[Fanfiction] "Contagion" [1/3]
"Contagion" [1/3]
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Julio (Bolivia), Miguel (Peru), Manuel (Chile), Sebastián (Uruguay)
Summary: Demon Hunter AU! Julio learns all about the “family business”. Miguel preferred that he didn’t. Either way, stupid boys have hard lessons that must be repeated until learned.
Julio had been young when their parents died under mysterious circumstances and not a week had passed before a young man (probably still in his late teens and the air around him seemed to quiver and shine in awe of him) had come knocking at their aunt's door with a socialite's smile and a politician's manner, offering Miguel a job with his private business; Miguel had barely blinked before stammering out a shaky affirmation and signing on the dotted line.
It took a good year and a half for Julio to figure out exactly what Miguel was doing for work (“hunting”, accompanied by some short jackass with a foul mouth and a fetish for costume bird wings, and another older boy with brown hair that curled into his face and framed his bright smile); truthfully, he only found out because he followed the trio late one Tuesday night and privately wondered how the hell so-called hunters couldn't tell they were being followed.
The three of them took up their post beneath an ivy-covered lamp post in the empty lot behind an abandoned supermarket and seemed content to wait (except for the short jackass with the foul mouth who kept twitching and sighing every couple of seconds). Julio hid behind a gnarled shrub that was more dead than alive and waited with mounting impatience until he drifted into a light doze with his chin perched on his knees.
He was brutally shoved into consciousness by a gale-like wind bursting over the empty lot like a tidal wave, bowling him over.
His dismayed squawk was lost in the roar of wind and he was able to scramble back into hiding before he was noticed. And there, like something out of someone particularly imaginative's most hellish nightmare, stood some kind of beast, like an enormous black fox with too many tails and a neck that stretched for endless feet like a snake. The head seemed like an afterthought, almost too small for the body.
Julio pinched himself to see if he was dreaming, staring in mute horror as the head split into quarters, revealing nothing but a gaping maw full of endless rows of teeth.
And then it shrieked.
He remembered nothing after that, except the sensation of everything going very quiet and cold and his eyes rolling back into his head. The next thing he knew, he was being shaken into wakefulness again by a rough hand at his shoulder and Miguel screaming in his face. Dragged upright into the tight circle of his brother’s arms, Julio stared over Miguel’s shoulder at the empty lot, brown eyes fixing on a molten lump of charred…something. It reeked of burning hair and rotted eggs, sizzling and popping under the night sky.
These were the kinds of things Sebastián sent his brother out to hunt every night. Every story their mother had told them about the demonic creatures that roamed in the night was true. They were real. It was dangerous, obviously. Too dangerous. It wasn’t something he could leave Miguel to do alone, because he was too spacey to know his elbow from his backside most days, and-and no.
It had taken another year of increasingly vitriolic arguments and a strained relationship between him and his brother before Sebastián relented (much to Miguel’s horror) and agreed to let Julio accompany Miguel and Daniel on what seemed like an easy mission. They needed a third to round out the party since their other member (Manuel, the weird one with the costume wing fetish) would be unavailable because of some bullshit reason Julio didn’t care about because he was finally getting out.
“Don’t get your hopes up too high or anything, okay? This is just sort of a routine patrol,” Daniel offered him an easy smile while Miguel sulked in the background, pulling on his own protective gear. Julio smiled back uncertainly, feeling his face flush and his ears go red-hot beneath Daniel’s gaze. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when Daniel turned away and picked up a small vial of what looked like cigarette ashes. Daniel uncorked it and spilled a bit into his palm before holding it up to his mouth and swallowing it down. Julio must’ve been giving him an expression of disgust, because the Paraguayan immediately burst out laughing.
“Insurance,” he told Julio warmly, taking his hand and dumping a small pile of ashes into his palm as well. “It’s the ashes of a Klamath weed, for protection.”
Julio nodded in feigned understanding, glancing at Miguel swallowing down his own portion of ash without complaint before surreptitiously dumping his handful on the floor and sweeping it beneath the furniture with a quick slide of his foot. Because really, who eats ash?
He jumped guiltily when Miguel appeared at his side with a grim expression on his usually jovial face.
Surprisingly, Miguel didn’t say anything about the discarded ash; Julio supposed he’d gotten away with it. Instead, Miguel dropped an armful of what looked like sports gear onto the ground before picking up the piece on the very top and yanking it over Julio’s head while ignoring the shorter boy’s protests.
Julio crossed his arms stubbornly while Miguel reached for the rest piece of equipment, blinking in surprise at how thick and hard the padding over his chest was. He prodded at the chestplate experimentally as Miguel dropped into a kneel in front of him, securing another swathe of padding to his thigh with quick, efficient movements.
“This is my old gear from a few years back, so it might be a little big on you but I trust it,” Miguel was saying in a monotone. Julio swallowed guiltily and stared at the far wall, hating that he was the one that had made Miguel sound like that. His questing fingers founds deep diagonal gouges in the chestplate, like claw marks from something the size of a tiger. His throat went drier than the ash he hadn’t swallowed.
He swallowed reflexively, staring downward to where Miguel’s hands were tightening straps and lacing rivets around Julio’s calves, suddenly more than a little afraid that he’d gotten himself in over his head as far as this monster-hunting business went.