Keelah Se'lai

Four Word Prompts:

“You know,” James shifts irritably in his bed in the hospital wing, “I never really understood the whole ‘restless leg’ thing some people claimed to have.” He slides one bare leg out from under the covers and glares at Peter in the chair next to him, “But now I’m beginning to empathize.” 

“You? Empathizing?” Peter barely looks up from his book, “Now Moony owes me a full galleon.” 

James scowls, “One, you should know better than to bet against Moony - he always knows more than he’s letting on. Two, there’s no fucking reason for me to be in here this long. I’m not going to fall to pieces if I serve my time in the Gryffindor Tower  instead of the Hospital Wing.” 

Peter fixes him with a stare that would have made even James’ mother wilt, “Oh yes, what a wonderful idea, Prongs. Set you up in our common room where Padfoot has free access to entice you into doing something foolhardy and utterly moronic like standing on your dislocated hip and partially severed spine before Madam Pomfrey has had the time to finish fully healing them?”

James sulks, shifting himself up on his pillows so he can look out the window over Peter’s right shoulder. 

“You know very well that your healing process is best served here, in the hospital wing, quarantined away from negative influences.”

“Not like those ‘negative influences’ would even speak to me if the last two weeks has been any indication.” 

One might assume, if they were a casual observer of the scene, that nothing substantial had been said. There were no changes in tone or inflection to indicate that the two boys were engaged in anything more than simple teasing. 

A casual observer would neglect to note the way James’ restless legs stilled, or the way his eyes seemed to focus on something only he could see out the window behind Peter. They would fail to observe that Peter’s eyes had stopped traveling along the page, pausing on one word; or the way his heels braced on the floor - a fight or flight question that had never been answered by James, but was, instead, a reflex, a holdover from a lifetime of learning to become proficient at escaping notice. 

“Sirius will get over it,” Peter keeps his tone neutral, speaking to his book. He doesn’t look James in the eye. In a few years, he’ll learn to lie with more finesse, but even then, when the world hangs in the balance and on the edge of his deceptions, he can’t lie to those eyes - he’ll never be able to lie to those eyes, “Remus is working on him. We handled it fine. It was a routine run.”

“He’s not pissed I missed the run, and you know it.” 

“Well,” Peter finally looks up from his book, focusing on the brick wall behind James’ pillow, “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before pulling a stupid move on the pitch that you’ve never tried before just to impress a girl.”

“It wasn’t - I didn’t - she wasn’t even …,” James clenches his jaw, tongue behind his teeth biting off the rest of his protestations, “We won the match, alright? I still caught the damn snitch. Maybe if Sirius wasn’t such a fucking Black about his grudges, he’d see that it wasn’t my fault.”

The second the words are out of his mouth, James wants to pull them back - swallow them and pretend he’d never thought them, let alone spoke them. Peter doesn’t look at him, and somehow that makes it worse.

“That’s not why Sirius is pissed, and you know it.”

James sighs, and runs a hand through his hair, mussing it in his anger. He knows. He’s pissed at himself for the same reasons Sirius is, and that’s why the fact that Sirius still had yet to come to visit him in the hospital wing stung so much. James couldn’t forgive himself for being reckless and leaving the Marauders a man down on a full moon until Sirius did. 

That’s how it worked with the two of them - they absolved each other, good deeds for bad, compassion for apathy. The world didn’t make sense without the three of them at his back.

“I just …,” he lets his head fall back against the headboard, “He’s stupid.” He finishes the thought lamely, trusting Peter to know what he’s not saying.

Peter rolls his eyes, “You two are impossible.”

James smiles, nudging Peter’s book with his big toe, “Thanks for sitting with me, Pete.”

Four Word Prompts: 

”That’s a nice shirt.”

Josh barely looks up from the grill - he’s not making anything particularly complicated. It’s just an absolute pain in the ass to scrap burnt down hash from the grill in the mid afternoon - especially if he burns it now, when barely half the morning rush has come in. He’d be at it for hours that afternoon. 

“I’m so glad you have the time to admire my choice in shirts right now,” he replies, flipping a pile of gorgeously runny eggs onto a mound of potatoes, “In case you hadn’t noticed there’s a fuck ton of hungry people out there, so if you’re done complimenting me, take these to Table Four.” 

He barely takes note of Danny’s laughing response, but registers, somewhere in the back of his mind, how good it was to hear his boss laughing again - Ms Michaels had been good for the diner owner, no matter how vehemently Danny would say that there was absolutely nothing going on between him and Jane. 

“Last time I try to pay anyone a compliment in this damn diner,” Danny mutters under his breath, scooping the plate onto his tray, the door to the little kitchen clapping shut behind him. 

– 

He doesn’t think about the exchange again until much later, as he clears tables after lunch, while Callie catches up on her reading in the quiet.

“Nice shirt,” she murmurs, a french fry nearly motionless, forgotten halfway between the table and her mouth as she reaches a particularly engrossing paragraph in her novel. 

“People keep saying that,” he responds, sinking into the chair across from her, tugging slightly at the color of the light blue henley, “Is it that rare that I wear something new and not covered in food stains that everyone in this idiot town has to say something about it?” 

“Okay, first of all,” she measures him icily over her glasses, “I was just saying it looked nice, don’t take your shit day out on me. Damn,” she glances back to her book, finally bringing the now cold fry to her lips, “You’d think I told you it looked like shit, not that it brings out your eyes. I mean fuck.”

Josh rolls his eyes, “Oh hush, you knew what I meant.” 

The sides of her lips twitch into a smile, and she turns a page, “It does look familiar though - still nice.” 

“I’ll make it my date night shirt - even Danny says it looks cute on me.”

“NOT WHAT I SAID,” Danny’s voice echoes from the walk in. Josh laughs, and returns to his work, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Callie’s head, “Thank you anyway,” he tells her. 

“Mhm, she responds, fully engrossed in her book once more. 

–

It’s not until much later, as he drags his aching body and creaking knees up stairs to an apartment that is not his own, that Josh realizes that he’s not entirely sure he’s ever owned a light blue henley like the one he’s worn all day. 

He’s still half puzzling over that minor conundrum, as he slides the hidden spare from the top of the door frame, and pushes into the living room - dark except for the blue light of a video game on the milk cartons that functioned as an entertainment center.

“Hey,” Trevor glaces up, pausing his game, “how was your day?” 

“Not bad.” Josh drops a bag of greasy leftovers on the floor between Trev’s legs, and kicks his shoes into a corner. He drops down, and curls up, resting his head on the space between shoulder and neck. 

“Goddamn you are the best, babe,” Trev practically moans out as he opens the bag and takes a deep breath of deep fried gold. 

Josh smiles, and presses a light kiss to Trevor’s jawline, before pushing himself up, “I’m going to grab a shower,” he pulls his shirt over his head, and tosses it onto Trevor’s chest, “When I get back you better have Smash pulled up because tomorrow’s my day off and I don’t plan to go to bed until sunrise.”

Trev laughs, “Will do.”

Four Word Prompts:

He barely knows why he’s there. As a child, he’d race the winding halls of the necropolis and never feel alone - with Alistair running alongside him and Abe tottering behind during family visits, they were always safe in the company of the dead. 

The privilege of the Innes. 

Now, death feels too familiar. There are too many painful echoes swarming beyond that veil for Kayden to feel entirely comfortable here, where he’d spent so many of his formative years. 

–

“You must have reverence for that which you take,” Kayden looks up into his father’s soft green eyes, his small, thin hand (calloused even at the tender age of eight) wrapped in his father’s big warm palm, “It is not enough to act blindly, waving sword and wand as though they have no connection to the sundering of soul from body.”

He’d nodded then, solemnly, determined never to take a life unless it was absolutely necessary, and his father had smiled with pride, pressing his free hand to the back of Kayden’s head in a blessing, a benediction, only a father can pass to his son. 

–

Now, Kayden walks the halls and feels the eyes of the dead watching and wonders if they see his crime indelibly stamped on his soul - a brand to mark him among the damned. He and Al had both done their two years in the custody of the Stewards of the Dead just before Hogwarts - his first year and Al’s last overlapping. Aiden and Al had connected easily, but Kayden had never found deep connections easy - he had learned early that shallow interactions kept people at arm’s length and kept Kayden in their good graces, no matter his lineage, reputation, or history. 

Alistair had a right to be here, to call upon the Labraiche - Kayden had never earned that familiarity or privilege. And yet, call him he did.   

He came upon Aiden in the sanctum, too far below ground to feel the sunlight, but never far enough for an Innes to lose the touch of the waves. Aiden was different now, (so was he). A form made of terror, belying the compassion of the act that initiated the transformation of body to shadow, smile to fang. 

Ironic, Kayden thought, he himself had become a monster to the world in all but form, Aiden, in all but soul. 

“I didn’t want to come,” he told the Lich before him, and he could swear he saw Aiden’s maw twist into a smile or a grimace. 

“I know,” Aiden answers, his fang ripping and tearing the words as they drop from a jaw no longer meant to shape them. 

Kayden wants to say more. He wants to tell Aiden of the sleepless nights, of the red waves and haunted eyes that come to him now in his waking hours; but his voice won’t work - he is back in Azkaban in these stone walls, the pounding of his heart against his rib cage might as well be the sound of the sea against cell walls.