It's a throw-away life

It's a Friday. Sam is grading papers, making clicking sounds every time a student makes a mistake. Sometimes he'll read out the more notable mistakes: "Hey, this kid spelled chlamydia with a k! I should give him points for the reference. I hope it was a reference." Mostly, though, he's quiet, even if Sam does 'quiet' differently than everybody else. Occasionally, his chair squeaks across the tile whenever he shifts. Sam is never comfortable when he's grading.

Dark sits on the other side of the table, and he isn't drawing, although he's holding a pencil. The paper in front of him is 11.7 by 16.5 inches of blank space.

Allie has her cosmetics in front of her; she has to leave for work soon. With the right kind of make-up, she can pass for human. Maybe it's her clothes, too: people don't think killers come in bright pink. She has her compact open, a single finger on a curved lip of plastic, but she's still.

Dark knows what she's listening to, because he is as well: The beat of Sam's heart. It's steady, steady, steady, and if he moves his hand, pushes it across the table, he could press his fingers against Sam's neck, wrist, heart, and feel that heartbeat under his skin--

There's the snap of the compact. Allie ties her hair back; she's barely remembering to throw in lots of extra movement, so that the action looks natural and clumsily human. She smacks her lips together, exaggerated. "Okay, I'm going," she says.

Sam looks up, focuses his expression on her. Dark grips his pencil; it bends.

"Don't do anything stupid," he says, and then, absurdly: "Stay safe."

Allie smiles at him. She leans forward. This is all vampire--smooth, graceful motion, her torso tilted at an angle no human could hope to suspend without extensive training. She presses her lip against Sam's cheek. It's a split-second touch, because Dark is present, and leaves a smear of pink.

"Sure," Allie says. She straightens, and suddenly she's a teenage girl, off to stand all night in the ordering booth of a 24-hour fast-food restaurant.

Dark waits until they're alone. Then he puts down the pencil and gives Sam a long, measured look, but the man is back to his papers, and his students. "You should be more careful around her," he says.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Train isn't spelled T-R-A-N-E, is it?" he says, and red ink flashes across the page. With his other hand, he reaches into his jacket. He pulls put a knife--the knife, the one Dark gifted him with. It lies between them, fenced in by blank sketching paper and student essays.

"I'm always careful," Sam says, and then: "Shit, you know what, I'm just going to take fifty points off these dumb unnamed papers."

Dark says, "I see." He picks his pencil up again, and begins to sketch.

Labels: _fiction, c: allison fencer, c: dark, c: samuel gray, verse: darkcity

Prompt: fire in the warehouse

Liam awoke to the thick smell of smoke and heat heavy against his skin. He registered the dry crackle of flames even as he jerked his body up, rolled over, and shook Code’s shoulders. "Wake up," he said. "Wake up!" he repeated, but Code didn’t move or open his eyes.

Liam was strong, but Code was bigger than him. It was awkward carrying the younger boy. In the end he threw Code over his shoulders like an oversized sack.

He left their bags behind.

The fire was a strangely quiet enemy; by now it had swallowed one wall, and the windows were blocked. It stretched, orange-yellow-blue, from floor to ceiling. There were no exits so Liam made one, drawing back and kicking. The wall crumpled like foil under the force of his kick; behind him, the fire guttered at the sudden onslaught of air, engorging.

Liam didn’t put Code down until he couldn’t hear the fire’s grabbing hisses. Then he was abruptly aware of the dull, aching exhaustion in his limbs, the way his chest heaved from panic. Code was stirring.

"Put me down," he mumbled, the words chasing each other, awkward and stumbling. Liam did. Code grunted as he hit the ground.

Code put his palms against his eyes, as if he had to stop his eyeballs from falling out. "Someone started that fire," he said, slowly, and even then Liam had to think for a moment, separating the slurred sounds into proper words.

"Yeah," he said, because he didn’t think warehouses could spontaneously combust. "But we’re out."

"The bags…" Code started, then stopped, shaking his head. "It doesn’t matter."

At least he was starting to sound coherent.

"Thanks for saving me," Code said.

Liam just looked back over his shoulder. His breath was calming; the world was dulling again, his senses no longer buoyed by panic and fear. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he didn’t.

Labels: _fiction, c: code, c: liam, verse: boneyards

Labels: _fanart, c: hyuuga hinata, fandom: naruto

Labels: _art, verse: misc.

Why do I like writing from Code's point of view so much? Huh. Anyway, 459 words. Companion pieces are Finding, Yesterday's Child, and Purpose. This one is the only one to feature the boneyards the verse is named for, though.

Code is one of the most depressingly practical characters I've ever created.

Risk

He was warm--hot--there were hands on him, soft, a woman whispering soothing words into his ear. And then the cold rushed in, chasing away the dream, and he opened his eyes and saw morning.

Code shifted. There were bones digging into his back; fragments drew red patterns on his left arm. Above, the ribs they'd slept against cast striped shadows onto the ground. The boneyard was utterly silent. Code touched the black sheet that covered Liam. When he felt the slight stirs of movement, the rise-and-fall of a thin chest, he withdrew his hand.

It felt--stupid--checking to see if Liam was still alive every time he woke up, but he still did it. It made Code feel better.

He checked their bag. There was a bottle of water, mostly clean. There were cigarettes, but they were Elle's, and untouched. He tried to picture her--wherever she was, traveling and searching, without her customary cigarettes. It didn't fit.

There was an extra blanket, but no food.

Today, his arm hurt. Code pressed it against his chest and flexed the thin fingers. He would need to hunt. He would have to leave Liam alone. It was a necessary risk.

He'd left his mother alone, once, and when he'd come back he'd found her gone, with blood on the ground, his little sister hidden in a place no babe should ever be--half-buried under the sand, her scent masked by mushrooms.

But he needed to hunt. It was a necessary risk.

He'd left his sister alone--not just once, but twice, and thrice, and many more times after that. He learned which scents drove predators away, that movement attracted attention, that the wind was as much enemy as friend.

Liam wasn't his sister. And it was a necessary risk.

Code leaned forward. "Liam," he said. "Liam, I have to go. I'll be back."

Liam didn't answer. Code thought he heard a slight hitch in his breathing. He was probably wrong. He drew the blanket tightly over the man, covering him completely, and hid the dark color as best he could under old bone and fragments sharp against his skin. He thought he understood Elle's need for cigarettes.

He stood. His footsteps broke the deep silence. The shadows on the ground had shifted slightly, warming slightly as the morning grew older. Code wrapped his fingers around Wyndham's knife. He didn't think about Liam. He thought about traps without bait, about insects in hidden nests, about worms and chrysalises. The morning was still cold, and he thought briefly, irrationally, of Ilsa, but then the wind brushed against him and he raised his head and smiled as he registered the tangy sweetness.

It was morning, and his arm had stopped aching.

Labels: _fiction, c: code, c: elle, c: liam, verse: boneyards

Some hand studies. You can tell which one I did first, lawl. (Hint: it's the uglier one.)

Just trying to avoid work by being pseudo-productive :]

Labels: _art, verse: misc.