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fantasticbeasts_kinkmeme) wrote2016-11-23 07:27 am
fantasticbeasts_kinkmeme) wrote2016-11-23 07:27 am
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Prompt Post #1
ROUND 1
FUCK IT WE'LL FIGURE OUT SPECIFICS LATER
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Fill: Pandora's Box, Chapter 2
(Anonymous) 2017-02-21 01:47 pm (UTC)(link)Credence remembered his -- Newt's -- green eyes. Remembered the shades and shapes they had taken when he spoke those words. Spring green and unwrinkled when he had offered his invitation. 'Wanting me here.' Mossy and narrowed when he had explained the way of things. 'Wanting to give me truth.' Viridian and creased at the corners when he had given his promise. 'Wanting to save me.'
If he had had a mirror, Credence would have searched in it for whatever it was that Newt saw in him. What it was that made him want and want things for (not from) this useless, sinful vessel. The boy doubted he would find it. He looked at a hand and clenched a fist around the scarred flesh of the palm. Older words like "weak" and "no use" echoed from the blackness inside. Tendrils of darkness snaked out from that core, preparing to lash out...
"Buzzip." The bright insects that had been flying all about him zipped away. Outside of the enchanted desert, a strange cry like a muted trumpet sounded. With an inaudible gasp, Credence brought up his arms and pressed them to his chest. 'Not here. Not now.' He could and would control it -- for Newt.
He felt the shadows subside. He lowered his arms, drew a ragged breath, and cast about for the wizard. The other man had gone to get supplies from... the boat. Newt had said they were on a boat... sailing to England... to publish a book about all of this...
The boy looked -- sensed -- all around once more. He felt the dusty rock on which he sat. Smelled sand and distant flowers and something like damp wool on the breeze. Heard calls and cries more exotic than what he had once heard from Central Park Zoo. Saw blue sky and red earth and green leaves and furtive darts of other colors. Newt's colors, in his suitcase.
'He can find these things... make this world... and he wants me in it...' His thoughts spiraled back, hovering between joy and doubt.
"Credence," the wizard's voice called him back and he turned his head to see his rescuer approaching with cloth and paper bundles. "Not much, I'm afraid, but I've gotten some food." He set the paper-wrapped parcel beside his guest. Then, he dropped his other burden in the sand and sat on it. "You must be famished."
"I'm..." Was Credence hungry? "I don't know." The slight frown on his listener's face compelled him to explain. "Ma--" he choked slightly on the epithet. It tasted of bile. "She discouraged 'vile bodily desires'." He lightly clenched his abused fist again. "We learned not to be hungry." Green eyes widened in horror, shone with a verdant light of sympathy. He added, "I learned not to be a lot of things."
"That's..." Now the wizard looked like the one with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. His lips rounded as if to say "awful". Puckered for "horrible". Drew back to spit out "insane" or perhaps "evil". He apparently found no descriptor that suited the passionate mix of sorrow and anger in his gaze. He merely shook his head before saying, "The simple desires: to live, to move, to eat, to drink, to mate, to protect..." No word was given greater emphasis, yet the fifth verb spun briefly in Credence's head. Flowed down his core, leaving a flush in its wake. Newt continued, unaware, "Nothing is more natural to any living creature."
"I--" The older man seemed to realize the earnestness of his stare. He ducked his head, curtaining those eyes with sun-burnished hair. "I might be, a little." Credence clamped down on unwanted sensation. Pushed it into the void inside. "Hungry," he clarified to a questioning sidelong glance.
"I hope you like sandwiches," Newt said as he began unwrapping the food. He offered a triangular cut of ham and cheese before taking one himself. He ate it in three bites and promptly took one of the two remaining pieces before his companion had even opened his mouth. He paused with his own mouth open to receive the next rapid bite when he noticed Credence's stare. Freckled cheeks flushed to match his hair and a hand went to his mouth while he finished chewing his first bites. "Sorry," he mumbled, hand moving to the back of his head. "I'm used to eating quickly so I can take care of my creatures."
Impossibly, Credence felt his lips curving, rising at the corners. He felt again a glowing warmth from inside when Newt returned that smile with a small chuckle. Before he could think of anything to say though, his host suddenly tipped back, flailing.
"Dougal!" Newt chided. His admonishing tone erased the boy's warmth and smile, nudged the darkness. But his attention was not on the human with him. "I haven't forgotten you," he said to the air behind him, picking up an apple from the parcel. The fruit rapidly diminished to a core. "My Demiguise, Dougal," he offered an explanation to his companion's wide-eyed stare. "He's invisible." Clothing rustled and moved as unseen hands rifled pockets. "And incorrigible. That's all for now-- oof!" He was apparently pulled over again. "Yes, yes, I'll see to the babies, too. Sorry," he added to the other visible member of the group, "it's feeding time."
Seeing the joyful glow that radiated from the wizard's entire being as he scratched an invisible head, Credence blurted out, "Can I come along?" He ducked his head down immediately after the words popped out. His finger started to tighten around his sandwich as he braced for words of rejection.
"Not until you've finished eating." It was not the negation he had expected. His gaze shot up once more to see Newt half frowning at the uneaten sandwich. The expression instantly cleared when Credence took a bite. It became a fresh smile when he chewed and swallowed and took another bite. "I might even ask you to help, if you'd be so good?"
'Good.' He tasted the word along with ham and cheese. Swallowed it and felt it fill him up. "I'd be... I'd be happy to." He was not sure if he had ever used that word before. Certainly he had never felt it in any memory. He quickly finished his food, unsure if it tasted wonderful or if he even truly tasted it at all.
"Shall we then?" Wordlessly, he followed Newt from one fantastic miniature world to another. Watched the wizard greet and feed the many creatures (the names did not fully enter Credence's brain). Carried and handed him things he could name no better than the beasts that ate them. He saw the man's earlier glow return, increase until the boy's eyes stung to look at him. Whatever emotion it was that suffused Newt's features -- moved from his fingers through soft, easy touches to his adoring creatures -- Credence could not quite identify.
'Want.' It was not so much a coherent thought as an indefinite yet familiar mix of longing and envy, echoed and distorted from his inner darkness. Black tendrils of thought and need given near-form inched from his consciousness, startling the strange tentacle-mouthed beasts Newt had been feeding. 'No.' The boy clamped down on the desires. Pushed them down as he always had, though they never seemed to go deep enough recently. A questioning glance from the wizard halted the wisps of darkness.
"You'd best stay back here," Newt said. He added as Credence started to apologize, "The Nundu doesn't like people."
Other feelings were temporarily subsumed in awe as, at a relative distance, a large creature roared, extending a terrifying ruff. "Yes, I know," Newt said to this Nundu while they approached one another. The man held a bucket of meat in one hand. "He'll behave if you will." He held up a large cut of meat and the fearsome beast took it almost politely from him. It swallowed it whole and then took another and another until the bucket was empty. It nosed the empty bucket and then Newt, making mewling grunts. "Sorry, that's all for now." Disappointed, the Nundu stalked away, tail high.
'To catch and tame such a monster...' Credence thought as his host walked carefully back to him. "You must be some kind of hero."
That smile turned sheepish. A hand went up to the ducked head, further mussing already disheveled hair. "My brother is the hero. I'm just an odd wizard that likes creatures better than I do people." Green eyes looked at him through ruddy bangs. The question just forming in his mind must already have been in his face as an earnest clarification quickly followed. "Most people."
'Special.' Mr. Graves had called Credence that in his lying words, but Newt's warm smile and soft voice promised it. All the more sincere for being implicit.
"Well..." The wizard said, hand going to his hair again. The soft drawn-out word and nervous gesture startled the younger man from his reverie. "It may not look it in here, but it's getting rather late." He started moving back to the desert area. His guest, having not been recalled enough to the present moment as yet, silently hurried along behind him. "I thought that, with the storm in the outside world..." Newt picked up the cloth bundle he had left in the sand. "...You might be more comfortable in here."
"Here?" Credence glanced at the rocks and dust.
"Well, not here here." The other man shouldered the bundle and lead the way to an area that slightly resembled human living space. Even with sparse furnishings, it was still homier than... the past. "If you don't like the sofa," he said as he shook sand out of the bedding that had comprised the bundle, "I think there's a cot around here somewhere."
"I don't need much," Credence answered honestly. "Whichever you don't prefer."
"Me?" Newt glanced in the general direction of the ladder to the outside world. "I was going to--"
'Stay.' An incorporeal grip -- suppressed will made into force -- reached out to stop him. The boy extended his hands to grasp a sleeve, hopefully masking that other touch. Not trusting his voice, he implored with his eyes, 'Stay with me.'
"I..." Newt hesitated, looking from the hand on his arm, to the entrance, to the eyes locked on him. Brows subtly wrinkled and smoothed as a shade of doubt briefly darkened the green of his gaze.
"Please," Credence said the only thing he could think of. "I'm afraid." It was one of the many emotions swirling in, around, and from the dark vortex within.
"I suppose..." The wizard's expression softened. "...For tonight." His smile, however, did not quite reach his eyes. "The storm is making a frightful racket out there." He spread a blanket over the sofa, lightly extricating himself from the boy's hold in the process.
"You'll be close?" Credence asked as he was nudged towards the makeshift bed. "I'm not sure about... It."
"Well if you like I could tell you a story." He settled on the sofa, curled on his side to watch the man who pulled an armchair up beside him. When he saw a genuine smile overtake those warm features once more, he was even comfortable. "I don't know if it will improve your dreams any, but I'll tell you about how I met my Nundu..."
Newt's voice pulled Credence deeper into his vibrant world. And, eventually, into relatively peaceful slumber, with dreams shaded green, red, and blue.
---
So sorry for the delay! Got busy & then struggled to get back in the writing zone. Trying to build the tension believably but interestingly and trying to do Credence's character justice... Hope it's at least good enough to keep you willing to read the next chapter...
Re: Fill: Pandora's Box, Chapter 2
(Anonymous) 2017-02-21 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Pandora's Box, Chapter 2
(Anonymous) 2017-03-01 02:55 pm (UTC)(link)I love this so much, it's just what I imagined. I love the subtle uneasiness and sense of wrongness and the little hints of Newt not being completely comfortable with it all. And Credence's thoughts make so much sense, especially how he's focusing on little things Newt says and interpreting it in ways he wants to - it makes a lot of sense considering how messed up his social development must be from his childhood.
I also really like your writing style, it's quite dreamy and I feel like this fits in with the sense of unreality that Credence must be experiencing.
I hope your writing goes well, I'll definitely be here for the next chapter!
Re: Fill: Pandora's Box, Chapter 2
(Anonymous) 2017-12-06 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)I don't know if it's likely you'll come back to this fic, but I just wanted to say thank you again for writing this fic. FBAWTFT fandom didn't really go off in a direction I was interested in, but this fic is just perfect. If you ever decide to continue this, or post it on AO3, I'll definitely be there.