He finds Dwayne about a mile or so away from the van.
He's sitting on a boulder above the riverbank, where the water flowed over hidden rocks at the bottom, turning the clear water white with small rapids. His head is tilted back, against a tree that grew from a split in the stone, twisted and old and covered in green moss that had started greying with the late autumn. His eyes are closed, knees drawn up to his chest, face serine. He looks like he's listening for something. Or maybe to something.
Hadn't that been what he'd been talking about earlier? Listening rather than talking? Understanding what the world around you was doing, rather than being obsessed with your own head, the - the presence of nature and all the ways it connected. Michael's not entirely sure he got it, but maybe for Dwayne it was different. Either way, he tries to hold onto that solemnity, lest Dwayne feel like he's being. Disrespectful, or something.
Though he doesn't move in any way as Michael comes closer, he does feel Dwayne 'tap' the back of his mind. Just an acknowledgement of his presence.
"Sorry," Michael says lowly, honestly. "I didn't mean to uh. Interrupt your meditation?"
The edge of Dwayne's mouth twitches. He opens an eye to glance at Michael.
Davey Rennick didn't realize he had woken up right away. His consciousness was struggling to break through the haze of sleep, like a layer of oil on the surface of water, slowly and with resistance. It wasn't until later that he realized his body was restrained. Not just bound with a tourniquet or a rope, but pinned to the cold floor by something alive and pulsating.
"Shit."
He opened his eyes and gasped in horror. Something was writhing above him. McLeary? No, not McLeary. It was what he had become.
The human silhouette was distorted, as if it had been stretched and twisted into a mass of flesh, something that shouldn't exist. McLeary's face was still recognizable, with its beard, nose, and eyes. However, his eyes were cloudy, like a fish pulled from the depths of the ocean.
And that intent gaze...
Rennick jerked again, instinctively trying to pull away, but the tendrils of flesh tightened around him, wrapping around his wrists, chest, legs, and ankles. It's not painful but insistent.
"McLeary?" Davey's voice was hoarse.
McLeary didn't answer, just leaned closer, and Rennick could smell the salt, the seaweed, and the dampness.
The most eerie thing was that there was still some kind of "understanding" in McLeary's gaze, as if it were a conscious look.
A barely warm breath touched his neck, and goosebumps broke out on his skin. Rennick shuddered reflexively, and suddenly, the bands of flesh around him loosened, receding as if they had never been there. Davey was still afraid to move for a few seconds, watching as McLeary's body changed, contorting and shrinking back into its human form.
It was McLeary again. Or what pretended to be him. His skin was pale and bluish, like a drowned man's, and his eyes remained as cloudy, bloodshot, and deceptively blind.
"Wow, this works." McLeary's voice sounded distorted, as if he was relearning how to speak or hadn't spoken in a long time. Although the last time they spoke was a couple of hours ago, before taking a nap before another run through the oil rig.
McLeary clenched and unclenched his fists, staring at his hands as if he were stretching out stiff muscles. Then, awkwardly, with a guilty look, he extended his hand to Rennick.
Rennick slowly stood up on his own, refusing any help, as if McLeary weren't a man, but a wild animal, ready to attack at the slightest wrong move.
"You... what was that?" Davey coughed, clearing his throat, and swallowed hard. He carefully chose his words, although deep down, he wanted to scream.
"I don't know. But I think I can control it..." McLeary shrugged his shoulders. "I've been noticing something's wrong with me for a while now, but I didn't think it was this..." He made a vague gesture with his hand, and for a moment, the skin on his arm rippled like water, as if something was moving beneath it.
"You never think, McLeary, you idiot," Rennick bit his tongue to keep from barking at his former subordinate in his usual manner. Instead, he took a step back.
"Are you sure you can control this?" Rennick took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure, and adjusted his glasses.
"I don't know." McLeary looked at him. There was no lie or fear in his eyes. Only the depth of the North Sea.
***
Rennick walked quickly, almost running, his footsteps echoing through the oil rig's surviving corridors. But McLeary followed him step for step, like a shadow, like a parasite. Davey didn't turn around, didn't want to see McLeary's human body and face contort in that way again.
"Why are you so fast? I'm not biting." McLeary's voice was filled with inappropriate amusement.
"I don't like people invading my personal space, McLeary. Do you understand that this isn't normal?" Rennick still hadn't turned around.
"But... you're warm." McLeary sounded like he was apologizing.
Rennick clenched his jaw. "That's not an answer."
"For me, it's the answer."
Rennick turned around abruptly. McLeary stood half a meter away, his shoulders slightly hunched, his hands in the pockets of his uniform jumpsuit. In the dim light of the emergency lamps, it was particularly clear that his skin still had an unhealthy white tint. However, Rennick remained where he was. He knew that he wouldn't survive here alone.
***
Rennick didn't want to sleep. But his body constantly demanded rest.
When they found a safe place, McLeary always lay down beside him and always tried to snuggle up to Rennick like a sick dog seeking warmth, like a sea creature wrapping itself around its prey.
"Can I?" Once again, McLeary rested his forehead against Rennick's shoulder.
"No."
"Just a little."
Rennick shrugged his shoulder, trying to push McLeary away.
"No."
When Rennick heard the rustling of clothes, it was too late. Something slimy and cold had crept under his jacket, wrapping around his wrist like a jellyfish tentacle.
"Damn it, McLeary!"
He didn't respond, just pressed closer, and the area of contact increased. Thin, sinewy, slippery tendrils of flesh easily slipped under his jacket, wrapping around his ribs and up his back to his shoulder blades.
"Stop it!" Rennick hissed at McLeary without raising his voice.
"I'm cold." McLeary breathed into his neck, almost desperately.
And the worst part was that he wasn't lying. There was a simple, sincere need in his cloudy, dark eyes, like a human's, like an animal's.
Rennick felt him with almost his whole body. Tendrils of lesh, alive and cold, spread under his clothes, and McLeary himself pressed against him, as cold as a dead man.
"You're as cold as a grave." Rennick hissed, shuddering.
"And you're as hot as a furnace." McLeary whispered, pressing his face against Rennick's neck.
Rennick didn't sleep until morning, feeling the tendrils of flesh throbbing in time with McLeary's heartbeat.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"The first truth I expect you to accept is that if you die by my hand, you have well and truly deserved it."
Lady Dimitrescu imparts upon you a few simple truths.
----
Hope that you enjoy this micro-drabble!
I am currently working on chapter 4 of “Stole”. It should be out by this weekend. <3
I love all my fellow Lady D simps! <3 Only a little over a month left to wait for the game.
14 - overgrown (I seriously just pointed at the screen so that's what ya got!)
I’m absolutely okay with this one. I knew exactly who it would star the moment I read it. :D Thank you so much for the ask!Word Count: 249“Balic Cormac, of all the foolish, idiotic, childish,” Elara’s thickly accented rant chased her husband from the medbay. The big man skid to a stop, nearly boweling Fynta over, then ducked instinctively as a bag of cotton swabs flew over his head.Fynta took cover instantly because she knew how good Dorne’s aim was. When Cormac followed, Fynta shoved him away. “No way, I don’t know what you did, but stay away from me.”Cormac pushed past Fynta into the armory with her, earning them both an eyebrow raise from Jorgan. “It wasn’t even meant for her,” Cormac explained while trying to shove his bulk into the already crowded room. “I’d intended it for Vik, but Elara triggered it early.”“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jorgan grumbled, the grunted when Fynta’s elbow connected with his stomach. Cormac had managed to get into the armory enough to shut and lock the door, leaving the three soldiers squished together.Cormac held his breath as the sound of angry boots stomped past. Then, breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on, boss. Can’t you stash me somewhere until she calms down?”Fynta’s voice answered in a muffled gasp from where she was crushed between the two men. “Fine, just let us out.”“Thank you, I owe you one.” Cormac’s relief was palpable. Fynta counted the seconds until she’d pass out, nudging the big man impatiently in the back. When he spoke again, it was with a nervous laugh. “Uh, the door’s jammed.”
They pace around him, their outlines blending in with the shadows of the poles. The moon comes in and out of the clouds, the lighthouse at the furthest end of the beach sweeping by in long, even strobes. Only showing enough to let him see that there's something else in the darkness with him.
Boys, sometimes. When the light is artificial. It shines off the leather and aluminum spikes and glittering jewelry. They stand on two legs.
But in the moonlight, wavering on every lap against the shore, it's something else.
Things that crouch, padding along on all fours with arms too long and legs that bend at wrong angles. They have gaping mouths that pant, wide for a drop, a scent, a crumb of him. Teeth that crowd out the gums that are drawn back, always smiling, a perpetual rictus grin that cannot relax. Endlessly they circle and circle and circle. A laughter that eats up the air, memory, and life cackles hysterically around him.
And eyes that he cannot see. Eyes that are not there because they do not have them. They use his instead.
Dwayne sits, knees pulled up to his chest, leaning back against an old oak tree.
The grass has already died, brown and dried in the wide circle where the blessed salt had been sown into the soil, and he wondered how long it would take until it recovered. Years, maybe. In the center of it, maybe five or six feet across, the grass had been raked away with the digging of the shallow grave.
Not much depth was needed for this.
It had been three days, now. Dwayne had no idea how long it was supposed to go on for - how long Max intended. After the first night of wakefulness, David had stopped cursing. After the second, he'd stopped begging.
Now, on the third night, awake in the salted soil, mere feet deep but unable to move for the blinding, deafening, paralyzing pain of being buried in dead, salted ground, David had stopped forming words.
All Dwayne could hear was the screaming inside his head.
All Dwayne could do was wait here, outside, cradling the tortured mind with his own and hope Max grew bored of the punishment.
"The sun hits the mountains at sunset and everything is this shade of red and gold, and it's...it's really pretty," Michael finishes a little awkwardly.
But Dwayne doesn't poke fun at his stumbling words. He just listens with that intent, focused look on his face, taking in everything he's saying as thought it were actually interesting.
"Do you miss it?" He asks.
"Arizona?" Michael confirms, and Dwayne nods.
He looks down at his half-eaten burrito and considers it. Given their current predicament, the sun would suck. The daily higher temperatures might be nicer in the late November weather, but they'd be out of the forests, and into rocky, bare hills. Sage brush and desert scrub land and valleys of spindly fir trees on high cliffs. The wildlife would be as rough as their home. Lizards and snakes, lanky hares, laughing, jeering coyotes and pronghorns that Michael suspected might be able to give even a vampire a run for their money in a chase. At least at night it would be nicer - the stars outside of the city endless. Lonely and safe, where you could see people coming if worse came to worse.
As it sweeps through Michael's head, he realizes that...
