A/N: on dæmons. In this fic, the characters will have different dæmons than they did in my other dæmonfics, which is why there's a different icon; it's how I separate them. Everyone's dæmon will be listed/explained at the bottom of the first chapter they appear in. Also, in the HDM universe, people with same-sex dæmons are very unusual, as it's sometimes indicative of having a special gift or unique quality, like having second sight (or having an IQ of 190, or being a synesthete, or being 'totally awesome'). Also, it may indicate homosexuality, though it's never been proven, but it still inspires a lot of negative connotations that people focus on more than the positive.

WARNING: everyone knows that not everyone's family life is perfect. There will be instances physical/verbal abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and assault throughout this fic, sometimes just mentioned, sometimes explicit scenes. If that's some sort of trigger for anyone, you might not want to read on.

His first day of school in Portland, Oregon, and Jacob Stone was already thinking about taking a flying leap off the St. Johns Bridge. His mother was dead, they were several states away from home, and his father was already halfway to becoming a functioning alcoholic, minus the 'functioning' part.

During lunch, he slunk out a side door and made a break for the library, Laghu fluttering wildly after him. It was the one place he knew would always be empty during lunch in every school, and nobody would look for him there. He couldn't stand being in the cafeteria for another hot second, the surf-roar of noise that smelled like formaldehyde carpet, floor wax, damp wool, and wet concrete, probably due to the constant goddamned rain, not to mention the exhalation of two thousand kids, sweaty stocking feet, and food that'd been pried from under Ronald McDonald's bumpers.

He staggered into the library, his foot catching on that little ridge that separated the tile hallway from the carpeting, nearly falling on his ass. Laghu finally caught him, burrowing down into his clothes, and he kept one hand pressed lightly over his dæmon as he made his way over to one of the empty tables and sat down heavily. The strap of his bag slipped off his shoulder. It thumped to the ground and vomited his notebooks onto the floor; he didn't notice it.

He slumped forward until his forehead was pressed against the smooth faux-wood grain surface of the table, staring down at the floor between his boots. Good God, he had his boots on. He didn't remember getting dressed this morning, his body just going through all the motions while his mind drowned. What was he wearing? His boots, laced and tied, a miracle. He could feel socks, too. Jeans, the ones Mama didn't like him to wear to school because they were wearing through at the knees. He plucked at the hem of his t-shirt, and it was red. He was wearing his flannel shirt over it, and his welder's jacket. Laghu was tucked into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, he could feel his soul trembling there.

Jacob closed his eyes, arms wrapped around his middle as the school food fought to make a reappearance; he'd only managed about two bites before the panic hit and it was struggling for freedom. Don't you dare throw up, Jacob Stone. Don't you dare throw up on your first day.

Laghu heard the voice first, even through his jacket: a soft, feminine voice reading oh-so-quietly elsewhere in the stacks. Wrestling his nausea back under control, Jacob realised with a jolt that he recognised the material.

"Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame."

He dragged himself upright and pushed to his feet, following the sound of the quiet voice almost in a trance, shuffling around the stacks.

There was a girl there, sitting on the floor with her legs outstretched, the book propped open on her lap, leaning back into the corner as she read softly from the pages. Her dæmon was lying curled next to her, just a mass of dark fur that he couldn't find the will to identify, so he didn't bother. Exhaling slowly, he leant against one of the standing bookshelves, eyes closed as he listened to her. His lips formed the words with her, but he didn't speak aloud, not wanting to break the quiet spell.

"Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day."

Her voice cut off abruptly, and when she didn't keep reading, Jacob pried his eyes open. She was staring at him, clutching the book against her chest like a shield, eyes wide. She put one hand on her dæmon's head, which was staring at him too, niceties be damned, but he couldn't find energy to care. "Tennyson. 'In Memoriam A.H.H.,'" he mumbled. "Finished it in 1849, wrote it as a requiem for his friend Alfred Henry Hallam, who died in 1833 from a cerebral hemorrhage." He was blowing his cover big-time, but he didn't give a flying fuck at the moment. Let everybody find out that Jacob Stone wasn't just another dumb-as-dirt hick from some jerkwater town; what did he care?

His legs weren't up to supporting him anymore, so he slid down to sit on the floor in a mirroring position to her; his heavy boots ended up right next to her shiny black Mary Janes, almost touching. Feeling Laghu squirm out of his shirt pocket and up to his neck, he mumbled another stanza,

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

Jacob let out a sharp, harsh bark of laughter, but it wasn't a good kind of laugh. "That's some bullshit, that is. Utter...bullshit."

The girl closed the book slowly, setting it down next to her. "Are you alright?" she asked, her voice pitched low and soft, like if she spoke too loud he might break.

Alright? No, darlin', I'm pretty far from it. My mama's dead, my pop's crawled into his bottle and doesn't look set to come out anytime soon, my whole life's been uprooted and dragged halfway across the country. Oh, and by the way, I'm a genius with an IQ of about 190 and I know more about art, history, and architecture than anybody in this goddamn school, but don't tell my old man, he'd sooner have me die in an accident on the oilrig than have me be some artsy, brainiac queer, which he already thinks I might be because my dæmon is male, he thought.

Aloud, he said, "No."

She frowned a little, then pulled her feet in, rose up onto her knees, and scooted over to sit down next to him, almost close enough to touch. Her dæmon stood up with her, and holy shit, he was the biggest hyena that Jacob had ever seen, probably as high as a man's chest at the shoulders, the heavy bone-crushing jaws resting across her thighs, dark eyes rolling up to look at him, and he stared right back, though he shouldn't. It was part of the unspoken rules—you didn't look at another person's dæmon without permission, you didn't speak to another person's dæmon unless you were friends, and you never touched another person's dæmon unless you were the closest of lovers. "What's wrong?" she asked.

He nearly told her to fuck off, he wasn't up for this today, but the words lodged in his throat and refused to come out, unwilling to cuss at a lady. Mama raised him better than that. Laghu pressed harder into the hollow of his collarbone, like he wanted to somehow meld them into one being, and Jacob let out a slow breath.

"My mama's dead," he said, and his voice was flat, empty when he said it. It was the first time he'd said it aloud, and it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Or maybe he was too numb to notice it hurting anymore.

He felt her body twitch slightly next to him, saw the hyena dæmon's stubby tail flick, and he prayed to every deity he knew that she wouldn't apologise or try to hug him. If anybody touched him right now, he might break and lose it entirely, which he would not allow to happen, no sir. But she didn't ask, didn't offer worthless condolences that didn't make his mama any less dead, and didn't try to hug him, despite it being the traditional girl response.

Instead, she simply opened up the book again, began turning pages until she found another poem, and began reading it instead. Jacob leant back against the cool metal of the bookshelf with eyes closed and just listened to her read. A dry sob caught him unawares, and he bit the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood to hold in anymore sounds, swallowing back tears. He was not going to cry, not here, not in school where anybody could see him. It was bad enough he was acting this way, but if he cried, Pop would cut a switch faster than he could say 'sorry.'

She didn't stumble, just kept reading with a soft, steady cadence that helped him pull it together, forcing his lungs to work, settling his roiling stomach.

When the bell rang signaling the end of lunch hour, Jacob managed to stand up without tripping. "Hey. Hey, are going to make it?" the girl asked, standing before he could offer her a hand up. Her voice was so adult, no teenage bluster or stumbling there.

He blinked. He had his gloves on, and there was somebody talking to him. The world slid into place inside his head, sounds and colours no longer just sliding past like tinted raindrops across glass. The fluorescent lights gleamed on her hair, which was a brilliant, vivid shade of red that couldn't come from any hairdresser's bottle, and suddenly it seemed like the most beautiful colour he'd ever seen in his life. Laghu crawled across his jacket collar, silky fur tickling under his ear, and he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll make it," he answered and actually meant it.

She nodded once, one delicate hand resting on her dæmons' head. "Okay." Turning away from him, she replaced the poetry book on the shelf, Great Poems of the 19th Century, grabbed her bag off the floor, and walked towards the door, the hyena slinking along behind her, almost comically large and bulky next to her delicate build.

"Hey," he called, and she paused at the door. "Thanks."

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "First one's free," she answered, then ducked out the door.

He actually laughed. Call it a miracle.

As he was shoving his notebooks back into his backpack, Laghu fluttered up into his hair. "I like her," he said. Jacob nodded in agreement, and they both knew that they'd made their first friend here in Portland. There were certain things that you just can't do without becoming friends, and sitting there with someone as they grieve, knowing when to simply be there instead of offering worthless words, was one of those things.

He didn't even know her name.

Jake Stone – Laghu, Kitti's hog-nosed bat, Craseonycteris thonglongyai. Also called the bumblebee bat, it is the world's smallest bat and arguably the smallest mammal as well. Adults have a body length of only an inch and weigh about two grams. The bat is symbol of good luck in Chinese culture, also a symbol of longevity, immortality, and night, but also of hidden knowledge, secrets, and good parenting. Laghu is the Hindi translation for "miniature."