#alexei wilder

[befuddled-calico-whump]

before mermay ends: merman lex?

still grumpy

[befuddled-calico-whump]

crack whump thoughts of Lex just being dumped out in the wilderness

man's incredibly competent and scary but he's also a city boy who never really left the urban sprawl. Like his idea of being close to nature is hiding in a park tree while scoping out a target. He can identify any plant that you'd find in a grocery store but you're not gonna find patches of knuckle-sized strawberries out in the wilds and he's probably gonna just starve because he doesn't know what's poison and what isn't. He can start a fire but keeping it going would require trial and error. He can probably track animals to some degree but without a gun his only method of hunting is burning something to a crisp. Bro is gonna get scurvy

[befuddled-calico-whump]

making myself verbally identify the nuances between my existing guys before I add yet another stoic whumpee to the roster

Melchior - falls back on charisma unless he's too afraid/exhausted

Sahota - cold/mean to push others away. Fights his soft side for safety

Lex - natural flat register + asocial attitude compounded by Experiences

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Housewarming

cw: relapse, bad coping mechanisms, paranoia, alcohol/implied alcoholism, emeto mention, sleep deprivation

Wildefire Masterlist

•°•°•

Get up, check the lock on the door. Peer out the inlaid peephole, check the lock again.

Pull the curtain back an inch and scan the glass of the window, remind himself he's on the fifth floor with nothing but smooth brick between him and the ground, remind himself that the window can't open anyway, that the assistant who showed him to this room said the glass was bulletproof.

Not like he fully believes anything they told him.

Pace the room, head jerking at the little creaks and groans of the settling building. Pass the complimentary gift basket sitting on the nightstand, bottles reflecting the red light of the alarm clock. Try not to look at them.

Those certainly feel like a trap. He has no doubt Rivera is aware of his vices, his chosen tools to build a barrier of numbness that doesn't always work. She's taunting him, that must be it. That or trying to weaken him; laying booze out like bait in the basket of a guillotine, trying to dull him so he's easier to control.

He won't fall for it. He'll stay vigilant, stay on his guard, he isn't safe here. He's deep in the heart of enemy territory, trying to barter with snakes. It feels like running into the fire to escape the burn; stupid, hopeless. Rivera could still hand him over to the Tower at any point; he's vulnerable in the palm of Good Knight’s hand and he knows she's just waiting for him to slip up.

But it's for them. It's all for them. Pardons for Akeela and Rosie and Hugo, for Sarah. A path out of hiding, out of fear. They aren't at risk as long as they're here, under the protection of Good Knight. If everything goes well, they'll never be at risk again. That's why he's here. For them. He can do it for them.

He has to.

• • •

Get up, check the lock, check the window. He hasn't slept in three days. There have been moments where he's nodded off, only to jerk awake in a panic, nearly setting fire to whatever fancy upholstery he'd collapsed against.

Sarah was worried, he told her not to be. New place. He'd get used to it.

Fifth floor, smooth brick, check the lock, pass the bottles.

He's supposed to be safe here. Rivera said he's safe here, but he's never been safe. Someone will break down the door. Crash through the window. It's a trap, it has to be, he can't trust these people.

Akeela's been looking at school programs. The normal kind, courses she can take online to get around the "danger" she poses. Hugo's been offered an internship with the tech department, Rosie's been looking for her family. They're happy. Sarah worries, but she saw her moms for the first time in over a year yesterday. She introduced him and he tried to smile. She's happy.

How long before it all crashes down?

He can't let it crash down, not because of him.

• • •

Get up, check the lock. Turn around and check it again because he forgets if it was really secure as soon as he steps away and can't convince himself it's fine.

He's been sleeping in bursts. Waking up on the floor, facedown on the mattress, slumped against the sofa. Not sustainable. He's too wired to be alert, too sleep-deprived to be useful if a fight is needed. Sleep won't come. He's tried, but even as exhausted as he is, his eyes are flying open every few minutes. New panic, new certainty that they're coming, that as soon as he's out cold they'll come for him. He'll be drugged or overpowered. Taken away. In the dead of the night, even with all the lights on, the corners of his room look too much like the cell.

Hell. Bell. Knell. 

Check the window.

Come to slumped against the wall, cheekbone stinging from where it collided with the windowsill on the way down.

He didn't leave the room yesterday. Couldn't. If he passed out in public, that would be the end for sure. They'd know they had him, they'd know. He's checked his room a thousand times now, he knows it should be safe, yet sleep won't fucking come.

Pace the room in dead silence, listening for anything and everything. Eyelids weigh down, eyes drift back to the basket every time he passes it.

Trap. It's a trap. He knows it's a fucking trap.

But staying as he is is turning into its own sort of trap. It can't hurt if he only drinks enough to chase the paranoia. He's already exhausted. Shouldn't take much for him to catch a dreamless sleep. He needs sleep.

It's his first time really looking at the bottles. Wine, of course. Elite assumptions, or false hospitality. He knows wine is supposed to be customary, easily masked as a housewarming gift and not a trap, not a silencer. If the basket were full of the cheap liquor he was used to, it'd be too much of a giveaway. But even with the facade, Rivera’s overplayed her hand. Not just a wine, but also some fancy liqueur. Three bottles. There's more to the basket. Crackers and chocolate and some sort of spread. A glass, presumably for the wine. Set dressing.

It’s all too obvious; it has to be deliberate, this has to be what she wanted. He pulls a bottle free, glass clinking softly against the others on the way out. Raspberry. He knows it'll be oversweet and syrupy, something to get sick off of. 

He almost manages to put it back. But if he did, he'd only be standing here again within the hour, just as bitterly exhausted, just as cornered. Doesn't matter if he knows it's not, this place might as well be Titanium. And there was only ever one escape from within Titanium.

Pace away, check the window. Crack the bottle. A raspberry smell, heavy and sweet and pulling him towards nausea as if his body already knows what's to come.

Thrum, hum, numb.

Check the lock. Take a swig and it's like cough syrup, but take another anyway. Sit on the bed, listening. Grit his teeth and have another drink.

He's glad he hates the taste. It lends more to the illusion of just this once, just one more time and then I'm done forever.

Think about checking the window. Stare at it instead and chug until the taste and texture makes him gag and he has to stop, grimace for a chaser. The warmth is starting to hit him, a fuzzy coziness that's tugging at his exhausted mind, pulling his eyelids closed.

(hose, froze)

He has enough sense to down a bottle of water before finishing the liqueur. The plastic crinkles in his hand, and the sound fills him with guilt.

Sarah.

No, this is for her. This is so he can sleep, so he can stay vigilant without losing his mind. So if anything fails, if anyone betrays them, he can still fight for the rogues.

His head swims, a familiar lull settling over his senses as he curls up on the mattress, clothes and boots still on, forgotten. Bed still made beneath him.

Check the door, comes the blurry thought, and he glances at it. Hasn't moved. Lock still in place. His eyelids drift shut.

Check the window. He turns his head. Uncracked, undisturbed. No one outside, peering in at him. The water bottle is still in his hand, empty, and he flexes his fingers around it, listening to the hollow plastic noise.

For the first time in days, Alexei is pulled into a deep sleep.

When he returns to his room the next evening after a day of feeling better, of standing by Sarah while she negotiates their new contracts, of listening to Akeela tell stories about a classmate, there's a fresh bottle waiting for him on the bed.

•°•°•

tag list:

@whumpacabra  @enteredin2eternity  @kixngiggles  @whumpsday  @kiichu  @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump  @shywhumpauthor  @distinctlywhumpthing , @bloodinkandashes , @fleur-alise , @whumpy-daydreams , @whumpwillow , @honeycollectswhump ,  @snakebites-and-ink , @chiswhumpcorner

[befuddled-calico-whump]

thinking of a random situation where someone rents out lex to vent to. lex just like chained up and listening to them yap about their childhood for like 3 hours

😭😭 I think you may have accidentally created a new side character, nonny

[befuddled-calico-whump]

open for a surprise

oh hey, how'd he get here?

(from the end of No One's Coming to Save You)

•°•°•

Wildefire Masterlist

@whumpacabra   @enteredin2eternity  @kixngiggles  @whumpsday   @kiichu

  @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump   @shywhumpauthor   @distinctlywhumpthing , @bloodinkandashes , @fleur-alise ,

@whumpy-daydreams , @whumpwillow , @honeycollectswhump ,  @snakebites-and-ink , @the-scrapegoat

[befuddled-calico-whump]

[befuddled-calico-whump]

this is specifically addressed at the future lex from my beloved cinderglass drabbles. how does he feel having someone so close that not only trusts him, but that he trusts too. someone he feels comfortable when they touch him gently. someone that knows him and wants to get to know him

— honey :)

MAN it's so new to him, really. Even before the Tower, despite being pretty content in his life, he didn't have anyone he was willing to be vulnerable with. The other contract assassins understood the specific difficult things they were all facing---many had distant or non-existent familial relationships and all the baggage that goes with it so people got him, had an understanding, but no one ever talked about it

Bad days were only joked about, crying happened in private if at all, the present was all that was really allowed to matter. It served him well for years, it was his normal, until he came back and couldn't hide everything anymore. The best he could do was isolate from everyone so they wouldn't look at him like that and try to numb it all down

So Sarah's the kind of person he never imagined having in his life. He never put much thought into the future to begin with, since as an illegal empowered any day could be his last, but he certainly never pictured having someone he'd willingly cry in front of, willingly hand himself over to when he's in a very vulnerable place

It still feels unbelievable some days. Not just that he'll let himself stumble, but that someone will catch him. He never thought he could be comfortable having someone hold on to him while he cried, or talking him through bad moments, and sometimes it feels weird, like it's something not meant for him, but it makes him feel safe

And it's hard to reconcile wanting her to love him---she's only ever been heroic in his eyes, someone selfless and patient and too kind, and he's a killer who's only ever looked out for himself---but he thinks he deserves to feel safe