Chapter Text
Luther doesn’t remember the fight that got him in trouble.
He didn’t hit his head and lose his memory or anything like that. It’s just that when you do the same things over and over again they become mundane. Even violent things, things you aren’t proud of, can start to blend all together once you do them often enough. Bloody knuckles, wild eyes, the taste of copper behind bared teeth… yeah. Things like that.
Luther doesn’t know why he didn’t stop punching when Jack told him that the teachers were coming. He doesn’t know why he didn’t listen. He should have listened—he always listened to Jack—but that time he didn’t, and the next thing he knew he was being tackled by the security guard.
He thinks, sometimes, about the fact that he didn’t know how to keep his chin up until Jack came around. He was always trying to be smaller, always trying to shrink himself down—his father walked out when he was a baby and his mother worked three jobs and it was like even the people that were meant to love him didn’t give a shit. And then… then came Jack. A year above him, all charm and power and charisma… and he looked at Luther. He taught him to straighten his back and grit his jaw. He showed Luther how to be a man, and if Luther had to rough up a few kids to keep in his good graces, well… you can get used to anything.
Then the last fight happened, and Luther didn’t listen, and he can still see the disgust in Jack’s eyes as he backed away just before security came round the corner. Luther barely remembers recounting the incident to the principal, hunched down in his chair like he was trying to disappear as he told her that it was Jack’s idea, that it was Jack’s order. Jack, with his expensive button-down shirts and his slicked black hair. Jack, with his hundred-dollar cologne and his charming smile.
They were both expelled that day. Jack got private school. And Luther? Well.
Luther got Camp Green Lake.
***
Luther arrives at the bus stop in front of the juvie facility early Monday morning on the first of October, the day that Camp Green Lake is to be (re)opened. He has nothing with him but a backpack full of underwear and a few books, which he hitches up his shoulder as he takes in the kid already sitting at the bench, waiting. The kid looks up as Luther comes closer, blue eyes sharp, calculating, as if he’s always been there and is wondering who has come to intrude. The two of them stare at each other for a long moment, a mutual assessment, before the kid jerks his head to the side, indicating for Luther to take the seat next to him.
Luther does, setting down his backpack and trying not to feel awkward about how much space he takes up.
The kid doesn’t seem to be having an issue with that. He’s dressed in a boarding school uniform with his socked ankles crossed in front of him, leaning back as if he owns the place despite the handcuffs bracketing his wrists and the security guard with rather severe bangs hanging out at his shoulder. He looks young, maybe thirteen, his age at odds with the self-assurance on his face. He has the air of a person who is used to being the smartest person in whatever room he happens to be in—he seems like a kid who lives firmly rooted somewhere just a touch shy of cocky, for what is probably very good reason.
All in all, he’s not someone that Luther would usually be encouraged to speak to. Who he spoke to, what he did… Jack was very particular about those kinds of things. Jack would have been more likely to tell Luther to ‘put him in his place’ than to let him share some small talk.
Things have changed, though. Jack isn’t here. And Luther figures that the people he usually spoke to were who got him into this mess in the first place, so he might as well give this a shot. He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.
“So… do you know what happened at the camp? Why it was closed?”
It’s the first thing that came to mind, and he winces a little at the awkwardness of it. Thankfully the kid doesn’t seem to mind, because he ducks his head with a small, amused smile before turning his piercing gaze up toward the building across the street.
“Oh, sure. Warden got an ax to the head,” he says, as if he’s stating the weather.
Luther blinks. That was decidedly not what he was expecting. “…What. You can’t be serious,” he says, turning his large upper body towards the kid.
The kid, in turn, just lounges farther back in his seat. “As serious as an ax to the head can be. They found him one morning in early April, lying in the remains of his tropical fish tank with the blade still in his skull. Worst case of heatstroke I’ve ever seen.”
There’s no way this kid is in his sound mind. The judge never said anything about a—a—violent uprising or anything like that. That’s not—
Wait.
Heatstroke?
“What do you mean, heatstroke?” Luther asks, his brows furrowed.
The kid smirks. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the seven signs of heatstroke.”
Luther shifts in his seat. “Do I even want to know?”
“Sure you do. It’ll come in handy out in the desert. It’s saved my ass plenty of times. Goes like this.” The kid raises his cuffed hands and puts up a finger. “One—denial.”
“Wh—what do you mean denial?” Luther demands, feeling like he’s been yanked sideways.
The kid doesn’t respond. “Two—itching,” he says, raising a second finger.
“That doesn’t sound ri—”
A third finger. “Three—extreme thirst and urination.”
“Uh—”
“Four, excessive gas,” he says. He’s really on a roll now, not allowing Luther a word in edgewise. “Five, acute paranoia; six, uncontrolled perspiration, and, last but not least…”
There’s a pause in which the kid clearly wrestles with a series of complex emotions that Luther cannot possibly fathom. Luther watches, more perturbed with every passing moment, until the kid finally shakes himself out of it and says, “Last but not least. Sign number seven, homicidal rage.”
It’s rude to stare. Luther is well aware of that, considering how uneasy people's stares make him. Right now, however, he feels quite justified in gawking like a flying saucer just landed in front of him and a little green man stepped out and waved at him. Because that is exactly what it feels like just happened. It’s just… there is no way that these ‘seven signs of heatstroke’ are accurate. He’s ninety percent certain that he’s being screwed with. Either that or the kid has a screw loose, himself. That other ten percent, though… god. Suffice to say that Luther is now having some serious doubts about a few anatomical facts that he’s never doubted before.
Shaking himself, Luther pushes all that aside. He just… he can’t, right now. He’s dealing with a lot as it is. Instead, he latches onto something else the kid said—something about how he’s been out in the desert before. Taking a leap, Luther changes tact and says, “So you’ve been to camp already.”
“Yup,” the kid says, rolling his neck out. “They offered all of us campers a choice when the place closed—finish out our time in Juvie or wait and go back to camp when it opened again. And, well, what can I say? I’m a masochist.”
“…Sure,” Luther says, feeling less sure every passing second. Thankfully, the decidedly less-than-cohesive conversation that they’re having is interrupted just then by the arrival of another kid, a boy with short-cut hair and a scar on his brow who gives the two of them a surly look before he stands to one side, flipping a playing card between his fingers. He’s followed by a black girl with curly bleached hair, and then, as if a dam somewhere has broken, a bunch of kids arrive all at once, swarming the bus stop.
Luther offers the girl his seat just as the crowd hits, going to stand to the side with his backpack. He tries his best to melt into the background but judging by the looks he keeps getting he’s not doing a very good job. He’s nervous, too, which means his stomach is acting up—he has a feeling that he’s going to regret that breakfast burrito he had earlier when they’re all in a confined space on their way to camp, but heck, too late to do anything about it now. Hopefully, the bus has windows that open.
There are about forty teenagers milling about when the bus comes, creeping up to the curb. In just a few minutes they’ll be boarding, leaving their ordinary lives behind on their way out to Camp Green Lake. Luther bites his lip, willing his heart to stop beating out of his chest.
It’s then that the last of them arrives, ushered over by a second bored-looking security guard with a tan brace on his wrist. The kid stumbles, carrying nothing and dressed in just a black coat with a fuzzy collar and a motel towel, an exceedingly odd choice. Luther frowns, but he doesn’t have time to contemplate it further before the kid has tripped himself right into Luther’s space, his eyes wide and red, with huge blown pupils.
“Christ, you’re big,” he says, apropos of nothing.
Luther’s mouth twists. “And you’re high, I’m guessing,” he says, tilting his chin up and staring down his nose.
The kid waves a hand, showing off the word ‘hello’ scrawled on his palm in sharpie. “Details, details. Anyway, does anyone have any munchies? I’m freaking starving—”
And just like that, he wanders away, nearly tripping over the trailing corner of his towel in his bare feet. Luther stares after him, absolutely baffled, until the boy with the playing card snorts, dragging him out of his musings.
“How tall are you, anyway?” the guy asks, raising the scarred brow.
Luther shifts, uncomfortable. “Uh, six foot four? Ish?”
“Ish? You don’t even know?”
“I’m still growing,” Luther says, defensive. The guy just shrugs, flipping the card from one hand to the other with practiced ease. A moment later he heads forward to stand closer to the bus door, leaving Luther behind. Which is fine, because it’s not like Luther was planning to make friends straight off the bat. He’s here as penance for what he’s done, after all—it isn’t about making friends, it’s about making things right. About paying for what he’s done.
Breathing in slowly, Luther watches as the bus door creaks open. No more dawdling, he thinks to himself. No more putting it off.
It’s time to go.
***
The bus is pretty full by the time everyone is on board. Luther picked a spot at the very front, just behind the two official camp security guards who are accompanying them out into the desert, guns in hand. He finds himself in the company of the guy with the playing cards, the girl with the curly hair, and the stoned kid, the last of which he assumes chose a seat near the front because he couldn’t make it any farther back in his current state. He’s sprawled out in his seat, staring out at the parking lot like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen in his life. Luther tries not to roll his eyes and instead focuses on the girl.
“First time at camp?” he asks, aware that he’s being awkward but unable to help himself. She has perfect make-up on, the kind that movie stars wear on the red carpet, and he tries not to stare. He’s pretty sure he fails.
Thankfully, she doesn’t seem too put off by it. “Yeah. You?” she asks.
Luther nods. “Yeah. It’s, uh, an interesting place, or so I’ve heard.”
The girl laughs, and Luther smiles, and then they lapse into a stilted silence that stretches between the two of them like taffy. They have fifty minutes to go until they reach the camp.
Well. It could be worse, Luther reminds himself. Jack could be here with him, after all. He turns his attention to the city outside the window as it thins out into suburbs and then into farm country, until civilization seems to fall away altogether in favor of a stretch of unforgiving desert. The bus buzzes with superficial conversation, campers mumbling to each other under the revving of the vehicle’s overheating engine. Luther wonders offhand how many of these kids know what they’re getting into. Luther certainly doesn’t—it feels like a dream, still. Like he’ll wake up at any moment. He wonders if Jack was a dream, too—maybe his whole life was some kind of fantasy, some kind of nightmare, and he’ll wake to find out that he’s actually nothing more than a normal guy in a normal world, one with a normal life and a normal body and normal problems and—
He shakes the thought from his head, folding his arms across his chest and trying to shrink down into his seat. Normal? Him? Not likely. He’s never once been normal, and sometimes it feels like that’s by design. Like some greater force has shaped his existence, like he’s being watched and judged even when he’s by himself, alone with his own ungainly, too-large body. He’ll never blend in, never be just another guy, no matter how desperately he might want to.
It’s a sobering thought, especially in the face of his camp sentence. A thought that is made all the worse when he realizes with a lurch of his gut that they’re nearly there, the hour-long trip having whittled itself down to nearly nothing while he was lost in his head. Oh, how unfair the passage of time is, always slowing down when you want something to be over and speeding up when you need something to slow.
At least he isn’t doing this alone. He can’t imagine what it would be like to face down the end of the drive across the desert all on his own, wrapped in a blanket of silence and heat as the unrelenting sun bore down on him and him alone, facing the rest of his life and the other side of his last fight with shaking hands and trembling lip. But he doesn’t have to face that, thank god. He isn’t the only one, and for that, he’s never been more grateful. Even as the volume of the kids talking all around him only seems to rise as they pull off the dirt road and into the lot at the front of the first of the dust-colored buildings, nervous tension tightening in the air.
There’s a pair of people waiting for them there, a man and a woman. They’re both dressed smartly, the woman in a flared dress reminiscent of something from the sixties and the man in a white vest overtop a thin blue shirt with short sleeves and a starched collar. Luther studies the woman for a moment—her hair is a beautiful cascade of dirty blonde, and the lipstick on her soft smile is a charming shade of red—before focusing on the man. He’s wearing white shorts and impeccable white socks, and his face is decorated with a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and mustache combo that makes him look like he’d be at home in Victorian England. He watches with narrowed eyes as the bus comes to a stop, polishing something in his hand with a handkerchief. A moment later he raises it to his eye—a monocle, glinting in the sunlight.
Luther furrows his brow as the bus engine cuts out. The woman, he assumes, is one of the staff members, judging by the cart at her side and the clipboard in her hands. That would make the man the head of the camp, the replacement to the guy who supposedly got the ax to the skull. He seems… well, kind of an odd sort of guy. Luther has never seen anyone use a monocle outside of superhero movie villains, and he certainly wasn’t expecting his first encounter with someone who does to be an old man out in the middle of nowhere.
…Not that Luther really has room to judge, all things considered.
“Alright, everybody off!” the lady security guard calls, and there’s a bustle as everyone hurries to grab their things. Luther stands and starts to shuffle into the aisle at the same time as the kid across from him, the one with the playing cards—he magnanimously gestures for Luther to go first, rolling his eyes as he does. Luther smothers his responding eye roll, slinging his backpack across his back and angling his shoulders to get down the narrow stairs and out the door.
“Number One!” the man calls, as soon as Luther steps down into the harsh sunlight. “Hand over your bag. Quick, quick, we don’t have all day!”
Luther hands his bag over, watching with dismay as the man rifles around in it, searching for contraband. The woman smiles, raising the clipboard. “What’s your name, dear?” she asks.
“Luther,” Luther says. He watches as she marks his name off a list on her clipboard, taking the stack of clothing that she hands over. A moment later, the man hands his backpack back to him, ushering him to stand to one side as he beckons the next camper over with a loud, “Number Two!”
And so it goes. First Luther (one), and then playing card guy (two), and then the girl with the movie star make-up (three), and then the stoned kid (four), and then the heatstroke guy with the cuffs on (five) who calls the woman ‘Mom’ and the man ‘Dad’. They all take their things, coming to stand beside Luther in varying shades of nervous/sullen/bored/amused. Luther watches the whole time, taking note of all the campers that he’s going to be living with for the next six months.
They’re a motley crew, to say the very least.
The man has just called forward camper number six when a sudden loud siren cuts through the air, a police car pulling in behind the bus. Luther—along with all the others—turns away from Number Six to watch as the cop car pulls to a stop and one of the camp’s security guards steps up to open the back door. Luther cranes his neck as the man reaches in and hauls out…
…wow. That is one of the smallest girls Luther thinks he’s ever seen. If she breaks five foot he’ll eat a dirty sock. She looks up as the guard closes the car door, her face pale and her eyes huge between two curtains of mousy brown hair.
“Number Seven!” the man calls, sharp and impatient, gesturing to her as he ushers Number Six into line with the rest of them. “Come here! Hand me your effects!”
The girl does, ducking her head as she goes. Whether it’s in embarrassment or anxiety Luther isn’t sure, but as the man looks down on her with disdain he feels a sudden urge to stand between them.
He doesn’t, of course, because it’s not his place. There’s an order of things in places like this—authority to respect, orders to follow, all that jazz. He’ll be damned if he’s going to screw it up his first day here. Yes, even if said authority treats them like wayward cattle. Luther grits his teeth, standing taller and staring straight ahead as unlucky Number Seven joins him and the others at the side of the bus.
He has a feeling it’s going to be a long day.
***
“Numbers One through Forty-Three, listen up! I am Sir Reginald Hargreeves. You may call me Sir Hargreeves. Today, October first two-thousand-and-nineteen, is, for most of you, the first day of your sentence at Camp Green Lake. Follow along while I show you the camp and introduce you to the staff, as I will NOT be doing it again.”
Luther listens, rapt, as the man turns on his heel to lead them from the bus and into the compound, waving a hand toward the administration building as he goes. There is a small crowd of adults waiting in an open area between a cluster of dusty buildings—Luther swipes the sweat out of his eyes to get a better look at them.
“You’ve already met Grace,” Sir Hargreeves says, and gestures to the woman in the dress, who smiles with a little wave.
“Mom,” Five says, a small smirk on his face.
Sir Hargreeves frowns. “Your insubordination clearly hasn’t ceased in your time away, Number Five. Yes, you children all have your ‘nicknames’ for us, but trust me when I say that if I hear you referring to me or anyone else as anything but a name or an assigned number you WILL be docked shower tokens.”
“Will I?” Five asks mildly. “Because I seem to remember my social worker putting up quite the fuss the last time I went two weeks without a shower.”
“Do not test me, boy,” Sir Hargreeves says, a severe frown on his face, before he turns to wave forward the next staff members, three counselors who look far too identical to be a coincidence.
Luther tries to pay attention to their real names, but he’s rather distracted by Five saying, “The IKEA mafia, Swede One, Two, and Three,” under his breath. Likewise for the janitor, a little guy who he calls Herbie, and the security guards, Hazel and Cha-Cha. There is a lady counselor who is dubbed Aggie, which almost sounds like a normal name, and a secretary who Five calls Polka-Dot, and then introductions are over with a promise that they will meet everyone else ‘as necessary’. Luther sighs, knowing he’ll have to ask for their actual names later on, and allows himself to be shepherded into one of the three changing room tents to put on a set of his new clothes, a white t-shirt and bright orange coveralls. The outfit is topped off with a set of large boots that have clearly never been worn by anyone before him.
“We had to special order those for you, dear,” says Grace as she takes Luther’s clothes and squeezes them into a plastic bag to put away for now. She smiles and gives Luther a pat on the cheek. “A special order for a special boy!”
Luther smiles back despite himself. She’s a bit of an odd one, Grace, but she’s sweet and he thinks he understands why Five calls her Mom.
The rest of their shuffle around the camp goes quickly. They stop by the recreation room, the showers, and the tents they are to sleep in, where they leave their belongings for the time being. Luther, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, and two more kids whose numbers Luther didn’t catch are assigned to Tent U, which Five cheerfully calls the Umbrella Tent. Luther nods along, his mind already a whirlwind of information and sand and heat and sweat, following behind as Five leads the way after Sir Hargreeves to the cafeteria for their first meal on the campgrounds. Grace is serving them, her beatific smile still stretched across her cheeks even as the kids that have lined up make faces at the low quality of the food she’s dishing out.
Luther, he finds, doesn’t mind. He just eats, ducking his head low over his tray. Number Four, the stoner boy, is tearing into his bread with a wild abandon and leaving crumbs everywhere as Three, the make-up girl, looks on in mild amusement. Seven, the mousy girl, is quiet, picking at her beans. Five laments the lack of coffee served with the meal, Two flips his plasticware around in his fingers like he needs something to do with his hands at all times, and Luther… well… he allows the conversations around him to wash over him, snark and laughter and awkward questions sent back and forth over the table.
By the time dinner is over, Luther feels more exhausted than he thinks he’s ever felt in his life. Even a second serving of food doesn’t really help—it’s in his bones, in his blood, a part of him that he doesn’t yet know how to face. And it’s only going to get worse, he knows. When they start digging, when shovel hits sand under the weight of the beating sun, he will probably feel even more exhausted than he does now. Still, he’s grateful when they file back to the sleeping tents, falling into his assigned bunk with a whump.
It’s then, and only then, that he realizes that he’s not going to be able to sleep any time soon.
Part of it, he knows, is the change. Knowing that this is his penance, his punishment… it adds gravity to every action he undertakes. Another part of it is the sheer number of bodies in close proximity. At home, it was just him and his mom, and his mom was only there when she wasn’t at one of her three jobs. He’s not used to being around so many shuffling, snoring people. Not used to being so far away from home, either. Not used to the way the heat beats down all day and seeps away from the chilled night. Not used to the thin, hard cot that his feet hang off of. Not used to this, not used to that… he wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.
But he got used to the fights. The violence. The blood. If anything, this is a step up from where he was before, all things considered.
He sighs, low in his throat, and turns onto his side. There is the smallest sliver of the night sky visible through the tent doorway, and he focuses on that, the moon shining through. It’s big, bright, surrounded by more stars than Luther ever sees in the city. Strange, distant, but somehow still the same.
He’s so focused on the view that he doesn’t realize that there is a pair of eyes on him until their owner leans forward off her bunk, angling to see what he’s looking at. She smiles a moment later, turning back to him. “The moon is almost full, huh?” she says, and her face is make-up free for the first time all day.
Luther thinks she looks just as lovely like this.
But she asked a question. He shakes himself, and says, “It’s actually waning right now. It was full a few days ago.”
The girl, Three, snorts. “I see,” she says, amused.
Luther winces. “…Sorry, that was kind of weird to know off the top of my head, huh?”
But Three shakes her head. “No! It’s pretty cool, actually. Where did you learn that?”
“Uh. Well, I was really into moon stuff when I was a kid, so… I kind of wanted to be an astronaut but then I hit the height limit and now… well, now I’m here.”
“Is it what you expected?” she asks, bracing herself up on an elbow.
Luther hums. “The camp? Not really. Not sure I expected much of anything, though, to be honest—”
A groan sounds from across the room, cutting him off. “Would you two go to sleep?” says Number Two.
Three pouts. “Hey! We’re being quiet!”
“Not quiet enough,” Two grumbles.
“What, can’t handle the fact that someone is having a nice conversation without you?” Luther snarks, annoyed.
Two snarls. “Whatever, Spaceboy. Don’t make me throw a playing card at you—I’ll give you a papercut from ten feet away.”
Luther scrunches his face up. “Spaceboy?” he asks, turning to Three, who is snickering.
“I think that’s gonna stick,” she says.
Luther groans, dropping back to his bunk. Spaceboy… ugh. Why this? And that isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that no matter how angry Luther wants to be about it, he can’t find it in himself to be truly upset. It’s worlds better than what Jack used to call him. He’ll take Spaceboy over King Kong any day.
Luther doesn’t remember the fight that got him in trouble. He doesn’t know how to move on from his mistakes, doesn’t know how to outgrow the violence that has embedded itself in his every cell. But heck if he isn’t going to try.
He closes his eyes, and he sleeps.