Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Thank you,” he says, “for everything.”

And then-

He wakes up in what he thinks is a hospital bed with a headache behind his eyes and a weird numb pain in his stomach.

The room’s lights are harsh enough to immediately force him to close his eyes again.

He, of course, whimpers. Owwww…..

“Lukey!” he hears- entirely too loud, and much too close to his ear.

(Who…?)

His head feels like it’s full of cotton, and his mouth feels vaguely detached from his face, but he still manages to mumble, “Knife.”

“Mhmm,” his faceless companion agrees. “It was a reeeally big knife.”

His eyebrows scrunch up as he tries to remember.

There was… a man, in gold and as tall as the nearby street lamp. Another man, dressed in shadows and holding what couldn’t possibly have been an authentic medieval battleax. The moon, judgemental as always. And…

“Vampire?” he mutters, more so asking himself than the mysterious presence by his side.

But that can’t be right, not around so many people, and definitely not wielding a silver, serrated knife the length of her forearm.

“Ros,” says the Shadow Man, who he now remembers sitting with him in the ambulance. “Yeah.”

Ros, he thinks, and he feels… nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

A cold hand clasps over his forearm where it rests on top of his stomach; he flinches at the suddenness of it, but the hand only grabs on tighter. Pointed nails dig slightly into his skin.

“Oh, Lukey!” the Shadow Man cries. “I’m so glad you’re alright! I don’t know what I would’ve done if Yellow had killed one of my most trusted subordinates!”

(First off, again, who? And then: what?)

Slowly, carefully, he forces one eye half-open, the one nearest the Shadow Man.

Even under the harsh hospital lights, the Shadow Man is cloaked in darkness. The hood of his black leather jacket hangs low over his face, revealing only a set of perfectly-sharpened teeth set in a shark-like grin. His hand is as pale as a corpse’s, claw-like fingernails painted a blood red.

A curled finger taps against the side of his arm. “You should be more careful next time. It would be suuuper embarrassing if you died to Ros.”

Ros, he thinks again. Vampire. Angry. Purple.

Purple…

(“I heard you,” she says, fists clenched by her sides. “In the Null. You were there.”

He laughs awkwardly. “Uh, no? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He sticks a hand out politely. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, though. My name is-”)

Lukey gently shakes the Shadow Man’s hand off of him, and then he tucks his arms under the scratchy hospital blanket covering the rest of him.

“Right,” he mumbles, “it would be.”

(It would have been.)

His head hurts. It’s behind his eyes and drilling into his temples from the inside. Even his teeth are throbbing from it, what the hell? He got stabbed in the stomach, so why do his teeth hurt?

The Shadow Man smiles wider and reaches out to pat Lukey’s head. He ruffles Lukey’s hair with a light chuckle.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be out of here soon,” he assures him. “And then we can get to work!”

“I’m sorry?”

Lukey tries to do a polite little what-the-fuck laugh, but it just sort of ends up as a cough and embarrasses the hell out of him.

He grimaces even as the Shadow Man shakes his head and says, “Don’t be! It’s what I told you in the ambulance.”

Slowly, Lukey nods. “...Right.”

In the ambulance, right. A conversation that Lukey can’t remember that he isn’t even sure happened to begin with.

There is a pit in Lukey’s stomach, though he can’t tell if it’s unease or his stab wounds. It’s painful, no matter the origin.

What happened? He remembers getting stabbed in the absolute most basic, most foggy of ways. He remembers hearing the Shadow Man’s voice in the ambulance, sort of. He remembers… the dark. The darkness of unconsciousness, yes, and the darkness of pure absence.

Letting his head loll, Lukey looks back up at the ceiling; he fights the instinctual urge to let his eye slip back shut.

He doesn't know a lot of things at the moment, but he does know that he does not like the dark.

“Luckily,” the Shadow Man explains, pulling Lukey’s attention back, “Ros didn’t get you too bad. The nurses say you can be out of here by tomorrow!”

His smile almost seems to sparkle like he’s in a toothpaste commercial.

“Oh,” Lukey weakly replies, “cool.”

“Mhm. And then you’ll just be sitting out during the next game, but we’ll train you up after that.”

Training…

Somehow, Lukey doesn’t feel that he’s a good fit for whatever it is that he has supposedly signed up for. (Maybe he can use blood loss as an excuse…?)

But, somehow, he can’t refuse. He tries to protest, but the words literally won’t come off of his tongue.

As if reading Lukey’s mind, the Shadow Man laughs.

“Aww, come on! It’ll be fun!” he cheerfully exclaims.

(But what?)

Lukey gets his answer three days later as he sits uncomfortably in a broken plastic chair and watches the world’s tensest game of competitive bowling.

On one side of the lane is the vampire who stabbed him- Ros- and the tall man she was with when she stabbed him. There’s also a large, scary-looking man with a literal medieval mace poking out of the backpack at his feet, and then a woman with her nose turned up at Lukey as if he was a bag of trash. All four are in matching piss-yellow button-up jerseys with white crown deals over their left breast pockets.

‘The Kingdom,’ they are called on the scoreboard.

‘Yellow,’ Lukey’s team had sneered.

On Lukey’s side are only two other people. There is the Shadow Man, otherwise known as “Bad Boy” Halo. And then there is a man that Bad had called Pangi, who has the most obnoxiously-dyed hair that Lukey has ever seen; it’s as orange as a leaking highlighter, and it clashes terribly with both the team’s forest green jerseys and the bright purple tattoo snaking up his right arm. Bad’s own jersey is being worn over his leather jacket, the hood still up over his face.

Lukey’s own jersey doesn’t fit quite right, but Bad says that he’ll have a better one before the next game in two weeks. (He also said that Lukey will have to earn it through training, but how much training is involved in bowling?)

‘The Honey Badgers,’ the scoreboard says.

‘Freaky gnomes,’ the Kingdom’s team captain had sneered.

Lukey, as was promised in the hospital, is sitting out. He was kindly provided with a slice of pizza and a large bottle of water, but all he’s doing is watching Bad and Pangi absolutely decimate the Kingdom as Ros and her large, scary friend whisper to themselves.

His stomach still hurts. He can’t remember anything from before being stabbed, though he can remember everything from the stabbing onwards now that he isn’t on pain medications. He doesn’t know his last name. He doesn’t know if Lukey is his name or if it’s all a hallucination conjured by Bad’s calling him it. He doesn’t have a house, he’s been sleeping on Bad’s expensive leather sofa since being released from the hospital.

Still, he’s having a good enough time. Outside of the occasional violent threat sent across the lane between teams, it’s been almost nice. (Even if Ros keeps subtly staring at him when she thinks he isn’t looking.)

As Pangi picks up his bowling ball for his last turn- the final round of the game, even- he lets out a tense breath. With his free hand, he pushes his hair back. He looks over his shoulder at the crowd.

Bad whoops, “You’ve got this, Pangi!”

Ros cheers, “You’ve got this!”

Lukey moves to politely clap for his (apparent) teammate, but he stops when Ros shoots him a glare as sharp as the dagger she stabbed him with.

Pangi smiles, winks, turns to the bowling lane, raises his ball, aims his shot, and-

Mreow!

Lukey jumps in his seat and almost drops his water bottle.

Pangi stops short of throwing the ball and spins around. He starts waving his ball around threateningly, eyes narrowing at the newest entry to the game.

Sitting on top of the ball return, suddenly, is a small, white cat with a purple collar and matching eyes.

Pangi points his ball at the cat and shouts, “Get this guy out of here!”

The Kingdom’s team captain laughs.

Ros puts her head in her hands, seemingly steeling herself for whatever is to come.

Bad simply asks, “Oh, hey, when did you get here?”

The cat smooths its ears back with one paw.

Ros sits up with a plastered-on grin. “Wow, Pangi! I can’t believe you’re the last to play! That’s amazing, don’t you think?”

The cat says, “Just throw the ball already, dang.”

No hesitation: Pangi, indeed, throws his ball.

He throws his 15-pound bowling ball right at the cat’s head.

Lukey doesn’t even have time to be surprised about a talking cat, he’s too busy ducking for cover behind his seat as the game erupts into chaos.

The Kingdom’s literal medieval mace is pulled out. The cat is shouting in- what, Spanish? Bad reaches under his jersey’s collar and retrieves a fucking gun, and he’s shouting for everyone to calm down, and Ros is doing the same, and Pangi is screaming at the cat, and the lights are flickering, and-

And Lukey opens his water bottle, raises it to his lips, and shakily takes a sip out of it.

Next game, he’s bringing wine.

Chapter Text

“It won’t be forever, right?

“...See? It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

“I promise.”

Bad Halo lives in an old Catholic church that he’s converted into a house.

It’s out on the edge of town with its back bordering a large, open, empty field. On its right is a little brick house with a red roof, and on its left is a river so flat and still that it looks like a mirror.

This is where Lukey finds himself the night after the bowling alley brawl: sitting on the bank of the river tearing up the grass around him and throwing it into the water.

The moon above him is full, and, for the first time since waking up in the hospital, he almost feels at peace.

The church is… stifling.

It’s a nice enough building, and Bad is a delight. But it’s just…

Claustrophobic.

The floors are made of shiny new wood, the windows are all custom stained glass. The confessional booths have been ripped out and replaced by a kitchen. The choir loft has been converted into Bad’s bedroom. The couch that Lukey is currently calling home is part of a matching furniture set put together around a fireplace where the altar used to be. There are chandeliers and ceiling fans and high ceilings and exposed wood beams and a front porch with a swing and a pile of plastic skulls and-

It’s small. Bad is always upstairs in the loft or in the kitchen or working on his bathroom renovations (all he has left, apparently, is the backsplash over the counter and sink) or on the couch talking to someone named ‘Foolish’ on the phone.

Even now, Bad is talking to Foolish. On the phone. Loudly.

He didn’t even notice Lukey slipping out the door, but that’s… fine.

Lukey yawns, covers his mouth to hide his shame from the moon.

His wound twinges; he ignores it. He can’t have more medication until the morning, anyway.

Another handful of grass finds itself drowning. Oh, noooo…

As Lukey watches it gently float downstream, he sees his own reflection for only the second time since the hospital- the second time as far back as he can actually remember. And he thinks that he looks pretty damn good for an amnesiac stabbing victim: he doesn’t even look that tired!

Bad doesn’t know about the amnesia. Maybe that’s part of why the church feels so damn suffocating, or maybe it’s the way he keeps talking about training Lukey up for the next bowling game, or maybe it’s the way he is constantly wearing his hood up- even when he sleeps! Lukey checked! He wears it when he sleeps, and he wears it right out of the shower, and it has to be attached to his head or something, it has to be.

Bad doesn’t know about the amnesia, and Lukey doesn’t know what Bad even looks like. Pretty fair deal, actually.

Lukey’s reflection blinks. It sighs as Lukey does, and then it pushes the hair out of its eyes.

Lukey’s hand lingers in his hair. For whatever reason, he’s suddenly been hit with the thought that it’s just a bit too long.

Inconvenient, he thinks, but he isn’t sure why.

He narrows his eyes.

His reflection narrows its eyes back.

The ominous, dark-hooded figure leaning over his shoulder stares impassively.

Lukey’s heart jumps into his fucking throat. He lets out a strangled yelp of a scream and scrambles to turn around, still on the ground, unable to stand, nearly toppling backwards into the water, but-

But there’s nobody there.

Panting, eyes wide, Lukey looks right at where the figure should have been. Should be. But there’s nothing, not even an indentation in the grass.

Nothing.

As the adrenaline fades, Lukey’s stomach starts to burn and throb. Fuck.

He absently puts a hand over the wound. The pressure doesn’t help any, but it’s grounding. Sort of. In a painful way.

Still.

Inside the church, Bad starts shouting. He’s also laughing.

Maybe… maybe Lukey should head back inside.

…

He doesn’t move.

He’ll… in a minute.

A cloud passes over the moon, casting the world into a darkness only broken by the church’s teal-colored porch lights.

Slowly, Lukey’s breathing starts to even out. His heart rate starts to level. His wound stops hurting as badly, and his muscles start to relax.

He watches the space in front of him.

Nothing, still.

Mouth dry, he calls out a cautious, “Hello?”

No respo-

The grass behind him crackles, the tall grass along the river’s bank.

Lukey’s heart stops beating entirely. He finds himself completely frozen as something brushes against his back.

He pictures the hooded figure with a dragon’s head. Dark cloak, black dragon head spewing out purple gas.

He can’t breathe.

Loud sniffing. Grass rustling. Quiet grunting-squeaking noises.

Something long and rough pokes at Lukey’s hand where it sits splayed across the ground next to himself.

And then, strangely, a little creature comes padding out and into the open.

It’s small and brown-ish with a long snout and lengthy, sharp claws. Its eyes are beady and black and oh-so empty, and its body looks to be covered in scales.

It sits in front of Lukey, resting on its back legs, head cocked curiously to the side.

Lukey loves it.

He feels the tension immediately flee from his body. He slumps forward, relaxing into a proper sitting position once again, his own head tilting as he tries to figure out what the hell this thing is.

It isn’t dangerous, he thinks. The claws are sharp, but any decent predator would have taken him out from behind.

Armadillo, he considers. Echidna.

“Aww!” he coos, a wide grin crossing his face. “What are you?”

Mongoose. Pangolin.

…Pangolin!

Bad had mentioned a pangolin living in the area when helping settle Lukey into the church for the first time. Supposedly, it only comes out at night, and it spends its time eating bugs and sleeping in dirt holes out in the field.

“Watch out!” Bad had warned him. “Don’t get too close! Pangolins have rabies, I hear!”

But, well. Rabies be damned, Lukey reaches out and runs two fingers down the pangolin’s head and back. And then he does it again when the pangolin doesn’t immediately bite him.

“Aren’t you the cutest thing ever?” he asks, baby voice and all. “Yes you are!”

The pangolin blinks. Adorably.

Lukey adores it.

Whoever he was before getting stabbed, he thinks that he had a pet. He had to have, he loves animals! (Even amnesiac, he knows that.)

Hesitantly, the pangolin shuffles closer. It presses its head up into the palm of Lukey’s hand, eyes slipping shut as he continues petting it.

“You don’t even have rabies, do you?” Lukey affectionately murmurs. “Look at you, you’re adorable.”

The pangolin almost seems to nod in agreement, but that’s ridiculous. Probably just Lukey’s hand moving its head as if it’s nodding.

“You wouldn’t threaten to make me go bowling, would you?” he asks it.

The pangolin grumbles. Lukey chooses to take that as a ‘no’.

“I’m not even supposed to be lifting anything heavier than ten pounds for another two weeks!” he sighs. “But, noooo, I have to train. It’s almost like Bad has forgotten that I was freaking stabbed three days ago.”

The pangolin’s eyes snap open.

Lukey tilts his head back to look at the moon. The clouds covering it have disappeared, and it’s beautiful.

“Maybe I should practice, though,” he muses. “Maybe if I beat Ros, she’ll apologize.”

He pauses. “Or maybe she’ll just stab me again.”

He groans, “Oh, I don’t know!”

He looks back down at the pangolin, who is looking up at him intently.

“I hope you aren’t a talking pangolin,” he tells it, “like that talking cat from the bowling alley. That would be awkward.”

The pangolin, thankfully, says nothing.

Unfortunately, that’s when Bad chooses to storm out of the church and shout, “Lukey! That’s where you are! Come here, we need to work on your aim!”

With a sigh, Lukey gives the pangolin one last pet before pushing himself to his feet.

The world around him immediately swims, and he grimaces and fights to stay upright even as a sharp pain from his stomach wound threatens to send him back to the ground.

The pangolin stands up as if it wants to help.

Lukey whispers a quiet, “Goodbye!”, before stumbling back to the church as stably as he can.

Bad closes the door behind the two of them as they enter the church. His phone conversation must finally be done, then.

As Bad starts to set up the plastic bowling set he got for Lukey in the middle of the church’s central open space, Lukey considers asking him about the figure from earlier. It had a hood, he’s always wearing a hood. Maybe they’re part of a gang or something.

But… he’s homeless. And amnesiac. And a stabbing victim. What would Bad think if he started rambling on about seeing strange figures in the dark that weren’t really there?

No, Lukey can keep this to himself for now. He can’t go back to the hospital. He can’t go back to the streets he was supposedly living on before getting stabbed in the gut by a paranoid vampire. He has a roof over his head, and he has what can tentatively be called a friend. He can’t risk that.

So he just smiles and nods as Bad hands him the plastic bowling ball and tells him to line up his first roll of the night.

He’ll just figure it out himself.

Chapter Text

“Why are you even here? To mock me?

“You’re no better than the others…”

Lukey is eating his breakfast when Pangi comes stumbling in throug the church’s side door, yawning and stretching his arms above his head.

Completely, totally, and absolutely naked.

From his spot at the kitchen table, Lukey has a perfect view of… Pangi.

He drops his spoon in shock. It lands in his bowl of oatmeal with an equally-shocked-sounding ‘Ca-SHLUNK!’

Pangi, eyes squeezed shut from the force of his yawn, just lets out a tired-sounding, “Dang, Bad, you’re up early.”

He is on full display as he staggers his way to the nearest couch seemingly by memory; unfortunately, it turns out to be Lukey’s.

Lukey watches as if he’s witnessing a trainwreck. He can’t tear his eyes away, it’s horrifying.

Pangi flops onto the couch with a light moan.

And then there’s silence.

Lukey blinks. And then he blinks again.

And then he shakes his head, pinches himself in the side to tear his attention away from the terror in the room with him, picks his spoon back up, and starts eating again.

At least Pangi, all of Pangi, is now safely out of sight behind the couch’s back.

The oatmeal is bland. And Lukey’s stomach hurts. And the oatmeal is cold. And Lukey’s stomach hurts.

Day three after surgery is oftentimes the most painful day of the recovery process. Lukey doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does, and it’s day four- four days post surgery, four days post hospital- and he can’t so much as breathe without feeling like he’s being stabbed again. His stitches pull with every minute motion of his body, and it sucks!

Day three is oftentimes the worst, but day four can usually be just as bad.

Pangi groans. The couch beneath him groans as he shifts on it.

Still…

Lukey’s oatmeal gurgles pleadingly.

He chooses to ignore it, pushing the bowl away from himself and scooting his chair backwards.

He puts one hand over his stitches to placate them, uses his other hand to brace himself against the table and stand up.

He winces briefly at the pain, but he grits his teeth and starts trudging towards the hall cupboard beneath the loft. He vaguely remembers Bad pulling pillows and blankets out of there when he was helping him settle after the hospital, there should be more in there…

(Sue him, but he doesn’t want the naked guy to be using his blanket.)

Lukey’s experience with Pangi is minimal at best. They briefly nodded at each other in greeting before the bowling game, and then Lukey kept to himself watching as Pangi absolutely wrecked the competition (both literally and figuratively.) Since then, they haven’t spoken.

Bad says that Pangi is a good guy, if not a little lazy when it comes to actually practicing his bowling. Apparently, he prefers throwing hands instead of bowling balls. (Based off of Pangi’s performance the other night, Lukey is not surprised.)

He seems nice enough. He smiled every time he or Ros or Bad scored actual points during the game, and he ran up to Ros and picked her up and hugged her as soon as the fighting stopped. He even bought Lukey a second bottle of water after the game when he saw that the first bottle was empty.

He told Lukey, “Watch out, okay? Don’t get killed before your first game.”

And now he’s naked and groaning on Bad’s expensive leather couch only an hour after sunrise.

What a team Lukey has found himself attached to…

After some small amount of effort, Lukey makes it to the cupboard. He opens it, pulls a neatly-folded wool blanket out, and closes the door again.

As he walks towards the couch, he listens to Pangi’s mumbled complaints: he’s sore, he’s cold, he’s lost his keys, he’s hungry, etcetera, etcetera.

“Dude, Bad,” he calls, “do you still have any of those old healing potions in the freezer? I think I might have gotten stuck in a bear trap or something last night, I can’t lie. My leg hurts, man!”

(Potions…?)

Politely, Lukey covers his eyes with one hand as he gets to the couch.

“I don’t know about potions,” he responds, finally announcing himself, “but I’m pretty sure that I found some wine in the cupboard if you’d like that instead.”

(He knows he would.)

Pangi has just enough time to let out a, “Wait, what?” before a blanket is being dropped on his face from above.

He screams, and he startles so hard that the couch he’s on is violently shoved a few inches; Lukey gets a couch to the stomach and immediately doubles over, stumbling backwards with both arms clutched over where his stitches are.

“Guess not, then,” he wheezes.

Pangi is sitting up now, and his naked torso from the chest up is visible. His purple tattoo almost seems to glow as he stares at Lukey with wide eyes.

(Somehow, Bad is still asleep up in the loft.)

“Oh, shoot,” Pangi swears, scrambling to stand.

Thankfully, he wraps the blanket around himself like a toga before rushing to the other side of the couch and helping Lukey to the floor.

Lukey winces as his stitches pull at each other desperately. He leans against the couch’s back, eyes briefly slipping shut as he focuses on collecting himself.

Once he’s certain that he isn’t about to start crying (again), he opens his eyes.

When he does, he sees Pangi rummaging through the fridge on the other side of the room. (Must be looking for those ‘potions’, then.)

“No potions in there,” Lukey calls. “Just… ice, please?”

Pangi pauses, nods, and closes the fridge and opens the freezer. He pulls out one of the ice packs that Bad had ‘liberated’ from the hospital on their way out, and comes back over to Lukey with a perfectly neutral expression on his face.

He holds the ice pack out.

Lukey takes it and immediately presses it over his stitches. He lets out a sigh as the pain immediately starts to recede despite knowing that he’s probably just Pavlov-ed his body into reacting to the cold rather than actually feeling any real relief.

Pangi hovers over him awkwardly.

“I’m, uhh…” he says, looking anywhere but at Lukey, “gonna go get dressed.”

Lukey gives him a thumbs-up.

Pangi hurries to the hallway cupboard, the same one the blankets are kept in, opens it, snatches something out, and practically runs into the bathroom without closing the cupboard door.

Lukey waits until he’s gone to let out a quiet moan of pain. Fuuuuuck…

Twenty minutes later, Lukey is back at the table, this time with a makeshift mimosa and a banana from the counter. The mimosa is awful, but at least he knows where Bad keeps the alcohol now. (Really, he shouldn’t be drinking while on these medications, but, like, come on. With the morning he’s had? He deserves something to actually dull the pain.)

He only slightly reacts as Pangi slides into the chair opposite him with his own banana, fully dressed and just out of the shower.

He raises his banana in a toast. “Cheers.”

With a smile, he unpeels his banana and bites into it.

Pangi’s lips twitch into a brief smile of his own before he unpeels his banana.

“So, what, you live here now?” he asks. “I thought you had your own place…”

Lukey swallows, shakes his head. “No, I’m staying on Bad’s couch. It’s, ah. That one.”

He nods over his shoulder towards the couch that Pangi was just laying on.

Pangi’s cheeks tint themselves slightly pink. “O-oh. I see.”

He shoves his banana so deep into his mouth that Lukey almost expects him to choke on it. But he doesn’t, somehow.

(Lukey chooses not to think about that any longer than he has to.)

Pangi eats, and Lukey eats, and Bad is still asleep in the loft.

Once Lukey’s banana is gone, he drops the peel onto the table and moves back onto his mimosa.

Lips grazing the rim of the glass, he asks, “And you? Do you live here?”

Pangi shakes his head. “Nah, I live next door.”

Barely visible out the window, and tainted purple by the stained glass, is the little house with the red roof.

“I see,” Lukey says. He sips at his drink, grimaces at the taste, puts the glass back down on the table. “Waugh.”

Pangi raises an eyebrow. “Dude, it’s sunrise.”

“You know what they say, Pangi,” Lukey sagely replies. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“Fair!”

Pangi laughs, and Lukey smiles.

Emboldened, he picks his glass back up again and manages another sip before gagging and putting it back down far away from himself.

Wrong wine, he thinks. And the orange juice has gone bad.

Rotten luck all around. Naked man, stitches nearly torn, terrible oatmeal, worse mimosa. Amnesia. Strange hooded figure staring at Lukey from his reflection in the window over the kitchen sink, stood right behind Pangi’s back.

Wait.

Lukey blinks, and the figure is gone.

Pangi finishes his banana and tosses the peel over his shoulder. It lands in the sink; he cheers, a quiet ‘Yesssss!’

Lukey claps and offers a cheer of his own.

Pangi grins and does a little bow in his seat. His hair, wet, drips orange all over the kitchen table.

As he sits back up, he gives Lukey a once-over.

“Are those Bad’s clothes?” he asks.

Lukey looks down at himself: too-long black t-shirt, worn sweatpants a size too large, no socks.

“Yeah,” he explains, “I have my own, I wore most of them to the game the other night. But my shirt and hoodie were torn when I was, uh…”

Pangi finishes his sentence for him with a very monotone-sounding, “...stabbed.”

Lukey nods and looks back up.

Pangi’s smile is gone, and something in his eyes has hardened slightly.

But then he does smile. He leans back in his chair, arms crossed.

“Not to brag,” he says, bragging, “but I can do a bit of sewing. If you give me your stuff, I might be able to fix it.”

Lukey’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Really?”

Pangi shrugs. “Sure. I’m locked out of my house, anyway. I can’t get back in until Bad wakes up. I need something to do.”

He lost his keys, but he needs Bad to let him in…?

“Why are you locked out, if you don’t mind me asking?” Lukey asks.

Pangi stares at him as if he’s waiting for the punchline to a joke that Lukey doesn’t think that he made.

Then, eventually, Pangi waves the question aside: “It was that time of the month, you know how it is.”

Lukey opens his mouth to argue that he, in fact, does not know how it is. But then he thinks better of it, deciding that Pangi’s business isn’t any of his own. What he does at night outside in the wilderness alone and naked is absolutely none of Lukey’s concern, thanks.

So Lukey just says, “My clothes are on the other couch. The left one. We managed to wash most of the blood off, but…”

Pangi stands, pushing his chair back from the table with a loud screech. “I’ve got it.”

And, apparently, Pangi does, in fact, got it, because Lukey is holding his repaired hoodie in his hands only a short hour and a half later.

It’s as white as he thinks it used to be, there’s only the barest hint of faded blood in a thin line cutting across its front pocket. And even that is hidden by the green thread that Pangi used to stitch the tear closed.

Lukey looks down at it with an almost choked feeling in his throat. His thumb rubs across the thread; he’s holding it so tight that he’s sure it’s going to wrinkle.

Pangi has moved on to the shirt by now, but that isn’t quite as important. It isn’t, Lukey can feel that it isn’t.

“One hell of a knife,” Pangi had commented upon seeing the damage.

And then he had pulled a fucking knife out from under his shirt and had flipped it expertly in my hand. “Mine is better, though.”

He used the knife to cut the thread despite it easily being the size of a small sword. It’s impractically large, really, but he wielded it expertly as if it was a simple pair of sewing scissors.

“Thank you,” Lukey says, not looking up from his hoodie.

“No problem, man,” Pangi easily replies. “Just don’t get stabbed again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fix it next time.”

Lukey laughs. “Not planning on it.”

Pangi hums, and then a companionable silence falls.

Pangi works, and Lukey starts mentally preparing himself for the pain about to come.

3… 2… 1…

Lukey pulls the hoodie over his head and slips it on. It pulls at his stitches like a bitch, and his stomach aches like Ros’ knife is being slipped back in, but it’s all worth it for the sense of comfort and familiarity that he feels as he pulls the hood up over his head.

He lets out a breath and sinks back into the couch, hands sliding into the hoodie’s pocket as he watches Pangi work.

As it should be.

Chapter Text

“I’m afraid that they’re going to try and stop my research.

“Are they afraid of what I might find? Or are they just stupid?”

On day six of recovery, Lukey finds a shed.

It’s small, brown, and crumbling into dust. Its little red roof is caved in, and both the front door and the windows on either side of it are long gone. Ivy climbs the walls.

It’s old. It’s broken. It’s a real zombie of a building, barely visible through the mass of trees and branches and leaves and bushes hiding it from view.

But, and here’s the thing, but: the doorway is clear.

Twenty-odd minutes ago, Lukey took his pills, pulled on his shoes and hoodie, and crept out of the church despite logic telling him to keep fucking resting. But… aaaaaah!

Bad doesn’t have a goddamn television in his house. He has exactly one shelf full of books near the fireplace, but every one of them is in some ancient-looking language that Lukey can’t even pretend to comprehend. No cell phone, no ePad, nothing. Just a sleeping Bad in the loft and a children’s toy bowling set in the hall cupboard.

By noon, Lukey’s skin was itching from the boredom. Before that, he at least had a morning routine to get through- shower, breakfast, morning pills, and a nap. But lunch? He’s an amnesiac! Surely, he can’t be trusted to actually cook!

(Ignore the breakfasts that he’s been making for near a week now. They don’t count.)

And so: exploring.

There’s the church, and then there’s Pangi’s house next to it. There’s the field and the river, and then there’s the city poking at Bad’s front lawn.

But a brief meander along the river into the field revealed a thin bridge made of two fallen tree trunks held next to each other by rope. And over the bridge and across the river was a forest, and inside that forest was a barely-visible dirt path, and then it appeared in front of him just as he tripped over a rock and nearly fell right into it:

The shed.

Now, freshly-medicated and entirely too curious for a man as injured as him to be, Lukey stands before the open doorway. He shifts his weight from his toes to his heels, heels to toes, toes to heels…

“It’s just a shed,” he mutters to himself.

But he can’t see the shed’s interior, it’s so dark. It’s as if the whole thing was filled with asphalt.

Nervously, he pulls at his hood. It gets tugged lower over his head until it’s almost covering his eyes. Then, he raises it again back towards his hairline. (It just feels better that way.)

He takes a step closer, pauses.

No movement from inside. Nothing from outside, either.

Now, Lukey doesn’t believe in ghosts. Spirits? Yes. Ghosts? No.

Is the shed haunted?

“Surely not,” he answers out loud.

He walks right up to the doorway before stopping again.

Surely, the shed isn’t haunted, but the most dangerous things often aren’t supernatural in nature.

(The knife plunges into him, and someone is laughing, and he thinks that he’s screaming, and she’s looking at him as if he was some kind of monster, and there’s someone hovering over her shoulder with no face and a dark hood and-)

Lukey thinks that someone would have warned him if there was a murderer in the area. Bad was kind enough to tell him about the neighborhood pangolin, and Pangi seems nice enough. Pangi would’ve told him if there was some crazy knife-wielding maniac living in a shed in the woods fifteen minutes away from the neighborhood.

Potential serial killers aside, there could be some kind of wild animal in the shed that isn’t nearly as sweet as the friendly neighborhood pangolin. A tiger… or something.

On the other hand, the shed could just be perfectly normal. There might even be a lawnmower inside, one that he can push all the way back to the church and use to entertain himself with. (Somehow, he thinks that he knows his way around a toolbox better than he does a set of plastic bowling pins.)

So Lukey lets out a breath, nods to himself, thinks of the beautiful potential lawnmower waiting inside for him, and moves to take a step forward, and-

He freezes mid-step, foot hovering millimeters above the ground.

His ears ring.

Something warm is pressed against his back, juxtaposing the something very cold and very sharp grazing his throat just above his Adam’s apple.

A glance down reveals a knife and a pale hand holding it, one with purple-inked tendrils almost seeming to wave at him on it.

A low voice breathes into Lukey’s ear: “You should be more careful about being followed, you know.”

Lukey shivers. The hair on the back of his neck raises, surely from fear.

And then, just like that, the knife drops, and Pangi laughs.

He grabs Lukey by the shoulder and lightly pulls him backwards out of the doorway.

As soon as the knife is gone and Pangi is letting go of him, Lukey almost collapses in on himself; his hand flies to his wound instinctively, and his knees threaten to give out from under him.

Still laughing, Pangi pops into view in front of him, all smiles as he takes in Lukey’s extremely rattled appearance.

Now that he isn’t in what Lukey is pretty sure was an extra set of Bad’s clothes, Pangi is in all black: black cargo pants, black t-shirt, black leather jacket, black boots. A pair of fancy-looking black sunglasses hangs off of his shirt’s collar. It all makes him look so much paler, and it makes his genuinely terrible hair color pop out even more. (Interestingly, even the jacket has those purple lines going down one sleeve.)

“Hey man,” Pangi grins, “what’s up?”

His boots are heeled, Lukey notices. Just a little, maybe a half-inch. Enough to make Lukey have to tilt his head back to look him in the eye.

Heart still in his throat, Lukey tries an awkward laugh and says, “I, ah- just doing a little exploring. You?”

Before answering, Pangi, in one swift, smooth motion, flips his knife in his hand once, catches it upside-down, and slides it into a black leather sheath just barely poking out from under his jacket.

“Eh, not much,” he replies. “Just making sure you didn’t fall into the river and drown or something.”

Oh-so casually, he leans against the doorframe, hands sliding into his pants’ pockets.

“What?” Lukey protests. “You thought I was going to drown? Excuse you, I can swim, thank you very much.”

Pangi nods, unconvinced, and probably right to be so; Lukey still has to stop to catch his breath when walking unsupported for longer than two minutes, there’s no way he’d survive falling into the river.

A thought appears to him, suddenly.

Frowning, he demands, “Wait, were you following me?”

Pangi’s smile just widens in response.

Lukey… doesn’t know if he should be complimented that his new neighbor and teammate followed him to make sure he was safe or if he should be offended that he was followed because Pangi thought he was going to die. Maybe he should be freaked out, actually, because what?

“Besides, I thought I could show you something,” Pangi says. “You know, since you’re part of the team now and all.”

Well… Lukey is bored.

Cautiously, he lowers his hand from his stitches and straightens up. He raises a curious eyebrow that Pangi mimics.

“What is it?” Lukey asks.

“You’re looking at it,” Pangi replies.

He pushes off of the doorframe and pulls his hands out of his pockets.

He gestures grandly with both arms right in the middle of the black doorway.

The shed, unfortunately, is not as impressive as Pangi is.

Lukey’s other eyebrow raises. “What, this?”

“Yep!” Pangi cheerfully responds. “Come on, it’s inside.”

And then he turns and walks right into the shed, disappearing completely into the darkness.

Lukey stares into the shed. The abyss stares back.

Before the stabbing, there was darkness. There is darkness, it lingers in Lukey’s fragmented memories like a bad stench in a small room. Every time he closes his eyes to go to sleep, he sees it, and it sees him.

The sleeves of his hoodie fall over his hands. They nearly make it to his fingers, but not quite.

He hesitates.

There’s a groan from inside of the shed, and then Pangi’s head pokes out of it with an annoyed look on his face.

“Oh, come on,” he sighs.

Before Lukey can react, Pangi is grabbing him by the wrist and yanking him forward and into the darkness, and then-

His body collides with Pangi’s, and there is light.

Immediately, he jerks his wrist free and backs up a full two steps, mouth agape as the takes the inside of the shed in.

“See?” Pangi asks, the tips of his ears a light pink. “It’s inside.”

It’s inside, indeed!

Mildly shocked, Lukey turns around and looks at the doorway. It’s black, no sign of the forest outside.

And then he turns back to the room and Pangi, and he feels a smile threaten to grow on his face.

“Oh,” he lowly says. “I see.”

The room isn’t that impressive. It’s a broken-down shed with a bare LED lightbulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. Roofing tiles litter the floor, and leaves treat themselves as both carpet and wallpaper.

But what catches Lukey’s eye is the open trap door just behind Pangi- dangerously so, actually, he could have fallen in if he had pulled Lukey any harder. A trap door with the very tips of a ladder poking out of the top of it and a literal turtle standing next to it looking up at Pangi with wide, watery eyes.

Pangi clears his throat. “Uh, yeah! The actual cool stuff is downstairs. This is just the cover for if anyone from Yellow finds it.”

Lukey ignores him and hurries to pick the turtle up. He carefully raises it to chest-level and cradles it as best he can; thankfully, the turtle seems just fine with being carried.

He looks down at it adoringly. “Hello, you!”

The turtle opens its mouth as if saying, ‘Hello, Lukey!’

“It’s down the ladder,” Pangi says.

“You must be a very strong little lad to have crawled all the way here from the river,” Lukey coos. He gently brushes a finger over the turtle’s head. “A very brave little guy, huh!”

Pangi clears his throat again. “It’s not from the river, actually. It’s from downstairs. Where the cool stuff is.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lukey scoffs, “turtles can’t climb ladders.”

The turtle swivels its neck to look at Pangi.

Pangi just rolls his eyes and starts down the ladder, grumbling to himself about ‘stupid turtles’ and ‘escaped convicts’.

As soon as Pangi’s out of sight, Lukey giggles to himself and carefully tucks the turtle under one arm. Hah!

“That’ll teach you for stalking me,” he murmurs.

The turtle couldn’t care less about the petty ‘revenge’. It’s perfectly content as Lukey goes to the ladder and starts the climb down himself.

It’s slow-going, on account of the turtle and the still-healing stab wound in his abdomen, but Lukey makes it into the shed’s apparent basement eventually.

And when his feet do hit solid ground again, and when he turns around to put the turtle back down and to look for Pangi, he’s stunned silent. His jaw drops, and a smile does finally cross his face.

Finally, he thinks, something interesting.

Slowly, he crouches and sets the turtle free, still looking around the basement in awe.

The turtle runs off at the speed of… a turtle. It’s apparently as caught up in its surroundings as Lukey is, because it runs right into one of Pangi’s legs and tips onto its side.

“Oh, come here, you,” Pangi quietly says. He bends down and picks the turtle up with much less grace and care than Lukey did.

“So,” he asks, “what do you think? Cool, huh?”

Lukey immediately nods. “Cool. Very cool. Very, very cool.”

Because it is very, very cool.

It’s a goddamn cave, complete with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and bats swooping between them and what sounds like an underground river somewhere deeper within.

More importantly, it’s a goddamn laboratory. There is a glass wall directly to Lukey’s right completely filled with turtles, and rows upon rows of tables and counters covered in beakers and tubes and burners, and enough cupboards along the wall to store an entire store’s worth of goods, and, and, and!

Lukey gets to his feet. Pushes his hood off so he can run a hand through his hair. Starts giggling again, sounding somewhat deranged even to himself.

“Oh, Pangi,” he gleefully says, “this is awesome!”

Before he can quite literally jump for joy, he rushes off to inspect the closest table and its equipment. Burner, crucible, burette…

“What is this place?” he asks, picking up a test tube and rolling it between his thumb and pointer finger. (It’s unwashed, disgusting.)

“This is our potion room,” Pangi explains. “Bad and… we made it. For potions.”

There it is, another mention of ‘potions’. Seriously, what year is it? The world moved on from alchemy centuries ago.

Lukey puts the test tube down onto its side, careful not to let it roll off the table. Then, he moves on to the next table and starts the inspection process again.

“It’s rather disorganized,” he comments. “How do you get anything done in here?”

“Hey!” Pangi protests. “It’s organized! You just don’t understand our system yet.”

Next table, same mess. But, hey, this one has flasks on it instead of test tubes. That’s a change.

Lukey nods. “You’re right. I’m just… oooaugh!”

He turns around with a wide smile and gestures with both hands as if his head was exploding.

Pangi’s eyebrows raise in amusement. “What, are you some kind of scientist or something? Is that why Bad picked you up?”

Lukey… doesn’t know. Maybe? Possibly?

“Not sure,” he ends up replying.

Before he can see Pangi’s inevitable confused face, he hurries to the next table. This one actually has so-called ‘potions’ on it: red and blue and green and… white, in an inappropriately-colored way.

He picks up the red potion and holds it up to the light; there aren’t any overhead lights, but there are a few strings of red-colored fairy lights hanging between stalactites. The potion glitters.

“Strength,” Pangi explains. “It’s uh… fuck, I don’t know. Bad’s the potion guy now.”

Lukey swirls the potion. Its contents briefly shift to something approaching black before going back to red.

He looks at Pangi. “You know, I could probably figure it out. I could be another ‘potion guy’.”

(He recognizes almost all of the available equipment, anyway. Give him some time, and he’s sure that he can figure out the necessary ‘ingredients’, so to speak.)

He shrugs and turns around to put the potion down. “It would give me something to do, anyway. I think I’m going stir-crazy being cooped up in Bad’s house for so long.”

“I mean, you can just come over to mine if you want,” Pangi suggests.

Lukey looks at him over his shoulder, mildly surprised. “Really?”

It’s Pangi’s turn to shrug. Nonchalantly. “Sure. Unlike some people, I actually have a television. And Netflix.”

Lukey doesn’t exactly know what Netflix is, but it sounds leagues better than sitting and staring at Bad’s beautifully-renovated ceiling.

Lukey’s smile softens. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Pangi’s ears go pink again. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“All right, then,” he says. “We can, uh, go there now. Actually. Unless you want me to… show you around the potion room?”

Lukey considers. The potion room is exciting, but it isn’t a television. But being in Pangi’s house brings Lukey back closer to Bad, and that means that it’s only a matter of time until he’s forced into more bowling lessons.

And, importantly, Pangi’s hair is marginally less distracting in the cave’s shadows. It almost looks carrot-colored rather than bleeding highlighter.

The turtle that Lukey had rescued has somehow made its way back onto the floor.

Mind made up, Lukey turns to Pangi and says, “Let’s do this first. You still have to tell me what a potion even is.”

Pangi smiles, and he does.

Chapter Text

“I can’t remember what the moon looks like. He tells me that it’s gone, but that’s impossible.

“Where could it even go?”

The Honey Badgers have been a team of two for as long as the town’s bowling league has existed. It’s made up of its captain, Bad, and its only regular player, Pangi.

“There’s also Hannah and Pac,” Pangi elaborates, “but they’ve never actually shown up to a game.”

Lukey nods as if he knows who these people are.

“Right,” he seriously says, “slackers.”

Pangi laughs, nose crinkling from the force of his smile.

The sun outside of the car peeks out from behind the clouds for the first time all day, and Lukey’s eyes burn from the sudden brilliance of it.

Bad, up front in the driver’s seat, shouts, “Hey! Look who’s talking!”

Lukey groans and slumps in his seat, hands covering his face and muffling his words: “I’m trying, okay?”

“Not hard enough! You haven’t even picked up a ball yet!”

“Damn, really?” Pangi asks.

Lukey’s wound itches. Beneath the skin.

“Yes, I suppose,” he admits. “But I was stabbed, remember? Bad?”

He drops his hands and glares up at the car’s bloodstained ceiling.

He pouts, only a little, hopefully enough to garner some sort of sympathy from the rest of his team.

“It was only a week and a half ago,” he whines. “I’m not even supposed to be in a car yet, let alone hurling bowling balls. I might die.”

(He won’t, but he sure feels like he’s close to death just being in a car with an irate Bad.)

Miraculously, Pangi reaches across the middle seat and gives Lukey’s knee a light sort of pat-pat.

“There, there, Lukey,” he kindly says. “You’ll get to play with some balls soon.”

He grins. With fangs.

Bad turns up the radio: Carly Rae Jepson.

Lukey giggles. “Thanks, Pangi. I can’t wait to start playing with some real balls soon, once I’m fully healed up.”

“Not mine, though,” Bad comments. (Pangi masks his laughter with a cough.) “They’re too expensive for you to be touching.”

Lukey sits back up, mock-affront in his voice as he demands, “Ex-cuse me? Are you saying I’m cheap?”

“Of course not! I’m saying you’re poor.”

Lukey squawks.

Pangi gives up on trying to hide his immaturity. He laughs so hard that his head is thrown back against the headrest and his eyes are squeezed shut.

With a content hum, Bad turns the radio up once more.

And Lukey, somehow, is the butt of the joke.

They’re all piled into Bad’s minivan, Bad driving and Lukey and Pangi both banished to the second of three rows of seats. (The passenger seat, strangely enough, is reserved with a post-it note reading the name ‘Foolish’.)

Today, Bad is up earlier than sunset. Because the next game against the Yellow Team is in just over a week, and Lukey needs to be officially registered as the newest Honey Badger, and Pangi was bored enough to tag along on the trip into town.

Lukey’s seatbelt rubs against his hoodie, which rubs against his shirt, which rubs against his stitches something awful.

He winces, the corners of his mouth pulling tight.

He sighs out of his nose and turns to look out the window, pulling his hood lower over his head until it’s brushing his eyebrows.

Pangi starts talking to Bad about- what, pills? Pill-lee? And he sounds angry, describing a potential decapitation and-slash-or a trip to the local veterinarian’s office for an impromptu euthanasia.

Whatever the case and whatever the context, Lukey tunes it out in favor of trying to remember why he’s even joining the Honey Badgers in the first place. He knows he agreed to something in the ambulance with Bad, but his memories of the trip to the hospital are adrenaline-filled and about as blurry as an attempt at using a telescope underwater.

As the car goes past a Burger King, Lukey swears that he sees a dark figure standing on top of the drivethrough: watching.

He sits up in a snap, seatbelt reflexively going tight and restricting him.

But, just like that, the car is long past the restaurant and turning a corner.

But the figure is still there in the rearview mirror.

For some reason, the bowling league’s headquarters are seemingly located within the local public library.

It’s a nice library, fair enough: tall ceilings, two stories, miles and miles of bookshelves, tables and alcoves, and a conference room in the back with two vending machines in it. The circulation desk is right in the center of the ground floor facing the door; the computer sitting on it looks older than Lukey thinks he is.

The librarian looks up from her computer as Pangi stomps his way up to the desk with those big stompy boots of his. But it’s Bad that she chooses to look at.

“I’m still not putting your advert in the newspaper,” she flatly tells him.

Her voice echoes throughout the empty library like a ghost’s.

Bad pouts and leans on the desk, propping himself up with his elbows; a thin, curved, white line replaces his previous smile like a cartoony frown.

“I thought the paper was supposed to be neutral!” he complains.

“It is,” she nods. “but I can’t just publish an article calling for the king’s murder.”

Upon seeing Lukey’s confused face, Pangi leans in and whispers, “Foolish.”

…Which clears up absolutely nothing, actually, thanks.

“Why not?” Bad whines. “It’s an opinion piece! I have opinions!”

“Right,” says the librarian, nodding a second time, “you do, and your opinions are valid. But I can’t have the Keepers thinking that anyone is breaking the treaty again. They get cranky, and I don’t think anyone wants to deal with that this soon after the party.”

Keepers…? Kings…? Parties…? Treaties…?

What does any of this have to do with bowling!

Bad sighs and hangs his head in defeat. “You’re right… I can’t afford another Pangi kidnapping…”

Lukey’s jaw drops.

He immediately looks at Pangi, who is perfectly nonchalant as he hums and taps his fingers against the desk in some sort of off-beat rhythm.

“Are there any Keepers today, by any chance?” he asks. “We need to talk about bowling.”

He tips his head slightly towards Lukey, who offers a small wave and an even smaller, “Hello!”, as the librarian finally seems to notice his existence.

Her eyes widen slightly. “Oh, hello. You’re new.”

He nods and tries a smile. “I am.”

“And,” Bad adds, “he’s poor.”

Lukey turns on him with an offended, “Hey! What does that have to do with anything?”

Bad shrugs, already in a better mood from a moment ago.

Pangi, seemingly bored, yawns, stretches, and wanders away from the desk and into the library’s depths. He disappears behind a shelf, out of sight.

“We don’t get many new people,” the librarian comments.

“So I’ve heard,” Lukey awkwardly chuckles.

(He hasn’t.)

He holds a hand out, extending it over the desk somewhat.

“I’m Lukey, hello.”

“Oh, and he’s polite as well!” the librarian exclaims, shocked.

But she accepts his hand, and she doesn’t even stab him. (Yessss!)

“I’m Beky,” she says, “Beky Bekyamon. I’m the news.”

Her handshake is firm, and so is her gaze as she curiously looks Lukey over. It’s like she’s dissecting him with her eyes, it’s almost unnerving.

“She is!” Pangi calls.

He pokes his head out from behind his bookshelf, very helpful.

Beky Bekyamon rolls her eyes.

“Don’t shout in the library!” she shouts.

“Shoot, my bad!” Pangi shouts back.

He goes back behind the shelf, and Lukey’s ears only ring a little.

Bad’s little frown (quite literally) flips upside-down into a happy little smile.

“So,” he pleasantly says, “the Keepers?”

A switch is flipped, and Beky nods and goes back to her computer.

“Right,” she says. “Lukey… you’re interested in bowling, eh?”

Lukey tries to say, “Not really, but I’m not opposed to it.”

What ends up coming out instead is sort of a wheezing breath and a weak-sounding, “You know it.”

Chest constricting, he doubles over, coughing into his fist.

Bad giggles. Asshole.

Beky just hums. “I see. And you’re joining Green?”

“He is!” Bad excitedly says. He even does a little jump for joy right where he stands. “Finally, a new member!”

“I’m surprised,” says Beky, typing away on her keyboard.

Wheezing, Lukey agrees: “So am I.”

He grimaces and brings a hand to cover up his wound. Nothing actually happened to it besides the coughing, but it’s still unhappy with him. Great.

“Don’t worry, Lukey!” Pangi calls. “I’ll get you a water!”

His boots slam against the library’s tile floor as he goes running off towards the conference room and the vending machines inside.

“Aww,” flatly says Beky Bekyamon.

“See?” Bad cheerfully asks her. “The team is already bonding!”

He pats Lukey on the back hard.

Lukey is sent into another round of coughing, but he (barely) manages to stand his ground.

With a click of her rat, Beky asks, “Right, Lukey, got a last name?”

Lukey freezes mid-wheeze. He… does? He’s sure he does, it’s just…

After a solid minute of awkward silence, Beky moves on: “Right, that’s fine. What about a birthday?”

Uhhhh…

He frowns, eyebrows furrowing as he thinks.

“March?” he tries. (It’s March now, he thinks, though there isn’t really enough snow outside for him to be sure.)

“Day?”

He decides to give a random date. “Thirty-third.”

Beky snorts. “Right. Fair enough.”

Great, she doesn’t believe him. Which… is fair, actually, because he’s probably lying without meaning to.

Over Beky’s shoulder, Lukey can see Pangi kicking the vending machine; he’s groaning, loud.

Bad doesn’t know about the amnesia. But his posture straightens slightly with every question that Lukey fails to answer properly.

After a few more questions- shoe size, blood type, address, driver’s license number, credit card information- Beky sighs and looks up from her computer.

“Right,” she drawls. “I’ve been trying to look you up in here so I can get this contract ready for the Keepers, but you- oh, hold on…”

She turns her computer’s monitor around to face Lukey and Bad and, right there in big red letters across the center of whatever database she’s on, are the words, ‘Match Not Found.’

“Oh,” says Bad. “That’s interesting.”

Lukey skims the rest of the page over: the town’s registry, no town name listed, the name ‘Lukey’ inputted at the top.

“Hold on,” he protests, “if I’m new, I wouldn’t be in there, right?”

Beky shrugs. “I dunno. We don’t get a lot of new people, but this is the Keepers’ database. They know everyone.”

“Except for Lukey…” Bad muses.

He raises a finger to tap his chin; it disappears beneath the perpetual darkness hiding his face.

At long last, Pangi comes triumphantly marching up to the desk with a bottle of water in one hand and a bottle of something called Pepsi in the other.

“I got it,” he announces.

He takes his place back by Lukey’s side, putting the water on the desk and cracking the bottle of Pepsi open.

As he drinks, he reads over the monitor still facing outwards.

He frowns and lowers his bottle. “Hold on, what? Lukey doesn’t exist?”

He looks at Lukey, who raises his hands to chest-height defensively. “I do! I’m just not in the database!”

“But that’s the Keepers’ stuff,” Pangi says. “Everyone’s in there, even the snails.”

What?

Lukey reaches for the water with a shaking hand. He- he needs a drink.

“Exactly,” Beky agrees. “Which means that-”

Darkness.

The roar in Lukey’s ears is so sudden that he drops his bottle right back onto the desk and jumps, accidentally bumping up against Pangi’s arm.

“What?” he breathes, chest constricting in a way just slightly unlike the way it did earlier during his coughing fit, veins tingling and nerves almost wanting to shut down and, oh, it’s dark, and-

And then there was light.

There’s Bad, still smiling.

There’s Pangi, tense and squeezing his Pepsi bottle like he’s trying to strangle it.

There’s Beky, turning around in her swivel chair with her arms crossed.

And then there’s the tall, thin figure in all black standing behind her- just the slightest bit transparent and almost seeming to float a full half a foot off of the floor. Its face is just absent: a gaping hole of pure black, but, somehow, Lukey feels like he’s being stared at.

“There you are,” Beky sighs, sounding entirely too normal for someone with a goddamn specter towering above her. “We’ve got bowling to take care of.”

She turns back to the group, and she turns her computer back around so the thing over her shoulder can look at it.

“I tried getting a head start,” she explains, “but we’ve hit a bit of a roadblock.”

In the blink of an eye, the hooded creature is next to Beky and reading over her shoulder.

In Lukey’s head, he hears a voice that both is and is not whisper, This is unusual.

“I don’t think so,” Bad chimes in, which shows that he also heard whatever the hell that was. “This just means that you guys need to update your software more often.”

There’s a sound, something akin to rattling dishware mixed with a scream mixed with the rattle of a snake; somehow, Lukey thinks it’s supposed to be a laugh.

Lukey doesn’t protest as Pangi nudges for him to back up. Something about this… this thing makes him want to just curl up in a ball and also try and find its throat and cut it and maybe his own while he’s doing so and it’s just… off. Inhuman, but not in a way that Lukey is familiar with.

(Maybe it’s the way that both Bad and Pangi are taller than him but, at this moment, Lukey, for whatever reason, feels just the slightest bit small.)

Perhaps, he hears in his head. We will fix this before the next game.

And then, horrifically, the figure is gone. But it isn’t, there’s a cold breeze against the back of Lukey’s neck cutting through his hood.

He spins around and finds himself face-to-chest with it.

“Keeper,” Pangi coldly greets.

…Ah.

Even though it doesn’t have a neck, and even though it doesn’t have a face, the figure has its not-head tilted down so it can look Lukey over.

Hesitantly, Lukey offers a really casual-sounding, “Hi?”

The words push at his mind almost shyly: Hello.

And then: You wish to join the bowling league?

God, Lukey can laugh just hearing those words come out of a terrifying whatever’s not-mouth.

But he doesn’t. Because he’s cool, and this is a solemn matter, and he thinks that he might start crying if he does anything but speak calmly.

Luckily, Lukey is good at one thing and one thing only: speaking.

“I do,” he says, standing up as tall as he can without getting on his toes. “Is that a problem?”

No, the Keeper immediately says. The necessary paperwork will be done.

Pangi snorts humorlessly.

Beky’s chair squeaks; presumably, she’s leaning back in it watching Lukey have the slowest-growing panic attack known to man.

“Great!” Bad chirps. “You hear that, Lukey? You’re on the team!”

“Yippee!” Pangi cheers, faux-happiness in his voice as he continues to just glare at the Keeper, who has its focus entirely on Lukey.

Lukey stares back, chin tilted upwards in a silent challenge. So what if he’s homeless and he doesn’t have any sort of personal identification? What’s the Keeper going to do about that? Give him a house?

Good luck, the Keeper whispers. (Somehow, Lukey knows that he was the only one to hear it this time.)

Then: darkness.

Then: the roaring.

Then: light, and a return to normalcy.

Suddenly drained of all bravado, Lukey lets out a nervous chuckle and leans back against the desk. He puts a hand to his wound subconsciously.

His shoulders tense as he hears the slightest crinkle of paper from inside of his hoodie’s pocket.

Bad starts talking to Beky again, complaining about his article.

Pangi goes back to his soda, turning back around and chiming in about free speech and freedom of opinion and freedom of press and-

And Lukey, still facing away, reaches into his pocket with a trembling hand.

His hand wraps around what appears to be a thin slip of very wrinkled paper.

Slowly, he pulls it out. Swallows a lump in his throat, frowns as he unfolds the paper and reads it:

It wasn’t supposed to be like this

Chapter Text

“They’re in the trees. Last night, I even heard one call my name.

“...It had his voice.

“What have I done?”

The view of the sky from Bad’s porch is, frankly, dogshit. During the day, it’s too bright. At night, there aren’t any stars. Sunset and sunrise are both covered by the town’s skyline.

But the porch swing is comfortable, and being outside means that Lukey isn’t being held victim to Bad’s constant nagging, so.

So.

So Lukey finds himself the night before his first official bowling game on the porch swing nursing a chilled glass of wine. His hood is down for once, and his sleeves are rolled halfway up his forearms.

He swings back and forth lazily, toes pushing off of the porch’s floor when he stops moving.

Crickets sing from the field, and frogs harmonize from the river. It’s otherwise silent; Bad is in the church working on a ‘secret project’, and Pangi is in his own house.

It’s… nice. Could do with some actual music, but the frogs and the bugs are nice enough.

“Can’t it always be like this?” he wonders aloud.

He sighs and raises his glass to his lips.

Into it, he mumbles, “No horrors…”

No homicidal vampires stabbing him, no faceless humanoids stalking him… Oh, that would be the life!

He tilts the glass back and drinks, eyes briefly slipping shut just from the tranquility of it all.

He sinks into the swing’s back cushions, and-

“I often ask the same question.”

In a flash of panic, Lukey is sitting up and opening his eyes and coughing up his wine and screaming and throwing his glass- in self-defense!!- at-

At a cat: small, cream-colored, and sitting primly on the porch’s railing with its tail wrapped around its paws. Its eyes, squinted in amusement, are the same vivid purple as the collar around its neck.

The cat dodges the thrown glass with ease, only ducking its head slightly to the side. Not even its whiskers are touched.

Wide-eyed, Lukey watches the cat raise a paw to its mouth and giggle. Delicately.

“I’m sorry. Did I scare you?” the cat teases.

Cat. Talking cat. Got a bowling ball to the skull. Died.

But, very much alive, the cat leaps from the railing to the swing. It lands, stretches, and sits, looking up at Lukey with narrowed, glittering eyes.

When the cat died at the bowling alley, the entirety of Yellow had swarmed around its red, mushy corpse like vultures. They shouted and cried and screamed as they held Pangi back.

Lukey had only gotten a glimpse before Yellow had carried the body off, but he remembers a few things: ground beef where the head once was, and bone shards sticking up from the corpse. One eye was missing. The other was just sort of… dangling.

Now, the cat’s whiskers twitch as Lukey slowly moves his sleeves back down to his wrists. Just- just in case.

“Um,” he hesitantly says, not quite sure how to address a dead talking zombie cat. “Hello?”

The cat blinks. “Hello.”

Its voice almost seems to echo, but surely not.

(Talking cats, Lukey can excuse. Zombies, he knows exist. But vocal effects? Abso-lutely not.)

Lukey clears his throat, scoots along the swing to get some more space between the two of them.

The cat almost seems to smile at that, mouth curling.

“Don’t worry,” it says, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Lukey nods stiffly. “Okay. Cool.”

‘You’re dead!’ he wants to shout. The scientist in him wants to grab the cat and take it to the shed and down the ladder and put it on a table and cut it open and-

“I’m here to warn you, actually,” the cat elaborates, and all thoughts of dissection leave Lukey’s head just like that.

Lukey’s shoulders stiffen. “Warn me?”

He frowns, eyes briefly flickering between the cat and the church’s front door. Bad said to shout if anyone from Yellow showed up, but an ominous talking zombie count should also be worth shouting over, right?

“Yes,” says the cat. “About tomorrow’s game.”

Right. The game.

Bad is excited. Pangi is excited. Lukey wants to be excited, but it’s rather hard to feel anything but terror at the thought of bowling in front of an audience- an audience filled with murderous vampires and men with medieval weaponry. Scary men with medieval weaponry. Who all probably want revenge against the team that not only won the last game, but who also beat their cat-slash-mascot-slash-teammate to death with a goddamn bowling ball.

Lukey still hasn’t practiced with an actual ball, he hasn’t been able to. He still isn’t medically cleared to even hold one… but, really, he doesn’t know when exactly he could be cleared; with the way Bad got him out of the hospital, he’s really been guessing on the recovery process based off of textbooks that he can almost remember the words from.

He… won’t be very useful. At playing the game, or even joining in a potential fight. He can’t even bend over to tie his own shoes some days, and now he’s supposed to bowl?

What he can do is sit still and listen, and so that’s what he does:

He forces his body to relax, and he says, “Go on.”

The cat’s smile grows; it’s impossible, almost, how far into its face the corners of its mouth rise: off of the muzzle, nearly to the eyes.

“Have you met Pangi yet?” it asks.

Lukey nods.

The cat’s tail flicks behind it: disgust. “And I’m sure you remember how he ended the last game?”

Lukey nods again. The water bottle that Pangi had given him after the carnage was slick- not with condensation, but with blood.

The cat says, “Tomorrow, he should stay home.”

And then, before Lukey can ask for a reason why, the cat’s voice drops into something that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end:

“I’m not sure if he’s far enough along to come back when he’s killed.”

Not an ‘if’. ‘When’.

“‘Far enough along’...?” Lukey mutters.

(What is far enough? Or, rather, what isn’t?)

The cat nods. “Yes. He won’t accept this warning from me, but he might listen to one of his teammates.”

“But he killed you,” Lukey points out. “Why are you trying to help him?”

The cat does a little kitty shrug. “You’re new. I don’t want you to have to watch him die.”

Again, so sure. But, with the way Yellow seems to be, maybe a death sentence is guaranteed for anyone they hate.

(“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she demands, a bitter sneer painted across her face.

The knife twists deeper, and all he can do is stare at her in shock as he feels himself start to die.)

“Is all bowling in this city this violent?” Lukey faintly asks.

The cat just laughs, head thrown back and mouth open and- oh, those are human teeth.

Lukey’s stomach turns; for whatever reason, he feels the urge to run away and hide and cry and pray.

Chuckling, the cat fixes Lukey with an odd look. “You’re funny. What’s your name?”

There is a danger in names, a tiny voice warns from the very depths of Lukey’s brain.

But it isn’t his voice, so he ignores it.

“Lukey,” he answers. (He thinks, anyway.)

“‘Lukey’,” the cat echoes, pleased-sounding. “Interesting.”

It makes no move to offer its own name in exchange. But what other name could there be for a creature Lukey has heard Pangi refer to in the same tone of voice one would use to describe roadkill rotting on the side of the highway?

“I’m glad you think so, Pili,” Lukey lightly replies.

He offers a smile of his own, and the cat just cackles, eyes positively glowing.

Bad kicks Lukey out of the van almost as soon as they’re parked, claiming that he needs to wait for Pangi to arrive before he can go into the bowling alley.

And so Lukey awkwardly shuffles his way inside, waiting in the lobby near the counter with his hands in his hoodie’s front pocket and his head down.

He doesn’t have a jersey yet. He doesn’t know all the bowling terminology. He hasn’t held a proper bowling ball yet.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ros and the rest of Yellow coming in through the alley’s front glass doors. They’re all in their matching piss-yellow jerseys, heads held high as they breeze past the counter and towards the lanes.

But Ros stops at the edge of the carpet, and then she turns around to look at him.

“Oh,” she breezily says. “You’re here.”

Lukey lifts his head and tries to smile. “Ah, yeah. I’m here.”

Behind her, the tall man from the stabbing and the scary man with the mace still sticking out of his backpack stop as well. Foolish and Sneeg, Lukey thinks, remembering Bad’s lessons from the drive over.

Foolish, the team captain and the ‘King of the Yellows’, comes over with a brilliant white smile on his face. His teeth are all sharpened to a point; his skin almost seems to glitter under the alley’s lights.

“Oh, hey! New guy!” he cheerfully greets. “You actually shacked up with Bad, huh?”

Sneeg’s face is perfectly flat; strangely enough, his hair almost looks to be a navy blue color in the dim light.

The rest of the team gets settled on their side of the lane. There’s a man this time, unfamiliar, and the cat, smirking.

“I joined the Honey Badgers, yes,” Lukey replies.

“Really?” Sneeg asks. “Where’s the rest of them, then?”

Lukey checks through the front door’s glass; Pangi has rolled up on an epic-looking black motorcycle, and Bad is talking with him near the minivan.

“They’re coming,” Lukey says.

He tried telling Bad about what the cat had said. He tried telling Pangi back when they briefly saw each other in a brief pre-game meeting at the church. But both of them just laughed, Pangi looking closer to crying as he did so, and they brushed him and his words off completely.

“I’ll be fine,” Pangi had assured him. “It’s just Yellow. What can they even do, complain at me?”

Pangi, in the parking lot, has a white plastic grocery bag hooked on his arm. Must be what Bad needed to talk to him about.

Ros is silent. She looks even more pale than she did when she stabbed Lukey, impressive for a vampire.

Lukey may not be a particularly good bowler. But maybe, just maybe, he can try and defuse whatever situation is apparently going to happen before the game even begins.

So he smiles and extends a hand towards Foolish, who eagerly accepts it.

“Lukey,” he pleasantly says. “It’s an honor to finally meet you properly, your highness.”

Foolish beams. “Ooooh! Why, thank you, Lukey!”

His handshake is so firm that Lukey’s knuckle joints pop. His skin is deathly cold, like steel.

“Y’know, it’s a shame you’re on Green,” Foolish continues. “I really thought I could get ya.”

“What?” Ros exclaims, eyes wide in shock.

Lukey laughs awkwardly. “Yeah, it’s a real shame.”

He glances at Ros, and then locks eyes with Foolish again. “Maybe under different circumstances things could have been different.”

Sneeg snorts. “Wow, you think it could have been different?”

Doesn’t feel like a shot against what he’s saying, but the way he’s saying it.

Wow. Rude, much?

Lukey looks right at him. “I do, actually. But fate does funny things, doesn’t it?”

Sneeg makes no effort to reply, but that’s answer enough.

Ros, though, sticks her nose in the air. “Whatever you say, Lukey.”

She looks at her captain and says, very sweetly, “I’m going to go get ready, King.”

Foolish, still shaking Lukey’s hand for whatever reason, just replies with a simple, “Yeah, ‘kay. We’ll be right there.”

He squeezes Lukey’s hand one more time- hard- before letting go and stepping back and stretching.

“I’d say, ‘good luck’,” he tells Lukey, “but y’all are going down today.”

He reaches out towards Sneeg for a high-five; Sneeg gives it, and the sound is loud enough that it probably cracked the sound barrier.

Foolish winks, and then he follows Ros to the lanes.

Lukey, alone with Sneeg, turns towards the front door and watches as Bad and Pangi slowly approach the building.

Sneeg stands next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder: a silent giant.

Then, he says, “It is a shame that you’re on their team.”

Lukey glances up at him. “Really? Why?”

Bad trips Pangi in the parking lot. Pangi responds by grabbing Bad’s sleeve and trying to pull him to the ground. Their jerseys are green, and Pangi is smiling.

“Because you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences of their bad choices,” Sneeg simply replies.

He yawns. And then he farts.

And then he says, “Good luck, dude. Hopefully your first game won’t be your last.”

Lukey snaps his head towards him, ready to demand an explanation as to what the hell that means, but he’s met with what he thinks is supposed to be a light-hearted punch to the shoulder, something trying to say the bowling equivalent of ‘Break a leg!’.

But, instead of getting a bit of a tap, he gets fucking launched across the lobby and into the wall he was just standing against.

The brick wall he was just standing against.

Lukey cries out as his head cracks against a particularly-sticky-outy brick. His vision blacks out for just a second, and his hearing fades into a brief staticky silence only broken by Sneeg calmly saying, “Oh, whoops. My bad.”

Lukey slides to the ground clutching his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. He groans, nauseous.

Somewhere, Ros is laughing.

Somewhere else, the bowling alley’s doors are opening.

If Lukey opens his eyes, he might throw up. He might just vomit, and wouldn’t that be the perfect start to his bowling career?

A gentle hand touches the side of his head, right where it hit the brick. Stinging, pain, and then nothing as the hand is removed.

“Lukey!” Bad cries. “Why are you on the floor?”

“He’s bleeding, Bad,” Pangi snaps. “We literally just watched Sneeg beat his ass.”

“Nuh-uh!” Sneeg calls. “You didn’t see nothing!”

Lukey moans and tries to sit up. It doesn’t work out, though, and he ends up sort of just flopping back onto the carpet with a second moan.

He does manage a thumbs-up, though.

“I’m fine, guys,” he slurs. “Just get me some ice.”

He cracks an eye open, and he sees green. And then he looks up, and he sees the sun.

Ah, wait. No, that’s just Pangi.

Mental note, Lukey blurrily thinks, check for concussion.

Frowning, Pangi helps Lukey to sit up. His hands are firm where they hold Lukey’s biceps, and his eyes are sharp with concern.

As Lukey readjusts to the world, he swears that he sees someone by his side from his reflection in the building’s front door. But that could also just be the concussion talking.

Bad gasps, “Oh, I know! Here, Lukey, this might cheer you up!”

He drops to the ground next to Pangi and starts wrestling to get the plastic bag from off of his arm. He does so with little difficulty, and he reaches inside of it, and he pulls out-

“A jersey?” Lukey asks, not quite sure how that at all relates to the bag of ice he wants. (Does Bad not have ears under that hood of his?)

Bad nods proudly. “Mhmm! Pangi spent all night working on it!”

Pangi’s ears (oh, good, he, at least, has some) turn a brilliant shade of red. “Yeah, but you don’t have to bowl today if you don’t want to.”

Awww!

Lukey snatches the jersey from Bad’s hands and pushes Pangi off of him, stumbling to his feet and definitely not leaning against the wall for support as he does so.

“Are you kidding?” he scoffs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He looks at Bad, and he looks at Pangi, and he thinks he’s going to vomit, the world is spinning so rapidly around him. But- and maybe it’s the concussion talking- he feels fire in his veins and a spark in his chest that he assumes is either a heart attack or the spirit of competition.

“Let’s fucking win this,” he tells his teammates.

And, somehow, he knows that they will.

Chapter Text

While Bad and Foolish are getting the scoreboard set up, Lukey is getting checked out in the men’s bathroom.

He’s sat on the (damp) counter between the bathroom’s two sinks holding a bag of ice to the side of his head. The ice is courtesy the bowling alley’s snack bar, and the impromptu check-up is courtesy the man currently standing between Lukey’s legs.

Pangi’s hands are gentle as they tilt Lukey’s head back and forth; they’re rough and calloused and oh-so warm against Lukey’s skin.

He’s frowning slightly, deep in concentration as he looks for the concussion that Lukey already knows he has.

“Don’t worry, I’m a certified combat medic,” he had told Lukey in the lobby area.

Lukey had tilted his head at that. “You were in the army?”

Pangi’s face was indecipherable despite the tense smile he flashed. “Boy Scouts. Come on.”

In the present, he’s trying to figure out whether or not Lukey’s pupils are the sizes they should be.

“You look alright…” he muses. “You still feel like you’re gonna vomit everywhere?”

(Lukey, embarrassingly, had collapsed to the ground in front of the first toilet he saw and practically begged Pangi to hold his new jersey for him. It couldn’t hit the ground, it couldn’t get dirty- not on the night of his first game!)

Lukey grumbles, but he shakes his head in response.

His brain is… fuzzy, sort of. It’s different from how it felt when he woke up post-surgery, it’s more like he’s both a second in the past and a second in the future at the same time: he’s playing catch up while also trying to slow down and match Pangi’s pace.

Pangi tips Lukey’s head back so his eyes are looking directly at the overhead lights.

Pangi’s eyes, Lukey has noticed, are blue in a way he’s never considered blue to be. It’s strange, how the definition of a word can change after you’ve learned it. Blue, blue, blue… big and blue, like the ocean.

Lukey is wearing his jersey (his jersey!!!) open over his hoodie. It’s warm, almost uncomfortably so, and the concussion isn’t making it any better. He’s sweating, probably. Probably’s got a red face.

The light hurts, but Lukey doesn’t close his eyes. He toughs it out; it’s nothing compared to what he felt when he hit the wall.

“Cool,” Pangi says.

And then he drops his hands and steps back, pulling his phone out of his pocket and choosing to look down at that instead.

As soon as he’s let go, Lukey is sagging in relief and closing his eyes. He’s only been awake and aware for just over two weeks, and this is the closest that anybody has been to him… outside of Ros when she stabbed him, that is.

Ros had a strange look to her when Lukey caught her watching Pangi march him into the bathroom. He can’t imagine that she was jealous, not when Pangi is on the other team and Lukey is her most recent stabbing victim.

Outside of the bathroom, Foolish is shouting, “Just die already, you scumbag!”

Lukey turns his head towards the bathroom door, eyes opening back up halfway.

“Should we head back out there, oooorrrr…?” he wonders.

“Nah,” Pangi replies, “I think Bad likes it.”

Lukey’s mind flashes back to the nightly phone calls and the reserved seat in the mini van, and he suddenly gets it.

“Oh!”

Pangi snorts, a small smile crossing his face. His thumbs tap at his phone’s screen in a blur, probably updating Bad on Lukey’s condition.

“Yeah, Bad’s lowkey kind of a freak,” he explains.

He glances up from his phone, eyes crinkled in amusement. “They broke into the zoo last Valentine’s Day and stole a camel. It was crazy.”

Lukey blinks. “What’s that?”

Pangi repeats himself, adding on, “I think Foolish still has it, actually. Next time he’s busy, I’ll take you over. It’s massive, dude.”

Which doesn’t answer Lukey’s question at all, actually, but that’s fine. He likes animals, he’s more than fine with getting to meet Foolish and Bad’s joint-custody pet camel.

Suddenly: gunshots from outside. Just two, and then Sneeg screeching, “Stop fighting!”

At the noise, Lukey jumps and nearly slips right off the counter. He instinctively drops his ice and covers both ears, head snapping back towards the bathroom door.

Pangi doesn’t so much as flinch.

“I think that’s our cue,” he leisurely says.

He slides his phone into his jeans’ back pocket.

And then, in one swift motion, he unhooks his sunglasses from off of the collar of his jersey and opens them with a flick of the wrist. He holds them out to Lukey, who accepts them cautiously.

“You’ll be fine,” Pangi tells him. “You have a bit of a concussion, so keep these on and don’t do anything crazy out there. You’ll be fine once we get back to Bad’s place and we can make a healing potion.”

Again with the potions, but Lukey isn’t willing to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Removing his hands from his ears, he pulls the sunglasses on and hops off the counter. He lands, only stumbles a little, and immediately strikes a pose: one hand on his hip, the other shooting a finger gun at Pangi, grinning cheekily.

“Thanks, doc,” he says.

Pangi laughs, a short little thing that’s immediately cut off by another round of gunfire.

They both look at the door this time.

“After you,” says Pangi, going first and not holding the door open.

Lukey rolls his eyes, but he follows.

The scene outside is a mess: Bad is waving his gun around and pointing it at Foolish, who has a gun of his own pulled and aimed right at Bad’s heart. Sneeg is filming on his ePhone. Ros has her knife out, and she’s hovering anxiously by Foolish’s side, ready to step in. And then there’s Pili, who is laying on top of the ball return watching all of this go down with his tail twitching nervously behind him.

Bad sees Pangi and Lukey first.

He lowers his gun and calls, “Will you two ragamuffins get over here?”

“My bad!” Pangi responds.

He hurries up into a little half-jog, making it to Green’s side of the lane before Lukey even makes it off of the carpet. He whispers something into where Bad’s ear should be; Bad nods and tucks his gun back into his jacket.

Pili looks at Pangi. “Hello.”

Pangi flips him off.

Ros slowly moves to sit back down, but she keeps her knife out.

The unnamed man from Yellow, all this time, has had a pair of EarPods in. He smiles kindly and waves as Lukey makes it to Green’s side and sits. (Finally, someone normal.)

“Your arm looks more purple than it did when we last met,” Pili states, staring Pangi down.

Ros stiffens at that.

But Pangi just sits down to untie his boots. There’s a pair of bowling shoes on the floor in front of his seat, waiting.

There aren’t any for Lukey.

With a sigh, he gets up to go to the front counter and ask for a pair. (Thanks, Bad…)

Two frames and a fresh bag of ice later, it’s finally Lukey’s turn to bowl.

The score is more or less even. Pangi went first, rolling a neat nine points against Ros’ eight. Then it was Bad against Sneeg, both rolling even spares.

Lukey thinks he knows what he’s doing as he hands his ice to Pangi to hold for him. He’s practiced enough with the plastic set at the church, and bowling doesn’t look too difficult…

He picks up a ball from the return at random; Bad, Foolish, and Sneeg all have custom balls, but there are four others from the alley for Pangi, Ros, Lukey, and the other guy from Yellow. (Pili, being a cat, is not bowling.)

His ball is white, and it’s heavier than he anticipated as he carries it up to the edge of the lane.

He weighs it in his hands, fingers nice and snug in the ball’s holes.

Ahead of him are ten pins, which he’s pretty sure isn’t right, but that’s fine. He can work with ten.

“You’ve got this, Lukey!” Bad cheers.

“Don’t fuck it up!” Pangi adds, sounding much more enthusiastic about his support than Bad does.

Lukey smiles, turns around to shoot his team a thumbs-up, tries not to shrivel up inside at the sheer heat of the glare Ros is sending him.

He turns back around, raises his ball to eye level, judges the angle.

And then he takes a half-step back, lets out a breath, swings his arm back, and lets the ball go.

Immediately, he can tell that he misjudged. The ball drifts left hard, just barely grazing against the outermost of the ten pins before going right into the gutter.

But he can barely pay attention to that because his abdomen is on fire.

Wheezing, an arm clutches his midsection as he doubles over. He swears he can taste blood, he swears.

Yellow’s normal man gasps.

Lukey stumbles back, forcing himself to stand back upright as he makes his way towards the ball return.

He pushes Pangi’s sunglasses up his nose with one finger, desperately hoping that nobody sees the pain-filled tears in his eyes.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

“Oh, no, Lukey,” Ros sweetly says, sarcasm dripping off of her words like battery acid. “That was horrible! Maybe you should leave.”

She’s frowning, eyes wide with what Lukey knows for a fact is faux-concern. Her hands are in her lap, clutched together so tightly that her knuckles are as white as paper.

Foolish’s face lights up with delight. His own hands clap together, rubbing against each other as he looks between his teammate and Lukey as if he’s watching a tennis match.

Waiting for his ball, Lukey looks to his own team for support.

“That was a good try, Lukey,” Bad lies. He’s on his phone playing Angry Birds, did he even watch Lukey bowl?

“That sucked, what the hell?” Pangi counters, shooting Bad a visibly-irritated look. “I thought you said he was good!”

Ah, well, Lukey should have known better than to think that he’d get emotional support from the guy without a face and the guy who sleeps outside naked.

“I’m trying, okay?” Lukey huffs, turning back to the ball return. His words are tense and laced with pain that even Bad seems to acknowledge, his ever-present smile wavering somewhat.

Lukey’s ball comes up from the return. He grabs it with his free hand, unwilling to let go of his stomach for even a second.

He doesn’t so much as look back as he shambles his way back up to the line.

Right, he thinks, shuffling to the right a few inches, raising the ball, looking down at the triangles on the floor.

Right. The ball went left when he was in the center, he didn’t swing his arm straight, his wrist turned at the last minute. He doesn’t think he can figure out the proper arm and wrist positioning on the fly, but angles?

He closes one eye and sizes the pins up. He raises his ball just ever-so-slightly higher to eye level.

It drifted approximately that far, so…

He takes a step back. Stands upright, still holding his wound closed (he’s sure he just opened it again, holy shit-) with his arm. The arm holding the ball shakes from the effort of holding it up so high for so long, but that won’t be a problem for much longer.

Half-step forward, and… swing!

The ball rolls down the lane and makes contact with the first pin in the second row. He watches as a grand total of seven pins fall.

Only a little smug, he turns around and makes his way back to his seat.

Pangi is on his feet and cheering and clapping his hands, and, as soon as Lukey is seated, he’s sitting down himself and raising a hand for a high-five.

Grinning widely, he says, “Good stuff, man!”

Lukey gives him the high-five, but it’s weak.

So is his laugh as he replies, “Hah, yeah. Not bad for my first ever time bowling, I think.”

“This is your first game?” the normal man from the Yellow Team asks. He’s standing and picking his ball- a dull red one- up from the ball return, EarPods out at long last. “Congrats, dude! I’m sure that Pangi helping you in the bathroom right then got you real fired up!”

His smile is blinding even with the insinuations of what he said.

Lukey, for whatever reason, feels mildly faint.

Ros looks about as bad as he feels as she gasps, “What? Pangi?”

She locks eyes with Pangi, who immediately raises his hands with a hint of a flush to his cheeks.

“Don’t look at me!” he shouts, voice cracking just slightly. “I was checking him for a concussion!”

Yellow’s… strange man goes up to the lane with his ball and takes his first shot: five pins knocked down, the others all scattered in a way that’ll make it impossible to knock them all down with his next attempt.

Sneeg snorts. “Yeah, sure thing, dude.”

He’s back on his phone again, though he’s moved on from filming the group to playing some sort of card game. He seems positively enthralled with it, which is probably good news for Lukey’s poor battered skull.

Pili looks Lukey straight in the eye and says, “He’s gay, by the way.”

And Lukey, strangely enough, can tell that he’s referring to Pangi.

Pangi, who immediately throws Lukey’s bag of ice right at Pili’s blank little cat face.

“Hey!” Foolish protests, swooping in and picking Pili up. “No killing today, mister!”

“Yeah,” Sneeg rumbles, “wouldn’t want to get kidnapped again, would you?”

Ros’ breath hitches.

Yellow’s current bowler takes his second shot: three pins, total score of eight.

Pangi’s back stiffens.

But, instead of snarking back at Sneeg, he looks at Lukey, and he says, “Ignore Pili. I’m straight.”

As he stands to take his turn, he shoots both Lukey and Bad a confident smile.

Even through his jersey's baggy short sleeves, Pangi’s biceps visibly flex as he picks his ball up from the return and pretends to throw it at Foolish and Pili.

He swaggers up to the lane and, without a second’s hesitation, sends his ball rolling.

Without waiting to see the results, Pangi turns back around and gives his team an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The electronic scoreboard above the lane goes completely red as blocky golden text dances across it: STRIKE!!!

Lukey’s mouth is completely dry as Pangi smooths his hair back with one hand.

He swallows roughly as Pangi leisurely makes his way back to his seat, waving jokingly at Ros as she cheers him on and applauds his strike.

Pangi sits back down and yawns, stretching his arms above his head. He kicks his legs out casually, crossing them at the ankle. His arms come back down, and one elbow rests itself right on Lukey’s shoulder.

He looks down at Lukey and says, “See that? You better be doing that next game, or there’ll be trouble.”

Lukey just nods in response, words dying in his throat before he can even conceptualize them.

Pangi’s eyes are so… blue.

They end up winning the game in the end. Bad scored the most points on their side, followed close behind by Pangi. Lukey didn’t get many at all, having been forced to sit out the rest of the game after he almost collapsed during his second turn.

But it isn’t the game that Lukey is thinking about as Pangi helps him into Bad’s van.

“I’ll meet you at Bad’s house,” Pangi tells him. “I’m pretty sure one health potion will get rid of that concussion.”

“A health potion,” Bad says, realization in his voice. “Why didn’t I think of that! We didn’t have to go to the hospital at all, Lukey!”

Something tells Lukey that Bad had, in fact, considered it. But, in the end, he was in the ambulance with Lukey, and a deal was struck in that ambulance that Lukey can’t remember the details of.

But Lukey isn’t thinking about that either.

Pangi plucks the sunglasses right off of Lukey’s face and slides them onto his own; his thumb briefly brushes against Lukey’s nose.

“Don’t die on the way there,” he teases.

And then he’s gone, closing the van’s door behind him. He makes his way to his motorcycle, and-

And he’s straight.

“Sometimes we watch the sunset together. But, recently, it isn’t the sun that I’ve been watching.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t know how they can be normal when we have to burn our dead to keep them from coming back to life. Do they even care? Or does their concern only reach as far as the palace’s walls?”

Pangi is straight.

He is also, apparently, a morning person. And unemployed. And, above all else, kind.

Upon Lukey and Bad’s return to the church after their victory two days ago, Pangi was already waiting on the porch with an ice pack in one hand and a stoppered-up glass vial filled with some kind of thick red liquid in the other. He may have laughed at Lukey’s immediate gag reflex upon trying to chug the foul-tasting ‘health potion’, but then he ran inside to get a glass of water to wash the potion down with.

“Yeah, sorry,” he had said, eyes crinkled into crescent moons from amusement, “we haven’t figured out how to flavor this stuff yet.”

The next day, he was back at the church with a deck of cards and a smile on his face. The day after that found Lukey on Pangi’s couch as they watched YouTube videos of children falling down stairs on Pangi’s enormous tv.

Pangi is… nice. He taught Lukey how to build a three-dimensional dick out of playing cards. He basically erased Lukey’s concussion with that potion of his. (He sat so close to Lukey on the couch that their thighs were touching.)

Pangi is nice.

Pangi is (allegedly) straight.

And, two days after the game, Pangi is wearing a black tank top with a broken red heart spray painted onto it as he putters around with his motorcycle’s engine in the driveway. His skin has a slight sheen to it from sweat, and his tattoo almost seems to be shimmering in the noon sun.

Lukey, sitting criss-cross on the pavement next to him, is super fucking normal about what he’s looking at.

It’s warm- summer is just around the corner according to Bad’s complaints- but Lukey still has his hoodie on. Everything else is borrowed, though, from either Bad or Pangi, and it’s all either too long or too loose for his tastes. (He should really go shopping one of these days… but with what money?)

Lukey’s hood is up.

Groaning, Pangi pulls himself and out of his bike’s guts. He sits back on his knees, grabs at the bottom of his shirt, and-

Lukey quickly focuses his attention on his own hands in his lap as Pangi pulls the hem up his shirt up so he can use it to wipe at his grease-stained face.

“Fuck,” Pangi exhales.

“That bad, huh?” Lukey asks.

Two days ago on his way home from the bowling alley, Pangi had noticed a weird noise coming from his bike’s engine. A couple of days of laziness later, he decided that he actually cared after all and recruited a bored Lukey to be his assistant while he played mechanic.

“I can’t find anything wrong,” Pangi complains, voice tight. “It all looks good to me.”

Lukey hums thoughtfully, brain ticking away. He’s pretty sure that he was some kind of scientist before he lost his memories, maybe he was some kind of mechanical engineer?

He looks at the motorcycle: black with hand-painted, chipped flames going down the body.

“Did you put anything weird in it?” he asks.

Pangi scoffs, “Uh, no? Just gas. I’m not stupid.”

Privately, Lukey thinks that Pangi might actually be stupid for filling the tank with anything but water. But, to spare Pangi’s pride, he keeps that to himself.

Instead, he risks a glance over to Pangi- his shirt is back down, good- and he asks, “Can I take a look?”

Pangi looks at him doubtfully.

Lukey smiles in response. Sweetly.

A brief staring contest later, Pangi sighs and scoots over to give Lukey access to the engine, his head hung in defeat but the doubtful expression still on his face.

“Whatever, man,” he acquiesces. “But I will have to kill you if you break anything.”

There’s a toolbox on the ground to Lukey’s left. There’s a gun on the ground to Pangi’s right.

Lukey gulps, nods, salutes, and pulls his hoodie off. He tosses it at Pangi, who yelps and catches it with his sweaty little face.

Lukey tries not to laugh too rudely as he shuffles himself up to the motorcycle, but, judging by Pangi’s complaints to the side, he fails.

“Is this funny to you?” Pangi demands.

“No,” Lukey says, laughing, “not funny at all.”

Pangi grumbles and swats at Lukey’s knee, but he doesn’t put his gun to Lukey’s temple, so, like. Win!

Lukey holds a hand out to the right, palm-up. “Light.”

It might be noon, but the engine is draped in shadows. There might be something in one of its many crevices and ridges that’s wrong, and that something might be hidden under the cover of darkness.

“What are you, a doctor?” Pangi huffs.

But he places his phone in Lukey’s hand, anyway.

“Maybe.” Lukey shrugs. “Not sure, actually.”

Pangi groans dramatically, but Lukey ignores him in favor of trying to figure out what the hell kind of phone Pangi has; it’s unfamiliar, that’s for sure.

Tapping the screen reveals a photo of Pangi standing between two people: Ros is on his left, and someone with skin as grey as stone and with two little blue horns poking out of their bangs is on his right. They’re all dressed formally- Pangi, with his arms over the shoulders of his two companions, is in a gorgeous gown- and smiling; Ros in particular is caught mid-laugh with her eyes squeezed shut.

“Aww!” Lukey coos.

Pangi smacks at his knee again. “Dude, shut up!”

Lukey rolls his eyes with a smile. Aww, he’s shy!

He taps on the little flashlight icon on the lockscreen. Then, when that ails, he presses and holds.

The phone’s flashlight turns on, and Lukey only does half of a cheer before remembering he has company.

(Pangi snorts, but he says nothing.)

Cheeks pink with embarrassment, Lukey turns the light on the engine, and he’s immediately met with-

Huh?

Frowning in confusion, Lukey leans in closer. His eyes narrow as the light catches on something shiny, slick, and black in one of the engine’s dips.

“There’s something in here,” he tells Pangi.

“‘Something’, huh?” Pangi dryly replies.

“Oh, quiet, I don’t know what it is. Oil, maybe?”

But it isn’t. As Lukey adjusts the light’s angle, the stuff coating the engine almost seems to reach towards it. It’s not unlike waves shyly approaching the shore on a calm day, languid and hesitant as if it’s afraid.

“Oh, Lukey,” Pangi sighs, “there’s going to be oil, it’s a motorcycle.”

Lukey shakes his head, but he doesn’t respond as he blindly gropes around in the toolbox for a screwdriver.

He finds one, grabs it by the handle, and sticks the end of it into the engine.

Pangi makes a curious noise, leaning in to watch as Lukey gingerly scrapes the flat tip of the screwdriver along one of the engine’s manufactured valleys; Pangi is so close, all of a sudden, that Lukey can feel his chest lightly moving as he breathes, tugging the shoulder of Lukey’s shirt up and down slightly with each breath.

Lukey shudders and blames it on the wind.

Slowly, he pulls the screwdriver out. Pangi’s breath hitches, but Lukey pays him no mind.

The substance is dripping, the tip painted with some sort of oily substance. At first, Lukey thinks it’s black. But then, under the sunlight, it turns a very dark shade of purple.

God, what he would give to have a test tube right now!

“Huh!” he remarks, eyebrows raising as the substance continues to change color.

“Fuck,” Pangi swears.

“Hm?”

“How did I- give me that.”

He snatches the screwdriver out of Lukey’s hand and hops to his feet before Lukey can even react.

Pangi holds the screwdriver with a wrinkled nose, his arm fully outstretched. Under the sunlight, the substance almost seems to glow.

Peacock, Lukey thinks. Then: dragon.

Lukey lets out an offended, “Hey!”, before scrambling to his feet. He grabs his hoodie from where Pangi still has it hanging over his shoulder, unwilling to let it get covered in whatever the hell is on the screwdriver.

“What the hell, man?” he protests, reaching for the screwdriver. “I wasn’t done with that!”

But Pangi just takes a swift step away and holds the screwdriver over his head; the substance on it starts to run down from the tip, oozing at a snail’s pace towards the handle.

Lukey still has Pangi’s phone. So he decides to hold it hostage, holding it above his head with a sniff.

Pangi looks unimpressed. “Dude, seriously?”

“I’ll trade you,” Lukey challenges. “Phone for the screwdriver, come o- Hey!”

He blinks, yells, and falls in that order, landing roughly on the pavement on his back with an empty hand and a slowly-growing migraine.

Immediately, Lukey rolls over and gets onto his hands and knees; he’s just in time to watch Pangi, also on the ground, do a perfect somersault into a standing position. He runs a few feet down the driveway with both the screwdriver and his phone.

Pangi turns around and smirks, smugly waving the phone in his hand.

“You’ve gotta try harder than that,” he taunts.

But Lukey is only halfway paying attention to his teasing because the substance on the screwdriver is reaching towards the sun. It’s growing in vividness from its dusky purple to something more vivid and almost familiar in a crushing way.

Lukey’s lungs itch, though he can’t tell if it’s from Pangi knocking the air out of him or from the intense feeling of wrongness he feels in his chest from just looking at the-

Fuck, it’s right on the tip of his tongue? But how…?

Lukey has half a mind to just run up and smack the screwdriver out of Pangi’s stupid smug hand. He also feels a fuzzy sort of crawling sensation running up his nerves from his fingers and toes and to his spine as if an army of ants was marching towards his brain.

He looks at the purple sludge steadily sliding towards Pangi’s hand, and he wants to touch it.

Five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. He can see it: purple. He can hear it: crying. He can smell it: ozone. Next is touch, and from there should be taste. It’s…

Pangi’s face is tightening in, what, confusion? Concern?

“Lukey?” he hesitantly calls. He lowers his hands and the objects in them slowly. “You good?”

His arm is glowing- rather, his tattoo is. It’s brighter than it was just a second ago, its light pulsating along with what Lukey assumes is Pangi’s heartbeat.

Would the slime be warm? Cold? Sticky? It’s runny, but in the same way as maple syrup.

What is it?

Lukey frowns. There’s a buzzing in his ears. Bees?

(“Uh, hello? Lukey?”)

God, what he would give to have a fucking test tube! He’s a scientist! He w- needs to investigate! It’s…

(“Oh, shit.”)

…horrifyingly alien, whatever this hauntingly-beautiful substance is. There are eyes in the bubbles popping from where it’s melting and dissolving the screwdriver, and they are looking right at Lukey with unflinching pride: ‘Hello,’ THEY say, ‘and thank you.’

“Pangi,” he hears himself say. Are his hands shaking? He can’t look down to check, all he can see is- is- “I think there’s something wrong.”

Because there is- it is, he can feel it in his bones. Somewhere buried deep in his corrupted memories is the knowledge that this beautiful abomination is wrong.

Nature is inherently beautiful, but whatever this stuff is is anything but natural.

He blinks, and the substance blinks back. Tiny little tendrils reach towards the heavens, and Lukey swears that there’s someone behind Pangi just watching: black cloak, outstretched skeletal hand as if wanting to interfere but unable to.

It isn’t Pangi’s heartbeat that the tattoo is mirroring, Lukey realizes. No heart beats that slowly, not unless its owner is dying or in a deep, deep sleep.

But Pangi is moving, but Lukey is frozen in place and shaking and forced to observe as Pangi runs past him and behind, out of sight. He-

“Sorry about this,” Pangi says, breath hot against Lukey’s ear.

And then something cold and hard slams into the back of Lukey’s head, and the last thing he sees before slipping into darkness is the Keeper disappearing with its head bowed and its withered hand clenched over its chest.

Something warm catches Lukey as he falls, and then it’s blessed nothingness.

He wakes up on Pangi’s couch. Slowly. There’s a blanket over his body and the familiar chill of an ice pack under his head.

Lukey stares up at the ceiling with a migraine behind his eyes and trailing down his jaw and into his neck. He can breathe again. No inexplicable urge to stick his finger into metal-eating purple sludge.

Someone is next to him on the floor and watching a quiet YouTube video.

Slowly, Lukey turns his head to the side; he winces and whimpers as he does so, owwwwwwwwww…

Pangi is watching a… let’s play? Maybe, but Lukey doesn’t recognize the game; it’s weird and blocky and entirely unfamiliar. There’s a guy in the corner of the screen commentating, though, wearing a silly-looking green-and-white-striped bucket hat.

Pangi’s back is against the couch, so Lukey doesn’t have to look him in the eyes as he sighs a quiet, pained, “Burn that fucking screwdriver.”

He gets a quiet hum of acknowledgement in return.

“Already taken care of,” Pangi shortly replies.

His grip on his phone is tight, so tight that his knuckles are white as snow.

At some point after knocking Lukey out, Pangi had swapped his tank out for a soft-looking green sweater. His arms are both covered, but…

Pangi tips his head back and offers Lukey a plastic smile.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “My bad.”

He pulls a face that reads as ‘Guy holding his hands in the air as if claiming innocence’.

And then he settles back into his previous position, but he adjusts his grip on his phone so that it’s raised enough for Lukey to be able to comfortably watch along with him.

Lukey only halfway watches the video. Because Pangi’s arms are covered, but there’s a thin purple line extending halfway up his thumb that wasn’t there earlier, and it smiles as Pangi turns the volume up.

Chapter Text

“They’re saying that it’s the end of the world, but - - - - still brings home fresh flowers every day as if nothing’s wrong. (And he calls me the optimistic one?)

It looks like it’s going to rain.

That’s the first thing that Lukey notices when he steps out of the church: the heavy black clouds in the sky and the faint smell of ozone in the air. There’s hardly any wind, leaving behind an almost overwhelming warm pressure so palpable that Lukey could cut it with a knife.

Still, he has a mission… self-assigned, of course. A little rain isn’t going to stop him.

It’s been just over three weeks since Lukey was stabbed, and he’s spent most of those three weeks either resting or bowling. He’s been to the potion room, he’s been to the library, he’s been to the bowling alley, but…

Well, Bad is a nice guy, if not strange and incredibly terrifying in a chill sort of way. And Pangi is-

“Lukey!” Pangi cheers, shirtless and washing Bad’s minivan in his own driveway. His sunglasses are on, and his shirt is off, and his black athletic shorts have soap bubbles clinging to them, and his shirt is off, and he has a hose in one hand, and his shirt is missing, and-

And Pangi is a very nice (looking) man, even if he is a cat killer.

Lukey offers him a smile and a wave and a polite, “Hello!”

Pangi beams and waves back with the hand holding his garden hose. He briefly soaks himself in the process, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

(Rivulets of water pour down his naked torso: running between his pecs, catching briefly on his nipples, dripping down his stomach, beading and settling on his biceps…)

For whatever reason, Lukey suddenly finds himself thirsty.

“What are you up to?” Pangi asks.

He doesn’t wait for a response before ducking down and grabbing a sponge out of a bright orange Home Depot-branded paint bucket at his feet. He squeezes the excess soap out of the sponge and turns to the car, rubbing the sponge across the driver’s side window.

Lukey only realizes that his mouth is open when an insect almost flies into it.

Face heated (it is humid out), he clears his throat with a nonchalant cough into his fist.

“Ah,” he says, incredibly normally, “just going for a walk. You?”

Pangi bends back over to dunk the sponge into the soap.

As he stands back up, he scoffs, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Suds stream down his wrist. They’re almost thick enough to hide the lower portion of his tattoo.

Lukey jumps down the church’s porch’s few steps and only stumbles a bit on the landing. He thinks he gets away with the fumble until Pangi lets out a sigh of a laugh, presumably catching a glimpse in the car’s side mirror’s reflection.

“Wow,” says Pangi, a bastard.

“Shut up,” Lukey sniffs, nose in the air. He pulls his hood up. “My shoe was untied.”

He isn’t lying; his shoe is untied. He drops to one knee and gets to work, only wincing slightly as his wound twinges.

This close to the ground, he can almost see a hint of… something in one of the cracks in the driveway. Something that glitters, almost, shining like spilled oil.

He frowns and pauses mid-loop. It’s…

“Oh, no, Lukey! Watch out!” Pangi cries.

Lukey looks up just to be met with water to the face.

He yelps and tumbles backwards, skittering like a bug as he wipes at his face with his sleeve.

Pangi, laughing, just smiles as Lukey shoots him a poisonous glare.

“Sorry,” Pangi innocently says, “my bad!”

He raises both hands- sponge and hose- and pulls a stupid face.

Lukey rolls his eyes and stands, wrinkling his nose and pulling at the front of his wet, uncomfortable hoodie.

“Right,” he drawls.

He looks up at the sky. He looks back at the car.

“Good luck with that,” he says.

Pangi’s smile turns into a pout. “What, you aren’t going to help me?”

As if.

(Soap bubbles sit in the hollows of Pangi’s collarbones. His face is flushed slightly from the heat, and his shirt is off.)

(Wow, maybe Lukey should bring a water bottle with him, because he’s so thirsty all of a sudden.)

When Lukey doesn’t immediately answer, Pangi pulls his sunglasses up with his sponge hand and holds them at forehead level. “Pwease?”

Lukey grimaces playfully. “Ew, no. Not after that, I won’t. You’re on your own for this one.”

“Fine,” Pangi sighs. He drops his sunglasses back onto his nose and turns back to the car. “Where are you going, anyway?”

“What, do I have to tell you?”

“Well, no, but it would suck if you got stuck in the rain in Yellow territory.”

Lukey frowns. “I’m sorry? They’re a bowling team.”

“Exactly. You can’t be too careful.”

Pangi offers no further elaboration, and so Lukey asks for none; Bad and Pangi are best friends, after all, they both probably get off on lying and being misleadingly-enigmatic towards him for fun.

Rolling his eyes, Lukey sarcastically says, “Don’t worry, I’ll stay in Green territory.”

As if he knows what that consists of.

Pangi, being the bastard he is, nods gravely. “Good. And stay out of trouble. We have a game next week.”

Another eye roll: “Yes, mum, I’ll be careful.”

Without turning around, Pangi raises the hand holding the hose and flips him off.

Lukey, very serious, bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing.

Prick.

Since waking up in that hospital bed, Lukey has figured out a few things about himself. He hates the dark, but he likes animals. He gets cold easily and enjoys a good glass of wine with a meal. He was some kind of scientist before losing his memories. And, most importantly, he gets bored.

He gets so fucking bored.

Bad’s house, while lovely, has about as much entertainment value as a plate of corned beef. The man himself is asleep all day and only wakes up a few hours before Lukey is going to bed, and he spends those few hours either badgering Lukey about bowling or talking about “King” Foolish. No ePhone or game consoles to play around with; no television to watch; strange, indecipherable books impossible to read… the only thing that Lukey has done to entertain himself was try and compare the molding rates of a couple of expired cucumbers in the fridge, but Bad threw them away after two days on the counter.

It’s horrible.

The potion room is out of ingredients thanks to Lukey’s many recent “accidents”, according to Pangi, so Lukey can’t experiment with them to learn what potions actually are. The turtles there are cute, but they don’t actually do much.

And then there’s Pangi, who is actually fun to be around, but Lukey is starting to feel a little guilty over taking up so much of Pangi’s time; recently, Pangi has been on his phone texting his actual friends, and Lukey has just felt… bad about it.

It’s awful. Lukey’s brain is practically melting from the boredom. He needs stimulation! Books, movies, board games, bacteria cultures, anything!

And so, today’s mission: get a library card. Because, with a library card, Lukey can bring his own books back to church and bury himself in them rather than bother Pangi or listen to Bad pine after his mortal enemy. (And maybe, just maybe, he can try and figure out what the actual hell that purple stuff from Pangi’s motorcycle was.)

The bell above the library’s door rings violently as Lukey makes a mad dash inside from the rain; he nearly slams the door open and slips over his own freshly-untied, wet shoelace.

Beky Bekyamon, at her desk, only briefly looks up from her computer as he makes a mess of himself. She offers a loose sort of half-smile, nods once, puts her finger to her lips, and goes back to her work.

The hooded figure standing behind her just seems to stare, hollow space where its face should be following Lukey’s movements as he pulls his hoodie off and starts wringing the water out of it in the open doorway.

“Don’t get the books wet, thanks,” Beky absently calls.

Lukey smiles sheepishly. “Will do.”

The- what’s it called, a Keeper?- continues to watch Lukey as Beky speaks to it in a hushed tone.

Lukey shivers, and not from the rain. He looks firmly at his hoodie as he squeezes it; his hands are shaking.

He slings his damp hoodie over his shoulder and heads into the library proper, sure to keep his head down so he doesn’t have to make the equivalent of eye contact with the Keeper at the desk.

Research topic one, he decides, is going to be that weird purple shit that Pangi didn’t want him near. It’s some sort of slime mold, surely; it was organic, at least, so the biology section is a good start.

He’ll just ask for a library card when the Keeper is gone. That’s fine. He can make another trip to the library if he needs to. That’s fine.

Lukey makes his way past the newspapers and magazines and the public computer stations. Once he’s gotten to the first of the rows of shelves, he finally looks up from the floor and starts looking at the shelves’ labels.

Cooking… Linguistics… Drama…

The library’s door opens again with a ring of the bell and a shouted, unfamiliar, “Beky Bekyamon! How are ya?”

Lukey keeps his eyes on the labels, wandering through the aisles leisurely with his hands in his pockets. He’s got plenty of time to look, the storm probably won’t be over for another hour at least.

Beky and the newcomer talk.

Darkness, and an uncomfortable feeling in his gut as if he’s going through free fall and a roar in his ears and- Lukey stumbles and catches himself on a bookshelf, blinking rapidly as the darkness fades away.

Thunder rolls above, lightning soon following and flashing through the library’s tall windows.

The library’s lights flicker briefly, but they stay on, thank God.

Poetry… Historical Fiction… Romance…

It was a half-hour walk to the library, give or take the five minutes spent waiting to cross the street near the pizza joint near the church with a broken stoplight. Surely, Pangi finished washing Bad’s car before the rain started. (But, really, what the hell was he doing washing a car half an hour before a rainstorm? Weirdo.)

Lukey looks ahead and sees another five rows of fiction and then the conference room. Non-fiction must be on the second floor.

As he climbs the stairs, he glances down at the desk and sees that, not only has the Keeper disappeared- must have been the everything from a moment ago, but that the person leaning against Beky Bekyamon’s desk has a blue face and two equally-blue horns sticking out from under the hood of their slick yellow raincoat.

Lukey hesitates mid-step, hand hovering above the stairs’ wooden railing. Where has he seen them before…?

Whoever they are, they giggle at something Beky says.

There’s something about them that’s…

CRASH!

Lightning strikes a tree outside, and the library’s lights all go out at once.

Lukey immediately grabs onto the railing with both hands and closes his eyes, steadies his breathing out the way the little voice in his head tells him to: Five counts in, [Lukey], five counts out.

“Oh, come on,” Beky loudly groans.

“I told you to invest in a backup generator,” her friend chides. “Now look at us, alone and in the dark.”

“Alone, you say?”

“Oh, Beky! You cad!”

The dark is something stupid to be afraid of as a grown-ass adult. But it’s fine, Lukey has seen Pangi scream when a giant spider showed up in one of the YouTube videos they watched together.

(Whose voice is that, anyway?)

His heart rate levels, and Lukey opens his eyes just in time for the lights to kick back on.

He blinks as his eyes adjust to the light, and he looks down at the circulation desk by chance, and he locks eyes with Beky Bekyamon’s friend as they’re pulling back from what was probably a very tender and romantic kiss.

Face flushed, Lukey immediately tears his eyes away and hurries up the rest of the stairs.

“Who was that?” Beky’s friend squeaks.

“Mm? Oh, yeah, Lukey’s here. Don’t mind him, he’s one of Bad’s.”

‘One of Bad’s’... yeah, well. Yeah.

Lukey scurries past another periodicals section, tuning out Beky and her friend’s conversation as it turns away from him and back towards flirting.

(“Did Ros tell you that she’s thinking of throwing another party?”

“What, really? After how the last one went?”)

Rain pounds against the windows, and thunder rumbles in a constant rhythm above. It’s like a train is going by minus the whistling, it’s almost… what’s the word, overstimulating?

But, hey, with the Keeper gone, Lukey can actually get his library card… once Beky is free, of course.

Engineering… Physics… Chemistry…

Aha! Biology!

Lukey turns into the first biology aisle and starts browsing, running his finger along the books’ spines as he searches for the molds and fungi subsection. (Because that’s what the purple substance was, right?)

He grabs the first book on mold he sees and continues.

But, strangely enough, the next aisle over isn’t biology like it should be. Instead, it’s labeled with two words Lukey doesn’t think he’s ever seen before: Corruption and Skulk.

He pauses, brow furrowing as he looks down the aisle and only sees a handful of books scattered across the shelves.

‘Corruption’, he knows, technically, but not in any sort of scientific context. It’s a verb, sometimes a noun, never anything inherently biological. Evidence can be corrupted. Experiments’ results can also be corrupted. Data can be. But corrupt-ion?

‘Skulk’, meanwhile, is totally foreign. Must be just one of those things he doesn’t know about that everybody else does, like ‘Chipotle’ and ‘Jesus Christ’.

He thinks about moving on. There’s always more molds to look for, and he hasn’t even found a book on fungi yet.

But…

Hesitantly, Lukey picks up the nearest book and looks at the back of it: blank, no description.

He flips it to the front and only sees, handwritten in white marker, the words, ‘Skulk Versus the Sun’.

A brief moment of page-turning shows a couple of pages filled with hand-drawn, scientific-looking diagrams of blue stuff in various situations: underground in what’s probably supposed to be a cave, inside of a house, and in somebody’s garden.

Photophobic, Lukey thinks.

The next book on the shelf is simply titled Corruption. Inside is a whole mess of words in scratchy handwriting and then a sketched-out drawing of a large purple crystal.

“The Corruption grows better when exposed to direct sunlight,” the caption reads.

Phototrophic, Lukey thinks.

He keeps flipping through the book as he walks, eyes narrowing in confusion as he sees several drawings of eyes scattered across several seemingly-unrelated pages.

Lightning flashes through the window at the far end of the aisle.

Lukey glances up from his book and catches sight of a dark figure standing behind him in the reflection.

Heart in his throat, Lukey jumps and turns and backs up just to see… nothing. Blank space. Empty air.

But, looking back at the window, Lukey sees something there just… looking.

Watching.

He blinks, and it’s gone.

Beky and her friend are still talking downstairs.

No rush of darkness or heavy pressure in Lukey’s ears, so no Keeper.

But what else could it have been?

Slowly, Lukey swallows the terrified lump in his throat and looks back down at the book in his hands.

The page he left off on has only four words written on it: “IT TASTES LIKE SHIT!!!!”

Even more confused, Lukey flips back through the book until he reaches the title page: hand-written, Corruption.

His eyes widen, though, as he sees a faint, mostly-erased name beneath the title. It’s hard to make out, and it has been painted over with a fair amount of white-out, but Lukey can still piece the letters’ fragments together:

Pangi

The library’s lights flicker once again, and the book falls from Lukey’s hands as he buries his face in them and sighs.

“Nice trip?” Pangi asks as Lukey climbs the church’s front steps.

The storm is long-over, and the sun is just starting to set over the horizon.

Pangi is on the church’s swing with a bottle of water in his hand, shirt on and sunglasses back off; his tattoo almost seems to glow in the growing darkness.

Lukey tries not to stare. He thinks he even succeeds; the books tucked under his arm are heavy, but not from guilt. They’re eating at him already, he’s so curious, but first:

“Did you know that Ros is going to throw a party soon?” he asks, not bothering to mention where he heard the information from and not remotely answering Pangi’s question.

Pangi’s eyes widen and a smile crosses his face, and Lukey leaves him on that cliffhanger as he hurries into the church to drop off his books.

Research can come later, he thinks. (In private, once Pangi is asleep.)

First, he thinks as he takes a seat next to Pangi on the swing, gossip.

“I saw the librarian kissing someone today,” he says.

Pangi gasps, and Lukey’s eyes glitter as he tells him all about it.

Chapter Text

“I never thought the end of the world would be so… bureaucratic.”

The Corruption, according to Pangi’s research, is an organic material with phototropic tendencies and an aversion to fire. It thrives under moist conditions and has a fascinating sort-of sentience to it that Pangi… alarmingly describes on page 28 in just one word:

‘Beautiful.’

Page 28 contains just that, just that one word, and a taped-in, dark, blurry photograph of something amorphous and purple-pink in a pitch-black room.

A handful of pages later, the paper is marked by dried tear stains and the words, ‘I can’t tell if he stole it or if it stole him…’

Lukey reads the book in silence, sat criss-cross on a table down in the potion room surrounded by pages of his own notes.

The Corruption, he thinks, is a very accurate name, indeed.

Page two: it ate through the plastic container Pangi had it in.

Page five: Pangi tried washing it off of his driveway with his hose; it spread so quickly upon being sprayed that it started climbing his shoes and he had to burn them.

Page 20: “Aimsey told me that they think it wants to be spread, but then they started freaking out when I got Foolish to cover his steering wheel with it? Like hello? Make up your mind???”

Page 25: “I found a hole in one of my gloves.”

Page 45, in a new, much looser handwriting that stays for the remainder of the book: “It’s in the Null.”

The final page, and the reason why Lukey is alone in a cave reading this book and taking notes on it instead of asking its author directly:

“The pangolin thinks that he lost this book. Don’t let him know where it went. It’s better for the world to know this information and the danger the Corruption poses than to have him continue hoarding it all to himself.”

And, sure, maybe Lukey should give Pangi his book back, but the implication that Pangi was keeping all of this information to himself is…

Lukey’s eyes trail from the book and to a bullet point he’d written down just moments ago: ‘Necromantic properties?’

‘The Burden,’ Pangi had called it, and then he’d drawn a picture of a man beneath it- smiling with soft features and a scar over one of his eyes. And then he’d scribbled over it in red pen and written the words, ‘THE MADDENING’, next to it.

When a person dies, their very soul can become corrupted. If they were miserable enough in life, it can bring them back from the dead at the cost of their memories and, eventually, their humanity.

Lukey’s stab wound itches at the thought of how close he was to death that night. But maybe he did die, maybe that’s where his memories went… but, no, surely not…

His heart jumps into his throat as he hears heavy footsteps upon the shed’s creaking floor upstairs, a dragging sound like a wooden chest being pulled across the floor; a sudden metallic scent like that of the bowling alley right after Pangi killed Pili with a bowling ball.

Hurriedly, Lukey gathers his notes into a neat stack and tucks them under the book’s cover.

Pangi is supposed to be doing bowling practice with his friend Aimsey right now, but he also said he’d be back in the neighborhood to teach Lukey the basics of potionmaking before dinnertime, and who knows how long Lukey has spent pouring over these notes, so maybe it’s him? But he hasn’t spoken about the Corruption once since finding it in his motorcycle and he’s shut down every attempt at conversation about it since and the book says not to let him know where it is, but since when does Lukey actually listen to authority? It could get him answers, but-

“AAAAAH!”

Midway through hopping off the table, Lukey watches, book clutched to his chest, as a vaguely human-shaped blob plummets from the trapdoor and shifts into something much smaller and much whiter as it goes. It crashes onto the cave floor with a comedically high-pitched scream before going silent as its neck snaps upon impact.

He holds his breath, waiting for the cat to start moving.

‘This place is a secret,’ Pangi had stressed upon him. He was doing knife tricks at the time. Pointedly.

Pili twitches and groans, head backwards.

Well, fuck. Worst person to know about the secret base has found it, excellent.

Carefully, Lukey finishes clambering to the floor. He puts the book down where he was just sitting.

Pili’s backwards head has its eyes shut from the pain.

Before Lukey’s eyes, his neck twists back ‘round right with a sickening crackling noise.

Whining pathetically, Pili climbs to his feet and shakes his fur out, collar jingling.

“You guys really should babyproof this place,” he breathlessly comments.

He stretches languidly, claws flexing as he yawns.

“Trying to kill me is pointless, dude,” he continues, “so you might as well put a beanbag down here. Or something.”

Pili’s collar is purple. That’s innocuous enough. But so are his eyes as he opens them and looks up at Lukey- they widen and his body recoils into a sitting position from shock.

Page 47: “...come back with purple eyes. I wish that didn’t mean they’re evil because it looks really cool.”

Curiously, Lukey leans back against the table. He props himself up with his elbows, body cleverly positioned to hide the Corruption book from view.

His head tilts with a smile. “I thought cats always land on their feet.”

He giggles as Pili’s fur puffs up in offense.

“Hey!” Pili argues. “That’s stereotyping me! And-”

He pauses, fur laying back down flat as he looks around the room. “Where’s Pangi?”

“Out,” Lukey honestly tells him. (What’s Pili going to do to him, scratch him?)

“But,” he lies, not wanting a potential Pangi jumpscare to get anybody hurt, “he told me he’d come check up on me in a few minutes, so I’m sure he’ll be here shortly.”

“I see,” says Pili.

Effortlessly, he hops onto the nearest table. And then he knocks a test tube off of it, seemingly on reflex.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, actually,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Lukey raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Pili’s gaze flickers from Lukey’s face to his throat and back. “So, Ros has this party coming up…”

His eyes glow and his tail curls around his paws and his ears lay back slightly; somehow, Lukey gets the feeling that this is a corrupted zombie cat version of a blush.

“Oh,” Lukey simply replies.

“I was kind of wondering if you’d… like to go with me?” Pili asks.

He looks Lukey in the eye.

Lukey’s stab wound twinges. He thinks of Ros’ perpetual disgusted expression when they’re in the same vicinity and the way her knife shone under the light of the moon.

(He thinks of Pangi’s face just inches away from his in the bowling alley bathroom and the tear stains and angry red ink marking the pages of his book.)

For ages now, Lukey has just wanted something to do. Library books and plastic bowling pins are fine, but, really, he’s starting to get lonely. Half the people he knows would probably consider him better off dead, and the other half are Pangi, Bad, and Beky the librarian.

…And then there’s Pili.

Pili, unlike the other members of his bowling team, almost comes off as normal. Sure, he’s an undead abomination of a cat whose very existence defies logic, but he’s an undead abomination of a cat in a world of vampires and Keepers and “Bad Boy” Halo. Frankly, a talking cat is normal compared to half of the things that the very human Pangi gets up to. And maybe Lukey’s standards are low, but it’s nice to talk with someone who doesn’t want him dead.

(And it would be a good way to study the Corruption…)

But…

Sighing, Lukey bows his head slightly and breaks eye contact. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can…”

The air pressure in the room grows heavy and the hair of the back of Lukey’s neck stands on end as Pili spits, “If this is about that goddamn bowling shit, I swear to God-”

“Ah, no, it’s actually much more simple.” Lukey snorts. “Look at me, Pili, do I look like a hardcore bowler to you?”

He spreads his arms slightly.

Just like that, the pressure lifts somewhat.

But then, bizarrely, Pili asks, “So, what, you’re actually into Pangi, then?”

Lukey’s traitorous heart jumps into his throat.

He snaps his head back up with a tense, laughed, “Noooo. Really, it’s-”

Pili hangs his head with a sad little kitty smile. “No, it’s fine. I saw you guys at the last game, I should’ve known his stupid pangolin charms would get to you. But we don’t got to go as, like, boyfriends or anything. We can just go as friends.”

(How many times will Pangi be referred to as a pangolin today!?)

He grumbles, paw grinding into the tabletop sullenly. “Pangi’ll probably be there, anyway…”

Oh, will he just-

“Pili, listen,” Lukey stresses, “I’m-”

“No, it’s fine, Lukey. I’m not too hurt by this.”

Pili’s tail twitches and his mouth curls beyond the scope of his face and up to his ears, betraying his amusement.

Dick.

Lukey holds up a hand. “Pili, listen. It’s not that, I swear.”

“Then what is it?” Pili asks, eyes pathetically glistening as he looks back up at Lukey.

Lukey sighs, “Look- Ros stabbed me, right? Intended on killing me? Still dislikes me? Probably still wants me dead?”

“Uh-huh…”

“I can’t imagine she’d even let me near her party even if I did want to go. I’ve got to be blacklisted from attending.”

Because, really, Lukey would like to go. He can feel his socialization skills shriveling up with every passing day trapped in ‘Green Territory’. And Pili’s fun, even if he is a little unnerving to be around at times; sure, Pangi wouldn’t be too happy, but he hasn’t exactly given Lukey an actual reason to stay away from him. Pili does appear to be a corrupted individual, but that just makes it even more tempting to hang out with him and study the Corruption up close.

But Ros wants Lukey dead, he’s sure of it. And he’s already down most of his memories, he doesn’t know if he could realistically survive losing any more than he already has.

And, really, he doesn’t want Ros to be miserable at her own party. That would just be rude.

The air is painfully still.

Then, abruptly, Pili laughs, “Is that it? If you’re worried about that, I’ll ask Ros tonight if you can come. I’ll tell you what she says tomorrow at the game.”

Right, fuck, the next game is tomorrow. Two weeks since the last one, just over a full month since Lukey was first stabbed. He might get to bowl more than one frame now that his wound feels mostly healed.

“Uh,” Lukey awkwardly says, “if you’d like, but…”

…But, truthfully, there’s also Pangi with his grief-filled notebook pages and murderous hatred for Pili. Something happened between them long before Lukey even arrived in the picture, and he isn’t sure he wants to get in the middle of whatever that is.

(And there’s Pangi with his knife to Lukey’s throat and bare chest and blue, blue eyes.)

Pili rolls his eyes. “Nah, don’t worry about it. Worst she’ll do is say ‘no’, but that means we can just do something else some other time.”

“We can just do that anyway,” Lukey reminds him. “We can get dinner or something. As friends.”

“Why, Lukey, are you asking me on a date?” Pili gasps.

“As friends,” Lukey repeats.

Pili hops off the table and, indeed, lands on his feet.

“I’ll see you tomorrow with the answer,” he says.

And then, before Lukey can protest, Pili is skittering up the ladder, growing longer and more humanoid the closer he gets to the top. By the time he makes it through the trap door, Lukey can actually see a pair of pastel-blue jeans and a pair of white sneakers.

The trapdoor slams shut, and Lukey is left alone in the potion room.

Pangi will be by at any moment to start him on potion instruction, but… nah, he doesn’t need to know anything about what just happened. Not unless he brings it up first.

What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

Chapter Text

“With all these blood samples they’re taking from me, I have to wonder how much blood I even have left…”

Game day.

Lukey comes out of the church with nervous ants dancing down his spine. He has his jersey in his hands and a tingle in his fingers and a fluttering feeling in his stomach, and it’s game day.

Bad is already in the van, waiting. Before skipping out of the church, he made sure to run Lukey through some last-minute training exercises- aim, mostly, but also a couple of reps of flour-bag-lifting to make sure lifting a bowling ball won’t send Lukey back to the hospital.

He’d paused in the doorway as he left, clawed nails tapping against the doorframe.

“Don’t disappoint me today, Lukey,” he said, voice grave.

Lukey saluted with an easy grin. “I’ll try not to.”

Now, Bad has the van running. He’s on the phone, and Lukey can just tell he’s talking with Foolish by how screechy his laugh is; it’s like nails on a chalkboard, really.

Pangi’s driveway has a new motorcycle in it: a deep royal green color with a white outline of what looks to be a pawprint above the gas tank.

The man himself is on the church’s porch swing with his sunglasses on his face for once, his hands clasped together so tightly in his lap that his knuckles are the color of bone. His hair is even more of a disheveled mess than usual, and his jersey is rumpled almost beyond recognition.

He looks up as Lukey closes the door, a faint, pale smile pulling at his face.

“Hey, man!” he greets. “You ready for today?”

His voice is hoarse; Lukey winces and clears his throat sympathetically.

He sniffs. “Am I ready? What do you think?”

He puts his hands on his hips. His jersey flutters in the vague mid-afternoon breeze.

Pangi scoffs, “I think you’re too confident for a guy who scored a whole 11 points in the last game. You’d better do better tonight, or else…”

He sits up, unclasping his hands so he can pull up one side of his jersey, revealing a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

But Lukey isn’t looking at the gun, not really. Instead, all he sees is the visible outline of Pangi’s hipbone. Pale skin. A scar arced across his hip like a crescent moon.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me?” Lukey laughs. “That’s crazy. It’s just a game, man!”

Pangi’s nose wrinkles. “Eugh.”

“What?!”

“This is more than ‘just a game’, Lukey. If Yellow wins, they’ll never shut up about it. And-”

“So just beat them next time,” Lukey shrugs. “Easy.”

Pangi gapes at him like he’s listening to a toddler try and explain the alphabet.

Lukey grins. (He’s soooo easy…)

Slowly, Pangi shakes his head. “You are…”

He cuts himself off with a screech of a swear and a jump so hard and sudden that it shakes the swing into actually swinging as Bad slams on the horn.

Lukey instinctively lets out a cry and claps his hands over his ears, turning to glare at an impatient Bad; Lukey can’t see his face, but his aura… it’s permeating.

Lukey’s ready to hurry to the van and start shouting, but, when he glances down at Pangi with a complaining joke on his tongue, he pauses.

Pangi’s sunglasses have been knocked askew, and his knees are pulled to his chest as he almost seems to be trying to curl into a ball against the armrest.

Hesitantly, Lukey takes a step closer. He stops the swing’s movement with one hand, eyebrows furrowing and mouth turning into a concerned frown.

“Pangi?” he asks. “You good?”

The van’s passenger side window rolls down.

“Sorry, Pangi!” Bad yells. “My bad!”

Lukey watches as Pangi quickly unravels himself and fixes his sunglasses.

He shoots Bad a thumbs-up, and then he stands so he can try and smooth his wrinkled jersey down.

“I’m fine,” he says, head ducked. “It’s just, uh…”

He trails off, hesitant, hands settling over his lower abdomen.

Lukey’s mind flashes back to their first real interaction. It’s been a month since? Almost to the day? And Pangi only looks a bit worse than he did when he stumbled naked into the church, so…

“Let me guess,” Lukey kindly supplies, “It’s just that time of the month, huh?”

Maybe he said it just to try and shake the awkwardness out of the air, but it’s a mission successful: Pangi cracks a smile and laughs.

He nods. “Yeah. I’m, uh, surprised you remembered.”

“How could I forget?” Lukey dryly responds. “You left quite an impression.”

Pangi’s face quickly goes through a multitude of colors before settling on something not quite unlike that of a bundle of strawberry-flavored candy floss.

He takes a step back, knee knocking against the swing.

“I’m going to, uhhh…” Pangi hikes a thumb over his shoulder. “...go now. Hopefully, I can convince Ros to keep her team from trying to kill you again.”

Somehow, Lukey doesn’t think that’ll be possible. If anything, Pangi will end up trying to kill Ros’ team after he hears from her what Pili said he would ask her; the afternoon’s game will end a bloodbath in some way, and Lukey is not looking forward to having to get blood out of his hoodie.

But Lukey doesn’t say this. Sure, it would probably be better for him just to tell Pangi now and get it over with, but. Maybe Ros won’t say anything! She’ll know better than to ruin his mood right before a game, surely.

So Lukey just laughs weakly and smiles something he’s sure is believable.

“Thanks,” he lamely says.

As Pangi jumps down the porch’s front steps and hurries to his bike with a wave to Bad, Lukey’s shoulders sag.

He pulls his jersey on over his hoodie and buttons it.

It’ll be fine! Even if Pangi does find out, it’s not like Lukey actually said yes. He didn’t even give PIli an answer!

So, really, Lukey doesn’t need to worry at all. Pangi’s a chill guy, he’s just a bit of a bastard. He’ll surely listen if Lukey ends up having to explain it all, he’ll just get a little pissy about it.

(What would he even do? Shoot him?)

As soon as Lukey hops out of the van, he sees Pangi waiting for him and Bad outside of the building. He’s leaning against the pale brick exterior with his arms tightly crossed across his chest, a suggestion of a frown on his face.

“Ugh, this is what happens when I obey traffic laws,” Bad groans, slamming the door behind him as he gets out of the car. “We’re going to be late, Lukey!”

He practically runs across the parking lot, leaving Lukey to follow behind at a much more leisurely pace.

Bad nods once to Pangi before opening the bowling alley’s door and scrambling inside with a cry of, “Foolish, you better not have tried telling the Keepers that we forfeit again!”

Pangi stays still, not responding as Lukey catches up and shoots him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he explains, “I told Bad he couldn’t drive on the sidewalk to get around traffic.”

(He shouldn’t be apologizing for that, really, but Pangi deserves some kind of an explanation.)

He reaches for the door handle, but he’s stopped by Pangi saying, “We gotta talk.”

Lukey blinks. “...Sure, what’s up?”

Pangi tilts his head back to look at the sky. “Well, I’ve heard some stories. Just… from people, you know?”

…Ah.

Lukey’s heart threatens to stop, just briefly.

But, hey! Pangi doesn’t look that upset! He probably heard it- if it is what Lukey’s thinking of- from Ros, and they’re friends, right? She wouldn’t say anything that would actually upset him, right?

“So,” Pangi tensely continues, “I was just curious if- fuck.”

He swears and nearly doubles over, clean hand raising to clutch at his tattooed bicep; it almost seems to glow, as purple-pink as the dawn.

Lukey peeks in through the building’s glass doors for potential help: Bad and Foolish are arguing at the shoe counter, Sneeg is talking with Pili by the lane. Ros is sitting with one of her bowling shoes on her lap, head bowed and hair obstructing her face.

“Dude,” he starts to say.

But Pangi shakes his head and stands upright, and Lukey begrudgingly drops it.

“Ros told you, then?” he shortly asks, ready to get inside. (Maybe Bad…? If this conversation ends quickly enough, then maybe…?)

Pangi’s nostrils flare; his face, otherwise, is tinged in what almost looks like pain.

Through grit teeth, he asks, “She told me what, Lukey?”

Awkwardly, Lukey laughs.

He stops as Pangi snaps his head up and looks directly at him; his eyes are obstructed by his sunglasses, but, somehow, Lukey knows that he’s glaring.

Lukey clears his throat and looks away. “About the, uh. The party.”

The parking lot’s lights flicker.

Bad and Foolish move towards the lane.

Bad looks over his shoulder, sees Lukey, and waves for him to come inside.

Pangi nods. “Right, that. Tell me about that.”

His tattooed hand twitches, but its arm doesn’t move.

That time of the month, Lukey tells himself. He’s no expert, but this kind of stuff is normal around one’s cycle, right?

“Well…” Lukey’s hands slip into his pockets nonchalantly, nerves so tightly bound that he feels like he’s about to burst. “What did she tell you?”

Pangi shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. You tell me, or…”

His arms fall to his sides.

He does not elaborate.

Lukey reaches for the door again, but he’s stopped this time by Pangi literally stepping in front of it.

Lukey frowns. “Dude, we’re going to be late. Can’t this wait until after the game?”

“We’ll go in once you tell me what happened.”

“You know what happened! Pili asked me to the ball, and-”

“What!?”

Lukey flinches at the shout.

He rolls his eyes at Pangi’s smirk.

But then Pangi shrugs and bows his head, the toe of his boot scuffing against the pavement.

“I’m not too angry about that, I cannot lie,” he says. “I’m just-”

“Oh,” Lukey scoffs, “that’s a lie.”

“Excuse me? I’m just worried and concerned that my friend might’ve done something stupid and gotten himself into something he shouldn’t be messing with! Pili-”

“I didn’t even say yes!” Lukey throws his arms in the air. “I didn’t give him an answer! All I said was-”

(One of the lights above the door goes out completely.)

Pangi scowls. “Well, Ros said-”

“All I told him was that she wouldn’t want me at her party. That’s it! He said he would ask her, and-”

“Oh, so you are going?”

Lukey’s jaw drops, as do his arms. Does Pangi have ears? Can he fucking hear?

“What part of anything I just said would suggest that?” he incredulously asks.

Shaking his head, he steps away and turns around so he can try and collect himself. He runs a hand through his hair.

Pangi is his friend. It is that time of the month, and he is Lukey’s friend.

“You’re really upset about this,” he breathes, which is exactly why he didn’t want Pangi to find out.

“Um, no,” Pangi lies.

“You are!” Lukey shakes his head, sighs. “I knew it. Anything Pili-related riles you up. Well, for your information, mister, I was planning on saying no because…”

He turns around, ready to spill the beans and explain it all. But Pangi’s tattoo writes and squirms and his arm moves and

Chapter Text

There’s smoke in his lungs. The air is heavy with ash; it coats his tongue and smothers his words before they can escape from his mouth. Hot tears streak down his face cutting pale jagged valleys in the soot, but he can’t cry. He doesn't know how.

The foil blanket over his shoulders is heavy. So is his heart as he listens to the agonized screams of the boy in his arms.

The boy struggles and kicks and punches and bites, but he’s only had that cast on his arm for a week, and he’s smaller. (Smaller than he is, anyway, even though their birthdays are only six months apart.)

“Mama!” he wails.

But they’re the only two survivors, he heard one of the firefighters saying so while the boy was getting checked out by the ambulance guy- the mean one with a scar over his nose that makes him look like Batman.

A piece of roof caves in, and the rest of the apartment building goes down with it.

50 people, he thinks.

Well. 48. Because he and the the boy made it out.

The nice ambulance lady, the one who gave him the blanket and took his melted sneakers off of his feet for him, is in front of him now. She has two green lollipops in her hand, but even she’s starting to look upset.

“Would you like a candy?” she asks.

Her pretty yellow headscarf almost seems to glow in the fire’s light. She’s like a traffic light: caution, as his dad always said while they were driving to school. She might be the nice ambulance person, but she still works for them. No amount of candy or blankets can make up for the pitying look in her eyes.

I’m not a kid, he sourly thinks. I’m nine!

But the boy, of course, calms down the second he registers the candy in front of him. (He’s always been the baby…)

As the boy pops one lollipop in his mouth, the ambulance lady wiggles the other with a fake smile.

(But how can he take a candy when..)

He jumps, and his head snaps towards the sudden sound of fireworks: the palace standing defiantly over the city and the king inside. It’s his birthday; he’s celebrating being 700 years old, but doesn’t he care about the 48 dead people in his own city?

The ambulance lady follows his gaze and sighs, “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Saltpeter, he thinks. Sulfur, meal powder, and camphor.

He shrugs and looks away.

There’s a police car down the road in front of the flower lady’s store. There’s a cop outside and one inside and two teenagers in the back seat; he knows them because they stole the magnifying glass he got for his birthday and smashed it and made him eat the glass.

The boy tilts his head back and looks up at him with wide, terrified eyes. He lived down the hall, but because they were the only kids on their floor, they became friends, like, immediately. They were together in the lobby stealing candy out of the vending machine when the fire started, and they were the only ones able to get out before the electric doors mal-func-tioned and locked the rest of the building inside.

He wordlessly takes the lollipop from the ambulance lady’s hand. And then he puts it in the boy’s.

The boy sniffles around his candy and offers a gap-toothed wobbly smile.

He whispers, “Thank you, - - - - -.”

And-

Lukey comes back into awareness with a fuzzy headache and the taste of smoke in his lungs and a pleasant hum flowing through his veins. There’s something sticking into his wrist and a million other somethings stuck all over his skin, he can feel them. Even with his eyes closed, he can feel them.

He’s cold.

His mouth slumps into a vague frown. His limbs twitch, his hand fumbling numbly for the edge of the scratchy blanket he can feel all is bunched up at his knees.

He doesn’t get too far, though, because his hand is heavy with exhaustion. And because, as soon as it starts moving, there’s a small sort of coughing sound and then a hard-soft-warm-heavy something pouncing upon his hand and pinning it to the bed.

What the…

There’s a vague sort of beeping in the room; it almost manages to cover up the sound of a gasped, “Lukey, you’re alive!”

Suddenly, there’s a flood of light trying to make its way past Lukey’s eyelids.

Before Lukey can even think about flinching in response, there’s an angry snuffling sound.

The light is quickly shut off.

“My bad,” whispers who could only be Bad. (Who else would be with Pangi in a hospital, really?)

Grumbling and sniffling and wiggling, and then quiet.

And then a long wet something dragging itself up Lukey’s exposed inner wrist. Once, twice. A cold… thing pressing against his pulse. And then the warmth again, over and over again.

Lukey’s nose wrinkles in discomfort, and his head lolls to the side with a scrunch of his face. It feels like he’s being licked, gross.

“Urgh,” he croaks.

There’s something tight in his chest. Tight and almost prickly like an exposed clothing tag.

What happened?

Long fingers rub at his hair as if they were petting a dog.

“There, there, Lukey,” Bad softly, almost mockingly, says.

Lukey’s mind sluggishly tries to think back. He was… the game, right? They were late. Bad went in, Pangi was waiting outside, and…

Bad adds, “It’s just Pangi!”

Pangi.

The memory hits Lukey like a bullet to the brain: the argument and the tattoo and the gun and the-

…it’s just Pangi?

Lukey forces his eyes open with a hoarse, angry, furious gasp.

He sees the hospital room he’s in: sterile and dark.

He sees Bad hovering at his bedside.

He looks for Pangi- fucking Pangi- and… doesn’t see him.

Bad pulls his hand away from Lukey’s head. He sits back down in his chair, which has been pulled from the table in the corner of the room to Lukey’s side.

He’s still wearing his jersey; it’s absolutely drenched in blood. Some is dried. Some is not. All of it (presumably) Lukey’s.

Lukey’s eyes narrow at him. “Where.”

Where the hell is Pangi at?

“Hospital,” Bad replies, completely missing Lukey’s question.

He sounds as if he’s talking to a child as he huffs, “Really, Lukey? The bullet didn’t hit your brain!”

No, it hit his fucking- his heart, right? Surely. Left side of chest, prickling sensation, faint throbbing cutting through the drugs being pumped through his veins.

Lukey tries to raise a hand to poke at the wound he’s increasingly becoming aware of, but his one hand is full of needles and the other is being pinned down by-

The way the bed is angled has him laying at a slight incline. But he’s so sore he can barely move his eyes, let alone his entire head. Tilting it just to the side sends pain down his spine and makes his mouth taste like blood all over again.

But he still forces his head back forwards so he can look down the length of his bed, where he sees…

A small brown lump curled on top of his hand like an overprotective bagel; and two wet, beady eyes staring up at him. Long claws are curled into the mattress. In the room’s dim light, a few of its scales almost look purple.

“Oh?” Lukey questioningly croaks.

It’s that… what was it, a pangolin? The wild one from the riverside. In Lukey’s hospital bed. Keeping him from moving his hand. And reaching his blanket.

In what’s supposed to be a sterile environment.

But it’s so cute!

Pangi, though, is still nowhere to be found. But maybe that’s a good thing; Lukey’s afraid he might get so irritated looking at him that he’ll have a heart attack and die and waste the hospital’s good effort. Or smother him with his pillow. Or send the pangolin to claw at his shoelaces until his fancy leather boots are shredded. And otherwise bully him until he gets an apology and a damn good explanation for fucking shooting him.

Lukey smiles weakly at the pangolin.

“Hiya, bud!” he chirps. “Are you my nurse, then?”

The pangolin’s head lifts in clear delight, body unfurling and tail looking as though it wants to wag. (Can pangolin tails even do that?)

Still, awww!!!

Bad snorts. “Sure he is.”

Lukey ignores him in favor of letting his eyes slip shut, content enough with his situation to let himself fall back asleep.

Pangi isn’t here, so Lukey doesn’t need to waste his energy being angry at him. He can save that for when he’s healed and able to throw a brick through his window.

He yawns. He can guess what drugs the hospital has given him, and he knows that he doesn’t really have a choice in staying awake or falling asleep, anyway; he’ll be out again in a second, he just knows it.

“C’n I have my blanket?” he slurs.

Bad sighs kindly. “Of course, Lukey.”

As the itchy hospital blanket gets pulled up to Lukey’s chin, the pangolin goes with it. It crawls along the bed until it can tuck itself under Lukey’s armpit and against his side, chuffing happily as Lukey loosely curls his arm around it.

“Sweet dreams, you two!” Bad quietly says. “Try not to scare any nurses in the morning!”

(A nurse walks into the room and immediately drops her laptop with a scream:

“Security!”

Because, right there in her gunshot patient’s bed borderline on top of him, is a naked man.)