Original -- It Was a Dark and Reasonably Temperate Night
Title: It Was a Dark and Reasonably Temperate Night
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,342
Warnings: language, it's slashtastic!
Prompt: haunted at pulped_fictions
Summary: Two teenaged boys stumble on a house full of monsters. Have you heard this one before?
Author's Note: Halloween is the best! \o/ Vincent's just bitter because he knows Maion is going to drag him out to see "Breaking Dawn" in less than a month. Also, Vincent usually calls Edward by his last name, which is "Blevins", but I forgot last time because I suck/have been writing FMA fic at an unholy speed. XD
IT WAS A DARK AND REASONABLY TEMPERATE NIGHT
Vincent had about three-hundred and sixty least-favorite nights of the year. By his calculation, that put him four nights short of curmudgeonliness.
Halloween was ranked at tenth- or eleventh-from-worst most years. He tended to start bracing himself over Labor Day.
He flung the door open almost after the bell had stopped echoing in the foyer. “Wha-”
“Trick or treat!” the adolescent cretins crowed.
Vincent stared at them.
They stared back.
Everything between twelve and twenty looked about equally pimpled and scraggly these days, but if pressed Vincent would have pinned them at seventeen. The one on the right was wearing a straw cowboy hat and a red bandanna, and the other seemed to be convinced that a ski mask made him look like a ninja rather than a housebreaker.
“What’s the square root of nine-thousand and eighty-four?” Vincent asked.
They blinked, slowly and in perfect unison.
“That’s your trick,” Vincent said. “Be grateful it’s not molten lead poured down from the parapet.”
The cowboy kid started to frown in bewilderment; it was difficult to tell if his burglar buddy was doing the same.
Sockfeet started across the tile behind Vincent’s back and then proceeded over to glance past his arm.
“Hey,” Blevins said to the pathetic wastes of perfectly good oxygen. “Happy Halloween.”
“Well,” Cowboy said slowly, “it… was…”
Blevins gave Vincent a reprimanding look. That needed to be reiterated: Blevins gave Vincent a reprimanding look. And there would be twice as many cops as usual trawling the streets for intoxicated punks tonight, so Vincent couldn’t even kill him and dump his body in a ditch.
“Are you being a Scrooge?” Blevins asked.
“You disgust me,” Vincent said. “I don’t begin to exhibit Scrooge-like behavior until the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Look,” Blevins said, “they’re at that age where they’re half-assing it for the free candy. They pick expensive houses that are further away from the popular neighborhood hoping to get a better haul, and if you don’t give them something good, they’ll egg the place.”
A century previously, Vincent had spent the better part of a week perfecting his painstakingly slow eye-narrowing glare. “You sound,” he said, “as though you’re speaking from experience.”
Blevins shrugged. “I used to go around rescuing cats. Just give ’em some chocolate or something. You should’ve turned the lights off if you didn’t want trick-or-treaters.”
“We don’t have any chocolate,” Vincent said. “You ate it all.”
Blevins’s starkly offended scowl might have been more intimidating if he hadn’t donned a plaid bathrobe and sweatpants for his ‘scary’ movie marathon. “I did not. Your seraph ate everything.”
“He is not my-”
“Where the hell is he, anyway? He’d love trick-or-treaters. He’d probably have an aneurysm if some little kid came up dressed like an angel.”
Could angels have aneurysms? Vincent would have to ask. “He said he was going out. He didn’t specify where.”
“Awesome,” Blevins said darkly. “Just-find something they can have.”
“You may have this life lesson,” Vincent said to the cretins. “Door-to-door solicitation is punishable by dea-”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Blevins said. “I’ll be right back. You’re such a dick.” He tried to storm off, but the sockfeet-on-tile effect dampened the efficiency of the endeavor somewhat.
Cowboy and Off-Season Skier looked at Vincent uncertainly.
“This has gotten to be even more capitalist than Valentine’s Day,” Vincent said.
Cowboy fidgeted with his pillowcase full of ill-gotten high-fructose corn syrup and mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Ski-Mask seemed to be considering trying to melt into the night and disappear.
“Here!” Blevins said brightly, returning with-
“You are not giving the little bastards wine!” Vincent said.
It was official: his afterlife was a travesty. No self-respecting vampire should ever have to utter such a thing.
“It’s the only edible thing in the house,” Blevins said. “I picked old-looking bottles you probably wouldn’t wa-”
“How are you alive?” Vincent asked. “How do you have the intellect to dress yourself?” He looked pointedly at the bathrobe. “Oh, never mi-”
“Just because I wasn’t an alcoholic in Paris in the eighteenth century?” Blevins had raised his voice, which was twice as intimidating when his hair had cobwebs in it from the wine cellar.
“Everyone was an alcoholic in Paris in the eighteenth century,” Vincent said. “It was that or trying your luck with the water.”
Blevins appeared to be on the verge of attempting to break one of the bottles over Vincent’s head-which would end very badly for him, and which accordingly could be rather fun.
Vincent had a remark about flea collars on the tip of his tongue when a ringing voice emanated from the darkness.
“Oh, my gosh! Trick-or-treaters! Happy, happy, happy Halloween!”
“Aw, crap,” Blevins said.
Vincent couldn’t summon quite as much coherency as Maion bounced up across the lawn, plastic bags swinging from both hands, and threw his arms around each of the boys in turn. “You’re so cute!” he cried. “You’re the cutest prospector and living shadow ever to grace our doorstep!”
The cretins looked about as startled as Vincent felt.
“Are you-” Vincent cleared his throat. It was a stupid rhetorical question anyway, because of course Maion was dressed as a cartoonish demon, complete with light-up red horns and a pointy tail pinned to the back of his… red leather pants?
“I’ve had so much candy!” Maion said. “Chocolate is beautiful!” He kissed each of the cretin’s foreheads; they were too horrified even to gag. “Here!” he said, hefting the shopping bags and then digging into them. “More candy! Take it all so that I don’t eat it and get hyperactive and make Vincent do that pinching-the-bridge-of-his-nose-and-sighing thing he always does!”
Vincent paused mid-bridge-pinching sigh.
Blevins snickered.
Vincent was going to destroy him. Slowly. Messily. With great joy.
Maion dumped a massive quantity of candy into each cretin’s pillowcase. “Bless you! I mean that very honestly; don’t be fooled by this costume.”
“Um,” Cowboy said, voice breaking, “thank you.”
Ninja boy said nothing, which Vincent supposed was fitting for a ninja.
“On your way, now!” Maion said. “Be free! Cherish your youth! Eat candy until you’re ill!”
It had been a long time since Vincent had seen lackadaisical teenagers run so fast.
“Huh,” Blevins said, pushing the wine bottles at Vincent and directing his gaze at Maion. “Did you save me any Milk Duds?”
Vincent snatched the bottles away. “How appropriate, given that you are a milquetoast failure.”
“Asshole.”
“Wretch.”
“Here!” Maion said, producing a yellow box with a flourish. “Vincent, be nice. It’s a holiday.”
“No,” Vincent said.
Maion pinned him with the puppy eyes instantly.
“Vincent,” the angel said, “you’re missing the point of Halloween.”
“What a shame,” Vincent said. “I was so looking forward to consuming processed sugar until I made my own intestines rot.”
“The point,” Maion said, shoving the plastic bags at Blevins, who fumbled to take them, “is becoming someone or something else for one day.” He curled his fingers around Vincent’s tie, and the puppy eyes went-warm. Hot. “In my case…” He tugged, and Vincent held the wine out to Blevins, who made an indignant noise but took it. “…that means that this is the one day a year…” Maion pulled harder on the tie, and Vincent stumbled forward. “…that I can act…” Being nose-to-nose with Maion was something of a humbling experience; only when you were very close could you see his age reflected in his eyes. “…different.”
Vincent swallowed. “How do you mean ‘different’?”
Maion grinned slowly, slowly, eyelashes low. “I mean… wicked.”
“Oh, vomit,” Blevins said, shuffling off. “I’m out of here. Have fun. And keep it down, would you?”
Vincent gave him the finger, and then he hooked that finger into one of the belt loops of the red leather pants.
“Prove it,” he said.
Maion beamed.
So perhaps Halloween had its uses.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,342
Warnings: language, it's slashtastic!
Prompt: haunted at pulped_fictions
Summary: Two teenaged boys stumble on a house full of monsters. Have you heard this one before?
Author's Note: Halloween is the best! \o/ Vincent's just bitter because he knows Maion is going to drag him out to see "Breaking Dawn" in less than a month. Also, Vincent usually calls Edward by his last name, which is "Blevins", but I forgot last time because I suck/have been writing FMA fic at an unholy speed. XD
IT WAS A DARK AND REASONABLY TEMPERATE NIGHT
Vincent had about three-hundred and sixty least-favorite nights of the year. By his calculation, that put him four nights short of curmudgeonliness.
Halloween was ranked at tenth- or eleventh-from-worst most years. He tended to start bracing himself over Labor Day.
He flung the door open almost after the bell had stopped echoing in the foyer. “Wha-”
“Trick or treat!” the adolescent cretins crowed.
Vincent stared at them.
They stared back.
Everything between twelve and twenty looked about equally pimpled and scraggly these days, but if pressed Vincent would have pinned them at seventeen. The one on the right was wearing a straw cowboy hat and a red bandanna, and the other seemed to be convinced that a ski mask made him look like a ninja rather than a housebreaker.
“What’s the square root of nine-thousand and eighty-four?” Vincent asked.
They blinked, slowly and in perfect unison.
“That’s your trick,” Vincent said. “Be grateful it’s not molten lead poured down from the parapet.”
The cowboy kid started to frown in bewilderment; it was difficult to tell if his burglar buddy was doing the same.
Sockfeet started across the tile behind Vincent’s back and then proceeded over to glance past his arm.
“Hey,” Blevins said to the pathetic wastes of perfectly good oxygen. “Happy Halloween.”
“Well,” Cowboy said slowly, “it… was…”
Blevins gave Vincent a reprimanding look. That needed to be reiterated: Blevins gave Vincent a reprimanding look. And there would be twice as many cops as usual trawling the streets for intoxicated punks tonight, so Vincent couldn’t even kill him and dump his body in a ditch.
“Are you being a Scrooge?” Blevins asked.
“You disgust me,” Vincent said. “I don’t begin to exhibit Scrooge-like behavior until the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Look,” Blevins said, “they’re at that age where they’re half-assing it for the free candy. They pick expensive houses that are further away from the popular neighborhood hoping to get a better haul, and if you don’t give them something good, they’ll egg the place.”
A century previously, Vincent had spent the better part of a week perfecting his painstakingly slow eye-narrowing glare. “You sound,” he said, “as though you’re speaking from experience.”
Blevins shrugged. “I used to go around rescuing cats. Just give ’em some chocolate or something. You should’ve turned the lights off if you didn’t want trick-or-treaters.”
“We don’t have any chocolate,” Vincent said. “You ate it all.”
Blevins’s starkly offended scowl might have been more intimidating if he hadn’t donned a plaid bathrobe and sweatpants for his ‘scary’ movie marathon. “I did not. Your seraph ate everything.”
“He is not my-”
“Where the hell is he, anyway? He’d love trick-or-treaters. He’d probably have an aneurysm if some little kid came up dressed like an angel.”
Could angels have aneurysms? Vincent would have to ask. “He said he was going out. He didn’t specify where.”
“Awesome,” Blevins said darkly. “Just-find something they can have.”
“You may have this life lesson,” Vincent said to the cretins. “Door-to-door solicitation is punishable by dea-”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Blevins said. “I’ll be right back. You’re such a dick.” He tried to storm off, but the sockfeet-on-tile effect dampened the efficiency of the endeavor somewhat.
Cowboy and Off-Season Skier looked at Vincent uncertainly.
“This has gotten to be even more capitalist than Valentine’s Day,” Vincent said.
Cowboy fidgeted with his pillowcase full of ill-gotten high-fructose corn syrup and mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Ski-Mask seemed to be considering trying to melt into the night and disappear.
“Here!” Blevins said brightly, returning with-
“You are not giving the little bastards wine!” Vincent said.
It was official: his afterlife was a travesty. No self-respecting vampire should ever have to utter such a thing.
“It’s the only edible thing in the house,” Blevins said. “I picked old-looking bottles you probably wouldn’t wa-”
“How are you alive?” Vincent asked. “How do you have the intellect to dress yourself?” He looked pointedly at the bathrobe. “Oh, never mi-”
“Just because I wasn’t an alcoholic in Paris in the eighteenth century?” Blevins had raised his voice, which was twice as intimidating when his hair had cobwebs in it from the wine cellar.
“Everyone was an alcoholic in Paris in the eighteenth century,” Vincent said. “It was that or trying your luck with the water.”
Blevins appeared to be on the verge of attempting to break one of the bottles over Vincent’s head-which would end very badly for him, and which accordingly could be rather fun.
Vincent had a remark about flea collars on the tip of his tongue when a ringing voice emanated from the darkness.
“Oh, my gosh! Trick-or-treaters! Happy, happy, happy Halloween!”
“Aw, crap,” Blevins said.
Vincent couldn’t summon quite as much coherency as Maion bounced up across the lawn, plastic bags swinging from both hands, and threw his arms around each of the boys in turn. “You’re so cute!” he cried. “You’re the cutest prospector and living shadow ever to grace our doorstep!”
The cretins looked about as startled as Vincent felt.
“Are you-” Vincent cleared his throat. It was a stupid rhetorical question anyway, because of course Maion was dressed as a cartoonish demon, complete with light-up red horns and a pointy tail pinned to the back of his… red leather pants?
“I’ve had so much candy!” Maion said. “Chocolate is beautiful!” He kissed each of the cretin’s foreheads; they were too horrified even to gag. “Here!” he said, hefting the shopping bags and then digging into them. “More candy! Take it all so that I don’t eat it and get hyperactive and make Vincent do that pinching-the-bridge-of-his-nose-and-sighing thing he always does!”
Vincent paused mid-bridge-pinching sigh.
Blevins snickered.
Vincent was going to destroy him. Slowly. Messily. With great joy.
Maion dumped a massive quantity of candy into each cretin’s pillowcase. “Bless you! I mean that very honestly; don’t be fooled by this costume.”
“Um,” Cowboy said, voice breaking, “thank you.”
Ninja boy said nothing, which Vincent supposed was fitting for a ninja.
“On your way, now!” Maion said. “Be free! Cherish your youth! Eat candy until you’re ill!”
It had been a long time since Vincent had seen lackadaisical teenagers run so fast.
“Huh,” Blevins said, pushing the wine bottles at Vincent and directing his gaze at Maion. “Did you save me any Milk Duds?”
Vincent snatched the bottles away. “How appropriate, given that you are a milquetoast failure.”
“Asshole.”
“Wretch.”
“Here!” Maion said, producing a yellow box with a flourish. “Vincent, be nice. It’s a holiday.”
“No,” Vincent said.
Maion pinned him with the puppy eyes instantly.
“Vincent,” the angel said, “you’re missing the point of Halloween.”
“What a shame,” Vincent said. “I was so looking forward to consuming processed sugar until I made my own intestines rot.”
“The point,” Maion said, shoving the plastic bags at Blevins, who fumbled to take them, “is becoming someone or something else for one day.” He curled his fingers around Vincent’s tie, and the puppy eyes went-warm. Hot. “In my case…” He tugged, and Vincent held the wine out to Blevins, who made an indignant noise but took it. “…that means that this is the one day a year…” Maion pulled harder on the tie, and Vincent stumbled forward. “…that I can act…” Being nose-to-nose with Maion was something of a humbling experience; only when you were very close could you see his age reflected in his eyes. “…different.”
Vincent swallowed. “How do you mean ‘different’?”
Maion grinned slowly, slowly, eyelashes low. “I mean… wicked.”
“Oh, vomit,” Blevins said, shuffling off. “I’m out of here. Have fun. And keep it down, would you?”
Vincent gave him the finger, and then he hooked that finger into one of the belt loops of the red leather pants.
“Prove it,” he said.
Maion beamed.
So perhaps Halloween had its uses.