5+ AHoB hcs! Or 5+ hcs for your clusterfic maybe? (I......heckin love ur cluster)
Mwahahahahaha, an opportunity to write clusterfic stuff! And Victor clusterfic stuff, which is a whole lot rarer. I’m still building this cluster, so I’m just sticking to Victor, Agon, Bianchi and Dan, okay?
For anyone- actually, I don’t think I’ve spoken about clusterfic at all on my blog. I have two large multifandom crossovers in the works called ‘clusterfics’ because they involve characters in clusters a la Sense8. The one @boycottromance is asking for here is the second and newer one, featuring Victor Nikiforov (YOI), Kongo Agon (ES21), Bianchi (KHR) and Dan Wilds (AftG).
1. For all that Victor and Agon are like chalk and cheese, they get along almost distressingly well compared to the rest of the cluster. It’s enough to give people headaches, because both the boys are so different. Except where it counts, possibly, because they breathe sports, are naturals at their craft in a way that Dan has never been and Bianchi was in a completely different line. Agon respects Victor because he’s good at what he does. Victor respects Agon because he’s an absolute asshole and is never apologetic or defensive about it. That kind of attitude is something he wants.
2. It’s unsurprising that Victor grows up to be such a stone cold bastard when he has to be. Agon finds it absolutely hilarious, as does Bianchi. Dan, who still remembers the child with scrapped knees who was quick to tear up like something out of a Disney movie whenever he fell really hard while skating finds that she misses Victor the boy, who never hesitated to show real human emotion.
3. Agon can never figure out how to react to Bianchi and Dan. He’s lived a large part of his youth spending time with girls who wanted to waste time with him, a quick lay in the sheets or against a convenient table or wall meaning nothing to any of them. He knows all about how to deal with women like that, less so when confronted with women like Bianchi and Dan. Bianchi, who’s heart wrenching, a handful of broken glass and lace and oozing blood. Beautiful. But who’d chew him up and spit him out faster than anything else. Agon can never figure out if he loves her or hates her.
4. Dan is both easier and more complicated. Agon finds it easy to poke fun at her choices in high school, less easy to defend himself against a knee that goes straight for his nuts and an attitude that takes zero shit from him. Dan’s never afraid to get in his face if he’s doing something wrong, and he hates that. And hates her. He can never figure out how to handle her, and it’s a completely different emotion from Bianchi, who feels like a friend he might have known as a child, a sister, a classmate, himself. Dan is raw and rough and strong in a way that Agon has never needed to be, and he doesn’t know what to do with the fact that she’s him in another body.
5. It’s easier to understand her after the Devil Bats have trampled them to the ground. Agon hates, and hates, and hates, seethes with the strength of it. Dan just sits beside him through the entire ordeal, understanding in a way that Victor isn’t, because he’s forgetting what it means to lose the older her gets. Dan? Never forgets. She grits her teeth and tightens her gloves, and makes them all stand up and fight when they forget how. Agon hates that he respects her for that.
6. Victor finds that he needs other people less, when he finds his clustermates. Dan claims it’s unhealthy, Agon just rolls his eyes, and Bianchi gently ruffles his hair, something odd in her eyes when she focuses on her fingers tangled in ash blond strands. He feels comfortable with them in a way no one else feels comfortable, and he never actually needs to explain himself to them. It’s the explanations that tire him out, having to break down his thoughts in a way that make sense to other people. Yakov is the only one patient with him, but then, Yakov is his coach, much like Lilia later becomes his ballet instructor. Their patience isn’t unconditional like his cluster’s.
7. He supposes he will regret his disconnect with the world at some point. Until he has to regret it, though, he only revel’s in the colder edge it gives him when he skates. Agon always approves - as he always has, and always will, when it comes to winning.
8. It’s why Agon losing hits him so hard, when it does happen.
In response to this post, in case any of you still want to send in asks!
It’s dark where Riley is; the blackness thick like smoke or tar, Wolfgang can’t decide which. It stinks like death, he thinks, then something moves in front of him and he decides that, no, it stinks like loneliness. Like drugs and alcohol and unbridled anger aimed at whoever is within reach.
Wolfgang knows this darkness, has worn it like armor for most of his life. He thought this was Riley’s dream, but as he stumbles and trips, smacking his face on concrete that reeks of piss, Wolfgang realizes that he’s wrong.
This dream is his.
Part of Riley is still in it, though, crumpled in a corner with a pipe dangling from her fingers. She smiles lopsided at him, as she stares at some spot behind him. Wolfgang’s stomach twists painfully and suddenly he can’t seem to breathe right.
He never used to panic like this before them. Never gave himself the time to feel what happens when a fuck moment became an oh shit moment became and oh god I’m going to die moment. It wasn’t his style. But it's Riley’s and right now she's choking him with it, and Wolfgang wonders if the two of them collaborated to make this dream.
Riley stirs, scraping her legs across the ground as she pulls herself up into sitting. Wolfgang watches her every movement as if he’s trying to find the glitches it her form to remind him that she – this – isn’t real.
“Wolfie,” she says, and her voice is all wrong. If words were visual, Wolfgang swears broken shards of glass would be spilling from her mouth.
Wake up, he tells himself.
He closes his eyes tight and counts to five. When he opens them Riley is gone and Wolfgang exhales slowly. He waits for the room to change the way it always does once he fixes things, but it stays exactly the same.
He closes his eyes again and again and nothing changes. He spins himself around trying to see anything in the darkness, but he’s stuck in a void.
“Riley!” He shouts.
A laugh echoes back to him, low at first and then louder and louder until it threatens to burst his ear drums.
Wolfgang's blood turns to ice -- he knows that laugh.
His father's breath is on the back of his neck before Wolfgang can even entertain the thought that he needs to move. He can feel heat radiating from his father's body, burning Wolfgang everywhere it touches him.
He needs to wake up. Now.
He shuts his eyes so tightly it's painful; clenches his hands into fist and readies himself for a fight.
His father's voice is loud in his ears and Wolfgang is shaking by the time the words register in his mind. "Are you fighting for more?" his father asks him, "is this what is looks like when you're not being a little bitch?"
Wolfgang doesn't know what to say. He wants to turn around and murder the bastard all over again, but he's frozen.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake the fuck up!
His father laughs the loudest Wolfgang has every heard, right into Wolfgang's ear and then there's blood. So much blood filling his ears and leaking out and down the sides of his face.
It hurts, and it pisses him off.
"WAKE UP!" he screams.
Hands reach for him, pull at his shirt and tug him forward too hard. Wolfgang braces himself for the blows, but they never come. Instead he's blinded by light as the hands become arms that wrap around him and a mouth is pressed to his cheek and forehead.
Wolfgang gasps hard, pulling away until he realizes what happened, and then he's leaning in and letting himself be held. He looks at Lito as best he can from the position their in. He doesn't remember how they got here, naked in the same bed together, but he finds that he doesn't care enough to want to ask. There's a sob lodged in his throat and Wolfgang struggles to swallow it down.
He reaches up and touches his ears, flinching from residual pain. There isn't any blood.
"Lito," Wolfgang says quietly, not knowing what he wants to say next.
Lito pulls back carefully, keeping his arms around Wolfgang's body, and meets Wolfgang's eyes. "I'll stay as long as you want me to," he says, understanding Wolfgang's needs immediately.
Wolfgang nods and says, "Thank you," because it's the only thing that sounds right even if it sounds stupid.
Turning over so his back is pressed to Lito's chest, Wolfgang threads their fingers together and refuses to close his eyes. Lito kisses the back of his neck and doesn't try to change Wolfgang's mind.
In the end, Wolfgang is the first of them to have a child, and no one really knows what to make of the situation, especially not Wolfgang who leans against his kitchen counter and just stares at the blond little boy who watches him with watery eyes.
They’d all talked about this together one night in Riley and Will’s huge warehouse style apartment. Went around in a circle and expressed how they all felt about kids and whether or not any of them wanted some. Riley and Will had agreed a long time ago that the only way they’d ever have kids is if they adopted and even then it’d have to be a boy; sometimes Riley’s scars still ached and Will refused to be someone who assisted in cutting her open again. Sun, though having been out of prison for more than a year, then, was adamant that she was not meant for motherhood and children just got in the way. While Capheus and Kala both stated, with wide, joyful smiles that children would be a beautiful thing to have and take care of; Kala’s tentative glance at Wolfgang wasn’t missed by anyone. Nomi and Amaneeta and Lito and Hernando had all decided that if in a few years they decided that children was something they wanted then they’d try for them, but for now they were content to just be together, happily. Wolfgang, however, had stayed silent, smoking a cigarette as the others talked animatedly about something that was supposed to be one of the best things any human could do - raising another human to be a be a better person than them.
He thought it was bullshit.
Flashes of his father sped through Wolfgang’s mind as the others talked and it took him so long to realize that they had all gone quiet and just watched him, waiting for him to add commentary to the discussion.
He didn’t know what to say to make them all happy, so he said the first thing that came to mind, “I will never bring a kid into this fucked up world.”
The others were quiet for only a few seconds longer and then Will shrugged as the others nodded.
“Kids aren’t for everyone,” Lito said, patting Wolfgang’s shoulder.
“But if you ever change your mind...” Kala let her words trail off as she forced a smile to her lips.
Wolfgang didn’t correct her. He just took another drag of his cigarette.
He pulls a cigarette from his pocket now and puts it between his lips. He should light it, he thinks. But he doesn’t, not with the boy standing in front of him. He read somewhere, he thinks, that secondhand smoke is bad for children.
“Bad for everyone, really,” Kala says and she sidles up next to Wolfgang, letting her shoulder brush against his. “He looks like you.”
Wolfgang puts the cigarette on the counter and nods. “That’s how I know he’s mine.”
“You doubted that he would be?” Kala’s surprise hits him like a brick to the chest and he fights the urge to laugh.
“You haven’t been lied to very much, have you?”
Kala shakes her head and Wolfgang thinks it’s cute. “In my world people lie. All the time. Some women don’t want to keep their child, so they drop it off on the first person they remember fucking around the time the kid was probably conceived. Doesn’t matter if it’s really that person’s kid or not, it’s just a place for the kid to go while she gets to take off for a few hours and get high or drunk and fucks as many people as they feels like.” Wolfgang grabs a cup from the sink and fills it with water, then he hands it to the boy who takes it and drinks eagerly.
“This has happened to you before?” Kala asks.
Wolfgang moves back beside her. “Once, many years ago.”
“You didn't keep the child, though.”
“No. Her mother picked her up the next day, saying something about knowing who the real father was.” The boy holds the cup out and Wolfgang refills it, hands it back. “She looked nothing like me.”
“He does though.”
“Yes.”
Kala threads their fingers together and leans on his shoulder. They stay quiet for a long time.
___
The boy -- Michael, as Will discovered from a tag sewn into his backpack -- is asleep on the couch when it finally sinks in that Wolfgang is a father. Oh god, he’s a...
“Shit,” Wolfgang swears. His hands shake and suddenly he can’t breathe; the room is getting smaller, the walls are closing in on him and his eyes burn terribly. His chest aches and his head throbs; he’s going to vomit.
He tries to suck in a breath and nothing happens. Flashes of a plastic bag being wrapped over his head floods his mind and it’s all he can do to keep himself on his feet instead of falling to his knees.
He tries to inhale again and still nothing.
Then two arms wrap around him and he’s pulled against Lito’s chest as Lito whispers, “Shhhh,” over and over in Wolfgang’s ear. “It’s okay,” he says quietly, “It’s going to be okay.”
“I can’t,” Wolfgang chokes. “I can’t be a --”
“You can,” Nomi says, carding her fingers through Wolfgang’s hair. “We’ll help you.”
Wolfgang shakes his head and Lito runs his fingers up and down Wolfgang’s spine. “I never wanted to,” Wolfgang starts and then stops. They all know how he feels, they can feel it just as strongly as he is. Words are unnecessary, he knows because a kiss is pressed to his temple and then to his cheek; he doesn’t know by whom. Hands in his hair tell him all he needs to know.
He isn’t alone.
___
As it turns out, Capheus is the best with kids out of all of them. He is patient and kind where Sun gets annoyed and wants to leave. When Michael cries and asks for mama, Capheus is always there to tell him stories and show Wolfgang how to stay and be soft when all Wolfgang wants to do is turn tail and run.
Three days after Michael was left with him, Wolfgang sets two bowls of soup down on the small dining table and sits across from Michael. The kids watches him carefully, like he’s waiting for Wolfgang to do something. There’s a look in Michael’s eyes, a fear Wolfgang recognizes from when he was the boy’s age and would sit across the table from his own father.
He’s not going to touch the kid, though; he would never ever touch him like that. So Wolfgang stands, grabs his bowl and sits on the couch. Michael’s shoulders relax almost immediately and Wolfgang’s chest aches.
Help me, he thinks. I can’t do this.
The couch dips down and Sun stares at him. “If you keep saying that, one day it will become true.”
“It already is true,” Wolfgang says.
Sun looks at Michael as he spoons the soup into his mouth, getting more on his clothes than anywhere else. “He’s alive, is he not?”
“Yes, but --”
“You did that,” Sun says, turning back to him. “His stomach is full because of you. He’s been bathed, clothed, and has a place to sleep because of you. It looks to me that you are very capable of doing this on your own.”
“You all helped when I needed you to, though.” Wolfgang says.
“Yes,” Sun says, “and we will continue to do so for as long as you ask. We made you a promise.”
“But I’m not --”
“Whatever you are or are not, has no bearing on who you want to be. It’s up to you to choose whether or not you will repeat the cycle your father started or if you will break it.”
Wolfgang watches Michael’s eyes drooping as he finishes the last of his soup. When he turns back, Sun is gone.
Wolfgang sets his bowl down on the coffee table and stands up again.
“C’mon, kiddo. It’s bed time.”
___
Riley doesn’t visit for a week. Will says she’s scared, worried that Michael will remind her of Luna. Wolfgang gets it, he thinks. Sometimes Michael reminds him of a Felix when he was younger and it aches because that Felix didn’t have trouble breathing like he does now, that Felix didn’t have scars marring up his chest like he does now.
Wolfgang gets it, but he wishes he didn’t.
He wishes he could start all over again and fix everything he broke; change the past the way he once told Kala he’d never be able to do.
“Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing,” Riley says almost too quiet for Wolfgang to hear. She sits on the couch with her feet tucked up under her and her newly brunette hair curled back behind her ear. Wolfgang watches her tentatively, not really sure if he’s actually seeing her or if he’s just making her up. Michael lays in a ball on Wolfgang’s lap, head pillowed on Wolfgang’s arm; Riley smiles at the sight and Wolfgang knows then that she’s real.
“He’s beautiful,” Riley says. There’s pain in her eyes as she looks at Michael, but Wolfgang doesn’t comment on it.
“He’s much less work then I thought he would be,” Wolfgang admits. He runs his hand through Michael’s hair once and then moves his hand back to the armrest; his stomach knots uncomfortably.
“It’s funny how that happens.”
“Would you like to hold him?” Wolfgang doesn’t know why he asks, he has no plans to move the sleeping toddler and hand him over to Riley if she says yes. But thankfully he knows that she won’t.
Her smile is sad, her gaze far off and lonely. Wolfgang wonders if he should apologize for offering, but thinks better of it when Riley looks up at him and says, “One day I will.”
It a promise, he can feel it. So he smiles back at her and nods.
“Can you sing something?” he asks.
“Anything?”
“Your choice.”
Her voice lulls him as she slips into her native tongue and lets the words dance of her tongue. It’s beautiful and he feels the song deep inside himself long after Riley leaves and he falls asleep.
___
“Fuck! FUCK!”
Someone, anyone, I don’t care how many of you. Please help me! I need you now!
“You know this isn’t like texting, right? Which is also something you could’ve done, since you have all our numbers.” Nomi stands with her arms crossed looking annoyed, but not angry. Will and Lito flank her, while Capheus, Sun, an Riley stand lined up beside them. Kala rests her hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder and squeezes lightly.
“I don’t know where my phone is,” Wolfgang admits. He holds Michael on his hip and fights the urge to swear again.
“What's the emergency?” Will says, stepping forward until he’s standing right beside Nomi.
Wolfgang looks at all of them and demands himself not to cry. He turns to Kala, hoisting Michael higher up on his side. Michael whines and it kills Wolfgang to hear it. “Something is wrong with him,” he says.
“He's sick,” Sun says matter of fact.
“Yes,” Wolfgang confirms. “He’s burning up and I don’t know what to do.”
Michael groans and a sob shakes his small body; Wolfgang holds him tighter.
Capheus walks closer to them and puts his hand on Michael’s forehead. “He has a fever. Not high from the feel of it, but enough to be uncomfortable.”
“You need to lie him down somewhere and get a cool cloth,” Kala tells him. Wolfgang hesitates, not sure if he remembers how to even move beyond rocking Michael back and forth so he doesn’t cry. “It’s okay, we’re here.”
Wolfgang moves then, stepping out of his body and letting Will hold Michael and carry him to the small bed Wolfgang bought for him. Wolfgang watches as they move in tandem, working together to bring Michael’s fever down and get the toddler as comfortable as they can. It’s beautiful and Wolfgang can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened it he didn’t have them.
“Do you remember being sick as a child?” Lito asks when the others finally have Michael calmed down enough to try and get him to sleep.
Wolfgang shakes his head. “I didn’t have time to be sick. Not with my old man around.”
Kala watches him and Wolfgang avoids her eyes.
“I used to get sick all the time,” Nomi says. “My aunt used to make be this spicy tomato soup that cleared out my sinuses like nobody’s business, but it had this hint of sweetness to it that I was addicted to. I would eat the entire pot all by myself, only sharing with my sister every other bowl.” Nomi smiles wide and Wolfgang makes a note to tell her sometime how beautiful she is.
“What happened to her, your aunt?” Wolfgang finds himself asking.
“I don’t know. I came home from school one day and she was gone. My parents never told me why she left. My mother didn’t make me soup when I was sick.” Her smile, though still there, is smaller, sadder.
“Michael’s going to be fine,” Kala says, walking toward Wolfang.
“His fever has broken,” Capheus tells him. “He just needs to sleep now.”
“Thank you,” Wolfgang says.
They all nod and Will claps him on the back. “It’s what we’re here for.”
Wolfgang closes his eyes and breathes deep, when he opens them again they’re all gone, except Kala who sits on Wolfgang’s bed and holds out her hand to him.
“You need sleep too,” she says.
Wolfgang lets her pull him onto the bed and wrap herself around his back. He doesn’t deserve this, but just for tonight, he’ll accept it.
___
“Michael, hurry up! We’re going to be late!”
“I can’t find my bear, Wolfie!”
Looking around the living room, Wolfgang finds the bear shoved underneath the couch. “I found it, now come on!”
The sound of tiny bare feet patter across the hardwood floor and Wolfgang can’t help the smile that stretches his mouth as Michael races into the room . A year ago he would have never believe that this could be his life; that he’d be the father to a little boy who’s the spitting image of him and belong to a family who loves him almost more than Felix does.
Wolfgang would’ve laughed and said go fuck yourself if someone had told him that he’d be here, waiting for a four year old wearing a Chicago PD jacket over a Jean Claude van Damme shirt to grab his teddy bear from Seoul and pack it in his expensive as hell luggage from Mexico along with his tablet from San Francisco, and his mp3 player from Iceland that’s filled with more music than anyone one on the planet should know what to do with, so they could get to the airport and finally make their way to India. It was impossible, not something he deserved in a million years, but this was his life now and he’d do anything to keep it.
“Wolfiiiiee,” Michael cries as he tugs the arm of his teddy bear, “help me. Bear is stuck.”
Wolfgang looks at the clock; they need to leave like now if they're going to catch their flight.
“Wolfie?”
“Yeah, no I hear you. Let me see.” Wolfgang lays down on his belly on the floor and pulls the bear loose. Michael yelps excitedly and runs back into the room to grab his shoes and luggage.
“Do you have everything?” Wolfgang asks as he follows Michael.
“Yeah, I made sure to check three times. Can we go now?”
Wolfgang chuckles and grabs his own things from beside the bed. “Let’s go kiddo.”
It takes less time than Wolfgang had planned on to get to the airport and get through security, but soon they’re sitting in the boarding area and Michael is bouncing excitedly on the chair beside him.
“Is he coming?” Michael asks in a sing song voice.
“Of course he is,” Wolfgang tells him. He looks around the airport and smiles when he sees the person Michael is waiting for. “Okay, close your eyes.” Michael does so and grins as he tries to keep himself from squirming. “Count to five and then open your eyes, okay?”
“Uh-huh. One...two...thre --”
“Hey, Mikey!”
Michael’s eyes shoot open. “UNCLE FELIX!” He jumps from his chair and runs into Felix’s legs, hugging him way too tightly.
“How is my best nephew?”
Michael giggles, “I’m your only nephew!”
“Ah, that you know of.” Felix winks at Wolfgang and then bends down to hug Michael. Wolfgang shakes his head and smiles as Michael holds Felix’s hand and leads him over to the chairs where Wolfgang is sitting. Felix sits down and Michael climbs into his lap.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” Felix asks Wolfgang.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s time.”
Felix just smiles and kisses the top of Michael’s head. “Let’s do this then.”
When it's time to board the plane, Wolfgang carries Michael on his back with Felix following close behind. As he hands the flight attendant their tickets, there’s a tug in his belly and he sighs with contentment. He glances back behind him and looks at Nomi, Lito, Will, Riley, Capheus, Sun, and Kala all watching him with smiles on their faces.
“Enjoy your flight, sir,” the attendant says.
Wolfgang smiles and lifts Michael higher up on his back. “Yeah,” he says. ‘I will.”
As he walks down the hall to the plane with Felix by his side, his son on his back, and his family right behind him, Wolfgang realizes that for the first time in his life he is he’s completely and utterly happy.
