Chapter Text
“You can thank me later when you call me and tell me exactly how it all went.”
William didn’t expect a reply seeing how tunnel-visioned Mark was in his current romantic infatuation meeting his mother and the horror that could entail, so he quietly excused himself. He hid in the hallway, listening to the safe sound of Mark and Amber greeting each other, one with the awkwardness of a teenage boy whose lack of romantic exploration had ever advanced to the point of having a girl in his room, and the other with the confidence of knowing she’s a girl with self assuredness.
“And that’s my queue.” William swung around to descend the stairs.
“Off already?” The one and only mother of the house voiced.
“Yeah, as much as I love spending time in your lovely home, I’m not about to become a third wheel.” He waved a dismissive hand.
“Ah, so leaving the honour to me, I see how it is.” Debbie smiled.
William's gut instinct was to continue the banter in the way he knew best, by snarking through it with a smile to keep them both in high spirits and eventually steer himself out the door comfortable in the knowledge that he succeeded in that conversation. But he stuttered as he reached the ground floor. William had seen how the attack his father had suffered had affected him, sure the man was well and recovered now but was Debbie just as haunted now as Mark was?
“Well I could spare some time with my favourite Grayson if you wouldn’t mind.” He turned and adjusted the strap on his shoulder.
Debbie let out a single laugh and touched a hand to her chest, “what a high honour!”
“It absolutely is, and not because your son blew me off to study with a cute girl or because I hardly ever see Mr Grayson. Speaking of which, is he doing okay? Mark said he was attacked.”
William hated to see the shine fade from Debbie’s eyes but he needed to ask. “Oh. Yes, Nolan is fully recovered, like it never even happened. He’s just off sorting some work related things out.”
“Already? I mean that’s great that he’s better and all, but how are you doing? I can’t imagine seeing him hurt was easy on you, especially with how bad Mark looked.” William cocked his head, probing his best friend's mother and the woman he’s known since he was like 4 didn’t feel good but knowing he’d left her to stew in her own thoughts alone would feel worse.
“Oh William, you’re a sweet boy.” Debbie softened and patted his upper arm. “I’m doing alright, as well as I can be considering what happened and with Nolan home and Mark feeling better, I’ll only get better.”
The boy eased under her reassurance. Debbie Grayson had that insane motherly ability to flip any concern aimed at her back onto someone else, he’d asked if she was alright after her husband was hospitalised and here she was rubbing his arm to ease his worry.
William let out a put on sigh, “well if there’s anyone’s word in this house I trust, it’d have to be yours. Though that might be because Mark couldn’t lie his way out of a paper bag, but don’t tell him I said that ‘cause I’ll lie.”
Debbie’s laugh was genuine, eyes closed and a light slap on his arm, William let himself snicker in response.
“Your secret’s safe with me. Now I won’t hold you any longer, off you go.” She dismissed him and began making her way to the kitchen.
“If you’re sure you don’t mind those two up there being awkward and cute.”
“Oh honey, I’m making a snack so I have a reason to see that. I’m not missing the chance to see my boy with a girl he likes. I take my job as an embarrassing mother very seriously, you know.”
William cackled, “never change Mrs Grayson, I’ll see you next time.”
“Take care, William.” With that the boy left.
Spotting Amber's car outside made him grin, proud of his friend, but then having the knowledge that in the house's backyard was a pile of laundry and garbage said friend had frantically thrown out the window made him shake his head. ‘God he’s such a nerd. He’s lucky I like him.’
Case in point in how much he cared about his friend, William had to walk down the street to the nearby park he’d left his car at so Amber wouldn’t know anyone else had been over.
William had never lived super close to Mark which you would think would have made maintaining a childhood friendship hard, but that was the good thing about going to the same daycare where they’d met, then to the same schools and even planning to attend the same college. William and Mark could go days without a text or call, comfortable in the knowledge that their weeks consisted of days in the company of the other person.
It also helped that despite William spending a lot of time at Mark's house over their childhood years, Mark had never spent too much at his.
They had sleepovers in their younger years sure but since they became teenagers it must have been years since Mark had even seen his room.
William got in and turned on the radio to tune his train of thought out, though like trying to stop a boulder rolling down a hill with a stick, it didn't work.
It wasn’t that William was ashamed of his home, in comparison to that ideal family house that Mark inhabited, William knew where he’d rather spend time with his friend.
Especially after whatever happened with Mr Grayson and whatever the hell Mark was going through that he wasn’t telling him.
William stopped at the red lights and rested his head against his palm, tapping his finger against his head. That boulder kept rolling.
Recently Mark had started to act weird, evasive and distracted were the prominent observations made but there was more. His friend had always been hard headed but he was starting to get confrontational. Mark had never really sought out fights before, though he’d always be a person to try and stop a fight because he was a good person like that whilst William had a bit more self preservation than that. William knew his capabilities and that didn’t include taking hits, Mark may be bigger than him but he was still human and getting your ass kicked hurts. But recently he was walking into confrontations almost with a confidence that taking a hit wouldn’t hurt. Especially after he managed to eat those hits to the face and walk them off which got him put on Amber's radar. Maybe the carrot on the stick, that being a pretty girl taking notice, made the hits hurt less and made it worth it?
Sure, William could identify with Amber in that aspect, a guy taking a hit for your honour and shrugging it off was hot. But from the perspective of Mark's best friend who had seen that boy at age seven cry when he ran into a door and lost a tooth, William watched with concern.
He sighed as he parked. Locking his car as he came to his modest family home. The grass that had once been flat now overgrew the pavement and sprouted in clumps, the rose bushes once vibrant in colour thanks to almost daily TLC now reliant on just the sprinklers which was felt in the complete lack of flowers, and the newly installed ramp next to the three stairs leading up the porch had fallen to an angle again. William took a minute to kick the dirt and stones under the ramp end flatter and dig it into the ground until it didn’t rock under pressure.
The door was unlocked again.
“I’m home, don’t everyone get up at once.” He threw his keys on the counter dish and was met with one voice.
“William, sweetie, welcome home.” He kicked his shoes off and met his grandmother's smile as he came to the kitchen.
“Hi Grandma, what’re you making?”
“Just some casserole I’ve been slow cooking today, it’ll be done in an hour and some change.” William often got told growing up that he looked a lot like his mother, who in turn looked a lot like her mother. While William hated being compared to his mother, he loved seeing the similarities in his grandmother.
She stood thin and deceptively frail in the old kitchen, her dirty blond hair curling around her face where it fell out of the bun, though an older woman nearing her seventy’s there was a strength in her that shone through in these moments. Moments where she had a job to do, namely one that could offer anything to anyone, be it making a dinner in portion sizes so big that she could give a neighbour leftovers, or knitting a scarf and having so much yarn left over that she would make extra just to donate it because “I’ve only got the one neck.”
“Well it smells delicious even though I could’ve sworn it was my turn to cook tonight.” William grinned, taking a seat at the counter.
She stirred the contents of the slow cooker with one hand and waved him away with the other. “I wasn’t sure how long you would be at Mark's house for, speaking of which, how is that boy?”
William grunted because wasn’t that a loaded question. “Better, Mr Grayson's out the hospital and well enough to go to work so Mark’s been doing better.”
“That’s good to hear, terrible thing to go through no matter what, I hope it wasn’t that invasion we saw on the news that he got caught in.” She put a hand to her chest, concern evident in her features.
“I’m not sure, Mark didn’t go into details and I didn’t really want to pressure him y’know?”
“Of course, sweetheart, you just be there for him.”
William nodded, it would be easier to be there for him if Mark actually decided to rely on him but William was too tired to go into that with his grandmother after a long day.
“Yeah, he was also thankful for the books.”
“That’s good! Speaking of which, I picked up the donation bin today…”
William groaned loudly, “ugh! Not even five minutes home and you’re already putting me to work.”
His grandmother, knowing never to take his dramatics seriously, just laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s just a handful of books this week. Shouldn’t take you long to detail them for the shop.”
“I got it. I’m gonna get this homework done then I’ll get to it.” He heaved himself to his feet, scooping his bag back up and directing his attention to the cardboard box of pre owned book donations.
“Thank you dear. Oh! While you’re on your way could you check in on grandpa and make sure he’s had his afternoon pills?” She gave him a kiss on the cheek as he swung by her before going to pick up the box. Heaving momentarily because damn! William was under no illusions that his lack of gym time at all in his life would make lifting random boxes of books easy but this was heavy.
“Yes ma’am.” He wheezed.
William came to a stop at his grandparents bedroom where the tv could be heard playing the news and a cane stood by the door. There was a cane at nearly every door of the house because despite his grandfather suffering that stroke only a month ago, the man stubbornly refused to use a cane unless absolutely necessary.
He put the box down and knocked before entering. Said man was asleep in bed, even with the lights on, window open and tv playing he was fast asleep. But seeing the pills next to the cup of water he knew his grandmother had to have brought in not long ago unfortunately meant William couldn’t just leave him to sleep.
“Grandpa, wake up, come on.” He gently shook the older man’s shoulder, and with the alertness befitting of a veteran, his eyes shot open. Though blearily meeting his own.
“Oh Sophia, it’s good to see you again.” His voice was strained and William reflexively grabbed the glass water and pills.
“William, grandpa, and it’s time for your medicine.”
“That’s what I said, did you have a good day my boy?” He took the glass first, William shook the hand holding the pills to remind him.
“Yep! Survived another day of high school, nothing bad to report.”
“That's good, awful thing to have happened, don't you think?” He accepted the pills in a cupped hand before nodding to the screen. The somber scene playing was a rerun of the Guardians of the Globe’s funeral.
“No kidding. It’s scary to think they’re not gonna be around to protect us anymore.” William said in earnest. As someone so very human, the idea that those gods among men who protected his very way of life were gone was a terrifying thought he tried not to linger on.
“It is, but don’t worry too much. No matter how many good people we lose, there will always be more ready to help.” The man said before downing the pills and water.
“That’s a nice thought, grandpa. I hope whoever’s next is good, to go up against villains and bad guys without the Guardians as a safety net if things go bad, they’re gonna have to be invincible.”
William shook his head, “anyway! Grandmas making casserole, I’m gonna get my homework done then get these new donations detailed. Do you need anything else?”
“A new tv would be nice.”
“How about another glass of water?”
“That’ll do.”
William smiled and dismissed himself to fulfil his grandfather's more accomplishable request. Once done, he shut the door, hefted the box and kicked his bedroom door shut behind him.
Despite the rest of the house being made of old furniture, old floral pattern couches and curtains with at least two glass cabinets containing beautiful teacups and saucers collected over the years, Williams room was the only room that didn’t look like it stepped out of a sixties grandparents house time capsule. Namely because he was living in his grandparents house, but he had full control to decorate his own room how he liked.
Granted there was one other room in the house untouched by his grandparents style and influence but he hadn’t been in that room for years and wasn’t planning to change that anytime soon.
A double bed, desk for homework and tv with a gaming system that he and Mark had spent way too many hours playing on. He dumped the bag on the bed and the box thumped on the desk because despite saying he would, William really didn’t want to do any homework just yet. The books however would be a wonderful distraction for his runaway thoughts.
See, despite basically being retired, Williams' grandparents owned a used books store where people could donate their books. Thanks to his grandparents being friends with the man who owned that small stretch of shops and the bookshop itself being practically a crack in the wall compared to the other stores, it existed as a passion project they’d owned for decades. William usually helped out by finding the details of the donated books, what they retailed for, then slicing that price to put them up for sale.
But since the stroke, William found himself working at said shop on weekends as the sole employee since it wasn’t open on weekdays, even if he didn’t have school and didn’t necessarily want to only work there. But he didn’t expect the shop to be open much longer since his grandfather's declining health. But it was good pocket money which he’d saved up to eventually buy his car. Besides if William wanted to finally expand his wardrobe so he’d be prepared for college then he’d take any cash he could get.
In the box was a couple children’s books, one completely scribbled over with crayons and paint “thanks for the generous donation but I think you’ll find this is a bookshop, not a dumpster.” Unsalvageable books unfortunately had to be binned.
William flipped through the others to find them in good condition, he put them in a pile as he began relying on trusty ol’ google to figure out their prices. As he went he slapped on sticky notes listing the name, author, publish date and retail price, he’d still need to clean the books because you have no idea what hands have touched or noses had sneezed on them before they made their way here.
He continued, piling up 5 books before he saw the monster at the bottom of the box.
“So you’re the heavy culprit.” The book was massive. The cover was possibly the size of William's torso and looked older than the house he lived in.
Brown worn leather stretched around a binding of stained old yellowish pages with a clasp looking to keep the packed book from exploding open.
“No title… okay.” William dropped his hands to his hips. “Sure, why make my job easy?” He reached in and heaved the book from the box with both hands, smacking the cardboard to the floor so as to have a place on the desk to slam it back on to.
The cover of the book had no title, no author, no real picture except for a circular pattern indented into the leather.
“If this is a journal we can’t exactly re-sell it…” William put a finger to his chin, the nosy bitch voice in his head telling him if it was a donated journal then why shouldn’t he give it a little read?
Being a person of incredible self restraint, William wasted no time and unclasped the possible-journal.
Flipping it open he expected if not to see a title or authors note was at least a name followed by a DO NOT READ. But instead he saw what his one part of his brain recognised from playing one too many fantasy games as a pentacle, but what the other part saw as just a star in a circle because no way did he find a random book with a god damn magic talisman looking symbol on it.
“On one hand that’s a red flag if I’ve ever seen one…” but on the other he wanted to be sceptical. So he continued.
Any apprehension he felt that the book would suddenly spring to life and bite him or the words would detail how human sacrifices were great to live forever melted away pretty quickly when William realised he had no idea what was written.
Each page he flipped was filled with handwriting so neat it almost looked printed, writing elegant words he could not understand.
There were minor illustrations but nothing really recognisable to a seventeen year old modern century gay high school boy.
William came to the end, heaved the book closed before sitting back in his chair with a frown on his face. “Well that’s disappointing.”
He sighed and wiped a hand over his face. “…I need a shower.”
This weird ass maybe-journal could wait.
William enjoyed himself a nice hot shower, took a moment in the mirror to think over if he should grow his hair out? While he liked his undercut - he wouldn’t have been rocking it most of high school if he didn’t like it - but if he was going to college soon then it would be a perfect time to experiment. God he hoped he’d get to experiment there…
But that was a job for future William to figure out if he felt like reinventing himself, current William wanted dinner. He threw on some comfortable clothes before checking in with his grandmother and getting his grandfather so they could eat at the table.
Their conversation was as easy as always, the highlight of this dinner was what William wanted to major in after high school. The question had instilled fear in him once upon a time, but he was starting to see the appeal of his main idea.
“Pre-med? Oh that’s a fantastic idea.” His grandmother praised and his grandfather agreed with a nod.
“Right? I think I’ll do well - well I already do really well in biology and human biology so I figured it was a natural progression. Besides medicine is good work and with any luck it could mean good money.” William spoke before taking another warm mouthful of potatoes.
“A very noble profession, my boy. It’s good to see someone else in the family looking into medicine and healthcare.” And there was the part of the conversation William really wanted to avoid.
His demeanour soured but he still tried to steer the conversation in another direction. “Yeah, and with Mark thinking about biology and bio-chemistry I won’t be completely alone in my struggles.”
“Even better, you know I want you to be able to fly the nest eventually but it eases my heart that you won’t be completely alone.” Her hand rested on his shoulder.
“That’s all well and good but sometimes it’s necessary, hard to spread your wings when you’re constantly next to someone.” William bit his inner cheek at his grandfather's words.
“Come on now Johnathan, it's not so bad that he’ll have a friend when he’s not home.”
“I’m not saying it’s bad, dear, just that it might even do him some good to be on his own for a while.”
William stood up. Feigning an exaggerated stretch. “Well! Dinner was delicious as always, thanks grandma. I’m going to detail those books then probably head to bed early.”
Seeing that he desperately wanted out of the conversation, her concern was evident in her frown but his saving grace let him go with an “alright sweetheart, don’t you stay up too late.”
“I won’t!” He chimed as he scooped up his dishes, rinsed them in silence and sped to his room.
Shutting the door with a sigh, William threw himself on the bed. As much as he wanted to, falling asleep right now would not do him any good and the last thing he wanted to do was start spiraling. So he did the mature thing and pulled out his phone.
No messages from Mark which wasn’t surprising considering how he’d left him. So William started a good healthy dose of scrolling mindlessly on the internet. He was rewarded on twitter with people talking about a villain attack at Mount Rushmore.
The footage of the two heroes wasn’t great but the distant images of the pink hero looked like Atom Eve, but the other one William didn’t recognise at first.
“Wait, is he that new guy from that invasion the other day?” Once again as you can imagine the footage from that awful even wasn’t the best but twitter held the power of word of mouth from people with firsthand accounts.
William supposed his grandfather was right and with the absence of the Guardians, some young new heroes were looking to step up and pick up hero work where that team had tragically left off. “He looks pretty good, a bit clumsy but I’m not the one saving Mount Rushmore I guess. At least we still have Omni-man.”
He sighed, turning his head and his eyes landed on that mystery book haunting his desk. Frowning, William decided he needed a task and figuring out that book was going to be his victim.
Hoisting himself up, he sat himself down and opened google back up.
Time began passing in a blur as William struggled to find just what language this book was even written in. The words were so inconsistent on won’t page when compared with another that it felt like it was written in multiple different languages, some not in the Roman alphabet, some others looked Greek, so William started by looking to research the word in letters his keyboard could match.
He reverse image searched pages, phrases, letters and as he worked, that boulder of thought in his mind began its tumble again.
Look. Did William think that Mark jumping from being super depressed about his dads hospitalisation to wanting to go out with Amber was a healthy whiplash of emotions that may be either a way to distract himself from feeling that down or cope with it was a smart thing to do? No.
Did William say he would be there for whatever his best friend needed even if that entailed being the best wingman in getting Amber his number, asking around for her interests and grabbing a couple pre owned books on some of those subjects to better prepare Mark? Yes.
Because if William was anything it was a friend who tried, and if somehow with all that help Mark still managed to fuck up this chance with Amber then you couldn’t say William didn’t try.
He ran a hand through his hair. He just wanted Mark to be okay again. He loved his friend and hated how it felt like all of a sudden Mark had these walls up that William just couldn’t climb. He never needed to before. They used to tell each other everything and now trying to even hang out felt like pulling teeth.
He continued to type. Finally seeming to find something that matched a word near the beginning of the book in a little sectioned off part at the bottom corner like it was scribbled on.
William realised he may be taking too much of Mark's stress as his own but sue him. Mark was William’s best friend, fuck, his only real friend. Since they were kids it’s not like William ever really clicked with anyone else, you could even call it luck that someone like Mark - with all his nerdiness and awkward habits - was even his friend.
Sure, William was sociable and found it easy to talk with people, some he’d consider himself friendly with. But he’d not really felt as comfortable with them as he did with Mark, and he’d like to think Mark felt comfortable enough with him to be himself like he had all their lives.
William pulled out a pen and paper and began translating the word he’d translated, letter by letter on a sticky note, with any luck it was the title or author name.
Finishing, he furrowed his brow and picked up the sticky note.
“Etalsnart?”
The fuck did that mean? He repeated the word, multiple times with different inflections each attempt, trying to find a way the word either sounded familiar or gave a hint to what it meant.
“Well that’s a couple hours of work for nothing.” He sighed again, not liking how often he was doing that today. He gingerly flicked through the pages and complained “can you tell me who or what the hell is an Etalsnart?”
Light.
Blinding light flashed so brightly from the book pages that for a split second William felt like he’d been flash banged. Reflexively he’d dropped the book cover, thrown himself back off the chair and shielded his face, scrunching his eyes closed as he still saw the light behind his eye lids. Pain radiated up his back where he’d landed in the floor and he groaned “what the fuck was that?”
It wasn’t that dark in his room, it was dark outside sure but his desk lamp and laptop were on. His phone was on the desk, did the torch randomly turn on?
He sat up and uncovered his face, blinking hard to adjust to the regular light of the room. “…what the fuck was that?”
He stood up, preparing to reach for his phone and see if it was the culprit like his logical brain thought. Only to freeze his outstretched arm as the book lay open on his desk and look in shock as the letters written began to change.
Like ink dropped in water the letters swayed and shifted, settling into very recognisable English. William couldn’t even utter another ‘what the fuck?’ Because as his mouth opened he heard a feminine voice he’d never heard before sound like it was coming directly from that very book's open pages.
“Hello there,”
William blinked. Too in shock to what? Respond back to the voice from the book?
“It has been many years since someone read from our tome-“
William slammed the talking book shut.
He, without ceremony or grace, locked the clasp, threw open the cardboard box, dropped said talking book back into the box and piled atop that box anything heavy he could find in his bedroom.
Once he finished, William dropped onto the floor, breathing frantic and eyes wide as he stared at the box.
“What the fuck was that.”