Being a responsible guy
Lord of Mysteries - Leonard Mitchell
A/N: Happy belated birthday @wertzunge!! Sorry for taking this long for coming up with something, but I decided to try my hand in a little sequel (hopefully, you liked the first one enough for this). Keep thriving and I hope you have an amazing year, mwah!
Summary: Leonard and Klein, after finishing a mission together, need to take the Artifact 3-2026 back to the church's vault.
Word count: 1458 words
[Also on Ao3]
Klein let out a small gasp when the box was tossed high up in the air, his eyes following it as it lost inertia and started to fall back down. Just when he was about to say something, it landed safely back in Leonard's hand, his fingers gripping it just hard enough to secure the catch. Klein frowned slightly while his partner smirked, flashing a smug smile at him.
"It wouldn't hurt to be more careful with it, you know?"
"It wouldn't kill you to relax a bit," Leonard promptly talked back, continuing to walk down the stairs as if he was out in a stroll at Howes Street. "The mission's over already."
"We still need to return it," Klein insisted, following Leonard to the lower levels of the building, unable to brush off the uneasiness of seeing an artifact being so casually handled like that.
Artifact 3-2026. "Knismesis' box". One of the first artifacts Klein himself helped the church catalog after the nighthawks retrieved it from a beyonder hiding in a brothel. An artifact he also happened to experience first-hand in the past. If Leonard's memory was just around the average, he should remember how it worked as well. He was there too, after all, to witness the artifact's power in its full glory. And how easily it reduced Klein to a helpless mess.
For their most recent mission, they were authorized to draw it from the church's vaults. In the official registers, Artifact 3-2026 was labeled as an "incapacitating tool", strong enough to disarm a human foe without damaging the surroundings or harming the target. Once the box was unlocked, a small disturbance was enough to trigger it and a simply pulse of energy was enough to command it back into its confinement.
Simple, effective, and lethal against the right people, in Klein's opinion.
And thankfully, to avoid the risk of any misuse or accidents with Artifact 3-2026, the whole thing was solved without a single enchantment. Now, all that was left to do was to put the damned box back into its containment — a task that Leonard wasn't exactly willing to complete.
"Leonard, stop it," Klein reprimanded his partner, unable to make himself get any closer than five steps away from Leonard, 'just in case'. "It can break open if you drop it—"
"You know better than not trusting me, Klein," Leonard giggled, doing another last-minute catch. He was amusing himself with Klein's worries, finding a way to make their walk down those endless hallways a little more entertaining. He simply couldn't help it but admire Klein's little flinches and sharp intakes of air just before the artifact landed back in his hands.
After seeing Klein's expression darkening even more, Leonard turned back around and continued to walk. There was still a limit to how much he could push his partner's buttons.
"It's a shame, don't you think," Leonard broke the silence of two or three dozens of steps, slightly turning his head to look over his shoulder. "First time it's out of the vault and we didn't even get the chance to test it."
"I think that's fortunate, if anything," Klein sighed.
"Does it still haunt you this bad?" Leonard teased, finally tossing a grain of salt in the open wound. "It can't hurt you this time, Klein. It's locked up."
The not-so-subtle hint in his colleague's words made Klein's words get caught up in his throat. For a moment, he couldn't nag Leonard about the dangerous of handling the Artifact 3-2026 like that, nor ask him for some extra care with it. Klein simply bit the inside of his cheeks, blushing slightly when Leonard's remark sent him straight back to that embarrassing memory.
That, too, didn't go unnoticed. Leonard did a half turn to look at Klein, ready to push another of his buttons and ask about the silence, a loud sigh interrupted his track of though.
"Y-you're right," Klein muttered, tipping his top hat a little lower to fruitless try to hide his face, "I should stop worry over it, let's get going."
'My, was it a little too much this time?', Leonard thought as he watched Klein walk past him in hurried steps, barely bothering to look in his direction. "My, don't worry up now, Klein! Wait for me— ah!"
Thump. Crack.
Klein quickly turned to look at the source of that sequence of sounds — the whole context he and Leonard were in made it even more ominous than it could ever be. Leonard's body was curled slightly forward, the artifact's box just a few feet ahead of him. "What did— I-I told you to be careful!"
Leonard looked up, then down again to look at the box and at his own boots, the misplaced tile on the ground that made him trip. Still, he slowly stood back up, a calm smile still playing on his face. "See? I told you it was fine."
"Y-you did this on purpose?"
"Of course not," Leonard scoffed, walking towards the artifact, "who even trips on purpose? Regardless, the artifact is fine. Don't worry—"
Leonard reached for the box to pick it up from the ground, but yanked his hand back right after when he spotted something moving out of it. The impact, right over the box's lock, forced it to open. Not wide like it usually did, but just enough for the artifact to slip past it.
"Leonard!" Klein gasped, seeing his colleague stumbled back and press himself against a nearby wall. He saw the way Leonard wrapped his arms around his body, how his legs suddenly trembled and the crooked smile in his face when their eyes finally met.
What Klein feared up until now finally happened. Not to him again, but to Leonard instead.
"G-gehehet the- aghahah, d-dahamn it!" Leonard giggled, clenching his jaw as hard as he could to stop himself from laughing any louder. He could feel the gentle touches and swirls of the feathers inside his clothes, the way they moved around his body like a dog running in an empty field. "It reheheally— r-really tihickles! It's ahahawful!"
"H-hang in there!" Klein gasped, hesitating for a few seconds — long seconds, if you asked Leonard — before reaching for the box. Thankfully, he wasn't 'disarmed' as well in the process, which should be something worth to note to the church later and that he would write down if not in his current situation. "Retreat!" Klein shouted, but Leonard's laughter didn't seem to die down after the enchantment. "Huh?"
"K-Klehehein!" Leonard whined, his knees starting to give in. He knew he was ticklish, sensitive to an extent like every living men and women, but this was ridiculous. He could only picture the feathers flying through his sleeve, so why did it felt like they were all around his body? There couldn't possibly be so many inside that box. "M-mahahake them stop! Plehehehease!"
"I-I can't!" Klein looked down at the box, trying to figure out what he did wrong. The command was right, the execution was right — why it didn't work? He tried it again, focusing on making a stronger pulse this time, but the artifact still didn't respond.
"B-by the gohohoddess, I'm sohohorry!" Leonard laughed, pressing himself harder against the wall while he fell on his butt, unable to keep standing. "I wihihill be mohohore careful! AHAhah, I-I gehet it now! J-just plehehease!"
He shouldn't have underestimated Klein's uneasiness, after all. While it was hard to figure something out or having any other insights besides how much it tickled, Leonard quickly understood why that thing was still labeled as an artifact.
The tickling, while harmless, had quickly rendered him useless, helpless. It was hard to stand, as he felt that tingling sensation on his soles, and even to move around, as his limbs and joints were all equally targeted. Even if he himself wanted to reach for the box, how was he supposed to steel his body and accept the idea of exposing himself even more just to do it?
"I-it's not that!" Klein answered, his panic growing along with his partner's reaction, "I-I think the lock was damaged! It's not working like it should!"
"WHAhat?!" Leonard's voice cracked, both men unsure if because of the laughing or the dread that came along with that information. It didn't even fall that hard, Leonard thought, how could it be damaged already?!
"H-hang in there! I'll get you help!" Klein nodded, slowly stepping back despite Leonard's mirthful cries.
"K-Klehehein! Don't leheheave me hehere!"
"You can do it!" Klein shouted through the distance, running as fast as he could down the hallway. Hopefully, someone in there would know how to fix the lock and get the artifact back to the containment!
