June Writing Challenge: Hidden Fear

[Sean *]

It's writing challenge time! To enter, just post a ficlet (300-4000 words suggested) in this thread. When the voting for this month's OTM winners comes around, a voting poll will go up for this as well.

The Challenge: Write a story that focuses on one of your character's fears. This can be something common or rare, and doesn't need to rise to the level of an actual phobia. It can be something as concrete as spiders or something as abstract as becoming "that guy."

The rules:

• Characters must be in Hammel canon, but the ficlets are not site canon unless expressly stated.
  
• Entries must be more than 300 words.
  
• You can enter no more than three ficlets. Any ficlets posted after the original 3 will not be considered for voting. If you want to post more, however, have fun.
  
• Story entries must be titled.

[Gryphon Matsuoka]

Rambling Thoughts
Word Count: 1581
For anyone interested - yes, this is canon.
Also, as this is for 'hidden fears', there is a fear hidden in the text xD I've tried to leave hints about it towards the end but yay puzzles!

Gryphon looked himself over in the mirror. Yes, he was still - still - in a wheelchair, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep up appearances. The twenty year old (Twenty? When did that happen?) ruffled his hair a bit and straightened his clothes. It was nothing more than usual. Just baggy clothes, things he could easily get on over his casts and things he could easily move in. Despite the whole normality of this situation, he felt a slight sense of unease as he looked at himself. He couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

Was it the lingering worry about his bones? He looked at those crumbling excuses for legs attached to his body which, by this point, felt like annoying dead weight. He had realised how serious this was a little later than you might have expected. Around the time he expected the doctor to take the casts off. When he was told that they wouldn’t be going anywhere for at least a few more months. And he was told it was still possible he might be permanently damaged if he stopped being careful, or if the break was worse than they had realised, or if his legs just didn’t heal properly.

Wondering about this helped nothing, but Gryph just couldn’t help mulling over all the possibilities. If his legs didn’t heal properly, what would he do? His main talent and calling in life, he believed, was his ability to express himself through movement; his dancing. If he became in any way disabled, that would be disrupted majorly. This medical condition in general was fairly disrupting to his talent. One wrong move could result in a broken limb - it always felt like a risk, but because his dance was also aiding his condition, and because he enjoyed it so, he was not about to stop doing it. So long as his body agreed with him.

If his body didn’t agree with him… well, he didn’t know what he would do.

He had been forced to consider the possibility more as time went on. He had been reminded multiple times - dancing was not a simple career. Aiming to perform on stage or in a group wasn’t safe. The moment you left a production, you had to look for another one, if you wanted money. Either that or get a part time job.

….was that another worry of his? Not just dancing but his career prospects in general? His job at the dance studio was a no-go currently - it didn’t fit with the situation to be teaching children to dance whilst one couldn’t dance themselves to demonstrate. He tried for one lesson and it just didn’t work. Maybe he needed to broaden his ideas. Maybe it was time for something different.

Different. Hm. Difference was a difficult thing though. To go out there and specifically look to be different was scary in itself. But Gryphon was different in general, really. This avian man, with large eagle wings, the ability to communicate with birds and his homosexuality wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of averageness or normality. He was as far from the norm as some people got. Though some people did go further...

And they weren’t afraid. That was something to applaud. The people who could go out into the big wide world, seemingly without a care, and be themselves completely… not that Gryph didn’t do that, no, just… well, as far as weird got, he wasn’t the weirdest. And yet he still felt uncomfortable some days. He still felt that slight unease that got him looking at himself in the mirror and tilting his head and wondering ‘Is there something more to this feeling?’ Was it something important, actually present? Or was it just gentle anxiety teasing his thoughts and trying to squeeze out a new insecurity to play with like a ball of yarn to a playful kittycat.

Thinking about cats… eurgh. That was not a subject Gryph even wanted to delve into. It made his wings twitch just thinking about felines - those meowing creatures didn’t need to stay on his mind longer than necessary, unless he wanted to start worrying and panicking.

About panicking… Kodi was doing better. Maybe that was why he felt a bit unsettled… yeah, it would make sense. Worrying about his boyfriend - but as he had said, the dentokinetic was improving, ish. Slowly but surely. He wasn’t curled up on his bed anymore, hiding from everything and everyone, and he thought that encounter with Oriel more recently had done more good than harm. Those two needed to come back into contact anyway. Maybe…. maybe seeing the ink manipulator trying to scale a fence wasn’t the most normal thing, but as Gryph was saying before, when had he ever been normal? Nothing around him seemed to be normal, even if life was trying to settle into something a little more…. regular. Casual. Not so… emotional. It was what they all needed, Gryphon and the people around him. Some relaxation.

His thoughts bounced from one idea to another; from a problem to a conundrum to a solution, maybe. Or maybe it looped back around. Usually the solutions caused more problems…. ow, his head hurt. Gryph finally started moving away from that mirror and towards his desk. He had a lot to work on, and he was too easily distracted to keep finding excuses to walk away from it. He could go get some tea to concentrate, or some ice cream to calm down, or… or some more supplies so he didn’t run out of like… pens or paper or something. Yeah, he was using a laptop but paper was useful….! No. Come on. He took a breath and edged closer to the desk, loading up a study guide.

Gender studies. The major he decided on, involving this subject, was extremely interesting. He thoroughly enjoyed learning more about gender, and different sexualities and identities and the history of these things. Doing lots of reading and writing and essays was probably the hardest part, though. He was better at debating. Get the thoughts out as they came. Not… writing. Who even found writing easily? It was so hard to get words on paper (or a screen, as the case may be) and to make them seem natural and make them flow and make sense and use evidence well, let alone without grammatical problems and spelling mistakes and stuff.

And then getting back hours of hard work to find a crap grade. Or something a good grade! Gryph could never tell, he wasn’t made for academics.

Whether or not he was good at writing, though, he had an essay to do. An essay he didn’t want to do. He was too distracted by this point thinking about his life, and the lives of those around him. Made him wonder how much Tak knew about him, considering she was his housemate. He liked to think they spoke enough. But that wasn’t something to be thinking about. He wasn’t worried about Takchawee. So why did he still feel this anxious energy coming from himself?

It was like his body was trying to fool him. Throw him off guard and say “Hah, look, I fooled ya!”. When he imagined his mind fooling him, he oddly enough imagined his brain had the voice of one Mr. Vanguard. Maybe that wasn’t so surprising.

Was he really, truly scared of something right now?

Correct, apparently. What did he have to be scared of, though? He was alone, in his own apartment, nothing dangerous was happening; there was nothing to clearly be worrying about or afraid of.

And yet, he couldn’t stop his heart from thudding. Like something was amiss.

He wasn't sure anything was amiss though, but...

Was there? He could always have a quick check around, make sure nothing was missing or misplaced or incorrect. He had been paying rent, yes. There was food in the kitchen. All the bills were covered. These things he was fairly certain of. This uneasy feeling was really beginning to get to him. He just wanted to lie down and try and blank his mind but in this state, lying down wasn’t an option unless he lay on the ground, which didn’t seem like a comfortable option today. Why was he so nervous, so… worried, so… so...

Scared?

To be honest with himself, though, Gryphon had a feeling he knew what was making him so nervous. It was something he had spent long hours mulling over, and he didn’t talk about it because these subject… they were techty. He was afraid.

Be afraid, he told himself, you’re allowed to be scared of something you don’t fully understand. He just didn’t want to be-

Abnormal any more than he already was. He wanted to be simple, and not just simple-minded. But that one question always at the front of his thoughts kept pushing him backwards. He knew his mind wanted to hide it from him, because if it was true… it would be embarrassing. And he was scared of the rejection that could come with it, but--- but what did he have to be scared of? It wasn’t something he was certain on yet, and heck, he hardly knew about it whatsoever. He could look in the mirror and be confused all he wanted but it wouldn’t change anything. Maybe he was overreacting. Or maybe he was just thinking too much. He did that a lot.

[Lani Hunter]

Hold Your Breath

The water swayed and Lani, still three feet away edge, eyed it warily. As if it would somehow jump out and grab him, pulling him down into its depths. He shook his head and turned his eyes to the starting block. He caught sight of Caroline and gave her a thumbs up. The younger Hunter returned it with a smile and got up on the block. The buzzer had the swimmers off and Lani nearly went hoarse calling encouragement to his younger sister. He hated the water but he would always be there to support her. Caroline flew through the water in a way Lani couldn’t even begin to understand and the finish came fast. She got third and Lani could not have been more proud of here. He looked up at the time on the board and knew that it had been her record. He made his way to where she was getting out.

Without hesitation Caroline dropped wearily into Lani’s open arms. He hugged her tightly, no issues with being wet, since it was not near the basin of death water. “That was amazing! I’m so proud of you! That was…”

“Five seconds! I dropped five seconds!” Caroline cried breathlessly turning her beaming face up to his.

“Unheard of!” Lani declared and put his arm around her shoulder. “Was that your last race? Come on, get some water.”

She shook her head and took the water Lani offered as she flopped on the bleachers. “I’ve got the relay.”

Lani nodded and looked at the pool warily. “Alright, well I’ll text Odion then, ‘cause I am taking you out to dinner, you amazing lady.”

The younger Hunter smiled and high fived her brother with joy. Lani couldn’t even fathom it. Somewhere in the span of time he had grown into a man and Caroline had blossomed into a woman. She was strong and anyone who looked at her would never know that when she was merely six years old she almost lost her fight for life. Regret was not something he felt when he looked back at those times. He knew that if he did it again he would do exactly the same thing. What he regretted was how it had made him dishonest and distrustful. Caroline removed her cap and shook out her hair before binding it back into a pony tail.

With a smile he let his thoughts wander. Through everything Caroline had been his rock just as much as he had been hers. She was the one person bold enough to call him out when he was being unreasonable and he was there to protect her from the dark thought he knew sometimes ran through her mind. He knew, they were the same ones he couldn’t fight off sometimes. She had doubts about her intelligence and her place in the world. Questions that Lani had fought off for years. He didn’t tell her they would go away, he just reminded her of all the good things she’d done. He glanced down at her when he felt her hand take his. He squeezed her hand, unspoken communication going between them.

The morning sun rose and Lani wasn’t surprised to find Caroline still asleep on his couch. He silently made his way out of the apartment to meet Karalie for a run. He didn’t have to leave a not telling Caroline to help herself to food when she awoke. If there was one thing Lani still couldn’t get used to, it was the early mornings. They killed him. Bleary eyed he waved at Karalie who was already stretching out.

“Morning, sunshine,” Karalie teased.

Lani yawned and showed her the bird which only made Karalie laugh harder. Starting out his own stretches Lani was near to falling back sleep where he stood. It was a very real danger. So he shook himself out and decided to warm up on the way. “Which path should we take this time?”

Karalie pointed, “I was thinking this one, since it’s so nice, it goes right along the lake.”

Lani looked warily down the path, he’d been avoiding this one for so long, it would start to get suspicious if he came up with yet another excuse. So he nodded and dragged his feet when he followed after her. She glanced back at him with a curious expression and Lani groaned theatrically and picked up his pace. “I’m sure my brain is still in bed.”

Making Karalie laugh was a joy and she quickly got his mind well awake and working with conversation. He had really grown to like Karalie, she was sweet and sassy. And she hadn’t stopped hanging out with him when she found out that he was Odion weren’t just friends.

His side of the conversation lulled as they reached the bridge that crossed a narrow part of the lake. He had been over it before, but usually only with a lot of build up and he raced across it when he could. “Last one over buys coffee!” He declared without warning and bolted over, fright giving him extra speed. Karalie was only a step behind, caught off guard but she quickly caught up and was preoccupied by the race.

Lani slowed once they got to the end. “I win,” he declared.

“I don’t think so,” Karalie protested, “My foot crossed a second before yours did.”

Lani scoffed, brushing off his fear with it. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.” He glanced at her, that impish look on his face and his eyes glittered with humor. Karalie reached out and shoved him. She’d come a long way from the light swats. Lani’s path of travel wavered but he kept his feet and only laughed.

The path looped and Lani wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with the dock on the way back. He just hated it. The spaces between the wood made it possible to see the water and Lani convinced himself that it was ready to fall or that the railing was frail and would fall at any moment.

“Are you alright?” Karalie’s voice called through his thoughts and he blinked coming back to the real world.

“Yeah, of course, why do you ask?” He asked raising a brow at Karalie.

She shrugged. “I don’t know you seem a little distracted.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” he replied cryptically and before she could ask he supplied a lie, “Classes are just giving me hell is all.”

She smiled, though if Lani was still good at reading people he would say she didn’t quite believe him.

The conversation lulled then and they spoke little and sparsely the rest of the run. He shook off his fears and left her with a bright smile and a promise to buy her coffee tomorrow morning, since he had to run home.

The telekinetic climbed the stairs, his legs complaining every step. He was not prepared for the smells that met him at his door. “Hello?” He called.

“Hey!” Caroline and Odion answered in tandem from the kitchen.

He smiled as he rounded the corner and saw just what he had smelled. Breakfast! His mouth watered at the smell of eggs and pancakes. Caroline was manning the pancakes and gave him a wave.

“This smells so good,” Lani said sniffing the air. He grabbed some water and stole a kiss from Odion on his way to the skin.

“Go shower and you can have some,” Odion teased. Lani gave a wicked smile and leaned himself on Odion. Good naturedly, Odion shoved him off making a face at the telekinetic. “Go shower!” Lani laughed and did as he was told, his stomach growling.

The cool water washed over him and he closed his eyes letting the stream cleanse him. He was only in for a few minutes. Any longer and his lungs started to ache, even after the short shower he was starting to imagine his throat closing. He looked into the mirror and shook his head. Gripping the skin he looking himself in the eye. “You can breathe,” he whispered, “You’re not drowning. Breathe.” Following his own directions, he forced air through his lungs and did his best to ignore the lingering moisture. Everything was fine. The telekinetic recovered the sane part of his mind and breathed easily.

Finally clean and in fresh clothes, the telekinetic returned to the kitchen where he wrapped his arms around Odion’s waist and kissed him. The kiss faded as he dissolved into laughter as Caroline made joking sounds of barfing.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Darling Lorraine

Please don’t leave me yet.
I know you’re in pain,
Pain you can’t forget.
Your breathing is like an echo of our love.

The entire western wing of the hospital was isolated, reminiscent of the quarantines for tuberculosis, typhoid, and small pox in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. In order to pass through, the staff had to scrub up like they were going into surgery, before donning layers of gloves, masks, and protective aprons. Some wore goggles, although even the hospital administration considered that overkill.

None of the staff liked the inconvenience of that level of precaution, and so many of them did what they could to avoid the western wing during rounds. The patients went ignored for all but the most basic needs and the most important tests. Arguments ensued during daily conferences and team meetings. Some of the medical personnel received grief from their families, for fear of bringing the disease into their homes. That, too, contributed to the patient neglect and the overall grim atmosphere.

Sean was afraid of bringing the disease home, although that didn’t deter him from his duties. He had Josh were monogamous and had been tested when their friends began to die; they were clean. The telepath had used condoms as a matter of course since becoming sexually active, and he’d gotten used to them, so that they had become habit. He and Josh had used them since they began dating, years ago, for which they had earned teasing from their friends.

“You’re in medical school. Surely you know you can’t get him pregnant, no matter how enthusiastic you might try.”

Their friends no longer mocked their precautions.

Sean spent more time in the western wing than most of the other staff members. For this, he got into arguments with the other doctors, and he was shunned socially. If they knew he had a male lover at home, they would try to get him fired, and they would probably succeed in doing so. Everyone was so afraid. More than ruining his career, they would ruin Josh’s with the shame, and the young telepath could never forgive himself for allowing that type of collateral harm to his lover.

So he scrubbed up and held his tongue whenever he was at the hospital.

***************************************

“It’s a bad way to go.”

“There are no good ways to go.”

“No, but it’s worse than most of the others.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

*************************

“Sometimes I write him letters.”

“That’s not uncommon.”

“I tel him how much I hate him for leaving me.”

“That’s not uncommon either.”

“But does it make me a bad person?”

“No.” Sean had no ability to offer absolution to any of his patients, no matter how much they paid him for his services. He wasn’t a priest. He hadn’t stepped foot in a church in five years. He had no theological training, and the only formal training he had received in ethics came through the psychiatric field and what he had learned at Hammel. Yet his patients desired absolution in the form of assurance that they were normal, and that, if they were normal, then what they did wasn’t bad per se.

Considering the population who comprised the vast majority of his patients, what they did wasn’t bad, even though they received conflicting messages from society at large.

“What do you do with the letters?”

“I burn them.”

“All of them?”

“Just the ones where I tell him how much I hate him, or when I call him a selfish asshole.”

“What about the others?”

“I keep those in a shoe box in the closet.”

************************

Sean kept letters in a shoe box.

Only some letters. The important ones. The personal ones. The ones he couldn’t part with.

He kept other letters in his safe deposit box at the bank. Three of them. A letter describing his last will and testament for whoever ended up serving as Executor of his estate (either Josh or his attorney at this stage in life). A letter to Ryan as final words of advice to his nephew. A letter to Josh to tell the younger man everything he would want to hear, and everything that he wouldn’t want to hear.


Once upon a time, there had been a different letter to Josh in that box. When he had faced the real possibility of death or permanent injury. A lifetime ago as a bachelor who had wanted to protect Hammel, the students, his coworkers, Pilot Ridge, the world, all of the meta-humans who would be exploited, and all of the baseline humans who had no role to play in Gabriel Underwood’s twisted dreams. A letter telling Josh everything he needed to hear, although he knew that the younger man would have wanted to read none of it.

After surviving M.S.A.D., he had taken that letter out of the safe deposit box. Now it lived in his shoe box with the others.

He’d thought about burning it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Sentimental old man that he was.

******************

Lorraine...
Her hands, like wood.
The doctor was smiling...
But the news wasn’t good.

***********************

His insomnia had worsened over the years.

Newspapers printed summaries of scientific studies demonstrating that Americans as a whole slept worse than they did five, ten, twenty, fifty years ago. Studies attributed this to all manner of different causes: the obesity epidemic which resulted in greater instances of sleep apnea; the general aches and pains accumulated by an aging population; economic stress and concerns; as an offshoot of the last one, the fact that Americans were expected to work at home, even if they had clocked out for the day; the saturation of the average American in increasingly higher levels of back light from electronic devices, which threw off brain chemistry and interfered with sleep patterns; side effects from a panoply of prescription drugs.

Side effects from telepathy.

No study listed those, since they affected such a minuscule portion of the population. Yet, they existed and they afflicted Sean.

It was bound to happen; certain side effects were cumulative. Meta-humans with wings developed early-onset osteoporosis. Meta-humans with increased durability often slowly lost the ability to feel physical sensations. Shapeshifters accrued long-lasting joint pain. Telepaths accumulated a lifetime of baggage, much of it not belonging to them in the first place, even if they became its caretakers.


The mind rebelled at night.

Josh didn’t suffer from insomnia, and Sean envied his partner that ability. The ability to go to sleep at a decent hour, to wake at a decent hour - the hour he had set for his alarm clock - and the ability to remain asleep between those two points without interruption. To receive decent, restful sleep in the night.

He feared it would only worsen with time.

He hoped it wouldn’t, but it nagged at him.

People with Alzheimer’s often suffered from sleep problems.

Sean didn’t have Alzheimer’s now. He didn’t have a family history of Alzheimer’s. Josh was the one with the family history, although his father’s illness had been a shock to them all. (Less shocking when one remembered that his father had never seen any of his own family members reach an advanced age due to the atrocities committed during the War.)

But it nagged at him. He couldn’t think of a worse way to go.

Cancer was more likely. Liver cancer for him, lung cancer from the second hand smoke, even a brain tumor, although that, too, weighed on him. A heart attack, a stroke, or an aneurysm, he expected one of those to take him. Even cirrhosis, although his liver remained fully functional as of cutting back on the liquor. A car accident or falling down the stairs, or falling overboard from his boat, or even a bad bought of pneumonia. Any of those would be preferable.

He didn’t want to go through that.

He didn’t want to put Josh through that.

Beside him, his partner stirred, shifting towards the warm spot in the middle of the bed. The telepath shifted as well, to make more room for the younger man; that was instinctive.

He thought about his years at the hospital, how he had watched the men - and they were almost always men - dying in droves from AIDS. How they suffered and called out for help, but they had nobody at their sides. Either because their families had abandoned them or because their lovers were forbidden from visiting due to hospital policy.

From that perspective, he didn’t want to outlive Josh. He didn’t want to go through that alone, as those men had done.

But he also didn’t want to make Josh do that, after the attorney would have to see him through whatever finally took him in the end.

There was no good way to go, and there was no way to go about it that wouldn’t cause him or Josh misery. While he did everything he could to shoulder the burdens for both of them, this was one area where - for all of his power and knowledge and connections - he had no control whatsoever.

Josh stirred again. His eyes fluttered and then he squinted into the dark. “Still up?”

“Unfortunately.”

His partner looked sympathetic. “What time is it?”

“Past three. You should go back to sleep.”

“What about you?”

Sean shrugged a single time. “It’s one of those nights.”

Rather than roll over to fall back asleep, Josh pushed himself up and then wrapped his arms around the telepath. “I’ll stay up with you.”

“You don’t have to.” Despite his words, Sean didn’t try to push the other man away.

“But I want to.”

For tonight, that was enough.