Mother dress was red. The liquid sliding through his fingers was too.
It dropped at the feet of the unconscious body at his feet, just a few drops. His hits were precise, to the bone.
The pain painted everything brighter than it was, senses overloaded.
A pinch came to his chest, almost forgotten in the fire of his link with Mother.
But there it was, bigger and bigger as he looked his fingers. The cruel, sharp edged presence in his head incited him, rejoiced in his curiosity.
He licked.
Such an intense taste, it almost cleaved him, leaving him numb and oversensitive at all once. Like a current that zapped him breathless…At the back of his head a memory came to life once again, blurred at the force of the pain and fire of his Mother rage.
But he remembered that sensation and the bubbling scorching itch of an urge bigger than himself.
A shiver in the base of his back, a pinprick sensation on his neck, a slight ache on his jaw.
Ahh…
The sun was washed out grey, it wasn't a problem he didn't like the sun anyway.
It had been a busy week, full of the ice cold machines and the even colder Scientists. But they seemed satisfied with them, well, at least they were satisfied with him, giving little pats and brushes.
He knew the Scientist only cared for them as long as his Friend and he brought results, and it felt nice to have some sort of approval, a purpose, as he had heard one of them say.
But that didn't mean he liked them. He didn't.
It felt right to not like them, it was right, a faint something whispered on his mind. He shivered a little, an odd warm surrounding him.
He snapped out of his thoughts when his Friend touched his shoulder, walking towards the roundabout in the park they were allowed in. And he ran towards him feeling almost out of place following. It was always him leading with his silent side-kick on tow, getting out of the permitted areas, exploring.
He sat and held with both hands, the other kid had always been stronger and he enjoyed pushing him till his sides ached of laughter and his head was rolling.
He liked to think of them like one of those superheroes teams, the ones they had looked hiding under the sheets of his bed, on a book with yellowed pages and bright faded colors they had found on one of their explorations.
They talked about it since then; he would be the intelligent one, always with a plan or a word to get out of trouble, with his mind power if he needed it. And his Friend wanted to be the strong one, the one that punched straight through the bad guys, fearless. He knew his friend was scared of them, of the scientists and their guards, he was a scared of them too, but he didn't show that, someone had to be the brave one.
They had imagined plenty of times their heroic selves showing those scientists just how strong they had grown up.
Defeating that Dr. Wade who looked at them with that ugly gaze… yeah they would and then they would escape and they would fight all over the world with those that were unfair and evil. Always together, protecting each other.
He looked at the other kid when he jumped on the roundabout with him, and catching his gaze they both laughed while the blurring world wiped clean all their worries and all sound was drowned with their giggles and laughs.
The world was slowing and a white smudge tainted the colors.
The world didn't stop its spinning even when the roundabout did. His Friend was already getting up looking confused. He was confused too, they never approached in this moments.
They were having fun and standing by the side of the other kid he glared at the Scientist, annoyed. He had made a pact with his Friend that he would never talk to them first, so he didn't say anything.
The one with the lab-coat was a young man who looked at them with neutral eyes.
Half expecting the barked orders and questions, he was middle surprised when it was the Scientist who let his eyes fall first, without a single word.
The Scientist eyes caught his attention, green eyes with a little brown smudge in the left one. He hadn't seen this one before, he must have been new because he approached them with a shy, careful smile. No one smiled to them in the installations; they smiled between themselves, smug smiles of self-satisfaction for a successful test.
He didn't like those smiles and he didn't like this one either. It was too careful, as if the Scientist wanted to get closer to something that bite and was nervous.
The Scientist turned a little to face them with his side and let a little plastic wrap fall to floor. Not looking at them, he extended a fabric over the grass and put a tray on it and then he got a weird looking thing out of the wrap and put it over.
He heard a sharp intake of breath at his side.
It was a fruit. It looked orange bright against the dull brown and green of the grass. He hadn't seen a fresh one in all his life, the milkshakes and the weird solids they got as food were as plain as they looked.
Not watching them still the Scientist got a knife out and started cutting the fruit in half. A sharp sweet smell filled his nostrils, it smelled like nothing he had ever smelled, soft and strong at the same time, he felt his mouth watering.
Trust the Scientists to do this, interrupting their play time to show something they wouldn't offer. What horrible creatures, those Scientists. They would see, he would feed them only that plain food when he was a grown up and stronger than them.
And then the Scientist did something he had never expected, he got up with the tray, walked a little closer and crouched. Close enough for them to take one of those scarlet slices. How odd for something that pale to have such a colorful interior.
He extended the dish, without making eye contact, like an offering to an angry animal, a beast, a god.
His Friend was the first one to take one, in a movement he could barely see, a proof of how quick he was. And smelling it a little he started eating it.
He didn't have such an impetuous nature, so he waited a little longer, watching the scientist carefully and raised a hesitant hand towards the plate. He clenched it halfway, angry with himself for showing doubt, he had done much worse on their experiments, and he could taste the fruit, so with a sure hand he took one of the slices.
He was barely aware of the satisfied sounds his Friend did at his side as he bought the fruit closer to his face.
And again he was attacked by smell, it smelled so different, it made him feel refreshed and thirsty, it smelled so alive.
He pressed it a little, feeling the stick smoothness of the skin and some of the scarlet juice slid through his fingers, curiosity won as he licked the juice and for a second he thought it was poisoned, the taste so intense that it zapped his brain to an almost numbness before awaking it.
He didn't knew hunger, so this feeling, the loss of control, scared him a little before the sheer power on his mouth chased the feeling away.
World lost its focus as he plunged his face in the slice, slurping and biting and taking more and more of the taste.
Once he finished he looked at the scientist again, no doubt making a spectacle of himself with his face full of fruit, he didn't care, he watched as the scientist gave another half to his Friend.
It felt unfair to call the one offering the fruit a Scientist so he decided to call him a Person.
The newly dubbed Person turned towards him offering the other half, and he took it so quickly it squished a little in the Person's hand, letting a little of the juice fall on his fingers, painting a crimson trail that dropped at his feet.
Not that he cared with his eyes closed by sheer sensation and his mouth taking greedy bites of the slice, he felt overwhelmed, alive.
And as he raised his eyes towards the smiling person slicing another fruit, a thought flashed quickly, the thought that a Person was crueler than a Scientist.
For how would he ever taste something as electrifying as this? How did you unlearn hunger?
Head full of ashes, he scrambled out of the memories.
He hadn't remembered that hunger in a long time, he thought with amusement. Since the day Mother took his hand and his mind frayed and quivered under the pressure.
Since then his hunger had been the power, the knowledge, the mind games.
But now, with his mother screaming hate in his mind with the softest of murmurs, he thought of the other hunger, the one that had slept since his infancy, untouched and unsatisfied.
A hunger that swept though his bones and leaved him starving.
And he watched the weakest of movement in the body before him. Sliding his gaze all over…
green eyes with a smudge of brow.
…his hands ripped open the white lab coat and the shirt underneath it, hands as sure as they had been that day.
On his knees, before the offering, he lowered his head and bit, taste exploding against his mouth, and then he was plunging his face in the contracting flesh, slurping and biting, desperate now, headless to the agonized moans, tearing the shivering tissue with hands and mouth, clawing at the scarlet insides, shredding the trembling strips, as the taste savaged him, sliced him open as the roared whisper of his family pain raged in his head.
Numbed and overwhelmed…
his face full of fruit
…like a starving animal, he feasted.
I Own Nothing. And be glad because if I owned FEAR the end would be Paxton and PM having a happy brother-ship with their Lil' bro/sis and with each other.
This is the first thing I have published in a long long time, so do your worst with it.
Hope you enjoyed it -If someone actually still reads this fandom-
I almost die of frustration searching the name of that rolling thingie- Roundabout.