John "Harley" Villetta III (breaksomehearts) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-02-26 00:36:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #flashback |
Dream of demons while you sleep
Who: Harley Villetta and Bren Wilson
When: Early 2009, shortly after winter break
Where: Harley's dorm room at UoM
Bren never had generic dreams like "I was flying" or "I ate a lot of ice cream." Her dreams were pretty cinematic, telling stories or, alternately, singing songs that she would scramble to write down as soon as she woke. That wasn't very common, though, because most of the time she just had nightmares.
It was the same every time. The outcome differed, but it was the same memory. Herself, unsuspecting and innocent, on her bed in pajama pants and a bra because she hadn't put her t-shirt on yet, and her older brother coming into her room. Time had blurred the memory of the words, but then he was on top of her and she was screaming, though silent outside the dream, tears leaking from her sleeping eyes. That was unusual, she generally appeared to be pretty much dead while she slept, but for some reason it was so much more intense on this night -- some reason, that might have had something to do with the remarkably-similar-to-Mosiah's-build arm over her waist and body behind her in the bed. It was winter and bitterly cold, so Bren had snuck three floors up and crawled in bed with Harley. And now she was dreaming, and she knew the memory here should involve Mosiah suddenly, spontaneously catching fire, but he wasn't, fire had abandoned her...
Except it hadn't, and there was a fire on Harley's desk. It only took another half a minute for her to wake up, gasping softly as she sat bolt-upright in the bed, looking around wildly before she realized what was happening, why there was a Periodic Table of Mixology poster on the wall instead of her geeky Mozart one, and why the bed was so much warmer than it ought to be. It took only another split second for the flames to register and she was out of said bed, swearing softly and putting the flames out with her hands before the fire alarms could go off, knowing it could never burn her but not at all cool with the idea of the water sprinklers flooding the place. She got the fire out and sagged a little, biting her lip, then turning to see if Harley had woken up.
Harley woke up to the smell of smoke drifting through his room. Granted, his senses were nowhere near as strong as a wolf's would be, but being a were had some advantages, and the riflebird could tell when something was in the air like that. It still took a moment to register with him what was actually going on, so when Bren jumped out of bed Harley sat up, hair even messier than normal, and mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, "What the hell?" but in reality was mostly unintelligible.
In truth, he hadn't minded having Bren in his bed. Hell, she could stay there all the time if she wanted, Harley certainly wasn't opposed to sharing and she didn't even really need to ask. Showing up in his room and crawling under his covers had worked just fine. Then he noticed what she was doing - putting out a fire. On his desk. With her hands. Harley certainly owned a few lighters and a couple boxes of matches, regardless of the fact that they probably weren't allowed in the dorm, but they couldn't start a blaze like that.
Once the flames were gone, Harley reached out to touch Bren's arm. "What," he asked, pushing his hair out of his eyes with his other hand, "in the hell was that?"
Bren bit her lip, crawling back into bed with Harley, cause it was cold. "Um. Wow, this is like, the worst way ever for you to find out. I can..." She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. She was still shaky and scared from the dream, so she used that, just pushing through it, the confession she did not want to make. "I can light fires with my mind?"
She drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face against them, curling up tight. "My roommate said it means I'm a fire elemental and god I have never told anyone this in my life who didn't already know and it sounds like crazy creepy x-files shit but don't try to turn me over to the government or anything because apparently they know and they don't care." Her voice was muffled as she spoke, and she wrapped her arms up over her head, praying he wouldn't send her back to her room because she wasn't sure she could take that less than a minute after a nightmare so bad she'd lit fires and cried in her sleep.
Wrapping his arms around her, Harley tucked the covers around the smaller girl, holding her to him. She could light fires with her mind? That was a new one on him, and he was a damn bird, so that was saying something. Instead he didn't answer for a moment, letting that knowledge sink in. There were elementals in this world. How 'bout that.
Harley ran his fingers over Bren's hair as they sat there. "Why would I turn you over to the government?" he asked, confused. "You are what you are. Just - please don't set my room on fire, okay? I would like to keep all of my stuff intact if I could." He paused. "Is there a reason why my history textbook had to go up in flames? I mean, the thing can burn for all I care, but what happened?"
If Bren was a supernatural, then maybe she'd be cool with what he was too. Harley was considering telling her now, so all of those bird jokes could commence. Maybe it would make her feel better to know she wasn't the only one who was different.
Bren swallowed hard, fingers clenching in the neck of her shirt briefly. "Um." She sniffed and swallowed hard. "That's...well, I had a nightmare. I can't...I do that sometimes when I have a nightmare, I can't really..." She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit up, sitting cross-legged. "I'm, uh...well, I told you how, like you remember I didn't go home over break, right, even though I'm from Vegas and almost everyone goes home for break? You're not gonna wanna hear this," she warned, managing to make herself look at him. "It's fucked up. Like, you do not even know. Most people never even hear about something like this. Well, you hear about it, but it's like, in the news because one of them shot the other or something."
"So it's hard to control?" Harley could understand that, in theory. As a kid it had been hard to remember when he could and couldn't shift. Thankfully then his mom had still been around to teach him a little about what he was, being a riflebird as well. Now, the option wasn't there anymore. It wasn't like his dad gave a shit if Harley was a bird or a man, so long as it didn't cause problems for him in the long run. Harley kept his hands on her shoulders as she shifted around, knowing how she didn't like to be cold. He blinked as she described it as "fucked up." Regardless of whatever their relationship status might be, Harley considered Bren to be one of his closest friends. "You can tell me anything," he said. "And I will try to help you, if I can. Promise you I can handle it." Probably wasn't anything he could do something about, but that wasn't the point. No one messed with Harley's girl.
Bren sighed, shifting so she was curled into Harley, leaning against the older boy's chest. "Well, basically, I have this really psychotic brother. And he's a dick. Like, beyond dick. He..." She rubbed a hand over her face and squirmed around a little, tugging the blankets up some. "He's three years older than me, so he'd be 21 now, cause our birthdays are really close, and when I was 15 and he was 18 this one day he came in my room and tried to rape me except I lit him on fire before he could do it and that's basically the only reason why it's an almost cause he's not that big but he's bigger than me cause I'm tiny and I seriously thought I was gonna get raped and that's what my nightmares are always about." There was a pause, and she opened her eyes, having squeezed them shut at some point, and tilted her head up to look at Harley, gauging his reaction.
He let the smaller girl tuck herself into him, leaning down so his head was resting against hers. For a moment, all Harley could do was listen. Her brother had tried to rape her? Harley made a clucking noise under his breath; had he been some sort of elemental, likely something would have gone up in flames too. You just didn't treat women like that. Sure, he was a bit of a player and he didn't mean any harm by it, but he would never, ever consider something like that to be okay. "Bren," he murmured, kissing her hair, knowing nothing he said would make this better for her. "I hope the fucker went up in flames. Certainly deserves it, trying to do something like that to you." He didn't know how to help, not really, but he was hoping holding her like this was something she needed.
Well, his response wasn't negative towards her or basically any of the things she always feared people would say, that people had said to her, so that was good. She relaxed a little in his arms. "Yeah. The doctor said he'll have the scars his whole life, so, you know. That's something." She laughed, but it was humorless. "So basically after this my family more or less took his side. Like, my brother's kindof a sociopath, and sociopaths can be really charming and really good liars so all they saw was him with burns all up his back and arm, telling them I was spoiled and I'd freaked out cause he wouldn't drive me somewhere, and me with this story most people probably wouldn't believe, so they decided I was a freak and obviously I was a whore cause I made up a dirty story and just all this bullshit. So like, until I came here since I was fifteen I was basically treated like a freak by my family. Like, not allowed to talk about my unnaturalness or whatever." She shook her head, sniffing a bit and rubbing at one eye. "Stupid."
"He's still alive. That's more than he deserves." Harley couldn't comprehend what would drive someone to do that. Or why anyone would think it could be her fault. He believed Bren when she described what happened; he never known her to be the type to make something like that up. "Kind of a sociopath? Full blown one, as far as I'm concerned." One of Harley's hands went to her hair, running the through the strands, separating them with his fingers. Perhaps it was just a nervous habit, like how he cleaned his feathers in his were form to make sure they looked their best, but he'd always found it reassuring. Maybe it would work for Bren, too. "I'm sorry. I don't think you made it up. And I don't think what you are is unnatural. Just different."
Bren took a deep breath and nodded, closing her eyes and letting herself relax into him. The one thing she had going for her was that she knew it was necessary to trust people sometimes, and she'd learned to do it again. It wasn't hard -- trust came naturally to her, as did things like love and forgiveness. She had an open heart and however much her brother had rattled her, he hadn't changed the core of her. "Thanks," she murmured, shifting so her head was tucked down comfortably against his shoulder. "We have class in the morning, right?" she asked.
"Always," he said, one hand still playing with her hair, the other sliding down to rub at her back. Harley hoped Bren knew that she could trust him, that he wouldn't ever intentionally hurt her. His biggest flaw was being a bit of a flirt - all right, a giant flirt, but he couldn't help what he was. Regardless, he cared for the girl, and he knew she didn't deserve what had happened to her. No one did. At the mention of class, Harley made a face. "Yes, unfortunately. I should have taken one scheduled for later in the day, but if I did then maybe I wouldn't have run into you, now would I? That would have been a shame," he teased, hoping to get a hint of a smile out of her.
Bren smiled a little, tugging the blankets up. "We should try to sleep, then," she said, sighing and snuggling in some more, giving a content sigh once she got comfortable against him. "And it is really fucking cold. I'm from the desert, why did I think I could live in Michigan? I can't." She huffed a little and squirmed, but Harley was warm so she could leech heat from him. "You're warm though," she added, with a pleased little hum.
Harley reached over and adjusted the blankets so they were around Bren's shoulders, his arms still wrapped around her. She didn't want to be cold, and Harley had no intention of letting her become so. "Sleep, yeah, that thing people do at night," he said, head hitting the pillow. "My mom moved here from Australia when she was little, she used to tell me it was cold all the time, too. I'd say you adjust to it, but she never seemed to." Maybe that was because of their riflebird nature, Harley didn't know. The winters sucked no matter where you lived, in his opinion. "That's me, your own personal heater," he teased.
"Shut up," she said, smiling a little. "Sleep, or we'll see where the next fire pops up." There was a pause. "It might be in my pants." Another pause. "And I might need sleep because I can't believe I just said that."
He couldn't help it - he snorted, biting back the chuckle that wanted to come out of his mouth. "See, I wouldn't mind if a fire does pop up in your pants. But maybe that's just me." Smirking, he reached up to turn off the light by his bed. "Okay, sleeping now." She might not be able to see it, but Harley was smirking.
"Yeah, you'd like that, cause you have a firehose for that. Oh god, okay, I'm going to sleep now." She snuggled down some more, closing her eyes and trying to push the nightmare from her mind. Harley would protect her, right?