AN- Well, hello there. Oo
(I'd love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed
I'd love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head)
STOP!
THIS IS NOT A NICE FIC! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!
(I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box
On Sundays I would pray for you so it would never stop)
NOT NICE! This is like NOTHING I have previously written.
(I'd love to hear you laugh tonight, I'd love to hear you weep
I'd love to listen to you while you're screaming in your sleep)
See...what you THINK you're getting into is maybe a tension scene or two, maybe some dark smut, but you're wrong!
(I'd love to soothe you with my voice and take your hand in mine
I'd love to take you past the stars and out of reach of time)
I don't write Smut.
But I do intend to scare the hell out of you with this story.
Consider yourselves warned.
(I'd love to see inside your mind, to tear it all apart
To cut you open with a knife and find your sacred heart)
Beta-Nilahxapiel, as a favor.
-Playing with Beyond Birthday is like baiting a fucking spider. This entire ficlet will only be 5-7 chapters long, if I can help it. It will be dark, morbid, and I'm going to do my best to fuck with your head. So, come on kids, gimme the stick and lets watch its legs uncurl...-
Wanna to hear what inspired it?
Lyrics belong to Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo-Insanity. (www.youtube .com/watch?vsROhhid5CB4)
Reviews welcome. Step Lightly.
(I'd love to take your satin dolls and tear them all to shreds
I'd love to mess your pretty hair, I'd love to see you dead.)
XXXX
Oh.
And uh...gird your loins.
XXXX
Chapter 1
Clandestine -Kept or done in secret, often in order to conceal an illicit or improper purpose.
XXXX
B merely watched. It was the red head that sought the white child's company, and the blond would follow him. Once they'd found him, they'd both be ignored, and interestingly enough, they never seemed to mind. The red head merely enjoyed annoying the white child, and the other two loathed each other…yet they shared company like the thickest of thieves, each set to amuse himself in their respective corners of the triangle.
They brought children's things, the red and white, things like handheld gaming panels and blocks and action figures. Things one might see in any normal child's hands. The struggle for some illusion of normalcy turned B's stomach. They were gifted, beyond gifted, and yet they strove to lower themselves to the common standing of mere children in their free time because it alleviated the stress of their work.
The yellow child did not.
And it was this child that drew B's attention, when he'd look from his seat in the window and pretend that the world beyond that glass-paneled view did not exist. Often, he was so lost in his thoughts when they entered that it was far too late to tell them to leave when he finally acknowledged their presence. He didn't watch so openly in the beginning, warily marking the figures in the corners of his peripheral vision, but they were, without a doubt, the focus of his vast mind. It was a rarity, but sometimes one of the boys would lift their heads from their quiet endeavors and watch him back. He cut a startling image, hollowed out by the bookshelf, covered in the firelight. The shadows made his eyes glitter on the few and far occasions that he did look directly back at them. It was usually enough to murder their curiosity and send them back to their own minds. Dimly conscious and deeply aware, he watched as the weeks passed, and what at first were mere intruders to his place of solace soon became his frequent, indirect sources of entertainment. He refused to lower himself and call them companions.
The yellow child's hair glowed in the firelight.
It was small things such as this that drew his attention inexorably from his snowy landscape, until he could scarce look in any other direction. He often settled for staring straight ahead, his knees drawn up and arms about his chin as he studied the boy from the corner of his eye.
He read.
He was always reading.
Always.
The others wasted their time on mind-numbing tasks, building a fort of plastic, and moving pixels across a small screen, but he read. Silent and patiently, he turned his pages, and absorbed the words scribed upon them. Had B any notion of respect and its meaning, he might have held the yellow child in slightly higher regard…but instead, his thinly veiled contempt merely marked that he was not as stupid as the other two. The white one stretched upon the floor, letting a toy airplane hover in his hands and watching its flight with eyes as dark as B's own. The red child leaned upon the chair's arm, his back to the yellow one's side. It was almost comical how he assumed the submissive position when he was comfortable, but pulled his companion about by a blind lead when he wasn't.
…And the yellow one sat within confines of the large armchair and availed himself of the fire's warmth and the quiet company, with the air of someone doing something worth while.
Sometimes he would sit properly, his boots upon the floor where they belonged. Sometimes, he would come without shoes or sock, and curl his legs about him like a cat, exuding the same feline air of lazy indulgence, but regardless of how he chose to occupy it; the chair was always where B's eyes were drawn. When the fire glistened brighter in the midnight hours, a momentary batch of sap found within the depth of its fuel, it would hum and whistle and spit sparks, and the light would dance through his air like it belonged there, bright and golden and ethereal….
B was content to watch, and deny his interest blindly within his own mind.
Every evening for four months, they found their way to the library. It was a novel thing, in reality, because while they continued to intrude, they never seemed interested in beating B to the room. He followed the same routine that he always did, with minor variations for other people's incompetence, and then he retired to this room to wile away the hours before he felt tired enough to attempt sleep. Four months they'd crept in after him, talking quietly up the stair well, and falling silent upon reaching the door. Perhaps they were merely afraid to disturb him, B didn't know, but without fail, they entered while he was gone, so that when he finished a turn of thought and pulled himself from his reverie, they appeared there in the floor, arranged as always and silently amusing themselves.
It was movement that drew his attention from the stark wooden panel of the bookshelf he was staring at the night it changed. The snow was finally beginning to clear from the moor, and he relished the last vestiges of the winter chill emanating from the glass at his side. He wasn't sure at first what had pulled his eyes, but then the yellow one shifted again, drawing his other leg to accompany the first.
Beyond watched the smooth movement despite himself. Aside from the occasional shift from the white child, they didn't move very often.
When the yellow child lifted his gaze from his book to meet Beyond's eyes, the air in his chest locked, freezing tightly in place. He'd never seen his eyes before…they must have been a very light color…very light, grey or blue perhaps, because in the glow of the hearth, they were as yellow as a cat's stare. The red tinge in the corner of his eyes flashed, and his name flickered above his head. Beyond tried not to memorize it.
He held the yellow child's eyes for a long time, contemplating the wisdom of such a thing. They held his attention easily, however…the white child had dark eyes, too much like his to interest Beyond. The red child was an Irish blooded boy, with dark brown eyes. His eyes, however…the fire danced in them, and that was possibly the most fascinating thing Beyond had ever seen.
The boy dropped the stare first, of course, returning to his pages of solace, but the set of his shoulders spoke of new tension. He stayed too long upon his page, and slowly, so slowly, a smile began to tug at the corners of Beyond's mouth. It seemed a nearly foreign thing, but the idea he was entertaining was ludicrous enough to smirk at. No, it was simply just a notion, a tattered scrap of possibility that he turned over carefully in the limbo of his subconscious.
He didn't have to wait long. Almost surreptitiously, the bright eyes moved from their page again to capture Beyond in their peripheral vision. He didn't move, knowing that the shadows would hide his waiting expression as well as any motion he made would only betray it. With bated breath, he found himself tensing most exquisitely, the muscles along his spine and arms flexing of their own accord at the prospect of meeting that ember's gaze again. It seemed a waste of adrenaline.
But it was worth the smug curl of pleasure he gained when the boy lost his battle finally, and lifted his head a fraction to find Beyond still staring at him.
He could see the pace of his breathing quicken, and his smirk widened even further.
Contact, pure and uncomplicated. The shadows danced across his features at the whim of the hearth, and Beyond watched those too. The moonlight shifted, dancing out from behind the cloud cover and bathing Beyond himself in silver, and the fire…the fire caught his eyes just perfectly, he could feel it. Awash in the soft blue tone of the moon, his strange eyes trapped the light and burned crimson.
The boy blinked once, glancing between his words and the figure in the window. Beyond merely tilted his head forward and rested it on his chin, watching him openly now.
After several tried and failed attempts to return to his book, the golden child finally gave up and retired early.
XXXX
There was a spider building a web in his curtains. Beyond watched the tiny thing quietly working above him and wished that all human kind could learn to move with such silence and grace. They'd be much more enjoyable company if they could only learn to function without making any noise at all. Perhaps his bolt of irritation stemmed from the fact that for the first time in the months they'd been coming to the library, the boys were speaking quietly to his left. The moon highlighted the tiny insect swaying between the folds of white gauze in the window frame, and snatches of conversation drifted to him over the roar of the fire. Phrases like 'ice cream', 'midnight', and 'unguarded' tumbled quietly from the red child's lips in a defensive whisper. He seemed to be trying to coax the other two into a raid on the kitchens, and while he was certainly quiet, he was also breaking the more intense quiet Beyond had been enjoying only moments ago.
He wished the fucking boy would shut up.
At the end of his camaraderie speech, the red child instead found himself going to the kitchens alone while the white child went to bed. He watched (but didn't), the figures move towards the door, concentrating intently on his silent friend overhead and waiting for the triumphant click of the door closing.
It wasn't until the extended pause that he realized all was not going according to his fevered wishes, and the damn voice came back, slightly louder to be heard from across the room.
"Mello, aren't you coming?"
Mello.
The spider blurred in his sight while the cognitive gears of his mind stole the word and ran away to a dark haven with it.
Slowly, he let his gaze slip to the side, watching the boys from the mere slit of his eyes, lips slightly parted in blank surprise. The golden child remained in his chair, gloved fingers splaying a book wide upon his knee like a martyr while the other hand waved the noise off. A sneer curled his lip then, because he knew that the golden child was intelligent enough to read and carry on three conversations at the same time without dropping a train of thought…surely he wasn't-
A single, furtive upward glance.
A lie.
The red child hovered in the doorway a moment more before sighing and closing it after him. The affected pout didn't seem to reach either of the two figures as they remained frozen in place, even when the boy waited in the hall for another handful of seconds to be sure that his tag-along was truly abandoning him this time. Beyond could see the glimmer of color in his eyes held as they strayed to the door, and the contrast of relief and tension in his frame when the other boy's steps finally echoed down the stairs in defeat.
He'd stayed.
Pretentious little bastard.
Slowly, those eyes, those bright, golden eyes lifted from the book he'd ignored and met Beyond's. The older boy turned his head finally, spider momentarily forgotten in the wake of the notion that again tickled the underside of his conscious thoughts. It was a dark thing, a quiet muttering that it was in his best interest to ignore.
He'd lied to his friend, after a manner…pretending to be absorbed in his reading material so that he would have a moment alone with Beyond. It suddenly made him paranoid to wonder how long the golden child had been watching him watch the spider.
As though to answer his unspoken musings, a slow smirk spread across the boy's face.
Beyond merely narrowed his eyes.
The smirk disappeared.
As though on cue, the footsteps returned, pounding up the stairwell again.
"Mello!" The door swung open, and the red child stood in its wake, irritated. "Come with me, man…this place is fucking creepy after everyone goes to bed."
They remained locked in their stare for a moment monger before the golden child faltered, closing his book and muttering breathlessly, "Yes, I'm coming."
The idea returned, flaring in the recesses of his brain like an ember, and in the wake of the lost contact, Beyond turned his eyes back to his lovely insect and refused to acknowledge the boys as they left him alone in the firelight.
XXXX
The scent of chocolate.
Something had changed, he was sure. Still in the recesses of his thoughts, it was hard to focus on the room as he pulled his eyes from the wooden grain directly ahead. The sun was setting in the sky still, and due to their…habitual schedule, the boys weren't due until after the last traces of orange were gone and the only light remaining was the fire. The attendant had come and come some half hour ago, kindling the warmth and glow in the stone hollow beneath the mantle, but Beyond had barely stirred from his place. He wasn't even sure the woman had noticed him, curled like a panther in his little window bench.
The scent, not of burning wood, but of chocolate.
It didn't belong, his mind whispered, something was different, something was wrong.
When the bookshelf finally came into focus and he had the strength of will to move again, he didn't. Instead of tensing and allowing his instinctive violence to take over, he carefully turned his eyes to the side and waited for the anomaly to approach him…a year or so ago, he'd injured a small child that startled him out of his thoughts too quickly.
It appeared in the form of a dark blur, dark clothing and pale skin; and the miniscule movements of someone unwrapping a parcel. Once he determined that they were not within physical reach, Beyond turned his head, crimson eyes wide and unwholesomely ringed. At this point, he hardly needed to apply the make up to look like him anymore.
The golden child…Mello…eased into his chair with a bored expression upon his face, a bar of candy in one small fist. Beyond almost sneered at it, but then thought of his jam and allowed that everyone had their vices. The boy was carefully avoiding his eyes, as he rested his book upon a knee and bent to unlace his boots. The chocolate was a rich scent, hanging between his teeth as he worked the unnecessarily heavy shoes off, setting them to the side. Beyond was mildly surprised when he then lifted the hem of his pants and the hiss of Velcro disturbed his quiet even further. A small black band of fabric settled heavily into the discarded boots. 'Ankle weights' his mind supplied a second later as the golden child lithely stretched both of his legs and then curled them up into the chair.
Curiosity, Beyond supposed, is what brought him early. Perhaps for a glimpse of him in better lighting, perhaps to have his moment alone with the most frightening figure in the orphanage, it didn't matter. Beyond watched the golden child watch him, and found that he preferred the darker light of the fire to the pure sunlight that lit his hair now. The sunlight seemed less…enlivened. He found himself wondering if the boy had intended to impress him with his show of physical prowess by removing the weights in his presence. The idea was laughable…Beyond could probably throw Mello across the room.
He caught himself addressing him by name and frowned.
He turned back to his spider only to find that someone had cleared away its web during the course of the week, and felt another pang of irritation. Humans couldn't leave well enough alone.
XXXX
When he next pulled his mind together, an hour or so had passed. A quick glance showed that the golden boy's intense stare hadn't faltered any time recently, but his attention had. He sat with his eyes half closed, drowsily hooded against the firelight. Beyond cocked his head slightly to see it better, but he refused to turn towards the boy and alert him to the fact that he was once again himself. He could hear the other two coming up the stairs, talking quietly again, and almost as soon as the sound reached him, the golden child jumped, his eyes wide.
Beyond gave him a blank look, and glanced back towards the door as the other two entered. They must have taken it as a sign of his foul mood that he addressed them so soon, because the conversation immediately died with a soft clearing of the throat and the click and shift of toys in the white child's arms. They closed the door quietly, and he craned his back to rest upon his chin, still irritated about his missing spider. While he'd hardly been fond of the insect, it was something he could focus on. Something to ease the monotony of their presence, and help him slip back into his state of nothing.
He was tempted to call it meditation, but he garnered no peace from it, and so instead called it only his 'cessation of thought'. It had been difficult at first, but he found that learning how to 'not think' helped keep a clamp on the urges that sometimes nudged at his soul. Unhealthy things, the backwash of his training and his intense resentment of his benefactor. They were a common sentiment in the orphanage, though he was quite sure that no one else had experienced the negative side effects of their mental stress quite like he had.
He was almost positive that no one else had come to…enjoy it.
Still, regardless of his unique and possibly freakish tactics for handling his work, he found that no matter what he intended, his body would rest but his mind would not. It had become necessary to impose this form of stasis upon himself for his own safety, as well as those around him. He had a tendency to become rather irrational when he wasn't rested.
He was not sure how long he was gone the second time around, nor again what drew him back. There wasn't a sound to be heard, or any unnecessary movement from the boys at his side. The white one lay stretched upon the small sofa directly before the fire, and was in the process of blocking himself in, using both pillows and plastic squares. The red child sat against the sofa front tonight, instead of beside Mello's chair. The game system and its headphones glistened silver in the light and that seemed to be the extent of his world…until Beyond realized just how his chest shivered faintly with every indrawn breath. It was enough to make him turn his head, because he'd once witnessed a young girl have an asthma attack, and it had turned his stomach to watch her turn blue until someone called the team and she was rushed to hospital wing. Silent, he pulled his thoughts together, and with a clear, calculating mind, watched the red child for the next few minutes.
He already had a reputation of being around when the terrible things happened. It was not a luck card that he favored in his hand.
The white child, upon closer inspection, was actually half asleep behind his fortress wall, curled around a pillow and warily dozing as the minutes passed. Beyond doubted the boy trusted any of them enough to fall completely asleep in their presence. His eyes shifted to the one upon the floor, at the way his knees were partially drawn up, and his eyes stared unblinkingly at the small screen. From his angle, he could tell that the device had been paused, and the game halted to save his progress, and for a moment it didn't make sense.
Then an all too familiar tension began creeping into his frame, and as Beyond watched, unnoticed in the sidelines, the young gamer licked his lips and then surreptitiously flicked his dark eyes upwards.
…Drawing Beyond's attention to Mello for the first time since collecting the pieces of his mind.
The golden child sat curled up as comfortably as possible in the chair adjacent to the small sofa. The firelight glinted off the silver wraps of his boots, but that was not where the red boy's eyes were resting.
For a moment, he didn't see it, narrowing his eyes against the shadows and glancing between the taut frame upon the floor and the picture of calm upon the chair. The golden boy held his book open on his knee, forefinger and small finger splaying the pages open over the spine, and his chocolate hovered comfortably in reach of his mouth. His light eyes moved back and forth quickly, a small furrow at his brow a sign of his concentration. There seemed to be nothing amiss. Then, just as Beyond was prepared to write it off and slip away again, Mello tilted his head slightly to the side and took the point of the chocolate between his lips. He withdrew it slowly before taking it back, mouthing the candy to melt it against his patient tongue and teeth. A habit, Beyond supposed, but another visible shiver in the red child stopped the blood in his veins as he reconsidered his appraisal of the boys before him.
Not children.
Not quite, at least.
The notion of a sexual tension in one of them was so foreign that it caught Beyond completely off-guard, but there it was before his eyes. His arms loosed about his knees as he turned to take in the scene more clearly.
The gamer was staring at his unmoving screen again, lips pressed tightly together. The golden child continued about his way, completely oblivious to his companion's plight, but as the red one looked up again in time to see the dark candy disappear, a helpless sort of expression took over his features.
Beyond, now thoroughly fascinated, continued his observation in silence.
Mello turned a page, and his companion's eyes dropped guiltily in fear. Upon looking at the three of them with this new knowledge, and perhaps for the first time with his full attention, he realized they were not 'boys' or 'children' at all. In truth, they appeared to be merely a number of years younger than Beyond himself.
Young, yes, but certainly not children….
Children didn't know the meaning of lust.
A smirk spread his lips as he watched the silent drama unfold, the telltale drawing of the knees, and uncomfortable shift in the red one's tension. Beyond did rather the reverse, uncurling in his little corner as he rested his weight in his palm and watched, smirking broadly while the annoying one all but writhed in place. Lips parted, he appeared torn between his small game console and the more delicate distraction that Mello offered. The fire growled quietly, but beneath that, he thought he heard something of a whimper when Mello's tongue came to cleanse his lips. The chocolate withered in the heat of his grip, and if he didn't begin to pay it more attention, he would find it more trouble than it was worth before all was said done. Beyond surprised himself by trusting him not to be stupid enough to let it ruin the book.
They were all about the same age, Beyond knew from the rumors about the academy. Of the three of them, he supposed the red one was the only boy that truly looked his age…almost or barely fifteen, if Beyond placed him properly. Suddenly the notion of him playing games, and the white one playing with children's toys was all the more disgusting. A rustle of paper and another page turned, though the boy was careful to keep his head down. The hush of his breathing quickened slightly, and when Beyond lifted his eyes again to the golden boy, the notion in the back of his head ripped a stitch loose.
Look.
A coherent enough thought, if one looked at it as plainly as something that was natural and should exist in the depths of his thoughts. Like a sliver of glass, his own humanity twinged most unpleasantly when Mello lapped softly at his candy. For a moment, Beyond considered the possibility that he knew the effect he was having upon his companion, but his eyes never once faltered in their movement. Pages turned, chocolate disappeared, and the boy upon the floor suffered blissfully in silence. Perhaps it was the need to punish the red haired boy for his past insults and noise, but Beyond suddenly wanted to shift into his line of sight and catch him in his stare, to humiliate him. However, when he began to pull his eyes away from the golden skinned youth abusing the other's sanity, his mind whispered again.
Look.
It was unsettling, and he ignored it. Nor did he move from his place, choosing instead to see how long the fool could last before voicing some kind of protest that the candy received the attention, and not him.
The thought made him pause again, eyes narrowed and smirk curled. Watching the boy pull himself into a tighter ball upon the carpet, he began to look at it in a different light, perhaps. Despite his fervent glances and the red tint that hid his freckles from view, he doubted the red boy knew what it was he wanted from Mello.
The golden boy, not Mello.
It was at this point that Beyond realized he'd gone from 'yellow boy' to 'golden boy' and became even further irritated with himself for allowing the fools into his temple of solace to begin with.
…Regardless, the more he observed the frustration in the red one, the more convinced he grew that while this particular brand of torture was familiar to him, there had been no action taken on its behalf. While the exact extent of the red one's sexual experimentation was of absolutely no interest to Beyond, he found it hard to believe he'd discovered much more than masturbation at this point. Even that was dubious, considering the discreet pressure that he was applying to his…problem. It spoke of inexperience, excited fear, and frustration. Far be it from Beyond to interrupt his private tortures.
Instead, he remained sprawled upon his little bench, for once enjoying their company if for no other reason than to mock them from within the silence of his mind.
Look.
His eyes narrowed, even as the other reached his breaking point. With a single glance at the carpet, he genuinely surprised Beyond with the firmness of his voice.
"Mello, you're doing that… thing again."
The following moments were crystalline amusement, in his opinion. Before his eyes, the picture of calm became a ball of horrified tension. A single glance between his companion's blank expression and the chocolate in his fingers was all the confirmation the he needed. Without a word, he let his book slide away and pulled the paper up to cover the treat, shoving it to the end table. The white one smirked over his shoulder, hidden by the fortress wall, and if Beyond believed in respect, he might have chuckled at the sight.
So…this was not the first time.
They said nothing more of it, the gamer pressing buttons and again escaping into his bright little world once more. Mello licked his lips in an almost self-conscious manner, thumbing after his lost page.
…Then with a sudden start, he lifted his head to stare at the older boy stretched in the corner. Beyond merely held the fire-stained gaze, his benign smirk still in place. Slowly, those eyes widened in shock as the realization of his multiple witnesses sunk in, and while his lips didn't quite part, his fingers shook slightly upon the paper in their grasp.
Without another word, Beyond straightened up, rested his chin on his knee and watched the golden boy for the next hour or so.
It was fairly easy to turn a simple meeting of the eyes into a touch.
Look, his mind whispered, and he abruptly shied away from that thought.