Work Text:
Request from anon on Tumblr: could you make some thing about little shayne with his mom
___
Dahlia Bloom hugged her son as he sat sideways in her lap, head resting against her chest. She’d remembered to put a toy duck in her pocket before rushing out the door and heading to his school, so he’d have something to play with while they were waiting for their appointment, and for when Dahlia and the doctor were talking.
So far, he hadn’t done much with the duck except hold it very gently in his hands. He was still as pale as he’d been when she’d collected him from the school office, but the shivering and whimpering had stopped a while ago. There had been a few moments, in the waiting room, where he told her he thought he was going to be sick, but he hadn’t mentioned it since Dr. Amir had called them both through to her office.
“Mrs. Bloom, there’s nothing more I can do for you today,” Dr. Amir sighed from the opposite chair. She draped one elbow onto her desk and crossed her arms over her lap. “We can send him for some more invasive tests, if you’d like to go down that route.”
“Invasive?” Dahlia’s heart sank, and her arms instinctively hugged Shayne a little tighter. He looked up at her, but just for a second, before he went back to gazing blankly at his duck. “You’re… you’re talking about endoscopy, right? Cameras?”
The doctor nodded. “That would be one option, yes.”
Nausea began to rise in Dahlia’s throat. She wasn’t even entirely sure of what her own internal anatomy would look like to a doctor, let alone her son’s, but the idea of someone finding out that he wasn’t quite human… She couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen. Would they take him away from her? Would there be black vans, and men in sunglasses, and government facilities –?
“But if you want my candid opinion…” Dr. Amir turned and had a look at the file that was open on her computer screen.
“Yes?” Dahlia asked, bringing one hand up to comb through her son’s hair. It was dark like hers, curly like her husband’s, and it was a habit of hers, to stroke it during tense moments. She often wondered if it was more for the sake of her own nerves, rather than his.
“He’s… your first, isn’t he, Mrs. Bloom?” A tight, maddening smile crossed the doctor’s face.
Dahlia blinked at the question. Yes, he was her first. And he would be her only. Her genes were a curse that she’d already inflicted on one soul. Never again.
“Yes.”
“It’s not uncommon for first-time mothers to feel over-concerned,” Dr. Amir went on. “The symptoms you’re describing may well be… nothing.”
Ripples of anger burns in Dahlia’s skull, lights blinking behind her eyes. He’s not sick. You’re crazy, Lia. “What?”
The doctor smiled again, in that painfully awkward manner. “I’m not saying the symptoms aren’t real. Just that it’s extremely normal for children to get sick from time to time.”
Dahlia exhaled, even though she wanted to scream. She wanted to shout at the doctor, to very outrageously explain that her son was supposed to be like her, supposed to do the same things as her.
Look at him, she wanted to say. So little. So listless. He screams when he eats demons, he kicks and cries like something’s tearing him apart, and it’s not fucking normal!
She pressed her face lightly into his hair. The smell of him eased the burning urge to throw a fit. She wondered when she’d lost her care-free demeanour, her breezy approach to life. “Come on, baby, let’s go.”
He looked up – her very own dark-brown eyes looked up at her from the face of her son. He noted something in her expression before he shifted and began sliding down from her lap.
“I hope I haven’t caused you any offence –”
“It’s fine.” Dahlia hoped she sounded insincere.
Shayne landed a little shakily on his feet. Her backpack was looped over the back of the chair they’d both been sitting on, and she scrambled to get it onto her shoulder quickly, so she could take him by the hand. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Amir.”
Dr. Amir’s eyes widened as she sensed the darkness now seeping from the mother of her patient. She began to stand up. “Let me at least give you some literature on those procedures I was talking about –”
“I can use the internet if it comes to that, thank you.”
Dahlia barely even balked at the fact that the receptionist asked for sixty pounds this time, not forty, as usual. She simply handed over the money and proceeded out the door. Her only thought was that she wanted to get her son out of that building.
Blood trickled into her mouth as she bit through her lip on the way to the car, and she swore at herself in her mind. She managed to maintain a neutral expression as she settled Shayne in the car, her in the driver’s seat and him in the back. She almost didn’t want to leave him alone back there, but if she went about moving the booster into the front seat, she’d never hear the end of it from Scott. So instead, she smoothed back his hair, smiling as she tried to get him to tilt his head up and look at her. His gaze remained fixed on the duck as he turned it over in his lap.
The keys trembled in her hand as she got into the driver’s seat and moved them towards the ignition. She blinked, and her lashes shook loose a couple of tears. Thoughts began hurtling through her mind, feeling like shards driving themselves deep into her core. She had done this. She had brought him to this place, to this world, which was completely unequipped for him. This was her fault.
“Mum?”
Dahlia’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice, too quick for her to brush the tears away. He was still holding onto the toy duck as though it were made of thin glass rather than rubber, but he was looking at her now.
She exhaled deeply through pursed lips, feeling as though she would have wailed if she’d been alone. Her hands were still shaking as she reached back over the seat, just about reaching his knee.
“Everything’s fine, baby, I promise,” she whispered, fighting against the tremor in her voice. “Let’s get you home, okay?”
He hesitated, turning his duck over in his hands. Dahlia realised she was watching him make a calculation before he replied. His eyes were glistening when he met her gaze again.
“I don’t have to go back to school?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t send you back to school when you don’t feel good.” She shook her head, sniffling and rubbing at her eyes.
He blinked, his blank expression morphing into a grimace. Dahlia squeezed his knee, trying to ignore the question that was drilling into her temple; how many times had he gone to school feeling sick, not knowing that he could ask to stay home?
___
“Feeling okay?” Dahlia spoke in a hushed voice, though there was no real need for that; Scott had already woken up and showered and headed to work for another night shift by the time they’d arrived back at the apartment. He had no idea that Dahlia had picked Shayne up early. She was bracing herself for him to not understand, to challenge her, to gently suggest that she was being too soft with the boy, as usual.
She didn’t care either way. The boy deserved soft.
He nodded, curling up tightly in bed and pulling at his blanket so that most of his face was covered. To her immeasurable relief, he’d eaten a few plain crackers and had a glass of water when they’d gotten home, and he was looking significantly less pale and ghost-like. She’d still taken the designated bowl from the kitchen and left it on the floor next to his bed, in case he felt nauseous again.
“You’ve got your bottle?” Dahlia placed her hand over the blanket, feeling for the warmth of the hot water bottle that he was hugging to help with the cramps. Warmth seemed to soothe him in general. It made Dahlia wish her hands weren’t always so damn cold.
His eyes – our eyes – were already heavy with sleep. Dahlia wished she could have crawled in next to him and gotten some sleep herself, if only to escape from the horrible realities they both had to face while awake.
“Try to rest, okay?” she whispered. “I’ll be back to check on you in a little while. I… have to go and make a phone call.” The last part felt like a confession, an apology in not so many words. Shayne’s eyes flicked all the way open, and she sensed that he wanted to ask her to stay. He wouldn’t, though. He didn’t allow himself to be selfish like that.
She scooted along the bed, pecking half a dozen kisses across his head until he let out a reluctant giggle and pulled the blanket up further to defend himself. Dahlia laughed, a smidge of the weight lifting from her chest. As hard as she might hate that she’d passed on this spliced, twisted version of her own powers, she would never wish that she hadn’t done it. She would never wish this away.
She would never wish him away.
___
The clock in the entranceway read one-forty. She had about fifteen minutes before Scott would be waking up, and another ten before he’d be leaving the shower. Dahlia was trembling as she headed into the kitchenette, praying she wouldn’t shatter a glass in the process of getting herself some water.
Something peered at her from the plughole.
Is he crazy like you, Lia?
Something that had eyes, but no face; a voice, but no tongue. Something not of this world, but here anyway. The hairs on the back of her neck stiffened. Despite her throat being dry just moments before, saliva began to pool in her cheeks, dripping over her teeth as she stared the demon down and growled.
“ĺ̵̨͉͍̟̮͋̋ë̷̡̳̗̹̘̄̄͝ä̷̢̳̗̃v̷͉͇̪͖̑e̴̘͍̦͌̈́͗́̕ ̸̛͎̩̫͉́h̸̦̥͚̻̑̈́͠i̸̤̊͆͂m̷̡̡͖̜͙͋ ̷̯̥̓ȁ̸̺̠͎͐̽ĺ̶̠̝͖̝̠o̴͕͛͝n̸̥̊͐e̷̦͚̳̬͂̽.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth before the screech could disturb Shayne in the other room. A single blink, and the demon was gone. She was alone in the kitchen, with only her half-filled glass and the sound of the tap dripping.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whispered gently as she threw back a few mouthfuls of water. When had she become like this, when? There was absolutely nothing here for a demon. This was her stress personified. Her fears, given life by her imagination. “No demons here, Dahlia. No demons here. Breathe…”
She chanted to herself as she made her way to the living area. Less than seven steps got her there. The place was small, and barely organised, but the phone was always kept on the wooden table near the window, along with Dahlia’s address book.
She curled up in the armchair, which had come from Scott’s deceased aunt’s place, and thumbed through the book. She hadn’t organised it alphabetically, so everyone’s information had been entered according to when Dahlia had met them. It had been… a while since she’d flicked this far back through her life’s timeline. Since before Shayne, perhaps. In another life, it felt like.
Dread numbed her limbs as her eyes darted over the name and number she’d been waiting to find. Chances were, they’d moved house since Dahlia had last spoken to them, and she wouldn’t reach them at the number she had on record.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted to reach them. She punched the numbers into the receiver, taking her time, feeling like she was edging closer and closer to the edge of a cliff.
The line began to ring. Dahlia thought of the toes of her shoes, running out of real estate as the cliff edge came closer. She could still hang up. She could keep this doorway closed, like she’d intended. The only thing that kept her from slamming the phone down out of panic was the thought of Shayne. He needed help – she needed help…
And humans were useless. And dangerous.
“Hello?” The voice was deep and silken. Unmistakable. It made Dahlia want to peel off her own skin.
She gulped over a scream.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Dahlia,” she breathed, slowly covering her mouth with her palm and cursing herself.
“Dahlia… Bloom?”
She leaned forward in the armchair and wondered, desperately, if she still wasn’t too late to hang up the phone, to stick on a fake accent and claim that she must have dialled the wrong number. It would never work, but maybe she could convince herself that it had.
Her mouth was still covered by her palm, but she was under no illusion that the vampiric ears on the other end wouldn’t be able to hear her breath rushing through her nose.
“How long has it been?” the voice wondered. “Seven years?”
“Six years and eight months.” The figures came idly to Dahlia’s tongue. It surely seemed an insignificant amount of time to a vampire, but to her, it meant everything. It meant the life she and Scott had built for themselves. It meant Shayne. A tear slipped down her cheek as she gazed at the faded wallpaper, her heart dropping as she neared the edge of that cliff in her head. “I need your help, Madelyn.”
___
He resurfaced about an hour after she’d last opened his bedroom door to check on him, just as it was getting dark outside. Dahlia had turned on the TV, and there was a soap opera playing, but she wasn’t particularly invested. She’d gnawed the nail on her right thumb down to the bed. Madelyn’s words had run through in her mind so many times that they’d become slippery and dull. And she still had to convey them to Scott, sell him the idea. There’s a house. Close to theirs. They’re vampires, not demon eaters, but they have some knowledge of… Half-breeds. Hybrids.
We have to try –
“Mum?”
The sun had dipped behind the houses across the street, but it felt as though a little of its light had found its way back into the flat. Dahlia turned her head to see Shayne trudging across the living area, his hair messy and his eyelids heavy.
“Hey, sleepy head,” she smiled, patting the empty space on the cushion next to her. “How’re you doing?”
He shrugged and crawled onto the sofa next to her and laid his head in her lap. She let one hand rest on the back of head, peering down at him carefully as he settled down. Happy enough with the fact that he wasn’t crying, or shaking, or holding his stomach, Dahlia sank a little lower on the sofa and pretended to watch the TV. She never dropped her awareness of his presence, the microscopic movements of his body, the signals he might have been subconsciously sending her.
“Mum?” he whispered.
Her fingers fluttered over his curls. “Yeah?”
He whimpered and pulled his knees up closer to his chest. “Am I… okay?”
Of all of her components that resembled the human form, Dahlia resented her heart the most. What good was a heart when it had the potential to hurt this much, to crack straight down the middle?
“You will be, baby,” she choked out. “The doctor today, they – they just don’t know how to help you. You – you understand, don’t you? You know how Dad only eats the – the nice food, the plate food and lunchbox food; and Mum and Shayne need… the other thing?”
“Mmhmm.”
“The world is a bit like that. We’re a little bit different, that’s all.” She shook her head, allowing herself a moment of private despair while his eyes were shut and directed away from her. “It just means we have to look for help in… different places.”