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luchiaSo, my grandpa died at 7AM my time, that's 6AM on west coast time, and I'm strangely okay with it considering, according to my mom, he was coherent enough to be grinning about the Patriots losing the superbowl last night. Because that's pure golf-playing, speech-giving-when-it's-uncalled-for, hug-giving, "You're Quite The Shannon" grandpa.
I'll be leaving for Oregon either Tuesday or early Wednesday. If anyone knows what you wear to a Wake, for the love of god tell me because I'd hate to show up in all black while everyone else is wearing sandals and hawaiian shirts.
Also, to cheer us both up, I'm fic-dumping all my half-finished stuff.
For Puffy: What I've got of the hair-pulling bondage fic. No title yet.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you do this, Glitch.”
“Since when is that your problem? And it’s Ambrose, not Glitch. I don’t glitch anymore, so I’m Ambrose.” He paused mid-storming-down-the-stairwell, and turned to look at him. “Also? Don’t tell me what to do.”
“If what you want to do is a futile suicide to make up for things you didn’t have any control over, I’m going to tell you you’re an idiot at least,” Cain snapped back. “You couldn’t have known any of this would-”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Cain, so I suggest you shut up before I make you,” Ambrose growled, turning a corner, their boots sharp against the rusted grating of the lower-level floors. The old grease that had dropped down had mixed with the rust to turn it a sickly color, like dried blood.
“Glitch, we both know I can shoot you faster than you can dropkick me,” Cain said wryly.
“AMBROSE, Cain,” he hissed. “I’m not your precious forgetful fucktoy who won’t remember what happened in the morning-”
“HEY,” Cain shouted. “You were NEVER a fucktoy. And whoever told you that you were-”
“Oh, trust me,” Ambrose smirked darkly as he turned down yet another flight of stares, deeper and deeper into the machine that was Azkadellia’s Tower. “Nobody has to tell or explain anything to me any more. I’ve got my brain! Or are you the one with memory problems now?”
“And you think you were nothing but a fucktoy to me?” Cain frowned, and shook his head, disgusted. “You are the stupidest genius I’ve ever met.”
“That statement explains so much, gallant Tin Man. Insult me and hope I get defensive and forget that you didn’t say a damn thing about the real issue.”
“The one where you’re about to blow a building up with yourself in it or the fucktoy part? Both are real issues, and both are definitely stupid,” he snapped. “You were smarter with half a brain, Ambrose. Seems like the only thing you got out of that other half is a guilt trip the size of the Red Road and an urgent appointment with your own gun.”
“You’re the one with the gun,” Ambrose muttered, shaking his head and turning to a rusted, grimy door and the wheel-lock on the front of it.
Cain rolled his eyes. “Figure of speech, Gli-”
“You say that name one more time and I’ll lock this door behind me and with you on the other side,” he stated, and he twisted the wheel…down.
Huh.
With a yank, the wheel went down, and the door slid into the wall with a horrific screeching at a speed that could easily break bones. Inside was quite possibly the cleanest room in the whole building – clean metal floors, gage after gage of sparkling silver and brass and toggles on one wall, a faded schematic of…something that took up the entirety of the parallel one, and a huge window, window seat and all, on the other side.
“Projected view,” Ambrose muttered, already eyeing the gages as Cain stared out on the faraway mountain, and waterfall, and lake, and-
“You’re distracting me,” Cain said, gaping at Ambrose, who simply smirked and shrugged.
“Makes us even, I’d say.”
“You just put words into my mouth back there, I never tried to distract you from anything!” He rubbed at his forehead, teeth grating against themselves despite Cain trying very hard to remain in control and not just…tie Ambrose up and make him realize he was worth more than a pile of wreckage blown across the OZ.
“Why Cain, that was almost sweet,” Ambrose smiled devilishly, tauntingly.
“I am NOT going to rise to your…your baiting, Ambrose.” He frowned, trapped between glaring and almost pitying the man who’d regained his brain. “What is it going to take for you to realize you’re actually worth something?”
“I’m worth plenty,” Ambrose stated, twisting a knob that squeaked under his hand.
“Yeah, to everyone but yourself. You’re thinking in ransom money or something just as stupid. What do you need to realize you’re not a toy? Or just a tool for the Queen and the OZ and everything else? You’re-”
“Shut up,” Ambrose snapped, twisting towards Cain and taking three steps before slamming him against the wall. “Stay out of my business, Tin Man.”
“I can’t do that and you know it,” he glared.
For Dommy (and everyone else...): What I managed to get out of for the last chapter of 15 Annuals.
“Tell me about this Cyclone, Ambrose,” Azkadellia said.
She was sitting in her chair behind her study desk, pointedly ignoring him. Ambrose had moved one of the chairs in front of her desk the moment he’d been shown in, picking it up without looking at her and putting them back to back.
“She’s strong, and she’s going to kill you,” Ambrose sighed, looking out the windows at the blighted OZ, feet propped against a pane of glass, the frayed edges of his pants tickling his ankles. “There’s no stopping her, cousin dearest, no matter what you do or where you run to.”
Azkadellia grit her teeth, closing her eyes and forcing herself to remain calm. “We’ll begin with physical attributes.”
“Female, looks a bit like you but less possessed and insane. Then again, most women look the same nowadays, all glitter and primping,” Ambrose said blithely. “Can I go now, or do you have more questions for me to not answer?”
“What’s her real name?” Azkadellia snapped.
“What’s mine?” Ambrose grinned out the window. “Names have power, cousin dearest. Ideas, feelings, names, they all have their own powers. And right now, she has no other name. She may answer to others, just as I might, but right now, she is nothing but the Cyclone, and I am Ambrose.” He paused, twisting around in the chair to look over Azkadellia’s shoulder. She jumped. “Rather spooky, isn’t it? One’s right behind you, the other’s coming straight towards you-”
“Enough. Intellectual attributes,” she said, eyes closed.
“Smart.”
“Height?”
“Shorter than you.”
“WEIGHT.”
“Now that’s a question you never ask of a woman,” Ambrose said, scandalized. “The weight of her words is heavy? Will that do for you?”
Azkadellia threw down her pen. “Enough.”
“Oh, good, does that mean I get to-”
Before he got another word out, Ambrose found himself sitting in the solitary confinement cell he and Cain were currently guests of.
For...um. Everyone? The Architect/Construction Worker AU. ALSO without a title.
“It’s boring,” she said flatly.
The architect’s mouth opened and closed, eyes wide as the gray-haired woman, flanked by her blond husband, nodded to each other over the plans he’d spent four painstaking months on, time he’d spent designing, drafting, assessing the lot, determining structural capabilities, trying to make the best mansion possible for the royal couple, and they had just brushed him aside, just like they were brushing his papers across the table and towards him.
“We appreciate the work you put into this, though,” the man said. “It had a flavor of what we’re looking for-”
“I have another design,” the architect blurted out, and the couple stared at him.
The woman smiled uneasily. “Really, Mr. Tutor, we do appreciate all the work you’ve put into it, but it’s simply not what we’re looking for.”
“It’s eleven,” Tutor said, almost pleading. “If you let me come back at one in the afternoon, I swear to you that I’ll be carrying the plans you’ve been dreaming of in my hands.”
“That’s a heavy promise,” Ahamo said.
Tutor smirked, looking down at himself and hoping they couldn’t see how bad he was sweating. “I’m a heavy kind of man.”
“We’ll see you at one then, Mr. Tutor,” the woman said, lavender eyes still doubtful as they looked him over.
“Thank you, your Majesty. I promise you won’t regret it,” he said, and bowed, plans crinkling beneath him.
“Again with the promises,” the husband said wryly.
Tutor just grinned and walked as casually toward the door as he could manage.
When it shut behind him, Tutor grabbed his papers in a death grip and ran down the hall, praying to whatever was up there that he’d be able to find an eccentric genius before it was too late.
---
Said eccentric genius was, at that moment, sitting in a nearby park in Central City, feet hanging over the top of the bench, dark eyes watching the shoes that walked past. It was interesting to see what differences he could see in such similar shoes. A scuffmark here, a cut there, all riddles to be answered, hints at the life of the man or woman wearing them.
Unfortunately, this was a common habit for him, so around noon he found himself staring at a very familiar pair of recently shined shoes with one almost untied and signs of running all around town on them.
“Afternoon, Tutor,” Ambrose – who preferred going by Glitch – said cheerily. “No Toto today?”
“No Toto,” Tutor said, out of breath, and sat down next to Glitch on the bench. “I’ve been a bit busy today, I don’t have the time to take my dog out for a walk.”
“Oh, right, so your design presentation was today wasn’t it?” In one smooth motion that Tutor could never wrap his mind around that somehow involved a handstand and extreme flexibility, Glitch was sitting upright and right next to him. “How’d it go?”
Tutor cleared his throat. “That’s why I’m here.”
Glitch frowned at him. “I’m not scribbling something down only to see you wreck it again, Tutor. You’re a brilliant teacher and an even better mentor, but if you collapse another one of my designs-”
“I know, I get it Ambrose, I’ll let you be in charge of it, I just…I need this, Ambrose.”
“You mean you need the clients,” Glitch grinned cheekily. “Bigshots, I assume?”
“The royal family of the OZ,” Tutor hissed.
Glitch gaped at him. “…you’re not joking.”
“I’m not joking.”
“And you swear you’d let me be head architect?” Glitch asked warily, a spark in his eyes.
Tutor nodded quickly. “Can’t afford to let anyone else do it. Like you said, if I collapse another one of your designs – not to mention one for the royal family-”
“Okay then,” Glitch said cheerily, and stood up, holding out a hand. The photos of the build site’s views – gorgeous mountain view to the north, Central City to the southwest, an all-around panorama of beauty from any angle – were put in his hand, along with the aerial topography of the build site, were all he got.
Honestly, they were all he wanted.
Glitch put a hand on Tutor’s shoulder. “Alright! Take me to your drafting boards,” he grinned, already twisting columns and windows across the pictures, rooms inserting themselves. He paused. “Any specialty rooms, you think?”
“Throne room, maybe.”
“Oooh!” Glitch smiled like a little kid, and extended the house – no, mansion – well, no, now it was kind of a palace – in his head.
When they reached the paper, all he needed was the pen in his hand, the plans in his head quickly transferred onto papers.
---
When Ahamo and the Queen returned at twelve fifty from a very pleasant lunch with their daughters and two more rejected designs, they found that the door to the conference room was flanked by a grinning man with scraggly brown hair, shining dark eyes, a pale complexion, and ridiculously frayed but comfortable-looking clothing. He was lounging on the floor, smiling up at them.
“Hi!” The man stood up, and was suddenly undeniably businesslike. “My name is Ambrose, but you can call me Glitch, on account of how most people don’t think I’m quite right in the head. I assure you, though, my mind is entirely in one piece.”
“…I’m sorry, do you have an appointment?” the Queen asked, not quite understanding anything about the man in front of her.
He gasped, mouth wide. “OH! Tutor! He’ll be right back, said he needed some water or a drink or something.” The man paused. “But the design’s mine, and the build would be mine as well.”
“So Mr. Tutor was going to simply pass of your design as his?” Ahamo asked darkly.
Ambrose shook his head, smiling. “No, I was his student when first starting out. Since I don’t keep a firm or practice or whatever you call an architecture business, he hires me when he needs me, and I let myself be hired.” He paused. “And I do look better when I come to work, promise. Well kempt and all that. He kind of caught me off guard today with the commission is all-”
“Ambrose!” Tutor shouted from down the hall, carrying even more papers than in the previous meeting. Ambrose waved back enthusiastically. “Your Majesty, I’m so sorry if he’s offended you-”
“He’s quite charming, actually,” the Queen said smoothly, and opened the door to the conference room for them. “Now let’s see how charming the design is.”
---
“We got the job.”
“Yes we did.”
“We got the job.”
“Yep.”
“WE GOT THE-”
Glitch put a hand over Tutor’s mouth, frowning at him. “Yes, we got the job. Now comes the hard part, remember? The actual building of the building?”
“Ambrose, don’t you understand?! The royal family has commissioned an architectural design from-”
“From who, Tutor?” Glitch asked innocently, and that shut the older man up conveniently. “Now, we need a crew and materials and we can get started.”
“But we have to put in the-”
Glitch gave him a look. Tutor shut up again.
“Find me the best crew with the best connections with the best…you know what, just find the best. We need the best for this,” Glitch said, nodding to himself.
Tutor snorted. “Oh, I know who’s the best. Just don’t know if we can get on the waiting list.”
“You’re creative, you can think of something,” Glitch smiled encouragingly. Then he paused, and pulled out one of the more impressive interior sketches, the gorgeous view outside the windows included. “And if you can’t and the crew is as good as you say, show them that and ask if they really want to pass up the opportunity.”
Tutor blinked. “That really is a good idea.”
“I do tend to have those,” Glitch smiled, and, papers in tow, started walking out of the building.
“Hey! Ambrose! Where are you going?” Tutor shouted, and Glitch grinned back at him as the other man jogged up beside him.
“Get some essentials, and then to the site. I’ve got a new tent since the Galliter residence, after all, and there’s supposed to be some apple trees near the build site. I’ll wait there.”
Oh, yes. The Galliter residence. The mansion that Ambrose had designed, warned the construction crew about a single beam in, and when they changed a single measurement had refused to even enter the house. It had collapsed within a month. They’d actually tried to take legal action, but Ambrose had been untouchable, completely defended by his own actions.
“Then for the love of all that’s holy, get some decent clothing,” Tutor sighed, and pulled out his wallet, giving Ambrose a wad of cash that was nearly dropped from shock. “You’re playing the part of head architect. You have to look the part.”
“Not playing anything, Tutor,” Glitch frowned, and paused. “I’ll pay you back-”
“You just go get some sharp clothing and we’ll talk about debts later,” Tutor stated, and then smiled, ruffling Ambrose’s hair. “See you at the site, Glitch.”
“…bring Toto this time?” Ambrose asked hopefully, and got a nod in return.
Beaming, the other man went rushing out of the building, leaving Tutor with the problem of figuring out how the hell to get Wyatt Cain onto the project.
---
Wyatt Cain was a complicated man who had tried to simplify himself. It hadn’t worked very well. Instead of being a nice, simple box like he’d planned, he was a box with ticker-tape strewn all about it, tangled and torn and ripping apart where it just couldn’t take the structure of the box. But, in his mind, it was better than the alternative.
He had simplified himself into a construction manager (who usually did the more complex construction with his own hands, not that they were complaining), a father (despite his son’s protesting that he was sixteen now and could look after himself), and a good person. He hadn’t worn or held a gun for five years, hadn’t been a Tin Man for six, and kept telling himself he liked it that way and that it was for the best.
But not carrying a gun didn’t mean he was defenseless.
“Cain, this needed to be done yesterday, do you understand me?” their current architect (he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name) said, words hissed out as the man was fool enough to grab Cain’s collar. “Have you and your crew ever even heard of a deadline? The Aftherdsons wanted this done in five months, and we’re at three, and you’re still working on the foundations!”
“That’s because the area’s known for earthquakes,” Cain said dryly, pulling the architect’s hand off of him with a bit more force than generally necessary. “Even if your plans didn’t take that into account, we are.”
“Wha-what do you think you are?! I’M the architect here! I’m the one who made the plans, not you,” he said, and started reaching for Cain’s collar. Again.
Getting kind of sick of all this, Cain grabbed his arm again, this time yanking it behind the man, who shrieked in pain. “Your plans were bad,” Cain said. “We’re making you look good.”
“Dad, can we just take our pay and go? The guy obviously doesn’t want us around anymore,” Jeb called from nearby.
Cain frowned, turning towards his son but not releasing the architect. “We have a contract. Unless a better deal rolls around that we could officially consider more important, we’re stuck with the idiot.”
“Well that’s convenient, considering there’s a guy trying pretty frantically to find and negotiate with you outside.”
Cain’s eyebrow twitched upwards. “Frantically?”
Jeb grinned. “Says the architect is camping out at the worksite and won’t leave until the job’s done.”
The architect beneath him snickered, and Cain twisted his arm just a bit more, earning a scream. “You know something about this?”
“Ambrose, his name is Ambrose,” he panted. Cain released him a little. “Oh gods, that’s-”
“Ambrose, you were saying?” Cain interrupted, and earned a rather frantic nod.
“The guy’s a genius. Weird, but an architectural genius,” the man said, and paused. “Stories say that he can feel when the construction or the building or an addition will go wrong. Say there hasn’t been a single success where they didn’t follow the design exactly.”
“He’s also a big black guy about ready to get in a fist fight with the guys in his way,” Jeb added.
The architect snickered. “It’s not Ambrose, then.”
Cain released him, and walked towards his son. “Whoever he is, he’s a better offer than this guy. Tell the men to pack it up. We’re heading out.”
---
Cain wasn’t expecting what he saw when they arrived at the build site, trucks chugging up behind them with all the materials they’d be building with. Some of the materials he hadn’t even heard of before, and his mouth had dropped at the amount of silver-and-yellow marble that was in one of the trucks.
He had expected some big, elaborate tent stuck right in the center of the build site, a snobby architect with eccentric clothing inside. Instead, there was a simple tent – a pup tent, really – that looked like it had definitely seen better days, with a little fire going outside of it, placed on a small flat area a good bit away from the site. A man in nothing but loose brown pants and a plain white shirt sat on a camping stool in front of a collapsible table, drawing away at something.
The man named Tutor, who’d been riding in the front truck with him, immediately left the cab and headed for the man. Cain parked the truck, motioning the others to park in the same general area in an orderly fashion, and found himself following.
“-told you to get some decent clothing, Ambrose, and you’re wearing the same old stuff as in the park!”
“It’s comfortable, and I’ll wear the nice stuff when we get down to the actual building part,” Ambrose, apparently, waved off the older man. “Besides, I like these pants.”
“You’ve had those pants for seven years.”
“Part of why I like them,” Ambrose grinned up at Tutor, and then blinked at Cain.
Cain knew he probably looked a little strange, considering that he still had yet to break himself of many a habit from his Tin Man days. He still wore the hat, still had the coat, even tended to wear his empty gun holster when he dressed without thinking, like he had today.
“Hi,” the man said cheerily, and stood up, offering a hand. Cain shook it. “My name’s Ambrose, but call me Glitch. Everyone thinks I’m a bit off my rocker, see, and I kind of agree.” He paused. “Plus Ambrose is a really pretentious name and I’m not very pretentious.”
“No kidding,” Cain frowned, hands going to his hips. “So you’re the architect?”
“Yep,” Glitch grinned. “Did Tutor show you the sketch? I’m really excited. This will be a lot of work, but I guarantee it’ll be the most satisfying thing either of us will ever do in our lifetimes. Well, probably, but it’s still very exciting.”
Cain glanced over at Tutor. “You have a sketch?”
Glitch gaped. “You didn’t show him?”
“Fine, fine, here,” Tutor said, and pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Cain.
Cain stared at it, barely believing his eyes. Curves everywhere, stained glass windows all over, things so ornate that he had to squint at the detail. The building was, in a word, ethereal. The landscape was sketched lazily into the background, and he realized that the building complimented the view, not the other way around.
“I was going to do the stained glass and the windows, if that’s okay,” Glitch beamed at him. “A bit of a hobby of mine.”
“Since when?” Tutor frowned.
“Since five years ago,” Glitch stated, going back to his stool and table. “I did the glass in the Doell Auditorium after I asked the Master Artisan to teach me. It’s pretty fun, all the pigments and the firing and sand. Almost like chemistry, really!”
“Which you also do,” Cain stated.
Glitch grinned, and nodded. “I also secretly have a degree in physics. Don’t like being Ambrose PhD though. Ambrose Peaychdee. Sounds horrible.”
“Is there anything you can’t do?” Cain asked, feeling like he’d just been punched in the gut. This guy wasn’t an architect – he was a genius with a passionate hobby.
Glitch smiled at him. It was as beautiful as the design in his hands. “Fly.” He winked. “But I’m working on that one.”
Cain realized he was close to blushing, and immediately folded the paper back up and stuck it in one of his pockets, looking over the blueprints Glitch was currently drawing. “Pretty complex.”
“Tutor said you guys could handle it. I think you can.” He sighed, eyes still on the plans as his pencil moved across the page. “I’ve seen too many crews mess things up by improvising. You guys know what you’re doing, from the articles I looked over. You’ll be able to do it just fine.”
Cain frowned. “Articles?”
Glitch grinned, still looking at the design. “Research. Another hobby, even though it’s kind of a guilty one.”
Also for everyone (but mostly Fay): The Tin Man/Labyrinth crossover so far.
A Brief Author’s Note:
After extensive study of Labyrinth, I realized that it’s not just a story about confronting traps and evil someone else has set for Sarah. Every trap, every area, every character she meets, teaches her something not only about herself but her worldview in general. The Labyrinth forces you to see both the good and the bad in yourself. Considering this is Cain running through it, this is not your average, silly, playfully dangerous Labyrinth. So be aware that parts of this are…kind of terrifying. The Labyrinth has molded itself for Wyatt Cain, not a fifteen-year-old fantasy-inclined girl.
In short, watch out for Selg. ♥
“I wish the Goblins would take you away. Right now.”
Wyatt Cain had, admittedly, been having one of the most aggravating days of his life, even trumping the time when a young Jeb lit the curtains on fire intentionally and nearly burned down their entire living complex. Severe aggravation is, of course, well-known for a multitude of spontaneous, foolish actions that result from it.
But that was little to no excuse for doing something so incredibly, bafflingly, blatantly stupid.
His day had started with a Glitch glitching so horribly at breakfast that he poured orange juice into his oatmeal, tried to drink fried eggs, and asked who they all were fourteen times during the meal. With Raw busy being readmitted into his people as a full Viewer, which apparently took a two-week “Dream Seeker” ritual so sacred that they couldn’t even know why he’d be out roaming the wilderness only to wake up next to DG’s fireplace, and DG herself being so busy being turned into a princess and turning her sister into a normal (…well, relatively) person again, not to mention some portrait sitting she and her sister were going to have, the task of watching over an overly-glitchy Glitch fell to Cain.
He had actually thought it might be a nice change of pace, just reminding the other man who he was every few minutes, maybe sit on a balcony and have a relaxing afternoon under the spring sky. Instead, he was stuck like a dog on a leash as Glitch walked somewhere with VITAL IMPORTANCE only to frown, stop, and attack Cain before the Tin Man could remind Glitch that they were best friends and best friends did not steal each others guns and nearly shoot each other.
But somehow during all that wandering they’d ended up in front of the Ambrose-And-Queen Portrait that nobody seemed terribly keen on explaining, Glitch frowning at it.
“I always hate posing for these, almost as much as the Queens,” he frowned. “Stole something from me with those…with THIS.”
At which point Glitch had tried to pull the massive painting off the wall and nearly killed them both before Cain grabbed him by the waist and yanked him away.
Which, of course, resulted in a flurry of attacks until Glitch glitched again and he got a glare, and a dark “Do I know you?”
The glitching got even worse. It was almost like the zipperhead was hallucinating, muttering how the first eyes were green and about that old fairy tale, the one where a princess wished her future husband away to goblins, only to realize her mistake and run the infamous thirteen-hour labyrinth.
But the last straw, the bit that drove Wyatt Cain into saying those words, was so profoundly stupid that he would punch himself in the face until the day he died.
“That’s it, Cain! Finaqua!” Glitch had said exuberantly. “It’s the first castle and they had to move all the portraits after the Slippers started taking over – too strong of dreams, after all – and so the cut down maze stayed at Finaqua and the Winter Castle held my…my…huh.”
“Held your WHAT, Glitch?” Cain growled. Sometimes the more he glitched it was from thinking harder than normal, and he knew that Glitch had been saying something, but damn it, it was such a nerve-grinding process.
“…do I know you?”
“I’m Cain.”
“Oh, Cain! You know, I wonder if your pants are as tight as the Goblin King’s royal-”
Cain slapped a hand over Glitch’s mouth. “You don’t know it, but you have been talking non-stop about a FAIRYTALE. It’s not real, Glitch! You were Ambrose, head advisor to the Queen herself! Please, PLEASE stop talking about goblins.”
A pause. Cain moved his hand, hope welling up in him.
“Do I know you?”
“Glitch, by all that is holy-”
A blank, utterly blank face.
“…have we met?”
“You and your precious goblins. You know what?” Cain ranted. “I wish the goblins would take you away. Right now.” He was pacing by now, not even looking at Glitch. “Gods, you’re such a headcase-”
He paused and looked around, something feeling…wrong.
It looked wrong, too. The huge room was completely empty, and the gigantic portrait of the Queen and Ambrose was suddenly nothing but the Queen sitting in her chair, Ambrose’s place a disturbing patch of white, blank canvas behind it.
He twisted around. “Glitch?”
Cain’s voice raced around the ornate room without an answer, not even an echo. And that was when Cain started to think maybe there was more to fairytales than he’d originally thought.
A painfully bright clap of thunder outside followed the sudden appearance of a man in the dark, nothing but a silhouette in front of the nearest window. The lights were off, the storm had come out of nowhere, and so had the man.
Cain wasn’t an idiot (usually). He had his gun out and cocked by the next lightning strike.
“Oh, put the gun away, Cain,” a familiar voice sighed. The figure snapped his fingers, and the lights flashed on. He grinned. “Surpriiiise!”
The gun dropped to the floor, nearly shooting its owner in the foot.
“Glitch?” Cain asked, fairly certain this was actually Glitch’s twin or clone or something, considering the man had Glitch’s wild, coarse brown hair, but it was flared out and around his face, which had GLITTER under one eye. Said glitter was a dark blue that matched the hues of his big flowing cape that had so many hues of blues and greens he could almost believe it was like watching water hang around someone’s shoulders.
He also had ridiculously tight white pants on, knee-length riding boots, and a coat on beneath the cape that matched the cape, the shirt under it a lighter color than the almost scale-like coat. Thing.
“Mmmm. Close, I guess…” the man frowned, clearly amused, and started circling around Cain. With a twist of his wrist, there was a crystal in his hand, and he began to roll it around and around, over fingers, across arms, onto fingertips, everywhere and anywhere as he walked around and around Cain. “What to do with you? Quite the difficult question, Cain. On one hand, you freed me, and yet on the other you banished me. ME!” He paused, frowning. “…which, ironically enough, is why I’m free. Understand my predicament?”
“Not a bit,” Cain said, and reached down for his gun, only to lurch back at the sudden spray of glass as a crystal ball was flung onto the floor near his feet.
“I said to put the gun away, Cain,” he patronized. “That means away from you. No touchie.” The man stopped, frowning, staring straight at him. “Well, I could just go. No punishment, no prize. Like someone who doesn’t want their banished back.”
“I want Glitch back,” Cain glared.
The man blinked. “But I am Glitch.” He stopped for a moment, and smirked, another crystal ball forming in his hand. “Well. Kind of.”
“You’re not Glitch, and I want Glitch back, so let’s just get on to the…goblin king labyrinth thing,” Cain said irritably, trying to not be annoyed by the man pulling yet another crystal ball out of thin air and rolling it over and under his hand.
“For the Labyrinth to be run, the king must be present,” he stated, eyes on the sphere that rang as it moved over his gloved hand. “If you got your ‘Glitch’ back, there would no longer be a Labyrinth to run, considering ‘Glitch’ is part of the king, leaving you in the middle of the Betweens with neither man nor maze. Dear oh dear, whatever shall we do?”
“We follow the rules!” Cain snapped. “You – I mean, Glitch – has been rambling on about this fairy tale all day, and it says if I’m stupid enough to wish someone away, I get to try and get them back by running through the Labyrinth and reaching the castle within thirteen hours.” He glared at the man who was currently keeping Glitch captive, even if it was inside of himself. “Are you not following the rules?”
“Of course I’m following the rules!” the man snapped. “I made the rules, Cain! It’s my job to follow them!” He glared, gaze shifting to the half-empty portrait “Or was, at least.”
“So what do I call you then? Goblin King Glitch?” Cain asked, glaring at the enemy holding his best friend’s body captive.
The man looked at him. For the first time, the man actually looked straight at him, straight in the eye, and Cain felt his throat grow thick at the heat in those eyes. One was Glitch’s brown, and the other was pale silver, and there was so much heat in that gaze that it was like staring into the sun.
“What would you like to call me, Cain?” he purred.
Cain ignored the heat, forced it away, and grabbed the gun, aiming it straight at the Goblin King’s forehead.
“The loser.”
He smirked, and took a step back. When had they gotten so close? No, Cain had to concentrate on getting Glitch out of that body, getting his Glitch back.
“Ambrose, then,” the man said, bitter. “It’s been my name for the seven hundred years your precious Queens have called me. Sucking my magic, taming my labyrinth, trapping me here-”
“What?” Cain frowned. “You come in here with all that thunder and lightning, and you’ve been trapped? For seven hundred years?”
Ambrose actually stuck his tongue out at him. “Don’t remember you being this annoying to me before, Cain.”
“That’s because you’re not Glitch,” Cain said. Ambrose rolled his eyes, but Cain managed to cut him off. “Now I’m not demanding you go and be trapped again, I just want Glitch back. That’s all.”
“Glitch is a part of me, Cain,” Ambrose said quietly, all pretense gone, just an alien beauty standing face to face with a foolish Tin Man. “If you’re sure you want to go save your Glitch, that means you want to take away my freedom. And I’m going to fight you with everything I have to keep it.”
“I don’t want to take away your freedom, I want to take Glitch home,” Cain said simply. “And if you’re going to fight me with everything you have?” He holstered his pistol, and smirked. “I’m anxious to see what that crafty mind of yours can think up.”
For what seemed like a very long time, Ambrose didn’t move, just looked at him with those mismatched eyes, some unreadable emotion in them.
“And I do mean everything, Cain,” he whispered, and suddenly they weren’t there anymore.
---
Also for everybody: Wyatt Cain's Whatevers Have Three Names (sequel to Jeb has 1 to 2 1/2 Daddies)
Wyatt Cain’s Whatevers Have Three Names
(Which Jeb Thinks Should Technically Count As Him Having Four Dads Now Despite How Strongly Wyatt May Frown At Him)
When Ambrose went missing, nobody was particularly worried. They had a habit of wandering off, and it was usually for a good reason when they came back, sometimes even coming back with a good invention or a wanted criminal or even a good present for Azkadellia on her second de-witching anniversary (most people would have thought a stained glass Mobat music box inappropriate, but Ambrose had remembered Az had been more fond of them than any longcoat she ever spoke to, although where he got it was a complete mystery). Everyone assumed he had private, secret labs and workshops strewn across the OZ that he would occasionally go to, which was probably true. Or that sometimes Glitch just needed to stretch his legs and go somewhere, which was also probably true. So, when Ambrose went missing, nobody was particularly worried.
Confused, however, would be a good description for Wyatt Cain’s reaction to their absence, since they had promised to be there for dinner. Wyatt had even cooked, and neither Ambrose nor Glitch would pass up something he’d cooked himself. Not even during one of their ‘off-periods’, as Jeb tended to put it and Wyatt tended to wince at.
“He probably forgot,” Wyatt said, trying to ignore the worried look his son is getting. He hates when people start fretting, so he tipped his head over the chair, staring at the ceiling and hoping this won’t be the first time he’s lied to his son. “Glitch forgets things.”
“But Ambrose doesn’t,” Jeb countered quickly and logically. Wyatt would be proud if he weren’t just as concerned and disturbed by not just his…whatevers (Boyfriends? Husbands? Lovers? Wyatt decided to stick with Whatevers for the time being) not showing for dinner, but by how hurt both Cains were by it.
Glitch and Ambrose would go tearing through fire and brimstone completely unarmed for Wyatt, as he knew very well since they kept actually trying to and he kept nearly tearing out his hair keeping them from actually doing so. They would do the same for Jeb, too, but probably with more of Ambrose’s tactical advising and possibly covert military operations.
They could use their brain when it came to Jeb. When it came to Wyatt, the two turned brainless and worked on heart and hope alone, it seemed.
The worst part was that Wyatt was starting to realize he reacted exactly the same way when it came to his Whatevers being in trouble.
“Fine,” he said, and got out of the comfortable dining chair, Jeb just a moment behind. The Cains grabbed two coats, two hats, one gun (and one hand smacked away from another with a “we’re in the castle, son” and a “then why do you get one?” which was finished with a “since I saved the OZ and the royal family personally, I get a gun in the castle. You can take the sword if you honestly think we’ll be fighting something”) and a sword.
Strangely enough, the Cains already knew how to look for Glitch and Ambrose when they wanted to find him and he didn’t want to be found. Wyatt looked for Glitch, which meant more or less going to the most social parts of the castle or the most open or sunny and occasionally the one with the best view to the north (always the north; not even Ambrose could explain that one about Glitch). Jeb looked for Ambrose, which tended to be a sweep of first the royal family’s area, and then every single lower story that had labs or workshops or storage rooms on them.
Ambrose and Glitch knew they did things like this sometimes and tended to usually feel kind of slightly guilty about it, so they’d invented some sort of gadget that if you touched the one button you could talk to whoever was holding the other gadget. Jeb had one and Wyatt had the other.
Why Glitch and Ambrose didn’t have one, the Cains agreed was just ‘one of their things’. Geniuses with an extreme emotional connection to their subjects didn’t seem to put themselves into the equation very often.
…unless it was a Wyatt-Only equation. Those he definitely knew his Whatevers added themselves into.
The search went on for long enough that Wyatt was starting to get worried, especially since Jeb hadn’t been able to find him either. Otherwise Jeb would have used the gadget and told him so. Three hours of searching. He’d even invaded DG’s bedroom since he knew it had a north-facing window, which had ended up with her joining the search too.
It took a while to convince her that a ‘tank-top’ and a baggy pair of pants weren’t exactly decent, the fact that everyone else in the castle was probably asleep anyway. She was already the infamous ‘cross dressing princess’, they didn’t need her wandering around in her pajamas with a Tin Man to add to that description.
DG took on the task of looking through just about every bedroom in the castle, which Wyatt figured would keep her discreet enough that he could finish up his search. Since Glitch was nowhere to be found, he decided to join the Ambrose search. There was more basement than balconies anyway.
He pushed the button on his gadget and it whistled into action as he told Jeb he was joining the Ambrose search.
“Alright, Dad,” Jeb’s voice warbled over the gadget. “I’m going into Warehouse 72 right now-”
Another voice called out in the background as he could hear his son’s gadget slip out of his grasp.
“Oh. Hey! The name’s Glitch! Do I know you?”
---
Jeb Cain had never known the true Glitch. He was great friends with Glitch of Glitch-and-Ambrose, even considered him half (or two-thirds, at least) of the man he called Dads. Maybe he even loved him, in that father figure way. But this Glitch didn’t know him. This Glitch barely seemed to know himself. He had his fully-braided state-function coat (apparently they’d dressed up for dinner) unbuttoned and practically hanging off his shoulders, the white shirt underneath also hanging loosely, his gray undershirt literally torn along the hem.
Jeb wanted to ask why his Dads’ hands looked like he’d just run them across a dull saw blade. He wanted to ask why it looked like his Dads’ hair had been wrenched about and was standing in absurd clumps between squashed bit of black. But mostly he wanted to ask why Glitch, half of the man he called Dads, didn’t remember him.
This Glitch looked at him like he was about to skitter away, like he was waiting for Jeb to draw the sword and start slicing.
This Glitch didn’t know him.
“Did…did I do something wrong?” Glitch asked very carefully. It almost hurt more than him not remembering Jeb (which HURT, even more proof his Dads had been making a difference) to see Glitch look so lost and helpless.
“Is Ambrose around?” Jeb tried, his throat oddly choked up.
Glitch frowned, looking across the dusty room, obviously searching for something. “Who’s Ambrose?”
Jeb was sliding down the wall to the floor and holding his head in his hands when Wyatt came bashing through the door of Warehouse 72.
---
Jeb was okay. Jeb was out of it. So was Glitch, since he looked like he’d just been chewed on by mobats. But nobody was hurt, nobody was dying, nobody was in imminent danger, so Wyatt took a deep breath, pulled his hat off, and took a deep breath in.
“What’d you do this time, Sweetheart,” he sighed…and blinked at the look of complete blank shock on Glitch’s face.
“You know me?” he asked, a bit breathlessly as he approached. Approached very very slowly. More like creeping over a rickety old bridge than walking towards him.
Wyatt frowned, taking in how bad Glitch really did look and ignoring the flinch from his Whatever as Wyatt touched his scalp, fingers coming back with a small bit of blood on them.
“Listen, mister, you may know me but I don’t know you so either tell me where and who I am or why I’m here or…or…something, or leave me alone,” Glitch said, and while he backed up in what would seem like a normal backing-away-from-you move, Wyatt knew damn well that move was usually followed by physical violence.
“…Your name is Glitch,” he said cautiously, heading over to Jeb slowly. “I’m Wyatt, and this is Jeb.” Even helping Jeb up from the floor, his eyes never left Glitch’s. “We were looking for you to make sure you were okay. You went missing.”
“How could I go missing if you knew where to find me?” Glitch asked in return, crossing his arms and tilting his head to the side. Which also meant he was out of a battle-stance.
Jeb looked like one of those new Post-Witching paintings, face drawn and pale, eyes red. “Dad, what happened to him?”
Wyatt looked at Glitch. Looked at every bit of him. There wasn’t a single trace of Ambrose in him.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said, refusing to let himself go shake Glitch and demand his Whatevers back, to hug him and tell him it would all be okay and they’d get through this, to just hold Glitch’s face in front of him and look for any trace of Ambrose and his Whatever in those confused, lost eyes, because Glitch wouldn’t know what he meant or who he was or even why he cared. He put his hat back on, shielding his eyes from the world. “And I doubt he knows either.”
“I don’t know a lot of things, probably,” Glitch said. “Are you sure I know you two?”
“Very sure. Will you let us help you walk out of the room and up to where we live?” Wyatt asked, trying to remember this was not his Glitch, this was a Glitch that was constantly glitching for whatever reason.
A reason he intended to find as soon as he possibly could.
“If you’re sure,” Glitch smiled. “The name’s Glitch! It’s probably nice to meet you, Cain.”
Before he could run over and grab Glitch by the shoulders and try to find his Glitch in there because he’d never said his last name, the one Glitch and Ambrose had yet to break the habit of calling him even though they were more or less considered Cains via common-law-marriage and that meant they were IN THERE, Glitch had walked out the door and into the straight basement corridor, practically jogging as he watched the seam of where the wall met the ceiling.
The Cains followed, Jeb in front and heading for their quarters and Wyatt just a step behind and to the left of Glitch, trying his best to keep Glitch from…well, glitching all over again, and trying to fan that tiny ember of his Whatevers that he knew Glitch had in him.
He kept Glitch calling him Cain. He kept calling Glitch Sweetheart. They talked about dancing (“oh, I love dancing! Have you ever danced?”), and intelligence (“I think if I was smart I would know where I am”), and winter weather (“oh I can barely stand it. Just the thought gets me all queasy in the stomach”), and hypothermia (“What’s that? Sounds expensive”).
And then Glitch froze in front of a stairway, got that hazed look, and blinked over at Wyatt. “Who am I and where are we going?”
“You’re Glitch, and we’re going home.”
“Why does going home involve so many stairs?”
“Because we’re in a castle, Glitch.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because we’re important people and a very good friend demanded we do.”
“I have a friend?”
“…you’ve got a lot more than one friend, Sweetheart.”
“Why do you keep calling me Sweetheart, Cain?”
Cain. Cain Cain Cain. Keep it going somehow, keep him awake, keep him closer to being their Glitch, keep pulling him back home.
“Because you once told me I needed to have a heart, and I got one thanks to you,” he said.
Glitch froze mid-step, and when Wyatt reached out to grab his elbow and make sure the fool ex-zipperhead didn’t get even more brain damage, he started talking, and his eyes were entirely the eyes of his Whatevers, the eyes of Glitch of Ambrose-and-Glitch. “…Cain you need to be ready to let go because he’s barely holding on and he’s terrified and I don’t think we can go back to how we were with…him back.”
Wyatt was probably hurting him, he was squeezing his elbow so hard. “Who is ‘he’? Glitch, I can’t let go of you both, let me help, let JEB help-”
“Who’s Jeb?”
For the first time in a very, very long time, Wyatt Cain was tempted to break down and cry.
When they managed to get Glitch into their bedroom and convinced him that yes, he slept in that bed, and no, he wouldn’t wake up somewhere else and that they’d lock the front door if he wanted them to, Wyatt grabbed a pillow and a blanket and stuffed his face into the pillow, screaming and half-crying and punching the innocent bit of fluff because he couldn’t do it to this ‘he’ that had his Whatevers so scared.
Naturally, Jeb found him like that. He said he couldn’t sleep either when he handed his father a cup of hot chocolate and cleaned up the dinner that they’d never eaten. He also asked for his toy horse back, just for the night, and Wyatt handed it back, never saying a word through it all or even the tight hug they ended up sharing before Jeb retreated into his own bedroom.
Neither wished the other a good night, because they had never lied to each other and didn’t feel like starting now.
Wyatt didn’t sleep much. But when he woke up, Glitch was staring down at him, an intense look of concentration on his face.
“It felt weird when I woke up,” he said.
Wyatt wanted to say that yeah, waking up with another person sleeping in bed with you for two years tended to do that when it went away, but didn’t. Because Glitch wouldn’t understand, and Wyatt was tired of that blank, befuddled look and preferred this intense scrutiny of confusion. It was like the old Glitch he’d known, the one they’d taken down the Old Witch with.
“I feel like I should hug you or kiss you, too, and when I woke up I knew exactly where everything in the kitchen was and made us coffee. Do you know who Amber Rosenvar is?”
“Thank you, and I don’t know,” Wyatt answered, although he mentally made a note to track down whoever Amber Rosenvar was and probably beat the crap out them.
Glitch was obviously not thinking about anything other than thinking, since he was curling up next to Wyatt on the couch, tucking his head under Wyatt’s chin. He could feel the dried blood in his hair. “And my dream was so strange and important but all I can remember is something about raw queens and pressure or something.” He paused. “You smell really good.”
He let himself indulge in the fantasy that everything was okay and he was holding his Whatever and not a fragment of them and that Ambrose would start complaining about how the measurement of time was the stupidest thing ever created or Glitch would start teasing him about how sentimental he was.
“Why are you sleeping on a couch?” Glitch asked.
The fantasy shattered.
“Because I was tired. You need a shower. Do you know why there’s dried blood in your hair?”
Glitch shifted, getting even closer. “I don’t know, but I think it was something bad.” He paused. “The…the glitch.”
He looked Glitch straight in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
And the confused, distant look was back. He wanted to break something. “What do I mean by what? And why are we cuddling?”
Wyatt shut his eyes and wished he had his hat to put over his eyes. “We’re cuddling because you decided to. And then you were going to take a shower-”
“But I want to keep my clothes on.”
…Well, that was a first. There was a hint of Ambrose in that statement, considering Glitch thought it was great to go wandering around in their bedroom in his birthday suit (which Wyatt didn’t mind in the least, which was why Ambrose never complained about it so long as the naked was only in their bedroom and nowhere else – he was surprisingly prudish about their body despite him/them randomly showing up during the day and kissing the living daylights out of him).
“We need to get you cleaned up though, Sweetheart,” he sighed into Glitch’s hair.
“But Caaaaaiinnn-”
Wyatt jerked his Whatever’s face up. That had been one hundred percent playful Glitch-and-Ambrose. “…Sweetheart?”
“Huh?”
Poof. Gone. Not even the Magic Man in his prime could have disappeared that fast.
Anyway. READ. ENJOY. CHEER ME UP WITH ENJOYABLE COMMENTARY.
And since I have absolutely no time, if someone feels like crossposting all the half-finished drabbles for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. ♥
I'll be leaving for Oregon either Tuesday or early Wednesday. If anyone knows what you wear to a Wake, for the love of god tell me because I'd hate to show up in all black while everyone else is wearing sandals and hawaiian shirts.
Also, to cheer us both up, I'm fic-dumping all my half-finished stuff.
For Puffy: What I've got of the hair-pulling bondage fic. No title yet.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you do this, Glitch.”
“Since when is that your problem? And it’s Ambrose, not Glitch. I don’t glitch anymore, so I’m Ambrose.” He paused mid-storming-down-the-stairwell, and turned to look at him. “Also? Don’t tell me what to do.”
“If what you want to do is a futile suicide to make up for things you didn’t have any control over, I’m going to tell you you’re an idiot at least,” Cain snapped back. “You couldn’t have known any of this would-”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Cain, so I suggest you shut up before I make you,” Ambrose growled, turning a corner, their boots sharp against the rusted grating of the lower-level floors. The old grease that had dropped down had mixed with the rust to turn it a sickly color, like dried blood.
“Glitch, we both know I can shoot you faster than you can dropkick me,” Cain said wryly.
“AMBROSE, Cain,” he hissed. “I’m not your precious forgetful fucktoy who won’t remember what happened in the morning-”
“HEY,” Cain shouted. “You were NEVER a fucktoy. And whoever told you that you were-”
“Oh, trust me,” Ambrose smirked darkly as he turned down yet another flight of stares, deeper and deeper into the machine that was Azkadellia’s Tower. “Nobody has to tell or explain anything to me any more. I’ve got my brain! Or are you the one with memory problems now?”
“And you think you were nothing but a fucktoy to me?” Cain frowned, and shook his head, disgusted. “You are the stupidest genius I’ve ever met.”
“That statement explains so much, gallant Tin Man. Insult me and hope I get defensive and forget that you didn’t say a damn thing about the real issue.”
“The one where you’re about to blow a building up with yourself in it or the fucktoy part? Both are real issues, and both are definitely stupid,” he snapped. “You were smarter with half a brain, Ambrose. Seems like the only thing you got out of that other half is a guilt trip the size of the Red Road and an urgent appointment with your own gun.”
“You’re the one with the gun,” Ambrose muttered, shaking his head and turning to a rusted, grimy door and the wheel-lock on the front of it.
Cain rolled his eyes. “Figure of speech, Gli-”
“You say that name one more time and I’ll lock this door behind me and with you on the other side,” he stated, and he twisted the wheel…down.
Huh.
With a yank, the wheel went down, and the door slid into the wall with a horrific screeching at a speed that could easily break bones. Inside was quite possibly the cleanest room in the whole building – clean metal floors, gage after gage of sparkling silver and brass and toggles on one wall, a faded schematic of…something that took up the entirety of the parallel one, and a huge window, window seat and all, on the other side.
“Projected view,” Ambrose muttered, already eyeing the gages as Cain stared out on the faraway mountain, and waterfall, and lake, and-
“You’re distracting me,” Cain said, gaping at Ambrose, who simply smirked and shrugged.
“Makes us even, I’d say.”
“You just put words into my mouth back there, I never tried to distract you from anything!” He rubbed at his forehead, teeth grating against themselves despite Cain trying very hard to remain in control and not just…tie Ambrose up and make him realize he was worth more than a pile of wreckage blown across the OZ.
“Why Cain, that was almost sweet,” Ambrose smiled devilishly, tauntingly.
“I am NOT going to rise to your…your baiting, Ambrose.” He frowned, trapped between glaring and almost pitying the man who’d regained his brain. “What is it going to take for you to realize you’re actually worth something?”
“I’m worth plenty,” Ambrose stated, twisting a knob that squeaked under his hand.
“Yeah, to everyone but yourself. You’re thinking in ransom money or something just as stupid. What do you need to realize you’re not a toy? Or just a tool for the Queen and the OZ and everything else? You’re-”
“Shut up,” Ambrose snapped, twisting towards Cain and taking three steps before slamming him against the wall. “Stay out of my business, Tin Man.”
“I can’t do that and you know it,” he glared.
For Dommy (and everyone else...): What I managed to get out of for the last chapter of 15 Annuals.
“Tell me about this Cyclone, Ambrose,” Azkadellia said.
She was sitting in her chair behind her study desk, pointedly ignoring him. Ambrose had moved one of the chairs in front of her desk the moment he’d been shown in, picking it up without looking at her and putting them back to back.
“She’s strong, and she’s going to kill you,” Ambrose sighed, looking out the windows at the blighted OZ, feet propped against a pane of glass, the frayed edges of his pants tickling his ankles. “There’s no stopping her, cousin dearest, no matter what you do or where you run to.”
Azkadellia grit her teeth, closing her eyes and forcing herself to remain calm. “We’ll begin with physical attributes.”
“Female, looks a bit like you but less possessed and insane. Then again, most women look the same nowadays, all glitter and primping,” Ambrose said blithely. “Can I go now, or do you have more questions for me to not answer?”
“What’s her real name?” Azkadellia snapped.
“What’s mine?” Ambrose grinned out the window. “Names have power, cousin dearest. Ideas, feelings, names, they all have their own powers. And right now, she has no other name. She may answer to others, just as I might, but right now, she is nothing but the Cyclone, and I am Ambrose.” He paused, twisting around in the chair to look over Azkadellia’s shoulder. She jumped. “Rather spooky, isn’t it? One’s right behind you, the other’s coming straight towards you-”
“Enough. Intellectual attributes,” she said, eyes closed.
“Smart.”
“Height?”
“Shorter than you.”
“WEIGHT.”
“Now that’s a question you never ask of a woman,” Ambrose said, scandalized. “The weight of her words is heavy? Will that do for you?”
Azkadellia threw down her pen. “Enough.”
“Oh, good, does that mean I get to-”
Before he got another word out, Ambrose found himself sitting in the solitary confinement cell he and Cain were currently guests of.
For...um. Everyone? The Architect/Construction Worker AU. ALSO without a title.
“It’s boring,” she said flatly.
The architect’s mouth opened and closed, eyes wide as the gray-haired woman, flanked by her blond husband, nodded to each other over the plans he’d spent four painstaking months on, time he’d spent designing, drafting, assessing the lot, determining structural capabilities, trying to make the best mansion possible for the royal couple, and they had just brushed him aside, just like they were brushing his papers across the table and towards him.
“We appreciate the work you put into this, though,” the man said. “It had a flavor of what we’re looking for-”
“I have another design,” the architect blurted out, and the couple stared at him.
The woman smiled uneasily. “Really, Mr. Tutor, we do appreciate all the work you’ve put into it, but it’s simply not what we’re looking for.”
“It’s eleven,” Tutor said, almost pleading. “If you let me come back at one in the afternoon, I swear to you that I’ll be carrying the plans you’ve been dreaming of in my hands.”
“That’s a heavy promise,” Ahamo said.
Tutor smirked, looking down at himself and hoping they couldn’t see how bad he was sweating. “I’m a heavy kind of man.”
“We’ll see you at one then, Mr. Tutor,” the woman said, lavender eyes still doubtful as they looked him over.
“Thank you, your Majesty. I promise you won’t regret it,” he said, and bowed, plans crinkling beneath him.
“Again with the promises,” the husband said wryly.
Tutor just grinned and walked as casually toward the door as he could manage.
When it shut behind him, Tutor grabbed his papers in a death grip and ran down the hall, praying to whatever was up there that he’d be able to find an eccentric genius before it was too late.
---
Said eccentric genius was, at that moment, sitting in a nearby park in Central City, feet hanging over the top of the bench, dark eyes watching the shoes that walked past. It was interesting to see what differences he could see in such similar shoes. A scuffmark here, a cut there, all riddles to be answered, hints at the life of the man or woman wearing them.
Unfortunately, this was a common habit for him, so around noon he found himself staring at a very familiar pair of recently shined shoes with one almost untied and signs of running all around town on them.
“Afternoon, Tutor,” Ambrose – who preferred going by Glitch – said cheerily. “No Toto today?”
“No Toto,” Tutor said, out of breath, and sat down next to Glitch on the bench. “I’ve been a bit busy today, I don’t have the time to take my dog out for a walk.”
“Oh, right, so your design presentation was today wasn’t it?” In one smooth motion that Tutor could never wrap his mind around that somehow involved a handstand and extreme flexibility, Glitch was sitting upright and right next to him. “How’d it go?”
Tutor cleared his throat. “That’s why I’m here.”
Glitch frowned at him. “I’m not scribbling something down only to see you wreck it again, Tutor. You’re a brilliant teacher and an even better mentor, but if you collapse another one of my designs-”
“I know, I get it Ambrose, I’ll let you be in charge of it, I just…I need this, Ambrose.”
“You mean you need the clients,” Glitch grinned cheekily. “Bigshots, I assume?”
“The royal family of the OZ,” Tutor hissed.
Glitch gaped at him. “…you’re not joking.”
“I’m not joking.”
“And you swear you’d let me be head architect?” Glitch asked warily, a spark in his eyes.
Tutor nodded quickly. “Can’t afford to let anyone else do it. Like you said, if I collapse another one of your designs – not to mention one for the royal family-”
“Okay then,” Glitch said cheerily, and stood up, holding out a hand. The photos of the build site’s views – gorgeous mountain view to the north, Central City to the southwest, an all-around panorama of beauty from any angle – were put in his hand, along with the aerial topography of the build site, were all he got.
Honestly, they were all he wanted.
Glitch put a hand on Tutor’s shoulder. “Alright! Take me to your drafting boards,” he grinned, already twisting columns and windows across the pictures, rooms inserting themselves. He paused. “Any specialty rooms, you think?”
“Throne room, maybe.”
“Oooh!” Glitch smiled like a little kid, and extended the house – no, mansion – well, no, now it was kind of a palace – in his head.
When they reached the paper, all he needed was the pen in his hand, the plans in his head quickly transferred onto papers.
---
When Ahamo and the Queen returned at twelve fifty from a very pleasant lunch with their daughters and two more rejected designs, they found that the door to the conference room was flanked by a grinning man with scraggly brown hair, shining dark eyes, a pale complexion, and ridiculously frayed but comfortable-looking clothing. He was lounging on the floor, smiling up at them.
“Hi!” The man stood up, and was suddenly undeniably businesslike. “My name is Ambrose, but you can call me Glitch, on account of how most people don’t think I’m quite right in the head. I assure you, though, my mind is entirely in one piece.”
“…I’m sorry, do you have an appointment?” the Queen asked, not quite understanding anything about the man in front of her.
He gasped, mouth wide. “OH! Tutor! He’ll be right back, said he needed some water or a drink or something.” The man paused. “But the design’s mine, and the build would be mine as well.”
“So Mr. Tutor was going to simply pass of your design as his?” Ahamo asked darkly.
Ambrose shook his head, smiling. “No, I was his student when first starting out. Since I don’t keep a firm or practice or whatever you call an architecture business, he hires me when he needs me, and I let myself be hired.” He paused. “And I do look better when I come to work, promise. Well kempt and all that. He kind of caught me off guard today with the commission is all-”
“Ambrose!” Tutor shouted from down the hall, carrying even more papers than in the previous meeting. Ambrose waved back enthusiastically. “Your Majesty, I’m so sorry if he’s offended you-”
“He’s quite charming, actually,” the Queen said smoothly, and opened the door to the conference room for them. “Now let’s see how charming the design is.”
---
“We got the job.”
“Yes we did.”
“We got the job.”
“Yep.”
“WE GOT THE-”
Glitch put a hand over Tutor’s mouth, frowning at him. “Yes, we got the job. Now comes the hard part, remember? The actual building of the building?”
“Ambrose, don’t you understand?! The royal family has commissioned an architectural design from-”
“From who, Tutor?” Glitch asked innocently, and that shut the older man up conveniently. “Now, we need a crew and materials and we can get started.”
“But we have to put in the-”
Glitch gave him a look. Tutor shut up again.
“Find me the best crew with the best connections with the best…you know what, just find the best. We need the best for this,” Glitch said, nodding to himself.
Tutor snorted. “Oh, I know who’s the best. Just don’t know if we can get on the waiting list.”
“You’re creative, you can think of something,” Glitch smiled encouragingly. Then he paused, and pulled out one of the more impressive interior sketches, the gorgeous view outside the windows included. “And if you can’t and the crew is as good as you say, show them that and ask if they really want to pass up the opportunity.”
Tutor blinked. “That really is a good idea.”
“I do tend to have those,” Glitch smiled, and, papers in tow, started walking out of the building.
“Hey! Ambrose! Where are you going?” Tutor shouted, and Glitch grinned back at him as the other man jogged up beside him.
“Get some essentials, and then to the site. I’ve got a new tent since the Galliter residence, after all, and there’s supposed to be some apple trees near the build site. I’ll wait there.”
Oh, yes. The Galliter residence. The mansion that Ambrose had designed, warned the construction crew about a single beam in, and when they changed a single measurement had refused to even enter the house. It had collapsed within a month. They’d actually tried to take legal action, but Ambrose had been untouchable, completely defended by his own actions.
“Then for the love of all that’s holy, get some decent clothing,” Tutor sighed, and pulled out his wallet, giving Ambrose a wad of cash that was nearly dropped from shock. “You’re playing the part of head architect. You have to look the part.”
“Not playing anything, Tutor,” Glitch frowned, and paused. “I’ll pay you back-”
“You just go get some sharp clothing and we’ll talk about debts later,” Tutor stated, and then smiled, ruffling Ambrose’s hair. “See you at the site, Glitch.”
“…bring Toto this time?” Ambrose asked hopefully, and got a nod in return.
Beaming, the other man went rushing out of the building, leaving Tutor with the problem of figuring out how the hell to get Wyatt Cain onto the project.
---
Wyatt Cain was a complicated man who had tried to simplify himself. It hadn’t worked very well. Instead of being a nice, simple box like he’d planned, he was a box with ticker-tape strewn all about it, tangled and torn and ripping apart where it just couldn’t take the structure of the box. But, in his mind, it was better than the alternative.
He had simplified himself into a construction manager (who usually did the more complex construction with his own hands, not that they were complaining), a father (despite his son’s protesting that he was sixteen now and could look after himself), and a good person. He hadn’t worn or held a gun for five years, hadn’t been a Tin Man for six, and kept telling himself he liked it that way and that it was for the best.
But not carrying a gun didn’t mean he was defenseless.
“Cain, this needed to be done yesterday, do you understand me?” their current architect (he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name) said, words hissed out as the man was fool enough to grab Cain’s collar. “Have you and your crew ever even heard of a deadline? The Aftherdsons wanted this done in five months, and we’re at three, and you’re still working on the foundations!”
“That’s because the area’s known for earthquakes,” Cain said dryly, pulling the architect’s hand off of him with a bit more force than generally necessary. “Even if your plans didn’t take that into account, we are.”
“Wha-what do you think you are?! I’M the architect here! I’m the one who made the plans, not you,” he said, and started reaching for Cain’s collar. Again.
Getting kind of sick of all this, Cain grabbed his arm again, this time yanking it behind the man, who shrieked in pain. “Your plans were bad,” Cain said. “We’re making you look good.”
“Dad, can we just take our pay and go? The guy obviously doesn’t want us around anymore,” Jeb called from nearby.
Cain frowned, turning towards his son but not releasing the architect. “We have a contract. Unless a better deal rolls around that we could officially consider more important, we’re stuck with the idiot.”
“Well that’s convenient, considering there’s a guy trying pretty frantically to find and negotiate with you outside.”
Cain’s eyebrow twitched upwards. “Frantically?”
Jeb grinned. “Says the architect is camping out at the worksite and won’t leave until the job’s done.”
The architect beneath him snickered, and Cain twisted his arm just a bit more, earning a scream. “You know something about this?”
“Ambrose, his name is Ambrose,” he panted. Cain released him a little. “Oh gods, that’s-”
“Ambrose, you were saying?” Cain interrupted, and earned a rather frantic nod.
“The guy’s a genius. Weird, but an architectural genius,” the man said, and paused. “Stories say that he can feel when the construction or the building or an addition will go wrong. Say there hasn’t been a single success where they didn’t follow the design exactly.”
“He’s also a big black guy about ready to get in a fist fight with the guys in his way,” Jeb added.
The architect snickered. “It’s not Ambrose, then.”
Cain released him, and walked towards his son. “Whoever he is, he’s a better offer than this guy. Tell the men to pack it up. We’re heading out.”
---
Cain wasn’t expecting what he saw when they arrived at the build site, trucks chugging up behind them with all the materials they’d be building with. Some of the materials he hadn’t even heard of before, and his mouth had dropped at the amount of silver-and-yellow marble that was in one of the trucks.
He had expected some big, elaborate tent stuck right in the center of the build site, a snobby architect with eccentric clothing inside. Instead, there was a simple tent – a pup tent, really – that looked like it had definitely seen better days, with a little fire going outside of it, placed on a small flat area a good bit away from the site. A man in nothing but loose brown pants and a plain white shirt sat on a camping stool in front of a collapsible table, drawing away at something.
The man named Tutor, who’d been riding in the front truck with him, immediately left the cab and headed for the man. Cain parked the truck, motioning the others to park in the same general area in an orderly fashion, and found himself following.
“-told you to get some decent clothing, Ambrose, and you’re wearing the same old stuff as in the park!”
“It’s comfortable, and I’ll wear the nice stuff when we get down to the actual building part,” Ambrose, apparently, waved off the older man. “Besides, I like these pants.”
“You’ve had those pants for seven years.”
“Part of why I like them,” Ambrose grinned up at Tutor, and then blinked at Cain.
Cain knew he probably looked a little strange, considering that he still had yet to break himself of many a habit from his Tin Man days. He still wore the hat, still had the coat, even tended to wear his empty gun holster when he dressed without thinking, like he had today.
“Hi,” the man said cheerily, and stood up, offering a hand. Cain shook it. “My name’s Ambrose, but call me Glitch. Everyone thinks I’m a bit off my rocker, see, and I kind of agree.” He paused. “Plus Ambrose is a really pretentious name and I’m not very pretentious.”
“No kidding,” Cain frowned, hands going to his hips. “So you’re the architect?”
“Yep,” Glitch grinned. “Did Tutor show you the sketch? I’m really excited. This will be a lot of work, but I guarantee it’ll be the most satisfying thing either of us will ever do in our lifetimes. Well, probably, but it’s still very exciting.”
Cain glanced over at Tutor. “You have a sketch?”
Glitch gaped. “You didn’t show him?”
“Fine, fine, here,” Tutor said, and pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Cain.
Cain stared at it, barely believing his eyes. Curves everywhere, stained glass windows all over, things so ornate that he had to squint at the detail. The building was, in a word, ethereal. The landscape was sketched lazily into the background, and he realized that the building complimented the view, not the other way around.
“I was going to do the stained glass and the windows, if that’s okay,” Glitch beamed at him. “A bit of a hobby of mine.”
“Since when?” Tutor frowned.
“Since five years ago,” Glitch stated, going back to his stool and table. “I did the glass in the Doell Auditorium after I asked the Master Artisan to teach me. It’s pretty fun, all the pigments and the firing and sand. Almost like chemistry, really!”
“Which you also do,” Cain stated.
Glitch grinned, and nodded. “I also secretly have a degree in physics. Don’t like being Ambrose PhD though. Ambrose Peaychdee. Sounds horrible.”
“Is there anything you can’t do?” Cain asked, feeling like he’d just been punched in the gut. This guy wasn’t an architect – he was a genius with a passionate hobby.
Glitch smiled at him. It was as beautiful as the design in his hands. “Fly.” He winked. “But I’m working on that one.”
Cain realized he was close to blushing, and immediately folded the paper back up and stuck it in one of his pockets, looking over the blueprints Glitch was currently drawing. “Pretty complex.”
“Tutor said you guys could handle it. I think you can.” He sighed, eyes still on the plans as his pencil moved across the page. “I’ve seen too many crews mess things up by improvising. You guys know what you’re doing, from the articles I looked over. You’ll be able to do it just fine.”
Cain frowned. “Articles?”
Glitch grinned, still looking at the design. “Research. Another hobby, even though it’s kind of a guilty one.”
Also for everyone (but mostly Fay): The Tin Man/Labyrinth crossover so far.
A Brief Author’s Note:
After extensive study of Labyrinth, I realized that it’s not just a story about confronting traps and evil someone else has set for Sarah. Every trap, every area, every character she meets, teaches her something not only about herself but her worldview in general. The Labyrinth forces you to see both the good and the bad in yourself. Considering this is Cain running through it, this is not your average, silly, playfully dangerous Labyrinth. So be aware that parts of this are…kind of terrifying. The Labyrinth has molded itself for Wyatt Cain, not a fifteen-year-old fantasy-inclined girl.
In short, watch out for Selg. ♥
“I wish the Goblins would take you away. Right now.”
Wyatt Cain had, admittedly, been having one of the most aggravating days of his life, even trumping the time when a young Jeb lit the curtains on fire intentionally and nearly burned down their entire living complex. Severe aggravation is, of course, well-known for a multitude of spontaneous, foolish actions that result from it.
But that was little to no excuse for doing something so incredibly, bafflingly, blatantly stupid.
His day had started with a Glitch glitching so horribly at breakfast that he poured orange juice into his oatmeal, tried to drink fried eggs, and asked who they all were fourteen times during the meal. With Raw busy being readmitted into his people as a full Viewer, which apparently took a two-week “Dream Seeker” ritual so sacred that they couldn’t even know why he’d be out roaming the wilderness only to wake up next to DG’s fireplace, and DG herself being so busy being turned into a princess and turning her sister into a normal (…well, relatively) person again, not to mention some portrait sitting she and her sister were going to have, the task of watching over an overly-glitchy Glitch fell to Cain.
He had actually thought it might be a nice change of pace, just reminding the other man who he was every few minutes, maybe sit on a balcony and have a relaxing afternoon under the spring sky. Instead, he was stuck like a dog on a leash as Glitch walked somewhere with VITAL IMPORTANCE only to frown, stop, and attack Cain before the Tin Man could remind Glitch that they were best friends and best friends did not steal each others guns and nearly shoot each other.
But somehow during all that wandering they’d ended up in front of the Ambrose-And-Queen Portrait that nobody seemed terribly keen on explaining, Glitch frowning at it.
“I always hate posing for these, almost as much as the Queens,” he frowned. “Stole something from me with those…with THIS.”
At which point Glitch had tried to pull the massive painting off the wall and nearly killed them both before Cain grabbed him by the waist and yanked him away.
Which, of course, resulted in a flurry of attacks until Glitch glitched again and he got a glare, and a dark “Do I know you?”
The glitching got even worse. It was almost like the zipperhead was hallucinating, muttering how the first eyes were green and about that old fairy tale, the one where a princess wished her future husband away to goblins, only to realize her mistake and run the infamous thirteen-hour labyrinth.
But the last straw, the bit that drove Wyatt Cain into saying those words, was so profoundly stupid that he would punch himself in the face until the day he died.
“That’s it, Cain! Finaqua!” Glitch had said exuberantly. “It’s the first castle and they had to move all the portraits after the Slippers started taking over – too strong of dreams, after all – and so the cut down maze stayed at Finaqua and the Winter Castle held my…my…huh.”
“Held your WHAT, Glitch?” Cain growled. Sometimes the more he glitched it was from thinking harder than normal, and he knew that Glitch had been saying something, but damn it, it was such a nerve-grinding process.
“…do I know you?”
“I’m Cain.”
“Oh, Cain! You know, I wonder if your pants are as tight as the Goblin King’s royal-”
Cain slapped a hand over Glitch’s mouth. “You don’t know it, but you have been talking non-stop about a FAIRYTALE. It’s not real, Glitch! You were Ambrose, head advisor to the Queen herself! Please, PLEASE stop talking about goblins.”
A pause. Cain moved his hand, hope welling up in him.
“Do I know you?”
“Glitch, by all that is holy-”
A blank, utterly blank face.
“…have we met?”
“You and your precious goblins. You know what?” Cain ranted. “I wish the goblins would take you away. Right now.” He was pacing by now, not even looking at Glitch. “Gods, you’re such a headcase-”
He paused and looked around, something feeling…wrong.
It looked wrong, too. The huge room was completely empty, and the gigantic portrait of the Queen and Ambrose was suddenly nothing but the Queen sitting in her chair, Ambrose’s place a disturbing patch of white, blank canvas behind it.
He twisted around. “Glitch?”
Cain’s voice raced around the ornate room without an answer, not even an echo. And that was when Cain started to think maybe there was more to fairytales than he’d originally thought.
A painfully bright clap of thunder outside followed the sudden appearance of a man in the dark, nothing but a silhouette in front of the nearest window. The lights were off, the storm had come out of nowhere, and so had the man.
Cain wasn’t an idiot (usually). He had his gun out and cocked by the next lightning strike.
“Oh, put the gun away, Cain,” a familiar voice sighed. The figure snapped his fingers, and the lights flashed on. He grinned. “Surpriiiise!”
The gun dropped to the floor, nearly shooting its owner in the foot.
“Glitch?” Cain asked, fairly certain this was actually Glitch’s twin or clone or something, considering the man had Glitch’s wild, coarse brown hair, but it was flared out and around his face, which had GLITTER under one eye. Said glitter was a dark blue that matched the hues of his big flowing cape that had so many hues of blues and greens he could almost believe it was like watching water hang around someone’s shoulders.
He also had ridiculously tight white pants on, knee-length riding boots, and a coat on beneath the cape that matched the cape, the shirt under it a lighter color than the almost scale-like coat. Thing.
“Mmmm. Close, I guess…” the man frowned, clearly amused, and started circling around Cain. With a twist of his wrist, there was a crystal in his hand, and he began to roll it around and around, over fingers, across arms, onto fingertips, everywhere and anywhere as he walked around and around Cain. “What to do with you? Quite the difficult question, Cain. On one hand, you freed me, and yet on the other you banished me. ME!” He paused, frowning. “…which, ironically enough, is why I’m free. Understand my predicament?”
“Not a bit,” Cain said, and reached down for his gun, only to lurch back at the sudden spray of glass as a crystal ball was flung onto the floor near his feet.
“I said to put the gun away, Cain,” he patronized. “That means away from you. No touchie.” The man stopped, frowning, staring straight at him. “Well, I could just go. No punishment, no prize. Like someone who doesn’t want their banished back.”
“I want Glitch back,” Cain glared.
The man blinked. “But I am Glitch.” He stopped for a moment, and smirked, another crystal ball forming in his hand. “Well. Kind of.”
“You’re not Glitch, and I want Glitch back, so let’s just get on to the…goblin king labyrinth thing,” Cain said irritably, trying to not be annoyed by the man pulling yet another crystal ball out of thin air and rolling it over and under his hand.
“For the Labyrinth to be run, the king must be present,” he stated, eyes on the sphere that rang as it moved over his gloved hand. “If you got your ‘Glitch’ back, there would no longer be a Labyrinth to run, considering ‘Glitch’ is part of the king, leaving you in the middle of the Betweens with neither man nor maze. Dear oh dear, whatever shall we do?”
“We follow the rules!” Cain snapped. “You – I mean, Glitch – has been rambling on about this fairy tale all day, and it says if I’m stupid enough to wish someone away, I get to try and get them back by running through the Labyrinth and reaching the castle within thirteen hours.” He glared at the man who was currently keeping Glitch captive, even if it was inside of himself. “Are you not following the rules?”
“Of course I’m following the rules!” the man snapped. “I made the rules, Cain! It’s my job to follow them!” He glared, gaze shifting to the half-empty portrait “Or was, at least.”
“So what do I call you then? Goblin King Glitch?” Cain asked, glaring at the enemy holding his best friend’s body captive.
The man looked at him. For the first time, the man actually looked straight at him, straight in the eye, and Cain felt his throat grow thick at the heat in those eyes. One was Glitch’s brown, and the other was pale silver, and there was so much heat in that gaze that it was like staring into the sun.
“What would you like to call me, Cain?” he purred.
Cain ignored the heat, forced it away, and grabbed the gun, aiming it straight at the Goblin King’s forehead.
“The loser.”
He smirked, and took a step back. When had they gotten so close? No, Cain had to concentrate on getting Glitch out of that body, getting his Glitch back.
“Ambrose, then,” the man said, bitter. “It’s been my name for the seven hundred years your precious Queens have called me. Sucking my magic, taming my labyrinth, trapping me here-”
“What?” Cain frowned. “You come in here with all that thunder and lightning, and you’ve been trapped? For seven hundred years?”
Ambrose actually stuck his tongue out at him. “Don’t remember you being this annoying to me before, Cain.”
“That’s because you’re not Glitch,” Cain said. Ambrose rolled his eyes, but Cain managed to cut him off. “Now I’m not demanding you go and be trapped again, I just want Glitch back. That’s all.”
“Glitch is a part of me, Cain,” Ambrose said quietly, all pretense gone, just an alien beauty standing face to face with a foolish Tin Man. “If you’re sure you want to go save your Glitch, that means you want to take away my freedom. And I’m going to fight you with everything I have to keep it.”
“I don’t want to take away your freedom, I want to take Glitch home,” Cain said simply. “And if you’re going to fight me with everything you have?” He holstered his pistol, and smirked. “I’m anxious to see what that crafty mind of yours can think up.”
For what seemed like a very long time, Ambrose didn’t move, just looked at him with those mismatched eyes, some unreadable emotion in them.
“And I do mean everything, Cain,” he whispered, and suddenly they weren’t there anymore.
---
Also for everybody: Wyatt Cain's Whatevers Have Three Names (sequel to Jeb has 1 to 2 1/2 Daddies)
(Which Jeb Thinks Should Technically Count As Him Having Four Dads Now Despite How Strongly Wyatt May Frown At Him)
When Ambrose went missing, nobody was particularly worried. They had a habit of wandering off, and it was usually for a good reason when they came back, sometimes even coming back with a good invention or a wanted criminal or even a good present for Azkadellia on her second de-witching anniversary (most people would have thought a stained glass Mobat music box inappropriate, but Ambrose had remembered Az had been more fond of them than any longcoat she ever spoke to, although where he got it was a complete mystery). Everyone assumed he had private, secret labs and workshops strewn across the OZ that he would occasionally go to, which was probably true. Or that sometimes Glitch just needed to stretch his legs and go somewhere, which was also probably true. So, when Ambrose went missing, nobody was particularly worried.
Confused, however, would be a good description for Wyatt Cain’s reaction to their absence, since they had promised to be there for dinner. Wyatt had even cooked, and neither Ambrose nor Glitch would pass up something he’d cooked himself. Not even during one of their ‘off-periods’, as Jeb tended to put it and Wyatt tended to wince at.
“He probably forgot,” Wyatt said, trying to ignore the worried look his son is getting. He hates when people start fretting, so he tipped his head over the chair, staring at the ceiling and hoping this won’t be the first time he’s lied to his son. “Glitch forgets things.”
“But Ambrose doesn’t,” Jeb countered quickly and logically. Wyatt would be proud if he weren’t just as concerned and disturbed by not just his…whatevers (Boyfriends? Husbands? Lovers? Wyatt decided to stick with Whatevers for the time being) not showing for dinner, but by how hurt both Cains were by it.
Glitch and Ambrose would go tearing through fire and brimstone completely unarmed for Wyatt, as he knew very well since they kept actually trying to and he kept nearly tearing out his hair keeping them from actually doing so. They would do the same for Jeb, too, but probably with more of Ambrose’s tactical advising and possibly covert military operations.
They could use their brain when it came to Jeb. When it came to Wyatt, the two turned brainless and worked on heart and hope alone, it seemed.
The worst part was that Wyatt was starting to realize he reacted exactly the same way when it came to his Whatevers being in trouble.
“Fine,” he said, and got out of the comfortable dining chair, Jeb just a moment behind. The Cains grabbed two coats, two hats, one gun (and one hand smacked away from another with a “we’re in the castle, son” and a “then why do you get one?” which was finished with a “since I saved the OZ and the royal family personally, I get a gun in the castle. You can take the sword if you honestly think we’ll be fighting something”) and a sword.
Strangely enough, the Cains already knew how to look for Glitch and Ambrose when they wanted to find him and he didn’t want to be found. Wyatt looked for Glitch, which meant more or less going to the most social parts of the castle or the most open or sunny and occasionally the one with the best view to the north (always the north; not even Ambrose could explain that one about Glitch). Jeb looked for Ambrose, which tended to be a sweep of first the royal family’s area, and then every single lower story that had labs or workshops or storage rooms on them.
Ambrose and Glitch knew they did things like this sometimes and tended to usually feel kind of slightly guilty about it, so they’d invented some sort of gadget that if you touched the one button you could talk to whoever was holding the other gadget. Jeb had one and Wyatt had the other.
Why Glitch and Ambrose didn’t have one, the Cains agreed was just ‘one of their things’. Geniuses with an extreme emotional connection to their subjects didn’t seem to put themselves into the equation very often.
…unless it was a Wyatt-Only equation. Those he definitely knew his Whatevers added themselves into.
The search went on for long enough that Wyatt was starting to get worried, especially since Jeb hadn’t been able to find him either. Otherwise Jeb would have used the gadget and told him so. Three hours of searching. He’d even invaded DG’s bedroom since he knew it had a north-facing window, which had ended up with her joining the search too.
It took a while to convince her that a ‘tank-top’ and a baggy pair of pants weren’t exactly decent, the fact that everyone else in the castle was probably asleep anyway. She was already the infamous ‘cross dressing princess’, they didn’t need her wandering around in her pajamas with a Tin Man to add to that description.
DG took on the task of looking through just about every bedroom in the castle, which Wyatt figured would keep her discreet enough that he could finish up his search. Since Glitch was nowhere to be found, he decided to join the Ambrose search. There was more basement than balconies anyway.
He pushed the button on his gadget and it whistled into action as he told Jeb he was joining the Ambrose search.
“Alright, Dad,” Jeb’s voice warbled over the gadget. “I’m going into Warehouse 72 right now-”
Another voice called out in the background as he could hear his son’s gadget slip out of his grasp.
“Oh. Hey! The name’s Glitch! Do I know you?”
---
Jeb Cain had never known the true Glitch. He was great friends with Glitch of Glitch-and-Ambrose, even considered him half (or two-thirds, at least) of the man he called Dads. Maybe he even loved him, in that father figure way. But this Glitch didn’t know him. This Glitch barely seemed to know himself. He had his fully-braided state-function coat (apparently they’d dressed up for dinner) unbuttoned and practically hanging off his shoulders, the white shirt underneath also hanging loosely, his gray undershirt literally torn along the hem.
Jeb wanted to ask why his Dads’ hands looked like he’d just run them across a dull saw blade. He wanted to ask why it looked like his Dads’ hair had been wrenched about and was standing in absurd clumps between squashed bit of black. But mostly he wanted to ask why Glitch, half of the man he called Dads, didn’t remember him.
This Glitch looked at him like he was about to skitter away, like he was waiting for Jeb to draw the sword and start slicing.
This Glitch didn’t know him.
“Did…did I do something wrong?” Glitch asked very carefully. It almost hurt more than him not remembering Jeb (which HURT, even more proof his Dads had been making a difference) to see Glitch look so lost and helpless.
“Is Ambrose around?” Jeb tried, his throat oddly choked up.
Glitch frowned, looking across the dusty room, obviously searching for something. “Who’s Ambrose?”
Jeb was sliding down the wall to the floor and holding his head in his hands when Wyatt came bashing through the door of Warehouse 72.
---
Jeb was okay. Jeb was out of it. So was Glitch, since he looked like he’d just been chewed on by mobats. But nobody was hurt, nobody was dying, nobody was in imminent danger, so Wyatt took a deep breath, pulled his hat off, and took a deep breath in.
“What’d you do this time, Sweetheart,” he sighed…and blinked at the look of complete blank shock on Glitch’s face.
“You know me?” he asked, a bit breathlessly as he approached. Approached very very slowly. More like creeping over a rickety old bridge than walking towards him.
Wyatt frowned, taking in how bad Glitch really did look and ignoring the flinch from his Whatever as Wyatt touched his scalp, fingers coming back with a small bit of blood on them.
“Listen, mister, you may know me but I don’t know you so either tell me where and who I am or why I’m here or…or…something, or leave me alone,” Glitch said, and while he backed up in what would seem like a normal backing-away-from-you move, Wyatt knew damn well that move was usually followed by physical violence.
“…Your name is Glitch,” he said cautiously, heading over to Jeb slowly. “I’m Wyatt, and this is Jeb.” Even helping Jeb up from the floor, his eyes never left Glitch’s. “We were looking for you to make sure you were okay. You went missing.”
“How could I go missing if you knew where to find me?” Glitch asked in return, crossing his arms and tilting his head to the side. Which also meant he was out of a battle-stance.
Jeb looked like one of those new Post-Witching paintings, face drawn and pale, eyes red. “Dad, what happened to him?”
Wyatt looked at Glitch. Looked at every bit of him. There wasn’t a single trace of Ambrose in him.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said, refusing to let himself go shake Glitch and demand his Whatevers back, to hug him and tell him it would all be okay and they’d get through this, to just hold Glitch’s face in front of him and look for any trace of Ambrose and his Whatever in those confused, lost eyes, because Glitch wouldn’t know what he meant or who he was or even why he cared. He put his hat back on, shielding his eyes from the world. “And I doubt he knows either.”
“I don’t know a lot of things, probably,” Glitch said. “Are you sure I know you two?”
“Very sure. Will you let us help you walk out of the room and up to where we live?” Wyatt asked, trying to remember this was not his Glitch, this was a Glitch that was constantly glitching for whatever reason.
A reason he intended to find as soon as he possibly could.
“If you’re sure,” Glitch smiled. “The name’s Glitch! It’s probably nice to meet you, Cain.”
Before he could run over and grab Glitch by the shoulders and try to find his Glitch in there because he’d never said his last name, the one Glitch and Ambrose had yet to break the habit of calling him even though they were more or less considered Cains via common-law-marriage and that meant they were IN THERE, Glitch had walked out the door and into the straight basement corridor, practically jogging as he watched the seam of where the wall met the ceiling.
The Cains followed, Jeb in front and heading for their quarters and Wyatt just a step behind and to the left of Glitch, trying his best to keep Glitch from…well, glitching all over again, and trying to fan that tiny ember of his Whatevers that he knew Glitch had in him.
He kept Glitch calling him Cain. He kept calling Glitch Sweetheart. They talked about dancing (“oh, I love dancing! Have you ever danced?”), and intelligence (“I think if I was smart I would know where I am”), and winter weather (“oh I can barely stand it. Just the thought gets me all queasy in the stomach”), and hypothermia (“What’s that? Sounds expensive”).
And then Glitch froze in front of a stairway, got that hazed look, and blinked over at Wyatt. “Who am I and where are we going?”
“You’re Glitch, and we’re going home.”
“Why does going home involve so many stairs?”
“Because we’re in a castle, Glitch.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because we’re important people and a very good friend demanded we do.”
“I have a friend?”
“…you’ve got a lot more than one friend, Sweetheart.”
“Why do you keep calling me Sweetheart, Cain?”
Cain. Cain Cain Cain. Keep it going somehow, keep him awake, keep him closer to being their Glitch, keep pulling him back home.
“Because you once told me I needed to have a heart, and I got one thanks to you,” he said.
Glitch froze mid-step, and when Wyatt reached out to grab his elbow and make sure the fool ex-zipperhead didn’t get even more brain damage, he started talking, and his eyes were entirely the eyes of his Whatevers, the eyes of Glitch of Ambrose-and-Glitch. “…Cain you need to be ready to let go because he’s barely holding on and he’s terrified and I don’t think we can go back to how we were with…him back.”
Wyatt was probably hurting him, he was squeezing his elbow so hard. “Who is ‘he’? Glitch, I can’t let go of you both, let me help, let JEB help-”
“Who’s Jeb?”
For the first time in a very, very long time, Wyatt Cain was tempted to break down and cry.
When they managed to get Glitch into their bedroom and convinced him that yes, he slept in that bed, and no, he wouldn’t wake up somewhere else and that they’d lock the front door if he wanted them to, Wyatt grabbed a pillow and a blanket and stuffed his face into the pillow, screaming and half-crying and punching the innocent bit of fluff because he couldn’t do it to this ‘he’ that had his Whatevers so scared.
Naturally, Jeb found him like that. He said he couldn’t sleep either when he handed his father a cup of hot chocolate and cleaned up the dinner that they’d never eaten. He also asked for his toy horse back, just for the night, and Wyatt handed it back, never saying a word through it all or even the tight hug they ended up sharing before Jeb retreated into his own bedroom.
Neither wished the other a good night, because they had never lied to each other and didn’t feel like starting now.
Wyatt didn’t sleep much. But when he woke up, Glitch was staring down at him, an intense look of concentration on his face.
“It felt weird when I woke up,” he said.
Wyatt wanted to say that yeah, waking up with another person sleeping in bed with you for two years tended to do that when it went away, but didn’t. Because Glitch wouldn’t understand, and Wyatt was tired of that blank, befuddled look and preferred this intense scrutiny of confusion. It was like the old Glitch he’d known, the one they’d taken down the Old Witch with.
“I feel like I should hug you or kiss you, too, and when I woke up I knew exactly where everything in the kitchen was and made us coffee. Do you know who Amber Rosenvar is?”
“Thank you, and I don’t know,” Wyatt answered, although he mentally made a note to track down whoever Amber Rosenvar was and probably beat the crap out them.
Glitch was obviously not thinking about anything other than thinking, since he was curling up next to Wyatt on the couch, tucking his head under Wyatt’s chin. He could feel the dried blood in his hair. “And my dream was so strange and important but all I can remember is something about raw queens and pressure or something.” He paused. “You smell really good.”
He let himself indulge in the fantasy that everything was okay and he was holding his Whatever and not a fragment of them and that Ambrose would start complaining about how the measurement of time was the stupidest thing ever created or Glitch would start teasing him about how sentimental he was.
“Why are you sleeping on a couch?” Glitch asked.
The fantasy shattered.
“Because I was tired. You need a shower. Do you know why there’s dried blood in your hair?”
Glitch shifted, getting even closer. “I don’t know, but I think it was something bad.” He paused. “The…the glitch.”
He looked Glitch straight in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
And the confused, distant look was back. He wanted to break something. “What do I mean by what? And why are we cuddling?”
Wyatt shut his eyes and wished he had his hat to put over his eyes. “We’re cuddling because you decided to. And then you were going to take a shower-”
“But I want to keep my clothes on.”
…Well, that was a first. There was a hint of Ambrose in that statement, considering Glitch thought it was great to go wandering around in their bedroom in his birthday suit (which Wyatt didn’t mind in the least, which was why Ambrose never complained about it so long as the naked was only in their bedroom and nowhere else – he was surprisingly prudish about their body despite him/them randomly showing up during the day and kissing the living daylights out of him).
“We need to get you cleaned up though, Sweetheart,” he sighed into Glitch’s hair.
“But Caaaaaiinnn-”
Wyatt jerked his Whatever’s face up. That had been one hundred percent playful Glitch-and-Ambrose. “…Sweetheart?”
“Huh?”
Poof. Gone. Not even the Magic Man in his prime could have disappeared that fast.
Anyway. READ. ENJOY. CHEER ME UP WITH ENJOYABLE COMMENTARY.
And since I have absolutely no time, if someone feels like crossposting all the half-finished drabbles for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. ♥
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-02-04 05:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-05 12:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-04 06:15 pm (UTC)Every bit of this was lovely and tonight, I will be entertaining myself with fantasies of Cain working shirtless on that project.
When do you leave, exactly, so I can post the next part of my AU for you before then?
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Date: 2008-02-05 12:23 am (UTC)And I don't know why, but Architect-y!Glitch only has the brown pants and his one-buttoned white shirt on. Glitch-by-choice is so, SO strange.
Thank you so much, darling. ♥
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Date: 2008-02-04 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-05 12:25 am (UTC)...dammit, I need a hugging icon.
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Date: 2008-02-04 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-05 12:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-04 08:47 pm (UTC)I almost feel sorry for Az dealing with "cousin Ambrose". I definitely feel sorry for Cain in the last one. Why he just doesn't attach a leash we may never know.
Anyway, I'm around if you need.
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Date: 2008-02-05 12:30 am (UTC)Yeah, Wyatt Cain's Whatevers Have Three Names is a huge semi-angsty fic all about why Glimbrose was always Glimbrose and not just Ambrose. Except it gets a lot funnier because it involves skittles of despair and a big important quest for a bedroom. And Amber Rosenvar.
Also, if you could rec me some good, plot-and-porn Doctor/Rose (HET ZOMG!) I'd love you even more. If that's possible. Not sure if it is, honestly, Dommy. ♥
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Date: 2008-02-04 11:37 pm (UTC)I have to say Lu, I can't get enough of your fics. For each one, I get so absorbed that I can't comprehend it when there isn't anymore to read. XD; I'm incredibly worried and wondering about Ambrose-and-Glitch, and poor Cain omg. Labyrinth!fic is kinda confusing, but I can get the gist of it(I should watch The Labyrinth again sometime...). Architect!Glitch and Cain are so adorable(altho I'm sure Cain would disagree with my word to describe him >.> XDD). I feel sorry for Azzy in 15 Annuals.
Muahahaha.And I'm reeeeally looking forward to the bondage!fic. Yay, porn! ♥Also, have you started with Heroes yet, or have you not had a chance to watch anything?
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Date: 2008-02-05 12:34 am (UTC)Labyrinth!Fic is kind of SUPPOSED to be confusing. Not to mention it's surrounded by semi-normal/understandable fic, so that makes it even worse.
And yes! There was this radiation guy and Nikki's badass alternate personality is named Jessica and Hiro is SO DAMN CUTE good GOD. And the Petrellis are so gay it's almost painful to watch them, because I'm going "Damn it, Peter, just screw the flying and kiss him or whatever."
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Date: 2008-02-05 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-05 03:26 am (UTC)Also, it's kind of funny. The only call I've gotten from Oregon was my mom giving me EXACT INSTRUCTIONS for what to wear, down to socks and hair accessories for the wake thing. But then she hung up before I could ask about the funeral. I guess grief is weird like that...?
And ooo, email~!
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Date: 2008-02-05 09:36 am (UTC)ARGH IT IS 4:30 IN THE MORNING HERE, AND I HAVE TO GET READY TO LEAVE FOR SCHOOL IN AN HOUR AND A HALF SO I SHOULD GO SLEEP SOME MORE NOW. I will return this afternoon and finish reading your FABULOUS fics then so I HOPE YOU HAVE AS GOOD OF A DAY AS POSSIBLE. MORE LOVE ♥
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Date: 2008-02-05 06:25 pm (UTC)1. Hair-pulling bondage fic looks WAY CREEPIER than I was initially thinking it would be. This is awesome AND win AND flail. Looking forward to the finished product! (I should acronym that, Glimbrose style... "LFTTFP"?)
2. Oh, he's so awesome when he's mindfucking Az. I could read chapters of JUST THAT. I can't believe this'll be the final chapter (plus epilogue, yes? There must be an epilogue, you can't just end it like that did the series! *toddlerfists*), this universe could go on FOREVER AND EVER AMEN.
3. ...architect-contruction worker AU? Where did that even COME from? Not caring, LFTTFP!!
4. OMG Labyrinth!!! *flails* I've had the biggest crush on
JarethDavid Bowie since I was... far and away too young to appreciate sexual ambiguity. Now the love is PURE and WACKY and you Glitch'd him! LFTTFP!!!! ♥5. Cain and his multiple whatevers... oh gawd I love that universe too, and this looks to be all nicely Dark And Angsty. I love your BRAINZ. And yes, it has beens aid repeatedly but your Jeb is (to coin a phrase) fanTAStic! \o/
Buckets full of adoration and worship for you. Trufacts.
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Date: 2008-02-08 12:15 am (UTC)I need to ask, however, if is Glitch attacking the darkness.
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From:Your schedule/requested dress code info
Date: 2008-02-06 05:36 am (UTC)To answer your question...according to the Mama you get to wear whatever you want to the Wake. The overall schedule is as follows:
Friday- (same outfit worn to all)
Viewing (not at all required to actually view)
Another thing but I forget what
Memorial Service (basically speeches)
Saturday-
Funeral
Wake(21 Bud salute)
In case you're wondering why I put this all on here it's cuz I know you check this but often you don't get my emails so yup there ya go. El schedule-o in case you hadn't been told.
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Date: 2008-02-07 02:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, I couldn't make myself read the 15 annuals one, because then I'll have less of an update to read later, and the reading scheme will be un-even, and I swear I know what I mean, but I'm very excited for the rest of the stories! Now I will sit patiently and wait for them all to be finished *fidget fidget, re-read*
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Date: 2008-02-07 06:49 pm (UTC)In all: Your fics=winandawesome. Have a Prize! *hands over a ball of stuff*
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Date: 2008-02-07 09:32 pm (UTC)I sorry for loss. I'm sending good vibes and lots of hugs and kisses your way. As always I'm intrigued by each story and looking forward to them all. In due time. For you and these I can find the patience. Hugs and Kisses.
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Date: 2008-02-08 12:09 am (UTC)On another completely different note, I loved all of these. If I was to pick an outstanding not it would be
The Cains grabbed two coats, two hats, one gun (and one hand smacked away from another with a “we’re in the castle, son” and a “then why do you get one?” which was finished with a “since I saved the OZ and the royal family personally, I get a gun in the castle. You can take the sword if you honestly think we’ll be fighting something”) and a sword.
It was just so completely Cain. It made me lol so hard I spit coffee on the ground, and considering I'm at a coffee shop (on the patio thank God) it made for a nicely embarrassing moment. Hope that image cheers you up at least a little.
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Date: 2008-02-08 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-08 04:16 pm (UTC)As for the stories, where do I start? Wow! The bondage fic... I am tempted to some bondage myself to make you write some more! Love it doesn't begin to cover it!
The AU is very intriguing, I can't wait to see what you'll do with it.
Labyrinth crossover is hot! That last line "I do mean everything, Cain" sent shivers up my...well never mind. 'cough'
Can't wait to read more of the last of your snippets, looks like rough times ahead for Cain. Love it.
Take care, all my best.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-10 03:51 am (UTC)And you have a little over a month before you can pounce on me again! And then I'm yours for 5 whole days!
Love you!!!!!!
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Date: 2008-02-14 11:30 am (UTC)HOWEVER. You made me cry. I was sad from reading your entry, but then I read "Wyatt Cain's Whatevers" and I'm most definitely crying now. I'm really curious about what's going on, though. What happened, and is there three of him/them/whatever now? (I think that would be the neatest thing ever, as long as all of them are ok.)
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Date: 2008-02-14 03:21 pm (UTC)Thank you very much. I'm just amazed at all the amounts of CARING and whatnot that you amazing, spectacular people have. ♥
And Wyatt Cain's Whatevers is...WELL. Kinda complex! I'd tell you more about it but um. I guess I can summarize with "They Find Things Out That Are Surprising And Sad, They Go On A Quest, And Everything And Everyone Lives Happily Ever After." Because anything else would just give away the whole thing.
BUT DON'T CRYYYYY D:
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From:15 Annuals icon
Date: 2008-02-17 04:29 am (UTC)Re: 15 Annuals icon
Date: 2008-02-17 08:19 pm (UTC)*uploads far too quickly ♥*
Re: 15 Annuals icon
From: