made this little collage for Gavin Walsh Livingstone because I just finished Brothersong and it'll take a while for me to calm down for this feral man - also Steve Jansen might just be 1:1 what I imagined when reading the book 𓃦
I've been looking at my Kelly Bennett designs and am trying to reevaluate his hair timeline. I wanna keep his long hair, but also let it be short at some points. But he also canonically has haircuts so now I need to work his trauma into his hair length.
Gordo was in Abel Bennett’s office, and he wished that he was anywhere else.
He dreaded coming in here because he knew it meant pain. Searing hot intense pain that would drain his energy for the rest of the day, maybe even into tomorrow, too. When he would hear the door click closed behind him, he knew there was nothing he could do. But he still tried anyway.
“Please,” he begged his father as he watched him begin to set up the equipment he would be using. As usual, his pleading fell on deaf ears. Each time he would beg his father not to do this and each time the answer would be the same. A stern look from his father, a tight lipped smile from Thomas, and silence from Abel.
As if on queue, Thomas put his hand on Gordo’s shoulder and gave him a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’ll be alright,” Thomas said. “The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be over. And I’ll be here the whole time.”
His words didn’t offer Gordo any comfort. Neither did Thomas helping him to lay back on the table.
No, the only thing that Gordo could take comfort in was the fact that none of this was real. Sure it had been real at some point, but it wasn’t real now. He wasn’t a child anymore. The other three men in this room were nothing but ash. He knew this was a dream. He knew this had already happened.
But none of that stopped his heart from racing and his breathes from quickening. Because in this moment, he was back to being a kid that wanted to make his father proud but hated that this was how it had to be done.
They knew that he would start screaming when his father began to work so they always placed a towel between his teeth to muffle his cries. Each of them had their usual place that they would take around Gordo. His father would be at his right arm, burning the newest tattoo into his skin. Thomas would hold down his left arm and his head, tasked with making sure he didn’t hurt himself in the process. He would always keep his face near Gordo’s, offering reassuring words, trying to keep him calm. Abel would stand by his feet to stop his legs from kicking out.
His father began to work, and Gordo remembered how much this piece had hurt to get. It was the vines that spread down his arm, full of intricate details that had taken forever to finish. This session would have him passed out in bed for the entirety of the next day and he would still be feeling sore for a week afterwards.
Like always, Gordo screamed in pain. He pleaded for them to stop but the towel did a good job of dampening his words so they were unintelligible. His skin was covered in sweat and tears filled his eyes and ran down the sides of his face. Thomas’s face was a blurry image above him and Gordo could only partly make out the words he was saying.
His right arm was in a pain so excruciating that his vision almost whited out from the feeling. His body jerked away from the pain, his limbs struggling against the hands that held them down. He became less aware of his surroundings but his body began to panic nonetheless.
“Hold him down,” he heard his father’s gruff voice say.
“Gordo, please. You need to relax,” Thomas said from somewhere above Gordo’s head.
Away, his body screamed at him. You need to get away. He thrashed even harder against them, trying to free his arms and legs.
“Damn it, kid. Quit moving!”
“Robert, maybe we should-”
Gordo got his left arm free for only a moment before Thomas slammed his hand back down. He threw his head from side to side in hopes that Thomas would release his hold on him.
Wake up, his magic screamed at him this time. You need to wake up. Gordo tried to listen to it, desperately wanting to get out of this hell. With the next big burst of pain from his arm, he let the feeling take him, and finally passed out.
---
Gordo awoke in his bed. Not as the child he had been in his dream but as the grown man that he was now. His head was groggy, trying to separate the dream from real life, and his eyes were unfocused as he slowly regained consciousness.
The pain he had felt in that dream was gone but his body continued to react as if he was still in that office. He felt the sweat covering his body, felt his heart jack hammering in his chest, and felt his breathes coming so fast it was like he had just run a marathon. That voice in the back of his head telling him to move, to get away, to escape was still there, too. And Gordo found himself responding to it.
In a daze, he attempted to move from the bed only to find that he still couldn’t move his arms. If he had been more awake, maybe he would have remembered that he had fallen asleep on his side with his right arm underneath him. Maybe he would have remembered that Mark was pressed against his back and had draped his own arm across Gordo’s left arm and waist, holding him close as they slept. But he wasn’t fully awake, so he didn’t remember any of that. He only remembered his dream, his panic, and the hands holding him down.
So once more, he struggled to get away. But this time, he had his magic.
Without even thinking, his hand latched on to the arm around his waist. He didn’t have time to register the sleep heavy “Gordo?” from the man behind him before his magic lashed out to protect him.
The yelp that echoed through the quiet room was enough to clear the fog from his mind. He scrambled to the edge of the bed once the arm was off of him and finally took in his surroundings. The room was dark, with the only light coming from the full moon outside and the glow radiating from his arms. He was in his bed with Mark next to him. Mark, who was staring at him with wide, confused eyes. Mark, who was holding his forearm that now had a bright red imprint on it. Mark, who Gordo now realized with an immense sense of dread, was injured because of him.
“Mark… I…” The rest of his words failed him, so he reached across the space between them instead. He caught the way that Mark flinched slightly at the movement and he stopped his hand before he could touch him. Seeming to register what he did, Mark shook himself before moving closer to Gordo.
“It’s alright,” he said, his voice sounding much more awake than it had been before.
“It’s not alright, Mark. I hurt you,” Gordo spat back, feeling his anger building at himself. He carefully took Mark’s arm in his hand and inspected his skin. The wound was already healing, though slowly, and since it was caused by magic, it would take a while to completely go away. Gordo knew that he wouldn’t be able to heal it but he knew that he could at least remove the pain. So he reached out with his magic, gently this time, and began.
They sat in silence as he worked for which he was grateful. He still felt rattled but his body was slowly calming down as time went on. By the time he finished, his heart rate had returned to normal and his arms had stopped glowing. The imprint was still there, but he had done what he could do. He released Mark’s arm and moved to sit with his back against the headboard, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at him and what he had done.
“I’m sorry,” Gordo breathed into the silence of the room. “I didn’t…”
He felt Mark move beside him and heard the creak of the headboard as he mirrored Gordo’s position.
“Are you okay?” Mark asked, and Gordo wanted to just lay down and go back to sleep. “That seemed… intense.”
Normally, Gordo would say that it was fine, that it was nothing. He would internalize his problems or deal with them on his own. That was always how he was, how he had to be. But this was Mark. This was his mate. Maybe it could be different this time.
“It’s…” He resisted the urge to say fine. “Stupid,” he settled on instead, which probably wasn’t that much better. “Just a bad dream, nothing to be worried about. Like I said, it’s stupid.”
Mark’s voice was firm when he responded. “It’s not stupid, Gordo. It’s normal to get nightmares. You don’t have to-”
Gordo finally opened his eyes and turned to look at him. “I’m a grown-ass man, Mark. I should be able to deal with something that happened almost thirty fucking years ago.” He dragged his hand over his face, trying to reel back his emotions. Snapping at Mark wouldn’t help anything.
He seemed almost hesitant when he asked, “What was the dream about?”
Gordo really didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to go back there again. And yet, he found himself telling Mark anyway.
“It was more like a memory, I guess. One of the days in Abel’s office. Getting this.” He lightly traced the vines on his right arm with his fingertips. “The pain was awful and all I wanted to do was get away from it. But I couldn’t. Abel and Thomas…” He couldn’t get the words out. Gordo knew that Mark was aware of what went on in Abel’s office, though Gordo never told him specific details about it when they were younger. He didn’t know if Mark’s father or brother ever told him about what they had to do. He doubted they did.
Mark seemed to understand what Gordo couldn’t say. “So when you woke up and my arm was around you, it felt like you were still there?”
Gordo just nodded in response.
“You know, I still remember that day,” Mark continued and Gordo looked at him, head cocked to the side. “I remember pacing in front of the office door, frantic. I couldn’t hear anything through the soundproofed warding, but I could feel your panic through our bond.” His voice was distant as if he was reliving that same day like Gordo had. “And when the door finally opened and I saw my father carrying your unconscious body, I-” Mark sucked in a sharp breath. “Gordo, I had never hated anyone more in my life than your father in that moment.”
Though his father was already dead, Mark looked like he wanted to kill Robert Livingstone all over again. Gordo took Mark’s hand in his and gave it a squeeze, trying to bring him back to the present. It seemed to work, as Mark’s voice was softer as he spoke once more.
“I wish I’d done more. I wish I could have stopped them from hurting you. I wish that your childhood wasn’t full of pain.” He sounded on the verge of tears.
“Hey, hey,” Gordo said soothingly. He gave Mark’s hand another squeeze. “What could you have done? Go against my father? Go against your father?” They both knew that wouldn’t have been an option.
“Besides,” he continued, “having magic hasn’t been all bad. It’s definitely saved our ass’s more times than I can count. And yeah, the tattoos were painful but they gave me this.”
He brought his hand up to Mark’s throat and traced the outline of the raven on his skin. The action seemed to calm him, and the two of them sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.
After a few minutes, Mark pressed a soft kiss to Gordo’s bare shoulder and spoke.
“Well, I don’t know about you but I don’t think I’ll be getting back to sleep tonight. What do you say? Want to see what kind of TV shows are on at-” Mark glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table. “Three o’clock in the morning?”
Gordo huffed out a breath. “Yeah, that sounds good to me.”
I just finished wolfsong by TJ Klune and I’m 100% convinced, that this guy has read or written abo fanfiction or even better; sterek fanfiction because this was a fucking great book which reminded me of my fave ship
