, she's on the... eighth floor, I believe? So... you better get to steppin'."[break][break]

* * *

[break]

The woman looks at her notes. It's been at least half an hour already. He feels too acutely aware of each minute.[break][break]

"You couldn't turn off this Gift of yours until you were... twenty-two. You weren't even aware that you could. But you can control your empathy now. You only use it sparingly, you said? When you feel like you have to?"[break][break]

Luck nods. He knows she is leading up to something because Tawny does the same thing. It crops a discomforting sort of anxiety in his chest. An anticipation that, if left unchecked, will gradually tip toward panic. His mind wants to barrel forward — guess what she will ask and try to figure out the answer before she does.[break][break]

"And do you often feel that you have to?"[break][break]

"No," he answers, maybe a little too quick. At the sound of it, he lifts his eye to her face. She hears it too (of course she does) and he sucks in a breath. "Maybe I do. But I try... not to. I believe... people hide their emotions for a reason. And most of the time, I should allow that privacy. I think it's important that I... figure things out... the way they intend me to. Or want me to."[break][break]

"What do you mean?"[break][break]

"I mean..." he starts the sentence reflexively, but is unable to come up with the rest for a long, searching moment. The words are clumsy. Lumped in his throat. Wanting to be swallowed down. Even when he manages them, they sound as if they're trying desperately to catch on his teeth. "I don't think it's always a... good thing to know what people feel. Especially about you. All the time."[break][break]

The woman nods, brow furrowing in a way that Luck thinks looks too rehearsed. As if she's practiced it in the mirror before — how to look invested. He could be speaking gibberish, she could understand nothing, and she'd still nod the exact same way. Pinch her face the exact same way. His gaze drags between her eyes and she nods again, brow lifting now. She's asking for more, nudging him to go on, to elaborate further, and he knows this. But he can't help but hesitate — wondering if half of her is elsewhere. Making a grocery list. Considering what she'll have for lunch. Thinking about the TV show waiting for her at home. She listens to so many stories and he is just another. To be suffered through with painfully practiced neutrality. And then to be shelved entirely when his hour is up and the next person walks through the door. [break][break]

After a long, considering moment, he decides that the fact is... actually more encouraging than discouraging. He does not know her and she will not know any more about him than he chooses to share with her. They will not talk outside of this room. Will not run into each other somewhere else. He will not have to revisit this conversation, acknowledge (and possibly regret) the things he shared, over beers or strained small talk. She is not someone he will see tomorrow, she will not even think about him tomorrow. He will be notes on a piece of paper to her. A paper in a file. A file in a drawer. To be pulled back out if he chooses. She is not his friend. [break][break]

But he will still have spoken. [break][break]

He wets his lips. Unfurls the fingers from his palms to spread across the tops of his thighs. And he finally nods back, eye dropping to study the tips of her shoes. [break][break]

"I guess... it's hard for me to explain. But my earliest memories, they start at about seven. And... I don't actually remember much beyond being filthy and ratty." It's his turn to furrow his brow and he does so with a lift of his shoulders. "Sharing sneakers and jeans with my mom because it was always clothes or food back then. Clunking around, all dirty and tied up." The image of himself in his mind is a pitiful one. And he is unsure if it's honest or if the picture is less kind than the reality had been. [break][break]

"Nice people, they felt a lot of pity. Sympathy, I guess. Not that I knew those feelings by their names at the time. I just remember thinking... deciding... that pity, it's... it's such a sickly and thin feeling. And less nice people, you know, they felt... disgust. Something a whole lot thicker and... curdling."[break][break]

"At least kids, you know... other kids your age, or around there... they say it all to your face. Or they just hit ya. Because they haven't learned yet to hide things." It's not funny, but he chuckles, fingers twitching as he pulls them together in his lap. "But adults, they hide a lot. And I... don't think you're supposed to know that as a child. The things everyone's hiding behind their smiles or what they're feeling when they turn their backs on you."[break][break]

What if he'd been oblivious to all that? Been just a foolish kid, none the wiser, with no way to know or feel shamed of himself and those feelings he stirred in people? He'd wondered about it a few times — if only he'd been slower to realize... figured things out at a more disadvantaged pace... maybe he'd grown up a little different. [break][break]

"And then, okay, here's one." He chuckles again, but this time it's not trying to sound amused. It's a little derisive, almost like a snort, and when he lifts his eyes back to the therapist, he can feel the slight screw in his gaze. A bit of innate challenge that comes with the memory — a guarded feeling and a prickly impulse that he has never been able to completely rid himself of even after years and years of trying to unlearn it. He has spent almost two decades making it smaller, tried to snuff it out completely, but it is still there. "I'm sixteen. I live in a small, Podunk town. An old... traditional town. And I'm with another boy, parked in his truck, miles out in the dark. Way, way out. So far out, it's — it's not even paranoia at this point, it's just... it's ridiculous."[break][break]

"I've got his breath in my mouth and my hand in his pants and he says not to stop. But all I can feel is his..." his gaze flits sidelong and he presses his tongue into his cheek, searching for a word that is strong enough. "Repulsion," he decides, barbing it as it leaves his lips. "At being touched by me. The suffocating shame he feels for liking it. And his... his fear of being seen or caught, it's... it's so much more than anything else he feels. It is so... much... that I almost can't feel anything else past it." He shrugs, feeling the challenge slip from him as he ties it up with a dismissing admittance. "I can't figure out how much of it is his and how much of it is my own."[break][break]

He doesn't pause. He's pulled something from within and he continues to pull without thought, speaking before he thinks. [break][break]

"I'm seventeen and my mom dies. And no one," the bite returns swiftly to his voice. He is not sure where it comes from. "Feels how I feel about it. Somehow, and it has never made sense to me, but somehow... no one really knows her." He shakes his head, his own brow lifting now. "She is all over that fucking town, she is working everywhere, everyone sees her, knows her face, talks to her daily, takes from her and never gives, but somehow, somehow... no one feels anything real about her. They are sad but they are not sad enough. It just.. it doesn't feel real." [break][break]

Sweat beads at his temple. And he can feel an irrational sort of accusation in his stare as he levels it at the woman across from him. She doesn't budge at all beneath it. She is watching him. Learning far more about him from the way he is twisting himself up than from what he is saying. [break][break]

"And shortly after, very shortly after, I realize that no one really knows me either. I am just like her. I am everywhere, working myself bare, being a dozen different people at seventeen, and everyone knows who I am, they know my name, but I feel everything they feel about me and... it's all so superficial." He rubs his palms across his thighs and closes his eyes, not wanting to observe her seeing him. [break][break]

Not looking at her somehow lessens the strain in him and, when he speaks again, he's a little more neutral.[break][break]

"And I'm just a kid. I'm stupid and I'm young. And I don't realize it then... I won't realize it until another ten or so years later... but... it's because I never let them know me. I guess... I'm not sure... I guess I kind of always assumed everyone else knew what I was feeling, too. Everyone had that same empathy... my Gift. And so I tried to hide a lot. Not in the same way everyone else hid things, you know... the normal way people hide things. I guess, I tried to hide things more... completely. Tried not to feel things at all, I think. Or ran away when that was impossible."[break][break]

His brow knits. Everything he says feels so inadequate. [break][break]

"And so... I run for real. I leave everything. And for a long while after that, I'm always running. Whatever time I'm not spending working or on the road, I'm in bars pretending to be someone else. Older than I am. More figured out than I am. And I know and I feel that no one cares about me. No one knows me. I stick around places long enough that people do start to know me and, uh..." he stalls, words quieting on an uncertain breath. He is losing the wind in his sails. This part is much less clear to him. Maybe it'll take another ten or so years for him to figure it out. A couple of months practicing with Tawny before he can speak on it with any sort of certainty. "Maybe I just... needed to not be figured out, back then... I don't... know... maybe I didn't know who I was, so I couldn't let anyone else try to... show me... I don't, I don't know... but it's not... good for me and so I keep running. Every time. To a new place where no one knows me again."[break][break]

He shakes his head. Blows out a breath and shifts in his seat. His shirt feels too tight. There's a numb sort of tingling in his toes. His hands ache and he realizes, at some point, he has balled them into fists — nails biting into his palm. He loosens them and shakes his head again. "Anyway, I'm not so sure any of that even matters now. I learned I was Gifted. I learned how to turn it off. I know that feeling all of that wasn't normal. And I'm a completely different person now. I know who I am now, I'm much more comfortable where I am, who I am, who I am to others... I'm not scared of uh..." he trails, and finally shrugs. [break][break]

He is feeling a bit desperate now, winded and regretful, and he needs her to say something. It's at this point Tawny would say something. Would stop him from tipping over some unseen edge.[break][break]

The woman recognizes this. And she speaks.[break][break]

"It does matter. And even though you are seemingly quite aware of how it has affected you, I think it's important for you to understand that it still very much affects you. You've obviously given it all a lot of thought."[break][break]

She pauses. He hates her little pauses. It feels like she thinks him a child and that he needs time to process what she is saying. That he needs a moment to let her previous statement sink in before starting the next. [break][break]

She is right, but he still hates it.[break][break]

"You lived over half your life the way you've described. Just because you feel you are different now, and you act differently today than you did fifteen or twenty years ago... "[break][break]

* * *

[break]




His stride is quick and firm as he cuts across the building's lawn and toward the car parked on the visitor curb. He is fleeing and pretending not to be aware of Tawny watching him through the car window as he approaches. He pulls open the door and she doesn't even wait for him to slide in before she's speaking. He can't stand it. He has had enough. Can't bear even a little more. And he knows he shouldn't be angry or irritated with her, but he simply can't help it. [break][break]

"How was it? Oh my God, you are so sweaty."[break][break]

Luck blows out a breath as he shuts the passenger side door, fingers trembling as he reaches for the knobs to the turn the fan on full blast. He settles back in his seat and pinches shut his eyes, taking a long moment to simply feel the air on his face. Waiting for the flush he knows is there to start to fade. [break][break]

Tawny gives him some time to come around. And though the moment she allows is more than gracious, it is still not enough when she speaks again. "Luck...?" He flicks out his fingers and lifts a palm to bob warningly on the air — knowing that, if he speaks, he'll bite. His voice will be too curt, it'll be a snap, and he will be mean without really wanting to. It will just happen. And the sound of it, the feel of it in his mouth, will begin that stupid fucking cycle he's prone to do. [break][break]

But Tawny, she's taught him a bit about this. They've talked about this. She knows. And Luck presses his eyes shut the tiniest bit tighter as she breathes a simple "okay" and starts the car. The feel of them moving, getting away, and her silence — he can't decide what he feels more, grateful or wretched for it all. [break][break]

It's a long while before he opens his eyes. He is cooled now... collected... breathing easier... and he reaches to turn the fan down before dragging his gaze out the window. She's directed them from the bustling underbelly of Downtown and to the outskirts of the city. In his periphery, he can see her turn to cast him a gauging look.[break][break]

"You okay?" [break][break]

Her voice is not cautious or hesitant. She is not uncertain. And his gratitude for her swells so swiftly that he can't help but scoff a soft laugh as he shakes his head and runs a hand through his sweat-dampened curls. "Yeah, Tawny... thanks." He turns his face to meet her look and she holds his stare for a searching moment. And, as if she figures him out in a second, she finds what she needs. Only gives a simple nod before turning her attention back to the road. Then she cracks a grin. "Jo did a number on you, huh? She really is oh so good. Was it bad? Did you cry? I always remember the patients who cry on their first session. Always."[break][break]

He laughs, lifting his arms to feel the air in his pits. "No, I didn't cry. But I don't think I want to do that again." She shrugs. "It's a start anyway. We can talk about it. Will you let me see?" He shakes his head at the sudden cut of eagerness in her tone, rolling down his window so he can feel the wind on his face. "If I said no, wouldn't you just look anyway?"[break][break]

She chooses not to answer, only smirks. Then she shoots a hard fist into his shoulder and squeals: "I am so proud of you! Oh my God, I'm gonna get you a t-shirt."




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[newclass=.couchconvos span]color:#C776AC;font-weight:bold;[/newclass]

[Luck Harris]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","couchconvos"]

A LATE-NIGHT CONVERSATION

ONESHOT for Luck Harris [break][break]

[break][break]

Summary: I changed my mind, I'm putting this [break]
in my one-shots. Just let me be annoying and accept [break]
that I'm a lost cause sdfhskdjhf[break][break]
AKA: Some thoughts on love, I guess?[break][break]

CW: None[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

[break]

"Do you think you'll love again?" [break][break]

She calls the question, quite abruptly, from the bathroom. From his spot in bed, Luck can't help but blink rapidly in surprise. It's not the first time they've seen each other in the past couple of months, but it was the first time she'd asked him something so direct. So personal. They've talked about their exes only briefly. Neither of them too keen to open up about it. And neither of them — at least, so far — too keen to pry, either. [break][break]

"Oh, yeah..." the answer leaves him in a hurry and he follows it up with a nod. "Sure." She hums as she moves back into the room. He can't decide if the tone of it is thoughtful or dubious. Maybe he didn't sound as convinced as he wanted to. She steps back into and lounges across the bed, propping herself up with an elbow across his chest. Then she squints at him. He thinks she is going to ask another question, but... she seems to be waiting. And when she quirks a brow (looking unmistakably doubtful now), he huffs a conceding breath. [break][break]

"I loved people before him." His eyelids flutter tellingly. The words feel like half a lie and, after pinching his mouth tight, he can't help but immediately amend it. "In my own way, at least. As much as I was capable of at the time. And... I'm sure I'll be able to love people after him, too." [break][break]

"Do you think it will be easy for you?"[break][break]

He tucks his mouth, wishing for a moment he could simply say he "didn't want to talk about this", and leave it at that. But he only blinks at her and brings up a hand to brush down the arm holding her aloft. He thinks about it, plucking at her fingers as he does so. Finally, he shrugs. "Falling in love is easy. Everything is exciting and fast in the beginning." She tips her head and he drops his own to blink at the ceiling, a small furrow forming between his brows. "I think it is staying in love that is special. Taking care of love. Always finding new ways to love, more things to love... littler and littler things... when it's no longer new." [break][break]

"Do you believe in soulmates?" [break][break]

"No..." he breathes a short, quiet laugh, pinching his eyes shut before letting them slowly open to watch her face. She quirks her mouth to the side, daring to look a little disappointed at the answer, and he only lifts a brow sympathetically. He raises a hand to tuck some mess of sweaty hair behind her ear and sighs. "Those romantic sayings. Meant to be... made for each other... no, I don't believe anything like that." How sad would that be, really? How many of those people simply wouldn't find each other? Wasn't it just an excuse? So, when someone looked back on something that didn't work out, they could comfort themselves with the good ole "oh, they mustn't have been 'the One'"? [break][break]

"There's no... one person out there for anyone." He coaxes her back down to his side and she settles with the back of her head on his bent arm, tucking against him as if she is getting more comfortable. But he knows, in five minutes... maybe ten... she will complain he is too hot. Latch on to that complaint, wield it, and insist she would never be able to sleep a night in his bed. And he will let her go. Let her think he believes it is the only reason. That he doesn't know that she is holding onto something else. Someone else. And that, this, what they've been doing, isn't just squeaking by. He won't ask her to pretend, simply because reaching for her as she left... it would be a little pretending on his part, too. [break][break]

"There are billions of people in this world. So many people that you are compatible with." He continues to study the ceiling and sifts his fingertips into her hair, brushing it gingerly from her forehead. He can feel her blink against him, probably considering, too, how long she'll hold out before she runs. He isn't sure if speaking more on the matter will make her slower or quicker to bolt. "It's just a matter of meeting them at the right time, I think. Discovering each other. Sometimes the timing is off and one or the other won't let themselves be discovered. Aren't open. Or there's something in the way. Life's just like that."[break][break]

He was sure Nate had met hundreds of people better for him than he was. That he'd have been happier with. But he'd been with him. And they were happy. So they'd missed one another. And, likewise, Luck could bet there'd been dozens of people he'd met in his life that would have made him settle down before Nate did. But he had never been... willing or ready... to see things like that. So they'd missed one another. [break][break]

And here they were now, two people sharing a deep conversation and holding close. Perhaps it could work out. Perhaps they'd fit as easily in an early-morning kitchen as they did in a bed. But neither were in the proper place to find out. Neither were quite willing to see it through. Give it a chance or learn what might have been. And eventually, they'd stop messaging one another. The charm would wear off. Or become too familiar. And then they'd just be a name in a phone. A couple of memories. [break][break]

Things like that just happened. They both knew. [break][break]

"I bet you've met and talked to a lot of people who could've been the 'person of your dreams'," he tilts his face, knocking his temple against the top of her head and chuckling. "And you didn't even ask them their name." [break][break]

The attempt at humor doesn't land. She doesn't respond. And Luck is certain that the four or so minutes they have left, to just lay like this, have now been halved. But, after a moment, he feels her draw in a long, steadying breath. "I think it was just the one dream for me. I don't know how you joke about it. Or how you believe what you believe. I will never find that again. I can never have that again. I am done with it." [break][break]

Luck tries not to feel anything but... his chest clenches despite his efforts. They've never really spoken about it. But he now suspects that the person she is holding onto... she has lost with far more permanence than he has. She is a widower, perhaps. And the thought of that — it makes him want to take back everything he has said. Because he can not presume to know that pain. He can only suspect it is world-shattering. [break][break]

"I think it's not... impossible... that we can love again," he swallows, uncertain about the risk of using 'we' instead of 'I'. It does feel presumptuous. But, at the words, her fingers curl into the palm held over his chest, she releases a shaky breath, and he decides it's okay. "But you're right... it won't be the exact same." Which he didn't think was bad or even unexpected. He wasn't certain that any relationship could be identical to another. "Eventually... we might even love someone that much again. If we're very, very lucky." He pulls away, just enough so he can turn his head and watch her long lashes as she quickly blinks her eyes closed. His mouth tugs a bit remorsefully when she tips a little toward him and he can see a glistening in the hollow beneath one eye. "But, I'm sure we couldn't possibly love someone more."









[break][break]