Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new one-shot in my Amissum one-shot series, Disturbia! In the Amissum series, which is 'lost' in Latin, is about a ruined Smash stadium following four pairings of Marth x Ike, Lucas x Ness, Shulk x Lucina and Robin (M) x Samus through their lives after an evil Master Hand ruins their life and everything after that. In order, it goes with Dark Tech Tethered on Darkness, Fading, Oasis, Nine Hundred and Thirty Three Days, Yesterday, and now Disturbia. This one is a little tamer for the pair of Ness x Lucas, a sequel to Oasis without everything else lol. I am unsure whether or not I want to do an actual story of Amissum with the eight characters being the real stars and setting all of that up, but eh, I'm game. This one-shot has been in the works for about five to six weeks, on and off with tweaking here and there. Hope you enjoy Disturbia!
*UPDATE* Got one guest review, the same guy who hates all Lucas x Ness work and called me a whore? I wonder who this guy is... doesn't he realize all he's doing is making me want to write more just to piss him off? I love it! Everyone, let's make an example of him and all write Lucas x Ness! He not only lets my view count go up, but my review count for work that I think is pretty good. I wonder who peed in his cornflakes. He also got mad at me in my Glitter and Glass, Ness x Lucas piece... and awww that's awesome, I've got a stalker of my stories as this has only been up for like forty minutes and he's just waiting in the fandom for these stories to pop up. This is the best. Who's got popcorn? Kid, grow up. You make me laugh. How about you go use that colorful language to your mother, before you use it to some stranger who at least has the decency to say who he is in the review, Mr. Anonymous.
Are you alright? Ness asks, Are you okay?
He is not looking at Lucas, but staring off into the grey opening where the black road bleeds into dust and nothing. Are you here, now?
The blonde swallows around a dry throat and looks at his hands. They are whole.
This does not strike him as strange.
He flexes his fingers, and wonders if he's missing something.
Most days I am, he says. He looks sideways at the road barrier, weather cracked cement, overgrown and withered brown vines draped over it and spilling into the shoulder. Today I am, I think. He says, looking back to Ness and finds only the memory of his outline there. He blinks rapidly, a far away desperateness seizing him, until he sees oilslick impressions there, half dreaming that the next time he opens his eyes Ness will be right in front of him again, staring up at him through smudged glasses with a bland half frown.
Instead there is nothing.
The car's engine idles behind him, exhaust fumes swirling warm air around his legs, making the calves of his jeans stick to his skin. They're gone from that horrific apartment and everything bottled up there. Lucas shudders, and his perception brightens, acid white, against his temples, and the tips of ten fingers buzz where he's tracing meaningless whorls into cool olive skin stretched over thin hip bones, and he thinks distantly, he's on the cusp of waking- don't you sense it sweetheart? Your monster is stirring within me and it is going to kill me like rotting fruit bursting everywhere. HELP!
A hum, electric and high pitched whines between his ears, breaking over his streaming thoughts, plugging the spigot, and his vision stutters as he takes a step back, bracing himself with both hands against the hood of the car. The metal of the hood is cool and damp and gritty with caked on dirt.
When he comes to, the world is bleary, his tongue is swollen and dry in his mouth, his ears are muzzy, muting the already hushed stillness. Lucas grits his teeth, shaking himself off, but he feels like the world is off kilter, settling at a slant. I'm fine, he says out loud, to himself. Fine, he repeats, clenching his fists on top of red metal, digging his knuckles into the dust. Okay.
A curl of breath whispers across his cheek, faint. And close.
And the set of diamond eyes turns to clash with the sea of black orbs.
I see, Ness says at his elbow, eyes cast to the side and chin low, hiding his pretty drawn face. A shiver goes through his wane frame, then drifts forwards, steps flickering and suddenly he is far down the road, only a shadow there. He does not turn back, but Lucas thinks he can see the withered and pale tilt of his chapped lips. You're lying, aren't you, Ness's fading back says. There's a snarl somewhere thrown in there, mixed and warped around like poisonous fire leeching at every single pore in his body, festering little bullet ants with vicious mandibles. He is walking up a tiny slope of hill on the sunbaked road, the heels of his of shoes making soft scraping sounds where they scuff against detritus and it echoes strangely in this grey stretch of road..
Lucas is reminded of an ancient, stone oven. Or the peeling spine of some long faded book. A shuttered and final inhalation. The crumbling walls of a hospital hallway he's huddled against.
No-no…. I don't think I am
(i can't be), is what Lucas wants to say, maybe, to the vacant place beside his shoulder, in some approximation of repudiation. But if he is to say this, the stadium inside Ness, inside his boyfriend, will come forth in a glorious night, furious. That's what the raven haired devil is there for. To make him feel good, to stop the lies and second guessing. Impressive nothings without oppressive need. Instead- in spite of, possibly just because of- He says nothing. Continues to until the question, its answers, its false rhetoric in the form of by the ways and don't leave me, begins to evaporate, first on his lips, then-
He glances down at his fingers and wonders why that is.
Where are you going? He asks, before he can linger on questions (or, was it answers again?) he can't remember asking (giving? wishing?).
Ness is gone. But... he can't be, right? The haze is off putting.
Sudden and quiet and Lucas can't be really sure he was ever there.
Oh, he breathes to himself. The sound is loud in the empty place, and he feels the real weight of it press and expand in his chest.
Bits of rubble flakes off under his weight when Lucas leans to fall heavily against the road barrier. The rough fuzz of the vine feels strangely warm, like a wiry arm or a dry tongue or-
He looks at the path he thinks he remembers Ness walking towards. A sun blazes outwards into the horizon, streams of blinding light as if Jesus was coming down from the reckoning right then and there.
-Something.
And then he gets to his feet and follows.
Over the tiny slope, the road ends. It's not an abrupt end, he thinks; where the grey, worn tarmac becomes wild, dusty, thick leaved foliage that bleeds out and backwards towards a place that smells like wet stone. But… he can not tell exactly.
His world is blurred and his vision is failing and Lucas cannot stand straight.
The road and the end meld together. (That's a fact.) Says someone who read it from a torn page from a book without a title. (Maybe). He remembers the cadence of their voice murmuring for his attention... a smell like a cold day, a shuffle of soft soled shoes on checkered tile. The feeling of running the tips of his fingers over a nameplate on the side of the door because he didn't have anything to do with his hands (and he didn't want to hear and he didn't want to understand), spelling over and over
H
O
P
E
Lucas has lost all hope, even in Ness can he never find it.
Lucas hesitates. Uneasiness pricking at the skin of his face, his arms, his knuckles. He notices the humidity then, and he begins to move in place, shifting and discomfited beneath prickling, crawling, heat. Lucas blinks through bleary eyes, taking several half aborted steps away from the grasping sway of the undergrowth, his boots grinding into black earth and tar as if bracing against a sudden gale or a revelation.
Lucas is damn sure.
Sure of it all.
(Ness, are you listening to me? No? Why the hell not! Please. it's going to be-)
He's never heard that voice before.
That's not my memory, he whispers, face blanched and mouth dry.
But there's no way to know.
Is there any possible way to figure whose voice it is?
(slim fingers grip unto his temples, the feeling burns and that person is screaming, look at me, you stupid git, do you even know my name? A burning face places itself in front of him, fire leeching like tendrils of smoke and twisted tree branches off the black skin chapped lips press into a thin line and the terribly pretty face staring down at him is haloed in watery light and his ears ache and his mouth waters and his eyes burn and he says of course of course I'm Lucas, right, because he does not like the expression that pretty face makes when he can't answer. He knows that, even if he doesnt always know why)
He's lost so much time. His mind skips. Burnt out celluloid frames shuttering on a reel.
Tension winds at his temple, Lucas winces, blunt teeth digging into his lip as he presses shaking fingers to his brow, beading with cold sweat.
(Sweetie i'm sorry. Your mother. She's gone, the stadium is gone. I know you never cared for her. That bitch of a mother who tortured all of us is gone, destroyed... you're happy, right?)
He gasps shallowly, a noise like a dying animal grits in his chest with smoke and rattling shells.
And then-
A stale wind sweeps along his back, unbalancing him as it plucks irritably at the loose folds of his clothes and through microscopic holes under his skin, brushing away the pressure. The blonde blinks blearily.
And the answers are gone.
Like Ness is, Lucas reminds himself, forcibly latching onto the last wisps of fading pain in his skull with fingernails and teeth, and his chest constricts, gunsmoke and car exhaust and nicotine tar and the mirthy jangle of warped lead rattles his bones and pours from his open mouth.
Lucas, someone says. Lucas. Did you think you were-
The roiling smog burns at the green. Broad, leathery leaves wither, curling back and blackening like a jagged smile into cringing teeth.
Free? No. Impossible. Nothing's free in this desert. Not with Marth and Ike traversing the same road in that f'd up Jeep. Not where they won't listen to their pained calls and much worse. The time when a postcard from Manila gets sent to the youthful pair and they are staring at Lucina and Shulk's smiling faces, and they wonder why aren't they them? Or, Robin and Samus's sweet little letter written in four languages because they had that type of time on their hands to write such long messages.
He has fallen to his knees, but there is no pain forthcoming. He picks at himself, delicately. Whole handed and vision cusping into spinning fractals, Lucas wanders.
(And wanders) Where's the devil to tempt him? To give him fake bread and cities of grandeur? Lucas already has a desert, he's hungry, thirsty, sex starved... Wait. Lucas does have a devil. It lies inside Ness. That black, tempting stadium of vile energy. Carnal and furious.
(and perhaps it is as Orpheus once did. (Was there ever a moment where Orpheus could no longer see the way back? to?) Or is it the corpse that left his heart, in, where was it? Arizona? Colorado? a lake only seen in dreams? dirty roadside bathroom stall, "youre ok youre ok youre okokok" carved into the plaster? a hospital bed with a plain green privacy curtain? (if orpheus -if he, if it, if they- turned back, a scared little boy clinging to infinitesimal wisps of specters fluttering like the skirts of women...what would happen?) He doesn't know)
Hey, I heard what happened and.
Dark hair laying over a white neck. A scene faded in Neon, and buffeted in creaking vinyl stools, perspiration on glass, steam from a mug. Utensils scraping on empty Parker and Jane plates. Burst egg yolk coloring painted flowers. Lucas shakes his head. Ness was in there, the first thing he saw.
I wanted to say I'm. That I'm. Sorry, I guess.
Yeah.
It's..., Bitten fingers worry at a damp coaster, blurring ink advertisements into the pulpy paper. I mean it, Ness. I can only pray it gets better. The visions. The smell of rotten blood and charcoaled skin.
The coffee's gone cold and Lucas remembers he is not his boyfriend. The one raked over the coals and stabbed with plastic forks by a malicious floating white hand. The stool scrapes back over checkered linoleum, the sound slipping into him, bleeding into hairline fractures to carve new wet fissures into his very infrastructure. He turns to the? his? Ness's? dream? ghost? friend? memory? and says, I don't belong here. I have to find- He chokes, tongue and lips and thoughts and throat welded with acidic bile and something saccharine. Need- he says, standing abruptly on legs skewered by pins and needles. To get away. Have to find...find-
His jaws lock. Teeth bared and lips pulled back, spittle foaming at the corners, like the mad dog he is.
Lucas is mad.
Lucas is a mad dog (man).
Lucas is a dog who's mad and who has had lost its wits
He's barking at (ghosts) and shadows (put him down)
He slams his fists down on the linoleum counter and it melts like wax and the clean yellow wallpaper blooms mold like flowers, like fire, like ash, like dust in the end, blown like wind; ceramic cups and plates and bone and teeth and glass lenses fall in a shattering rain on the checkered floor, and he breathes in the noise.
Lucas. Says the fellow ghost, friend, wanderer, lover, dreamer, convict, runaway-dead man walking-Ness.
And it is Ness. Only- not quite.
Lucas clings to the vision none the less, blinded by sunspots and the smell of instant coffee grains, flickering lights reflected in the window.
He fears the reflection more than he does the illusion.
Something inside tells him, as he reaches to touch soft curls. Bleary eyed, he makes a sound like he's dying when the blonde strands brush the pads of his fingers instead of unraveling like so much smoke.
What are you doing? Here, I mean. Ness says, (kindly overlooking or perhaps) oblivious to Lucas's shaking. Don't you know how late it is? Honey? He crouches down among the broken glass, fingers trailing over sharp edges with acerbic familiarity (almost like fondness?), leaving red and bits of himself behind. It took a while, but I'm here now. Lucas. he says before Lucas can reply, and the blonde winces, chin trembling just slightly as he takes another step closer, shattered everything crunching underfoot.
Wa- He was about to say wait.
His eyes snap open. He sees grey gravel and dusty green leafs. Lucas groans and slowly pushes himself to his knees. His hands are bleeding, leaving dark blots on the colorless ground, the smell of iron and earth muddling his already bruised head. Ness, he says, and the name is bright and it urges him into standing even as his knees buckle under his weight. He pushes himself forward, bracing against a tree, the bark biting (the wound it seemed both sore and sad) into his skin while memories and words and feeling and sensations tumble through him from a point of disconnect. It builds behind his right eye, alien and shifting, not quite malignant, but-
other
-his legs slip out from beneath him, his fingers scrabble at the rough bark and splinters break off and under his nailbeds, he can't catch himself, vision inverting, the bruises in his head swelling. His shadow seeps into the dirt, the blood from his hands boil and crumble into the ground after it, breaking apart the earth like split fruit; the pressure behind his eye opens, lengthening and alive, yanking forward like a tether, slick and sinuous as it latches onto the roiling pit.
the blood and the dark and the tether pull and pull and pull and he opens his mouth to scream but a tar black skeletal hand bursts from his lips, and it burns like chemical smoke and tastes like gaslit fire as it scrabbles at the edge of the pit, no Lucas says, tries to, but he has no strength left in him, dragging uselessly forward, not- not-no, not this
(a warm mouth hushes into the curve of his neck you will take me apart, just like this)
(no i won't he says. then he thinks i'll put you back together again and he slides his rough hands down the smooth slope of a white spine. i'll put you back together with pieces of myself)
Pretty dove hands dig into his (broad, bowed, wide, weak) shoulders, bitten fingertips with their burned and bruised knuckles grip onto him tightly, ten lifelines and warm papery palms, and suddenly the Ness's pretty pale face fills his vision, strained and dirt smudged and lined with fear and anger and stubbornness, and Lucas gets the sudden impression that this is the first real thing he's seen. He gasps, gulping in harsh, foul, miraculous air like his lungs have only just remembered how to work, clutching at Ness's too big shirt, twisting fistfuls of the fabric so hard he's almost expecting it to shred apart.
Idiot!
It rings loud and clear, more felt than heard as it rips through the muffled static filling his skull like so many cobwebs. The bruises swell in his mouth, and he's winding himself around Ness, tossing them backwards into the ground with bone jarring force, their legs twist and tangles, chests impacting together and compressing their lungs into one.
Ness, Lucas says, fisting threadbare cloth and pushing uncomfortably close, chin digging into a rapid pulse. Helpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpmeplease. He scrabbles impossibly closer, as if he can merge their very nervous systems together just like this, and his hands spasm like they want to claw a hollow out into the warm body beneath them, make a space he can fit himself away in before Ness spins away into smoke and undisturbed dirt.
Lucas, you idiot, Lucas. Ness rasps hoarsely, his own fingers gripping with urgent desperation to Lucas's jacket with enough force to make the leather creak.
I looked, the blonde agonizes senselessly. I looked for you everywhere. You were gone. I couldn't. I I I looked.
A noise of frustration scrapes its way out of Ness's throat, and he shakes his head harshly, tugging frantically. Lucas, Lucas, listen, he whispers fiercely, a faint buzzing bleeding into his words, Lucas, wake up. You need to wake up. Breathe. Your heart- stopped- Wake up, Lucas, you aren't-
"Goodnight, you dark one."
Lucas snarls in Ness's grip, and there is a sudden shift in body weight, the blonde's lips savagely attacking the raven haired male's face and neck, and they tip over into the floor. The blonde lifts up in euphoria, angry and he smiles crazily.
"I HEAR YOU!" he roars.
There we are you guys! That was a new Amissum series one-shot, Disturbia. I can imagine that a few of you are all like... what? but it can all be explained in due time lol. Ness has something inside of him, a 'gift' from Master Hand, and Lucas has it now as a part of him, but our blonde beneficiary cannot handle it and here it drives him mad. Maybe an interesting ending, but it is one of those you can explain for yourself and perhaps through getting to read the other five one-shots in this series you can learn it all, too. I will be writing sequels and or prequels to the Lucina x Shulk and Robin x Samus ones as I love them just as much as these. And of course I titled this song after Rihanna's hit song, which I also really like. Hmm... I think that's it for me. Haven't written or posted a one-shot in a long time, wanted to get one out for you all. Hope it was great! Please review and let me know what you thought! Love you all! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm