Alex merely blinked lazily at his boyfriend's reaction before a languid smile came to his face as he pinned Rey down onto the couch. He leaned to take in the earthy scent of his boyfriend before trailing kisses from his neck to his jaw.
"So adorable..." He breathed out as he traced his lips over Rey's jaw to his lips. His eyes were clouded with lust as he then brushed his lips against the other's while pressing their bodies closer together.
Alex had that weary smile again. That one expression aged him considerably despite his youthful looks. He pressed a soft kiss to Rey's cheek and looked him in the eye.
"I'm a very, very old man, Reynardine, and a very tired one. I don't have much to live for."
Cupping the other man's cheek, he pressed his forehead to the other's and closed his eyes as he whispered, "I will join you when you pass away, and nothing will stop me from doing so."
Loud music, the smell of sweat and alcoholics together, fueling the frenzy of people. Not a place that Officer Alex Delalune would pick as his first choice to go on a night out.
But here he was, sneaking into an underground gay bar, only coming in because he knew that this particular bar wouldn't be raided tonight. Keeping his head down, he made his way to the bar and ordered a beer.
He loathed himself right now, going to such a filthy place, having such unnatural feelings for men....
Nothing could make this night any worse, could it?
The little girl kept staring daggers at the man, coming really close to his face with an annoyed and grumpy expression. He could’ve asked for a slice, he could’ve said to her that he was really hungry; ask if he could have the whole pie for dinner, pretty please with whipped cream on top? Heck, he could’ve said nothing, but at least left a note where the pie used to be, saying that he was sorry. But no, none of that happened. He just ate the whole damn pie without saying a word. Rarely anything caused Lillian to be the least bit angry, but this was one of the one things that did.
The only situation only gets worse for the werewolf when he lies, the extravagant story only making the girl squint and get ever closer, having to bring her legs onto the bar stool and prop herself up, and holding Rey’s shoulder to keep her steady. “ Reynardine-- ” She starts, but his laughter interrupts her, making her puff her cheeks in frustration. But then the truth comes, and she lets all the breath held in her mouth out as an agitated sigh. “ You could have at least asked Thomas if it was alright, though, he was up last night. ” She only knew that Rey had eaten the apple pie because of Thomas’ telling her so, saying he had spied on him eating the last little bits, but then the man got a strong talking to for not telling her sooner.
“ I worked really hard on that pie, too. I wanted all of the staff to have a slice before they started work today. ” That wouldn’t have been for another hour or so, but she though that she’d be warming it up again in the oven before they got to the bar. Sighing again, and losing most of her strong, angered emotions with it, she moves away from Rey and slumps in her seat. Her expression turns more upset and disappointed, arms crossed over her chest, eyes finally looking away from the man and at the bar counter. “ ...You’re mean, Rey. ” She finally grumbles after a moment, a bit of her anger coming back, glinting in her sky blue eyes. “ You really should’ve asked first. ”
drabble for @itsreynardine ( get ready for the pain train y’all )
“ Didn’t I just tell you to fucking stop, you piece of shit?! ” The hunter’s curses stem from what a huge annoyance this case had become. Though, the werewolf was more of a “caught-in-the-moment” type of thing, rather than an occurrence late at night, with he and Lillian going on the case to take this sucker down. And of course he had to be caught ripping into a man right behind his bar. This one must’ve just been really stupid, or was purposefully trying to get a rise out of Thomas this time, because the wolf should’ve heard about the little hunter duo that protected this town, bringing about their supernatural justice with an iron fist and a righteous heart. The names of Lillian and Thomas Marchand should strike fear into the hearts of all who dared to pass through and disrupt the peace...
Or so said Lillian, on a particular night of success, in one of her occasionally bragging moments, the regulars at the bar laughing and cheering at the little speech, drinks being raised as Thomas and a few others watched the scene unfold outside his office. One of them being a supernatural creature himself, but no one else in the bar knew that besides Lillian and him.
Looking down at the smaller and younger male as Lillian continued to boast, he couldn’t help but grin at the soft yet glad expression on his face, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and bringing him close, letting out a boisterous laugh at the other’s yelp of surprise. “ Ah, Rey, just look at her! I haven’t seen her this excited about finishing a case since school let out! ” He points to his niece, and the other man nods in agreement, both of them sharing a bit of silent joy over the happy little girl before Thomas decides to break the silence again. “ Why don’t you go closer and listen to her rabble off the story again, Rey? She loves it when you listen to her stories, especially since you’re a part of this one. ” Having him help on this case was a huge lifesaver, having him give them insight, and even stick his neck out to find the little group of wolves so Thomas could give them the element of surprise, and have the extra help if he needed it. Which he did; being outnumbered three to one against surprisingly strong youngsters, he would’ve been mince meat if Reynardine hadn’t helped him.
“ No thanks; I’m pretty content back here. I don’t really want to butt in on her shining moment in the spotlight. ” The other man states, a grin gracing his own features as Thomas quickly raises his hand in objection. “ Hey now, you deserve some spotlight! You’re a big part of the story, you know! ”
“ Well you are too, Thomas. You’re the amazing uncle that strikes fear into creatures of the night. ”
“ Alright, then we’ll both go up there! ”
Another sound, this time of disapproval, comes from the smaller male as Thomas drags him to the bar, his other friends chuckling as he tells his niece to stop standing on the counter and to tell everyone who incredibly important Rey’s role in the whole ordeal was. Of course, the little girl grins from ear to ear and runs with the proposal, plopping herself on a bar stool and looping her arms in one of theirs as she turns her boasting and praise directly onto them both. How bright and cheerful their faces were, it could’ve made for a fantastic photo to put on the wall...
“ Damn. I wish he was here to help with this right now. ” Rey was definitely cooler than Thomas, expertly calming down his behavior now than he was when they first met, and a great ally to have in the supernatural world in general. A great friend, too. He even considered him family, if the man was feeling particularly mushy and sentimental. Rey had been on the last case, with he older man treating him with the same soft words and gestures he did to Lillian, especially when they both got hurt protecting the other in a pretty brutal fight. He’d never forget that kindness. It really gave him hopes that Lillian’s ideals would really sound through the community, and that that bond would a pillar of strength for her words.
But Rey wasn’t here to help this time. He’d said his goodbyes already, and was probably already on his way up into Virginia. He had to go to New York for something, he said, but just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them first, even if they lived so far away. It just made Thomas happy to know the man cared that much about them, and it of course made Lillian overjoyed to have the werewolf visit them for awhile. But now he was gone, and Thomas knew it’d be a bit rude to just call him up in the middle of the night and ask if he could come back.
Thomas had this. He’s done it before on his own, even before Lillian came around, and he could certainly do it again.
A snarl coming from the creature in front of him finally brings him out of his thoughts, coming to a screeching halt before he can run into the beast, who suddenly turns and slashes downwards at him. Thomas barely dodges, the arm of his coat getting torn before he lands on his ass, scrabbling to his feet before he can get hit with another blow. He barely has time to reach into his coat pockets and quickly yank something out; his dagger’s the first thing he grabs, and it isn’t his weapon of choice in this scenario, but it would have to do until he had another window of time to actually look for his gun. Close combat was going to be dangerous, though, especially since this guy was now on the offensive. One false move would cost Thomas his life if he wasn’t careful.
“ Okay, you ugly---! ” He goes for a swipe towards the werewolf, cutting off some fur but not much else as it moves, then sliding away as claws lunge towards him. Of course the hunter could keep up this little dance, swiping at the other’s arm and getting a good cut, hearing the wolf let out a whine of pain. But he knew he couldn’t keep it up forever, at such a close range, when the arm comes back and claws digs into his shoulder, making the hunter wail in pain, nerves stinging and blood rushing as the werewolf raises it’s other arm in the air. Thomas doesn’t think about the wound or the other’s next action, he just twists the dagger in his hand and quickly goes for a stab, landing it in the beast’s abdomen and dragging it down and through, until a yelp and he’s tossed to the ground. The hunter still doesn’t look up from the ground, he just rummages through his deep coat pockets for his gun, only hearing the sounds of the wolf pulling the dagger out of it, the sounds of pain, the sounds of anger and furious running. It isn’t until Thomas has gun out and cocked to fire that he sees the creature almost on top of him, arm swinging to shoot it, not even caring about where he aimed...
Of course he expects teeth to be clamping down on his skull, claws buried deep into his abdomen, feeling blistering pain as he’s split in two. Of course, that’s always what you expect to happen when it comes too damn close like this. But he just feels the body land on top of him, slobber and blood smearing on his neck, and he stiffens, still waiting for anything. But then the body shrinks, fur revealing normal skin, feeling the snout on his arm shrink into a normal face, and Thomas lets out a deep sigh of relief. A laugh bubbles up from his throat after, even, and it echoes throughout the forest, as the limp body on top of him slowly begins to loose it’s warmth.
It’s only when his adrenaline rush diminishes and the spike of pain from his right shoulder goes through him that he pushes the body off of him, gritting his teeth into a tight grin and sucking air through his teeth. He was a bit reckless there maybe, he thinks, gingerly touching the bleeding wound, hissing then letting out a forced chuckle, turning towards the body. “ You know, my niece is gonna freak when she--- ”
A pause. A long, strained, disbelieving pause. Glazed over eyes of the younger male stare back at him from where he laid beside him on the ground. Once brown, occasionally yellow, now almost seeming black and cloudy to show no life left within him.
He’s frozen in fear. This wasn’t the same monster he just killed, right? No way it was him. He’d know the kid anywhere.
Quickly flipping the body on its back and leaning against his good arm, he brushes long, black hairs from his face, then gingerly lifting the back of his bloodstained head. Pale and lifeless. Cold body not seeking any warmth from the worn out hoodie he wore.
“ Reynardine? ”
The grin is gone, replaced with a contorted, pained expression, slowly picking up the boy---suddenly just a boy in the hunter’s arms---, while the gunshot wound still bled out onto Thomas’s jeans, cradling him in a shaking grip. “ It’s not...I-I didn’t think......It c-couldn’t have been you, right? Th-This is some damn nightmare, r-right? Rey’s not dead, no, he isn’t... ” But his vibrating, colorless voice doesn’t convince him as he holds the boy close, not even noticing the tears pouring from his eyes until he’s trying to choke down sobs, burying his head into the nook of the boy’s neck. He really was just a boy, wasn’t he? Small, skinny, fragile, now with an icy touch...
“ I-I’m so sorry, kid...I’m so fucking sorry... ”
It takes hours for Thomas to stop screaming and sobbing, telling the lord, telling Lillian, telling everyone he knew that he was so sorry; that he didn’t want to kill his boy, but life had a way of fucking good things up, didn’t it? It took even more time to pick himself off of his feet, carrying Rey in the break of dawn towards Matt’s Funeral Home. Matt never asked questions since he signed on to help Thomas’s hunting business, and that was the beauty spot of the business: when people never asked questions. But with Reynardine in his arms as he walked through the door, the mortician couldn’t help but stare in shock and ask; “ How did this happen, Tom? The poor boy... ”
The broken and downcast stare, fresh tears prickling in the corners of his eyes, shuts the man up instantly, though he didn’t even express his own sorrow as he directed the mourning man to the back and down the stairs to the morgue. The hunter stubbornly held onto the boy, refusing to sit down and get his arm sewn up until Rey was laid on a table, with Thomas’s chair rolled up next to where he could stare at him longer with his guilty gaze as his jacket was pulled off and wound was properly getting cleaned.
At about dawn, the silent operation, with barely any remorse or condolences given in between, was finally interrupted by the jingle of the man’s front door bell, little, muffled shouts making their way to the back and downstairs, before a polite knock sounded from the morgue door. “ Matthew? Are you in there? ” The worried yet sweet little voice makes Thomas stiffen; he knew she’d coming look for him, but he didn’t the guts to look the little girl in the eye while Rey was still freshly dead next to him and his wound was just freshly sewn shut. He didn’t want to tell her what happened yet. He just wanted to wake up from this damn nightmare already.
“ Yes, sweetie, I’m here! Don’t open the door; I’m doing my usual on your uncle’s victim. ” The sound of loud disgust from Lillian makes the mortician force a normal laugh, leaving Thomas’s stunned side with a forced smile on his face, opening and closing the door quickly, leaving the hunter alone with Rey in the big, quiet room. Leaving plenty of time for him to think.
The little girl had done as she was usually told. Stay in the bar, don’t go outside, don’t follow him on this one. Even though she rarely listened to the last part, always following him but then never being able to keep up with how fast he ran, the only reason she stayed was because of a special instruction her uncle left: call Matt to clean up the mess. So she did, with a disgruntled huff as she sat down in Thomas’s office chair and talked to the mortician, getting the stuff he required from the kitchen and then practically throwing it out the back door as soon as he arrived. She knew the smell of death by now, by both visiting the mortician all too often to walk an injured uncle home, and from stumbling on one too many horrific aftermaths of supernatural killings, but that still didn’t mean she was used to it. She despised it; smelling anything a bit similar made her stomach churn.
She guessed that’s why she never liked following Thomas on his hunts; rather, she just saw it as something she had to do. Mostly to just make sure that her uncle was okay throughout the whole ordeal at the times when she could keep up with him, but also as a bit of a learning experience for the future. The little girl knew she’d have to learn all of this stuff and actually be able to go on hunts eventually, and she would have to know what to do, so following and taking in everything her uncle did was the next best thing. Still, she wasn’t looking forward to it. She knew she was more of a researcher and a preacher for peace, and even though she’d have to get her hands dirty in the future to get rid of the bad creatures of the night, seeing Thomas’s faded and fresh scars from delivering that justice frightened her.
And the thought of dying for her job and her message was the thing that scared her most about the future. And it always made her worried when Thomas didn’t come home, because it made her think his time had finally come.
So, after hours and hours of waiting, when Matthew had left and the light of morning was just lifting itself into the sky, way longer than she had waited before for her uncle, she went to the most logical place she could think of that would keep him for so long. Now, seeing the man open and close the morgue door so quickly makes her more nervous about the damage done to her uncle to make him stay in there for so long. But she doesn’t want to ask. Instead, she just asks the obvious.
“ I-Is Thomas in there? ”
“ Darling, where else would he be? ”
The sigh of relief that the little girl lets out as she slumps herself against the other wall in the tiny, downstairs corridor, along with the shudder in her breath, shows just how worried she truly was. Of course, she knows she’s already showed concern all over her face. She was such a bad liar to Thomas in that, and that’s the reason her uncle always gives for banning her from interrogations.
Mortician Matthew laughs again as she relaxes and is at ease with his response, the young girl pouting and crossing her arms over her chest. “ Hey, you know I have a right to be worried. He was out all night chasing whatever was behind the bar down; didn’t come home once. ”
“ Well, he’s okay now. Just patched him up, but...well, he might want a bit of space with this one, kiddo. This was a tough one on him; really tired him out. The bar’s probably gonna be closed the whole day, too, so you should run home and tell staff--- ”
“ Is it that bad? ” Concern finds its way in her voice again as she interrupts him. Thomas almost never closed the bar due to an injury, whether it hurt like hell or not. He only did that when he and Lillian were traveling, or when something during the hunt causes him to get in a brooding, silent mood, and she’d only seen that when one of his regular friends at the bar died helping him against a group of vampires. The thought of him wanting to close the bar for the day meant more than likely the latter occurred, or maybe that Matthew just didn’t want him to work with the injury he had gotten from his hunt. Fear manifests in her mind, and before the mortician can really respond, she’s squirming past him and bursting through the morgue door to see her uncle.
Though, of course, seeing the figure of a dead man next to him makes her instinctively cover her eyes, not wanting to see what Matthew had already done to him as she shouted at her uncle. “ Thomas, a-are you okay? Matthew just said for me to close the bar today, b-but I wanted to talk about it with you first! ”
The silence that follows makes her tense, but the boots falling heavily on tile, followed by the warmth of her uncle embracing her gives her the answer she needs. Bringing her hands from her eyes, the little girl glances at the shaking man from the corner of her eyes, before sighing and wrapping her arms around him. She won’t ask about what happened; last time she did the man exploded on her, and then they both went to cry in their rooms. Not wanting that to happen again, she just turns and kisses her uncle on the cheek, nuzzling her head into the crook of his neck. “ It’ll be okay, uncle Thomas. You deserve to take a few days off, if you--- ”
“ No I don’t, sweetheart. I did something really bad last night, and I know you won’t forgive me for it. ” The way his voice quivered, and how strained and tired it sounded, made Lillian squeeze her uncle tighter, the fear within her intensifying as she blinks her eyes open and dares to ask: “ What happened? ”
Next thing she knows, her uncle is standing up, grabbing her hand, and dragging her towards the dead body on the table next to where he had sat. She looks nervously up at her uncle, not really sure who she would see or why she would need to see them.
But she understands why when she lays eyes on him, and at once, she starts to wonder if this is all just a dream; that maybe she fell asleep while waiting for Thomas to come home. Nightmares plagued the girl often during times when she was extremely worried or scared, and waiting for Thomas to come back from a hunt always made her feel a bit of both, so maybe she was having one right now.
With that childish hopefulness, the girl feels more surprised by the sight than anything else. But then she slowly grabs Rey’s hand, and then instantly she’s surrounded by the reality of the situation, gripping his hand tighter as his cold touch seeps into her skin, chilling her to the bone. Letting go of her uncle’s hand, she puts her other over her mouth to contain the waves of nausea that slowly start to go through her, legs starting to shake as she feels her strength leave her. Thomas’s words penetrate the air, and she strains to hears what he has to say in her shaken state. She expects that Rey had come back for something and tried to help Thomas when he saw that the man was in trouble. But that’s not what she hears at all. Listening to his quaking voice, filled with emotion, she hears the worst thing that her uncle could’ve said in that moment.
“ I didn’t know it was him, Lilli. I swear to god I didn’t know. ”
Then she glances at the dead man’s head, the bullet wound under his neck finally clicking in her mind, and then she’s having to lean on her arms to support herself while her knees start to buckle under her, though being so close to the body only makes her more upset, staring down into the vacant eyes her uncle didn’t close. This was her friend. Her best friend, even, and the man that Thomas had commented was just like family to them, now dead at the hands of the man she trusted most. The whimpers that she had started making turned into quiet sobs, tears finally streaming down her cheeks as she lays her head on the cold body, not caring anymore about the feel of it, just wanting him to spring back to life again and wrap his arms around her, to tell her everything was a lie.
Her uncle doesn’t try to comfort her, and she doesn’t question it; as much as she wants comfort and someone to hold while she grieved, the little girl didn’t want it to be him. Because he was right. She wasn’t going to forgive him for this. A permanent scar on their relationship, and no matter how much it would heal, it would always still be there to haunt the both of them.
She hears Thomas’s boots stomp off and away from the morgue, up the stairs, then the ringing of the front door signals his exit. The little girl begins to cry louder, sobs turning into grieving screams into the Rey’s still chest then, even if the door wasn’t closed to give her complete solitude. Tugging at with her hands and soaking his clothes with her tears, she doesn’t even notice the mortician walking back into the room, until the scent of green tea catches her off guard. She jolts, wrapping both arms around Reynardine’s body, as if to protect it from the man, but he just stares silently down at her with a rare, pitiful glance, before walking away and closing the door behind him. Leaving the little girl alone to grieve, and think about a terrible future without him.
The twins went strangely quiet then looked at each other for a bit. Then they turned back to stare at Rey.
“You’re a level 1 friend since you’re going out with our big brother but that’s it.” Edward started off.
“And besides, you wouldn’t understand even if we told you, now would you, boy?” Theodore finished with an emphasis on the last word, as if he was talking down to a child.
“Not even half the person that she was, you know?” Edward noted to Theodore as he nodded in agreement.
Micah blinks a few times before he looks over at Rey and tilts his head. After a moment of consideration, there is another tilt of his head, a facial expression, and a distinct shrug of his shoulders that all sort of say ‘why not?’ before he smiles brightly at his friend. A pajama day didn’t sound so bad after all.
