Chapter Text
Haven pressed their blunt-nailed, light brown hands together in front of their pale lips and waited until the basement door was closed. They turned to Reese from the waist, not the hips, an uncanny motion to witness, and their fishnet-clad hands opened and lowered to chest height, as if making an offering, as they gazed beatifically the few inches up at Reese's face.
"I just want you to know your mother is terrifying." The words were flat, unemotional and without emphasis, delivered with the strangely artificial accent of an AI impression of a midwestern newscaster.
For a moment, Reese looked like he might be offended.
"Oh, my god, Haven!" Stella's mouth hung open.
And then Reese laughed, covering his mouth and coughing for a few moments. "God, that was--" he choked on another sound of amusement. "You should have seen your face-- and then--" He looked faintly alarmed and then folded in on himself, hands going into his pockets, just folded enough not to catch his nails. "Sorry. That was a brilliant delivery. I just... that was not the sentence I expected, at all."
Haven managed an awkward impression of a cocky grin. "Thanks. I work on that," they deadpanned, tenor voice sounding a great deal more southern.
"But, she's not that scary. She's just... protective." Reese's shoulders hoisted toward his ears. "Stella probably mentioned I'm pretty sick."
"Sick enough your mom didn't want to let us see you, yesterday," Kaneeka pointed out.
"I was probably sleeping. I'm... not up much, during the day. You know that." Reese shook his head, and his shoulders dropped.
"Yeah, if you were awake at a reasonable hour, maybe you'd stream at a reasonable hour," Kaneeka chided. "How am I supposed to watch you, when you're on at like three in the morning, and I have to open the shop in the morning?"
Reese smiled and studied the edge of his shoe. "It's ..." He shrugged, futilely.
"Yeah, come on, you could even just record the streams and post them for later viewing. You'd get such a following!" Stella bounced excitedly.
"Okay, but... I don't really... want a larger following. Sparsely-populated late-night livestreams are about all the social media I can handle. I don't know how you do it, Stella. Existing in front of all those people, all the time. Knowing that some version of you exists in their heads, knowing they expect something of you that you might not be able to give them." Reese turned back toward the other side of the room to find Haven studying the paintings that hung on his wall.
"Yours?" Haven glanced over their shoulder, feeling the eyes on their back, silver beads in their dyed-black braids clicking with the speed of the motion.
"Yeah, I ah..." Reese looked away and gestured at the walls.
Haven pointed at the one his hand stopped at, reddish-grey figures on the wall above the bed. "Goya, much?"
"I'm sorry?" Reese blinked in confusion.
"Oh, wow, you're right." Kaneeka smiled in surprise. "You say it, and I see it."
Haven nodded. "Black period, but sketchier. I'm getting Atropos vibes. Or maybe Witches' Sabbath?" They pointed at another one. "That one's still got the uncanny angles and the faintly unnerving vibe, but I think it leans a little more Beksinski. Actually, this whole wall could be mistaken for the lost works of Beksinski. ... They're not actually lost. He set them on fire."
"Artists?" Reese guessed, still looking like he was waiting for someone to explain the thread of conversation.
"Zdzislaw Beksinski, Polish artist. He did a lot of surrealist images of death and decay, painted a few really nice liminal pieces that passed from nightmare to dream. Like yours, a significant portion of his work joins the... the visceral with the fantastic, embracing the inevitable beauty of decay, at times reaching toward the transcendent evisceration of the self. This isn't just a reproduction of agony, it's a longing, from a place of death, for meaning and recognition in and of an awful truth, and how it necessarily alters one's perspective." Haven turned at another odd angle, to look up at Reese by tipping their head back over one shoulder, silver beads clicking again. "I'm a little in love, okay? They're beautiful."
Reese stood there blinking like he'd been slapped for a few moments. His mouth opened and closed around a few half started sounds, before words came out. "You get it."
"Yeah, of course I get it. What the fuck is not to get?" Haven turned around, head first, the rest of their body following the motion, hands out as if to embrace it all, and possibly Kaneeka, if she didn't move. "It's a distillation of horrific truth and the persistent pursuit beauty, even in it, even through it. They're gruesome because the substance of being is gruesome, but it is so much more with a good hand and a steady eye. It's like when the angel came to Zecheriah, and opened with 'be not afraid'. There is horror in this world, and it is at the root of all the best of things, just waiting to be understood and appreciated, not just for its transformative potential, but for itself. But, if it must be transformative, you always grow better roses with a corpse in the ground."
Reese made adorable puppy eyes at Stella. "Can I keep them?" He stopped, turning considering eyes on Haven, ignoring Stella's reply.
"Your mother would absolutely lose her mind, and you know it."
"'Them' or 'it'?" Reese asked, and Kaneeka squawked.
"You can't just call people 'it'! What the hell is wrong with you, man?"
Haven's eyebrows crept up, amusement breaking across their face. "What gave me away?"
Reese looked away, nervously, shoulder twitching in a half-shrug. "I dunno."
"Yes, you do. And you're afraid of what I'm going to say." Haven remained unmoving, a slim smile firmly parked on their lips.
Kaneeka cut in. "You shouldn't push him, like that. If he doesn't know, he doesn't know."
"It's all right," Haven said, ignoring Kaneeka. "I've heard it all. I suspect you have, too."
And that was when Reese looked up, catching Haven's eye. They stared at each other, silently.
"If they were dogs, they'd be sniffing each other's butts," Stella whispered loudly.
"Shut up!" Kaneeka hissed, wondering if she was going to have to break up a fight.
The hint of a smile touched Reese's lips, finally. "You're monstrous."
"What?" Stella demanded.
"What the hell, Reese?" Kaneeka looked horrified.
"You cultivate it," Reese went on. "I just embraced it."
"I embraced it, and then I cultivated it," Haven argued, with a sly wink. "Keeps the shitheads back about thirty feet. You just don't know me well enough to see it."
"I'd like to. I'd very much like to." Reese's hands went back into his pockets and he stepped back. "I mean, if you..."
"Any day of the week. Any hour of the day. I'm here until Monday." Haven smiled again, eyes bright with anticipation.
"Are they flirting? I think they're flirting." Stella whispered loudly. "That's Reese. And he's flirting. With Tabitha's cousin."
"I don't know if it's flirting, but it's definitely fucked up," Kaneeka decided. "I'm pretty sure nobody calls someone a monster and then expects to go out with them."
Stella gestured at the scene in front of them, like a gameshow presenter. "Obviously not 'nobody'."
Reese looked up, shyly. "I mean, if I'm awake at a reasonable hour... Unless you're up for--"
"I don't think I said anything about reasonable hours. I'm not a reasonable person." Haven's smile widened into a dangerous grin. "Let us be monstrous, together, for an evening. If it works, it works. If it doesn't... I'm going home on Monday, and we need never mention it again. Besides, I'd love to see what the hand that did all this could do with me."
"You'd sit for me?" Reese's eyes widened. "You've seen what I do, and you'd sit for me?"
"Happily. Merrily. As cheerfully as you can expect from someone wearing a Neübauten shirt your mother shouldn't see." Haven unzipped their hoodie and pulled it open. "I forgot we were coming here, when I got dressed, this morning."
"Haus der Lüge!?" Reese choked on another laugh, covering his mouth and rolling his eyes. "How do you even have that shirt? I would kill for one in my size! ... Not that I could wear it around the house, and where am I ever... And yes, you should probably cover it, before we go back upstairs, or my mother will never let you through the door again."
"Oh, my god, you have the horse-cock album on a t-shirt." Kaneeka looked horrified.
"The what?" Stella stopped flipping through a pile of drawings she'd found on the floor. "Oh, my god. I had to see that with my own two eyes."
"Oh, please, my shirt is not more horrifying than the Ditchlings." Still, Haven zipped their hoodie.
"Speaking of Ditchlings..." Stella turned around the drawings she was holding. "This why you said they looked like something out of your nightmares?"
"Yeah, ah..." Reese rubbed the back of his neck. "They've been coming to my window, at night. I thought I was hallucinating them, but you just recognised them, so... ah, it's not me."
Kaneeka eyed the drawing with concern. "Yeah, that's exactly what I saw on the way home, last night."
Stella's eyes flicked to Reese in undisguised concern. "What does it mean that they've been lurking around here, though?"
"Does it have to mean something?" Reese asked, shrugging. "I don't mind them. I like the company, actually. I think they're beautiful, in a sad way."
"Like you," Haven breathed, and Reese's attention darted to them, as Kaneeka went on as if she hadn't heard. She probably hadn't.
"Agree to disagree with you, there. Those things are going to be in my nightmares until the day I die," Kaneeka said, before she registered that Reese wasn't listening, and was gaping like a fish at Haven. "What did you say, this time? Did you break him?"
"Perhaps I'm wrong about the sad part," Haven admitted, tipping their head apologetically.
"Say it again." Reese shook his head. "I'm sure I heard you wrong."
"You said the Ditchlings were beautiful, in a sad way. I said, 'like you'." Haven held up a hand. "I could be wrong about the sad part. I don't know you that well."
"No, he's pretty sad," Stella chimed in. "Wait. No. Emotionally. Not..."
Kaneeka covered her eyes. "Do any of you even talk to actual people, ever?"
Haven leaned backward, bending their knees for balance, until they could see Kaneeka. "I live alone, in a dingy one-room apartment, with a cat the size of a bathtub. Do I really seem like I talk to people?"
"Yeah, that's you. And probably him, too. But, what's her excuse?" Kaneeka gestured despairingly at Stella.
"She spends all her time hanging out with cryptids," Reese joked. "Myself, included."
Kaneeka sighed. "You're not a cryptid, Reese. You're just sick and tired."
Reese grabbed the skin under his upper arm and lifted his arm away from his hand, stretching the skin. He looked at Stella. "Both?"
"Both is good!" Stella and Haven assured him, at almost the same time.
"Ehlers-Danlos?" Haven asked.
"Gesundheit!" Stella volunteered.
Reese looked blank.
"The stretchy thing. Is it just your skin, or do your joints do it too?" Haven grabbed one of their own fingers and pulled, taking it obviously out of the socket, rotating it both ways, and then putting it back in and popping the knuckle. "Ehlers-Danlos is a hypermobility syndrome, but it's not the one I've got. You've got the stretchy skin, and I don't."
"You just dislocated your finger. How did you-- that's one of those illusions like taking the end of your finger off, right?" Stella looked fascinated.
"No, that's real." Reese shook his head. "Nice. My elbows turn inside out, sometimes. I can't always do it, but the stars align or something, and my arms bend both ways. Sometimes my fingers come out, but... the other way. The gross way."
"That's your connective tissue surrendering to the inevitable." Haven nodded, as if imparting a great secret.
Kaneeka watched them in moderate concern. "Dear lord, there's two of them. Maybe bringing them together wasn't such a good idea. I feel like we've just unleashed something on the universe, here."
"Something awesome!" Stella decided. "Come on, have you ever seen Reese look this happy?"
"No, I haven't. And I really don't want to see him look sad, after."
The tension was broken by a shout down the stairs. "Dinner's on the table!"
Haven elbowed Stella as she crossed the room. "Text him my number, would you?" They winked at Reese. "Any time, day or night, as long as you can get me past the front door."
Reese blushed vividly. "Oh, I can."