Ugh, I'm on this Dragonshipping stint. Bear with me. Also, the thought of Yami living in a gothic church is way too aesthetic, so it just… ends up in AUs. Soooo, gargoyle!Atem and Delinquent!Joey. Sooo, just regular ol' Joey, eh? *laughs in bad comedian*
Fun fact: technically, only decorative rain spouts are "gargoyles": all other similar statues with a less practical purpose are called "grotesques" or "bosses". But, for the sake of simplicity, I will call them all gargoyles.
The last rays of sunlight stained the summer sky crimson. The dying sanguine rays washed over the rain-stained stone of the abandoned Catholic church. The serrated parapets cast their harsh shadows, and the numerous statues - snarling sentinels, those - lining the gothic ledges remained affixed in scarlet chiaroscuro.
Fangs and arched wings and talons curling over stone. One faced directly west. Its strangely solemn face was cast in soft relief in the dying light of day. Colorless stone eyes watched lifelessly the sun sinking below the metropolitan horizon. Perhaps it was just a trick of the evening sun, but it seemed as though that gray chest lifted with breath, pulsed with life, as though those carved claws curled tighter around the pedestal that was its perch, as though those protectively arched wings unfurled higher to catch the last of those crimson rays. Yes, it seemed as though the wind - stronger so high up amongst the holy spires - ruffled that mane enshrined eternally in stone.
Eventually, the remnants of day were only the faint red-violet smudges on the darkening horizon. The statues and parapets were entombed in the black, so thick here in this abandoned sector, where humans no longer dared to tread amongst the skeletal warehouses and desolate old homes.
Yet still, perhaps a trick of the darkness, that hard jaw twitched. Stone cracked along that stoic face, right over a colorless eye.
And from within the fissure, red glowed into the night. Red, red eyes lurked beneath a prison of stone.
Joey walked up to the chain-link fence. It was rusted, nearly disintegrated, but it apparently did its job - keeping foolish young bucks like him off the property.
He frowned up, up, up. The church spires seemed so high (so foreboding), when he was this close.
He gulped. He felt as though he were standing at the feet of a giant slumbering beast.
He shook his head, elbowed the ragged backpack hanging from one shoulder. It was ridiculous. Just a bunch of stories to scare the local kids from wandering into a condemned building. Ghost stories. That pale revenants guarded the hallowed halls when the sun went away and the sky was dark. Locals of all ages told hushed stories of figures in the stained glass windows, of movement on the balconies and ledges. Of red eyes peering from the desolate blackness lurking within the derelict House of God.
Joey stared. Everything seemed still and silent, now. Perhaps eerily so.
He shook his head again, and he quickly tossed out of the way the blond hair that fell into his eyes.
He glanced back up to the chain link. It wasn't like it was topped with barbed wire or anything. He might get a little dirty doing so, but he could climb right over the top.
And Joey Wheeler wasn't afraid of some rust stains. And he certainly wasn't afraid of some stupid old church and some make-believe ghosts.
And so, he nimbly scaled the wobbly fence, dropped down onto the overgrown weeds on the other side. They were prickly and dry and crackled audibly beneath Joey's weight. He stood from his crouch and didn't bother to brush the dirt and little plant bits from his clothes. He shuffled closer. His pants legs caught on the weeds, but he only plodded on forward.
Huh. He looked at the church again. He was right at its front door, now. He paused.
He could just tag the outside, and call it good enough.
But curiosity and bravado teased his ego. What would the gang say when he told them?
Hey, I went to that old church last night.
What was it like on the inside?
Nah man, I just stopped at the doorsteps.
Pathetic.
And he genuinely wanted to know what it looked like on the inside. Joey'd never been in an old gothic-styled church before.
He looked over his shoulder. The street behind him was empty as ever. He crept up to the once-grand double-doors. Right there at the entrance, hanging above, was a gargoyle. It was hideous, snarling, all fangs and horns and a curling tongue and curling bat wings.
Joey snorted. It seemed like an awfully… non-Christian way to ward off evil. Like, it seemed more like something from ancient cultures that believed in talismans and spirits and ghoulish things that went bump in the night. Eh, who was he to judge, though?
"'S not like I'm a Christian, or anything," he murmured to himself.
He lifted a hand to check the door - in all possibility, it could be locked or barricaded from the inside - and frowned at his outstretched limb.
His fingers were shaking.
He scoffed at himself, and wrung out his hands - and hopefully wrung out any jitters that might have remained in them.
He splayed a hand out on the warped, stained wood. And pushed. The door creaked open, all rusty hinges and heavy oak.
With one last look out at the street and the gargoyle that seemed to be staring at him with so much judgement in its featureless eyes, he stepped within.
High above, red eyes blinked, and the shadow-laden figure ducked into the yawning maw of a broken window.
"Wow," Joey breathed.
Faint moonlight slanted in from the windows. So many windows, a few broken in, but many intact, with their watercolor murals and fragmented figures. The pews were still lined up, neat and orderly and rotting, waiting for the devout to sit and worship once again. The smell of mildew and wet stone permeated the still air.
The sides of the room were lined with archways yawning into darkness. He looked up, to the vaulted ceilings, some thirty feet above, lined with decades of cobwebs.
The place was untouched since its abandonment. Joey frowned. He expected that someone else would have already snuck in to tag the place, ghost stories or no. But the walls were only water-stained stone, unmarred by spray paint. Apparently, a certain Joey Wheeler was the only one brave enough to venture into the derelict church.
Joey crouched, dug around in his backpack. He pulled his arm out, can in hand. He shook it, stood up, flashlight in his other hand.
Now the only questions that remained was what to put and where to put it.
He trailed forward, switched on his flashlight, and skimmed over the room. The stark, shifting shadows cast by the blinding glow of the flashlight and the pillars of the arches were unsettling. The back of his neck prickled, but he kept moving forward, even as he twisted wildly to scan the church.
When the light passed swiftly over one of the pews, Joey's heart froze in his chest. A grayish figure lurked in the shadow of a pillar. He gasped, flashed the light back onto that spot. Nothing, there was nothing there.
Still, his heart pounded wildly against his ribs, and a cold sweat rushed from his pores.
"Just my imagination…" he whispered. "It's just your imagination, Joey old pal."
He nervously shook the can in his hand.
He passed the light over the altar, and he saw it again, but, it disappeared once more when he passed the light over it again.
He stumbled back a few steps, looked over his shoulder where the door was still parted.
"Who's there?" he barked, wildly passing the light about the huge room in hopes of catching that figure in its path.
He own echo answered.
"I know you're in here," he said loudly. "I don't like being toyed with. Who's there?"
A low growl from somewhere above. The light panned up, above the arches, where a walkway was shrouded in even more archways.
Oh god, what if it was some sort of wild animal?
"You do not belong here, trespasser," a deep voice hissed, and the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Joey jumped, gasped. But still he couldn't find the source. "And you do? This place is condemned. No one is supposed to be in here."
Another growl, bestial and blood-curdling. "I will not let you desecrate this place."
Joey quickly tucked the spray paint under his shirt. "What?"
"I sense your intentions, defiler." The last word was spat like filth from the tongue.
Joey could only freeze, trembling, when at last the light fell upon that figure.
Grotesque and gray, red eyes glowing and refracting the light.
It was a monster.
It lunged, wings flaring, tail lashing. "Leave!" The bellow shook the windows in their frames.
Joey just barely stumbled back in time before deathly claws were carving into the pew that he had just been standing next to. He dropped the flashlight, and it rolled away, but still he saw that formidable silhouette as the beast whirled on bowed legs. A snarl, leonine, sent a terrible chill down Joey's spine, and he continued scrambling back, even as monstrous feet advanced with the clacking of nails on stone.
Joey turned tail and ran, bolting through the open door and into the night. It took him the barest seconds to clamber over that rusted fence and drop onto the sidewalk on the other side.
It wasn't until he ran himself breathless, coughing, blocks and blocks away from that dastardly place, that he realized that he forgot his backpack.
From the east, tongues of fire licked over the horizon. Yet still, the beast crouched, facing the last of the night in the west. Breaths slowed, muscles stilled.
When the first rays of sunlight graced the stone of the church, red eyes faded to gray.
END PART
So I decided to cut it off here and see how you guys like it. I definitely plan on writing more, but is this a good start or is there something missing? I'm all ears, so let me know!
Thanks for reading!