crawl

”Hey! Don’t blame me for this. I didn’t pass you the bottle, or let you get behind the wheel. Shit!” He hadn’t asked to be yanked here to deal with Bozo the Clown, dodging the guy’s lumbering swings at him with slippery little mops in the muddy gullies his tires had torn up as he’d ploughed off road and in the woods.

”I’m no’ goenehwhur. Son o’a’bitch.” The bull sized asshole spun again, moving with about as much grace as you’d expect a drunk behemoth to have.

Damien hissed out a sigh and shifted away again. Usually he didn’t have the patience to tolerate the screaming or the stubborn for too long. They weren’t supposed to force them to go, but when he suspected they were just struggling to take that first step he gave them a little nudge. It’d probably get him canned if some jagoff went and reported him to the big guy, but since the jagoff wasn’t currently here – he didn’t care.

The alcohol shouldn’t have been affecting the soul he had to reap – not without it being in the shattered body in the front seat, the one currently hugging the tree that’d sheared off and smashed through the window – but after decades of pickling his liver, this guy probably didn’t know what sobriety even felt like.

He charged at him again, but this time Damien let the guy hit him. The air exploded out of him in a whooof. This would’ve been easier if he hadn’t made himself corporeal, but sometimes that little change had the dead settling. Not this time. Bozo crushed him down into the mud, wallowing about like a hippo until he got a hand on the back of that thick neck and then they were gone. Sobriety came with sobs as the scent of brimstone and sulphur bloomed in the air. Drinking yourself to death might not’ve been a crime, but buddy boy here had obviously committed far worse in his time. As a demon melted out of the shadows to take care of the new prey, Damien was bugging out. He had better things to do with his night.

Appearing in the apartment, he found it dark. That likely meant that Leah was either on the clock, or she was at the club, playing tug of war of war – or smash the bottle over the mail order bride’s head – over Remzi. Not worth it in his book, but others didn’t always see what you did. Something had attracted Leah to the guy enough that jealousy continually spiked in her gut. It had apparently built enough over her former living situation, with Remzi and Hannya (the demon’s presence alone made that sticky enough that he wanted no part of it), that she’d moved in here.

It wasn’t any of them that he was looking for as he did a tour of the apartment though. Damien’s lips remained in a thin line as he opened the door to every room, scanning those shadows like something – or someone – was going to launch out of them. When one single touch would see whatever it was dead, it felt ridiculous, but Aurora had been warning him ever since her brother had crawled out from whatever rock he’d been hiding under to try and crack down on his sister’s life. Those warnings crept around the edges of his awareness, lending a wariness to him that he hadn’t felt since it was the FBI on his tail instead of some ancient overprotective vampire big brother. He was no threat to Aurora, or the jagoff himself, but apparently Tristan wouldn’t accept that, so they were playing this game of hide and seek.

Hissing out a sigh as he wound up in the bathroom finally. Sharing with Leah was nothing like sharing with Connie had been all those years ago – there were a lot more products for one thing, like they were even required when you were now immortal. Well, some of them were anyway, Cory’s situation was different, the kid was a hand-puppet for Augustus – totally fucked up if you asked him. His suit would be cleaned with a snap of his fingers later (or tossed and replaced if he felt like it), but for now it puddled on the white tile, the splashes of mud on his skin turning to dirty streams of water that trickled down the drain as he stepped into the cubical and cranked the shower up hot. Immortal, but he could still feel the pound of hot water against his shoulders, driving the weariness away.

Soap was chasing the last of those brackish streams away by the time the apartment door closed. It was barely audible, but Damien stiffened all the same until he heard Aurora call out. ”Hey baby, I’ll be right out … maybe we can take a little trip, pick up something better…” Get out of town again instead of huddling away here, trying to duck Tristan and his people by staying in.

The suds gave way to clean water. Damien swiped wet hair back from his face and shut the shower off. He didn’t bother bypassing into his bedroom for clean clothes, just wrapped the towel around his waist and headed out wet to the echo of Aurora’s voice through the apartment again. ”I’m here. I was just taking a shower … I had a messy one, you know, some people don’t …” Want to go easy. They didn’t meant a smooth end to their lives, they wanted to hold on, kicking and screaming, the way he imagined Leah had at the end – before she’d come back to screw up his life.

Damien lifted his hands up, cursing her now as he emerged into the living room to find Aurora holding up one of Leah’s discarded bras like it was about to blow up in her face – blowing his relationship up with it. ”It’s Leah’s.” Not enough of an explanation, he knew, it wasn’t like he hadn’t before Aurora had come into his life, just not since. ”She’s staying here for a while, her last place got … sticky. In the spare bedroom, where she should’ve been keeping all of that.” He approached slow, his hands remaining high in anticipation of an explosion.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 1043

Women were a minefield. Sonny had tried telling him as much when he’d been too young to realise that his brother was capable of spouting bullshit. He’d looked up to Sonny, trusting almost every word of his mouth. That’d been before their lives had been detonated by an asshole who’d decided to get behind the wheel drunk. One bad decision had left carnage in its wake that he’d never expected to fully heal. If it had, if Connie had come out of her coma, they wouldn’t have staggered out of the other side of the rubble and straight into a life of crime. That thing wouldn’t have infested Sonny, he wouldn’t have bled out on the floor of the bank. Aurora wouldn’t have careened into his life.

He wouldn’t have been standing there in the bathroom unaware that one of those mines was about to go click beneath the weight of his big mouth. Aurora had been honest with him, as he had been with her. Truths shared under the glow of the moon on a tropical beach and tucked in the quiet of the bunker that’d once been his playground. He’d spoken of Connie and what had ultimately cost him his brother, Aurora had told him about her own brother, Tristan’s reasons for trying to seal his sister up like isolation was somehow going to fix what he thought was broken in her. It was bullshit. There was nothing to fix, Aurora was perfect as she was. Right now he was the thing that was fucked up and it was all Leah’s fault.

Damien resisted the urge to curl his hands towards his face. He could’ve cursed into them, ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, but it wouldn’t solve the issue of Leah lighting the fuse on the situation. She wasn’t even here to smirk and coo a whoops before she disappeared out of there leaving her usual brand of chaos in her wake. His hands continued to hover in the air between him and Aurora, lowering at a snail’s pace. ”I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned her before. She’s nobody to worry about.” And look at him, pouring oil straight onto the fire like an absolute idiot.

Clamping his mouth shut, Damien tried to get a hold on himself. His hands finally found the edge of the towel around his waist, settling there like everything might end up exposed here. He’d tried tossing Leah’s things back into her room the first few times he’d found them, but it was a losing game. They cropped up like mushrooms on the furniture, two or three replacing each thing he’d tried to tidy away. With warning this time he’d have gone through the place, made sure that thing was behind a closed door.

”It’s been a couple of weeks,” he admitted with a sigh. ”And it won’t be for much longer. She swore she’d find somewhere else.” That promise seemed to have evaporated as soon as it was past Leah’s lips through. ”Like I said, she’s in the spare bedroom. That should’ve been in there.” There was probably just a paper thin barrier between the walls in Aurora’s mind though, the presence of the bra proof that he’d had some sort of a hand in taking it off of Leah.

Slowly, Damien drifted closer. He let go of the towel to bring both hands up to grip Aurora’s biceps lightly. One corner of his mouth twitched up, his dark brows drawing together. For once his eyes were unshielded by his glasses, the little lines that sprung up at their corners more obvious. ”Yeah, Leah my coworker. She can throw herself at other men all she likes. I’m not them, Aurora. I’m not gonna fall for any of that. Why would I when I have you?” Damien had dipped his head to press a kiss to her brow in reassurance but at Aurora’s question he froze and drew back. ”She’s staying here so she doesn’t throw herself at her boyfriend’s fiancée. I already had to stop her from attacking the woman once. Trust me, her being here is better for everybody involved than her being there. You don’t think I’d let her move in to sneak around behind your back? Honest to God, baby, there’s nobody but you.” Maybe Remzi’s fiancée had thought the same about him, but if Leah was right that arranged marriage hadn’t taken into account just what the romance novel cover God had been getting up to without his mom knowing about it.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 757

Elias had inserted himself into his personal life, he hadn’t been invited in like some coworker who’d spilled over into becoming a friend. He didn’t know the truth about anything, just thought he did. Cory was a sweet, naïve kid, but the two of them weren’t close either. To Cory he was the mysterious one, just getting on with the job, not pogoing around on the stick up his ass like Elias, or constantly courting trouble like Leah. The other reapers? Distant connections who maybe he’d work with when major disaster struck this town, again and it was all hands on deck. The whole lot of them were just like those coworkers he’d had at the bank before disaster had struck his life and Connie had been hurt. He wouldn’t blink at leaving any of them in his dust – except for Leah.

Damien stopped himself from hissing out a sigh as Aurora bit out the confirmation that he’d not brought Leah up to her before. Leah had gotten closer – more intimate at one point – but was just bordering on a friend. He hadn’t tossed back the covers on his bed and offered her the other side when she’d - alright, she hadn’t come knocking on the door, but the next best thing to it. The guest room was just that. A space for Leah to put her head down for a couple of weeks while she got over her broken heart and stinging pride. Like every boundary she’d ever been given, Leah had stepped over that though and now he was having to tiptoe through an explanation that should’ve been simple – and would’ve been if it was Cory or Elias sleeping in there.

He shook his head at Aurora, his brows drawing together. ”Elias, Cory, Leah … me. She’s part of the clean up crew in Mystic Falls. A co-worker. I thought I’d mentioned her like I do all the others.” Sub-consciously he’d probably realised he was better off not doing that, probably thought he was better off not doing it. A smarter man would’ve dripped the information in, eventually saturating the information enough that Aurora wouldn’t be feeling this bite of jealousy now. Damien cursed his sub-conscious for being fucking stupid – something he’d never believed himself to be (although it wasn’t like he’d ever had this much experience in a relationship).

If he hadn’t saved Leah’s ass and allowed her to stay when her place with Hannya, the boyfriend (did he count as an ex now?) and the boyfriend’s girlfriend (fiancee, there was meant to be some sort of a wedding about to happen), he might’ve suspected she’d done this on purpose. Leah definitely had other things on her mind though and he was Cory, she didn’t seem to get the same sort of kick out of screwing up his life. Maybe in a few more days she’d have moved back there, forgiving whatever crimes her roommates had committed, but before it could happen the two halves of his life had collided and one part – the better part coming off the worse for it.

Risking losing his hands when he touched Aurora when she wanted it least, Damien reached for her finally. It was too late to toss Leah’s things out on the street, the damage had been done and now he needed to lay his hands on to try and fix it all. The sigh rolled out of him immediately as she questioned his decisions. Not soon enough was the answer that should’ve come. His thumbs rubbing gently over her biceps until Leah was shoving him away, stepping back. ”I should have done it the minute she arrived and I’m sorry I didn’t,” he said honestly, hands dangling at his sides. ”A couple of weeks.” Damien winced faintly at the admission. ”It was meant to be a few days to start with, but things still aren’t patched up there. If it doesn’t happen soon I’ll be going over there and dealing with the fiancee. With both of them.” He wasn’t about to let his relationship be the one to implode here.

Damien glanced around the apartment, his frown deepening before he looked back at Aurora. The sensible thing would’ve been to kick Leah out immediately. The text message that should’ve gone to Aurora at the very beginning of this becoming a ‘sorry, this can’t go on, not if you don’t want my girlfriend trying to tear your throat out’. ”I love you and I screwed up, I know that a sorry’s not enough right now. What can I do to fix this? Throw her out? Fall down on my knees here?” He had to do something, he wasn’t ready for this to end up becoming just more rubble in his life. It wasn’t the reason for the apology, but honestly, he didn’t want Tristan chasing him to the ends of the earth either. Then he’d be forced to defend himself and it’d make how angry Aurora was now look like a toddler’s tantrum.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 835