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First, may I direct your attention here: it’s angsty, but it’s a nickname! Ehe.
Second,
“Darkipoo, can you—”
“Don’t call me that.” Dark was stooped over, squinting at a pile of papers. He looked over at Wilford, only half-annoyed. “What?”
“Never mind that,” Wilford stuttered, dropping his bag with a suspiciously heavy thump. “Are you wearing glasses?”
Dark took them off, rubbing his face. “Mark has awful eyesight,” he muttered, setting the papers aside. Wilford eyed them as they slid off the kitchen table, grainy security camera images on newsprint.
“Do they have any leads?” Wilford asked, conversational, as he picked up his bag again.
“Nothing too close to home,” Dark said, pulling the top paper closer to him. “What was it you wanted, Will?”
Wilford grumbled, inaudible, and disappeared into the laundry room.
“What’s that?”
“Why do you call me Will, then?” Wilford poked his head out of the laundry room, glaring.
“It’s one syllable less than your full name.”
“Then why can’t I give you nicknames?”
Dark paused, turning, and peered over the top of his glasses. “Why?”
“I said, why can’t I—”
“No, why would you want to give me… nicknames?” Dark looked very much as if he was repressing a shudder, and Wilford grinned.
“They’re fun, Smoke-For-Brains.” With a wink, Wilford disappeared back into the laundry room, along with the strong smell of copper.
Dark sighed, turning back around. “Very clever.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Wilford sang, and there was the sound of the washing machine starting. “But I do have a question.”
“Mm.” Dark didn’t look around as Wilford shuffled over, brushing off his hands. “What is it, then?”
“If—hypothetically—I were to kill someone, who would you least like for it to be?”
“Who would I least like for you to kill?”
“Uh, yeah. Besides Mark, I guess.”
Dark scowled at his papers, distracted. “Our mayor, probably.” He muttered something about high-profile kills and the difference between murder and assassination, and Wilford shifted from one foot to the other.
“Well, uh—”
“Why?” Dark looked up, long-suffering, and met Wilford’s eye. “Will, did you actually—”
“It was an accident!” Wilford held up a mayor’s badge, caked with blood and hair.
“Warfstache—” Dark growled, standing with his nails digging into the table.
Wilford, to his credit, stood his ground. “Oh, now we’re bringing out the last names, are we?”
“This isn’t a joke,” Dark snapped.
“No, of course.” Wilford pulled himself up, eye to eye with Dark. “Everything is serious, isn’t it? As long as you say so?’
Dark sagged, glaring. “Is this an argument you want to have?”
“No,” Wilford shot back, deflating. “Never mind, then.” Without looking at Dark, he walked across the kitchen to rummage in the cupboards, pointedly ending the conversation.
Dark looked down at the pile of papers in front of him. Too many escapades, too careless. He really needed to talk to Wilford about this, random killing for sensation and sloppy coverups. They had to be more… serious.
“Do you want me to corrupt the security camera footage?”
“Yes please,” Wilford muttered, mouth full of cereal.
Dark nodded to no one, taking his glasses off. “I’ll be back, then.”
Wilford hummed his thanks, still avoiding Dark’s eye.
Dark paused at the door, head down, and his voice approached an apology. “See you in a bit.”
Wilford looked up, surprised, but Dark was already gone.
“Darkipoo, on your left!”
Dark jumped back, snarling, as his aura lashed out. It had barely been a week, but their stockpile of weaponry was too easily trackable. Police had found them, and whatever half-trained SWAT team had found them didn’t stand a chance. His aura, coiling, took four of them out in one swoop. “I see that.”
Wilford, a whirlwind of blades, was having the time of his life. “Just making sure,” he called back, cheerful, and the men went down two at a time.
He was distracted, and Dark let his aura swarm around them, giving them a second to draw back. “Stay focused.”
“I am,” Wilford snapped, turning his knife in his hand. “Shut up, Darky.”
“Focus more on fighting—” Dark lunged forward again, knocking freshly-drawn guns across the floor, “—and less on the stupid nicknames.”
“I am.” Wilford moved at the same time Dark did, and they stood back to back against the last two members of the SWAT team.
Dark took a deep breath, forcing himself to look. His aura wanted power, and it fought him even now. It would be so easy to let her take over, to let her finish this fight—but they were nearly there, and they needed control.
A pair of gunshots, and Dark’s aura jumped between him and the fire. Let me help.
Dark pushed her back, wresting the gun from the man and turning it back on him. Not now.
A final gunshot, and the man under Dark’s foot fell back, limp. It was finished, and there was silence. “Will, are you alright?”
Instead of a reassuring quip, Dark felt, too late, the human come up behind him. In a second, he was in a terrible, choking headlock, a gun to his temple.
“What do you want?”
The officer, whoever it was, barked, “on your knees, and hands on your head!”
Dark turned slowly, and his stomach twisted. Wilford slumped in a growing pool of blood, pale against the floor.
The human behind him, for all his steady hands, smelled of sweat, and fear, and blood.
Wilford’s blood.
Let me help.
Do it.
Dark wasn’t sure if humans felt anything when they were ripped limb from limb, but his aura certainly seemed to enjoy it. When she stepped back, Dark’s eyes were pure black, and he was stained to the elbow in rotting human blood. Messy, but God, was it necessary.
His aura swirled around the room, cloaking the two of them. She wasn’t as fast at teleporting them, but for now, it would do. Dark knelt, knees wet in Wilford’s blood, and grabbed for his shirt.
“Will? Wilford, can you hear me?” Dark pressed his hands into the wound—a deflected bullet. His fault? The humans’? “Wilford?”
Wilford barely stirred, eyelids flickering. He’d lost blood, too much blood, and Dark muttered to himself as he pressed harder, trying to stop the bleeding.
His aura cleared, and they were in the kitchen again, and Wilford was bleeding out onto the tile. Dark, with barely a thanks for the smoke nipping at his heels, sprinted for the first-aid kit. This was too familiar for him to be paralyzed in terror, but too delicate to risk Wilford’s life for a moment of reprieve.
Dark wrapped and wrapped the bandages until they matched the tightness in his chest, then shook Wilford’s shoulder. “Will, get up.”
Wilford, breathing more easily but still deathly pale, murmured, unintelligible.
“Wilford.” Dark picked him up bodily, Wilford’s arm around his shoulder. “Let’s get you to bed, and water.”
“Mm.”
Grumbling, Dark dragged him to bed and under the covers, then sat. He was still covered in blood—both of them were, human and Wilford’s and the smearing of black ichor around the edges. They were exhausted.
“You okay, Big D?” Wilford looked up under lidded eyes, woozy.
“I’m fine,” Dark muttered, scrubbing at his hands. “Don’t let that happen again, idiot.”
“Hey.” Wilford managed a smile, settling back on his pillow.
Dark helped him settle back, reaching for a bottle of water. “What?”
“You’re getting the hang of this nickname thing,” Wilford said, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Idiot?”
“Mm-hmm.” Wilford took the water bottle, small sips turning to desperate gulps.
“You’re an idiot, it’s not a nickname.”
“Aaaaaand you ruined it.” Wilford handed back what was left of the water, looking, if anything, even more pale.
“I—” Dark started with something approaching an apology, but Wilford had already closed his eyes, falling asleep. Dark shook his head and stood, heavy and sore. His aura whistled gently at his shoulder, a reminder, and Dark turned to go. “Rest up, then, idiot,” he muttered, turning out the light.
As the door closed, Wilford turned over, grinning gently to himself. “Take care of yourself, Darkipoo.”