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1.
It starts, strangely enough, with him and Kristen, neither of them really sleeping after their trip to the Nightmare Forest. They’re just friends because she’s a lesbian and he, well, he doesn’t know one hundred percent what he is yet but he knows he loves the Bad Kids. But something had changed between the two of them that day in the Nightmare Forest, the moments by the lake burned into their brains and now that something fits small and easy between them.
There’s a system in Mordred Manor that only the Bad Kids understand, a complicated line of coloured post-its and open doors that mark who is where and which beds are empty. Sandra Lynn and Jawbone quickly gave up trying to track them, no longer fazed by extra faces at the breakfast table and the rest of their parents slowly stopped the panicked calls trying to keep track of them. Maybe it’s just part of being an adventuring party, he thinks, or maybe they never should have been asked to do this so young.
Regardless he thinks he’s the first one to notice Kristen’s lone pink post-it and the door that’s always open. Sometimes she draws angry little faces on them, angrier with every day that Tracker’s away but mostly they’re just there and he can’t ignore them. He thinks she always puts them up late enough that no one will check them and he’s not sure what that means.
It’s two weeks before he goes into the room though, sure that whatever she wants he won’t be able to help. The shadows in his office had started to dance with what was probably a lack of sleep but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his mirror was wrong so he had found himself at the manor as he always does.
When he gets there he does a round, resisting the urge to look in every room to check for the rise and fall of his friends breathing. The system tells him Ayda is in the piano bubble with Fig and that Adaine had a nightmare. The system tells him Kristen and her pink post-it are alone, and that she doesn’t mind if someone comes in to talk.
He doesn’t expect to find her sat at her desk, furiously typing something out on her computer at three in the morning, shoulders shaking. For a second he’s back at the lake and he suspects she might be too. It’s a harder image to shake than they thought it would be, any questions he has falling flat in the air from his view in the doorway.
“Are you okay?” It seems useless to ask but it’s a start as he moves to sit cross legged on her bed. She starts at the interruption but relaxes at his voice.
“I don’t know man, it’s just a lot y’know. And like, Tracker’s gone and I miss her but I don’t know if I, like, miss her or miss what she meant in terms of like, everything.” He notices she doesn’t stop typing. The click of the keys fills the old chapel. “And Jawbone told me I should write her a letter, but I think it’s also kind of too my brothers so it’s just gibberish and stuff I half remember.”
With his sharp detective senses the shape Tracker left behind in Kristen’s life is visible everywhere in the room. Easily evident from the two distinct glasses on the nightstand and the way the shelves no longer quite feel full. It feels like a ghost of the place it was when it was home to two people.
“Can I get you something, I think there’s, like, sleepy tea or something in the kitchen?” He doesn’t know for sure but each time he goes into the kitchen there are at least three new tea varieties. Fig likes chamomile. Adaine likes licorice and rose.
“Nah, I think I’m good.” The typing slows and then, gradually it stops. The almost silence of the sleeping house pressing in around them. He can’t help but yawn, the edges of sleep finally coming to him now that he knows the Bad Kids are all safe enough.
“Maybe you should switch rooms for a bit.” He doesn’t know if that’s the right thing to say, but he thinks she might need to hear it under the vaulted ceiling. He always thought the chapel felt a little more haunted than the rest of the house, the jagged shapes of tombstones always silhouetted in the windows.
“You never met my family did you?” She’s talking but only half to him, he suspects this is like the letter, just a fragment of a story. “My mom was a lot but she was still my mom you know, she always sent me to school with band aids because I always used to scrape my knees. And on the first day of school I did and I came home and she just looked at me and said, ‘oh Kristen.’ And like I wonder if she knew that I was going to leave before I did and I think of her saying ‘oh Kristen’ every time we fight.
“And my brothers, they’re just babies. They have whole lives in front of them and they don’t even know it and I want to tell them that they’re going to be okay, you know.” He pictures two boys with her freckles, finding the gold coins he knows she leaves in their rooms. It’s a goddamn tragedy that they may never know their sister, who has saved the world and also each of the Bad Kids so many times over. Her world is so much bigger than it was that day in the cafeteria and while they are all better for it, and for her, he thinks those two boys are likely so much worse for not knowing this version of her.
He doesn’t have words for what she must be feeling, the mix of leaving and being left. Riz knows he’s lucky that he has his mom, and now in some ways has his dad too, and he wishes he could share just a fragment of that luck.
“I think you’re right.” She gets up from her desk, crystal closing with a definitive click. Her eyes are red rimmed but when she looks at him she smiles. And it takes him a second, to remember the last thing he had said. She clearly got up from her bed to write, in faded pyjama bottoms and a Harvestmen camp shirt he’ll have to remind Fig to steal to use for ‘stage costumes’. He wishes for a brief second he knew the Sleep spell that some of them had used on him, from the number of pink post-its he’d seen it had probably been a month of secret letter writing and quiet prayers. She looks more tired than he’s ever seen her. “I should switch rooms, you can help me find one in the morning.”
She cuts off his protests easily, mumbling something about using his detective skills to find the best available room in the manor as she drops onto the bed. He gets up to leave and she turns to him, for a brief second her face stern instead of sleepy. “It’s three in the morning man, and this is a king. We’ve shared a room before and if you leave now you’ll definitely wake at least one person up.”
He can’t really argue with that so he shrugs off his sweater, watching as she dispels the last of her lights with a flick of a hand. In the morning they will find her a normal room but for the night they will sleep in the echoes of the chapel. When his head hits the pillow, for the first time in a few nights, he falls straight into easy and undreaming sleep, lulled by the comfort of her steady breathing by his side.
2.
Today his meeting with Fig is at Basrar’s, because they both need to stop skipping class for extraplanar missions or risk flunking their junior year. Aguefort had made Gilear be the one to tell them in an awkward meeting that went on for far too long. Apparently, much to Fig’s dissent, neither being an archdevil of the Nine Hells nor a consultant for the celestials counts towards class credit. So meetings had moved from the upper and lower planes, to the ice cream shop in Elmville with its sticky vinyl booths.
He’s early and she's late, so he preemptively gets a black coffee and her usual hyper sweet coffee drink. He knows by the time she arrives it’ll be just cool enough for her to take a comfortable first sip. Right on schedule, she comes bursting through the door holding a thick textbook, probably intended to be a weapon, titled 'Barbarian Skills for Babies’. He takes another sip of his coffee as he pictures her in Gorgug’s classes again and their teachers tired faces.
“Sorry, I’m late.” She takes a sip of her coffee and her ever present grin widens. “It’s perfect, how did you know?”
“Magic.” He can’t help but smile back as they slip into the easy routine. He knows because between the Bad Kids they’ve bought every drink in the place and Fig has tried all of them. She’ll have a coffee now, then a milkshake once they’ve started and when she thinks he’s not looking she’ll put three drops of hot sauce in it, because hell fucked with her taste buds.
They talk for a while about the state of things off of the mortal plane. Fig has taken to her duties better than anyone could have predicted, reaching into the mess of corruption Kalina left and pulling it out bodily. Her corner of Hell almost sounds like it could be a pleasant place to be. Riz is just glad he gets to see his dad, but he’ll feed all this information back to the celestials and maybe it will result in some change that they can’t see yet.
After a while Fig calls a waitress to replace his coffee, in the seamless pattern of their meetings. She turns to him frowning this time though, and for a brief second he sees the full force of Hell burning behind her eyes. “When was the last time you had something that wasn’t caffeinated?”
He would be annoyed by the question, if he wasn’t so unsure of the answer. He thinks he had breakfast but he definitely skipped lunch to trail Porter for her so it’s been maybe ten hours, maybe more. His silence is clearly enough of an answer for her as she orders fries ‘for the table’ while looking at him dead on. Kristen is the only one who won’t cave when she stares like that.
“You’re my favourite legal advocate, you can’t starve to death.” The tension brought about by her challenging him to question her is dispelled just as quickly, her smile returning. He tries to explain to her again that she should hire an actual legal team as their food arrives. She pushes the basket of fries towards him and he eats half of them at once. He suspects that there are at least three lawyers lost in the tangle of the Sig Figs finances, she takes these things seriously. Regardless, he does his best to give her good advice.
When all the fries are gone and he’s helped her through some of her homework they start to think about leaving the ice cream shop. They could just message the rest of the Bad Kids and have real dinner there as well, six loud bodies crammed into a too small booth. But by the way she’s looking at the door though he thinks Ayda’s probably back from the Compass Points and inviting the Bad kids would interrupt the sacred space of these sort of secret meetings.
Instead, he offers to walk her back to the Manor because he’s not quite ready to leave the comfort of her company. His office always seems a little quiet after the life contained within the ice cream parlour. Fabian left his new friendship necklace at Mordred anyway after a wayward sword broke the chain on his, so he has an excuse even though he knows he doesn’t need one. He knows the thing between all of them isn’t just the strange bond of an adventuring party. They are one unit now, a tangled web of diner dates and sleepovers, always and forever. It seems less important to spend an evening mapping it out though, than walking through the red painted door of Mordred Manor and staying for dinner.
3.
“I brought you an orange.” He reaches out with the small bright fruit as Gorgug walks off the bloodrush field, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead.
It’s become another intricate Bad Kids ritual, Riz always meets them at practice. When Fabian is in town the three of them go and get ice cream, laughing so loud that Basrar threatens to kick them out, not that he ever would. But when he isn’t Riz goes to the field with an orange, climbs into the half orcs backpack and they walk. Or Gorgug walks at least, usually to the small artificer’s workshop his parents have created for him.
Gorgug talks him through the intricacies of a bloodrush practice as he’s soothed by the gentle rhythm of the bag bouncing against his back. Ever since they got back from the forest he knows he’s been more coffee than boy but during their walks his caffeine jitters always start to fade. He knows for these brief moments, with Elmville passing them by, he is completely safe, the only time he doesn’t want to question that feeling.
When they get to the Thistlespring tree it smells like fresh baked bread and motor oil. Wilma is in the kitchen with the light music of the radio station he knows Digby likes filling the air. She smiles when she sees them and Riz takes the moment Gorgug pauses to hug his mom to jump out of the backpack, stretching out the sleep in his limbs.
“You’re so tall now!” He doesn’t expect when Wilma turns her attention to him, pulling him into a close hug. He’s smiling even as he tries to extricate himself from her deceptively strong grip. He knows off to the side Gorgug will be flushing deep green, pulling a face thats equal parts embarrassment and love. She keeps them in the kitchen for a few minutes so she can fuss a bit and pass them hot, sweet tea that she says will help them think.
The workshop is a squat cozy building, built with just enough room that Gorgug doesn’t hit his head on the ceiling beams. Every available surface is covered in trinkets, cables and switches and tiny sculpted pieces. He pulls a now slightly squashed orange from his pocket as he climbs onto the tidiest surface, putting him almost at the artificer’s eye level, and offers out a piece. Gorgug takes it and pretends like he doesn’t inspect it for pocket dust before he puts it in his mouth. Riz pulls a case file out of his bag, unsure if the half orc is in the mood to talk more or just wants to work.
“How come the others don’t know you’re tall?” Gorgug doesn’t look up from his work bench as he asks the question. He sorts through the various pieces that have been left out and unaware of the way it leaves Riz feeling slightly stunned. He knows that he is tall, taller than his mom and both of Gorgug’s parents. But he also knows that he isn't; he’s shorter than Fig who all the rest say is short.
“Why don’t you tell them that you solved my last case?” He parries back. It had been a post practice hang just like this and he’d left his files sprawled across a work table, after leaving in a rush of inspiration that hadn’t paid off. The next morning Gorgug had arrived at school wide eyed with excitement and unravelled all the pieces of the theft case that Riz hadn’t spotted yet. He would have been embarrassed but it was hard to be when Gorgug was so happy and it would mean he could get a full night’s sleep.
The half orc shrugs, eyes still fixed to his tinkering. Riz passes him another piece of the orange. He writes a note to himself on a blue post-it stolen from the manor, his handwriting almost indecipherable. They work well together, he knows the tools Gorgug needs before he does and the sound of the workshop and Gorgug humming make a pleasant soundtrack to his note taking.
Riz chews on a piece of wire as he works, hoping he hasn’t taken something crucial, and starts to recognise the shape of the little mechanical object his friend is creating.
“Is that the Hangman?” He thinks it must be, though obviously much smaller. The bundle of metal is probably about the size of Adaine’s palm, but there is now definitely a front wheel and the start of a skull sculpted on the front. Gorgug holds his hand out, palm up, and Riz hands over the now slightly frayed wire, watching as it’s connected to a tiny switchboard.
“Yeah. When I’m done it’ll have a motor and a camera.” He nods along as Gorgug points out where various pieces will go as the model progresses and he tries to keep track of them in his head. The artificer’s technological explanations have solved more than one case in the past, through clues he would have otherwise missed or intricate gadgetry kept in his briefcase.
When he’s is done explaining how it should work, he places it in Riz’s hand so he can just look at it, take a second to catologue all the different things he’s just been told. Its heavy and pleasantly cool and when he looks closely he can definitely see the first pass at the Hangman’s features. He turns it over slowly, careful not to touch the arcane battery. The first time Gorgug had passed him a half worked gadget he hadn’t been so careful and his mouth had tasted like pennies and scream metal shows for a week.
When he looks up Gorgug is smiling. He makes a new note for himself, what should it mean to love the Bad Kids?
4.
It’s the second last game of the bloodrush season and he’s glad he gave it up after one awful practice because it means he gets to catalogue the looks of joy on his friends faces as they win. Under the blinding stadium lights, Fabian looks straight out of a story book. Of all of them, Riz thinks, Fabian looks most like he should be playing the hero.
The three girls sitting behind them clearly think so. He recognises one, she sits in the back of his rogue classes and he watches as Fabian sends a grin out into the crowd and she blushes. Adaine rolls her eyes when she thinks no one will notice and he matches it with a grimace of his own. While it’s fun to watch the sophomores try and chat Fabian up, it does mean they as a group have to try and redirect the baby adventurers. Fabian’s heart lies forever with the Bad Kids and currently with some beautiful pirate they haven’t met.
The game ends and they win because of course they do. They’ve played fifteen games so far this season, won eleven, drawn once. Fabian says the team from Bastion City cheated. Gorgug says they were just that good. The next game is against that team for the season title and Riz is sure it’s all they’ll hear about starting tomorrow. But tonight is for celebrating the win.
Fabian runs straight to them from the pitch, sweat sticking his jersey to his skin. He pulls as many of them as he can into a crushing embrace and as the smallest Riz easily gets caught up in it. There is no better feeling than the sticky sweet embrace of his party. He loves the rush of solving mysteries and unravelling answers but they are why it means anything at all.
Soon the rest of them make their excuses, disappearing into the indigo night, and he is left under the light of the bleachers with Fabian by his side. After the bloodrush games, when no one else is looking, he sees the only time Fabian is ever truly quiet. The bench is uncomfortable, designed for someone bigger than him but he knows Fabian won’t want to leave yet so they don’t. Instead he lets the taller boy lean into his side and they watch the grass of the bloodrush field sway in the breeze.
5.
Neither he or Adaine are particularly accomplished with their swords. A sword is a fine tool. It serves a purpose but she has her magic and he has his father’s gun and really using a sword to fight seems too close and too personal. That hadn’t stopped Fabian from trying to teach them though, in the long, tense style of practice that he’d grown up with. Neither of them used the sharp, narrow fencing swords that Fabian was accustomed to and eventually he had given up on them but the practices had stuck.
They knew it wouldn't hurt to learn a little, in case they needed it.
When he turns to pull his sword from where he keeps it on his bag, he feels her prod at his back in a gesture that lets him know she has energy to spare. In all likelihood something has happened with Aelwyn and she needs to let her frustration out before it burns her up. He whips round, blade light in his hands and moves to make the first slash, loose across her stomach. She grins as she jumps back, laughing to let him know it won’t be an easy fight.
It takes a minute at most before they are twisting and lunging in complete synchronicity, a whirl of blades and noise. Practices with Fabian had been a chore but this was fighting for the joy of moving and of learning and it feels good. At one point Adaine trips him, in her quick, calculated way and the impact with the ground knocks the start of a laugh out of him. And once he starts he can’t stop. They’re having fun. For a second she holds her sword point to his throat, concentrated fury across her face, but it doesn’t last and soon she’s collapsing into the grass from the weight of her own laughter.
When her giggles slow she reaches across the grass between them and takes his hand in hers and he can’t bring himself to move. Adaine isn’t physically affectionate in the way Fabian and Fig are, with their constant need for contact, but he’s noticed that when she can she will always link arms with one of them. For a while they are quiet and he is completely at peace, the grass soft against his skin and her hand tight around his.
“A girl in my divination class the other day asked me which of us were dating.” Adaine’s voice is tightly controlled from years of practice, he knows his role is to listen. He doesn’t want to let go of her hand. “Which is ridiculous because Fig has Ayda and Kristen has Tracker and Fabian has Leviathan.”
In the time since Riz met his father, he has realised that he doesn’t really want to do the dating thing either and had told Pok as much. His dad had hugged him tight and told him he was proud of him, for reasons he’s still not quite sure he understands. But he also gets asked which of the Bad Kids he’s dating at least once a semester and he understands why someone who hadn’t seen the ragged edges of the world in the way have would think that. The relationship they have with each other forms a delicate membrane around them all, keeping them safe from what would try and tear them apart.
“Fig gave me this book, that Ayda gave her from Compass Points, about types of love and soulmates and queer platonic relationships and it’s just a lot. But I didn’t tell the girl from class that because I didn’t want her to be even slightly right.” He can hear from the sound of her voice that Adaine is blushing. Although it’s a rare sight he doesn’t look, knows she hates it when her feelings are written that clearly across her face. “I’m just glad I have the Bad Kids and I love you all and if you tell Fabian that I’ll kill you with a sword.”
Riz does turn to look at her then, careful not to dislodge their interlocked fingers. He can’t see any of the nervous girl who he met on their first day at Aguefort, Adaine Abernant died somewhere over the course of the past two years. But Adaine O’Shaughnessy looks at him with her sharp elven eyes and smiles like she’s discovered the secrets of the universe in Ayda’s book. She probably has, she’s smarter than any of them and she can see the future.
He can’t find the words for what he wants to say to her so he squeezes her hand instead and her smile brightens. It’s always a relief that him speaking is not an important part of sword practice, they fight and she understands his silence. The next time she speaks he can’t find any trace of the rigid control she held moments ago, just excitement and love and care as she pulls him onto his feet and challenges him to continue fighting. They fall back into the rhythm of clashing blades and a heartbeat that he didn’t realise had sped up in his chest falls back into time.
They fight for maybe half an hour more before Ayda walks into the yard, watching them carefully before she speaks. He’s now got quite good at sword fighting Adaine, both of their skills improved by repetition and the knowledge that it isn’t really real, no blood will be spilled. Adaine can’t stand the sight of blood. He’s conscious of Ayda’s watching eyes as they grin and try to put on more of a show. Next time there’s a pause, once again caused by Adaine winning the fight, he turns to face her.
“Fabian told me to tell The Nerd Squad that dinner was ready. He said those words exactly.” Riz nods at her before turning to Adaine who’s got both thumbs up.
She speaks before he can. “Fabian didn’t make dinner did he?”
He pulls a face at the memory of the last dinner Fabian made, a combination of kippers, pasta and some elven herb that made the whole thing almost sweet. Fabian has for the most part been banned from the kitchen of the manor, due to inheriting his mother’s cooking skills and his father’s confidence. He’s always quick to tell them he prefers setting the table anyway, as no one else has the correct sense of occasion.
“No, Jawbone made bolognese. It smells very good.” He drops his sword in immediate relief and hears Adaine do the same. Almost as quickly he changes his mind, remembering Sandra Lynn’s strongly worded rule that swords not be left in the yard, with no exceptions. He picks his back up and moves for her’s as well as they make their way through into the house.
They stop to wash their hands in the kitchen sink, sides pressed together and still in unison, her words swirling in his thoughts. It feels good to know that she’s noticed it too, the way they all fit together, something so much bigger than what can be seen from the outside.
....
The next time they’re on a mission Adaine’s words about soulmates, however sparse they were, ring over and over in his head.They’re true in the way Gorgug and Kristen do the dishes in smiling silence and they’re true in the way Fabian kisses each of them on top of their heads as he makes his way to find ‘the best room’ in the Hangvan. It’s always noisy and messy when they travel but this time is louder than ever, now Fig’s parents aren’t there to keep track of them. He thinks it must have been Ayda that convinced her not to bring Gilear, and everyone’s thankful she succeeded where they’d previously failed.
He sits by the fire that Kristen’s set up and lets a wave of sleepiness hit him for the first time in a few days, soothed by the wave of noise coming from his party around him. He’s so used to the bustle and chaos that he can’t sleep in the quiet anymore. Their junior mission feels easier by far than hunting down the Nightmare King, so the past week has been a road trip interspersed with quick fights in pursuit of a haunted bracelet. They’ll find it in time, they always do, and for once if they don’t solve the mystery the world won’t end. He’s passed a cup of tea, probably from Gorgug by the delicate, citrus smell of it. They’re all holding him to a promise of a limited nighttime caffeine intake, so all eyes are on him as he takes his first sip.
From across the fire Fabian calls for his attention and he’s happy to give it to him. “The Ball, Fig says I can use Kristen’s old room as a dance studio so you should move your office.”
If he had to guess from the sputtering noises Fig is making, that is not what she said but he can also hear Fabian continue loudly pleading his case. He knows she and Gorgug have a combined recording studio and workshop in the basement so if Fabian really does move his studio then he has to get a room in the manor as well, for fairness. He shouts as much back to her and watches as she relents as more of them start to yell. He likes his office, but he likes time at the manor more.
With all his friends around him he lets himself feel a soft type of tiredness that’s always just out of reach no matter where he tries to sleep in Elmville. He isn’t sure whose idea it is to pull all the blankets out from the Hangvan so they can sleep under the stars but he loves whoever said it. He does in fact love all the Bad Kids just as Adaine says she does, and she knows they are truly loved in return.
The stars above them are endlessly vast. To his left Kristen mumbles through the different constellations she was taught as a kid and to his right he hears the soft whistle of Boggy’s breathing. He’s in the middle of the pillow pile, a wall formed of warm bodies around him, curling into the crook of Fig’s knee and the mass of Gorgug’s chest. The world around them continues to turn, mysteries are left unsolved and Riz Gukgak falls asleep in the warm embrace of the Bad Kids.