I recently joined a prompt community on Livejournal called Six Imp Ear Fics (www . community . livejournal . com / 6impearfics / profile), which offers six-set prompts based on scents offered by the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Currently I'm working on a prompt list called Falling In, and when I'm done, I'll have six Nightside fics revolving around Dead Boy to show for it. Officially, my claim to the list hasn't been accepted yet, but when it is, I'll have links.
Prompt: Opium Poppy (Opium teaches one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real. A bitter, soft, fragile flower.)
I found Dead Boy sitting outside of the stairway leading down to the Pit.
It pays, most of the time, to keep track of people you may need. I'm not very good at it, but that was why I hired Cathy. Don't ask me how she does it-- I really don't want to know. It's incredibly useful, though, whatever it is.
Still, when I appeared at my office, asking her if she could tell me where the infamous expert on death was, she gave me a strange look.
Cathy is usually very good at saying what she's thinking-- loudly and with no regard for political correctness. Today was different. She ruffled through a few papers on the desk before her, almost as if stalling for time, and didn't meet my eyes. Eventually, she did look up, and the expression on her face was caught between worry and disregard. "He's at that awful club you nearly put out of business a few months ago," she told me offhandedly.
"What club?" I asked. It was a valid question. I put many clubs out of business. Daily. Sometimes just by walking by them. (What sort of holy terror would I be if I didn't?)
She only hesitated for a moment. "The Pit. John, don't freak out, he's just--"
But I didn't hear the rest of it. I was already out the door.
--
Nothing good ever comes of putting special value on friends, especially when your friendship is based solely on the fact that you can trust the other guy not to stab you in the back when you've turned around. Friendships don't come about by way of common interest, in the Nightside.
But Dead Boy's self-destructive nature had taken a turn for the worse in the past few weeks. Rossignol had, for whatever reason, decided that she didn't need him anymore, and he'd gone back to his job at the mausoleum. I don't know what happened after that, because he dropped off Cathy's radar for almost three weeks, and no matter how many people I tried to contact him through, he didn't seem to want to be found.
He reappeared again, eventually, when I bumped into him-- literally-- down the street from Strangefellows, while working on a smaller, more anonymous case. He looked like hell, and that's saying something, for someone who's already dead.
Ever since then, I'd asked Cathy to keep an eye on him, whenever she could get a source of information. It was difficult, though. Sometimes I think she gets a little exasperated with my concern, but usually doesn't complain, which I love her dearly for.
As I walked away from the office and towards Uptown, I tried to let my thoughts organize themselves. The air was thick and distracting around me, hot and sweaty like a summer night. People walked at a leisurely pace around me, strolling with all their airs and graces out on display. For once, the Nightside felt calm, but I couldn't help but be jittery.
My only hope was that it didn't show on my face. Nervousness would get you eaten alive, and the closer I got to Uptown, the truer that was.
True to what I was told, I found Dead Boy sprawled against the hard brick wall near the club's stairs, panting and giggling breathily to himself. For once, the floppy hat he wore everywhere wasn't atop his head, and his greatcoat lay open, revealing a pallid torso adorned with more wounds than I could count. His hair was mussed and his eyes were glazed, and I didn't need to look to see the pillbox held limply between his long fingers.
No matter how high he was, it didn't taken him long to notice my approaching footsteps, and he greeted me with a happy, dazed smile and a tilt of his head. "What brings you all this way, John?" he asked me placidly.
The smiles hid dread and emptiness. I'd known him too long to be fooled by his careless state. "I was wondering whether I'd find you here," I said.
He simpered a bit, looking away from me with a light chuckle. He didn't respond.
I cautiously moved to sit down. Once leaning against the wall beside him, I took a moment to straighten my thoughts out, before taking a deep breath and trying to let everything out of my mind in the calmest way possible.
"You're dead, if you don't realize. You don't heal anymore, and sooner or later, you're going to fall apart, which absolutely no one wants to see, except maybe whatever freaks you've been playing with. Are you blind? Maybe stupid? Or have you just stopped caring?"
That seemed to ground him back in reality. He blinked down at the sidewalk beneath him, and I simply glared. I wasn't about to let him off too easily.
I watched as he opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, trying to force words that just wouldn't come. Finally he looked at me, a little bit less out-of-it and a little bit more upset. "'Freaks' isn't really a word you can throw around, John."
I was silent. He was right.
We sat like that for quite some time-- how long, I couldn't say-- listening to the vile sounds of the world around us and skillfully ignoring everything we shouldn't hear. The moon loomed above us, bright and intimidating, and bass-heavy music wafted through the air and up through my toes.
I eventually closed in on myself, biting back angry words and things I didn't mean. I wanted him to talk-- hauling him away wouldn't help.
And so I waited. Seconds ticked away.
A small hiccup sounded to my left, and only then did I realize that Dead Boy was crying. Trying to cry, anyway. He seemed to be putting real effort into it, though I was sure the small whimpering noises he was making were all his dead body would allow. His eyes showed no signs of actual tears, but damn if he didn't look as melancholy as ever.
When he was alive, I'm almost sure Dead Boy was bipolar. It seemed to have carried with him even after death, too.
"It's so unfair!" he said softly, harshly, in a voice I'd never heard from him before. He was Dead Boy-- free and manic-happy, always ready for parties and drugs and more of whatever was offered to him, and sometimes when it wasn't, too. He was rude and defiant and cocky, but never had I seen him so upset.
Feelings didn't get to him like that, or so I'd thought.
This was a side of him I'd only seen glimpses of, sometimes when prompted to talk about his death; others, when asked about who he'd made his deal with, all those years ago. Only once had he ever willingly opened up to me, on the Nightingale case, right after we'd cleaned the mausoleum of its hideous temporary inhabitants. There'd been a terrified look in his eyes, something desolate and horrible and utterly mad. I'd never wanted to see it again, but I knew it was there.
"I've gotten to a point," he continued in that same empty voice, staring mindlessly at the passers-by on the street before us, "where I don't feel it anymore. Any of it. I truly am just a soul trapped in a doll's body."
"It's your own fault," I said before I could think. I would've given all I was to take those words back.
I wasn't enough.
Dead Boy laughed; a quiet, bitter sound. "Yes, and I suppose you'd think that, wouldn't you? I 'didn't read the fine print', wasn't that what you said? It's my own fault for being too blinded by the need for revenge to see what I was stepping into. Spin your bullshit, John, go ahead. I've had my turn. I know what my soul is worth, and an eternity left to wander this world is not it."
Though he didn't turn his head, I felt, more than saw, him glance over at me. His gaze is unavoidable like that.
Silently, I shifted, and gently pulled him into my arms. He went without protest. I felt fingers curl around the fabric of my shirt as he nestled his head up against my chest, exhaling damp, shaky breaths against me.
He was wary-- I could sense it in the way he held himself, even though I couldn't see his face. Still, the hostility he'd been dripping with just a moment before had vanished.
I rubbed the back of my neck gently with my thumb. His skin was cold and clammy beneath my fingers-- I don't know why I'd expected otherwise.
"Why do you do this to yourself?" I asked, softly but firmly.
Dead Boy was a mistake. He would always be a mistake, in every sense of the word. On my list of Bad Ideas, this one was right up there.
He shuddered against me, softly, so soft I barely noticed, and eventually withdrew from my grasp to meet my gaze with a lifeless one of his own. "They..." he started, and then rethought what he was saying. "I would rather feel pain, feel something and destroy myself in the process, than become numb." Dead Boy shook his head, still managing to look composed as he sat there on the wet, dirty sidewalk beside me. "It feels... it feels good."
"To be hurt?" I asked.
He smiled a bit, lamentingly. "Yes. But to be taken care of, as well."
I nodded, unable to do or say anything else.
More moments passed. In those moments, I hesitated, but worked up the courage to ask, "Can you walk?"
He eyed me with a look I couldn't place. "Probably not."
"Do you want to--"
He cut me off before I could even finish. "No, no, I'll be fine."
I scoffed at that, loudly and very disbelievingly. He couldn't heal-- if he couldn't walk, he had no way to fix himself either. "Call your car."
--
Dead Boy's car was very patient with me, for once, possibly because it liked Dead Boy quite a bit more than should be normal for a car and didn't like seeing him hurt. (Though it did try to run me over when it saw the state he was in-- surprisingly, it's quite common for machinery to blame me for things like that. No, I don't know why.)
Being dead had taken its toll on him-- he was all long limbs and lanky frame, without an inch of fat on his permanently adolescent body. It was easy enough to help him stand, and when he stumbled, to pick him up and set him down gently in the driver's seat. I assumed the car would get to where it was going by itself, as long as it was given directions, and I didn't really trust it enough to try and drive.
Only when he stood did I really notice the evidence of the beating he'd taken. There were new wounds-- lumpy shapes that could've been broken ribs; cuts and lacerations; even a few burn marks. Though he probably only felt a few of them, they still made him look quite damaged, and I had no clue how he'd fix them.
Once sitting, he relaxed marginally, popping open his pillbox and dry-swallowing a couple. I walked around to the other side of the car (quickly, might I add-- I was still a little nervous about being run over), and sat down in the plush passenger seat. Only after I'd given it my address and made sure that we were moving, did I relax as well.
"Is there anything I can do..?" I asked carefully, but he shook his head.
Reluctantly, I quieted, and let him think. I knew he needed it.