The bite is a gift

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Bex shut his eyes as Derek leaned in. His mind went back to In Cold Blood… Truman Capote. Killers of the Flower Moon, even, and then his front door. A regular human could be deadly with a paper towel roll. Derek and his family were consistently well-armed.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do.” Bex said. He almost wanted to call off work tomorrow, if he still didn’t have repairs to make on the house, but the last thing he wanted was for his safe space to be damaged then, rendered title less. “What can I do?”

Derek was older now, his beard streaked with the start of grey and Laura sobbed with relief, clutching onto Derek. She didn’t need to question it, didn’t even think twice about it not being Derek. Laura knew her brother and would know him blind. She pulled back a little, looking at Derek with tears in her eyes.

“Oh shut up. Don’t you even start blaming yourself asshole.” Laura scrubbed her tears away and punched him lightly in the shoulder. “You couldn’t have known. Neither of us could. Don’t tell me you’ve been beating yourself up over that all this time.” Laura huffed, pulling Derek back in for another tight hug. “You could have come with me and he could have killed you. Or killed us both. And then where would we be then?”

There it was the line again. She use to tell him that so many times when they’d first moved to New York and she found him on the floor crying how he wished he’d just never been born. She’d always hug him so tight until he stopped crying and calmed down even making him some hot chocolate afterwards. She’d wrap him in a soft blanket so tight he needed her help to get out. It always helped at least to get him to level out. Even right at that moment he felt like a pup who needed affection, but her death had hit hard and he had never really let himself heal from it. No, he always needed to be strong for the pack and while he had gotten help for everything, her death had not been one of them.

“It’s a library,” Bex repeated. The idea just seemed so opposing in his head. He couldn’t even remember the first time he started running away to hide among the books, the idea that all he needed to perfect himself was somewhere in those pages. “What’s he going to do, throw a hardback at me? Disturb study hour?”

Laura shivered a little, the bark rough on her skin as she sat up, twisting a little to look at her brother. Her brother. Derek was alive, he was here, he was older, but he was still right here.

Derek’s skin was covered in soot, ashes from what remained of his clothes presumably, and Laura had so many questions. How many years had she been dead apparently? How many years had she missed out on? She’d left her brother alone, to carry on by himself. Laura’s chest ached, her spine ached, everything hurt like parts of her were being burned from the inside out.

But then Derek threw himself at her and Laura sobbed as she caught him, burying her face into his dark hair. “Derek. I’m so, so sorry.“ She clutched onto her brother, holding him tight.

Derek ignored the way his skin felt sensitive to the touch or how the bark felt under his skin. All he cared was that he was with his sister. He didn’t even think twice about trusting that it was her. It smelled, looked, and sounded like her. Sure he was curious as to what happened with her and even himself, but right at that moment he didn’t care too much about it.

“What’s he going to try? It’s a library,” He said. Bex laughed, trying to bring some sort of mirth into the conversation that seemed so brittle. “The library has always been my safe space. I mean, I dedicated my entire education trying to make sure I could spend every day there that I wanted and I did. What’s he going to do in a library?”

“You know I’ve been alone with people in the archive room before. All the time, really, it’s part of the job,” Bex offered, although, he could tell it was an idle, pointless comfort. “Peter seemed charming enough, just a little off-putting.”

He sighed, watching Derek. He could see the tension, how it started to rise in the man. “The check doesn’t take very long since I’m meant to be there with whoever it is, not more than a day. I’ll text you if and when he comes back.”