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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[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?

[ Because my dad told me I had to. ]

I'm not mad. I--

[ He casts a look around before snatching Henry by the arm and dragging him into the nearest restroom. After a quick check under the stalls to make sure no one's there, he comes back into Henry's space to mutter in hushed tones: ]

You have some kind of magic powers, right? Well, me too. And my dad.

[It takes zero effort to drag Henry into the restroom, and not only because he's a scrawny kid who wouldn't be able to dig his heels in and resist, anyway. No, it's mostly because he has no idea what's going on or what's gotten into Alec, and yanking him to and fro is the easiest thing in the world when he's frozen by uncertainty.

He's stiff as a board when Alec ducks into his space and starts going on about magic powers.]

Wh-what?

[To avoid sounding like a broken record, he tries again.]

What are you talking about? "Magic powers?" I don't have... magic. [Maybe Alec's making fun of him. But there's something about his expression, one he's never really seen before, that makes him hesitate to believe this. He looks like he's serious. But he's talking nonsense.

Isn't he? After what he's learned he can do, maybe... Maybe not.]

But do you mean that you can... move stuff with your mind, too?

No, it's-- [ he keeps looking at the door, like a twitchy animal on the lookout for a predator. ] Kind of different. I'm learning how to make fire and water and stuff.

Look, I'll show you, but you have to promise you won't tell anyone. I'm not supposed to do magic where other people might see.

Edited (noticed a typo sssh) 2022-11-18 06:45 (UTC)

[Every time Alec looks towards the door, Henry slides his gaze over, too, like he’s obligated to be leery.]

…O-okay. [What else is he supposed to say? He’s still confused, but now he’s curious, too.] I promise.

[ Maybe this is a really stupid idea, but now that it's happening, there's some part of him that excited, weirdly, to share.

Alec crowds close, lifting his hand between them. His brows knit together in concentration as he does his best to recall the runes he needs and etch them in the air in stormy purple light that flows from his fingertips. Maybe that's proof enough of the magic, but then the shaky lines dissipate and a small orb of water appears, floating a little shakily but holding together. ]

[He doesn’t know what to expect. What does “magic” entail, anyway, other than what he’s read in books?

Either way, Henry definitely didn't expect purple light flowing from the other boy’s fingertips. Much less what follows — a little jittery orb of water, hovering there between them.

Sorry, but—]

Woah!

[His voice echoes throughout the restroom. Henry’s quiet and awkward but he’s still… twelve. This is crazy. He can just make some objects float and push stuff around — it’s not even half as neat as what he’s looking at now.]

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