worth saving

Routine was meant to help. You got used your blood bag at the breakfast table, the bowl of cereal sat alongside it like it made any sort of difference – corn flakes, nothing neon and sugared in a balanced diet - like Lucky Charms or Cocoa Pops were a gateway to draining people. Going with Magnus to the shop, cause pacing around the house like a caged animal wasn’t reassuring of helpful in the least. A few hours of it were all he could take though. Magnus probably wasn’t, but Linc was almost sure he could feel him staring at his back – just watching over him – setting that itch off that had him wanting to squirm.

He should’ve gone to the square after, got some of that sun, basked in it with all that green around him. Just a normal teenager, not a murderer still trying to forget how it felt to see the life go out of someone’s eyes. To shrug off that panic he’d felt as he’d thumped his fist against the guy’s chest and shoved his blood past the guy’s lips. Guilt all too late to make much of a difference to the people he’d killed.

Guilt all too late to change Cassie’s mind about what he was.

Shoulders hunched, like if he got them close enough to his ears they’d work as an invisibility cloak. Harry Potter with fangs and a constant thirst for blood. All it felt like he was missing these days was the lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

Three days ago he’d walked back into the club for the first time since he’d … slipped. Alright, who was he fucking kidding. Since he’d had Cassie mule kick his heart and push him away. Since he’d taken her accusations to heart and had gone from accidentally nicking her lip with a fang to draining and killing three people. Hunkered down in an alleyway like some sort of troll, ripping at anyone who happened past.

Linc’s eyes flicked up to the bouncer, then away again as he slipped inside. It was a Saturday, but still too early to have the queue outside snaking around the block. Not enough people in the club upstairs to have him flinching away from all that life and a couple hundred pounding hearts. Temptation on two legs, the reek of desperation on them all as strong as the stench of sweat and perfume.

Nobody pushed at him as he trotted down the stairs and into Emerald City. No questions fired shotgun fast at him, not after three days of refusing to tell any of them where he’d been. Linc slipped behind the bar, strapping on the black apron over his jeans and t-shirt. All spic and span, no junky shakes and sweats, no senses going wild over every beat of a heart in the near empty space. If any of them had found out what had happened, then they weren’t saying anything – and he probably had Magnus and Hector to thank for that. The two of them were the ones who’d get it – there was no way Saint Lawrence had ever done this, even if he did crack that choir boy act every time he disappeared behind a closed door with Hannya.

The moment the place started to fill up it was easier. People – supernaturals – were as impatient as anybody else. They crowded up to the bar when things really got going, snapping when a drink wasn’t set down in front of them fast enough. Some eyeing the staff like meat, like none of them had any worth beyond the meal they might end up being. That was the hardest part, sending his shoulders up around his ears again. How close had he got to ending up like that permanently?

Beer bottles, cold against his fingers, didn’t clack against the rim of the glasses as he poured at least. The hunger that had burned super nova bright in him after Jo and Magnus got him out of that alleyway beat back for the minute at least. There were blood bags here if he needed them, but he wouldn’t, he’d fed today, it was enough that he could get by on the soda that sat sweating behind the bar, only a couple of mouthfuls taken out of it. Linc set the glasses down in front of the shifter who waited at the bar with an exasperated look on his battered face. ”Sorry for the wait, ‘s busy tonight,” Linc muttered. The guy picked up the glasses and walked without a word. On his tab it was then, although would a thanks really have choked the asshole.

Linc’s lips pursed as he reached for the glass, taking a gulp, trying to stop the desert dryness from slipping into his throat and tripping him up. The shift of lights, another customer. A twitch of a smile – you’ve gotta look a little bit like you actually want them there – freezing brittle as ice on his lips as Cassie stopped in front of him. Smiling like she hadn’t shoved him away, like she hadn’t ripped him apart just three weeks ago. ”Hey.” That single word brought the burning dryness back to his throat and Linc frowned, looking down at the taps. He started to pour a soda automatically, even though Cassie hadn’t asked for one.

Sorry. Remembering the texts he’d gotten in the worst of the withdrawal, Linc froze, his fingers tight around the glass he held. Tears had swum in his eyes then, the phone clunking out of his fingers, onto the floor of his bedroom where someone had picked it up days later and had left it out on the kitchen counter for him to find when he’d eventually emerged on stiff legs. ”I had a couple of weeks off,” he said tightly. Like that was much of an explanation, or an apology of his own.

Looking up at her from under his lashes, Linc felt the muscles in his jaw twitch. It had just been words, that had been what he’d tried to tell himself after, once there was blood drying on his hands and tear tracks of regret on his cheeks, but it had definitely been too late then.

She was shifting around the bar, leaving him flinching as she touched his arm. Linc held his spot, not backing away like maybe he should’ve done. The laugh tried to roll out of his throat but it just felt like he was straining to swallow back the ache. She did? She’d been called a monster and pushed away by one of the only people he thought he’d known hadn’t seen him that way. Cassie didn’t stop there though, babbling out something about flowers that ended with another apology. Linc’s head dropped, his brows beetling as he stared at the fingers wrapped around his forearm, rather than the painted lips and warm eyes that had gotten him in trouble the last time. ”Apology accepted. You don’t have to try and … explain.” What had the talk about the plants been anyway?

Somehow he lifted his head, still concentrating on her eyes rather than her red lips – far too close to the colour of the blood that had smeared on them the last time – as he looked at her. ”I was the one that fucked up … you did something good for me and I took a liberty. So, I’m … I’m sorry for it. You don’t have to apologise again, alright?” His voice was flat, his own admission choked up, held behind a mental wall of bars. She wouldn’t have been saying sorry if she’d known that he was no better than she’d accused him of being. A murderer, one who might never have the sort of control that’d let him kiss a pretty girl without taking it too far. Cassie was better off around people who wouldn’t accidentally kill her.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 1318

He’d known this would be coming eventually. Cassie had gotten in too deep with Hector to avoid the club forever … and there’d been that text. A lighthouse’s glow when that darkness was still swirling around him, some promise of land and safety when he was still half sure he was going to drown in his hunger. Cassie didn’t deserve to be caught up in that, to end up like he had, tossed aside, drained dry, left without much choice in being turned. She didn’t deserve him, if she’d even want him after all that.

That touch said she probably did, at least enough as a friend to try and patch things up. She had a good heart, she’d want to do that and God, some part of him wanted it too, but how was he meant to apologise for being everything she’d accused him of? Linc felt the words burning on his tongue. Instead of letting them spill out immediately, he held onto them, let them scorch him from the inside out. The apology, the admission, she deserved to hear both of them when the blame on all fronts lay on his shoulders.

It wasn’t guilt that had him flinch away. That was lodged like lead in his chest, leaving him feeling like he was crawling most of the time. It was fear. Cassie had eased past the stilted greeting, around the bar that might’ve kept her safe if he lost his mind, and right up to his shaky shields again. She’d reached past them and that fear that he was going to hurt her again, that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, exploded inside of him. Was one single step between them enough, should be bolt back? Linc imagined the tears filling her eyes with more of that regret and stayed put.

She didn’t understand this, not the way she thought she did. It wasn’t the way witches worked, not the way Magnus and Jo seemed to reckon it at least. They didn’t have this thing inside of them, always clawing away, tempting, teasing at the edge of their senses. He could feel Cassie’s heartbeat through the fingers she curled around his arms. He didn’t want to stop it, hadn’t wanted to with those other people either. Her hand slipped away from his arm as he brushed her apology off and the muscles in his arm twitched. He wanted to reach for her hand, linking their fingers the way they’d done before. ”It wasn’t you,” Linc rasped. It had been him, all him.

The hurt and anger on her face that day as bright as the bead of blood on her lip. All gone now, there was just that pain there now, the croak in her voice, the tears building in her eyes. Linc pressed his lips together, his throat burning but not with hunger. ”Angry enough to tell the truth. Shitty and awful, maybe I needed to hear it. I … I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I wasn’t watching what I was doin’.” He’d been caught up in that moment, the unbridled joy of it, the press of Cassie’s lips against his, nothing standing between the two of them then. With the ring on his finger he could see her outside of the club, somewhere out in the open where it was safe. Or so he’d thought.

Cassie was smiling when he looked up but he could see the strain around the edges of it, making her lips quiver for just a moment before he vanished. The burn in his throat worked its way up into his sinuses, like his own eyes were going to fill. ”I need to.” The truth about what he really needed to apologise for stoppered up tight in his throat. He’d babbled those apologies in the days after. A kid crying his heart out with his dad right there, trying to make everything better, but none of them really knew how to do it. God. Linc let out a heavy breath. His hands fisted at his sides, his thumbs moving restlessly over the backs of his knuckles. ”I wanted it too. You can’t trust me though, Cassie, you don’t know what I could do. Whether I wanted to or not. I could go further…” His hands shook at the memory of the taste of blood on his lips, that hunger for everything crushing him just as that guy had bumped right into him.

Noise from the bar slipped around them but all Linc could hear was that apology. He sank down on the counter on this side of the bar, spilled beer soaking into the arse of his jeans. The tears were breaking for Cassie now, despite the smile that tried to shine like sun through those clouds, her hand went up to brush her tears away, the ones he had her crying. ”Did they hurt you?” Linc heard the hollowness in his own voice. He glanced down at the hands he had braced on his thighs. ”Something happened after you … after I left. It’s way you can’t say that for sure. I know you want me to be and I wanna be. I’m not that good though. Hurting you would …” Break him for good. Looking up at her, Linc let that fear fill his eyes. He’d seen it again and again in the back of his mind in that alleyway and hated himself every time he saw Cassie’s face overlaid on the people he drained.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 919

If the road to Hell really was paved with good intentions then Magnus was on it, and Cassie, and maybe Jo and Hector too. Mrs Graham would’ve been marching right along it with what she’d tried to do for him, and none of them deserved it. Hell should’ve been reserved for people like his parents - too neglectful, too selfish and greedy to be able to care about anybody but themselves (and burning your brain cells out with chemicals was no excuse) - and Wesley. People whose intentions were shitty from the start. Linc knew karma didn’t work that way though. People tried to convince you it did, even after you got everything you hadn’t deserved (what kid deserved that when they were barely out of the womb?). It was always karma comes around in the end. Karma could suck it if trying to do the right thing got your arse burning in the end while the real evil got to skip through the pearly gates.

In those days, years, where fire had raced through his veins and everything had hurt like he was suffering through the worst flu ever, Linc had begged not to be sent there. He wasn’t innocent, hadn’t been from the moment he’d delivered the first drunk idiot to Wesley. Magnus hadn’t seen that when he’d decided to turn him though, or even when he’d killed the bouncer completing his transition. The people in the alleyway had dulled that shining belief a little, like tarnish added to the armour Magnus had been sashaying around in since Jesus had been a toddler, but it hadn’t shattered it. Magnus could still some sort of promise in him. Penitence was possible, if he didn’t fuck up again.

Sorry hadn’t stopped Cassie sending him away that day, but his regret had burned through him about the kiss as hard as it had about the lives he’d taken. How much penitence would he need if he gave it to what he’d wanted then and now and Cassie let him kiss her again? How much if he lost control again and did worse than just wring a couple of drops of blood and a metric ton of disappointment from her?

He did want to kiss her again. Seeing her mouth form those reassurances, Linc remembered the way her lips had fit against his, the taste of her that hadn’t been washed away, no matter how much blood he drank, the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck and the joy that had bubbled up inside of him. Linc could almost feel it all again, enough that he had to press his lips together to avoid taking them back there to try and dry up the tears in her eyes – not that it would help melt her pain away. ”Cassie…” Swallowing, Linc shook his head. ”You weren’t lying. It wasn’t rude to protect yourself.” Maybe it had been too sharp, but it wasn’t just her words that had cut the strings on her control, they’d just severed that one thread that had been holding it all together since the start.

There were multiple sets of hands on those torn edges now, none of which Linc was entirely sure he deserved. They were all trying to weave those frayed threads back together for him, to show him how to hold onto them himself so he didn’t end up back there. Shame had him wanting to tear his gaze away, but Cassie deserved more than his self-pity. He could regret it all he wanted, punish himself for it, make up for it, but at the end of the day he didn’t want her punishing herself for what he’d done. ”You shouldn’t have to do that to keep yourself safe. Witches shouldn’t have to, but I know there are people out there who won’t stop.” Who wouldn’t want to. Linc’s teeth found his lip, his head turning slightly to look around the two of them. The bar was probably filled with people like that, who saw that sort of grin on Cassie’s lips and wanted to take some of that light for themselves.

He'd wanted it, and in that one moment he’d had it and too much more.

The part of him that would’ve done worse than feed from anybody who hurt Cassie cracked through with the relief, the pressure in his chest releasing. Linc sagged slightly. He watched Cassie fight her tears to smile for him. ”You didn’t … you were scared he was gonna take you again, that he was gonna hurt you.” And then he’d bitten her, one of the very things that seemed like it might be her own personal nightmare. Guilt slathered itself on like sunblock over his conscience, preventing anything from shining in to chase those shadows out of it. ”Did they find her?” That … that could’ve been Cassie and he wouldn’t have known because in the moment she’d shattered what had grown between them like one of those giant bubbles the blokes down on the South Bank blew he’d abandoned her, giving into his worst instincts.

That was him being more than shitty. It was him being the thing she was afraid of and he hated it more than ever now. Reaching down as he started to open the floodgates, Linc fumbled for a handful of napkins. Cassie was watching his mouth like he was explaining in Latin. Mutely, he nodded at her squeaked question, nausea rolling up in his throat as he avoided looking around again. ”I couldn’t be here,” he admitted quietly. ”I was at home. Magnus was … helping.” Like he’d broken his wrist and just needed someone to tie his shoes for him.

Cassie wasn’t hearing what she should’ve still been worried about in his words. She was stepping towards him, lighting up every nerve in his body, and bringing hope with it, as she settled her hand over his. Linc slowly lifted his other hand, crushing the napkins between his palm and hers as he took hers. ”Tryin’ might not be enough,” he said hoarsely. ”I can’t hurt you again, I can’t do it.” Cause that part of him that had snapped in the wake of it still hadn’t knitted together like the bones in that broken arm. ”You’ve got nothing that needs to get better. I can promise that if you promise I won’t hurt you.” Did deals really work like that?

Blue eyes dropped from her glassy eyes to her mouth. Not a spot of blood on her lips now, although he remembered the way it had bloomed there like lipstick. Bigger blooms on the throat of the man he’d killed first, staining his shirt before it was all gone, all drained away. Linc squeezed Cassie’s hand harder, like he was chasing the memory of it away. ”I killed someone … more than one,” he breathed, the tears building in his own eyes until he dropped his head and tried to blink them away. ”I couldn’t stop with them. You get that I don’t want that to be you? It was why I pushed you away that first time? I wanted you and I didn’t know if I could find that line. I … still want you …” He wasn’t about to ask the question that leapt in his throat. ‘Do you want me even if I’m a killer?’ The answer to it could be a blow to that still healing spot and Linc doubted there was any way to fit those splinters back together then.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 1258

They hadn’t exactly locked him up in a cell as he’d dried out, but his bedroom had become the next best thing to one. His phone out of reach in the end, no newspapers, no internet, no blood at all at first – probably all the better to burn out the worst of those cravings, get you to the point where you’d drown yourself in any blood to stop it. No way to see who had died when he’d lost it. Some part of him wanted to know now, but Linc suspected that was just some need to add to his guilt about it. After all, what was he going to do? Go to their families, confess that he’d been able to help himself and he’d drained them. Jo and Magnus hadn’t told him where they’d put them afterwards. Little kindnesses he wasn’t sure he could fully appreciate yet.

Little kindnesses that left the door open to worry about just who he’d killed that day. Not Nicky’s sister, it couldn’t have been her – not with her going missing out of the shop while he was in that bedroom cell. Still, Linc felt his throat dry up, his pulse thump just a little faster in the base of his throat. Was there three families out there looking for their loved ones the same way that Nicky and his brother were looking for their sister? Was there any reason at all it was her and not Cassie? Fuck.

Linc had to resist folding over, like a puppet with its strings cut, his lungs suddenly seizing up. Would Nicky have come looking for him if Cassie had gone missing instead? Fingers pointed at the bloke who’d hurt her. He’d not have known otherwise, not unless Magnus would’ve trailed in days later, with the apology filling his lined face.

His hands moved restlessly over the thighs of his jeans. Moist palms wiped off anxiously. His gaze remained locked on Cassie’s, apology cutting its lines of worry into his face. ”It sounds awful,” he said hoarsely. ”I hope they find her and she’s alright. Those tracking spells usually work in the end, don’t they?” Like he knew anything about magic, other than those films his parents would leave on, when they actually had a TV in the flat. They were things he shouldn’t have been watching, being over a decade under the age restriction on them. Sat on the floor – couches were as rare as the TVs, everything that’d bring even a couple of quid sold off when they got desperate enough – forearms propped on his knees, his face buried in them when he couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

He'd done the same in his bedroom after. Laying on the bed in a ball, sweating, shaking, the sobs wracking him as he’d wrapped his arms around his head like he could block it all out. Magnus’ quiet voice, Jo’s light touch as she’d dragged the covers up over him like he was a kid getting tucked in after a nightmare. The little soothing touches that he’d barely been able to tolerate. He didn’t deserve, did he? He’d killed people who hadn’t deserved it and he hadn’t been able to see anything that would make up for it then. Apologies didn’t seem like shit when it was murdering someone you had to try and make up for. Babbling them here would’ve been easy if he’d returned to work straight after, screwing up on the clock in a place where it probably happened on a weekly basis anyway. Bodies tucked in the freezer, dragged out to be buried in the woods, none of them blinked an eye. It was all on him, what Magnus thought best finally sinking in a bit.

Whether Cassie got that or not when he told her he hadn’t been able to be here, Linc wasn’t sure. But she came close, smiling as her hand settled on his. Linc wondered if he’d end up having to blink tears back as the truth burned its way free of his throat. Her hand was so warm under his and he could almost remember the way it had felt against his cheek, at the back of his neck the first time they’d been here, things that shouldn’t have been on his mind, although it was hard to forget what it had felt like before she’d seen something beneath what he tried to be. ”You sound like Magnus,” he said hoarsely. ”He believes in me too.” And that had been just as hard as anything at the start. He hadn’t seen what Magnus had, hadn’t known why he’d bothered to try and save him when it would’ve been far easier to just let him bleed out on that couch.

A deal with Magnus to try would’ve been easier than making one with Cassie. He didn’t feel that bubble swelling in his chest again when Magnus had coached him back onto his feet with the sort of belief he’d only ever gotten from one person before – and Magnus sure as hell wasn’t Mrs Graham, in support tights and nylon house dresses, although the sensible shoes were there. He wasn’t Cassie either, her halo of blonde hair and her grin made him want to promise never to hurt her again a million times over. ”I guess I need to learn to trust myself the way you do … the way he does.” Linc turned his hand in hers slowly, hooking his little finger around hers to give it a tiny tug. Pinky swear, the best he could do and still be one hundred percent sure he’d keep their deal.

Giving her the truth of it – horribly revealed in those six little words – Linc wondered if Cassie was going to pull back, slapping away the idea that he could be trusted as she bolted from him. Through tear filled eyes he watched her until he dipped his head, fixing on the lip he’d bit, the ones that would be warm and soft under his. If he didn’t have a grip on her hand he would’ve been grinding the tears away with the heels of his hands, pulling himself back together with a wet sniffle. Hector would shit a brick if he left the shift early, but being around all of this when your emotions were ragged was bad, you had to get yourself under control and Linc could feel his teetering on some edge there, desperately wanting them to fall back instead of forward.

She didn’t let go. He shouldn’t have felt so much hope at that, but Linc was clinging onto the bright shiny edge of it that shone around the dark edges of the clouds that had swept in the moment that bloke had stepped out into his path. ”You do?” Surprise had his voice rising. He looked up at her, studying her face like it’d suddenly change. ”It seriously fucking does.” Just a hint of something lighter to his voice at her laughter. Linc swallowed hard at Cassie’s sigh, trying not to immediately see the other shoe out there, waiting to fall behind the two of them. ”I’m gonna do everything to make sure I … to make sure I stay on the wagon … but … it scares me too. I don’t know where to start with any of the lines, Cassie.” Except for the ones Magnus – and alright, Jo and Hector to – had helped him to start sketching out again.

He didn’t want to be Wesley, didn’t want to be killing again. He didn’t want to see the fear fill Cassie’s eyes at his tiniest slip, or have her looking at him like she expected he was gonna hurt her at any moment. But, he did want her – the sunshine, the light, the warmth that had bubbled out of her before she’d even had a clue who or what he was. Linc felt that bubble in his chest expand further, pushing up into his throat as Cassie squeezed his hand and leaned in. It left him breathless as he felt her lips brush his forehead, her hesitation barely noticed when she was right there. Looking up at her, he slanted her a grin. ”Be friends?” he asked tightly, although he wanted more than that. ”Take a step towards that line together at least.” The one that would leave him breathless in a different way if they did step over it again.

Still holding her hand, he rose to his feet. Linc glanced down at them, fingers still tangled around one another’s, the ring gleaming blue on one finger, a connection he hadn’t expected to have again once the truth came out. If this had been anything like that day, he’d have drawn her in, returned that forehead kiss by finding her mouth with his. Linc tilted his head towards the bar instead, the fragile borders of the bubble feeling like they could either take another small expansion or burst right there. ”You wanna stay for a drink?” he asked. There was no hiding the hope in his eyes, the anxiety in the rapid beat of his heart. That rack like pull of everything he wanted, tugging at every part of him that mattered now – the bits that mattered because of them, because of Cassie.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 1548