Chapter 4: My Favorite Things
Pairing: HB/Myers
Feedback: Welcome.
Notes: Spoilers for first Hellboy movie, and the comics by Mike Mignola. The way pancakes are used at the very end of this was entirely his idea.
Hellboy:
I can feel his uneven breaths against the hollow of my neck.
"Ok?" I ask, stroking his back one-handed.
Myers nods, eyes shut. Damn he looks good right now... I can always tell how Myers feels by his face, but when we're together like this, I could swear he lights up somehow. A high flush on his cheeks, warmth I can feel three inches away, and a kind of invisible tremor, like it's takin' all he has hold himself back. -That's the part I like best.
I hold him to me with my left arm, and run my stone hand up the back of his thigh. Myers makes a surprised mewling noise, and grabs at my back.
I hold him steady, and drop a kiss on a faint scar just above his eyebrow, one I watched him -get- some years back. I let my tail-tip twitch inside him, just a little.
Myers gasps, opens his eyes and looks at me wildly, then shuts them again and tries to push back. I let him, but I move my tail back at the same time. A sound that's almost a growl escapes from Myers's chest, and I kiss a second small scar on his cheek, smiling. This time I push back.
John catches his breath again, swallows.
"Let go," I whisper, and he does. I lower Myers to the mattress, and crouch over him, knees apart. I had a plan, but now I'm staring at his Johnson, wondering what it would feel like if I...
-but I close my left hand around it instead, touching the hard, insistent, LIFE against my palm, and watching what my touch does to him in return. I move my tail and my hand together, stroke mirroring stroke, twist for twist, and Myers throws his head back, hands fisted hard in the bedclothes at his sides. I build us a rhythm and he's speechless, alone in his skin except for MY touch. I move my head slowly down, coming so close that his eyes open as he feels my breath heating his skin between my fingers. I hold his gaze, and switch my hand for my mouth, swallowing him whole. Myers arches up almost out of my hands, coming hard with a ragged yell.
I hold him steady right through, until all but the faintest of trembling stops, and all I can hear is his hard breathing coming down. I slip my tail out of him very, very gently, and curl it around one of his legs.
Myers doesn't speak. He reaches down and strokes my head, fingers passing over hair, red skin and the stumps of my horns without preference. I enjoy this for a while, then grab a towel from up by the pillows and spit into it without being obvious. ...Neither of us is big on the snowball thing.
"R-red? That was..."
"-Shh," I interrupt, kissing his palm.
Myers sighs, and settles for just smiling at me sleepily. There are faint spider webs of scarring on his left wrist and hand too, and I kiss them each in turn. I take up his right hand, and he pulls it back.
"What?" I ask, looking up.
"I- -I don't like that one..." Myers says, eyeing the newly healed spiral of dashes that goes twice around his right forearm.
"How come?"
"It makes me look like a junkie," he shrugs, uncomfortably.
"I thought ya liked spirals..." I tease, walking my fingers up the red dotted line.
"On YOU, maybe," Myers smiles.
"What, I don't get a spiral?" I say, tryin' to sound offended.
"Well, um..."
I kiss one end of the dotted line, and run the tip of my nose along it part way.
"...Maybe just that one," Myers decides, bending forward to kiss me between my horns.
Myers:
"Hi, Johnny-"
"Adrianne! I didn't know you were back from lake Champlain..."
I fall into step beside my old friend, slowing my pace so she can keep up on crutches. Crutches aren't that unusual for BPRD agents to be seen using, but Adrianne's are permanent. -A car crash when she was seventeen, and also the reason most exploration vessel captains won't take her to sea. ...I've lost enough swimming laps to her to know better, but there it is.
"You would not -believe- what we found in there. Champ's like a plesiosaur, but her tail's flattened laterally along the last twenty feet, -cartilage only, no extra bones, so her swimming motion is actually more like that of a cetacean-"
"Can I see?"
"The lab guys still have the tapes, but I can have them cut you a copy."
"You didn't kill it?"
"Heck no. Abe says Champ's species is highly intelligent, probably the reason they've been able to avoid capture for so long, and I think they talked for a while after Abe convinced her we weren't food..."
I just grin, watching the excitement in Adrianne's eyes as she continues the story.
"John," she breaks in on me after a silence I let hang too long, "give it to me straight, how close do they expect me to get, to Abe I mean?"
"HUH?" I stare at her for a few seconds, and feel my face turn red. "No, uh... you're... just supposed to work with him. I guess your job would be- -I don't think Abe realizes how badly the BPRD sometimes treats him, because they actually you know, FEED him and pay attention to him sometimes? -Just be there if he needs somebody to turn the pages, and uh... be somebody he can trust. Director Manning's not a bad guy, but doesn't always see Abe as a real -agent- if you get my drift."
"YOU got me this job," Adrianne accuses.
"No, I- -I just put your name into the hat, that's all."
"Hmm," Adrianne looks at me thoughtfully from under her low black bangs.
Then she grins and kisses me on the cheek. "-Thanks, Johnny. ...I just saw a #& LAKE MONSTER..."
Hellboy:
"Hey Myers, take a look at this!" I wave the letter at him, "I got a letter from some kid in Seattle."
The library's empty except for us, and Myers leaves the mess of papers on the table to meet me halfway.
"How did he get this address?" Myers asks, crowding close and trying to read upside-down.
"Didn't. He just wrote, 'Hellboy, the FBI, New York'. -They- routed it."
"Well, what does it say?"
"It's a job. The kid's name's Michael Harvey, and he says there's a monster camped out in his mom's tool shed that the local cops an' exterminators won't touch," I explain.
"Probably because they didn't believe him," Myers notes.
"Yeah. But get a load of this-" I turn the letter over and show him the crayon drawing on the back.
"THAT'S A-"
"I know. Suit up."
Myers:
The house is in a nice neighborhood backed up against some two-story office buildings to the East, and bordered by a thin strip of park to the North. Nothing -looks- wrong.
I ring the doorbell.
"Uh- -Mikey, go get that-!" I hear a woman's voice say from inside.
The door opens, and a wary eight year old boy looks up at me and Swenson.
"Hello, Michael. I'm agent Myers, and this is agent Swenson from the FBI. Is your mom home?"
Michael's eyes get big.
"You're here about the monster, aren't you?" he breathes.
"I'm here about your letter," I reply, carefully.
Michael's face goes from open and amazed to sour and apprehensive instantly.
His mother appears at the door in an apron speckled with multicolored oil paint, still wiping her hands on an equally paint-stained towel.
"No thank you," she says pleasantly, and begins to close the door.
-It's not the first time we've been mistaken for missionaries.
"Mrs. Harvey?" I interrupt quickly, "-I'm agent Myers, FBI, and this is agent Swenson. Can we talk to you for a minute?"
"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. What's this about?" she asks, opening the door again. -Michael has disappeared, I notice.
"Well, we received a report about a dangerous animal that may be using your tool shed for a den. Would you mind if my team and I take a look?"
"...I don't believe this," she says, rubbing the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb and leaving behind small a smear of blue. "You're here about Michael's imaginary monster in the tool shed?"
I give her an apologetic yet winning smile, and the smallest of shrugs.
"You have to check out every call," she nods, understanding.
"We have to check out every call," I nod, "-and there's no harm making it look real. Can you keep Michael inside while we do this, and lock all the doors and windows?"
"Yeah, I guess..."
"I'll leave agent Swenson here with you."
"Call me Matt," Swenson says, offering her his hand.
Hellboy:
Man, I hate Trolls.
It's backed into one corner of the reeking shed, an axe in one hand and a pair of hedge-clippers in the other. We go a few rounds, and the damn thing grabs my tail.
"Gyaah!"
I shake it loose in a violent series of jerks-
"GETYERLOUSY--MITTS--OFFA'MY--TAILYOU--STINKING!--SONOFA-"
-and I lay on a good uppercut before it lands. The Troll smashes upwards through the shed's corrugated metal roof, and sticks there half draped out of the hole as it turns forever to stone in the sunlight.
I escape to the less rancid air of the backyard and light up a cigar, contemplating the Troll statue sticking up out of the tool shed.
I hope Mrs. Harvey likes gargoyles.
Myers:
"It must have been that carved wooden bedroom set my mother-in-law in Norway left us," Mrs. Harvey decides.
Hellboy, McIlroy, and Swenson file past us carrying the bent Troll statue away.
"-It had that same hideous face on the headboard," she continues, "-I wanted to give it to the Salvation Army, but Lars wouldn't hear of it, -his- mother you know..."
Hellboy:
"Mom took that pretty well," Mike says, hands in his pockets.
We're sitting on the steps of their back porch watching the crime scene team measure things.
"Yeah, your mom's tough," I agree.
"How do you -really- kill a vampire?" Michael asks.
"The ol' stake through the heart or cut their head off. Crosses help."
"What about Bigfoot?" he asks, excitedly.
"He's vegetarian and he stays away from people," I shrug, "-why kill the sucker at all?"
"But he's still a monster, right?"
"You gotta learn to pick your battles," I advise.
"...I could kill it," Mike asserts.
"YOU don't go hunting ANY monsters 'till you grow up," I order, pointing a big stone finger in his face. "-That's MY job."
"But the FBI guys-"
"NO, Mike."
We face off, and I win. ...It's closer than I'd like to admit.
"O-kay," Mike sighs.
"-Hey."
"Hm?"
"You did real good tellin' me about this Troll. I could see what kind of monster it was right off from the picture you drew," I say, digging the crumpled sheet out of my coat pocket and showing it to him.
"Really?"
"Yeah. You should be a- -police sketch artist or somethin'."
"I can still draw monsters, right?"
Myers:
Hellboy fires the last shot in the general direction of the paper target down range, and hands the gun back to me.
"Not bad, Myers."
"Well, it seemed to make sense," I shrug, "-you're not left handed, and without a trigger-guard, you can shoot this with either hand."
"You wanna try it?" Red grins.
"No thanks, I like the bones in my hand right where they are," I say, handing it back.
"Heh..." Red cracks the Samaritan's cylinder open, and empties out the spent shell casings. "-Let's go get us some lunch."
"Lunch, lunch?" I ask, innocently.
"Well I meant food, but ah-" Red trails off, and loops his tail around my waist below the level of the shooting box.
"No, you're right, food first."
"I should NOT have given ya lessons..." Red grumbles, snapping the Samaritan's cylinder closed.
Hellboy:
We walk back into my room, an' most of the field agents are waitin' in there around a big stack o' pancakes with a lit candle on top.
...October ninth. Whaddya know?
I try to wipe the smile off my face, but it doesn't work. I turn to my sneaky li'l partner.
"Your idea?"
"Happy Birthday Red," says Myers.
I give him a sideways look that means, 'I'll deal with you later' but in the good way.
I make a wish, blow out the candle, and I won't tell -anybody- what my wish was.
Abe is suckering Thompson into working out the third side of his Rubik's cube. Adrianne is moving individual pancakes onto smaller plates, and licking syrup off her fingers. Several of my cats are meowing and circling underfoot.
Myers is sitting close by my elbow and talking to McIlroy. He leans forward to illustrate some point with his hands, and John's knee presses mine under the table.
I think I'm gonna like being sixty four.
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