
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2466113.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      From_Dusk_Till_Dawn:_The_Series
  Relationship:
      Kate_Fuller/Scott_Fuller, Carlos_Madrigal/Freddie_Gonzalez, Carlos
      Madrigal/Santanico_Pandemonium, Richard_Gecko/Seth_Gecko/Vanessa_Styles,
      Richard_Gecko/Seth_Gecko, Santanico_Pandemonium/Vanessa_Styles, Carlos
      Madrigal/Scott_Fuller, Seth_Gecko/Vanessa_Styles, Seth_Gecko/Santanico
      Pandemonium, Seth_Gecko/Scott_Fuller, Richard_Gecko/Seth_Gecko/Freddie
      Gonzalez, Richard_Gecko/Seth_Gecko/Vanessa_Styles/Santanico_Pandemonium,
      Kate_Fuller/Santanico_Pandemonium, Rafa_Infante/Scott_Fuller, Richard
      Gecko/Santanico_Pandemonium/Vanessa_Styles, Richard_Gecko/Freddie
      Gonzalez, Richard_Gecko/Santanico_Pandemonium
  Character:
      Seth_Gecko, Richard_Gecko, Vanessa_Styles, Kate_Fuller, Scott_Fuller,
      Freddie_Gonzalez, Carlos_Madrigal, Santanico_Pandemonium, Canon_Female
      Character, Eddie_Gecko, Sonja_Lam, Rafa_Infante
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Zombie_Apocalypse, Alternate_Universe_-_Canon
      Divergence, Alternate_Universe_-_Gender_Changes, Alternate_Universe_-
      Daemons, Alternate_Universe_-_Children, Kid_Fic, Alternate_Universe_-
      Werewolf, Sibling_Incest, Pre-Series, Post-Series, Mother-Son
      Relationship, Alternate_Universe_-_High_School, Alternate_Universe_-
      Arranged_Marriage, Implied/Referenced_Child_Abuse, Drug_Use, Bullying,
      Canon-Typical_Violence, Alternate_Universe_-_Priests, Demons
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-11-26 Chapters: 59/? Words: 26246
****** a story of need against need against need ******
by opheliahyde
Summary
     "Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has
     their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting
     selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of
     good against evil, but of need against need against need, where
     everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame. " - Richard
     Siken
          a collection of from dusk till dawn ficlets written for
          prompts on tumblr
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Intro *****
Chapter Summary
                                        
                        A FEW NOTES ON THIS COLLECTION

         * First of all, welcome to my collection of drabbles and ficlets
           that I've done through ask memes on tumblr. Here you will find
           a wide variety of pairings, writing-styles, and word counts.
         * Because this collection was created to house a variety of my
           short works that I've written throughout my time in theFrom
           Dusk Till Dawn fandom, many works may come across "dated" or
           jossed—just imagine those pieces as "AU" universes. 
         * In an effort to keep this collection as user-friendly and
           skimmable as possible so that any readers can find the ships
           they're interested in, I've organized the chapters by gen, then
           pairing fic, then organized alphabetically by first name of the
           characters involved. Updates will be added accordingly from now
           on. Hopefully this will help make the reading experience
           easier. 
         * In regards to Kisa: all stories involving her will be labelled
           with her chosen name, but some of those pieces will have her
           referred to as Santanico within the text—I feel it's
           unnecessary and disingenuous to re-edit those pieces to simply
           change her name, especially with pieces set before she had
           accepted herself as Kisa, therefore the original text will
           remain. 
         * I do make an effort to put all warnings within the tag set for
           this collection, but if there is anything you need tagged or
           thought I should have warned for, please don't hesitate to
           comment and let me know! 
***** Kisa - gen - pedestal *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt canvas.
She learned to sit still long before Malvado asked her to pose.
(young and awkward, too long limbs, nothing growing quite right, a skinny
little thing the Lords stole from her mother’s arms and set her upon a dais and
asked her to stay;
she shook for weeks until she grew used to people staring, grew used to her
visitors falling to their knees, though her insides were twisting and churning,
spilling out of her mouth when she was left alone, the smell spoiling in the
heat)
He dresses her himself, peels off her clothes to her skin—she has learned
better not to fight, stands still, jaw set as he stares for moments until her
pulls her dress on, as his fingers stroke up the curve of her spins as he ties
her laces, as he buttons her in. His hands are on her throat as he adorns her
with heavy jewels he brought back from across the sea, lays them out across her
chest. He has others pin and curl her hair, stain her lips red, line her eyes
in kohl.
(he sets her on a chair and she is back on the dais, back on the altar, the
artist peering at her, staring for hours as he works in paints, captures her
again)
She never sees the finished product, Malvado approving the rendering of her
image and paying the artist in gold, shining in his hands and has the canvas
removed from the room.
All she sees is her reflection in the mirror, back in her room, looking at the
girl Malvado made of her. 
She rips the necklace from her neck, breaking the chain, the jewels rolling on
the floor and tears the pins from her hair, lets it fall down her back in black
waves, smearing the paint on her face with her hands, turning her wild, eyes
yellow as sobs roll up her throat, the tears washing the colors away in
streaks.
***** Maria (Richie&Seth's Mother) - gen - forgive me father *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt before the beginning.
Father Fitzpatrick smiles at her when she enters and it makes her flush,
burning along the edges of her cheekbones—Maria hadn’t meant to make this a
habit, but now it’s a routine.
It was always easier to sneak away mid-week than on Sundays with Ray watching
her every move, to tell him she’s going out to get a few things to the store
and take the boys with her, slipping out not to be missed for a few hours.
Father Fitzpatrick climbs down off the dais to meet her halfway up the aisle,
his stride long and he meets her baby-faced and  rosy-cheeked, too young to be
anyone’s father, but he wears the collar, fresh out of seminary school. She
always wanted to apologize to him for his assignment, for this neighborhood,
but Maria had a feeling he’d wave her off, tell her it was an honor.
(Sometimes she thinks it was best he devoted his life to God, too sweet for the
rest of of the world, would’ve been eaten alive otherwise.)
Maria slides Richie carefully off her hip, watching for his clinging hands as
she sets Seth’s carrier down. “It’ll only be for a few minutes,” she says,
looking up at Father Fitzpatrick, uncurling Richie’s fingers from her skirt as
she stands up, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I hope it’s not an
imposition?”
He smiles, broad and genuine. “Not at all.” He tips his head down at Richie,
who then closes his eyes and fits himself against her leg. “We’re making
progress, I think? One day we’ll be friends.”
Maria sighs, but keeps her features soft when she slips to her knees and cups
Richie’s cheek. His eyes open slow, tension relaxing before his eyelids flutter
open and his eyes meet hers, wide and intense, his stare holding hers. “I will
be right back, I promise.” His bottom lip quivers, his eyes watering. “Hey, hey
now,”she soothes, stroking her thumb across his cheek. “Someone’s got to look
after Seth. Can you do that for me? Stay with Seth and watch him?”
It’s startling to watch how his face shifts, drawing back tears that hadn’t
fallen yet and setting his jaw, too serious a look on a toddler’s face, but he
nods, shifting away to sit himself next to Seth’s carrier, hands on the edge,
peering inside to watch his brother.
Maria picks herself up, watching Seth gurgle up at his mouth, wide toothless
smile stretching open his mouth. “He shouldn’t have a tantrum now—” She pauses,
feeling Father Fitzpatrick’s eyes on her as she reaches behind her neck,
unclasping the silver crucifix from around her neck—it had been her mother’s,
and her mother’s mother before that, and one of the few things that was hers.
“Hey,”she says, kneeling down beside Richie; his eyes flick to hers, before
darting back to Seth. Maria picks up his hand, flips open his palm and drops
the necklace into it. “Thanks Richie.” He doesn’t turn again, but he unfurls
the cross and dangles it above Seth’s reach, lets it sparkle in the light.
Maria stands, meeting Father Fitzpatrick’s gaze—there’s a heavier feeling to it
now, watching her with careful consideration, sizing her up; she wonders if he
spots the fading bruising on her arms, the dark shadows under her eyes that
makeup never did a damn good at hiding, what he thinks now that he’s got a good
look at her. “They should be fine now.”
He nods as she passes, brushing her hand across his shoulder as thanks, making
her way down the aisle, turning towards the confessional booth.
Maria crosses herself when she enters, closing the door behind her, then seats
herself. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a week since my last
confession.”
***** Scott&Seth - gen - along for the ride *****
The kid is scrawny and small, scrunched up in the passenger’s seat with his
feet up on the dash, with a set to his jaw that juts out his chin and eyes that
could slice someone open, as sharp as they are; Seth remembers feeling that
way, ready to burst out of his skin because of the anger in his belly burning
hotter than the hunger churning his guts, making him clench his fists to hold
himself steady, to keep him from lashing out at the first available target. 
"I could help, you know," Scott says, voice strained and breaking. "I know how
to shoot, I can do it, if you’d let me—" 
"You wanna kill someone?" Seth asks, sliding the car to the side of the road,
jerking it into park. "You ready for that? Judging by the how green you turn
whenever I mention it, my bet’s on not." He sighs, running a hand down his
face. "Can I take you some place? Take you home?" 
Scott jerks in the seat, a violent twist of his limbs towards the car door. “I
never had a home,” he gasps out.
"Yeah, well," Seth says, having to settle back in his seat. "Homes are
overrated, kid." 
***** Hunt you down until you love me - Carlos/Freddie *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt Carlos stalks him periodically back to Texas.
The rinche had gone home and Carlos hadn’t decided if that was an entirely
stupid move or smarter than he’d given time to consider—his wife (Margaret, he
remembers from being inside his head, hears it again like it just rolled off
his tongue) had been furious and the echo of it reverberated outside the house,
her fists going into his chest—Carlos can still taste the tension, but the
anger had cooled with relief washing down the walls. They’re quiet, staring at
each other from across the dining room table, therinche’s little girl in his
lap, his mouth brushing down across the top of her head. Perhaps it had been
smart after all to go home, stand guard over his family (he knew Carlos would
find his way here eventually; he’d had seen things, too).
“What are we doing, mi amor?” Santanico asks and his eyes snap to hers. She
arches up and stretches in the passenger’s seat, rolling towards him with a
furrowed brow and questioning eyes. “Why are we following thisrinche?” She
spits the words like it tastes bitter, full of disdain, like she had been
around to see and not trapped inside that bar—Carlos had been there, had seen
them hanging from the trees, had felt the anger burning like a pit fire in his
stomach, but he knows when she speaks, the voice of her people comes through.
He pulls his gaze from hers, closes his eyes (it’s too late, she’s already
seen). “He surprised me. I don’t like it when people surprise me.”
Santanico laughs at his side, high and full, coming from her throat and she
falls back against the seat. Falling silent as she picks herself back up,
Santanico crawls across the console and into his lap; he looks up and meets her
eyes (they’re everything and nothing, he sees her and he sees himself reflected
back; sometimes it feels like they’re one and the same, she did make him, after
all)—she grins at him when his hands settle on her hips, sharp and wicked. “Did
you taste him?” she asks, leaning forward, her mouth dragging across his,
tongue flickering inside before she tugs herself back, resting her forehead on
his. “What did he taste like?”
Warm. Alive. He wants to tell her he burned, but she already knows, she just
wants to hear him say it. “Sweet.”
Her grin broadens, fangs descending—he reaches up, stroking his fingertips down
the needle thin shafts. Santanico pushes his hand away and he lets it fall to
her torso, sliding down her waist and she dips her head, the ends of her hair
brushing his hands; the points of her fangs strokes the side of his neck,
scratching as she breathes across his skin. “I think you like thisrinche, mi
amor.”
***** It's a cold victory - Carlos/Freddie *****
Carlos lounges, sleek and loose-limbed, like a panther in a tree on his throne,
grinning down at Freddie with teeth bared and eyes yellow, sliding his legs off
the arm of ornate chair to sit back straight, hands curl over his desk—sharp-
ended nails tapping across the mahogany surface, echoing in Freddie’s ears
between each of his heavy steps, boots scraping against the stone floor.
“Report time already, peacekeeper?” Carlos asks, voice bright as his eyes glow,
grin broadening. “So eager to see me?”
Freddie’s mouth flattens, can’t fake a smile, not anymore—not since it all went
to shit and he hasn’t seen Margaret in two years, hasn’t gotten a chance to see
Billy’s first steps, hear her first words; a young woman haunts his dreams at
night, sorrow-eyed and burning with cold anger. Carlos laughs, full and loud,
creeping joy like he can see inside Freddie’s head, peering right into his guts
and peek into the fabric of his soul, like before—the sound of it rattles down
his spine, churns his guts, and he wills his feet to bring himself closer.
He lays the file on the desk, sliding it over to Carlos—their fingers brush
when Carlos takes it from him, deliberate and lingering as Carlos glance up at
him from under a thick line of lashes, tongue darting out across his lips.
“They’re heading North, towards Alaska—I think they figure the cold could be
played to their advantage.” It’s a lie—he’s grown used to the taste, the way he
rolls his tongue around the words, face trained and blank.
(they’re headed east, Kisa towing Seth behind her; Seth doesn’t talk much these
days, half-alive husk of a human being kept going by her whispers in his ear,
promises and vows—Kisa burning enough for the pair of them, power like that the
only thing that plants seeds of fear in Carlos’ heart, along with the culebras
that have flocked to her side, amassing quicker than Carlos can administer his
blood–I made her, he hissed, his hand around Freddie’s throat when he told him
the news, where would she be without me?)
“La Diosa, tsk tsk,” he breathes out, clicking his jaw. “Not so clever without
her pinche gringo.” He turns to Freddie, his hands lifting up and fingers
curling towards his palms. “You know, I can still feel that chingado going to
ash in my hands. I wish I could deliver it to Seth in a box.”
Freddie tries not to recoil, tensing his muscles under his jacket. “Should I
send out a scouting team?”
Carlos stands, loud scraping sound rumbling under their feet. “Yes,” he says,
moving close–his body is always cool next to Freddie’s, lips like catching a
chill across his forehead, burning his cheeks, ice on his lips when he presses
a kiss there, claws under Freddie’s chin; Freddie trembles, despite himself.
“Thank you. Peacekeeper. You have certainly lived up to your title.”
***** future perfect/past tense - Carlos/Kisa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt things you didn’t say at all
When it’s all said and done, Carlos joins her, keeping pace with her steps,
walking away from the wreckage, the end of the battle at her side.
They don’t touch and she doesn’t look at him, but she lets him walk with her,
keep her company now that Richard had sped off in a car with his brother—los
hermanos Gecko were never much for fighting, trickery and schemes, choosing
flight always over fight, their precious hides worth more than any pride they
might have had—and Carlos’ fledging had chosen his human sister over Carlos.
It’s easy.
Carlos is a habit of loneliness that she allows to persist.
He offers to show her the world, pulls out a map and tells her to pick
anywhere, but she tells him Mexico, always Mexico, show me what they’ve done to
my homeland.
They avoid the temples, she had enough of those for another five hundred
years—ruins, he tells her, heaps of stone that tourists come to see, skin
pinkening under the sun, taking pictures immersing themselves in the history;
it makes her laugh, bright and airy, and he smiles at her, so she takes a
picture of him, standing outside a food stand on a street in Mexico City, steam
rising up behind him.
(They eat a pair of them—tourists—luring them with easy smiles and offering to
show them the real Mexico, whatever that had meant, left them in an alleyway
with torn out throats and she kissed Carlos with a bloody mouth, head spinning
and feeling heady, drunk from the kill, and finds steady feet with her lips on
his.)
Santanico tries to make sense of her country, connect what Carlos had told her
throughout the years to what she sees, thought if she could see it, if she
could touch it would become real to her, but none of the places look the same,
not even the ocean, like time had eroded away all her memories and left her
stranded in a foreign land on foreign soil that she once used to know, felt
between her toes and laid down on, smelt as it warmed under the sun.
Carlos combs his fingers through her hair as she stands with the ocean water
lapping over her feet, staring out onto the horizon, wishing she had let him
show her elsewhere, taken her away so her long dead heart wouldn’t feel this
heavy.
“If you had seen the change,” he whispers above the breeze, the gentle roar of
the waves, “It would have been better. I wanted to you to see. I’m sorry you
didn’t get to.”
He holds her at night, just like that night, when they’re not hunting, when
she’s shaking and hiccupping, tears hot on her cheeks, curls around her like a
different sort of shackle, hand pressed against her chest like he could still
feel her heart, feel it beating though it stopped long before he stumbled into
her temple and claimed her for his own. She brings his hand to her mouth and
kisses his palm, a careful benediction that’s more of a thank you than
forgiveness—maybe one day, there’s still time.  
***** stay quiet - Carlos/Kisa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt things you said that i wish you hadn’t.
When Carlos comes back, he brings her stories—of his adventures, his scrapes,
his near misses and close calls, of the outside world and the people in it, the
things she cannot see. He whispers them in her ear after the carnage, after her
performance and the mask is gone, face clean and stripped to soft silks
covering her skin where he runs his hands down over her arms, lips pressed to
her neck, under her ear.
(he is always careful—her Carlitos—gentle, cautious, a different kind of
worship but worship all the same, gasping la reina, la diosa, but never her
name, true and given)  
His stories stoke the fire in her, always burning; his stories make her mouth
taste of ash and soot, like bitter poison, resentment building in her gut. She
lives for his stories, she dies for his stories, no in between, no merciless
relief.
“When you are free, I will show you the world and everything in it. I have so
much to show you,” he says, stroking her hair back from the nape of her neck,
running his fingers through—he would kill you for this, she thinks, knowing
Malvado never will.
(I created my own torture when I created you, she thinks, but she lets Carlos
lay his mouth on her, lets him hatch his plans that never come to fruition,
lets him live every day out there while she’s still trapped inside, waiting)
“When will I be free?” she asks, tugging his arm around her and running her
fingers across his palm, tracing his lifeline, his heartline.
“Soon,” he whispers in her ear.
She twists in his arms and meets his gaze, sees the promise and the lie
reflected in the dark depths, the love and the idolatry all at once. She cups
his face in her hand, watches as he closes his eyes, turns his mouth to kiss
the heel of her palm and she feels herself begin to burn all over.
***** identity - Carlos/Kisa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt beginning of their relationship.
Carlos teaches her his tongue, slow and careful, but she learns fast—or perhaps
it was determination, practicing the phrases he gave her with brows drawn
together, repeating them over again until she said it like him, until she gave
it meaning.
She speaks it with a bitter taste, a bite around the words that never leaves,
harsh and angry, like he hadn’t given her a gift but rather a curse she spat
out of her mouth every time she spoke.
(He had wanted to ask her why, ¿por qué no quiere entender el uno al otro?—but
her eyes stopped him, dark and unknowable, yet he wanted to sink into them and
suffocate, die again for her; he knew the answer without speaking, like he knew
he had to break her chains and bare his neck—they always understood each
other.)
Carlos sits at her feet after he brought her back more conquistadors, wandering
lost and looking for gold (she taught him how to feed, the bodies dropping by
the count, both of them sharing in their blood--their souls, she had told him,
patting her hand over her heart, sus almas). She strokes his hair, nails
running along his scalp, humming a tune and whispering in a language he
remembered at the edges of his mind, one he knew the meaning of somewhere he
couldn’t reach.
“Why don’t you want to speak your mother’s tongue?” she asks, twisting his head
to look at her. “Do you remember your mother?”
He remembered a woman who held him in his arms with soft skin and smelling of
spices, of earth underneath, but she was  fading, just like the sound of the
songs she sang in the same tongue and Carlos bit down, staring up at her—the
goddess he chose—until he tasted his own blood, memories flooding his mind,
searing across his vision.
Carlos stands and runs, disappears into the forest and stays there through
three sunrises and sunfalls, hiding in a cave he found. He returns, like he
always will, falling on his knees at her feet.
“Do you know who you are?” she asks.
“Do you?” he counters.
She didn’t have a name, his goddess, not one she could tell him—or wanted to.
She nods.  
She had chosen a name for herself, and he smiles when she tells him, the way
she tells him, a purr softening the snap of her teeth.
Santánico Pandemónium.
***** I'll be with you through the dark - Carlos/Kisa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt accidental baby acquisition.
The infant takes to her, easier than Carlos would have thought (the young like
animals have a sense about their kind, avoid them if they can, all instincts
and self-preservation—smarter than most give them credit for), but she gurgles
happily in Santanico’s arms, tiny mouth stretching out into a toothless smile,
rounding out her cheeks as Santanico coos at her, lends her her fingers to
grip. The rest of the girls stand around eyeing their mistress curiously,
warily, unsure of what to make of her early appearance, hiding in the crowd.
Santanico grins down at the infant, stroking down her small, soft nose and
Carlos can see how her eyes are warm, features confounded with affection and he
hates to ruin it.
“Mi amor, we cannot keep her.” He touches her shoulder and it tenses under his
hand, her head turning—her eyes narrowed, slitted and golden. “This is no place
to raise a child.”
“They shouldn’t have brought her in here. What kind of mother would bring her
child in here?”she asks, voice sharp; it startles the infant and Santanico
bounces her in her hands, bringing her up to her chest, holding her close.
“Into the lion’s den. This pit of snakes.”
“They didn’t know, they were just traveling past—”
“It’s still a bar, Carlos.” She stares at him in a way that tells him to close
his mouth and not open it until she tells him to, or she might claw his face
off and stands up, hefting the baby on her shoulder and walking through the
parting crowd.
She lets her go (of course she does, he isn’t sure why he worried, why it felt
like it was strangling him around the throat to see her hold the child),
frightening her parents with vicious threats as she released them, slipping
them out before another bloodbath began.
Carlos curls around her later, fitting himself behind her in her bed, arms
going around her torso and hands pressing against her stomach, leaving a trail
of kisses across the nape of her neck. She doesn’t cry, not like she used to,
but her voice is thick, soft when she speaks.
“They stole that from me, too.”
***** Bitter bite of loneliness - Carlos/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt pet names.
“Good job, mi hijo,” Carlos says, sliding behind Scott without a sound and
laying his hands on his shoulders, squeezing and releasing like Scott had seen
on wrestling, but different—the coaches never got this close to their wrestler,
Carlos pressed against his back, Carlos breathing out onto his cheek.
“You’re learning to not make such a mess.” He reaches over Scott’s shoulder,
thumb brushing away the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
Scott bristles at the endearment, but bites down until his fangs recede—it’d be
no good to tell Carlos to stop, that he’s not his son (I already had a father
and you’re nothing like him, he thinks, but it’s a bitter thought, goes down
like a pill too big and chokes him to remember the feel of the stake pressing
into his chest, the way his father’s face twisted up and he reeked of fear; no,
I never had a father—he guesses Carlos as good as any); Carlos would just grin
and tip his chin up, tell him, but who made you, mijo?
“Does it get any easier?” he asks instead, turning to get some space, facing
Carlos and backing away. Carlos’s mouth twists, eyes flashing gold, but he
keeps his feet still. “You know, feeding?”
Scott hates it. Tasting means seeing, no matter how he gets it. Blood bags are
duller, more sounds than images, but he can still make out the memories, a
constant reminder the blood belongs to a human through the memories that run
through his head when he takes from them, tasing their soul, stealing pieces of
their life—until he ends it and his head goes black.
That’s the worst part—the sudden blackness, feeling their heart stop; he hasn’t
slept in weeks, haunted by the memories of others, the feeling of death under
his skin.
“One day,” Carlos says, stepping forward and Scott lets him, keeps his feet in
place and leans forward. Sometimes it’s nice, having Carlos there, Carlos solid
and present, Carlos with his easy, creeping touches that are better than
nothing. Better Carlos than alone—Scott thinks sometimes that’s why he helped
him get out of the Twister, better Carlos than no one. “It won’t matter so much
to you, querido.”
Carlos presses a kiss to his temple, then lifts his face, hand under his jaw,
fingers brushing his throat. “It’ll get easier when you stop caring.”
***** The Loneliness & The Scream - Carlos/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt things you said with no space between us
The nights are cold, even colder beneath The Twister, more levels than Scott
could figure out beneath the surface. He wondered why he even felt it at all,
the chill nipping at his fingertips, toes and ears, shuddering through him and
rattling his bones.
“We haven’t fed,” Carlos says, speaking aloud like Scott’s thoughts had been
too loud and he couldn’t help but answer.
(I can hear you, Carlos whispered to him once, cornering him against the wall,
breath ghosting Scott’s neck because he wanted it to, I can hear you like I can
hear someone’s heartbeat, your thoughts an endless stream flowing from you to
me—I made you, never forget.
Scott had wished he could, wished he could tear out the venom that had turned
his blood and made him of Carlos, gave him another family line he never asked
to be part of.)
Carlos moves closer until they’re pressed from shoulder to hip, their knees
knocking as he curls to match Scott’s position. “You could try not to listen,
once and a while,” Scott says, his shoulders cringing when Carlos slithers his
arm around him, hooking it around his neck—Scott doesn’t shove away, too tired,
too fucking hungry, the kind that gnaws and gnaws at his insides but doesn’t
kill him. It’s been more than a week, he should have died of thirst by now, but
he’s still here.
And so is Carlos.
“You’re mine, Scott,” he says, rubs his hand through Scott’s hair like a big
brother would—or a father. He leans in close, their foreheads brushing and
Scott lets his head hang, drop against Carlos’, leaning into him as his body
sags. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Did this happen with Santanico?” Scott asks, but not expecting an answer—the
name always makes Carlos’ mouth screw up tight, jaw on lockdown.
But Carlos breathes a yes against his cheek, and presses dry lips to his
temple, stroking down Scott’s hair.
Family history, he thinks, a laugh getting caught in his throat, a lump he
can’t swallow down, never had that before.
***** dream - Freddie/Richie *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt handholding.
Freddie remembers his hands when he watches Richie, eyes away, back to Freddie,
his shoulders broad hunched over a table, creating a shadow, his hands mapping
out across a set of plans. They’re large, like the rest of him, long elegant
fingers good at opening up safes and picking locks, maybe for taking people
apart—there’s notes in his file that Freddie remembers with a shudder, crimes
they could never pin on him, too clean, too perfect. Richie was always the
meticulous one.
It wasn’t real, he tells himself, but the sensation of Richie’s fingers weaving
around his still lingers, stroking across his palm, like an itch—a phantom
tugging at him, leading him, guiding him.
(moonlight reflected on Richie’s glasses, setting his eyes off with an
unnatural glow and there was a bloodstain over his gut, duct tape around his
hand–not the Richie he knows now, a Richie dug up, unearthed, a Richie with
Earl’s blood still on him, fingers smelling of gun oil; a bloody
meeting—perhaps they were always meant to cross paths, one way or another, a
funny way to start believing in fate)
“I had a dream about you,” Freddie tells him, not sure why, but it feels good
to let it out, to set it free, stalling him in the hallway—caught between two
spaces.
Richie smiles, languid and unfurling, halfway between amusement and a threat.
“Was it a good one?”
(Richie’s hand was warm under his, sticky with blood, sticking to his skin,
grip firm)
“Not particularly.”
His smile grows sharper, stepping close so Freddie has to look up, has to crane
his neck to meet his eyes—blue, a pretense, false security, just like his
straight-edged teeth. “Sweet dreams then, peacekeeper,” Richie breathes across
the back of his neck as he moves past, leaving Freddie alone in the hall,
electricity skimming the surface of his skin.
***** I am singing now while Rome burns - Kate/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just
     trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips
     against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
It doesn’t feel like anything she had ever felt (maybe it shouldn’t, a kiss is
just a kiss until it’s her brother’s mouth against her own, pressing in close
as she opens up and let’s him inside).
Kyle had been clumsy at first, an awkward mashing of lips that had smoothed
out--practice under a pew in the back row, she remembers how hard the wood
floor felt under her back, how the boards creaked, the scent of dust caught at
the back of her throat.
Richie had been a graze, a near-miss that got too close and brushed at her
mouth; she kissed him, but even now she can’t remember why, what had propelled
her forward, it’s a dull buzz at the back of her mind, tucked into a dark
corner.
Scott kisses like he’s done this before (she wanted to know who, unearth the
secrets she never cared to know when he kept his door closed, locked, music
pounding against the wood, shaking the house, but she didn’t think that was
fair, not now, let him have something that’s not hers, theirs), like he knows
how his lips and tongue work, applying them to hers with an edge of
desperation, too hard, sharp—she takes it and gives it back to him, fingertips
pressing against his jaw.
(It flip-flops in her stomach, like her heart has slid down from her chest and
sits now in her hips, thudding and throbbing—she remembers what the bible had
to say about this.)
“Do you think they ever did this?” she asks, laying in the dark, eyes to the
ceiling—she knows the answer, somewhere, she knows the truth, her own way of
seeing.
Scott rolls over, throws his arm around her and tucks his face into her neck,
nose trailing across her collarbone. “I don’t want to talk about them,” he
mutters,  then drifts away, falling heavy at her side.
(She wonders where they are sometimes, if they ever got where they were
going—they left after, quick, Seth tugging his brother behind him, gun in hand,
finger on the trigger, ready to blast his way through if anything stood in
their way.)
She let’s him drive—he’s gotten better—practice of a different kind, his hand
on the wheel and foot on the pedals as she tells him how, where to go—and rests
her head on his shoulder, staring at the endless stretch of road.
(They buried their father in the desert with their own hands and two shovels—by
the end she had felt dried out, baked in the sun, no more tears; they drove
away and kept driving.)
***** too much to drink - Freddie/Richie *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt lonely.
Freddie’s drink is tequila.
Richie wants to rib him, tell him what a cliche he is, but he can’t bring
himself to do it as he shifts the empty bottles into the recycling bin,
watching how they start to overflow. This isn’t like you, Ranger, he thinks,
grabbing an empty box to start putting the excess in, you’re supposed to keep
us on the straight and narrow, how are you gonna do that liquored up all the
time?
“How much do you charge?” Freddie asks, rubbing his face as he pushes himself
up on one elbow, sheets pooling low around his hips, leaving him bare to the
waist. “For the maid service—can I call you for a turndown service as well.”
Richie laughs, dry and humorless, the sound cutting and razor sharp. Freddie
startles, blinking at him, awake and sober in a breath. “You’re better than
this shit, you know,” Richie says, tossing a bottle into the box and hearing it
break, shatter—too much strength in his throw. “My old man, may he rot in hell,
used to do this–only he’d get mean and swing at us. Good thing your wife kicked
you out, huh?”
Freddie is quicker than Richie gave him credit for, even hungover and wrangling
himself out of the sheets, able to leap across the room and go for Richie’s
throat, hand clamping down as he rushes Richie back against the wall. “Don’t
you ever—" Freddie gets caught on a breath, choking the next words out, “—ever
suggest I’d do anything to hurt my little girl, are we clear?”
Richie smiles, gritting his teeth, bearing them as Freddie squeezes, lifting
his chin to feel the burn of hand locked over his jugular–watching Freddie’s
eyes blacken as his gaze gets set ablaze. “There’s the ranger I know,” he says,
corner of his lip twisting and curling.
Freddie lets go in another breath, dropping his hands and staring up at Richie
like he can’t quite believe him, an edge of disgust always coloring his
features. Richie thinks it’s over when Freddie comes at him again, hands on his
shirt collar, gripping hard as he yanks Richie down, dragging their mouths
together. Freddie uses his tongue like a weapon, thrusting in his mouth, warm
and slick, tasting sour as he moves his hands to grip the back of Richie’s
neck.
“We need to stop doing this,” Richie says, when Freddie breaks for a breath
Richie doesn’t need, letting Freddie pull him forward by the lapels of his suit
jacket, leading him towards the bed. “You need to deal with your shit instead
of drinking and fucking it away with me.”
Freddie grabs for his jaw, fingers digging into his cheek, rubbing the inside
against Richie’s molars. “Shut the fuck up, Gecko,” he hisses out, leaning up
to shove their mouths together again, his second kiss landing like a slap, hard
and leaving his mouth stinging.  
***** two-headed devil - Freddie/Richie/Seth *****
Freddie showers away the sweat and semen, dressing up neat and nice the way his
mama taught him, and goes to confession afterwards, walking to the little
catholic church down the road. Inside the booth, his tongue goes numb, feels
thick and clumsy, he chokes on his breath when he inhales deep, swallowing past
the lump in his throat.
(it hits in flashes–the heat of Seth’s mouth around him, the way Richie’s low
words crept and crawled into his head, slithering and writhing in his belly,
the way their mouths collided over his shoulder, how they pulled apart with
twin smiles, sharp as knives)
I’ve seen the devil, he tells the priest, and he has two heads.
***** Forget the horror here - Kate/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt zombie apocalypse au.
Kate’s hands are slick with sweat and the gun keeps slipping, her finger
sliding down the slope of the trigger as her hands tremble. You have to do it,
Katie-cakes, her dad said, his skin already paling, blood-loss stealing the
color in his cheeks and the virus tinging his skin in blue, you can do it.
She should have let one of the Geckos do it, it would have been quick and
clean, no hesitation, one perfectly aimed shot to the head, neither of them
standing in front of the writhing creature that used to be her dad and not
doing anything, risking him breaking free, risking attack and infection because
she can’t stop crying, can’t do what she promised (let it be family, Kate, let
it be you—don’t let it be Scott).
“I can’t,” she hiccups, swallowing around the hard lump in her throat. “I can’t
do it.”
Scott’s hands reach around hers, not pulling the gun from her hands, but
cupping them closer, fitting them properly to the grip (his hands are bigger,
covering her completely and he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t noticed when her little
brother’s hands had become bigger than her own, when he’d gotten so much taller
than her that he can curl around her back and reach down her arms). “You can,”
he says in her ear, voice firm, but thick, she can feel his tears dripping down
her neck. “We can do it. Together.”
She promised, she promised to keep him away (you’re older, Kate, you have to
look after him, you have to look after each other), but Scott wrapping around
her, his hands on her stills the shaking and she can hold the gun straight, aim
it at their father’s head.
“We’ll do it on a count of three, okay? Squeeze the trigger with me, Kate.”
She nods, not trusting her voice.
Scott doesn’t start counting, not all at once, his mouth presses against her
temple, leaving a kiss there before he begins.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three,” she finishes, the gun coming to life under her hands.
***** You can't go home again - Kate/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt she woke up in a cold sweat on the floor / next to a
     family portrait drawn when you were four / and beside a jar of two
     cent coins that are no good no more / she’ll lay it aside.
You can’t go home again, somebody said that, somewhere Kate can’t remember, but
it sticks in her head for three months until she was sure she believed it–but
with the road under her feet and the moon her only light and company, home is
all she thinks to go.
(he’s waiting for her, sitting on the steps of the old creaky porch like when
they would wait for the bus in the morning, but from the other side, night
always a dull orange glow from the neighborhood streetlamp, a cool scent on the
air–winter had come home with them, ghosts come to haunt an empty house full of
memories to haunt them right back.
when he looks up at her, she expects his eyes to be golden, like the last time
she saw them, but they’re black, like the night sky and she drops her bag with
the few belongings she had stolen on the walkway and throws her arms around his
neck, pressing her face against his cool skin.
he doesn’t hold her back, but she can feel his hands hovering near her body,
like he might.)
Maybe Scott had the same idea, once he grabbed at his own freedom, the pair of
them taken and taking themselves back, following familiar paths like a compass
always points north.
(he holds her when she smashes the portrait later, arms wrapping around her
like chains, holding her still as she struggles, as she screams, eyes burning
and brimming with saltwater, an urge to see the smiling faces burn, scorch away
the lie of a happy family, purge the secrets eeking out of her skin.
“don’t touch that,” he says, voice thick, harsh, a flash of the gold she
remember after he sets her on the floor and she reaches for the shards, loose
and disconnected from her body, hanging above herself, hovering close.
she wants to ask, would you eat me if i cut myself? wants to test it out, prick
her finger and see if he would suck away the blood.
but scott sweeps away the sharp edges, like they were never there, and tucks
the picture in a drawer where their mother kept her recipes.) 
***** demon on my back - Kate/Scott *****
I would never hurt you, Scotty, Kate croons.
Scott thinks he believes her, even with warm blood on her hands, leaving smears
and fingerprints across his cheeks, the smell cloying at the back of his
throat, making his fangs pop, uncontrolled; believes it when she dips her
fingers into the wound of her latest victim and trails the blood around his
lips, flattening his hair with her soaked hands.
A thank you, she says, mouth twisted to the side, and he shudders, remembering
the holes in her, the way he tried to hold them closed with his hands, thinking
about the venom and for once, showed some restraint at the wrong time, for
saving my life. 
***** heat of you - Kate/Scott *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt warmth.
Kate has nightmares now.
(she used to sleep like the dead, near impossible to wake up, their mother
trying to drag her out of bed in the morning until she couldn’t get out herself
and it was Scott’s job, knocking on Kate’s door, yelling get your ass up, or
we’ll miss the bus because their father wasn’t there and their mother was
asleep–he liked it, that little chip in the perfection of his sister, one thing
he was better than her about)
She sleeps more now and less, light sleep on the verge of waking for short
blocks of time, dark circles growing under her eyes as her skin grows pale,
washing her out, hair pulled out of her face in a messy bun—dark now, dyed back
brown after that demon turned it red. Kate sleeps in his bed, curled up under
the covers, her face pressed against his pillow, until her breathing evens out
and her heart beat slows—he waits and listens, stands guard perched in a chair
in the corner of the room, unable to make himself leave.
(they stuck around, though she begged him to go, still begs him to go, but
Scott doesn’t know where they could go when hell’s still on the loose, safer
here than anywhere else—I hate them, she whispers to him at night, tears hot on
his neck, it’s all their fault; he doesn’t argue, but swallows hard)
Her scent lingers long after she’s gone, Scott urging her to take a shower,
like deja vu—home alone with his mother, bartering and dealing, I’ll wash the
dishes if you get dressed—Kate harder and easier, a well-placed please making
her fold. He lays in the heat she left behind, listening to the water running,
counting down the seconds to know when it’s been too long.
***** i went dancing with my sister - Kate/Scott *****
Scott touches her in soft, careful ways that make her feel delicate, like he
taking pains not to handle her too much in case she might break, aware of his
strength and choosing to ghost his fingers across her skin and forgoing the
pressure. “Are you sure?” he asks, words stunted, like they’re tripping over
themselves out of his mouth. “I don’t want to hurt you—I mean, it doesn’t
always hurt, but I have to, you have to—” 
Kate rushes up to kiss him and breaks the skin of her lip on his teeth; Scott
groans and licks her lip, but tugs back, breathing into her mouth but not any
closer, her blood smeared across his lips.
(It’s been there before, bolder and redder, dripping down his chin; she wants
to laugh at him—I don’t want to hurt you—thinking of the healing marks on her
wrist, the scars on her shoulder, how his fangs felt sinking in—white-hot and
sudden—how it couldn’t be any worse than that, it couldn’t be any better.) 
"Come on, just do it," Kate says, pulling him close again, her fingers stroking
the scales that have erupted across the back of his neck. 
***** champion - Kate/Kisa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt kiss on the forehead.
Her lips are cool, cooler than any lips she had ever felt (cooler than her
father’s dry kisses on her cheek, than her mother’s wet press against her
temple, both fading to memory, ghost sensations to haunt her at the back of her
mind, throbbing in her knees as she kneels at a different altar, for goddess
not of her father’s teaching); her mouth presses against her brow like a wet
cloth over her forehead that feels too hot, her lipstick tacky, sticking to her
skin when she pulls away.
Her cold hands cup around Kate’s face, under her jaw as she tilts her head up,
eyes cast on hers—they’re brilliant and gold, the kind of eyes she remembers
from dreams (or nightmares, she never could decide, never could make up her
mind—angel or demon, it didn’t matter, in the end).
She smiles, teeth bared, but not sharp, a warmth inside rising up to turn her
eyes molten as her fingers comb through Kate’s hair, letting the strands fall
across her shoulders.
“Thank you, pequeñita,” she says, like she might mean it, like it might be
enough for what it cost, rubbing her thumb across her forehead, smearing the
red of her lipstick over her pale skin.
***** heart & home - Kisa/Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
The bed is too small, Vanessa thinks, listening to the creaking of the springs,
the give in the rod-iron; they needed something sturdier, bigger, to hold all
this weight.
Santanico nestles against her left side, burrowed under Vanessa’s arm, face
tucked against her throat, sleeping still with her hand resting over Vanessa’s
chest, fingertips brushing Seth’s arm wrapped over them both. Richie and his
long arms reach around Seth, pressing his brother closer her her body, face
against the back of his neck, their legs knotted and tangled, pressing them
closer together with a hand on her hip, fingers brushing Santanico’s bare skin.
It’s a wonder she can breathe, swaddled in the middle, it’s a wonder they fit
at all.
(my name’s Kisa, Santanico tells her at breakfast—it’s seven at night, but
that’s breakfast now, she and Seth picking up their nocturnal rhythm—reaching
for her hand and tracing the length of lifeline, embedded deep in her palm, but
I don’t feel like a Kisa anymore
she stils; Vanessa has learned to let her have breathing room, watching as she
lifts her eyes to hers—
Seth curses, and Richie laughs, loud and hearty in a way that feels less rare,
these days, both of them too big, too loud for her tiny apartment, but she
doesn’t startle, keeps holding Vanessa’s eyes as she presses their palms
together;
I like it here, she says, and Vanessa can’t deny that she does too, likes the
way they make her apartment feel too full, no more empty spaces)
***** waves - Kisa/Richie *****
The water is still warm, even under the moonlight—the day’s heat hadn’t left it
yet, not like the sand, cool under the soles of her feet, slick and sticking
between her toes as she lets the water lap at her, the coastline ebbing and
receding back, the night wind tangling her hair.
“I’ve never seen this ocean before, “ she says, glancing over her shoulder at
Richard, standing hesitant on the sand behind her, a shadow at her back she’s
grown used to over the weeks, silent and ever present. “My family—” she
swallows, throat still tight after all these years “—we never made it this far
east.”
Richard shuffles across the sand to her side, sliding his feet into the ocean
beside hers. Strange to see him this way, collar undone, his pants and sleeves
rolled up, the breeze lifting strands of his hair left loose, glasses gone–for
a moment, she thinks she has enough in her to unravel him, take him apart layer
by layer, see what’s inside, but she’s been inside his head and Richard still
has yet to make sense to her.
“I’ve never seen the coast from this side of the border. Seth would’ve—” He
says, and stops himself, ducking his head, jaw tightening under his cheek.
Her hand raises, as if to touch him, but stalls, faltering on where—hold his
hand, grabs his shoulder, stroke his cheek—she can’t think of what would be
welcome, if any, not from her.
“Do you think he found his beach?” she asks, unable to stop herself, words
flying off her tongue unbidden, quicker than she could catch them.
Richard gasps, then laughs as he exhales, thick and raw, a rough broken sound.
“No,” he says, shaking his head, burying his feet under the mud. “Geckos are
never lucky enough to get what we want.”
She doesn’t touch him and Richie slides his hands into his pockets, out of
reach, eyes cast down as he watches the water wash back the sand from the tops
of his feet, unburying him as the silence lingers between them, palpable as a
heartbeat.
“Let’s go,” she says, a soft command, finality heavy in her voice. “It’s just
not the same without the sun.” 
***** freedom - Kisa/Richie/Vanessa *****
Vanessa didn’t expect it would be Richie to bust her out—she should have known
Seth wouldn’t risk it, she knew that the moment she raised her gun to the
officer’s head, knew it the moment she surrendered to the ranger with kind eyes
and soft lies; she knew who she married. But Richie comes for her with strange
eyes, flashing gold as his skin ripples, blood dripping from his mouth, he
comes with a dark-haired woman at his side, staring at Vanessa like she can see
right through her skin, gaze incisive, slicing through into her mind, her
chest, her guts—she shudders as Richie grabs her hand, picks her up from the
floor.
“You alright?” he asks, his voice smooth and familiar; he wipes away the blood
on his shirtsleeve, and Vanessa remembers the photos the ranger showed her, the
women with no eyes and feels her gut clench. “I can’t believe my brother would
sink this low.”
Vanessa laughs, the sound catching, noticing for the first time the absence of
Seth—the woman to Richie’s left, but no one on his right but empty space.
She swallows. “I’m fine.”
 
 
The woman crawls into the backseat with Vanessa, slithering between the seats,
stepping over the console while Richie drives them, speeding away. She shifts
close, moving into Vanessa’s space peering at her in the dark with large,
fathomless eyes, her fingers stroking Vanessa’ hair back from her face, tucking
the strands behind her ears.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” she says, tipping Vanessa’s chin up with her
fingers. “Those memories of yours are lies. Richard isn’t a monster.”
Vanessa laughs again, trembling as he continues to stroke her hair–the woman’s
fingertips are cool; Vanessa hasn’t forgotten the way their eyes had glowed,
the blood on Richie’s mouth, the way his skin was scaled then not–hasn’t
forgotten the women without eyes, carved out with delicate precision. “Then
what is he?”
She cups Vanessa’s face, eyes on hers like she could make Vanessa understand
with a glance, eyes glowing in the passing headlights. “He’s Richard,” she
says. “And I’m Santanico.”
 
 
It’s easy slipping into bed with them—Vanessa too tired to think much of it,
sliding between the sheets beside Richie, like rewinding her life, going back
to when Seth was in prison and she wasn’t, when Richie took up space in her
apartment and her bed. Richie pulls her close to him, Santanico curled up,
already dozing against his back; his skin isn’t as warm as she remembers, cold
like something died.
Vanessa brushes her fingertips across his brow, wondering where his glasses
were, what happened to him. “Where’s Seth?” she asks, so quiet she’s not
certain she said it out loud, until he shudders, his eyes reddening, becoming
wet.
“He got what he wanted,” he says, and something pricks as Vanessa’s eyes.
She leans up and presses a kiss to his forehead, then tucks her head under his
chin. “If he’s gone, then I don’t think Seth knows what he wants,” she says
against the skin of Richie’s throat.
***** payback - Kisa/Seth *****
Richie was never a great con, nervous smile and flimsy lies, shaking out his
cards with trembling hands (lies never came as easy as harsh truth–Richie’s
tongue wasn’t silver, but serrated steel); he surrendered when Seth said they
should go in without him, Santanico watching him close, but there was no
bitterness left, not a trace, just as long as they followed his plans, Richie
was content, maybe almost happy.
Santanico (Kisa thrums in his head) falls into his rhythm easy, curling her arm
around his, fingers gripping his bicep as she leans in close, slipping on the
role like a second-skin, quicker than him, quicker than a switch, smiling at
him and looking at him with moon-doe eyes so large and black, he almost could
believe she liked him.
(so what do I call you now? he asked, after, the lights still fizzling,
sparking every few breaths; she kept staring at the pile of dust at her feet,
fingers toying with the end of her hair, teeth sunk into the red of her bottom
lip–whatever you like, she said, locking her eyes on his, dark and
fathomless, I don’t care
Kisa, he thought, wanting to run his tongue around it, see how it fit this new
feeling in his chest, how he saw her now, a couple layers exposed; whatever you
say, sweetheart, he said, tucking loose sooty strand behind her ear, tracing
the metal snake curled around the edge that guarded her skin)
She tugs on his collar when she kisses him, pulling him against her into a dark
alcove by the stairs, away from prying eyes of the cops, suits that looked a
lot like goddamn FBI–it’s not sweet, but it is soft, a demanding gentleness
that shivers across the back of his neck in white-hot sparks, her tongue
curling against his as he breathes into her breathless mouth, cheek cool under
his palm.
She rubs away the red stain left on his lips, his chin when she pulls back.
“Close call,” Seth says against her thumb.
Her mouth twists; her eyes flash, black to gold. 
“I owed you one.”
***** a con - Kisa/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt fake dating.
She doesn’t dress up this time (or anymore, it’s been weeks since Seth had seen
her in a dress, wonders if she even owns one now), jeans and thick-knitted
sweaters, her hair braided loosely, strands falling around her face, dust on
her boots, makeup smudged around her eyes, rougher around her edges she had
always carried with her shoulders back and spine straight.
(she looks a bit like Vanessa, like this, in certain lights, hitting him all of
a sudden, strange and striking hard in his gut)
It’s fine, Richie says, straightening his tie when Seth asks, she looks better
next to you, at any rate—
(he remembers when Seth first saw them together, up on the stage, fitting
together like two slick pieces of art as the snake bit into her throat, then
again at the restaurant, her leather dress a match to his dark suit, paired up
neat and tidy, stunning, for a moment, just the sight)
—more believable.
Seth knows all about looking believable, so he trades his suit in for jeans of
his own, a soft gray knit shirt that fits close to his skin. They walk together
as Richie follows a hundred feet behind, sliding into his escalade as Seth
opens up the creaking door to his red charger, helps her inside, cool fingers
brushing his cheek as thank you. Inside, she takes his hand, curls their
fingers together, laced together as he turns the ignition.
“Ready, sweetheart?” he asks, smooth and easy, sliding into the role.
She smiles, sharp as always, dark eyes flickering to life.
“Sure, honey.” 
***** chew me up - Kisa/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt things you said through your teeth
Santanico shoves him against a wall—not her full strength, all his bones
intact, nothing shattered or split. Going soft on me, he thinks, feeling his
mouth twist as she snarls, fangs and full-faced scales, into his face, hand
pressing down on his windpipe, claws breaking skin.
(It makes his blood run hot and gets him a little hard—he wonders if she can
smell it on him, see it in his fucking head, how he thinks of Richie shoving
him to kiss him when Seth riled him past words or Vanessa pushing him back
against the door that first and last time, if she knows, sees it reflected in
his eyes rather than needing to dig her way under his skin.)
“Gonna kill me, señorita?” he chokes out, jaw tight, his vision going hazy at
the edges. “Well, fucking get on with it. I don’t have all day.”
Santanico releases him then, lets go like she had just remembered he was
diseased and contagious, wiping her hands on her pants like that’s enough to
get rid of the taint. “I’m not going to kill you,” she says, scales receding,
red-painted mouth quirked to the side, eyes guarded but softened with false
modesty, gazing at him with lowered lashes. “Someone’s going to someday, but
it’s not going to be me.”
Seth runs his hand down his throat, wincing at the bruising, smearing the
wetness to his collarbone. “Promise to my brother, no doubt.” He laughs, ragged
and sharp. “Tell Richie I don’t need his protection, not anymore. Dad’s dead
and I’ve outgrown it.”
Santanico clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “Tell him yourself.” Her eyes
flick open wider as she cocks her head to the side, grin growing broader so he
can see her teeth, pristine white against the red of her lips. “Unless you’re
too scared to show your face. After all, this is all your fault.”
Seth hadn’t had to move that fast in a while and his bones creaked, his muscles
ached like he sprained something using the momentum to lend weight to pin her
back across the alleyway, arm across her throat. “This is not my fault,” he
spits into her face that remains unchanged, only grows in amusement. “If you
hadn’tfucked with his head, then he’d be here with me.”
Santanico reaches up and presses her hand to the side of his face, careful and
gentle. Seth watches her expression shift, softer staring straight at him, but
her eyes distant like she was looking at him but not, pulled inside like Richie
used to get sometimes and it makes Seth’s stomach turn.
“You never did listen to him, did you?”
Seth drops his arm.
***** bandage - Kisa/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt heal.
The gauze is familiar in her hands, dry woven cloth that brushes through her
fingers as she wraps a long strip around Seth’s forearm, tight enough to apply
the right pressure, loose enough not to cut off circulation—least she could do,
though the action feels heavy, weighing down on her chest, aching and still
fresh, Seth’s eyes on her; looking at her, looking through her.
(Manola used to look at her like that, waiting for her to speak, always
waiting, patient and steady, exchanging blood for Kisa’s cool hands on her
throat, cleaning the holes she made, taping gauze to Manola’s skin, change
bandages and checking for infection—least she could do)
Kisa doesn’t ask about the scars that litter his arm, the one stained with ink,
or the still pink puncture wounds at his wrist, the raised skin at his throat,
under the space where the flames lick at his neck, doesn’t ask about the scar
toughened skin, layer upon layer, torn open and healed harder. She tasted it on
her tongue, a bit of his soul still replaying in her mind, his memories
blending into hers.
(Richie with a mouthful of blood, Richie small and young covering her with his
body, Richie with a dog, Richie smiling, the way prison felt, claustrophobic
and suffocating, his anger as hot as hers, just not as ancient, the way the
needle felt like fangs, sinking into her skin, burning as the heroin hit)
Kisa runs tape along the edge of the gauze, keeping it closed, keeping it
secure, looking up to meet his eyes, holding for a moment. “You’re secrets are
safe with me,” she tells him, fingers circling the marks she didn’t leave,
still fresh, still healing. “I promise.”
Seth grins, mouth a little sharp, but genuine, a warmth flooding his eyes.
“Thanks, princess,” he says, the nickname not smarting in the same way as he
leans forward and presses his lips against her forehead, leaving a kiss as he
pulls back just as quick, getting to his feet.
You taste like cinnamon, she thinks as he turns his back and walks away,
licking the corner of her mouth, hands moving to pack up the first aid kit.
***** you're knocking at my windows - Kisa/Vanessa *****
Vanessa fits Santanico’s fingers around the gun, molds them to get the right
grip, straightens her wrist; she’s warm across her back, like the sun beating
down but more alive, heart pounding through her ribs, the scent of he blood hot
under her perfume—Santanico bites back her fangs and suffers how her throat
goes dry.
"Let’s rob a bank," Santanico says, licking her lips.
Vanessa laughs, heavy in her ear, and the sound travels down, kicks under her
chest. “Maybe after you learn how to shoot.”
***** You could be my luck - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt girl!Richie/girl!Seth.
Richie fits her fingers through Seth’s, a finger between two of hers, fitting
their hands together like teeth on a zipper while they sit at the edge of the
school office. Seth  grins at her, tucking her messy hair behind her ear.
There’s blood on her teeth, on her lip, her chin, smeared across her  forehead
and Richie traces the scrapes on her knuckles, rubs at her swollen fingers
(it’s not bad, she had said when they called her to the office and she found
Seth, slumped on a plastic chair, hair tangled and matted, shirt torn, you
should see the other guy).
“You shouldn’t get into fights,” Richie whispers, staring at the linoleum
tiles, the places where they weren’t fit together right, leaving crooked cracks
between the large squares. “It’s not worth it. I can’t keep talking around
Uncle Eddie and why he won’t come in and conference about you.”
“I’m almost sixteen,” Seth says, leaning against her side, resting her head on
Richie’s shoulder. “You’re almost past sixteen. Fuck school. We don’t have to
be here anymore and I don’t have to see their stupid fucking mugs anymore.”
Richie sighs, but doesn’t shrug her off, let’s her toy with her fingers now
left in her grasp. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Maybe you could
try not planting your fist in their faces and—”
Seth sits up, reaching with her other hand to grip Richie’s chin, turning her
face to meet her eyes. “I did it for you,” she hisses. “You don’t want to hear
what they said, what they’re always saying. I don’t want you to, so I took care
of it. You could say thank you.”
Her gut twists looking at her sister’s face, fierce and determined, anger in
her eyes but there’s a fondness warming underneath and tries not to think how
it was for her, how Seth makes people bleed and how Seth bleeds for her. It
makes her throat tight, constricting and she can’t say anything, not thank you,
not you don’t have to, not spill her secrets and tell her how she’s not the
only one.
“The principal will see you now,” a voice says.
It takes Seth a moment to drop her hand from her face, another for Richie to
look away, meeting the eyes of the office attendant, looking back and forth
between her and Seth like she caught them doing something more inappropriate.
They’re holding hands when they stand up, and don’t let go.
***** I was set alight - Kisa/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt my body was bruised and I was set alight, but you came
     over me like some holy rite, and although I was burning, you’re the
     only light
Santanico is quick to accept her offering, cool, long fingers clasping her
forearm, around the back of her hand, thumb pressed in the center of of her
palm–Vanessa glances up, locking eyes with Seth watching from the rearview
mirror when Santanico’s fangs sink in, a stinging bust of pain that burns,
forces her breath through her clenched teeth, breathing through it until it
lessens, like the sudden jab of a needle smoothing out to a surreal sucking
sensation, Santanico’s mouth warming over her skin as she feeds.
They should have stopped, Vanessa knew, had told Seth to pull off the highway
and let them out, but once his flight instinct had kicked in, it got his foot
riding hard on the gas pedal, left them speeding down the empty road like he
was still trying to outrun what they had long since left in their dust.
(One of Seth’s hands had dropped off the steering wheel and reached towards
Richie curled in the passenger’s seat, and he turned it palm up, wrist
exposed–Richie was slow to take it, but he did, tangling his fingers through
his brother’s as his mouth descended, teeth sinking into Seth’s skin–easy
solution; two humans, two culebra, simple math, really.)
Santanico breaks off with a gasp, lips painted red with Vanessa’s blood, her
lipstick smeared off on Vanessa’s skin around the fresh wound. Santanico covers
the mark with cloth she tears away from the hem of her t-shirt, pressing down
to staunch the flow, holding tight to Vanessa’s arm as she leans in close,
running her tongue over her lips, lapping up the excess blood when their
foreheads touch.
Vanessa’s head goes light, spinning and for a moment, she swears she sees stars
in the depths of Santanico’s eyes, glittering up through the darkness and she
can’t help staring, transfixed.
Santanico runs the pads of her fingers over the side of Vanessa’s face,
stroking down the slope of her cheekbone, rubbing up the slant of her jaw. “I’m
sorry they hurt you,” she says, cupping her hand under Vanessa’s jaw, her thumb
circling over the rapid flutter of Vanessa’s pulse. “No one should have touched
you.”
(Vanessa never rests well in the day, sleeps fitfully, turning over in the
motel bed in the room they got when Seth knew he couldn’t run anymore, the
light breaking the horizon, giving him new reason to panic. Day terrors, she
had begun to call them, bad dreams that jolt her awake, sweat dampening her
clothes, soaking the back of her neck, old and fresh memories intermingling and
coming to lay roost in her head.
That day she dreams of an old foster home, an old foster father who would knock
her around sometimes when she got to lippy, dreamt of the night he crawled over
her in the twin bed they loaned out to her, breath sour and stinking, making
her gag–but before it could play out, with her knee shooting up between his
legs and her running as he writhed on the floor, he was yanked up by familiar
hands that grabbed him by the head and twisted until the crack hit hard in her
chest, and Santanico dropped him to the floor like a crumpled napkin.
Vanessa opens her eyes to Santanico staring down at her like she had in her
head, crouched above her in the bed, hand reaching towards her hair, combing it
back with her fingers.
“Rest,” she whispers, the hissing lisp a strange comfort, like the flash of
gold in her eyes, smooth feel of her scaled palm across her brow. “No more bad
dreams when I’m around.”)
***** room service - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt threatening the pizza delivery guy.
When they get back stateside (after years—a decade, Seth had told Richie, the
whine of annoyance in his tone, a fucking decade, brother—enough time to pass
so their names will be dusty, a distant memory and if anyone was looking for
them, they’d be looking for men who should be graying, more wrinkles on their
faces than either of them have now, looking ten years younger than they
should), the first thing Seth does is order a pizza.
“I thought we should eat in tonight,” he says, grinning—there was always
something ferocious about Seth’s grin, but Richie thinks it’s worse now,
something wild behind his eyes that Richie had put there, gave him the snap to
his teeth, the flash of gold where there should only be deep brown.
Richie sighs and rolls his eyes, turning towards the motel bed. “Don’t make too
much of a mess.”
Seth gets in his path, laying his hands on his chest, curling his hands in
Richie’s shirt. “Aren’t you going to join me, brother?” He lets go of the
cloth, smooths it out with his palms, staring up with his chin tipped and eyes
half-mast. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Richie can’t help himself but to reach out and cup his hand around the side of
Seth’s face, trace his thumb down the edge of his cheekbone. “Clean up after
yourself, alright?”
Seth’s mouth flattens to a line. “I always do.”
At least it’s not some teenager that knocks on their door, but he’s still
young—college student, maybe, delivering pizzas to get by—a bit on the scrawny
side when Seth drags him inside, the pizza box falling to the ground.
“Thank you for your fast service,” Seth tells him, leaning his face against the
pizza boy’s, scaled and his fangs bared, panting against the boy’s skin—Richie
can see him trembling from his spot on the bed, smell the stench of fear
smothering the air in the room and he wants tell Seth to stop, never understood
why he loved this, the hunt, playing with his food (the fear makes them taste
better, he told him once, and Richie hadn’t wanted to hear more; Richie
knew—the fear always made the blood richer, taste stronger, pump better into
his mouth).  
Seth tugged the boy’s head back by his hair, scraping his fangs against his
throat. “I would give you a tip, but, ah, well,” he says, mouth opening wide
and his fangs driving in—Richie can smell the blood  and it makes his mouth
water, throat grow dry. Their strange hunger that’s also thirst, a feeling that
leaves them empty and desperate, just the scent of blood could make them
frenzied, turn them vicious and wild. Richie swallows and locks his jaw.
But Seth would never let him starve himself and he brings the boy to him, still
clinging to life, eyes glazed and focus hazy, but they stare at Richie when
Seth bares his throat to him, exposes the open wound he made, deep and gory and
red, filling Richie’s nostrils with nothing but his scent, makes the blood drip
on his closed mouth.
“Come on, brother, let’s share.” Seth pulls his eyes from the boy’s to his,
golden in a way he’d grown used to, his tan skin now tan scales, rough and
bumpy along the edge of his brow, mouth red and fangs jutting out of his
mouth—he’d done this, made his brother this because Seth had asked and Richie
could refuse him nothing.
Richie bites over the wound the shape of Seth’s mouth and feels the blood run
thick over his tongue, tries to focus on the taste—mint; new, and he wouldn’t
know what it means—and ignore the images rolling through his mind, a life that
wasn’t his flashing before his eyes as the boy’s heart pounded in his head
until it stopped and everything went black.
Seth takes  the  corpse from him, drops it on the floor and Richie would have
yelled at him, watch the fucking blood, watch the fucking rug—but Seth had
crawled on top of him and shoved him back against the headboard, face fading
back to the one he’s known all his life, imprinted in his head as his brother’s
face, but his mouth was still blood, red dripping off his chin.
He kisses him with his bloody mouth on Richie’s, groaning against him like he
was still hungry—Richie groans, too, likes the taste better when it’s from
Seth’s lips. Seth’s hands curl in the collar of Richie’s shirt and his hips
fall on Richie’s as he settles on his thighs. “I knew you were hungry,” he
whispers, licking the length of Richie’s bottom lip. “Always gonna take care of
you, brother.”
“And don’t worry, I’ll clean up the mess.”
***** I could hunt you like a killer - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt I could hunt you like a killer, with open arms like
     holy healers.
Santanico doesn’t ask where he disappears to, taking off for days at a time.
(Richie asked her once, if it was because she was still in his head, rooting
around for answers; she shook her head, stroking her hands down his cheeks,
cupping his jaw, “I don’t need to be in your head to know things, Richard,” she
had said, turning his head and brushing her mouth across a cheek, thumb rubbing
away the imprint of her lipstick before letting him go.)
He slips away while her back is turned, or her eyes are closed, never while she
is looking, not when she can see him go, slipping out like a straying lover.
Richie’s saving that, the time when she’s watching to turn his back and leave;
he’s not sure for when—a rainy day maybe—but he knows it will be the last time
and he won’t be coming back.
Richie chases a cold trail until it gets warmer, listening to the clenching in
his gut, trusting his instincts, closing his eyes and scenting the wind—he
always finds his way to Seth, finds his way back like other people find their
way home. It’s always different, each time he gets in the car, new direction
because Seth’s always moving, never stays in one place too long, never settling
like Richie told him to.
Paradise doesn’t exist, Richard, he said the last time Richie found him, when
Richie turned his back—he wondered if Seth was getting used to the sight,
getting familiar with him walking away—I was chasing a pipe dream when I ran us
down here and look what it got me.
Fucking nothing.
(Find El Rey, yet, brother?
It was the first time he found him, picking him up off the street where he’d
fallen, drunk off his ass and stumbling on uneven pathways.
Seth fell into him easy like it hadn’t been weeks, like they never separated,
leaning on him heavy, pressing his face against Richie’s neck and smelling
sour, like sickness and grief.
Been to plenty of beaches, but didn’t stick around, didn’t see the point.)
He follows Seth down a street in Durango, falling into sync with his steps,
pacing himself so he stays a few feet behind to watch him, to focus himself
through the bustle of other bodies to pick up the sound of his heartbeat, the
exhale of his lungs, hold onto his scent through the haze of the city air, cut
through the grime and the sweat of bodies, blood pumping under their skins to
get at Seth and hold on.
Richie doesn’t know he’s being led until Seth turns a corner into an alleyway
and he finds himself being herded back against a building. Seth shoves into him
before Richie could pounce, hands grabbing for his collar and yanking Richie
down to press their mouths together, quick and harsh, more teeth than lips,
like Seth’s trying to bite at his mouth and taste blood, like he’s the one with
a hunger for it.
(It always ends up here, their bodies colliding like it’s the only thing they
were made to do, smash into one another and find a way they can fit together,
searching for notches that must be there, that should exist because they’re
halves of a whole, and Richie knows there’s got to be a way to lock themselves
together so they can never break apart, that’s not sewing up their skin and
hoping they won’t bleed too bad when they tear themselves in two.)
Richie rolls him around and slides his hands under his shirt, pushing up
against the wall with his palms under his ribs, pushing between his thighs as
Seth groans, panting against his mouth as Richie feels his heart like it’s
pounding in his hand.
“You should stop drinking,” he says, running his tongue over his bruised mouth,
lips reddened and swollen, tasting his blood brought so close to the surface
through the thin skin under the stale tequila.
“Shut the fuck up, Richie.”
***** Soul meets body - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt daemon au.
It’s said that Richie Gecko doesn’t have a daemon.
(Alba settled early, after Richie’s first growth spurt, she settled as his
limbs began to ache. She settled small, a practical shape, nothing either of
them had imagined, but Seth had breathed out slow, grateful she hadn’t become a
dog like their dad’s daemon was.
Richie begged her to reconsider, holding her in his hand, stroking over her
spines.
“I like this one. It feels… right,” she said, shifting from palm to palm, tiny
enough to fit in one hand. “It’s done anyway, no use trying to change it.”
Seth had watched him sigh and bring her up to rest on his shoulder, his teeth
worrying at his lip.)
Which is a load of shit, in Seth’s humble opinion—like a person could exist
without a daemon, and Richie’s still walking, still breathing. It helps,
though—the legend preceding them, gives them an edge when most people are
scared of Richie, got a reputation for being dangerous and unpredictable
without having to build it. Sometimes Seth thinks it’s cool, the way the story
spreads, blowing his brother out of proportion, drawing him in lines more myth
than man, but he doesn’t like the way people look at him at times, makes his
fingers twitch and reach to touch his gun, like Richie’s defective and not
entirely whole, a monstrosity for lacking something they’ve got.
(Luce had settled not long after, Seth following Richie like he had his whole
life, ever since he came into this world ten months later. It felt right.
Richie had stroked over her back, running his fingers up her tail in a way that
felt white-hot under Seth’s skin, shuddery reverberating down his spine as Luce
wound around Richie’s legs, nudging her face against his calf.
“It’s not fair,” he said.
Luce settled at his feet, peering up at him with unblinking, wide green eyes.
“A housecat is not a particularly fearsome creature, Richard,” she told him,
cocking her head.
“You’re still a predator.”
Luce’s fur had ruffled, fluffing up as her back arched and ears flattened.
“That’s not all that matters.”
Seth had held Alba close to his mouth, rubbing the pads of his fingers against
her soft, vulnerable underbelly. “If it’s any consolation, I like you just
fine.”)
Richie keeps Alba in his jacket pocket, nestled close to his heart and Seth
thinks that’s got to count for something, even if he hides her. “At any rate,
it’s safer,” he tells him, running his hand down the front of his suit. “She’s
too small and you know how jobs can be.”
Seth doesn’t argue because it’s sound fucking logic, but  he can’t help the way
his mouth twists downwards and makes Luce’s throat rumble, like she might growl
if she opened her mouth.
(Seth caught him sometimes, sprawled in bed and naked to the waist, Alba a
small pile of dark brown needles on his chest. He’d whispered low to her, stuff
Seth couldn’t hear, but it felt like settling, like something locking into
place.
Richie had been early, but in a lot of ways, he’d been late.)
“I don’t hate her, you know,” Richie says in the car, Alba free from the
confines of his jacket and perched on the edge of Richie’s knee. “I never did.”
Seth doesn’t look at him, but reaches to brush his fingertips back over Alba’s
spines, then reaches up to cup his hand over the back of Richie’s neck, thumb
stroking over the corner of his jaw.
“I know.”
***** Thunderstorms on the inside - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt werewolf au, full moon issues.
When Seth wakes, the first thing he notices is how fucking rancid his mouth
tastes, like something died, thick and gamy on his tongue, drying at the back
of his throat. There’s pressure between his teeth like something got lodged
there, stuck between the molars, painful like not having brushed his teeth the
night before and scrub away the bits and pieces.
The night before. It comes back to him in pieces, strange colorblind flashes
that never make much sense—the wolf has his own language, hunt, kill, run;
anything else seems beyond him, instincts in place of emotions, acting without
much thought.
(Seth had told Richie once, what it felt like—he tried to laugh, make
light,what’s the difference from before? he asked, but then Seth jumped on him,
pinned him to the floor, a snarl on his lips and the wolf rushed to the
surface—bite, pack, mate; Seth recoiled, falling on his ass away from Richie,
watching as he sat up panting, eyes huge and bright behind his glasses,
smelling him sharp and inviting, and told him, the difference is, I have some
self-restraint.)
He tries to move, but that’s when the pain starts, shooting through his body
like he slept wrong, slept twisted, leaving knots and kinks in his body where
they shouldn’t be—or his limbs are numb, useless pieces of  flesh that had
fallen asleep and pick like a thousand fucking needles when he tries to curl a
different way on the ground. The grass underneath him sticks to his bare skin,
warm from his body but wet in the early morning dew. He can smell the dirt,
layers of it, pick out different minerals and toxins in this trippy way that
barely begins to make sense—he can tell them apart, but doesn’t have a name for
most of them.
Seth smells blood, but he realizes it’s him that’s covered, dried around his
mouth, dark and sticky down his throat. It all comes back to him—he made a
kill, some deer that had wandered into his path; he took its throat out before
it had a chance to run, blood hot in his mouth as he bit down, snapped its
neck.
His stomach churns as he gags, rolling over to puke in the grass.  After its
over, stomach empty of raw deer meat, he scoots away from the mess, sitting up
and holding his aching head between his hands, resting his forehead on his
knees, folding himself up close, shivering in the cool morning air. Seth isn’t
sure how long he waits, a few heartbeats maybe before Richie comes, hears him a
few yards away, sneakers squeaking through the wet grass. The blanket he drops
over his shoulders is warm and woolen, and Richie is sturdy to hold onto as he
helps him up, half-picking him off the ground as he stands on wobbly, coltish
legs, weak like a fucking newborn.
“You ran further than usual,” Richie says, slowing his pace to match Seth’s
uneasy steps, holding him up with his arm around his shoulder—Seth leans into
him, running his nose along his collarbone;  Richie always smells clean, a
sharp freshness that brings to mind starting over, renewal, earthy like the
muddy beginnings of spring (the wolf says brother, pack, mate, rumbling under
his skin). “I was worried—fuck, sometimes I worry you’ll run too far and I
won’t find you.”
“Then I’ll find you, brother.” Seth grins up at him, thinks it much look awful,
bits of his kill smeared over his teeth, mouth outlined in blood. “Got your
scent now.”
***** let's run away - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt my heart stops when you look at me / just one touch
     now, baby, i believe this is real / so take a chance and don't ever
     look back.
It was a stupid idea, but not one of his worst, of which there had been plenty
more to keep it low on the list.
(he couldn’t help it from coming out of his mouth, low and careful as he leaned
heavy on Richie’s side, bruised and bloody and holding steady to the only solid
thing he could ever remember having, Richie clean and mark free, all healed up
like a goddamn miracle—wanna do a tour, like old times, huh, brother? he asked,
coughing with bruised lungs, Richie’s hand soothing over his back, sliding up
to lead Seth’s head to his shoulder, stroking over his hair
maybe when you’re patched up, Richie said, not a yes or a no, but Seth dragged
him into the car before his ribs had fully healed, Richie’s eyes on him when he
sped out onto the road)
Seeing the sights by night was a fruitless fucking pursuit (but that didn't
stop them), roadside attractions closed up at two in the morning--even if they
broke in, hopped a fence, the lights were out and Seth could see the World’s
Biggest Ball of Twine, even if he could touch it, Richie leading his hands
through the shadows to the rough ridges.
The Grand Canyon was a void, purple and cool blues, and infinite darkness, and
Seth wonders what Richie saw, eyes shining gold in the moonlight, his hand
gripping the collar of Seth’s shirt when he moves too close to the edge and
stays there, fingers cold rubbing circles at the base of Seth’s skull.
(look up, Richie whispers in his ear, sounding like a gust of wind and Seth
turns his eyes to the sky; he’d never seen so many stars, too much city and not
enough country, the lights almost blinding, tiny explosions across the midnight
blue and he gasps, hand gripping Richie’s hair, clean and dry and free of gel,
when his mouth slides wet around his cock, taking him all the way in as Seth’s
breath comes out in puffs of fog, Richie humming around him as he watches the
stars)
Richie doesn’t drive, lets Seth have the wheel and decide where they go,
offering navigation when Seth needs direction, but doesn’t argue, a calm
growing inside him that Seth doesn’t understand, but isn’t scared of—lets
Richie tune the radio to a station that only plays cool jazz and pushes on
through the night to next coast, a new city.
(days are passed sleeping or fucking slow with the shades drawn and curtains
pulled tight, Richie warming so close to his skin, biting him with careful nips
and lapping up the drops of blood, hiding his grin against Seth’s neck on the
side of the flames, lips pressed over the scars that never healed quite
right—he misses his heartbeat sometimes, his chest real but hollow, but they
can share, been sharing with Richie his whole life)
“Seth,” Richie says, and he keeps driving into the warm orange on the horizon.
“You have to stop.”
He turns to look at Richie, hooking his gaze on his, staring too long while
speeding down the empty interstate--no eyes on the fucking road, no scrambling
for the wheel, Richie matching him breath for breath, mimicking his pattern as
they share a life.
“I know,” Seth says, pulling his gaze away, and presses the gas pedal a little
harder.
Seth had always liked sunsets better.
***** In your dreams - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt post s2, creepy Richie watches Seth sleep
Seth doesn’t sleep well.
(you should fucking do something about it, but Richie can’t make his legs move,
can’t push himself up from the chair in the corner of the room, eyes on Seth
twisting in the sheets of a too big bed, fitful as it swallows him up, heart
rate fast, the tempo pounding in Richie’s head—
it’s how he spends the hours he should be resting, but can’t, restless energy
alive under his ribs whenever he splits from Seth to his own room, the distance
too much to bear when it’s only a few square feet; the sounds Seth makes in his
sleep echo off the stone walls)
The dark circles become a permanent fixture and Richie wants to rub the way the
smudge in his skin with his thumbs, wants to drug his drink and carry Seth off
to his room, stand guard until the gold in his skin comes back, no more of the
pale pallor that makes Richie sick to look at—maybe it’s switch, from daywalker
to nocturnal; Richie remembers when he rose with the sun, bleary-eyed and
living.
(Richie doesn’t sleep—eats little and feels cold all the time, like a chill had
seeped into his bones and poisoned what’s left of his heart sitting too long in
the bowels of Jacknife’s, too long in a chair that never feels quite right, too
long alone, burying himself underground)
Seth’s screams shred up his insides, the kind he’d never forgotten, guttural,
raw screams that never wake him, come from the black pits inside of him,
infected wounds that never healed but turned septic. Too many painful corners
that Seth never had the talent to bury deep enough, not like Richie, anger
still burning in Seth’s guts like a furnace he keeps stoking.
(sometimes Richie thinks the black flames move, writhe and flick, sharp sinuous
lines winding around Seth’s arm, licking at his throat, alive and burnt out)
Seth’s forehead is sticky under his palms when he folds, running his hands over
his face, seeking the heat of a fever lurking underneath but getting lost at
first contact, Seth’s skin sweet to the touch—it was easy, so fucking easy,
just his name, whimpered and whispered, just Richie from Seth’s throat, hooking
and tugging, drawing him to the bed, drawing him to Seth, drawing him between
the sheets and pressing close. Seth burrows against him, head tucked under
Richie’s chin; no more screaming, no more fits, breathing soft, steady, and
deep.
(Seth is a fire in his hands, the kind Richie winds and winds himself around,
lets him engulf him, skin scorched and cold blood warmed, wicking away the ice
he let settle in his veins, the kind he can’t help touching—reminds him of
Santanico and her beams of light, hand catching fire and skin smoking,
bubbling; like touching Seth could turn his hands red, bright and burned.)
When Richie sleeps, he doesn’t dream anymore.
***** cut - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt knives.
Richie’s always looked gorgeous with a blade against his skin, with a shock of
red bubbling up, settling off his fair complexion, the blade glinting in the
low light, making Richie shine. 
His blood still tastes the same—bright and coppery, bursting over Seth’s tongue
rusty and familiar, not as warm, but warm enough and Seth can’t help but lap it
up, ducking his head and licking across the cut he made under Richie’s
collarbone. Richie groans, reverberating deep in his throat, arching up towards
Seth’s mouth chasing the closing wound like Seth got a hand on his dick or his
lips around a nipple—like Seth was already fucking him.
“You like that?” he whispers, fingers braced around Richie’s hips, leaning his
forehead against his temple, licking his lips, licking up the excess blood.
“You like when I feed off you, brother?”
Richie shudders. Doesn’t matter that Seth’s still human, doesn’t matter that
Richie’s not–it turns Richie’s goddamn crank, cock leaking over Seth’s fingers
when he gets a hand inside his briefs, lets out a sharp cry, bitten off when
Seth’s blunt edged teeth sink into his jugular and breaks through his skin. 
It never lasts—all the marks Seth leaves heal right up, as soon as he leaves
them, only thing left is the stain, red rubbed pink, drying across Richie’s
chest like a flush. 
***** i still find you dashing - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt Your pretty face is soaked in blood, but you know, I
     still find you dashing.
“Hey, hey,” Seth says in that voice Richie’s grown used to, the hushed soft
tone that makes Richie feel like a wild animal, something to be approached with
careful steps and outstretched palms, his tone gentle.  Seth tips his chin up
to drag the damp cloth up his stained neck. “It’s alright, buddy, I got you
covered.”
Richie winces at the nickname just as it unfurls inside him, spreading warmth
out from his chest, tingling in his fingers and churning in his gut. “Seth,” he
says, trying to pull away, but Seth’s hand clamps around his wrist, holding him
steady, holding him close. “I can do this myself. You don’t have to—” His
throat catches when Seth looks up at him, tightening down on his words,
squeezing his voice at the sight of his eyes open, staring up at Richie
unhindered, a tenderness kindling underneath his expression, framed in his
lashes. “—you don’t have to do this for me.”
Seth’s tongue darts out, swiping across his bottom lip as the corner of his
mouth tugs upwards. “I want to, brother.”
(Richie hadn’t meant to make such a mess—he should be past that now, he knows
he’s past that, making a mess when he eats, when he feeds—but the kill had been
quick, a sudden spring in his legs that had him on the guy and fangs digging
into his jugular, tearing him open as his blood spurted into his mouth and all
over him, ruining another shirt. Seth hasn’t learned to look away, watching now
with greedy spectator’s eyes that shudder through Richie like it might loosen
his skin and expose him, meat and bones, to the world. The fear had been
replaced with something Richie couldn’t make himself pick up and give a name
to, the change in Seth that makes him grab his bloody hands and lead him away
from another corpse.)
Seth rinses the cloth and brings it back to Richie’s skin, pulling at his
shirt, tearing the buttons off—doesn’t matter, it’s stained anyway, has to be
burned, rid them of the evidenced Richie trailed back to their motel room.  The
cloth is lukewarm against his cheek as Seth swipes it across his face, cleaning
away the last of the splatter. Richie loses himself in the sensation, the rough
wet drag as Seth breathes out, inhaling in, his heart beat a steady percussion
that lulls Richie away.
“Hey Richie,” Seth says, tugging on his chin to get his attention, his brown
eyes the first thing that comes back into focus. “Can I see?”
Richie knows what he means, can see it the way he tugs his bottom lip behind
his teeth, how Seth tips his head down, but keeps his eyes cast up, lids at
half mast—an artful manipulation of his face, erasing away years worn out on
his skin, taking away the time he spent in prison, making invisible the gray
peeking into his temples; all Richie can see is Seth at fifteen, trying to
seduce him with a glance.
“Alright.”
It’s like flipping a switch now, about twisting his jaw the right way and his
face shifts, bones rearranging as his skin gives way to scales, fangs
descending. Seth watches with hitching breaths, but Richie doesn’t smell fear
on him anymore, but something else that feels more base, curls into his nose
and catches at the back of his throat.
Richie closes his eyes when Seth touches him, dropping the cloth into the sink,
inhaling when Seth’s fingertips map the crest of his brow and stroke down,
palms pressing briefly against his cheeks until his fingers curl under his jaw.
Richie feels the pressure of his thumbs on his fangs, sliding them down the
curve. It sends shivers through him, makes his fists clench at his sides—makes
his chest hurt, though his heart has long since died. Seth’s lips follow the
same pattern, sweeping across his forehead, pressing hard in the middle,
kissing both cheeks before their mouths collide.
He holds still and lets Seth kiss him, leaning into the sensation of his tongue
wrapping around each of his fangs. He nudges at the tips with his tongue, his
lips sliding against Richie’s once more before it’s just his breath, hot and
thick with humidity as Seth lays his forehead to Richie’s, holding him close by
the back of the neck.
“You’re still my brother like this,” he says, nuzzling their noses together;
Richie’s eyes flutter open when Seth breathes in and stares at rows of his
lashes. “It’s good to see your face, brother.”
***** Future Perfect - Richie/Seth *****
In the end, it’s just the two of them.
Eddie’s place is theirs, the paperwork handled under the table, quiet, their
names kept away from government ears by a small man in glasses, saying he owed
Eddie a favor as slid the deed into Richie’s hands—it’s something like he wants
and nothing at all, but there’s a shop to be taken care of and all of Eddie’s
secrets to dig through, dust off; Richie knows his shoes will never fit.
(maybe he should have seen it, how he would circle back to Seth, circle back
home, treading old paths, like always and now forever, his own true north—he
never should have tried running, no matter how many times he tries to tell
himself Seth started it, Seth turned his back first)
Seth cleans in slow, square feet, emptying a box at a time, a whole day to
alphabetize a bookcase of VHS tapes, doesn’t speak, neither of them do, and the
words left unsaid pile up between them like small mountains of Eddie’s old
clothes.
(he cooks when he’s hungry, making enough for two and Richie eats it, cautious
smile after a bite and doesn’t say how it tastes muted, dull sense of what he
remembers and he misses it like he misses Seth, while he sits across from him
at Eddie’s tiny, square kitchen table)
They sleep together in the back bedroom, like old times, the queen-sized bed
still there while guilt of it has eroded away–the open secret between them and
Eddie, how he learned early on that Seth never slept in his own bed, could only
sleep well pressed close to Richie’s skin.
(he kisses Richie hard, grabbing his face as he climbs into his lap, straddles
his thighs, panting please, please into his mouth, tracing it with his tongue;
Richie can taste the desperation in his blood, how he offers up his throat like
he offers up his memories, bits and pieces of his soul that hit like throwing
knives, cutting Richie open
please don’t leave , Seth groans, all I dream about is you leaving)
Richie smokes afterwards (old habit, like his glasses, like falling into bed
with Seth–hard to kick), Seth asleep at his side, arm over his chest, leg
across both of his like that would stop him, wound at his neck clotting, their
shared blood running along his collarbone, a new stain.
He stays, listening to the thud thud thud of Seth’s heart, counting the beats
until he loses track into the thousands.
***** no safety - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt weapon.
Seth doesn’t tremble the way Richie thinks he should, running the muzzle of his
gun from Seth’s hip, over his ribs—Richie’s gun, fully loaded, safety off,
Richie’s finger stroking the trigger in sweet, delicate swipes, muzzle circling
one of Seth’s nipples until he’s arching, a gasp rolling over his tongue as his
lips part. We shouldn’t be doing this, Richie thinks, mapping the length of
Seth’s collarbone, dipping the gun into the hollow of his throat, metal warming
against Seth’s skin, we shouldn’t be fucking doing this–but Seth’s chin tips
up, head falls back so good for Richie when he runs the gun up his neck and
strokes Seth’s cheek.
The muzzle fits too well against Seth’s temple, makes Richie’s cock throb as
Seth’s tongue flickers out over his lips—panting now, quick rapid breaths that
Richie can’t shake, can’t get out of his head, gaze caught between Seth’s dark
eyes and the flutter of his pulse under his skin.
“Get on your knees,” Richie says, smoother than he thought he was capable of,
still choking on the order; he shudders when Seth just fucking drops, knees
bending on command, no backtalk, just his eyes cast up, waiting for Richie to
tell him what to do.
Richie runs his free hand through Seth’s hair, stroking over the crown of his
head, down the arc of his neck, trying to quell the trembling in his fingers
against Seth’s skin. 
“Good boy,” he says, his stomach flipping, churning over when Seth closes his
eyes and nuzzles the palm of his hand. 
***** Inked in my skin - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt kiss on the neck.
Richie avoids him, careful not to be left alone with him after that first day,
after their encounter in the office (Seth can still feel Richie’s hand in his
hair if he thinks hard enough, pushing his face against the hardwood of the
desk, holding him down like Seth held him in the sunlight, the last time Richie
was inside him); distance was better, Seth thinks, rolling over in his too
empty bed, in a room all his own, down the hall and too damn far from his
brother. 
(you’re not gonna hurt me, he says to Richie, getting him cornered for a
moment, a stolen bit of time, voice an agonizing desperate noise he recognizes,
begging poor Kate for another hit, asking a dealer to cut him a fucking
break—but Richie nudges him to the side, lifts him off his feet and walks free,
whispering, that’s not what I’m worried about, in his ear later, creeping up
behind him, noiseless)  
Richie watches him all the time, can feel his eyes like hot brands, burning
between his shoulderblades when he moves across the room when he makes his
rounds, playing another role, putting on another guise—host, boss man, manager,
the I hope you’re having a good evening, it’s on the house guy. Richie mouth
quirks to the side when he catches him, a grin, almost, eyes glowing in the
gloom of the shadows.
(thought you wanted out, Seth thinks, isn’t this why you did this—wanted the
spotlight for once, brother; but Richie skirts the edge like he skirts just out
of reach, just out of the sun)
Richie folds, breaking his own stalemate when he shoves Seth against the wall
just outside the kitchen and Seth arches for him, rolling against him, mouth
still burning from the last time he kissed him too hard, left his him bruised
and swollen—but Richie’s mouth goes for his throat, opening across his jugular
under his jaw. Seth gasps, a white-hot shudder running from the soles of his
feet to the back of his skull as he grabs fistfuls of Richie’s suit jacket.
“Do it, do it, come on, Richie, do it,” he starts to chant, swallowing gulps of
air, too shallow to reach deep enough, waits for sharp bite of pain, old wounds
throbbing for it.
It never comes, Richie’s fangs sheathed as his mouth moves across his throat,
mapping the expanse in open mouthed kisses, sucking and licking at his skin—his
tongue tracing the black flames, flickering across the edges, leaving the scars
underneath tender with a new mark that Richie rubs, pads of his fingers
pressing against the puncture wounds that never heal quite right as he brings
their heads together, eyes yellow when Seth opens his own.
“Why’d you get this?” he asks, second time, thumb brushing the ink crawling
across Seth’s collarbone.
Seth steals the kiss, quick and chaste and his. “You know why, you’ve always
known why.” 
***** Sweating out confessions - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt priest AU
Seth’s eyes flash in the dark gloom of his room, bright like lightening,
ethereal and dangerous, something not of this world, but Richie can’t help up
reach out run his fingers across his cheekbones, cupping his palms around
Seth’s cheeks—he grins, sharp teeth and wolfish, familiar, like the weight of
his hand, palm spread across Richie’s heart, searching for the thudding,
pressing his fingers in against pulse hard enough like he might dig in and tear
it out.
(sick part is—Richie would let him, tell him, it’s yours, it’s always been
yours)
Seth crawls on top of him, shoves him down against the thin mattress of his
narrow bed, hovering over him as his breath ghosts across Richie’s lip, eyes
black now, glinting when moonbeams catch across the slick black oil of his
gaze. “Do you even believe in God, brother?” he asks, rubbing his fingers
across the architecture of his chest, knees slipping around Richie’s waist,
bracketing Richie in underneath him. 
“Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom Come–” Seth finds
his nipple through his thin t-shirt, circling the small, sensitive nub,
breathing in Richie’s gasp, mouth close as Seth brings their foreheads
together, but not close enough. “How does it go—Forgive me, Father, for I have
sinned. I have coveted thy own brother.”
Richie arches up, grabbing at the back of Seth’s neck and shoves their mouths
together, tastes the laugh on his breath, tastes the warm wet sweetness of his
mouth, licking inside, lapping at the roof of his mouth as Seth’s hands travel
under his shirt, pushing the cotton up until Richie feels it bunch under his
armpits, feels Seth’s fingers on his nipples, rubbing and pinching, making him
buck up under him, making him bite at Seth’s full bottom lip and suck.
“So easy, Richie,” Seth pants into his mouth, hands stroking down his torso,
moving lower. “Did your vows mean anything at all?” Seth’s hand is warm and
rough around his slick, sticky cock, gripping him under the waistband of his
pajama bottoms, his underwear, like old memories that shudder through him, just
kids touching each other in ways that should and shouldn’t, his brother making
him gasp and whine for him, just like this. “Or was it a piss-poor replacement
for this, us, me?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—Christ, Seth,” he moans, hips jerking up under Seth, into his
tightening grip.
Seth licks Richie, chin to his nose, grinning when he pulls away. “Christ can’t
help you now, Father.”
***** And I built a home - Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt accidental baby acquisition.
At first he didn’t believe it, but he isn’t blind when he meets her
and sees Vanessa’s thick dark hair pulled back out of her eyes that look like
his own, staring at him in a familiar way behind thick-lens glasses. “Hi
Gracie,” he says, kneeling down to her level but doesn’t reach out, lets
her stare with her brows knitted together, looking from him to Vanessa, to
Richie hovering behind him.
“Her name is Grace,” Vanessa had told him, after she agreed to meet him after
they got out of Mexico, just barely—too fucking close of a call—and he had
smiled. “I like that. Gracie Gecko. It has a nice ring to it.”
Her face had gone cold, stern and serious, a look he hadn’t seen before. “She’s
not a Gecko,” she said, voice strong, firm and final. “She’s not yours.”
“I know,” he said, meeting her eyes, putting his hands on the table, fingers
curling against the flat-surface. “But she’s still blood. She’s
still Richie’s.”
Richie didn’t want to tell him, kept it hoarded away while Seth
coaxed Vanessa into planning the job, unused to her reluctance and careful
consideration of her involvement and was left confused when Vanessa took the
money, no questions asked, no pleading to go with him, no asking him to stay.
When he told Richie, he’d demanded why he gave her little—it all came spilling
out after that, little bits and pieces he pried from Richie’s clenched teeth
until he had the whole story.
“Are you mad?” Richie had asked, for once not meeting his eyes, kept his eyes
cast away.
Seth had to grab his chin and lift, to have his eyes on his. “No, I’m not mad.”
He laughs, rubbing his thumbs against Richie’s cheeks. “You and Vanessa, I
still don’t believe it.”
But Richie’s in her face, smaller and smoother, but the angles are there,
cutting across her cheekbones and down the slope of her nose, to the way she
holds her features, blank and locked down, only a subtle flickering in her eyes
giving anything away. Seth had never felt so easily the warmth spreading in his
chest, forceful and edging on pain as it clenches when he looks at her and she
tilts her head at him, her hands curled tightly around Vanessa’s hand like it’s
her lifeline, a tether.
(Richie used to do that, hold tight to his hand when they were kids like he
might float away if Seth didn’t keep him grounded.)
Gracie lifts her other hand, finger outstretched and pointing behind him.
“That’s my dad,” she says, conviction in her voice. “But who are you?”
Seth isn’t sure how to answer, throat constricting around the word, but
Richie saves him, stepping close, but not lowering himself, making Gracie crane
her head to meet his gaze head-on, a set of determination in her jaw.
“He’s your uncle.”
***** begin again - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt sunrise.
Seth can see the light peeking out from behind the curtains, slices of bright
sunshine that he’s tempted to go near, to feel what is feels like now–that kind
of burn. Richie grabs him, hand around his arm, tugging him back into the bed,
rolling Seth underneath his body like he could hear his thoughts (maybe he can
now, all his blood inside his brother, so much of his soul now Richie’s, like
it already wasn’t before, maybe Richie can see inside his head like Kisa could
see inside Richie’s) and he had to stop him, keep Seth safe pinned to the
mattress, keep Seth underneath him.
(you’re mine now, Richie whispered to him in the darkness, the night before,
his cock buried deep inside Seth, almost as deep as his fangs went, tearing
into his throat–not thrusting, but holding, hands cupped around Seth’s face,
eyes glowing in the gloom, mine in ways you weren’t before, I made you, turned
you—Seth wanted to tell him, you’ve turned other people, what’s the difference,
but Richie stole it from his tongue, opening Seth’s mouth with his own, hips
jerking back and thrusting in hard)
Richie’s eyes are blue in the morning, looking down at him like the sky Seth
won’t ever get to see the same way, but he made that choice, both of them did
the moment the knife sunk too deep into his gut and the blood wouldn’t stop
flowing, over his hands and his brother’s, still embedded under Richie’s
fingernails–their blood staining their palms as Richie tried to hold him
together, put him back together.
(it’s not fair, Richie had moaned in his ear, sharp like a sob, tears wet and
cool on Seth’s cheek; it wasn’t, rotten luck, goddamn Gecko luck—save the
world, end up bleeding out in your brother’s arms–it made him laugh, until he
was choking on his own blood, until he was telling Richie, do it, just fucking
do it, tasting copper in his mouth, tasting death, before it all went black—
there was always ways of cheating fate—and he and Richie, they’re the fucking
masters of it)
“Don’t hate me,” Richie says, voice careful and small, his grip growing loose
as he trembles on top of Seth. “Please.”
Seth reverses their positions, rolling Richie onto his back, climbing on top of
him, his hips digging into Seth’s thighs as he leans down, holding Richie’s
face as he pulls their foreheads together. “Hey, brother,” he says, brushing
his mouth across Richie’s lips, pressing a soft kiss there. “We fucking made it
to the other side. I couldn’t hate you for that.”
Richie stills underneath him, melting into the kiss, melting into Seth like
that’s all he wanted to do, all his life, fold himself under Seth’s ribs and
never come out. 
***** Turned - Richie/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt teenage culebra AU.
Richie keeps staring at himself in the mirror, running his hands over his face,
poking and stretching, making his fangs pop out and in with the hinge of his
jaw, his scales appear and recede—Seth watches him from the doorframe, sees the
change over his shoulder, a reflection, two-sides of his brother now, two sets
of eyes, blue and yellow; his brother and the monster he made him.
(we match, brother, Seth says, hovering over Richie with his blood smeared
across his mouth, still soaking his tongue, the taste of his brother sharp and
minty, a flashes of shared memories playing across his mind as Richie blinks up
at him, pupils slitted, scales a dark gold–smooth and bumpy and cool under his
fingers)
Richie turns when their eyes meet, looking at him with his new face, a low
snarl building in his throat and Seth feels the impact before he realizes
Richie had charged, shoving him to the floor and climbing on top of Seth, hands
shackled around his wrists. “Fuck you,fuck you, I don’t want to be sixteen
forever,” he growls in Seth’s face, eyes glowing bright.
(he hadn’t meant to, he hadn’t known when he got in the sleek car, the kind he
liked to steal and ride around with Richie, lured in by a wad of cash for just
a blowjob–more than his asking, more than he asks for a fuck; Seth should have
known, deal too sweet to be just that, thinks about it now remembering the man
on top of him, leather gloves on Seth’s face, bearing him into the seat and his
fangs sinking in deep, how it set a fire running through his veins, how he
tried to drive off with him after, whispering, the pain will be over soon,
mijo, but Seth opened the door, rolled out onto the pavement and crawled his
way home to Richie)
Seth gets the upperhand—matched now, strength for strength, he and Richie—and
rolls Richie underneath him, knees bracketed around his hips, Richie hissing,
snarling under him, teeth snapping, but Seth can’t pull away, pushes closer,
their foreheads coming together, Richie’s scales feeling new and electric
against his vulnerable skin.
“I didn’t want to be alone forever,” Seth says, whimpering low in his throat,
softening Richie’s mouth against his with a kiss, slow and careful.
***** Promise me you'll never go away - Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt zombie apocalypse au.
When they find her, she points a gun at Richie’s forehead, hand still and eyes
blank.
Good, he thinks, that’s good.
Vanessa looks a mess, no makeup and hair pulled back and torn clothes, dirt
smeared on her forehead, her cheeks, blood under her nails—but she’s alive, a
little banged up but unbitten and still breathing (she’s a survivor, he’d told
Seth when he dragged him on this quest to find her, like us, she’ll be fine).
“Are you bitten?” she asks, voice rough, timbre dry and cracked, vocal chords
unused—he wonders how long she’d been on her own before he found her, huddled
against the side of a building. “Are you real?”
He doesn’t move, neither forward or back, but raises his hand, turns them palms
up. “Would you trust me if I said no?”
Vanessa’s eyebrows knit together, eyes sharpening as she cocks her head,
raising the gun higher, closer to his head. “Maybe.”
“Have you met any of them that talk, Vanessa?” Most of them are silent, but
some scream when they charge, quicker than the old Romero flicks had suggested,
but he was right about the headshots putting them down. She should know, he
doesn’t doubt she’s shot a few. (He wants to ask how many, but he bites that
down, not sure how kindly she’d take to that.)
“I wouldn’t put it past you to be the first,” she says, dissolving into
laughter, soft hiccuping noises that could also be sobs—he wasn’t sure, even
with the tears running down her face, washing the dirt away in streaks because
her mouth is curved and open, teeth showing.
She drops the gun and he wants to tell her to pick it up, how the fuck could
you be so careless, but then she crashes into him, arms around his neck, hands
gripping his shirt in bunches as she presses her wet face against his neck,
whispering, “I never would have guessed how fucking glad I would be to
see you.” His arms go around her with caution, unsure of where he should put
his hands, how tight he should hold—fuck, Seth should have been the one to find
her, he thinks, but tries, puts his hand on her back, stroking down her spine.
“I’ll be damned,” Seth says, rounding the corner, lowering his shotgun to his
side.
Vanessa lifts her head to the sound of his voice and Richie loosens his arms,
readying to release her, but her hands don’t let go, clinging to him as she
watches Seth approach, breath hitching in his ear. “She was hiding around the
corner,” he tells Seth, watching his eyes flick between them and he tries to
read his expression, but sometimes Seth is hard to read, features locked down
and wired up right, impossible to crack. “She tried to shoot me.”
He doesn’t laugh, but cracks a smile. “Good girl.”
He shifts closer and Richie keeps waiting for her to slip away and reach for
Seth, but she stays put, only one hand letting go. She latches it onto Seth
when he comes near enough and Richie has to move to match her movements when
she tugs on Seth’s shirt, pulling him against her, against Richie, her arm
around his back, Richie’s folding over hers, their foreheads colliding.
“You stupid fucking idiots,” she says, nuzzling against Seth’s cheek, the
corner of her mouth curled upwards. “I’m glad you came to find me.”
***** I wasn't thinking of you at all - Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt I never meant to hurt you, you have to believe me; I
     wasn't thinking about you at all
The mark is high up on Seth’s neck, under his jaw, ugly red-purple darkening
his skin and there’s no missing it, no hiding it.
Vanessa presses her fingers down on it, watching the color change, listening to
Seth whine and pant like just touching it could get him off, if she pressed
just right. She doesn’t ask where it came from, not in the mood to listen to
him scramble to come up with another unconvincing lie, too half-baked and
careless, like he really doesn’t give a shit about making her believe him.
She knows, anyway—could only be one source, she knows the way her gut tightens
and her heart picks up in her chest, face flushing like she might faint,
trembling like she might be sick. She presses down harder against the mark,
shaped by a mouth, teeth marks still embedded in his skin and feels him lean on
her, gasping out.
(She wonders if Richie thinks he’s being subtle, or he meant it to be subtle at
all—it was a message, that much she knew, coded in Seth’s skin, placement
unmistakable.)
She bites Seth’s shoulder while he fucks into her, her nails dragging down his
back. Vanessa bites hard enough she breaks skin and copper dribbles on her
tongue, sucking at his skin until it turns puffy and bright red, purpling at
the center. He comes, thrusting deep and she holds him, wrapped around him,
squeezing and bearing down until she’s panting against his throat and shaking
against him.
(After their next job, Seth returns with a new bruise on his collarbone, inches
from where hers is fading, Richie’s fresh and noticeable—it’s a game now, like
writing their names on Seth’s skin with lips and teeth, and seeing who would
win, who can stake the most claim.
Richie: 2. Vanessa: 1.
She shoves Seth down against the bed, climbing up to straddle him, running her
teeth down his chest, mapping out a place to leave her mark.)  
***** Tiny Dancer - Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band /
     Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man / Ballerina, you
     must have seen her dancing in the sand / And now she’s in me, always
     with me, tiny dancer in my hand
It wasn’t so bad sometimes, if she remembers back—before Vegas and Seth shoved
a ring on her finger, laying claim where he had no right to, and she had
laughed, too drunk and giddy to realize her mistake, it not hitting her until
months later alone in her apartment, surrounded by his things, and Seth nowhere
in sight—being the third wheel to the Brothers Gecko, taking up space in the
backseat when they drove to the next job, the next score, working along side
them like maybe she could fit somewhere.
Richie and her pouring over blueprints, putting in long hours casing a bank,
sharing fries out of a crumpled fast food bag, working out a plan while Seth
took apart guns, cleaned them, and put them back together without blinking,
without thinking, muscle memory taking control. Jobs seemed easy when they
pooled together resources, smooth and simple, with barely any risks and
casualties—in and out, cash hot in their hands, speeding out of state.
Laying low in the aftermath had been her favorite, picking a tourist trap town
off the map and blending in with the crowd, the three of them acting like they
were on vacation, Seth laughing loud and unhindered in her ear as he swung an
arm around her neck and Richie’s, leading them down a rickety boardwalk, sun
bearing down and the air salty and breezy.
They let her in cautiously, with care for what seemed like a few brief moments
in time—Vanessa didn’t think they realized what they were doing, but she
noticed, been in enough homes to notice when people have got walls they don’t
know how to let down; the difference was—is that they tried, despite how they
were stitched tight together, just the two of them, loosening the threads just
a bit for her to slip between.
***** Homesick - Richie/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt dropping food off for him.
Vanessa takes careful steps up towards  the door, feeling with her foot to test
the strength of the wood—it looks flimsy, thin and worn down by the elements,
not cared for enough to maintain it, but it holds her weight as she climbs up
the few steps, it seems to hold Richie. She knocks, though the door is cracked
in places, the bottom broke up so anything could get in. It makes her wince to
see the conditions, what he’s exiled himself to, hiding out in the woods an
hour’s drive from any sort of civilization.
“Hey Richie,” she says, and knows he can hear her, sense him through the
splintering wood as he tries to move like a ghost, but he’s solid and his
weight makes the floorboards creak and groan. “I got some food for you.” It’s
not much, a few non-perishables, a dinner she made closed up in tupperware, but
it clears her conscience for a moment, stops the buzz of worrying at the back
of her mind.
He seems to still for a moment, though she can’t figure out where, obscured and
away from the door. “Leave it and go,” he says, voice thin and dry like rice
paper, straining over  the  words—Vanessa is glad she thought to bring water.
“Can I see you?” she asks, pressing on the door—it gives, but he’s quick to
catch it, shoving it back, keeping them divided. “Come on, Richie, I go see
Seth next week and he’ll want to know you’re okay.” He gasps a bit, high
hitching sound coming through the door. She knows it’s cruel to dangle Seth
like that, remind him of where he can’t go and why he might have ended up here,
but it’s the only card she has to play, Seth the ace of her sleeve; he wouldn’t
care what she has to say next. “I want to know you’re okay.”
He snorts, but pulls the door open and lets her see him—she trains her face not
to let him see, but he eyes her like he knows, the blue always sharp and
cutting like a knife, splitting her open to expose the truth. It’s a shock to
see him like this, grubby torn clothes and hair brushing the base of his neck,
a rough growth of a beard obscuring his jawline. He looks dirty, not clean like
she’s used to, pristine and immaculate, every hair held in place. She takes a
deep inhale, and steps around him inside the shack as he closes the door behind
them.
There’s not much space, just one room with a woodstove and a beat up old couch
she imagines he’s been sleeping on. Vanessa spins to meet his gaze and finds
him watching her—he seems too big for the space; it makes him hunch as he peers
at her, both direct and with confusion, like he’s not sure she’s real.
“You look like shit,” she says, setting the food and the water on the rickety
table by the woodstove. “How long has it been since you showered?” She steps
back towards him, raising her hand. “God, you need to shave.” Richie catches
her wrist when her fingers brush the coarse, curling hairs and keeps his hand
locked tight; Vanessa looks up at him with a set jaw. “You could come back with
me, you know. We could be like before.”
Richie laughs, a hushed shuddering sound that makes him wince, tipping his head
down and away from her gaze. “And what? Play house again?”
Vanessa swallows, remembering the way he felt in her apartment, too big and too
comfortable, brushing something strange but not unwelcome, and nods. “Yeah,
Richie, yeah. If you want.”
He tugs her hard, so abrupt she trips on the floorboards and lands against him,
free hand catching on his shirt to steady herself as his arm goes around her
and traps her, bodies pressed close. He smells rank, worse up close, but she
doesn’t gag, tries to breathe through her mouth. “What if I want everything?”
He releases her wrist and tips her face toward his with his fingers nudging up
under her chin, his eyes dark peering into hers, pupils blown wide. “What if I
want what we did?”
Her heart trips over, then picks up a rapid pace while her stomach flips—for a
moment she feels like a jackrabbit caught by a coyote, Richie’s mouth crooking
to the side, giving her an ugly smile that doesn’t touch his eyes. Despite it,
she can’t help how it shivers over her skin, thinking about allowing him and
wonders if he can sense the way her skin heats up, makes it feel tight with
goosebumps, her breathing going shallow as it aches at the apex of her thighs.
(It’d be filthy, but she’d let him here. If he wanted, on his rundown ratty old
couch or even on the floor, getting splinters in her back—let him fuck her
because she’s missing something too, though she’s better at holding herself
together without it, but she still feels it, the jagged edges scraping inside
her, making her want anything to numb the pain, anything to take its place—feel
him close, skin on skin, let him fill her up so she forgets for a moment, face
pressed against his neck and legs around his waist.)
She nods. “Whatever you want.” 
Richie shoves her away, unkind and rough, and she has to keep steady on her
legs to keep upright. “Go home,” he tells her, brushing past her and turning
away.
Vanessa catches her breath, pulling at her clothes and tucking her hair behind
her ear. She thinks about going, leaving without another word to pass between
them (maybe stay away this time, but she won’t, something always keeps her
coming back).
She stays a moment longer, and says, “Do you want me to tell Seth anything?”
Richie’s back goes rigid and he doesn’t turn, just stills where he got caught
by her words. “Tell him,” he says so soft she can hardly make out the words.
“Tell him I’ll see him soon, brother.”
***** Blood in the water - Richie/Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt they’ll nosh you up / they’ll nosh the love away but
     it’s fair to say / you will still haunt me
To say it was a deal gone bad might be the understatement of the
century–Vanessa thinks about it, laughing under her breath as she counts the
bills over again, placing them in neat stacks all across the scratched motel
table, writing down the sums in neat columns on the motel notepad, tries to
figure out the conversion rate, tries to makes sense of how much they have
after Seth’s guy got his cut, how much it’d be if they split it three-ways.
(she wonders how much it’d cost her to get new papers, to get back across the
border, how much it’d cost her to get as far away from Texas before the feds
knew she was there, how much it’d cost her to disappear—but she can’t make
herself do the math, to budget it out, even thought it’d keep her hands and
mind busy, keep her from watching Richie pace around the small room like a
beast in a cage, edging around the beams of sunlight the curtains couldn’t
quite cover; she couldn’t make herself think of leaving)
“Richie,” she says, starling when his head snaps in her direction, almost
knocking the pad on the floor when she lays it across four stacks—he stares,
watching in way he hadn’t before, not like he was looking through her, but
under her skin, eyes caught at her throat as the turn golden and wild at the
edges. “You hungry?”
He nods, then shakes his head, his eyes cooling back to blue. “I’m not doing
that shit again, okay?” He lets out a shaky breath—must be habit—and runs his
hair through his hair, mussing it up, making it stick up at odd angles. “Stop
offering.”
Vanessa swallows, her throat feeling dry as her skin prickles, her cheeks
growing hot, remembering. “Okay, whatever you say. You better not attack me
before Seth gets back is all I’m saying.” She goes back to counting the money.
Seth arrives soon after, warm food in paper bags that he hands over to her (eat
up, sweetheart, he says grinning, eyeing the money next to her) as he passes by
to reach Richie. He grabs for his collar, tugging him along behind him—the
bathroom door closes.
Of course , she thinks, of course, when they tumble back out, Richie wiping the
red from his mouth, Seth’s neck adorned with a new bandage.
(she got out with a few scrapes and cuts, blood under her nails that didn’t
belong to her—she got out by the skin of her teeth, another life gone, landing
on her feet as always, but she sees the hole it carved in Seth, the way he
watches Richie sometimes when his back is turned—thankful, mournful, and angry
all at once, rubbing the new and old scars in the shape of teeth marks; she
sees what it cost Richie and thinks it’s not fair, it’s not fair at all
so she stays, least she could do, what else has she got to lose?)
***** Brutal Hearts - Richie/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt Are you the brutal heart that I’ve been looking for? /
     Cause if you’re looking for love, you can look for that door /
     Hearts, hearts that break the night in two / And arms that can’t hold
     you that true / So use me, use me
It’s not the whole suit, just a jacket hanging loosely from her shoulders and
wrapped around her like a robe, leaving her legs bare, one crossed over the
other as she relaxes back in the chair and Richie wonders what she’s wearing
underneath because all he can see is bare skin, her hands holding the jacket
closed. Vanessa looks up at him with a bare face, her eyes larger and bluer
without the dark lines, guileless and open, an exposure in her glance as her
head tilts, throat exposed, when he draws nearer. Her hair is pulled up off her
face, off her neck, wound and pinned to her head in some smooth, sleek fashion
that makes her look like she cut it off.
“That’s Seth’s,” he says, slow and careful, controlling his tone despite a
frisson of emotion filling his head and skittering through his veins, shot off
at his nerve endings, and he curls his fists, keeps his hands closed to keep
from grabbing her and yanking it off.
Vanessa doesn’t look away and he can smell it, the warm biting scent of Seth’s
cologne–he crouches, kneeling as he leans closer, hands folding around the arms
of the chair, sniffing to see if it’s the jacket or if she splashed her skin
with it, pushed back her scent to give him Seth’s.
“I know,” she says.
Her touch is tentative, reaching toward his face as the jacket falls open (she
isn’t wearing anything, he should have figured, but he thought there might be
something of herself something to identify her with, but she made herself a
blank slate and poured Seth on top), but her hand settles on his  shoulder,
moving down his arm, coming to rest on top of his hand, finger tucked around
his wrist.
“It’s his birthday.”
The cake on the counter should have been his first clue, covered in white
frosting and untouched, a perfect confection no one will eat, to be thrown away
when it becomes too unsanitary to keep around, whole but rotten. Another year
gone and past, he and Seth are the same age for this short stretch of months,
this in between period before the clock turns on him, pushing him ahead–he
can’t take comfort in that, the closeness he had always treasured, the time
when Seth caught up and they were on equal footing, not when Seth was where he
couldn’t reach, too many barriers, locks he can’t work open and set him free.
Richie shrinks, folding in on himself as he lays his head in her lap, cheek
pressed to her thigh as Vanessa’s fingertips stroke through his hair,
fingernails grazing his scalp.
“I miss him, too.”
***** you’re my light, you’re my emptiness - Richie/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt you’re my light, you’re my emptiness / the pretty
     colors on that summer dress, babe.
Vanessa softens in the summer.
It’s the heat, Richie thinks, the black giving way to lighter, looser fabrics,
Vanessa trading jeans for skirts, for lacy sundresses that make her look like
she stepped out of an old movie from the 50’s, hair pinned and curled, lips
stained red.
(I miss the beach, Vanessa tells him one night in the haze of mid summer, when
the nights never cool off and their skin sticks together like his and Seth’s
did, curled too close in bed when they should have allowed the air to breathe
around them.
He wants to ask when she had seen the coastline, knowing Tennessee is just as
land-locked as Kansas, wants to ask how she made it out then chose to come back
inward, wants to tell her, you should have stayed out there, kept your back to
the ocean and feet in the sand–maybe she wouldn’t be stuck in this hole with
him, black inside their heads and around their hearts, suffocating in the
bright sunlight of summer.)
Today her dress is white, patterned with blue flowers the color of her eyes,
shrugging straps over her shoulders with the bathroom door open. “Zip me up,
would ya?” she asks, turning her back to him, zipper split to expose tanned
skin. She shudders when Richie strokes up the curve of her spine, rubbing with
the pads of his fingers before tugging the zipper up.
Vanessa turns and rises up, pressing her lips to his cheek, then rubbing away
the mark she left with her thumb. “Thanks, Richie,” she says, holding his gaze,
fingers curled under his jaw. “Want me to tell him anything?”
(it’s been two years, it’s a wonder he’s still alive, bleeding internally since
the first blow, the final tear, ripping out some vital organs, leaving a hole
that no surgery could fix)
Richie shakes his head, tongue caught in his throat, words filling up inside
him, enough to close the gap between him and Seth if they had any power.
Vanessa leaves him with another kiss, soft and chaste against his lips.
(Vanessa comes back hard and demanding, climbing into his lap and shoving him
back against the couch, kissing him with a mouth that tastes salty, lipstick
gone and when she pulls back, panting heavily against his lip, into his mouth,
he can see smeared mascara, the smudged eyeliner, hastily cleaned up in a rest
stop bathroom.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” she whimpers in his ear, arms locked
around his neck as she rocks on top of him with her underwear shoved to the
side to let him in.
Richie mouths at her throat, tongue pressing in against her pulse, nose under
her jaw, breathing in like he could steal away anything of Seth that might be
lingering on her skin.
He reaches up and strokes over the back of her head, hair loose and messy,
curls she ironed in limp with sweat.
“Me too.”)
***** Vows - Richie/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt at best, you could’ve confessed that you’re a big mess
     and that you’re so damn weak.
Richie doesn’t meet her eyes when they’re introduced, eyes cast down, cast up,
cast around her shoulder looking at someone not her—he takes her hand in a
loose grip and she squeezes his fingers tight, feels the way his knuckles grind
together but he doesn’t look up, his mouth closed and flat.
Vanessa shallows, feeling a thud in her gut, almost knocks her over when he
lets go–you’re marrying that.
He doesn’t speak to her the whole evening, downing a new glass of champagne
whenever she looks over at him. Seth fills her ear with charm and warm phrases,
keeps close to her side, hands on her elbow, her waist, smiling in a way she’s
not sure Richie is capable of, so stiff while his brother is fluid.
Richie walks her out—told to by his father’s harsh glare and asked by to his
mother’s soft plying pleas; he doesn’t touch her, keeps his distance as they
walk shoulder to shoulder, silent presence at her side.
“I’m sorry,” he says, like he could mean it, says it like defeat, like he’s not
going to try, when he opens her car door, waits for her to get in.
Vanessa’s fist curls as she bites down on her tongue.
She could have socked him in the jaw for that.
 
 
 
When Richie kisses her at the altar (two weeks later, Ray Gecko insisted and
her father complied, couldn’t refuse the increase in status, the wealth that
came with the exchanging of rings like it was still the nineteenth century—how
easily she could be bought and sold, thrown to the wolves for the right price),
his lips are cold and closed, pressing against her mouth like he couldn’t wait
to get away.
Vanessa grabs onto his collar and holds him, pressing against his mouth until
he opens up and kisses her back, lips folding, softening as he fingers curl
under the tie wrapped around his neck, tight like a noose—she bites his lip
when he tries to shove her back, hands on her shoulders, nails digging through
the white lace.
Of course there would be blood spilled on her wedding day.
Richie wipes it away with the back of his hand, keeping his back to their
guests as she tries to force a smile, holding onto his wrist; Seth stares at
her askance, around the breadth of his brother’s shoulders, something hot and
sharp in his eyes, a ferality she hadn’t noticed under his heavy performance,
too sleek and smooth, she hadn’t noticed the jagged edges.
The band around her finger pinches.
 
 
 
The punch Vanessa should have gave him lands four weeks later, shoving Richie
back into their room (what a fucking joke, she thinks, knowing most nights he
slips out or doesn’t join her at all, exiting Seth’s room in the morning, bold
and shameless, dropping all pretense—it’s a secret everybody knows, she didn’t
know why she was surprised), slamming her fist into his jaw, her gut twisting
with satisfaction when he hunches over, hand clutching the slanted edge.
He laughs, choked and strangled, sounds like sobbing until it shatters and
cracked, hiccuping as stares at her with bright eyes, mouth curled up at the
corners. “That the best you can do?” he asks, catching his breath. “I’ve had
worse.”
“I bet you deserved it,” she says, unapologetic, even when he winces, a flash
of fragility in his eyes that she wants to dig her fingers into, pull it out
and maybe he might start to make sense, something he begins to covet, like his
company, like his attention.
Richie rubs the bruise just beginning to show, smoothing his other hand over
his hair, mouth crooked and eyes locked down.
“Sometimes.”
***** In Need - Rafa/Scott *****
Rafa helps him bury Jessica’s body (he can’t stop thinking, fuck Jessica, how
could I do this to Jessica, fuck fuck, and tries to be careful with her limbs,
watching her head; thinking she deserves better than this, better than to rot
in a hole in his backyard—they all deserve better); he doesn’t expect it,
doesn’t expect him to get his hands dirty along with Scott’s, not from his
sanctimonious lectures and evangelistic you can be better attitude that reminds
him of his father—it makes him laugh, an ugly choking sound, wondering where
Kate found a culebra who spews sermons on how to be a good citizen and only
murder bad people, like that makes it less sinful somehow.
Scott curls up under the tree they put Jessica under, feels the cool wet mud
seep into jeans, his sneakers ruined, not sure he wants to move from this spot,
the rain like ice, stabbing harsh and painful all over him, not cleansing like
they write about in books, the kind of rain you see in movies. He thinks about
how long until morning, if he’d last that long.
Rafa sits beside him, shovel tossed on the ground, his shoulder bony when it
bumps Scott’s. “You know,” he starts, catching Scott’s glace side-long, then
glancing at Kate curled up on the steps, soaked to her skin, across the yard
from them watching, “my first kill, I hated myself, too.”
“Who says this is my first kill?” Scott bites it out, feels his teeth sharp in
his mouth, feels his skin ripple; it is, he knows, first one that matters,
first one not another monster.
Rafa’s mouth is tight, a kind of smile pulling and turning his mouth, eyes
dark, reflecting the lightning when it flashes. “Do you hate yourself, Scott?”
Scott doesn’t answer, tongue swollen and thick, throat tight; can’t answer,
wrapping his arms around his legs, tucking his chin on his knees, gut turning
over, hollow and empty, a sick twist–but he doesn’t pull away when Rafa coils
an arm over his shoulders, lets himself weaken against Rafa’s side, locking
eyes with Kate through the rain.
***** i'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby, like you - Scott/Seth *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt high school au
Scott thought Kansas City would be better than Bethel—larger, metropolitan with
more people, easier to disappear into anonymity and skate by—but so far it only
meant bigger bullies, with rougher edges and more aggression, ready to let
loose on the unsuspecting new kid.
(Don’t talk to me, Kate had whispered out of the side of her mouth when they
had entered the building on the first day, tossing her hand over her shoulder
and walking down the hall to her first class—it had been a general rule, the
pair of them never acted like they knew each other, even back in Bethel,
somehow making it through without crossing social circles, eating separately in
the cafeteria, Kate with her friends and Scott with no one. 
He didn’t know why he thought it’d be different here.)
Outrunning them had been his usual go-to strategy, and he had gotten good at
navigating the back alleyways and hopping fences, making it out unscathed,
panting when he caught a city bus home, his heart bruising his chest, kicking
at his ribs. But sometimes they caught him, four to one, blocking his path and
closing in on him—he’d also gotten good at lying, telling his mom he tripped,
gotten hit in the face with a ball in gym.
It’s okay, really, he’d say, voice strained as she stroked his bruised face and
sighed. Being the new kid is never easy, she would tell him, and he had to hold
back a snort, thinking of Kate and her easy friendships, fitting in when he
always seemed to stand apart, no matter where they went.
Scott winces, forcing himself to breathe though it hurts—hands shoving at his
back, pushing his lungs into his gut as his body spins around, tripping over
his own feet as he’s passed from person to person, until a voice cuts through
the dizzy white-noise filling his head.
“Hey, dipshits, didn’t your mothers ever tell you to pick on someone your own
size?”
Scott couldn’t see who it was, but it made them laugh, the leader—Chris,
captain of the football team (there was some irony in that, moving from Kansas
to Texas, trading lacrosse players for football, and maybe one day Scott could
laugh about it) digging his fingers into Scott’s shoulders where his hands had
clamped down. “Like you?” he asked, chuckling. “You’re not much of an
improvement, Gecko.”
Scott had heard the new laugh join the group, but it felt faker, sharp while
the others were hearty and thick. Then one went down, clutching his jaw, his
buddy getting a fist the gut and curling on the pavement. Chris nodded to his
friend at his side and he went for Scott’s rescuer—now that he could see him,
wasn’t much taller than Scott, just as scrawny, but he held his body with a
wiry edge, grinning like he knew what he was doing, knew that he was going to
win despite the odds.
It was messy, nothing like Scott had ever seen in the movies, violent and
bloody, bodies falling on one another without the finesse or style of
choreography, hands grabbing and pulling, using hard points of the body—an
elbow to the ribs, knee to the gut, a crack of bones ringing in Scott’s ear.
The four of them had limped away, glancing over their shoulders at Scott’s
savior as he waved at them, flippant and casual, spitting blood onto the
pavement.
Scott tried to make out what he looked like under the bruises and the swollen
eye, without the blood staining his teeth when he grinned at him, if his
clothes were that ratty and worn, or if the fight had roughed them up, left
stains. All that stood out were his eyes—brown and fierce, the fight still
burning behind them like he never left it behind.
“Thanks,” Scott choked out, shoving his hands into his pockets, his tongue
feeling thick and clumsy, his stomach knotting up. “Uh…”
“Seth,” he supplies, running his hand over his hand, mussing up his already
messy hair. “Seth Gecko. And it’s no problem—I hate those fucking assholes,
thinking they’re hot shit when they’re nothing.” Seth spits it out like he spit
out the blood, like a bitter taste on his tongue.
“Yeah, well—”
But Scott was cut off by a guy appearing at Seth’s side, marched across the
parking lot with a purpose then hovering over Seth, tall and broad-shouldered
and all long-lined and pressed clothes, buttoned to the neck, but touching
Seth’s face like Scott’s mother touched his—examining the damage and fretting,
clicking his tongue as Seth tried to bat his hands away.
“Richie, I’m fine,” Seth says, voice going soft, a whine like an undercurrent,
but his mouth stays curved.
Richie looks unconvinced, but he pulls his hands away, dropping his arms to his
sides. “Fights draw attention, brother.” Richie then turns, noticing Scott as
if for the the first time, his eyes intense and large behind his glasses. “Who
are you?”
“This is—” Seth starts, but can’t finish.
“Scott,” he answers, shrinking under Richie’s gaze. “Scott Fuller. I just moved
here.”
Richie nods and turns away, like Scott wasn’t enough to hold his interest for
long, his eyes pulled back to Seth where they seem to settle. “We should get
going before any of those guys tell a teacher.”
“They’re not going to tell—” But Seth lets the protest die on his tongue,
silenced by the look that Richie presses on him. “Okay, fine. You’re right,
like always.” Seth heaves a sigh, then follows when Richie moves, matching pace
with him, step for step, their shoulders brushing.
Scott wants to call to him, but he can’t work out what he’d say, the words in
his head jumbled, his stomach twisting up as he feels sick, but his chest warm,
feeling like he’d been tossed a lifeline. But then Seth turns back, throwing a
grin over his shoulder.
“See ya around, Scott.”
***** I'm a little bit in love with you - Seth/Vanessa *****
Chapter Summary
     For the prompt cooking together.
“So where’d you learn how to do this?” Seth asks, stirring the cake batter—if
Vanessa had known they didn’t have a mixer, she would have brought over hers;
it’s good Seth had strong arms that never tired easily.
Vanessa peers over the brim of the bowl, checking to see how it’s coming, if
he’s making sure to keep it smooth, break down the lumps like she told him; so
far so good. She pulls back, resting her arms on the counter—it was dusty with
flour, but she was already covered, so it didn’t matter; baking was never very
neat. “Working at a coffeeshop when I was sixteen.”
Seth’s eyebrows go up and she wonders if he’s ever met anyone who’s held a
legitimate job, if he even believes in it. Easier to slip his hands into
someone’s pocket than toil away for a measly sum per hour.
“Under the table, of course,” she continues. “I didn’t have papers and I had
run away from the system, but the owner was one of those rare good people, you
know? Looked the other way and I made enough cash to keep me afloat. Anyway,
sometimes I messed around in the back after I had put the day’s pastries in the
oven, trying recipes I copied from books in the library. Some turned out to be
fucking disasters, but I learned eventually what worked and what didn’t.”
Seth sets the bowl down on the counter—Vanessa grabs for the spoon, stirs the
batter a bit to test the consistency; seems about right—and he laughs a little,
light and breathy, shaking his head.
“What?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, rubbing his hand down his face, smearing batter across
his cheek, down the bridge of his nose, grinning a little. “Richie used to do
the same thing. Not about baking, but anything else. Spent hours pouring
through the stacks, flipping pages, absorbing words like a goddamn sponge.”
His features soften as he ducks his head, mouth curving as his eyelashes fan
across the tops of his cheeks, and Vanessa has to look away—like she was caught
red handed staring at something she shouldn’t have, something private, and for
too long. But his face draws her back in when she feels his eyes on her; she
looks up and feels her heart trip over a beat in her chest, worrying that she
might be in some danger.
“So where’d you learn how to cook?” Vanessa asks, swallowing and folding her
arms over her chest, leaning with her hip towards the counter. 
He was new to baking, she could tell with the way he carefully measured out
everything, eyes falling back on the recipe before he moved onto the next
ingredient, but he was comfortable in his kitchen and they weren’t completely
devoid of tools; there were spatulas and peelers, along with a variety of pots
and pans that looked like they were used. It’s funny, she wouldn’t have pegged
it, but it makes sense. Seth was always good with his hands, whether it was
swiping wallets  or fitting together the pieces of a gun or breaking it down
again.
Seth grins a bit, tosses it over his shoulder while he puts the dirty dishes in
the sink, looking a bit like he won’t tell her, that he’ll keep it his secret,
but he turns away from the sink without turning on the water to let the bowls
soak, facing her. “Home EC in high school before I dropped.”
She laughs, biting her lip. “To pick up unsuspecting girls, I imagine?”
Seth’s brow furrows, cocking his head. “Not really,” he says.
Vanessa’s gut tightens, like it does sometimes around him, tripping over
something she hasn’t figured out yet, something he won’t tell her, but she
knows she made a mistake and it flushes up in her cheeks, burning up her face
as he goes silent.
She breathes in deep. “You wanna learn how to make frosting?” she asks,
relaxing when his expression eases and he nods.
After, Vanessa washes the dishes while Seth wipes down the counters while they
wait for the cake to cool. “Thanks,” he says, looking up as he drags the damps
rag around the edges of the sink. “You know, for doing this.”
“It’s no big deal.”
Seth holds still a moment, keeping his eyes locked on hers as his jaw tightens
and he swallows—there’s something about his eyes that say but it is, but she’s
not sure why, hasn’t cracked open that part of him. It’s just a cake.
“I hope he likes it,” she says, testing the words out.
Her stomach flutters hard when Seth’s mouth breaks into a smile, one that
alights his eyes and shudders open across his face, genuine under the locked
down layers.
“He’ll love it.”
***** Your voice was too loud - Scott/Seth *****
Seth knows his guns, handles the one Scott drags out to the abandoned baseball
diamond like he was born to it, dismantling it and putting it back together
like he’s trying to impress him—his grin worms through Scott’s guts, squirming
and wriggling and white-hot, teeth squared off and white, biting open his mouth
as he lifts the gun, aims, and shoots the bottle off the low wooden fence.
It keys Scott up, the sound of the bullet hitting, shattering the glass, the
way Seth’s shoulders shrug, loose and casual, like he hadn’t just hit it—bull’s
eye. Makes his skin prickle, goosepimples exploding up and down his arms, even
in the heat, under the hot sun.
“It’s easy, kid,” Seth says, kid kicking off his tongue in the way that makes
Scott want to punch him, tell him,we’re the same goddamn age, but Seth wears a
world-weariness on his sleeve that makes him feel older, dangerous in the way
Scott wants to be, wants a taste of the respect Set can earn with one school-
yard brawl.
Scott misses the target, but Seth elbows him and messes up his hair like he
hadn’t, laughing warm and cheerful, then tells him what he did wrong, lifting
and arranging his arms, holding him and not saying a word when Scott
trembles—he gets the bottle this time, Seth rewarding him with an arm slung
over his shoulders and his knuckles digging into his scalp.  
 
 
 
(We should bring it to school, he tells Seth, when it’s put away in his
backpack, when Seth is walking him to the nicer part of town, that would show
those assholes who to mess with.
Seth glances at him, sidelong and serious, his eyebows scrunching up and
forehead crinkling, and tells him, nah, buddy, we’re not bringing it to school.
Scott feels his mouth twist and scowl, until Seth body-checks, then wraps his
arms around his shoulders, close enough to feel his breath on his cheek, hey, I
got your back, okay?
The terrible fucking thing is—Scott believes him.)
 
 
 
Seth comes over for dinner when he asks—his mom had told Scott to invite him,
running her palm over his cheek, whispering, I’m so glad you found a friend—and
Scott regrets it in the same breath he loves it, watching his father’s face
screw up eyeing Seth’s second-hand clothes and beat-up sneakers, turning red
whenever Seth opens up his mouth, a sharp Sir whenever he answers him, dripping
with disdain, disrespect and Scott had never seen someone talk like that to his
father before.
Kate stares at him like she wants him to do something, kick Seth out,
apologize, but he lifts his shoulders at her, pulling his legs back before she
can kick him and shoves a mound of mashed potatoes in his mouth.
“I don’t want you seeing that boy again,” his father tells him, hypocritical
Pastor Jacob Fuller, preaching tolerance and acceptance, but never practicing
it, never giving an inch, laying judgement that Scott rolls his eyes at.
“Not gonna happen,” he says, and walks away before his father can grab him,
before he can yell, stepping out onto the porch and meeting Seth headon.
Seth has the decency to look apologetic, another surprise, hands shaking and
running through his thick, dark hair. ‘Sorry about that, it’s just—your old
man, he’s the kind of guy that gets under my skin, I didn’t–”
Scott kisses him silent, hands cupping around his neck, pads of his thumbs
scraping against the newborn stubble under his jaw, the kind Scott hasn’t got
yet, the kind that burns against the edges of his mouth when Seth kisses back,
pulling his t-shirt tight over his shoulders when he grabs fistfuls of it.
Kissing Seth is like putting a gun in his hands, like feeling he gets when his
stomach drops and the trigger is squeezed, like keeping balanced in the
kickback.
His mouth is pink and swollen when he walks back inside, Kate making a noise
when she see him, half-squeak, roughened by a scoff, tossing her hair and his
father watches him like he saw, like he’s always watched him—like he never
should have taken him all the way home from China, disappointed.
Scott couldn’t give a shit.
End Notes
     come say hi to me on tumblr!
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
