Hilow here. 24 • blog about JATP, HSMTMTS, TUA. • My AO3 • tracking tag: #userhil • survivor of the great cheesecake war of 2020. 🍰 • header by @willexmagic
i was always very inspired by hilow's @theobligatedklutz works, be it meta or anything! their willex vampire au was one of my faves and the accompaining hunter rayleb fic was SO fun!! so here's some doodles from 2021 i never shared.. with added rayleb comic i cleaned up that was in sketch form for agesss. i dont think hilow is active anymore in fandom but i remember their fics so fondly and they were such a wonderful part of jatp fandom meta and fic!! <3
A little gift back to ryn and the jatp community; I wrote this years ago but it was a scene from an important arc from Hunter that I never revealed to anyone. An excerpt from unpublished but outlined Chapter 9 from the vamp verse vault. Caleb, a father, a lover and most remarkably, a human:
Julie sits there, huddled next to her brother, looking all of seventeen and helpless as Caleb hulks over them with his arms stretched out to catch every bullet meant for the kids. There’s crimson seeping through the light purple of Caleb’s tee, soaked in so much blood that it paints Julie’s vision red. Wispy smoke rising from where the bullets are lodged into his back. Julie wraps her fingers around the cuff of Caleb’s jeans and tugs, her chin quivering and tears streaming down her face, softly calling out his name.
She sounds so childlike, it pulls Caleb out of the pain-induced daze he’s fallen into because that’s not what Julie sounds like. She gives him hell like it’s her hobby. She is not supposed to sound so little, so hurt. Is she hurt?
Caleb takes a shuddering breath, unscrews his face in some semblance of calm and regards both Julie and Carlos with squinted eyes, looking over them for any injuries and only stopping when he’s satisfied.
“Are you- are you both alright?” He asks just to make sure.
Carlos gapes, looks at the blood dripping and collecting in a puddle around his feet incredulously. “Are we okay? Caleb-”
Caleb swiftly cuts him off, turning his head over his shoulder like he’s heard a sound. “They are coming.”
He glances at the two Molinas at his feet, holding onto each other and looking so brittle, so terrified, and hopes he’s right in his decision, hopes Ray will forgive him for putting his kids in danger. Hopes Willie won’t hate him again for creating more messes than he can clean.
He swallows dryly and his eyes harden with something akin to his usual tireless resolve. “I need you to run.”
“No. I'm not leaving-,” Julie shakes her head, her white knuckled grip in the fabric of his pants tightens impossibly like that’ll change his mind. Like Julie can convince him to let her stay and fight.
It’s too late, there are too many of them. Vampires and hunters alike converge on them, glass crunching under their boots as they step in through the gaping wall where the window once was. All poised and ready to strike. Caleb turns on his feet, swaying slightly, but too stubborn to drop dead. And that’s when Julie and Carlos get a full view of his back. The back of his shirt is entirely saturated, almost blackened with blood, leaving his shirt in wet tatters. Julie takes in a shallow dry heave in, tightening her fingers around Carlos' wrist. Something haunted settles over both the Molinas' eyes. It doesn’t make sense to them how this man is standing right now because he should be dead and on the floor, pooling in his own blood. Yet he stands there on his feet like a cracked, shockingly sturdy wall between the enemy and them.
Caleb spots Vivian fronting the group and he knows he can't let him get any closer. Not close to his kids — he doesn't even get to reflect on the fact that he's embraced them so completely he's willing to die for them.
He throws both hands up, palms facing the bastards who think they can rip apart the only people he loves dearly. Caleb is ready to burn the world down just to protect them. Even if it's the last thing he does in his miserably, infinite life.
For a second, Carlos thinks Caleb is surrendering and he never took the man as someone who could but then- Then, every single person in Caleb’s proximity save for Julie and Carlos bring their hands up over their temples and scream bloody murder as if their heads are about to explode. Julie is pretty sure she’s never seen this extent of Caleb’s power but he always did say memories could be powerful and painful. And it shows in the way the chaos in front of her unfolds. Caleb pivots his head over his shoulder, looks over at the two of them with unrelenting determination.
“Julie, Carlos, run. Now.” A line of red drips from his nose, cascades onto his lip but he keeps his arms up. “Take care of each other. Get to your dad-”
He grunts in pain, stumbling back and throwing his head towards the back door urgently to get them moving. Julie hesitates but looks down at Carlos at her side and nods her head like she knows there’s no other way. Carlos scrambles up, stays frozen there for a second. Horrified and scared. And Caleb wishes he could do something to provide him some semblance of courage. He can't. So instead, he prays to a God that has refused him; to protect these kids, to get them to safety. "Go. Carlos. Go! Protect your sister."
There’s no time and Julie is pulling Carlos away before he can say anything more. The last thing they see before they stumble out the back door is Caleb falling to his knees, huffs of pained breaths falling from his mouth and vampires slamming his body into the floor to incapacitate him. They don't see the way the leader– Vivian – looks at their retreating backs with murder in his eyes. They don’t catch the way Caleb pulls his head up from the floor, catching the drag of Vivian’s gaze over the backdoor and desperately hissing out, "You've got me. You've won. Vivian, don't go after them. Do not-"
///// Yes, the rescue in my head did have Ray smacking Caleb upside the head and yelling at him. And then yeah, he patches him up.
“What part of we are in this together was hard to understand, you self-sacrificing idiot?”
“They were in the house, Ray.”
“You should’ve run with the kids!”
“You know I couldn’t…they’d give chase.” Caleb knows if it came down to it, Ray would want his kids safe. “I could not…”
“Caleb…you’re not expendable. You’re precious to me. Don’t you understand?”
At this point, Caleb understands too well. That’s why he does what he does. Why he did what he did.
