finalflight | PSL; [TERRIBLE THINGS WE HAVE DONE]

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PSL; [TERRIBLE THINGS WE HAVE DONE]

[It's difficult being the new kid at school, the new kid in town, everyone a stranger, every setting a readjustment, a fresh (and always failed) expectation to fit in hanging over one's head like a knife. It's even harder when your name is Henry Creel; a twelve year-old boy who is a little too lanky, a little too quiet. Who would prefer to keep to himself and not always look someone in the eye, finding more companionship in books and his collection of drawings than any of the kids his age. Who doesn't look like he wants to try to fit in—and struggles with every teacher’s gentle encouragement—even if he’s hardly a rule-breaker. Always punctual, always presentable, good grades, a nice new home to return to at the end of the day.

But his faith in his own integration is low. He had never flourished in his old town — why should he in this new one? As if moving would change how the world is, how he is, but he tries so hard not to linger on these thoughts today. They make him indescribably—

Well, he doesn’t know.

School lets out. The weather’s nice. It’s time to walk home, detaching himself from the excitable crowd of his classmates as swiftly and quietly as he can, his backpack slung over one shoulder and half-unzipped. He tries to stuff a book into it with one hand, paying no attention to where he’s going, and stumbles right into someone in an utterly ungraceful showing.

The book, of course, goes flying and lands splayed open, pages-down. Blue eyes flick up, out comes an automatic:]

Sorry.

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[They’ve never met before, but Henry already knows Alec by reputation alone. Everyone in school mutters about how much he gets in trouble, how many fights he picks. How detention might as well be his second home for how long he spends there. And though a twelve year-old that keeps to himself is not privy to the rumors that fly around between the adults, he doesn’t need to be. Alec is the kind of kid he does not want to cross paths with, the complete opposite of himself in every imaginable way.

Fate must be having a laugh to literally send Henry on a collision course with him today. But he barely has time to register what’s happened before he’s pushed back. He stumbles, wobbling, actually falling down to land hard on his backside, pencils and a few notebooks flying forth from his backpack. He is, unfortunately, as physically inept as he looks.

Eyes widen up at Alec. He is… not equipped to deal with this.]

I said I was sorry.

[He’s just going to gather up his things in an awkward scramble, not making eye contact. Maybe he’ll be left alone now that he’s been thrown to the pavement just outside the perimeter of the school.]

[ And likewise, Alec knows about Henry. Or at least knows of him. There's always a buzz that ripples through the school whenever a new kid comes to town. Who are they, what are they like?

(Are they someone with whom Alec might finally find himself connecting?)

Quiet, is the answer. Awkward. In his way. Henry scrambles for his things, but before he can get to his fallen book, a well-worn (ratty, old, they can't afford another pair) sneaker comes down on the back of his hand, hard. Alec keeps his foot there, shifting his weight and sitting on his haunches. ]

You're the new kid, aren't you?

[Henry startles at the pressure on his hand at first; the pain from bone pressing down into pavement comes next, and he tries to pry it away. But he can’t, not with Alec pushing his weight onto him as he crouches down on his haunches.

He finally flicks his eyes up to look at the other kid, confused and harried. This feels all too familiar — bullies are not new to Henry, who’s experienced the cruel attentions of more than one in the past, before his parents decided a change of scenery would be good for him. And yet, one change of scenery later, here’s another one — the same thing on repeat, just with another coat of paint.

If he’s lucky he’ll only get his hand stepped on. Henry tries to figure out the best thing to say, as though the answer would be written on the other’s face.]

Yes, and I’m just— I didn’t mean to run into you. I just want to go home.

[ I bet you do, something in Alec thinks bitterly. Back home to his nice house and his nice family so he can crawl into a corner somewhere and cry. What a joke.

Alec scoops up the book, turning it over in his hand like he has all the time in the world to consider it. Like he isn't standing on this kid's hand. ]

I think you should make it up to me. Does your mommy give you lunch money, huh? I think that should be enough to get me to forget this whole thing.

[The book is well taken care of, like all of Henry’s belongings. Even though it’s the assigned reading for his class—The Hobbit, declares the title—it looks like new, its spine barely creased. Not even a single, dog-eared page.

His hand, though. He’d prefer to have that back first and worry about the book later.]

I don’t have any lunch money, I used to it buy lunch.

[Obviously. Obviously. Ugly thoughts rise up in his mind, are you stupid?, but he has more sense to bite that back, not let it slip out of his mouth. He has practice.]

[ Presumably, Alec has a copy of The Hobbit somewhere too, no doubt creased to hell and collecting dust. He doesn't particularly give a damn about school, but his dad keeps making him go anyway.

He rolls his eyes, bringing the spine of the book down on top of Henry's head with absolutely no gentleness. ]

I mean tomorrow, nerd.

[Winces as he's thwapped on the head with his own book, screwing up his face accordingly. Guess he's the stupid one.]

Okay, fine, just... stop stepping on my hand-

[It's going to bruise at his rate, it's already pulsing with pain down his fingers.]

Great. It's a deal.

[ Alec apparently deigns to keep this interaction brief. Show a little mercy to the new kid, let him think he has a chance at peace, only to rise up and make his life a living hell later on.

He pushes himself to his feet, feeling the way Henry's hand strains under the thinning sole of his shoe, before he finally lifts it away.

The book remains in his hand a moment or two longer, Alec seeming to consider it again. Then, suddenly, a well-aimed toss lands it in the nearby gutter with a splash, brackish water seeping into the pages. The grin that Alec wears is self satisfied and mean. ]

See you tomorrow.

[The pages of his book ruin in mere seconds. His hand throbs even after Alec’s removed his weight from it, the skin of his palms raw. He’ll dirty them, all the same, trying his best to fish his book out of the gutter after he’s left, even though his arms cannot hope to reach far enough into that fetid darkness.

See you tomorrow. Henry knows it’s both a threat and a promise.

* * *

And it is. Alec is suddenly a constant fixture in his life in the worst way possible. Henry is deprived of his lunch money, he’s pushed around in the school hallways. On a good day, he’s mocked even if he’s quiet and compliant. On the bad ones, when he’s feeling particularly hollow on the inside, he makes surprisingly snide comments for such an odd, awkward boy, and he gets roughed up accordingly for it.

There’s no winning. But at least it's predictable like all things are with time.

But predictability can only offer a small amount of comfort. A bad day is still a bad day. And this particular afternoon, once school has ended and let out again, Henry sits on a little bench just outside the building, waiting for his father to pick him up. He has his sketchbook open, scribbling into it with hard, purposeful lines. He doesn’t seem to notice Alec’s approach out of the corner of his eye, though he should more than easily recognize the sound of his gait at this point.]

Edited 2022-11-17 04:15 (UTC)

[ There's some sort of twisted glee that Alec has found, latching onto Henry like he has. All the other kids know him, they're wise to his tricks and their parents have very little tolerance for his bullshit, but Henry is new. Quiet in a way that makes him easy to push around, and in those rare moments where he plucks up the courage to talk back, it's easy to beat him back down again.

He zeroes in on the other kid with laser precision, finding him as everyone is filtering into the building for the day, in the hall, and even after the final bell has rang.

Like right now. He steps up, hand snapping out to grab Henry's sketchbook and snatch it away. ]

[Like that, his sketchbook is stolen so suddenly from his hands that it might've given him a papercut. Eyes snapping up, his brow furrows as soon as he sees who it is... Alec, of course.

Immediately reaching out to try to steal it back-]

Give it back.

[Drawn on the paper, if Alec bothers to look, is a large, antique grandfather clock.]

I wasn't done!

[ Oh, but Alec is very good at keepaway. He lifts his arm away, keeping the sketchbook out of Henry's grasp while he skirts back out of his reach. ]

C'mon, Henry. You can share, can't you?

[ Just like he shares his lunch money, and the occasional homework assignment.

Now back a safe distance, Alec takes a look at the drawing he's snatched from Henry's hands. ]

Hey, this is pretty good.

[ IT'S A TRAP HENRY. ]

[HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER but the praise still has him meeting his eyes, surprised, if not a little leery. He pauses in his attempts to get his drawing back.]

I...

[IS THIS A TRAP??? What should he say.]

It's... it's the clock we have at home.

[ he sees that little spark, the way the compliment hooks into Henry like a fish on a line. he smiles, utterly unkindly. ]

Yeah, it's real good. For a piece of garbage.

[ his fingers curl around the edge of the page, primed to tear it out of the book. you know the gutter where so many of Henry's belongings and books and assignments have ended up? ]

[He can see it before it happens, because it’s happened a few times before now. Alec tossing away a book, or a scrap of homework, or a report card, or anything that shouldn’t be thrown away and into the gutter. But this time, as he watches his fingers curl around the page to rip it out, Henry’s frustration spikes to a new level.

The grandfather clock he’s drawn, it has meaning to him. It represents a strange and unexpected change in Henry, one that he’s only just learning to wrangle, parts of it still manifesting, the rest of it unknown. Alec has no context for that, so he’d not know what kind of offense it is to see it nearly-torn from his sketchbook — as though the other boy were trying to symbolically wrest this new part away from him, to crumple it up like garbage, before he can even understand what it is.

And so he stands to his feet—]

Stop!

[—and without actually meaning to, an invisible force lashes out. It pushes Alec backwards, collides against his face like an open-palmed slap. Hard.]

[ Something unseen shoves against his chest, and Alec takes a stumbling step back, but it's not until that hard whip-crack of force across his cheek that the sketchbook falls from his hand. The edge of the page is half-crinkled, but the drawing still mercifully in-tact.

Alec's hands goes to his cheek, but there's more shock than anger in his gaze. What the hell, he didn't even see Henry cast. His own abilities, his magic, are new. He knows only a handful of spells and certainly nothing like that. But he does know the rules, his dad has drilled them into him every chance he got: do not let other people see you use magic.

His gaze casts wildly around, but thankfully they're alone, the few groups of students still hanging around this late too caught up in clubs or sports to pay them much mind. ]

What are you, crazy?

[Henry goes wide-eyed the moment he sees that invisible force connect against Alec’s face, and how he stumbles backward like he’d been shoved. He stares, his stomach dropping. He’s never… done that someone else before. The most he’d managed was making a book hover a few inches off his desk, and even that had been a strain.

But this? He had felt so— agitated. Is that why—?

What are you, crazy?

Henry snaps out of it, shaking his head.]

No, I… That wasn’t…

[He’s ducking down to pick up his sketchbook.]

You must have tripped.

[ For once, Alec doesn't stop the other boy from picking up his things. In fact, he takes a good couple of steps back, giving him ample room to do so. ]

I didn't-- [ trip. No, no, no. Better not to draw attention to it. If someone else should overhear, it could be bad news. For these few moments, he forgets to be mean. He forgets to be mad. Frankly, he's just scared because he doesn't know what a breach of the rules could mean for either of them.

A car rumbles close, and Alec whips around only to be flooded with relief when he sees its his own dad pulling up. ]

Go home, Henry. Just... just go home.

[He doesn’t know what to make of all of this. He feels vaguely panicked in ways unrelated to Alec’s own concerns, the kind of underlying shock that goes hand-in-hand with discovering something new and uneasy.

Henry doesn’t reply to Alec. Any words would stick in his throat, anyway, and he gathers up his sketchbook and holds it close to his chest as though that too might go flying away. In fact, he doesn’t even look up as the other boy departs, the eventual sound of a car rumbling away indicating his departure. He just sits there for a minute or two, finally deciding to gather himself up to move back to the bench, only to be interrupted by another brake-squeak of an approaching car.

He knows the low rumble of that engine. Glancing up, it looks like his dad’s already arrived. By the time Henry crosses over to the large family sedan, shuffling into the passenger seat and closing the door, he’s already put his sketchbook away and is expecting the same question as usual.

Hey, sport. How was school today?

He always gets the same reply, or some variation thereof:]

Fine.

[Minutes later, and they’re well on their way home.]

[ On the opposite end of things, Thomas Brennan can tell instantly that his son is panicked, scared in a way that the boy really never has been before. When Alec starts babbling about "breaking the rules" it takes nearly the whole drive home to pry out of him that he means the magic rules and not the same old rules Alec has been breaking since the day he set foot on campus.

It takes a good while more to convince Alec that no one is coming to take him or the other boy, this Henry, away. Accidents happen, and no one saw them, so it's okay.

But what really nags at the back of the man's mind is that it is a small a community of magic users in this area, and everyone knows everyone - or at least knows of them, and "Creel" certainly does not ring a bell.

Later that night, Thomas steps into Alec's room and sits him down for a talk.

---

In a perhaps strange turn of events for Henry, Alec does not appear to antagonize him at all the next morning. They pass in the hallway, but Alec turns his gaze away, a strange look of frustration on his face.

When the children all file into the cafeteria for lunch, only then does Alec step forward, cornering Henry in some quiet corner of the hall before either of them can step in to join the rest. ]

Hey.

[ Yeah, that's it. Hey. ]

[Henry half expected for Alec to come at him full force, the shock of their last encounter long worn off. But he’s surprised to learn that isn’t the case, and that’s nearly almost as disconcerting.

Did he… scare him? But definitely not enough to ward him off forever? There’s no relief in uncertainty.

When Alec corners him right as he’s trying to make his way to the cafeteria, the “hey” is odd, a little jarring, but Henry just expects his interest to still lies with his lunch money more than himself.]

Hey…?

[help]

Hey.

[ Again. Alec seems to be floundering here for some unknown reason. He fidgets a bit, stares down at the tops of his shoes, until: ]

Do you want to... come over... to my house... for dinner?

[ This is, surprisingly, not a trap. ]

[THIS FEELS LIKE A TRAP]

Do I want to... [A beat.] ...what?

[Clearly he heard him wrong.]

I said... [ He clenches his fists, and tries again. ] Do you want to come over for dinner?

[Okay. He didn't hear wrong.

But now he's just so, so very confused.]

...Why?

[What on earth is happening. This has never, ever happened to him. Ever.]

Aren't you... angry?

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