![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[Fic] Pet Shop of Horrors // Sleeping Beauty (1/?)
Oh god, you guys, I am SO TIRED YOU DON'T EVEN FUCKING KNOW. But I have written???? Like 5000 words????? I CAN'T FEEL MY EYES ANYMORE OR MY BRAIN I THINK I FORGOT HOW TO THINK AND MAYBE TYPE????????? BUT MAYBE NOW I AM WORTHY OF BEING DOCTOR TONKS' WRITING BUDDY OF DOOM FUCK YEAAAAAAAH.
Fuck yeah Jemis being bad at dealing with emotions because there are so many words to be found in a character who can't process shit like a fucking adult.
ON THE TOPIC OF PEOPLE WHO CAN'T DEAL LIKE ADULTS so here is some PSoH fic because PSoH is my comfort fandom and it tastes nice and I am kinda proud of this because FUCK YEAH DESCRIPTIONS and this was written when it wasn't like 4:30 in the morning so it makes more sense than this lead into it.
Man if I just left in all of the typoes that went on here this post would be unintelligible. I should sleep. And cuddle my husband. And go "nuuuuuu" if he tries to wake me up tomorrow morning because do not want.
Love you, please enjoy the fic that is better than me!
Pet Shop of Horrors // Sleeping Beauty (1/?)
T | 1314 words | Leon (Count D and Norma mentioned) | Spoilers for the entire series | Ten years later, Leon MIGHT have found the lead he needed.
The reports he'd followed hadn't been about animal attacks in the end. No mysterious deaths, no maulings, no scumbags getting their throat ripped out by their pet peacock or whatever. It was just that this one species of fish had been moved off the endangered list and back into... Being a viable species, he guessed. Then some more pandas appeared. Then some tigers. Not enough to move them off the list entirely, but enough to make them a little less endangered. And when Leon started plotting that map, the one that marked out every place where new animals were reported, he ended up with a trail. One that led him across Asia, to a tiny old house in the middle of a fucking forest like it was waiting for a witch to move in.
The door was overgrown with weeds and thorns, buried like it hadn't been opened in years. The vines ripped chunks out of Leon's hands as he tried to wrestle with the door handle. He swore viciously, snatching his hand away (And did the thorns follow him? He could believe it.). He looked around again - no windows, no other ways in, just a familiar door set in a building half grown over. There was only one thing that Leon could do; he stepped back and kicked the door open exactly as he would have back in LA. It didn't pop open as dramatically as it had back then, but he wasn't as young as he used to be. It took a few blows to pop the lock, and even then the door only opened a crack. Leon wrapped his jacket around as much of himself as he could to protect himself from the thorns, then shoulder-barged the door. It jerked open in a gale of dust and dead leaves, and he leaned against the door so that he could catch his breath and take in the view.
He'd expected the inside to be exactly the same, somehow, as the other empty shops, despite the outside being something out of a horror movie. And sure, when he opened the door the layout of the room was the same – sofas, table, cages, everything – except that the potted plants were withering. He'd never known D to let them go unwatered, and yet here they were, leaves brown and brittle. And once he noticed that, he could see the thick layer of dust coating everything, enough that it seemed like his feet were sinking into it with every step, making him cough. Making him choke.
He'd known that he missed D from the state of the outside, but he hadn't realised by how much – this must have been months of neflect, at least. God, this was the furthest out that he'd been in all the years he'd been looking, he didn't even know how he missed D by this much —
And then he noticed the bird.
There was nothing special about it, really; it was a big, white bird – a cockatoo? Was the white parrot-y things with yellow head feathers were? – with its head tucked under its wing. It looked fast asleep, secure in its cage. It was just – D had never left an animal behind before. Hell, Leon had always thought D would die before he'd leave any of his animals behind.
The logical extension of that thought wasn't on the table at the moment.
Leon dared to move closer to the cage, and noticed that the bars of the cage and the floor inside of it were both as covered in dust as the rest of the room. The bird periodically shook itself or shifted in its sleep, and dust shimmered off it.
"What the fuck?" Leon whispered, then winced; even that sounded too loud. But now that he knew what to look for, he looked around the room again – and it was the same all across the room. Birds sat huddled together in their cages, only the faintest shifting to show that they were still even breathing. The phone receiver sat on the counter like it had been dropped there, a bar curled against the mouthpiece. The bat didn't even twitch when he edged the receiver away from it. Leon held the receiver to his ear: dead. Not even a dial tone. He hung it up on the ridiculous antique phone stand – how did D always find one of these? There couldn't be that many in the world, but he always had one in his shop, wherever he set up – moving slowly and quietly so that it didn't jangle. The bat didn't even twitch, even though the phone had still been warm from its body heat. That was probably a good sign, right? The bat looked familiar at any rate, he was pretty sure it was the one that liked to come and sit on him whenever he came to the shop, the one that made D's eyes twitch when it cuddled up to his neck. He had no idea what it was doing near the phone though.
(He had a whisper of memory – people who looked like animals? – but shook it away.)
There weren't any tracks in the dust apart from his own, and part of his brain was ticking and ticking over this – time scale and survival rates of animals with no food (and didn't they all look healthy? He wasn't a good judge of this shit, that's what D was for) and the level of decay in the building. When he looked back at the door, it looked like the vines were trying to get a foothold in the room, less like they'd been dragged through when Leon barged his way in and brought them with him; more like they'd been growing there and always had been. He could probably get back through them, but it would hurt. And he wasn't planning to go back until he finished investigating anyway, so he'd worry about that bit of weirdness later.
Instead, he turned to the only doorway that mattered: the one to the back room of the fucking shop.
He hesitated before he touched the curtain though, trying to fix the image of the bare concrete box they'd found in L.A. squarely in his mind. He needed to keep his expectations reasonable: the incense was long burned out. He was probably going to find another empty room and that would be the end of it. That was always how this went. He'd done this dance more times that he could count over the years, and every time he felt that tiny thrum of anticipation despite himself. Every time, it was his memories of L.A. that he reached for, the memories that two years of his life had frown twisted around, that the past ten had grown out of. Leon took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and ripped the fucking curtain open. The dust it stirred up made him cough, but that made him open his eyes, and he saw – he saw —
It was a corridor. Not a tiny concrete back room, or any of the interchangeable spaces that the pet shop had taken over like mould, but an actual honest-to-god corridor. Leon leaned against the doorframe, and he couldn't even pretend that the sudden weakness in his legs or the dampness in his eyes was from the coughing. When he looked back in the room, the animals hadn't shifted an inch. He wasn't sure, but the front door looked a little darker than it had a minute ago.
When he looked back, the corridor was still there.
He had the sudden feeling that for the first time in years he might actually be close to something, and the idea of it made him dizzy. But that idea was the only thing that gave him the strength to let go of the curtain and plunge deeper into the shop.
Fuck yeah Jemis being bad at dealing with emotions because there are so many words to be found in a character who can't process shit like a fucking adult.
ON THE TOPIC OF PEOPLE WHO CAN'T DEAL LIKE ADULTS so here is some PSoH fic because PSoH is my comfort fandom and it tastes nice and I am kinda proud of this because FUCK YEAH DESCRIPTIONS and this was written when it wasn't like 4:30 in the morning so it makes more sense than this lead into it.
Man if I just left in all of the typoes that went on here this post would be unintelligible. I should sleep. And cuddle my husband. And go "nuuuuuu" if he tries to wake me up tomorrow morning because do not want.
Love you, please enjoy the fic that is better than me!
21199 / 50000 (42.40%)
Pet Shop of Horrors // Sleeping Beauty (1/?)
T | 1314 words | Leon (Count D and Norma mentioned) | Spoilers for the entire series | Ten years later, Leon MIGHT have found the lead he needed.
The reports he'd followed hadn't been about animal attacks in the end. No mysterious deaths, no maulings, no scumbags getting their throat ripped out by their pet peacock or whatever. It was just that this one species of fish had been moved off the endangered list and back into... Being a viable species, he guessed. Then some more pandas appeared. Then some tigers. Not enough to move them off the list entirely, but enough to make them a little less endangered. And when Leon started plotting that map, the one that marked out every place where new animals were reported, he ended up with a trail. One that led him across Asia, to a tiny old house in the middle of a fucking forest like it was waiting for a witch to move in.
The door was overgrown with weeds and thorns, buried like it hadn't been opened in years. The vines ripped chunks out of Leon's hands as he tried to wrestle with the door handle. He swore viciously, snatching his hand away (And did the thorns follow him? He could believe it.). He looked around again - no windows, no other ways in, just a familiar door set in a building half grown over. There was only one thing that Leon could do; he stepped back and kicked the door open exactly as he would have back in LA. It didn't pop open as dramatically as it had back then, but he wasn't as young as he used to be. It took a few blows to pop the lock, and even then the door only opened a crack. Leon wrapped his jacket around as much of himself as he could to protect himself from the thorns, then shoulder-barged the door. It jerked open in a gale of dust and dead leaves, and he leaned against the door so that he could catch his breath and take in the view.
He'd expected the inside to be exactly the same, somehow, as the other empty shops, despite the outside being something out of a horror movie. And sure, when he opened the door the layout of the room was the same – sofas, table, cages, everything – except that the potted plants were withering. He'd never known D to let them go unwatered, and yet here they were, leaves brown and brittle. And once he noticed that, he could see the thick layer of dust coating everything, enough that it seemed like his feet were sinking into it with every step, making him cough. Making him choke.
He'd known that he missed D from the state of the outside, but he hadn't realised by how much – this must have been months of neflect, at least. God, this was the furthest out that he'd been in all the years he'd been looking, he didn't even know how he missed D by this much —
And then he noticed the bird.
There was nothing special about it, really; it was a big, white bird – a cockatoo? Was the white parrot-y things with yellow head feathers were? – with its head tucked under its wing. It looked fast asleep, secure in its cage. It was just – D had never left an animal behind before. Hell, Leon had always thought D would die before he'd leave any of his animals behind.
The logical extension of that thought wasn't on the table at the moment.
Leon dared to move closer to the cage, and noticed that the bars of the cage and the floor inside of it were both as covered in dust as the rest of the room. The bird periodically shook itself or shifted in its sleep, and dust shimmered off it.
"What the fuck?" Leon whispered, then winced; even that sounded too loud. But now that he knew what to look for, he looked around the room again – and it was the same all across the room. Birds sat huddled together in their cages, only the faintest shifting to show that they were still even breathing. The phone receiver sat on the counter like it had been dropped there, a bar curled against the mouthpiece. The bat didn't even twitch when he edged the receiver away from it. Leon held the receiver to his ear: dead. Not even a dial tone. He hung it up on the ridiculous antique phone stand – how did D always find one of these? There couldn't be that many in the world, but he always had one in his shop, wherever he set up – moving slowly and quietly so that it didn't jangle. The bat didn't even twitch, even though the phone had still been warm from its body heat. That was probably a good sign, right? The bat looked familiar at any rate, he was pretty sure it was the one that liked to come and sit on him whenever he came to the shop, the one that made D's eyes twitch when it cuddled up to his neck. He had no idea what it was doing near the phone though.
(He had a whisper of memory – people who looked like animals? – but shook it away.)
There weren't any tracks in the dust apart from his own, and part of his brain was ticking and ticking over this – time scale and survival rates of animals with no food (and didn't they all look healthy? He wasn't a good judge of this shit, that's what D was for) and the level of decay in the building. When he looked back at the door, it looked like the vines were trying to get a foothold in the room, less like they'd been dragged through when Leon barged his way in and brought them with him; more like they'd been growing there and always had been. He could probably get back through them, but it would hurt. And he wasn't planning to go back until he finished investigating anyway, so he'd worry about that bit of weirdness later.
Instead, he turned to the only doorway that mattered: the one to the back room of the fucking shop.
He hesitated before he touched the curtain though, trying to fix the image of the bare concrete box they'd found in L.A. squarely in his mind. He needed to keep his expectations reasonable: the incense was long burned out. He was probably going to find another empty room and that would be the end of it. That was always how this went. He'd done this dance more times that he could count over the years, and every time he felt that tiny thrum of anticipation despite himself. Every time, it was his memories of L.A. that he reached for, the memories that two years of his life had frown twisted around, that the past ten had grown out of. Leon took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and ripped the fucking curtain open. The dust it stirred up made him cough, but that made him open his eyes, and he saw – he saw —
It was a corridor. Not a tiny concrete back room, or any of the interchangeable spaces that the pet shop had taken over like mould, but an actual honest-to-god corridor. Leon leaned against the doorframe, and he couldn't even pretend that the sudden weakness in his legs or the dampness in his eyes was from the coughing. When he looked back in the room, the animals hadn't shifted an inch. He wasn't sure, but the front door looked a little darker than it had a minute ago.
When he looked back, the corridor was still there.
He had the sudden feeling that for the first time in years he might actually be close to something, and the idea of it made him dizzy. But that idea was the only thing that gave him the strength to let go of the curtain and plunge deeper into the shop.
no subject
no subject
no subject