Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Don’t be dumb. Come have a beer! You have time for that.”

Rose stood there resolute, hands on hips, giving her a glare that was more amusement than irritation. Rey looked up from her seat, squinting through protective eye wear that created a kind of shadowbox effect over the top half of her face. Her brown hair hung in limp strands from the bun hastily secured on top of her head, and she was certain that by now her hands were covered in oxide smudges. The tattered laminate counter-turned-makeshift-workbench in front of her was covered in tools, the most prominent being a ring bender, rubber mallet, and file. She knew she was lucky that Rose didn’t complain about the damningly inconvenient set-up in the apartment they shared.

In such a cramped space, there really was no other place to shape and bend and create the jewelry she sold. Rey could not, for instance, just skip off to the metals shop on a whim. She didn’t have a car and went everywhere in town on foot most of the time; the dusty, scuffed Docs she usually wore were evidence of that. Going to campus wasn’t always a palatable option, and this was one such moment. The cool of October had set in. The trees were turning, then falling completely, leaving the bare bones of trees scaling across the sky like bare arms.

Even though it was often sunny during the day, the nights were starting to develop a chill that crept under layers straight to skin. Combined with uneven sidewalks that lined the side streets of town, a cold fall onto hard pavement became an even greater likelihood. Rey didn’t consider herself a graceful creature; the scars and bruises all over her knees were proof of that. It was almost as if she’d been cursed with an adversarial relationship with physics. What she did not need was a busted knee, or various other scrapes. Even if she wanted to – and even though Rey loved the rust and mustard-smelling dusk of autumn - walking alone at night was not pragmatic. She could just show up to the metal studio during waking hours like everyone else in the morning.

Instead, she was working in the middle of her apartment on the small island counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. A set of cupboards were built in just overhead to provide further separation between the two “rooms,” so she often smacked the ever-living shit out of her forehead when she wasn’t being careful. The complex she and Rose lived in was mid-century, designed to mirror Spanish colonial revival architecture. It had been advertised online as “vintage,” but no one honest would call it charming. More like diseased and crumbling at the edges.

And then there was the landlord. Christ, what an oily specimen of human horse flesh. Rey and Rose immediately knew what kind of a person they were dealing with when he told them to call him “Uncle Plutt.” The first time they’d met him was in his dark, musty little office space in order to sign their lease. It was hard not to notice the layers of dust on the old fax machine, the old Coors calendar hanging from the wood-paneled wall that apparently hadn’t been switched out since 2010, as well as the Venetian shades, half broken and drawn so only a sickly amount of light could get in from the street.

His small watery eyes were vacant and wandering; his face went slack when Rey’d asked him about their move-in date and deposit. Plutt – and most of her interactions with Plutt - left her feeling cold in a way she couldn’t describe. Every encounter stayed in the pit of her stomach for hours after it had ended, and there was nothing that could ruin her day like a run-in with the strange, disheveled little lump of a man. These days, he liked to show up at their place without warning to “change out air filters” while only one of them was home.

He’d skulk around their flimsy wooden door at all hours, leering a little too long when either one of them happen to be in view, whether they were climbing up the old black iron stairsteps to the second floor or taking their laundry down to the machines. It wasn’t just the threat of Plutt that kept her and Rose on edge all the time – the apartment itself was old and crumbling and probably had black mold hiding in the walls. They needed to leave. And so instead of having beer with her friends, here she was, and here she’d stay.

“Roooossseee, I gotta keep working on these. You want to get out of here, right? Maybe before we get told we have to sign another lease with Plutt or get kicked out?”

Rey asked the question with a smirk, waving her hand around at the room before setting it back down near the rubber mallet. Rose huffed, sending a stream of air directly into her thin curtain of black bangs.

“Might be a good thing. I mean, we could just live with Kay.”

Rey rolled her eyes.

“She has a studio, and that’s not enough room for the three of us. If you want our future deposit to exist, we’re going to need my Etsy sales. And the craft show sales. And the art fair sales…”
Rose sighed in protest while rolling her eyes, bobbing her head slightly.

“I took on extra hours at the store. You don’t have to keep pumping out merchandise like your life depends on it. And jewelry…people are always going to buy jewelry, Rey. Especially this awesomeness…”

Rose gingerly swooped forward, grabbing for a nearly-finished spoon ring, only to have Rey swat her hand away. That led to an indignant noise from the back of her friend’s throat. Rose had been eyeing the spoon rings she’d been making for months, never suspecting that her girlfriend had already put money toward “just the right one.” Kay had plead Rey for secrecy, making her promise to keep it quiet.
There’d been a sacred pinky swear and everything.

“Boo! You whore,” she retorted, quoting their favorite lazy day movie with a half-grin.
More finger shaking. More scolding. Rey snickered good naturedly. This was their dynamic, after all; it would be a cold day in hell before she’d stop bossing Rey around, and Rey loved it. Rose was good at acting like a protective older sister, and it made her feel wanted. Precious enough for someone to boss her around. The company, the caring – it was all so much healthier than the weak fluorescent light that blinked above them, and it made their cheap little hovel a home. It made things bearable.

“What, you think that spending your twenties like this is healthy? When was the last time you went out for more than an hour? When was the last time that you dated someone? I can’t even remember the last time you got laid!”

“That’s…a weird thing for you to remember, Ro.”
“You know what I mean. Listen, your boots are right by the door. Take off the weird goggles, go run a brush through your hair and…come…on!”
“Tomorrow.”

There was a high-pitched shriek of defeat.
“Fine! Dry up like a weird misanthropic art prune. I don’t care!”
“Yes, you do.”
“Goodbye, weirdo.”
“Night, babe. Be careful.”

At half-past eleven, Rey’s eyes started to burn. It had been three hours, and she’d finished two rings. The process itself wasn’t hard, but it took patience to get right. The ring bender had been a birthday present from her aunt and uncle; there’d been a horrible beat of guilt that hit her chest when she’d received the heavy box on her doorstep because she knew her little family never had ninety dollars just laying around.

To be fair, it was because of them she was here in the first place. The love of metal started early in Chewy’s shop. The smell of it when she was young – oil, welding fumes, and inorganic sparks igniting on ozone – it was comforting. Rwookrrorro Garage kept her clothed and fed as a kid; the business had been a dream for Chewy and Auntie Maz when they were young, and they’d sunk every spare dollar and second into the business. Money was tight like taut skin over the top of a new drum, but they’d given their little niece a good life.

Good, if not unorthodox.

There had been a playpen in the garage office that she’d spent a good chunk of her early life in, and Rey’d cut her teeth in that same place, sucking on clean, icy rags Maz left for her in the shop’s freezer. She’d had birthday parties there, and instead of hearing bedtime stories about princesses and big bad wolves, Rey grew up with Uncle Chewy tucking her into bed every night while he told her of motors and axels and mufflers he’d worked on all day. Worn-out spark plugs and cracked engine blocks – those were the villains the tiny slip of a girl with thick brown hair and golden eyes heard about.

By the time she was nine, she’d learned how to spot and deal with left-handed threads.
When she was eleven, she learned how to change a tire, although at that point, she still needed help with the lug nuts and jack.

There was a nice routine to her days and waking hours; she sprang up in the morning at seven, went to school around eight, went to the shop afterwards to do her homework, and then went back home with Maz at around five or six for supper. Sometimes her uncle left for the day with them, sometimes not.
It was a small, happy life that was nicely crammed at the edges.
But it couldn’t be Rey’s entire existence forever.

On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Rey began applying to colleges and by the time she graduated, she’d been accepted to three different programs. It just so happened that the smallest school – hours away from home - offered her the best scholarship and the cheapest tuition rates.

So that was that.

She trundled west to a small college town that was only three hours away from the Colorado border. Rey found herself enrolled as an art student with plans to specialize in sculpture and metals at Jakku State University because she, like her uncle, was addicted to working with her hands but knew in her bones that she’d have to become a craftsperson in her own right.
Wheel alignments were fine, but the technical processes of bending metal and forming something new – making wonders and adornments that weren’t specifically utilitarian – that was enough to satisfy a place in herself that hadn’t gotten much breathing room back home.

Her family’s generosity – their belief in her - had mattered more than anything in the world. A bender (the price of which she suspected caused her aunt and uncle to do without a few of the small luxuries they did enjoy) usually paid for itself thrice over, and in this case it had - almost immediately. To hasten her exodus from the dreaded apartment, Rey started collecting various metal scraps and abandon sets of dinnerware. She practiced by making rings for friends and got a steady stream of advice from the lavender-haired metals professor in her department, Amilyn. After a few false starts, Rey started to see her skills improving. It was an exercise in faith to create an online shop, but she’d done it. “Aluminum Falcon: Jewelry and Collectables” came into being, and she’d managed to build a nice little nest egg.

Her scholarship only covered so much, after all. She was working part time in the art department’s admin office, but it barely covered the bills. Rey’s job mostly entailed filing work and answering phones, but depending on the number of grumpy students, tired professors, and errands across campus, it wore her out. On any given day, she’d bounce between delivering messages to Dr. Akbar in the ceramics studio, cleaning rollers near the printing press, and bounding down the hill just west of the art building to the glass studio with a delivery of cane in various, twinkling colors. After all of that and her class work…well, she didn’t have any trouble sleeping hard at night.

Rey’s side gig required the skill of scavenging around the small college town of Jakku for material she could use, which was strenuous. Sometimes her friends found bits and bobs to gift her with and it seemed to make them feel good – to help her. If she was honest, it was nice to have a close found family despite her homesickness for her aunt and uncle. In fact, Kay often brought Rey weird metal scraps to see if she could make it into something worth selling; it was a game they’d had going since she’d started selling stuff online. The final straw for Rose had been when her girlfriend brought Rey part of a rusted can.

“Stop trying to give her tetanus,” Rose roared; Rey had just giggled while Kay grinned and good naturedly rolled her eyes upwards.

There were various unused pieces of copper piping, worn out keys, and – yes – even silver utensils. She was also always eager to scope out estate sales in the area, convincing Rose to drive her out to farm auctions early on Saturday mornings.

The only shitty part of it all – the only downside – was that her shop’s selection either dwindled or thrived depending on pure luck…so when she wandered into the town’s only second-hand store and found half a dozen mismatched spoons, she jumped at the chance to restock her wares. For the low, low price of eight fifty, she could make at least seventy bucks. It was absolutely worth it; the fiduciary turn-around would be great and it would add substantially to her “let’s get the hell out of the creepy apartment” fund.

Even if Rey did have to give up the crumpled bills in her front overall pocked that she’d been saving for her customary Diet Coke and Hostess fix from the vending machines outside the metals studio, it would pay off. It had to. That’s why she was working urgently; getting her merchandise restocked was the hit of dopamine Rey needed to feel like she was…getting somewhere and doing something worthwhile for herself. They could be up on her site day after tomorrow, easy.

Rey’s hands shook a little as she put down the ring she was working on, and she took a deep breath before heading over to the sink and refilling a faded plastic cup with water. She didn’t want to drink any more coffee, even if it would give her the energy to keep going. Sleep was important too, and the next day promised to be stacked full of gallery workers needing keys, students checking out lockers, shouting matches between the printmaking professor and his rival the photography instructor…and she had studio time with Professor Amilyn in the morning.

Their current projects were focused on engraving, so in order to get a good grade, she’d have to work within the parameters of the latest assignment. It was detailed stuff, and there was little distance between the successful sweep of a spit stick or the disastrous results of an unsteady grip. That meant focus or fail. And that meant she’d just have to finish her rings another evening. She sighed heavily and wandered over to the other side of the living room. Airflow in the apartment wasn’t great, which made working for long periods of time in the kitchen uncomfortably stuffy. It set her on an edge that she felt – even though her aching brain and screaming fingers were her more immediate physical issues.

With a halfhearted push, Rey slid open the dual glass-and-screen panel, then sagged against the doorframe, sighing into darkness studded with streetlights from across the small, enclosed yard below.

The base of audible música norteña from one of the other apartments in the complex lulled her, and she swore that the vibrations reached her skin. That was probably just exhaustion hijacking the senses she couldn’t quite rely on at this moment. Rey closed her eyes, trying to will herself back into the apartment, but faded shapes of rings outlined by the red impressions of bad lighting bounced behind her lids, and she simply stood there – tired, breathing, and leaning.

To be fair, she didn’t hear the wing beats at first because of the resounding 2/4 signature in her ears…but soon she realized that something percussive was out of time with the music and getting closer. Her eyes shot open, and two feet away from her face was a black…thing?
Bug?
Impossible to be a bug that big.
Maybe.

Two reflective, shining animal eyes bore down on
her, and she let out an undignified shout, backing her way inside without losing sight of…of whatever this was. Her mind quickly filled in the blank with the word “bat,” but Rey had already dodged behind her workspace, crouching down, head level with the counter.
What if it followed her? Was it trying to hurt her? Did she get close to its nest or something? Did bats have nests?
She momentarily cursed herself for not paying more attention to Mutual of Omaha’s nature documentaries before mentally snapping back to the present.

Before she could stop herself, and in a fit of weird evolutionary self-preservation, she hurled an unfinished ring in the winged beastie’s general direction before dropping back behind the countertop. Rey shut her eyes, bracing and waiting for the flapping of small wings to dissipate back into the night. Instead, she heard a muffled “thud.”

Rey’s stomach dropped, and she slowly raised her head just above the counter’s surface, bracing her shaking hands on the edge. From her refuge, she could barely make out the balcony and a small dark crumpled figure.

“Oh…oh God,” Rey muttered to herself, hands balling into fists. She hadn’t meant to hurt the…thing. Hell, she wasn’t even good at killing spiders because, even though they were creepy, they were living and sharing the earth. It never seemed right to kill something just because you didn’t like the way it looked.
For what seemed like hours, Rey sat behind the counter, trying to decide what to do. Finally, she reemerged and crept back out into the night air. Music still blared from beyond her, and it seemed too loud now. She finally focused on the dark little splotch near the balcony railing. Maybe it was because it was late, or because she was stressed. Maybe she was just too tired to think clearly, but Rey felt the prick of tears behind her eyelids as her chest got a heavy. It hadn’t been trying to hurt her. Bats ate bugs, didn’t they? It had probably just gotten confused and flown haphazardly toward her without meaning to.

Suddenly, the small body twitched, and a single leathery wing shook itself, then the whole body reanimated. It made a small noise, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think it’s little pinched face looked alarmed. It’s face which, to her horror, now had a sweltering mark from where her unfinished ring had hit its target. Rey was not, strictly speaking, used to aiming and hitting anything. She was not athletic in a classic sense, although she enjoyed the occasional run or hike.
The last time she’d tried to play a sport had been in high school gym class, and it hadn’t gone well. She worried the top of a chipped front tooth with the memory.
People often asked about it – wanted to know about the little divot in her top left incisor.
Rey just told everyone she’d gotten into a bar fight.
No one believed her.

For its part, the bat didn’t seem capable of much movement, and Rey made a noise in the back of her throat that turned into a small, injured sound.

“Oh, buddy,” she groaned. “I’m so sorry.”

Her mind spun. She couldn’t just leave the poor thing outside, could she? There might be predators that would eat a bat, even if she and it were two stories up. Could an owl scoop up a bat with its talons and eat it for dinner? Were there owls in this part of the country? Well, if there were bats, there were probably owls. Clearly, she needed to pay more attention to basic zoology in the future. Maybe even pick up a subscription to National Geographic. Rey took a deep breath and turned resolutely back into her apartment.

“Think, think, think,” Rey repeated softly.
She had to try and save the little animal’s life.
This was her fault, after all.
She didn’t know anything about bats, but maybe someone in the biology department could help.
There might be a vet in town that worked on exotic pets and would take on a charity case. God knows she didn’t have the money to foot a bill for random nocturnal creatures.

Rey bounded off to her room, then frantically searched for the shoebox she kept Kay’s scraps in.
Relief flooded her as she unceremoniously emptied its contents onto one of the emptier shelves of her bookcase. This would work for now. It was just temporary, after all. Running with the empty box to the kitchen, Rey took a moment to line the bottom of the box with paper towels, then she poked a hole in the box top with a red-handled pair of kitchen scissors. The injured bat would probably be ok in the box until morning, but there was just one more problem; how was she going to get the little animal from the floor to its temporary shelter?

She glanced ruefully at the flapping, injured maybe-a-rodent on her balcony and sighed. After a moment, Rey flung open one of the drawers next to the sink and retrieved a black plastic spatula.

“This is going to be really embarrassing for both of us,” she muttered.

The bat didn’t resist being spatula’d up and placed gently into the box. That surprised Rey, but she figured that it was probably in shock. Once the ordeal was over, she gently placed the lid on top, and brought box and bat into her apartment. Treating the emergency beastie shelter as if it were a breakable thing, she placed the cardboard rectangle gingerly on the countertop next to her ring bender, pausing only to pick up her phone with a heavy sigh. As she dialed Rose's number she heard a slight fluttering, then silence.

Chapter Text

“So, what you’re telling me is that there’s a disease rat in my home?”

Rey pursed her lips together and sighed, taking a moment to shift her feet against the carpet. She was still in the clothing she’d worn to bed, which wasn’t her usual habit. She was a “shower the night before and put on your clothes as soon as you get up in the morning” kind of person, but she’d slept fitfully. Before falling into bed, she’d done search after search on her smartphone about bats, animal sanctuaries in the area, and vets who might possibly help her, so perhaps she’d just been worried about the creature in the box. Her conscious mind was certainly preoccupied by the little animal she’d injured; why wouldn’t her unconscious mind follow suit?

As for Rose - well, explaining the presence of their temporary guest was going about as well as she thought it would. Rose was nursing a cup of coffee in the small kitchen as Kay sheepishly reached over the top of their small fridge for the off-brand Cheerios Rey had purchased with last week’s grocery fund and poured a heaping pile into a bowl. Kay bogarting cereal and the last of their milk was of minor importance in this moment, though. Her roommate, best friend, and hetero life partner was undercaffeinated, slightly hungover, and bordering on furious.

“It’s not rabid or anything. At least, I don’t think it is. This website I found? It says there’s, like, a point zero-zero-one percent chance it’s got rabies.”

Rose crinkled her nose in disgust, and Kay’s eyes widened as she scooped little wheat circle shapes into her mouth with a clean spoon from the dishwasher. The cereal might as well have been popcorn judging by the amused look on Kay’s face. Rey bit the side of her lip, hoping she looked too pathetic for the other woman not to forgive her.

“Again, you’re telling me it’s possible…and, no, even if it’s a small percentage of possibility, the possibility is still there.”

“Technically, yes, but it’s in a box. In my room.”

“Does the box have steel siding with reinforced sides and a lock on top?”

“….No. I emptied out the box I keep Kay’s scraps in.”

“I swear to God, Rey!”

She couldn’t help it – it was probably just a knee-jerk reaction, but before Rey could stop herself, she’d rolled her eyes and sighed, even though she knew it would make things worse.

“Look, I’m dropping the bat at a nature sanctuary later today, so just chill the fuck out. It isn’t going to hurt anybody. In fact, I think it’s injured.”

Rose closed her eyes, and took a deep breath followed by another long sip of coffee. Rey didn’t get upset that often, especially with her friends. The edge to her voice surprised the other woman, and she was afraid of what would happen next.

“It’s too early in the morning for this,” Rose sighed.

“Look, I love you and your big heart. I love that you saved a terrifying disease rat,”

“They’re not rats, technically speaking. People used to call them flitter mice!”

Rey smiled at Rose. “Flitter mice” was a nice thing to call bats, and she hoped the touch of whimsy would soften her friend. Kay’s eyes just kept ping-ponging between the two women as she ate faster, eyebrows raised in what might’ve been fear or anticipation.

“Just…please, get it out of here as soon as you can. Do you remember that episode of The Office when that redheaded lady gets rabies from the bat? Don’t be the redheaded lady, Rey!”

She smiled, sensing a way to diffuse the situation.
“I’ll be careful, Rose. Besides, my health insurance is shit. I can’t afford a hospital stay.”

Rose nodded, and their conversation turned to what she and Kay had been up to the night before.

After a few minutes, Rey looked at the clock on the microwave, realized she was late, and flew into the shower. As the warm steam hit her skin, she began to think about the bat again. What should she do with it while she was at work? All the websites she’d visited were very clear – it wasn’t advisable to handle a bat on your own, but she couldn’t just leave it in the box all day.

It needed food and water.

It needed help with whatever injuries it had sustained the night before. She had found a number for a wildlife center thirty minutes away that was accepting injured animals. If she hurried, she’d still be back in time for Amylin’s class. She was relieved. This mess could get taken care of before the busiest parts of her day started.

Rey rushed through the rest of her shower, dumping the Suave shampoo and conditioner combo onto her head without thought. She quickly scrubbed herself down with some of Rose’s fancy bodywash that smelled like cupcakes, rinsed off, and hurriedly wrapped herself in an old towel that was fraying around the edges. With a thoughtless swipe of her hand, she cleared the steam off the mirror to give her face a once-over before crossing from the bathroom through the hallway and back into her room. The sound of soft conversation and giggles came from her friends in the kitchen, and the sun was beginning to poke through the scant branches around the apartment building. Despite her exhaustion and the strangeness that lingered from the night before, it seemed like it was going to be a nice day. She smiled to herself, and closed the door to her room, turning on the overhead light.

Rey stared at the box for a moment. It would be ok to check on the bat, surely? She needed to make certain it was still alive at the very least. Rey clutched her cell phone tighter along with her towel, and took it in hand, sliding the menu from the touchscreen at the top until she could select the flashlight feature.
Finally, she made herself level with the nightstand she’d set the box on.

“Ok, buddy. Let’s see if you’re still alive,” she muttered to herself before opening the box just a crack. She did a sweep of the inside with the beam of her flashlight, and blinked in confusion, raising the box lid just a little more. Her heart began to beat faster as she realized what she was seeing – or, rather what she wasn’t seeing.

The bat was gone.

Of course they tore the room apart. They tossed everything upside down, sideways, over, under, and then back upright again. The sad twin mattress, the tattered box springs underneath, half the contents of Rey’s closet full of Goodwill deals, the particle board nightstand and her bookshelf – all were redistributed in various ways around the small room with wooden panel walls, carefully inspected, and then returned to where they’d been. It took about an hour, and all the while Rose yelled inventive threats at the bat. It was like she was trying to tear the walls apart with her phobia-driven fury. Kay couldn’t help laughing, which made things worse and better all at the same time.

Rey sighed every once in a while, rolling her eyes at Rose, reminding everyone that it was very unlikely that any of them would get rabies.

“Goddammit, we know, WE KNOW,” Rose shouted.

“Rey Kantana, if I didn’t love you so much, you’d be homeless right now!”

“Not legal. I pay rent, and I’m on the lease.”

“You know what I fucking mean!”

All three women finally emerged from Rey’s room in defeat and immediately – wearily – turned their eyes up and around towards the ceilings in the apartment. It was a typical popcorn paint white that every lousy apartment had; just now it seemed uglier than usual. There was no way a bat could hide on a white expanse of a ceiling, no matter how shabby it was. Or at least, Rey didn’t think it could.

“Wh…where do you think it is?”

Both Rey and Rose had nearly forgotten Kay was there at all, until they heard her voice from somewhere behind them.

“Probably in a dark corner. Maybe in one of the other closets, even?”

Kay shuddered and pulled the sleeves of her gray hoody tight as if trying to bury further into it. Rose’s mouth set itself into a thin line and she closed her eyes in defeat.

“Ok,” Rey breathed, placing her hand over her forehead and realizing that she was still in her towel.

“Ok. This is what we’ll do. You go stay with Kaydel until I find the bat. This is my mess. I’ll clean it up.”

Kay looked at Rey with something that seemed a lot like relief, but Rose was still beside herself. It seemed her anger had dwindled, and that was something Rey loved about her best friend; Rose was never angry for long at anything or anyone. When it was over, it was over.
She turned her head, looking directly into Rey’s face.

“I – I really don’t want to leave you here? But I think maybe…that would be best.”

Rey returned to the apartment around seven in the evening. She could feel the loose strands from her formerly neat brunette bun spilling over her hairline, and she smelled like stress sweat. “Long” was a word that did not begin to do justice to the afternoon she’d had after her engraving class. Not only had there been the fiasco with the bat before heading off to campus, but an explosion in the department’s kiln took out at least twenty pieces from various advanced ceramics students and had led to much crying and gnashing of teeth. She’d heard Professor Akbar yelling about it from outside the office for twenty minutes. Everyone knew that it was always a possibility that the kiln gods would demand a sacrifice every now and again. Each firing was a crap shoot, but it never led to a kind of expectant stoicism Rey thought a ceramicist would naturally develop over the years. Especially not with Akbar.

Groaning at the memory, she ran up the stairs to her apartment silently rehearsing what she’d tell Rose about her day – and then remembered that she’d be by herself. Well, maybe not completely alone. There might be an injured, pissed off bat hanging out somewhere, pun intended.

She heard a television blaring and came to a full stop at the top of the stairs. At first, she thought the noise might be coming from the apartment where two constructions workers lived. They were friendly enough guys, even though she made a point of never talking to them for very long. As she began unlocking the front door, she could hear a Humira commercial listing off various side effects, and she grinned.

Rose and Kay must’ve decided to stay after all. She unlocked the door and stepped through the threshold.

“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here. This was such a shit day!”

She looked up expecting to see one of the women comfortably crammed onto the couch in front of the television they all shared. Instead, there was a stranger sitting stone still in her apartment. Rey did a double take, thinking she’d walked into her neighbor’s place by mistake, but this was her couch. And she’d used her key to get inside. As for the stranger, he looked like a tangle of arms and legs stretched out on the cushions. Slowly, as if not to startle her, the stranger reached lackadaisically for the remote, then clicked the button that turned off the television. The only sound left behind was an eerie silence as the stranger looked up at Rey and grinned.

A long time ago at the garage, her uncle Chewy had hired a guy from West Virginia. The man had grown up square in the middle of Appalachia, and he’d told the young girl about all sorts of things that existed in the forests and mountains. One of the most fascinating myths was all about the “Not Deer,” a creature that tried hard to be a common woodland animal, but didn’t look quite right to any passersby. It was the “Not Deer” that came to mind as Rey looked into the face of the stranger on her couch.

Whatever it was tried awfully hard to look human, but it wasn’t. It had a long angular face with shadows that seemed to shift moment by moment, and the mouth on the face sat too long on a very square jaw. He - it wanted to look like a “he” – had facial hair and a mop of dark hair. Two nearly black, sparkling eyes sat just above a long nose, and there was a nasty scar on the pale skin that stretched diagonally across one side of the face. The creature gave the impression of being a spider resting its long appendages in a web, and when it spoke, its voice was dark and low, vibrating in her stomach and keeping her still.

“Well, hey there, little blood jug,” it said through the largest teeth Rey’d ever seen.

She screamed and tried to tear towards the door. One second, she was making a run for it, and the next, she’d been thrown up against one of the living room walls. Large hands grasped her wrists, holding them above her head. Her knees went wobbly with terror, and she was almost glad that the thing’s firm hold was keeping her upright.

“Rey. Rey-with-the-silver-and-deadly-aim. You shouldn’t try to run from me.”

Her cries for help or any reasonable response at all got stuck somewhere in her vocal cords, and all she could do was stare up into the shining eyes of the stranger who was in her home. The words that emanated from its throat were hollow. She knew now that emptiness could be transmitted through sound waves that were not an echo. Rey’s eyes kept veering towards the scar, as her brain tried desperately to pull something together because there was something here she was supposed to know – there was something…but her mind was a television madly changing channels. Nothing was sticking. All the images moved too fast.

She flailed, panicking as her senses all but blinked out like a broken Christmas light. There was a gruff chuckle that seemed almost playful, and she could see just over the head of hair – could feel the long nose rubbing up against her neck.

“Fuck, you smell good,” it grunted.

“You…” she grasped for something to say. Something that would avert the perilous attention he was paying to her body.

“I…I won’t run. You should take whatever you want, and leave. We don’t have much, but I’ll show you where the credit cards and jewelry are, and-”

“Oh, I plan on taking whatever I want,” it said.

“But we should talk first. Sit down, little blood jug. And remember – no running, or I might chase you. And I can’t be responsible for what happens after that.”

Rey gulped and the thing in her apartment – she refused to think of it as human - eased her hands down and ushered her to the couch. It was trite – people in dangerous situations always spoke of heartbeats and drumming noises…but the descriptions of physical responses to extreme fear seemed true enough. In that moment, Rey could hardly think for all the thudding in her head, and her body felt separate from her mind. There was no other recourse of action, so she sat. It was, she considered, preferable to being pinned against a wall.

In that moment she realized that even more of her hair was hanging haphazardly around her head. The hair tie was long gone. She felt cold sweat gathering on her skin, and she felt nauseous. Rey concentrated on trying to breath, then adjusted herself as far from the thing as she could – crossed her arms, and sat at the edge of the couch, wearily watching the intruder and willing herself not to cry, even as tear rivulets rand down her cheeks. The thing adjusted itself on the opposite side of the couch, sitting feet apart with hands placed lightly on its thighs.

It was still smiling a terrible smile, considering her with raised brows.
She took in what looked to be a black suit in the half-light – saw the suit jacket over the button down shirt. Nondescript. Meant to blend in with whatever was darkest in a room. It was camouflage. There were a couple of minutes where all she could hear was the sound of her own shallow breath, and the traffic outside. Rey considered that she might be dreaming – that the silence signified the end of her mind’s subconscious shit show – but then the low, hollow voice spoke again.

“I have a problem,” it began softly, leaning forward while placing both hands over each knee.

“I was hungry last night. I woke up ready to feed, but all I found was a woman who threw a fucking piece of silver at my face.”
The thing set its jaw, maintaining some restraint over the last few words it uttered. Rey took a shaking breath, then felt something in her chest constrict.
Could it….? No. This was bad joke – maybe her friends wanted her think twice about ever messing with a wild animals again. But Rose wouldn’t waste time on something this elaborate with so little payoff. If this had been staged, there’d have been no physical force. And there would absolutely not be a horrible thing half made of shadows and sharp angles glaring at her. It paused, eyes narrowing incrementally.

“I have been changed, little blood jug. Whatever you did has crept into me, and I am changed.”
A startling shift happened a second later, coinciding with a dangerous energy that made the air spark around her - the creature's eyes became wholly black like beetles, its sharp teeth protruding from a wide mouth framed by nearly beautiful lips that, Rey thought, were deceptive as any passive trap laying in wait.

“What have you done?”
The question was sharp and loud. Rey felt the room spin because she finally knew.
Knew for sure who and what the bat had been. Knew what it probably wanted and that she'd been stupid enough to let it in.

Chapter Text

Rey had always been quick, physically speaking. You had to be if you were a small child who spent lots of time in a family-owned auto shop with engine hoists, brake lathes, and vehicle lifts. More than once, she’d dodged a tire or falling wrench. Her uncle was always telling her to watch her step.

“Don’t want to do the paper work we’d have to if you got flattened,” he’d joke as Maz raised a brow and huffed.

She was not graceful, and not capable as an athlete – but quick. If she’d stuck with long distance and track, she might’ve gotten a scholarship. However, Rey had never been competitive, per se. It was nice to come back to the garage after school and decompress after spending all day at the high school.

It was too bad, she mused from her place on the couch in front of what she now knew to be a very angry vampire, that she wasn’t speedy when it came to eloquence under pressure. It was too bad that she was incapable of combining rapid-fire speech and panic like Rose. The best Rey could do was try and deescalate the situation. The problem was that she didn’t know anything about appeasing Eldritch horrors. Her heart still pounded in her ears, and it felt like there was super glue stuck to her tongue holding it stubbornly in place, but she swallowed hard, and stuttered forth.

“I…I’m sorry. I don’t understand what happened, but I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I was…”
She took another deep breath.

“I was frightened, and I just reacted. I was just holding my piece-”

“Your piece,” it repeated indignantly.

“The ring I was working on? I sell jewelry on Etsy.”

There was more silence as Rey bit her lip, finally able to look into the onyx eyes that gazed back. They were less wide now. The whites and pupils looked normal again. Surely that was a good sign. The silence made her more anxious, so she motioned towards her room and tried again out of desperation.

“My friend and I are trying to move out of this apartment, so I make jewelry from metals I find around town to make extra money. I, um, found some spoons in a junk shop so I’ve been bending those into rings.”

The thing was so still she might’ve mistaken it for a monstrous statue or a bad horror prop. She blew out a frustrated puff of air and kept going, unsure of how much she should say. Would the details matter? Somehow, she didn’t think so.

“Our landlord is creepy. I mean, I think all landlords are, but this one is…dangerous. Like, serial killer dangerous maybe. So Rose and I – my friend, I mean – we just want enough to make a down payment on a new place. Because this apartment is awful and…probably has black mold in the walls or something.”
She trailed off, unsure of where to go next.

The creature’s mouth hung open slightly. It looked confused, and a little surprised. A deep, sudden chuckle that started in its throat and made its way into the thing’s wide chest drifted into the living room. It was just loud enough to cause Rey to flinch as the creature threw its head back and continued laughing. Finally, the noise died down, and the intruder cleared its throat before speaking again.

“So…a scavenger. Because that’s what you are, you know. You’re nothing. Just a little, impoverished human scavenger looking for silver. You managed to injure me? Managed to drop me out of the sky like a clay target? No. I don’t believe it.”

In one swift movement, the creature was across the couch and staring into her face as if she were a curious oddity.
“Who are you?”

“I’m – I’m just Rey. I’m nobody,” she stuttered.

“I don’t think you’re telling me everything, Rey Nobody,” it said through sharp, gritted teeth.
“I’ll know the truth soon enough.”

Before she could react, the monster – because that’s what she knew she was dealing with now – reached one long black-clad arm around her waist, pulling her forward nearly into its lap. The other hand tipped her head back at an awkward angle, and she grunted in discomfort at the sudden motion. Rey struggled, trying to use the couch as a springboard, hoping her long legs would help her break free. If only her combat boots could connect with its stomach, she might get loose, but the creature above her had its nose and mouth to the side of her throat again and was shushing her as if she were a toddler throwing a fit.

“Hush, little scavenger. This doesn’t have to hurt. Just let go-”

Without warning, she felt something tear into the skin of her neck; she screamed, her eyes flooding with tears from the sudden pressure and pain. The sound became a slow gurgle, and then a warmth filled her – wrapped her in its grasp. Rey felt herself go limp, then closed her eyes while images – memories – flashed behind her lids.

She saw herself as if in an out-of-focus photo where Vaseline had been smeared over the lens. She was in the metals studio, working on her engraving project, safety glasses perched over her nose. Then further back, to the day she and Rose moved into their apartment. A quick flash of Plutt’s face swam before her eyes momentarily, and she jerked instinctively, only to be fastened down again by the creature’s grip. Further back she floated until she was home – until she could see her aunt and uncle in the shop. Rey tried to call out to them – scream for help, but there was nothing but silence and the unfocused image of their faces. She saw herself as a girl – maybe no more than three or four then – Aunt Maz holding her tight in a protective hug as young Rey reached for someone just out of sight. She felt herself sobbing along with the little girl whose face was set in an agonized expression and heard herself scream “come back” over and over, like a sad protest song.

The memory was enough to startle her – shake her insides. Rey had to get out of this place that she was trapped in. She had to fight, and she found that her heart was thudding hard again. Rey forced breath into her lungs, and with a jolt, she pushed away from the creature.
Immediately, the image behind her eyes changed.

It was dark, and the smell of dank mud filled her nostrils. She couldn’t move, and blackness invaded her – found its way into her veins. Come back, come back, come back. The same two words rang out over again, although Rey could barely understand them because they were not called out by her younger self – they were screamed. The sound reverberated around her skull like a small rock inside an empty can, and her stomach dropped once more. More images flitted behind her eyelids, but she could not understand what she was seeing. They were half pictures that formed nonsensical shapes and moved too quickly for her to make any sense of them. Rey felt it, then. It overwhelmed her reason – she felt that she’d been thrown into a hole in the earth that had no end. It was cold and deep and there was no way to climb out. There was no one…no one.

Something jumped and tilted suddenly, allowing an abrupt moment of clarity to rush back in. Rey found herself looking up into two dark eyes that seemed wider than they had before. She took a deep breath, finally sure of what to say.

“You. You still remember that pit of mud they put you in. You’re afraid that you’ll always be alone,” Rey croaked in a voice that barely belonged to her. Then she let her head fall back, and there was nothing but swirling, numbing blackness.

Rey woke, and it hurt. Her body felt sore, her leg and arm muscles still throbbing with the struggle she’d put up moments…hours ago? Maybe days? There was no way to tell. Her eyes felt puffy and swollen as if she’d been crying – maybe she had, and her head seemed heavy. Rey didn’t want to move from where it lay on the…pillow? She blinked her eyes open gradually, and saw that she was in her own room, empty box from two nights before still on the ground with the top halfway across the room. She was still in the close she’d worn for the previous work day, but her boots had been removed. That detail was odd.

Rey tried to lift herself from where she’d been sleeping on her side, but there was…someone holding her against a body reflecting her own warmth like a blanket. Her stomach dropped, and her eyes wildly rotated around what had, until this moment, been a safe and familiar space. There was sunlight coming in through her blinds, and the neat piles of clothing, books, and tools still lay exactly where she’d had them. There was no discernible difference in the room except for her – she felt changed – and the arm holding onto her waist.

“Good morning,” said someone softly, and close to her ear. Rey whimpered. There was a beat of silence, and then a sigh that felt heavy enough for both bodies on the twin bed resonated through her.

“Why are you still here?”

She hated how her voice sounded – small and scared and tired. That didn’t seem to matter as the arm that had been grasping her loosened, allowing her to slide of the bed and turn to face the intruder. But there was no swirling darkness. The not-quite-human quality of the creature had crept away, and Rey’s eyes widened as she realized that the monster was still a monster but also somehow a man now, all solid and fully formed. The fading in-and-out qualities, the shadows that melded with the darkness – they were no longer flitting across the stranger’s There was a long pause, and nothing but the reverberations of someone moving in the apartment below broke the silence.

By the looks of it, it was mid-morning. People were probably heading out to school or work or they had to go. She’d need to call someone in the art department. Class, work…she always had to be somewhere and doing something because people relied on her.

“Because we need to finish the discussion we were having before,” the man drew loose circles in the air with one hand and sat up, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed. His voice was ragged with sleep, and he enunciated each word with care as if strained by the effort.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she growled, inching backwards.
“You…did something to me!”

“Yes. I fed on you."

Rey tried to move herself towards her bedroom door, but the doe-eyed stranger in her bed held her gaze. He’d told her he’d give chase if she tried to run . She believed him.
Long angular features, cat-like and severe arranged themselves into a rueful smile that spread across a long pale face. He made for an odd picture, black clad body in a suit sitting on the cheap gray flannel Walmart sheets Rose had bought her last Christmas.

“You’re always cold, and the heat bill is going to eat us alive,” she’d said, referencing Rey’s habit of turning up the thermostat every time the air in their apartment hit anywhere below 70.

The intruder’s eyes were still dark, and Rey could now see shades of brown and flecks of honey instead of black. His hair, still the color of pitch, stood at haphazard angles on one side of his head and revealed one rather large ear. It was a bad case of bedhead, and almost funny. Almost.

“We still need to talk.”

“I need to call the cops.”

“That wouldn’t be wise. Believe me, you don’t want to bring anyone else into this.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The stranger in her bed pursed his lips together before licking along their seam and lifting his eyebrows.
“You’re a smart woman. You know what I am. Do you really want anyone to get hurt?”

She sharply took in a breath. The threat was clear, but it only made her angry.

“Look shitass, I don’t care what you are, I - ”

“Scavenger. Listen to me.”

It was a command and not a request.

Rey held her breath, hoping that this was somehow just a fever dream – that she had not really let the one bat in the tri-state area that turned out to be a vampire into her home; that she had not accidentally injured said bad, and given it a reason to stay. In a better world, Rey wouldn’t have found the bat-not-a-bat lying in wait on her couch after she’d gotten back from work, and he wouldn’t have chewed on her neck as if she were an apple.

The creature – and he was still a creature, even if he did look more solid and human in this particular moment - he continued speaking after brushing a lose strand of hair out of his face. His voice was odd and deep and sonorous, but not as hollow as it had been the night before.
“I saw the sun rise this morning.”

At first his words didn’t register, and he must’ve seen the confusion on her face because he swallowed hard, then grinned. It was a lovely smile, all things considered, except for the jagged teeth.
“I haven’t seen the sun rise in…more years than I care to admit. I could feel the pull to the light, and I did not burn. I was not touched by fire. Only warmth and the sky. The sky…”

His eyes rolled towards the ceiling as if trying to recall the image.
He was distracted for only a moment, but she bolted. Rey cleared the threshold of her bedroom door before she was flat on her stomach, dirty carpet fibers digging into half her face as a massive hand pressed down on her head, and a large body pinned her to the floor.

“You’re lucky I’m not hungry, little blood jug,” the man growled as he nuzzled a place on her neck that felt bruised and broken.
“…Although I could be convinced to have you again.”

The wind had been knocked out of her, so she let out a cough, and tried to kick up into the thing’s body. Rey had never been sure what she’d do in a situation where she was really, truly in danger. She knew now that going down without a damn good fight wasn’t an option she’d seriously consider, and Rey wished she could continue on, never knowing that about herself.

“Your fuckin’ monster mash ass doesn’t get to call me that,” she snarled, turning her head and trying to snap her teeth onto the elbow next to her face.

“What am I going to do with you?”

The voice behind and above her was annoyed. Tired, even.

“Get off!” she shouted.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then she was free and scrambling to the other side of the room. Finally, she came to a stop, and looked back at the stranger in her home. He was half-standing with his knees on the floor, long hands hanging limp at his sides as he watched her.

“Alright. Rey. Just Rey.”

She righted herself, her arms crossing over her chest while her legs shook.

“What do you want? Why don’t you just go?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the man smirked. He rose up to his full height and even from a distance, he made her feel small.

“I have a proposition for you, Rey.”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard me out yet.”

“Whatever it is, just no. Go. I want you to go.”

“That’s not how this works,” he replied.

“You invited me in. I have a claim to this place, now.”

She had the urge to run again, but something held her fast to where she stood. Was it fear? Was it him? She didn’t know and couldn’t tell over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding at record speeds.

“I helped you,” Rey cried.
“Why are you doing this, you….you…”

“Kylo.”

“What?”

“I am called Kylo.”

She was quiet again, and he cocked his head to one side, sizing her up. His lips quirked, and once again he looked too human. She knew that he wasn’t – could sense it. But the daylight and haziness of morning made him an uncanny sight. Her gut twisted with the dissonance of it all.

“You did help me – but only after you injured me. It’s of no real consequence, but when you hit me with that ring – I don’t know. I can feel you now, somehow. I can feel you moving through the world, and then after last night, after I bit you…”

The vampire – named Kylo, apparently – swallowed hard.
Rey thought about trying for the rest of the spoon rings still on the counter. If it slowed him down the first time, it might work now.

“I can take care of you, Rey. I’ll get you out of this apartment; you and your friends could live in luxury. I can fund your jewelry store, your schooling, you can have anything. Just give me what I want.”

She shook her head.

“And what’s that?”

“Your blood.”

His response was loud, and he managed to make two syllables of the last word by emphasizing the “d” at the end of the second word as if spitting it out.
She winced, and cold sweat began to form on her brow again.

“N…no. Fuck no. Why would I agree to that?”

“Because you want your friends safe. You want your aunt and uncle safe.”

“Fuck you!”

Kylo hummed, shrugging his broad shoulders.
“You don’t have much of a choice. If we cannot come to an understanding, I’ll kill them one by one until we do. I have time on my side, after all.”
He smiled at that.

“I’ll start with Rose, and end with your aunt and uncle. I saw them all while I drank, and I know…I know how important they are.”

“I’ll shove the rest of that silver down your throat if you even think of touching them,” she gritted, jaw setting and stubborn.

He crept closer. Again, she thought of a spider making its way down a web. His legs and arms were certainly long enough. And his preferred method of dining wasn’t all that different than the giant orb weavers she’d seen gliding along spindled threads they made in the bushes along walkways and against houses.
He smiled, teeth grazing his bottom lip.

“I want - need your blood because it made my heart beat.”

He took his fist and pounded his chest once for emphasis and she gasped at the sudden motion.

“I began breathing. I could feel my lungs working. I wanted water and not blood. I saw the sun. And it occurred to me that having access to whatever you’re filled with provides certain advantages.”
As if spellbound, she could only stare as he reached for her hand, clasping the small bones between two massive palms, and ten thick fingers. Again, she was eclipse and could barely breathe as he rotated her wrist, and kissed the underside where her veins ran, blue and green against the thin skin there.

“So you see, Rey – you think you’re nobody, but you aren’t. Not to me.”

There was a moment of stillness that settled over the two of them, then footsteps and the jingle of keys hitting the deadbolt jolted her brain back online. The smell of cigarettes and stale air preceded the slack-jawed figure of Unkar Plutt as he lumbered his way into the living room, stained wife beater and frayed overalls dragging on the carpet. The round little man walked in, totally unaware that the living room was already occupied.

He never realized it, either. In less time than it took to blink, Kylo was on him.