Holy Water

Heyyyyyy so. This was meant to be filling the prompt for @the-ghost-of-tobi, who wanted some good Dwayne and David interactions.

This writing got a bit away from me, however. After about three hours of work, I have this to offer, but cannot say I count it as the prompt being filled.

So! My lovely partner Berd is taking a crack at that, as we are writing partners, and everything they write, I look over, and vice versa. You WILL be getting our sweet, sweet Dwayne and David (dwayvid?) content. Just not quite here.

also, some content warnings for this drabble: use of racial/ethnic slurs against Indigenous people and Irish people. It's set in the 1920s. There's also canon-typical violence per the lost boys, so there's some descriptions of gore and bodily harm.

This drabble is a bit of an odd one, but I hope you'll like it.

Thank you.

-

Joey Olson hated his uncle. 

Well. Uncle Cal was only his uncle by a technicality of piety and the laws of marriage. His mother had ascended to the Lord’s Kingdom when he was seven, and Joey had gone to live with his Aunt Dodie. Now she was a shrewd woman, kept a good house and a tidy living for herself doing laundry and…helping young gentlemen out here and there with cooking and cleaning. They were always ever so grateful to her. While she’d been on her own, it had served her just fine. But Joey was another mouth to feed, a growing body to clothe, and a brain to mold with books and school tuition. She’d needed more. 

So ‘Uncle’ Cal came into their lives, and it seemed like the moment he’d passed the doorway of that small two-room let, he’d made Joey and Aunt Dodie’s lives a living Hell. 

Shared already with the discord, but here, for you for the holidays Tumblr.

We're filthy Marko/Michael truthers

Even if we had answered this before, we'll answer it again!!

So, the name comes from a line from Peter Pan, the book. @berd-alert is the ones who thought to use it, in reference to a lot of YCCM's themes. Not to get too spoilery, but in a slight deviation from 'normal' lostboys fics, Michael...isn't going back to being human. The Widow and David weren't lying when they said there was no cure or fix, save for THE most drastic, and Michael simply isn't going to engage in that.

But also, the longer he'd take, the less likely even killing his sire would even help. So.

YCCM is about a lot of things, and each Boy is going to have their full say about who they are, and what their life is about, including Michael/ The thing is, as the mc, he's just. Starting from page one lol. He's only beginning to figure that out, rather than already have the experiences. 'You can't catch me, and make me a man' - Peter is the boy who will never grow up, so there's the immortality reference lol, but there's also the implication in the second half of the line about what being 'a man' means. What being grown means. Being forced to confront things and make hard decisions that hurt. About standing on your own in an unfair and uncaring world. Can someone else truly make you be anything you aren't already, or where always going to be?

In the end, it's a story about some boys, some men, and where the two ends meet. :>

Thank you!! If you are curious about literally anything else, please feel free to ask, always! (And Berd, if you wanna weigh in on this, please do lmao)

Michael has a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad first night on the road.

-

Chapter 6 of You Can't Catch Me now up! :>

Jonathan Emerson had never been much of a smoker, not any more or less than any man of his generation had been coming up, even without the changing attitudes towards the health of the products.

But tonight, he felt like he'd like one.

He sits on the porch, the cabin quiet behind him. The long day of rearranging furniture and clearing out the second bedroom ached in his shoulders and knees, and he was thankful it was soon to be the height of summer. If his daughter had waited any longer the damp of fall and winter would have slowed him considerably. He might still have to ask her, and his older grandson, to help him lug the heavier boxes out when they get here.

He fills the briar-wood bowl of his pipe. A gift, for his last birthday. She had been mighty generous lately, and he had to wonder if she knew something he didn't.

She always did as a matter of course, but maybe it was something specific this time.

The night grows around him. Clouds skudding in from the water signaled there was going to be a hell of a storm in a day or so, if not sometime the next morning, but for now, they show him a rainbow of reds and golds and pinks and purples in the last of the day's light. The sun dies with a last gleam.

He can't say he expected the footsteps as they move up his drive, but he also can't say he's surprised.

...It's the eldest. As far as he can tell, anyway. Looked so, turned in their mid forties, at the earliest. The skin lays over the muscles and bones like glove, rouge and warm enough. The hair lightly tousled in a style that might fit someone a decade or so younger, the middle-aged trying to capture what it had only just lost. The smile is white, wide, and fits into the face like it could make no other expression.

Fits better than the suit, in any case. Alive for who-knows how long, and still can't be bothered to look into a good tailor?

Jonathan watches it as it comes out of the gloom like a shadow itself, detaching from the darkness under the trees that line the road up to the yard. The yellow of the shed's security light shines off the edge of the glasses like a pale copy of the sun long gone behind the hills.

For a moment, it stops at the arch of the fence, the entrance to the property. Above, the name Emerson sits burned into ceder wood and wreathed with old barbed wire, an both sides of an elk jaw.

It steps forward and crosses.

Jonathan takes another long puff of his pipe. The tobacco was also a gift, given at the same time. It burns as bright in his lungs as the embers in the bowl.

"She said you tended to birth smarter whelps than you could afford for yourself," he says.

It stops just short of the porch steps. The shined leather loafers dusty from what must have been the short, performative walk up the road.

The smile doesn't leave its face when it tips its head to him.

"Mr. Emerson."

Jonathan tips his head as well.

"Mr. Lawrence."

Talking to animals is an odd experience sometimes.

Marko isn't the envious type, never has been. Even if some parts of his own life growing up were less than ideal, he recognized that if he were to ask for someone else's benefits he'd also be taking their problems, and he preferred his own, thank you. Seeing other vampires who could turn to mist and crawl under locked doors, or mold flesh to their will, or craft illusions so complete a person could get lost in their own bedroom didn't make him any less happy with his gift.

Animals were fascinating. Marko had always liked them from the time he was little, wondering what was going through their minds, how they saw the world. Maybe in the end, that contributed to his gift being what it was. And he enjoyed every moment of it.

But it wasn't without its oddities every now and then.

Thorn was his good boy. He'd taken him out of the hellhole that had been his life before, the junked-up yard behind the run down trailer and the shithead who terrorized the puppy, and made him his. Max had tried to take him for a brief while, and he'd been waiting for Marko when he'd clawed his way out of the shallow grave with a hole still in his gut. He'd licked his vampire's face and hands and blood, crying love and joy purer than any water into Marko's head for his return. He'd stood by Marko when the dark had come. A brand of white fire in the abyss between him and the screaming nothingness.

In quiet moments, Thorn's internal monologue of images and scents and sounds would. Pause. He'd lift his head, and watch...something. Something beyond the treeline. Something that lived in backyards with empty plastic dog houses, and behind dumpsters and trashheaps where fur hung off of little skeletal bodies barely alive from one moment to the next.

Thorn's thoughts were so clear, Marko thought he was actually. Talking.

He talks of...something that Marko cannot quite turn into human words in his head. Names that aren't names, but that Marko knows is a title all the same.

The Oldest, Thorn says. The Beloved Owned and Scorned has come to free the dying. It Bites With Fear will avenge those tied to chains and at the mercy of their masters fists. The poor and shivering with mange and hunger and infestation - their prayers will be heard tonight.

Marko doesn't know what this is, what this means. He never mentions it to the others. He just follows Thorn when the dog speaks of things Marko cannot understand, led away from a home or alley or back-lot kennel.

There are things in this world, Marko is beginning to wonder, that maybe even vampires shouldn't see.

And sometimes, if he looks back when Thorn has called him away, stopped dead and turned around and pulls Marko with him, Marko...sees.

Teeth bared in a gaping bloody maw, eyes rolling in terror and rage the colors of bone. A figure that stands like a human but with fur the color of the inside an eclipse. A howl in his head like the screams of all animals who were never heard until they were silenced forever.

It is not an animal. But it is of them. An Marko knows better than to look for too long. If he does, it turns those eyes on him.

Yes, Marko enjoys his gift very much. It gives him a perspective of things most people, most vampires, don't even have. Talking to animals is very interesting.

But it is odd at times.

Angel: David...who's this?

*Michael, a clearly new, traumatized, confused, hungry fledge with barely enough of an idea about what's happening to stand on two feet*

David: Paul's childer Marko. Marko, this is Angel-

"Oh, you poke the Michael? You poke the Michael like the football? Oh Jail for Paul! Jail for Paul for one Thousand years!!!"

-Berd, right before screaming 'No!!' when I said it was going on tumblr

@berd-alert if you have anything to add, join in!

So, there's some stuff about the Widow that we can talk about, as she's overall got a much smaller part in the main bulk of the series of Yccm (in particular, Take My Burdens), but with Star, she plays a much, much larger role. In the planned Star fic (Straight on til Morning) Star will be center stage and we're going to look much deeper into her life post-movie stuff. While Michael is off having his life-changing road trip, Star is going to have a life-changing Stay At Weird Grandma's House.

But, your actual question - when was our Star turned.

Next to Marko (who in our story is actually the next youngest, turned in 1985), Star is youngest at only about a year per time of the movie events.

Star to us never read as someone very old - and even by the movie's own rules, she's only half vampire (not a thing in our worldbuilding, might I add) and refusing to drink blood, so she logically CAN'T be very old. Star feels very much like how she seems to be presented to the audience - a young person who was down on her luck that got sucked into a bad situation due to lack of a place to go or people to give her better than what the Boys were offering, who only realizes the baddness of the situation until she's in too deep to leave. It's a situation she's been dealing with for a while, enough to clearly understand the group dynamic, the routine of their life, but is still hopeful for a way out, which indicates that it's not been too long on-going.

Per yccm story stuff specifically, Star's backstory isn't too spoilery, because I think we've discussed it before? (maybe that was just dms lmao) but here are a few key details that will be gone into in more detail in Straight On til Morning:

-Star's actual legal name is Samantha Thompson. She hates it, and always did.

-Star is actually the oldest of the group! (Michael is 18, Marko was turned at 18, David and Paul were both turned at 19, and Dwayne thinks he was about 20 when turned (his exact birthday is unknown bc culturally his people tracked time differently but he knows it was sometime in the late winter so he just counts years now at January 1)). Star is 22 :>

-Laddie is her actual biological child. She doesn't know who the father is because she was. Uh. Sleeping with multiple men at the time. Laddie does not know this because her family insisted he just be treated like her little brother.

-Dwayne is their sire, not David OR Max. She has a complicated relationship with him for several reasons (not romantic, just to be clear.) mostly to do with Laddie and the fact that Dwayne made it very clear he'd only really intended to save the kid and not her when he found them.

-Star...is actually feeding, contrary to what she tells Michael. In our worldbuilding, fledglings and vampires can go for a while without human blood, months even if necessary, but they need it eventually. Star feeds off of animals, same as the Boys do, but. She's also feeding off of Paul, taking human blood in a way that she can rationalize. Go girl, give us mental gymnastics.

-Star's older sister is Jillian - the realtor lady from The Tribe. And they hate(d) each other.

-Star might be human after the events of the movie...but she's not going to stay human ;) (now that's all the more I'll say on that lmao. There's a few microdrabbles I've posted with the Widow and Star for more teasers lol)

anyway, if you have more questions, feel free to ask! We like to talk :>

He holds it in his hands. A pale sky blue and white, a single dot in the corner of the skirt where a persistent stain had fought off even the most strident of washings. The lower edge has lace sewn with a practiced, loving hand, along the hem. Something simple, but pretty.

He's the eldest, and the skirt is his sister's. Ended up in his laundry pile accidentally.

Paul is alone in the house. It's empty.

His sister's room is across the hall. The one she shares with the third - the twins and the baby are in the last room they have to offer, but they're not here now. Doors open but rooms just furniture and silence. And what stories a bed could tell about dreams aren't heard by human ears.

He's as tall as his closest sister, something she laments. The skirt fits her, made for her. Flesh like hers but in a different mold.

The cotton is very soft from wear, the lace itchy where it touches the bare skin of his thighs. She'd laugh at him to know he finally understands that, her complaints.

She will never know what the silent house knows.

Michael: fucking look at me, senpai

senpai cannot look at you right now michael. senpai is currently attempting to not have a disassociative episode, kitten

Maybe after finishing YCCM there will be a bonus chapter that's just deleted scenes or concepts

Since class starts tomorrow and I had some free time, I wrote this bit for chapter 7 of YCCM. God I love Paul and Marko. Worst men.

Marko: I can help with that

*leans head on hand while sipping bubble tea*

So, the story as we figure out the plot beats and details and characters has gone pretty off the rails in terms of characters, as we have a lot of ocs in this project, but the core of it remains the same; it's a story about the Boys, and their struggles in the world.

I'm just giving a heads up I suppose, it's a big world out there, and they are only 5 small vampires within it.