There's a reckonin' a comin'.

[cyclopticsadist]

Who: Niles, L, Azura, Henry, Myr, Connor,
When: Backdated to the 7th, through the rest of the month.
Where: A seedy motel, then an abandoned warehouse in the refugee district.
What: Sometimes people cut off their rival's fingers as self care. Don't judge.
Warnings: Niles cuts off all of L's fingers, it's gonna get nasty.



Mello vanishing was both a boon and a tragedy for Niles' plans. Getting a live grenade out of the picture made things much simpler, but it meant he had no secondary player to keep Myr's attention. The longer that Mello was gone, the more attention would be focused on him, no matter how much he sweet talked L's lackeys. This full moon was his best chance at success, and L was ever so helpfully acting out his self destructive schedule early. The night of the full moon was the perfect time to pounce, and the moment he saw L going for the bottle he gathered his supplies.

Time to get to work.

Comments

Step One: Myr

[cyclopticsadist]

[hearthebell]

[No matter how diligently one tried to make himself unpredictable, months of outfoxing a determined hound wears on even the cleverest and most careful. Eventually, the lack of a reliable routine demands tokens of structure for the cohesion they provide an otherwise unraveling life, and as exhaustion has begun to take earnest root, L has begun to become almost defiantly predictable while knowing that Niles is stalking him. A conclusion, one way or the other, is going to come more swiftly that way, and bring with it some kind of peace after months of scattered distraction, transient living, and the unique torment of waiting for an axe to fall.

His work schedule has never been more consistent. Reliably, every Friday, he takes a break from spending nights awake in the library or imposing on the long-suffering Myr's generosity to rent a room at a cheap inn, the sort with hourly as well as nightly rates. Generally, his goal is simply to bathe, clean his spare set of clothes, and choke down his anxieties and his senses with substances until he's drowned in oblivious sleep. The hope is that it will be enough to last him through the next week, if he manages to outpace Niles that much longer.

Tonight, however, he's switched things up a bit. He's started the weekend a night early, holed up in the stuffy room that stinks of old smoke and mildew, rationing out pills to guide and regulate a private pursuit that only begs for respite. The path there is filled with staring into the void, of course, but L's no stranger to it. In fact, it almost feels like home, where his closed and stifled world was accessed through a glowing screen and an endless rotation of tea trays coming and going as he grew, but never really changed.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[It was a curious quirk of a Faun's resistance to intoxication--or of one particular Faun's resistance to intoxication--that Myr had been unable to sense L's evenings of cultivated oblivion. What would have, had, floored the detective's other Bonded barely registered to a Monster the world's magic had made nearly proof against drunkeness, and so Myr had missed it among the noise of his other Bond and a life lived in Aefenglom.

No longer: With Connor's warning in mind and a hunch as to which nights L might have penciled in to spend obliterating himself, Myr trained himself to feel for those signs--and had come, now and again, to sit a silent watch outside his Bonded's door.

It felt a shameful thing, in its way, because what Myr ought to have done (he felt) was confront L on the behavior direct. But L had deemed it so necessary he'd bargained with Connor over it--L had deemed it so necessary he'd hidden it from Myr--and the very thought of that cut the Faun so deeply he could not even begin to formulate a rational approach to the topic. Guarding L at least felt a reasonable halfway measure, and with his Bonded's indiscretion happening on so regular a schedule, Myr could plan for it.

Until tonight, when the moons are high and fat, and a Faun's shaggy-coated and at his most virile, and-- L's starting early.

The recognition had sliced through the pleasant haze of Myr's full-moon planning like a blade of glacial ice. He'd dropped--whatever it was he was doing in his garden, it didn't matter in the face of this, and hastened to the motel L favored with no thought of what he'd do when he got there.

Because while the knight-enchanter in him is furious at this deviation, this lapse, the Faun in him wants nothing more than to join his Bonded and make something merry out of L's piteous, ill-kept secret. Within the week Myr would go off to war on Everett's behalf; why not a celebration with his Witch? Why not drag this private drinking out into the open where it belonged and show L a better road to a lighter heart? Wasn't that Myr's job?

--Which is how, in short order, the Faun finds himself knocking insistently on the door of L's rented room.]

[hearthebell]

[L's preparing a spell for one of his fondest illusions, letting the shower run after he's used it and tracing runes into the fogged-up mirror with his fingertip, when the knock startles him out of his steady concentration. It sounds too urgent to be someone here in a professional capacity; he's expecting no one, pointedly. If it's Connor again, ever the good samaritan who does not understand the very human frailties in a man who would really rather be a machine, L will have words with him, while he's only one pill deep, still decently sober and coherent enough to make a very compelling argument in favor of why he needs this even if it is a day early.

He opens the door a mere distrustful crack, at first... then, slowly, swings it wider when he sees who stands on the other side. On any other night, it would be the person he is gladdest to see, but...]

Myr!

[In one syllable, L's voice runs the gamut from dismay to a sort of overbright cheer.]

You're... I really wasn't expecting you.

[Connor talked. He must have. Stupid bolts-for-brains boy scout.]

Why are you here...?

[Even through the calming effect of the evening's first opiate, downed with liquor, the pull of their Bond is a heady and hungry thing. L wants Myr to join him, or take him away from this, be a distraction for a little while from the ever-present threat of Niles finally making his move. L's inhibitions are lower, he could give of himself more freely, he could offer the kind of affection Myr must like with the moon full in the sky...

...except. If L deserved that, he would have gone to Myr's tonight, instead. Even if he was deserving, he would still be selfish, heedless of disaster, willfully ignorant of the danger it would be putting his Bonded in to adhere to his side when he's being hunted and his stalker is in the final stages of closing in for just short of the kill.]

[faithlikeaseed]

You shouldn't be drinking alone, amatus.

[Myr's tone, like L's, is chimerical--a Faun's hedonistic delight in the Now overlaid on something darker, tenser. You shouldn't be drinking alone, because it's an awful thing to drink alone when one has a loving Bondmate to drink with instead; you shouldn't be drinking alone, because you're a man under siege, they both are, and they cannot afford to be off their collective guard.

The sway of the moons, the dose L has already taken, and his own soft heart certainly incline Myr more toward the first. Did they not deserve as much together, given the pain of the previous month? Given the tearing strain of constant vigilance, of constant fear of what the next hours might bring?]

Come out with me?

[--Though it is exactly that soft-headed, soft-hearted kind of reasoning that will get them both killed. Even as Myr makes his appeal and holds out a hand to his Bonded, a smile lighting up his face, there is something fiercely roiling beneath his surface as his two natures struggle with each other.

It's the last thing a Monster should be doing the night of the full moons, and yet--can he do aught else, when the need's so dire?]

[hearthebell]

[Even with the door swung wider, L still uses it like a shield, keeping the edge of it between himself and Myr and half-hiding behind the wood that, truly, any earnest effort could probably crack in half. It's a shoddy, surface-level comfort, like all the rest he's surrounded himself with recently... but Myr, at least, is real, along with what he's offering.

Wouldn't it be kind of nice, for a change, to not treat the weekend like an execution date? In addition to wildly irresponsible and selfish, of course.]

I... want to.

[A good preface to the requisite but. Except it doesn't come, yet. Why isn't it coming?]

I really want to.

[It's fine, he's making sure Myr knows it's not personal. A gentle, easy letdown, that... also spits in the face of the promises made, the trust given, the recommitment to their Bond that seemed equal parts hopeful and futile.]

Is that OK? You'd feel safe with me, considering...?

[faithlikeaseed]

[There's a moment before Myr answers, a moment in which his own inhibitions, anxieties, concerns make a last pitched attempt to win out against the pull of the moons. Had L expressed real reluctance--had there been a but--it would have thrown the whole fight, but L doesn't, and that at the last decides the matter.

He crooks his fingers in a coaxing gesture, smile widening.]

Considering he'd have Maferath's own time taking us both in public without getting caught? I do feel safe. Safer than if we spent the night here in misery.

[That they'd both be inebriated enough to be off their guard--well. There is something foolhardy and selfish and irresponsible in that, but whatever watch they'd both kept is wearing thin as the months grow on. Try as Myr might to take the burden off his Bondmate's shoulders, there is no denying that L is fracturing under the strain. Maybe a night spent together living would be anodyne for them; maybe, if failure is inevitable, it is better they have this together.

Maybe it would have been better to have lived all along.]

Come on. There are better ways out of yourself than this, amatus. Let's find them.

[hearthebell]

[Real reluctance would be more convenient, at this juncture. He could be convincing his Bonded to get far away, make the most of the full moon that is especially pleasurable for fauns pursing their nature without shame or guilt. Both of which L has embodied lately, to the point where he can barely remember what Myr saw in a Bond with him in the first place.

If he's leaving soon, wouldn't it be better to go out on a kind note? He owes Myr some better memories, at the very least, even if high spirits and good fun aren't the somber detective's strong suit even on the best of days.]

I guess I couldn't ask for better than a Faun on a full moon to show me a good time. I'll get my jacket...

[And leave his bag here, because he fully intends to cut the evening off at a reasonable time and release Myr from a vigil that is unfair, no matter how willingly assumed.]

Give me five minutes?

[Since he was setting up for an illusion spell, anyway... might as well lightly booby trap the room, just in case.]

[faithlikeaseed]

Five minutes, [Myr echoes, his smile now nigh irrepressible. There is a vast relief in falling back into the flow of his instincts, and L's flattery(!) certainly strikes them exactly right. It's no hardship to him to delay a moment, remaining as an effective roadblock in the doorway rather than intruding on L's space.

He taps a hoof as he waits, not in impatience but beating out the time as he hums verses of a particular ballad about a particular blind Faun. (It's still embarrassing to hear the lyrics sung, but the tune's catchy and constant enough to use for timing.) Of course, it isn't as if he won't hear when his Bonded finishes up--his ears angling toward the welcome sound of L's familiar tread as the detective returns to him.]

Do you have somewhere in particular you'd like to start the night? [he asks immediately, offering out his arm. Start the night, also, because he fully intends they end it together.] If not, I've a few places in mind you might like--

[He may have been keeping absent track, when he'd ended up in them, of which establishments catered to clientele (often Monsters) prone to sensory overwhelm. Quieter places with quieter entertainments where one might carry on a reasonable conversation in peace...

Though as they got drunker and less able or willing to control their voices, well, then it would be time to take it outdoors!]

[hearthebell]

[L's meticulous and thorough about laying his traps, but conscious of the time. He's not especially worried that Myr will leave without him (though it would solve so many problems and spare them both his selfishness), but by the time he emerges with his jacket wrapped around his bony frame and his boots on his feet, hair still damp from a shower that has him smelling the freshest he will be all week, he does feel something like ready. Is it exhilaration, or such pure acceptance and peace that anything at all would be alright?

He slips both hands through Myr's offered arm, grasping it gently and fondly near the crook.]

I don't go out much.

[He stays out a fair amount, of course, looking for places to exist while he's not at work. But he no longer drinks in bars, even avoids them. He drinks alone even when he's surrounded by others, after all, and many festive moods have turned ugly as a result of one too many, a sour or spiteful word rooted in bitterness or arrogance. L is abrasive sober, and being drunk and lonely doesn't exactly improve the tendency.]

I'd like to know your recommendations, though... you wouldn't take me somewhere I'd hate.

[And if it happened inadvertently, L has no doubt that leaving wouldn't be an issue. It's what trust feels like; it's a shame this state of grace isn't likely to last much longer, but it's so golden while it stays. He even nestles closer as they walk, a constant that will remain throughout the evening. He wants to be close, as long as he can, for reasons that have nothing to do with protection.]