Pretty and Spooky

The Railroad Man x Non-binary Witch Reader

Pt. 1

Garbage summary: Witch lives alongside the railroad, they’re a community organizer, healer, teacher etc. After unsuccessfully trying to wrangle some control over the reader’s village, TRM gets a lot a little obsessed with controlling the town and the reader. The reader likes a challenge and is more curious about TRM than is safe and sane [Basically, where’s the TRM x Reader love? I mean he squicks me out in an attractive way? he’s an embodiment of capitalism and brutally uses people for his own gain… but hear me out]

TW: Mentions of bodily harm caused by working at the railroad. There will likely be more as I come up with ideas for this story.

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You could feel his smile on your skin, somehow, it was hard to explain. It has always felt dirty and sickly to have been caught looking, but even more so by him. You knew he wouldn’t get close, you’d warded the place so well that even well-meaning visitors wandered around lost for a bit before finding who they were visiting and anyone who wasn’t meant to be here never seemed to notice any of it. This helped prevent people from banks coming to evict community members because the bank decided they owned this little village jammed like a doorstop into the edge of the woods.

Still, there was a feeling of unease, and the next three hours were spent reinforcing the wards. He may not have succeeded in destroying the town to make way for newer capital last time, but his presence on the hill every week now, it used to only be once a month when he could pretend he was hidden by a moonless night, made you nervous. 

You didn’t get much sleep after that.

The morning brought a light that activated a small, but treatable, headache behind your eyes and a harsh knock at the door. It was a rhythm rushed and broken, so you knew who it was before you even opened the door. 

A dark-haired boy stood on the porch, stood was a kind way to phrase it, more like pacing in place to get his energy contained. Isaiah Maddox was twelve, big for his age, and strong as an ox, but he was twitchy and needed to be outdoors. He loved running errands for you in exchange for whatever you had decided to bake that day.

“Finished with your chores already?” you feigned disbelief. Isaiah had two sets of chores, one in the morning, and a longer one after dinner meant to boil off any of that excess energy in him before supper. 

Isaiah grinned “Not unless you got any more for me!”

You thought hard about it, you didn’t really want him to go into the woods and outside your wards if you could help it, not with whatever strange meeting the Man had, you didn’t see him as the helping-people-out-of-the-goodness-of-his-heart type and whoever he helped was likely the same. The best bet was to pick things he liked to do in town, that would help him stay busy and safe, but not be too suspicious about it or he’d know the man who led his father out of his life was slinking around the town again. You didn’t know how, but that boy knew more than was good for him, and he had too much energy to keep any of it to himself

“Well, I was thinking about fixing that fence there and then heading over to my mama’s place”, you said with a smile knowing she’d be able to come up with plenty of things to keep Isaiah out of trouble and help you figure out what to do. 

It seemed to do the trick, the boy’s face somehow lit up even more. 

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The Man had given them business cards and you barely saw them, grey and shining, as they were tucked away into shirt pockets, hat bands, shoes, really any place they could be easily and reliably stored. Isaiah was holding one despite being far too young for the type of labor the railroad required and staring at it with a puzzled expression, he mumbled something that you couldn’t quite hear.

“What was that, Isaiah?”

“Shit business card doesn't even have a way to reach him” he grumbled.

Usually, you’d pretend to uphold his mama’s wishes for Isaiah not to swear, give him a little look he’d pretend to get sheepish at, but you figured now was the best time for a little swearing, and no one else seemed to have heard him. But he was right, it was a plain card with an “R” and railroad tracks, no name, and no company. 

“Isaiah, give me the card.” You tried your best to sound firm but calm, rather than the creeping fear you felt at losing this small boy to… who knows what. He must have figured you out because he handed it to you silently and shoved his hands in his pockets kicking at the dirt to pretend he wasn’t interested. 

The card made your fingertips tingle, it wasn’t painful like pins and needles when your foot fell asleep, but it felt dangerous, like the buzzing of wasp wings. With your heart racing, you turned back to your home.

Nearly the entire day was dedicated to you collecting and destroying the business cards, you found you could only hold a few at a time before the tingling turned into a burning, and it was a pain to cleanse the cards and burn them out back. You weren’t about to burn them and release that energy into your home. Many men refused to listen to your pleas that only bad things could come from this Man, that the railroad took life and limb indiscriminately, and that they best think about their families and the community that relied on them. Besides, the rails on the hill have been done for a year and a half now, what more could they need? Neither sympathy, logic, nor approaches to their egos worked on them, they wanted the glory and wealth the Man in the gray suit had offered them. You didn’t blame them, you knew they wanted the best for their loved ones. Money wasn't much here, most people went out into fields owned by other men to tend crops they didn’t own, and others traveled together weekly to larger towns to sell wears they had made and buy whatever the town couldn’t grow in the community garden. You did your best to make sure everyone got to eat regardless of their individual successes, and you never asked for payment when you set bones, delivered medicine, or delivered children, but the truth was, everyone was struggling. 

And so the next dawn, the men who held their business cards with iron grips walked out of town and they never came back.

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You snapped back into focus as you approached the small cottage, Isaiah had been talking, and you’d been responding with as much attention as you could, but your nerves had really taken over as the day progressed. Your mama, who wasn’t exactly your mama but might as well have been, had the table laid out with food much to the joy of Isaiah. 

“Hello, ma’am” Isaiah shouted a bit too loud for the house.

“Isaiah, you better be heading out to wash up before you even think about touching that food” a voice yelled from the kitchen. Isaiah froze one hand hovering over a roll before slinking off to scrub off his hourly dirt collection. 

A hand grabbed your shoulder, and your mama gestured for you to join her in the kitchen.

“I take it he’s been showing up again?”