Title:
I triple dare you...
Characters: Rodney Skinner, John
Skinner
Rating:PG
Author's Notes: I have taken
license with many back stories so please don't read these expecting
canon. Only Rodney Skinner does not belong to me. His made up family
though is all mine.
An hour ago there had been teasing drunken laughter, accompanied by the clink of gin bottles and the youthful stamping of feet.
Forty minutes ago a bet had been placed. The young men gathered had emptied their pockets and hastily scraped together two pounds in the hopes that one Rodney Skinner would never hold up his end of the bet. They all knew the thief was adventuresome but his brother John had thought up something absolutely horrible. Who in their right mind would drink a liquid solution owned by a reputedly insane scientist?
Twenty minutes ago, after a few more drinks and many more jabs at the redhead's masculinity, Rodney saluted his mates and tipped back the glass vial.
His screams shocked the boys out of their happy stupour, shooting them off their vegetable crate seats, gin and ale spilling along the cheap flooring. He fell, writing, while a vein throbbed upon his forehead and the tendons pulsed along his burning throat.
Fifteen minutes ago only John was left, kneeling over his brother's feverish form. The screams had diminished to strained grunts but his limbs twisted painfully, elbows knocking against forgotten bottles.
Now it was just Rodney. John had rushed away, sobbing, as his brother's body struggled then stilled. No one saw the consequence take place, no one saw Rodney disappear from the inside out.
And in a few minutes when he wakes no one will see how scared the gentleman thief really is, nor how much he will despair, nor how angry he will be at the solitude pressed on him.
Fear fades.
Despair fades.
Anger will keep Rodney
warm in the nights to come. And while his body is invisible to the
human eye, it is that attribute he will hide best of all.