Fanfiction: Shelter (Life Is Strange 2)
Hey, I'm actually being semi-nice to Sean Diaz for once! This boy really needs a hug, and I am delivering.
Title: Shelter
Fandom: Life Is Strange 2
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,500
Summary: Sean turns up on Lyla's doorstep, months after he left.
She doesn’t recognise him for a moment. It’s the most fucked-up thing. It’s Sean, it’s her best friend, she hasn’t made it through a day without missing him, but she opens the door to him and for an instant she’s looking at a stranger.
And then it hits her.
She tries to say something. She doesn’t even know what. But her voice is somewhere else.
“Lyla,” he says, and she didn’t know it was possible for someone’s voice to break so hard on two syllables.
He’s thin and filthy and he looks so tired, older than she remembers him, and holy shit, his eye-
She wants to - to hug him or kiss him or punch him in the face, just touch him, just touch him somehow, so she can know he’s really here.
But some detached part of her is telling her that it’d be bad if he stayed out on the doorstep too long.
She pulls him inside and shoves the door shut.
He beats her to the hug, and fuck, he’s shaking, or maybe that’s her. He’s holding her so tightly it feels like he has to be real, but she still can’t really make herself believe it.
He kisses her hair. She closes her eyes and presses her face into his stupid filthy stinking wolf hoodie, and she’ll just keep holding him like this forever if that’s what it takes to stop him leaving again.
-
She doesn’t know how long they stay there, clinging to each other in the hallway. But eventually a question filters through the impossible fact that Sean is here to reach her brain.
She doesn’t want to ask. She’s suddenly terrified of learning the answer. But she thinks she might have to.
“Sean.” She kind of half draws back, keeping a loose grip on his wrist. His name burns her throat as she says it. “Where’s Daniel?”
Sean hesitates.
Fuck. Fuck, no, no-
“Took off,” he says. His voice is more unsteady than hers, if that’s possible. “I mean, I think he did. I was out cold. I just... woke up, and he was gone.”
God, no. Nine years old and on the run, on his own...
“I kept telling him he had to run from danger,” Sean says. “I guess maybe he finally listened to me. Or he thought I was dead; I was in a pretty bad...” He gestures to the bandage over his eye, and Lyla’s about to launch into her next question of what the fuck that’s about when he speaks again. “Or he just hated me.”
“What?” Lyla asks. “Daniel loves you. You’re his big brother.”
Sean won’t look at her, he’s avoiding her gaze with his one fucking eye. “I don’t think I’ve been a good one.”
“You’ve got to tell me what happened,” Lyla says. “Just - okay, come on, let’s get to my room.”
It’s surreal. Walking to her room, with Sean, like she’s done a thousand times before. Like she thought she might never get to do again.
It’s a good thing her mom’s not here. Sean would have known she wouldn’t be here, come to think of it; he knows her mom works on Saturdays. Has he been in Seattle for a while, maybe a few days, waiting for the right time to knock on her door?
The thought makes Lyla feel weird. It seems like she should be able to feel him nearby, somehow. It doesn’t seem possible that Sean could have been in Seattle without her knowing about it.
“Okay.” She sits him down firmly on her bed. It’s probably unhygienic. She doesn’t care. “Tell me.”
For a moment he just kind of stares into space, his eyes cast down. And then he starts talking. Tells her how they got to know these people in California, and they were working on an illegal weed farm (Daniel too? Daniel, the nine-year-old?), and one of them took Daniel on some stupid plan to rob the boss. Because he could fit into small spaces, she guesses.
“So there was a fight,” Sean says, his voice starting to sound tight and painful again, “and Daniel - Daniel got shot in the shoulder-”
Lyla almost throws up. Someone fucking shot Daniel? “Fuck, was he okay?”
Sean looks helplessly at her. “I don’t know. It’s the last time I saw him. Last time I saw anything with...” He waves vaguely at his bandaged eye again. “He lost control, he blew up the house, and-”
“Wait,” Lyla says. There’s way too much to process here; she can’t do it. “Daniel, your Daniel, nine-year-old Daniel - he blew up a house?”
“Well, yeah,” Sean says. “With his powers.”
They stare blankly at each other for a moment.
“Shit,” Sean says. “I didn’t tell you. Fuck, I told you so many times in my head, I just forgot you didn’t know.”
-
Okay. So Daniel, the adorable kid brother of Lyla’s best friend for eternity, is a) missing and b) telekinetic.
She doesn’t know if she believes in the telekinesis thing, but she knows Sean believes it. He’s not lying, he’s not joking. And something happened to his eye.
Lyla’s not sure she’s tall enough to put these on top of the steadily mounting pile of things she can’t handle.
Is there anything she can handle? Is there anything she can do?
She can’t find Daniel. She can’t get the charges dropped, in spite of her months of research. She can’t give Sean’s eye back (and apparently Daniel’s the one who destroyed it, like the fact it’s gone wasn’t fucked-up enough already).
But Sean’s here, and that means she can help him, right? There has to be something. She’s been helpless long enough.
“So you made it all the way down to California,” she says. “And now you’re back?”
“I thought maybe Daniel would try to come back here,” Sean says. “And I...” He shifts a little, uncomfortably. “I needed to see you.”
He’s not the only one who needed this enough to cross two state borders. She’d have set out on her own months ago if she’d known where to find him. “So you’re staying here?”
He hesitates.
“Actually, cancel that question,” she says. “Not a question. You’re staying here. We can watch the news and wait for Daniel together.”
Watch the news for signs of superpowers, she guesses. How the fuck is any of this happening?
Sean shakes his head, just slightly. “I’ll be caught.”
“You’ll still be caught on the streets, and you’ll be cold.”
“I’ll get you in trouble.”
“Look, stay here tonight, at least,” she says. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
Sean hesitates again. He wants to stay, she can see it, she can feel it. She’s relieved to know that, even after everything that’s happened, she can still read him. No matter how broken he is, he’s not a stranger to her yet.
“What if your mom looks in?” he asks.
“We can lock the door.” The bolt’s at a slightly strange angle - Lyla installed it herself - but it works. “And she knows I’d literally murder her if she turned you in, anyway.”
Sean doesn’t look convinced. “Won’t she be suspicious? You know, if she notices the door is locked?”
“She’s learned not to ask questions.” Lyla’s mom has asked why her door was bolted exactly once. Lyla yelled back through the door that she was masturbating. Never happened again.
(It wasn’t even true. She was Photoshopping sparkles onto the members of Misty Mice, during her ironic Twilight phase that accidentally kind of became an actual Twilight phase. She just went with the explanation that would be less embarrassing.)
“Come on,” she says. “Stay here. Or I’ll just sleep out on the streets with you, and I’ll be pissed you made me do it.”
Sean looks back at her for a long moment.
“God, Lyla,” he says, his voice breaking, “I love you so much.”
“That’s a yes,” Lyla says. “You don’t get to take it back.” She pauses. “But I’m calling the cops on you if you don’t take a shower.”
-
They haven’t actually shared a bed before. It feels like they should have. But you don’t do that much sleeping over when your houses are a three-minute walk apart.
They’ve shared a tent. And they’ve fallen asleep on each other, sure. On the couch, marathoning bad movies on Netflix.
(Sean’s dad took a photo of them like that once. Threatened to use it as blackmail material. Sean had protested that that was weird, looked to Lyla for backup.
She’d just laughed, asked Esteban to send her the photo. It was a nice picture. She’d had it up on the wall of her room for a while, just to make Sean uncomfortable, until her mom had started asking questions about it.
It still doesn’t seem real that Esteban could be dead.)
Anyway. They’ve never actually shared a bed. But it still feels comfortable and familiar, tucking herself into Sean’s arms.
From the way Sean tenses up, maybe it’s less comfortable for him.
“Something wrong?” she asks, quietly.
“Not really,” he mutters. “I just... I slept like this with Daniel most nights.”
It tears at her heart to picture it. The two of them always on the move, clinging to each other because they didn’t have anything else.
She won’t let Sean strand himself alone.
“We’ll find him,” she whispers.
He presses his face into her neck. “Yeah.”
Title: Shelter
Fandom: Life Is Strange 2
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,500
Summary: Sean turns up on Lyla's doorstep, months after he left.
She doesn’t recognise him for a moment. It’s the most fucked-up thing. It’s Sean, it’s her best friend, she hasn’t made it through a day without missing him, but she opens the door to him and for an instant she’s looking at a stranger.
And then it hits her.
She tries to say something. She doesn’t even know what. But her voice is somewhere else.
“Lyla,” he says, and she didn’t know it was possible for someone’s voice to break so hard on two syllables.
He’s thin and filthy and he looks so tired, older than she remembers him, and holy shit, his eye-
She wants to - to hug him or kiss him or punch him in the face, just touch him, just touch him somehow, so she can know he’s really here.
But some detached part of her is telling her that it’d be bad if he stayed out on the doorstep too long.
She pulls him inside and shoves the door shut.
He beats her to the hug, and fuck, he’s shaking, or maybe that’s her. He’s holding her so tightly it feels like he has to be real, but she still can’t really make herself believe it.
He kisses her hair. She closes her eyes and presses her face into his stupid filthy stinking wolf hoodie, and she’ll just keep holding him like this forever if that’s what it takes to stop him leaving again.
-
She doesn’t know how long they stay there, clinging to each other in the hallway. But eventually a question filters through the impossible fact that Sean is here to reach her brain.
She doesn’t want to ask. She’s suddenly terrified of learning the answer. But she thinks she might have to.
“Sean.” She kind of half draws back, keeping a loose grip on his wrist. His name burns her throat as she says it. “Where’s Daniel?”
Sean hesitates.
Fuck. Fuck, no, no-
“Took off,” he says. His voice is more unsteady than hers, if that’s possible. “I mean, I think he did. I was out cold. I just... woke up, and he was gone.”
God, no. Nine years old and on the run, on his own...
“I kept telling him he had to run from danger,” Sean says. “I guess maybe he finally listened to me. Or he thought I was dead; I was in a pretty bad...” He gestures to the bandage over his eye, and Lyla’s about to launch into her next question of what the fuck that’s about when he speaks again. “Or he just hated me.”
“What?” Lyla asks. “Daniel loves you. You’re his big brother.”
Sean won’t look at her, he’s avoiding her gaze with his one fucking eye. “I don’t think I’ve been a good one.”
“You’ve got to tell me what happened,” Lyla says. “Just - okay, come on, let’s get to my room.”
It’s surreal. Walking to her room, with Sean, like she’s done a thousand times before. Like she thought she might never get to do again.
It’s a good thing her mom’s not here. Sean would have known she wouldn’t be here, come to think of it; he knows her mom works on Saturdays. Has he been in Seattle for a while, maybe a few days, waiting for the right time to knock on her door?
The thought makes Lyla feel weird. It seems like she should be able to feel him nearby, somehow. It doesn’t seem possible that Sean could have been in Seattle without her knowing about it.
“Okay.” She sits him down firmly on her bed. It’s probably unhygienic. She doesn’t care. “Tell me.”
For a moment he just kind of stares into space, his eyes cast down. And then he starts talking. Tells her how they got to know these people in California, and they were working on an illegal weed farm (Daniel too? Daniel, the nine-year-old?), and one of them took Daniel on some stupid plan to rob the boss. Because he could fit into small spaces, she guesses.
“So there was a fight,” Sean says, his voice starting to sound tight and painful again, “and Daniel - Daniel got shot in the shoulder-”
Lyla almost throws up. Someone fucking shot Daniel? “Fuck, was he okay?”
Sean looks helplessly at her. “I don’t know. It’s the last time I saw him. Last time I saw anything with...” He waves vaguely at his bandaged eye again. “He lost control, he blew up the house, and-”
“Wait,” Lyla says. There’s way too much to process here; she can’t do it. “Daniel, your Daniel, nine-year-old Daniel - he blew up a house?”
“Well, yeah,” Sean says. “With his powers.”
They stare blankly at each other for a moment.
“Shit,” Sean says. “I didn’t tell you. Fuck, I told you so many times in my head, I just forgot you didn’t know.”
-
Okay. So Daniel, the adorable kid brother of Lyla’s best friend for eternity, is a) missing and b) telekinetic.
She doesn’t know if she believes in the telekinesis thing, but she knows Sean believes it. He’s not lying, he’s not joking. And something happened to his eye.
Lyla’s not sure she’s tall enough to put these on top of the steadily mounting pile of things she can’t handle.
Is there anything she can handle? Is there anything she can do?
She can’t find Daniel. She can’t get the charges dropped, in spite of her months of research. She can’t give Sean’s eye back (and apparently Daniel’s the one who destroyed it, like the fact it’s gone wasn’t fucked-up enough already).
But Sean’s here, and that means she can help him, right? There has to be something. She’s been helpless long enough.
“So you made it all the way down to California,” she says. “And now you’re back?”
“I thought maybe Daniel would try to come back here,” Sean says. “And I...” He shifts a little, uncomfortably. “I needed to see you.”
He’s not the only one who needed this enough to cross two state borders. She’d have set out on her own months ago if she’d known where to find him. “So you’re staying here?”
He hesitates.
“Actually, cancel that question,” she says. “Not a question. You’re staying here. We can watch the news and wait for Daniel together.”
Watch the news for signs of superpowers, she guesses. How the fuck is any of this happening?
Sean shakes his head, just slightly. “I’ll be caught.”
“You’ll still be caught on the streets, and you’ll be cold.”
“I’ll get you in trouble.”
“Look, stay here tonight, at least,” she says. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”
Sean hesitates again. He wants to stay, she can see it, she can feel it. She’s relieved to know that, even after everything that’s happened, she can still read him. No matter how broken he is, he’s not a stranger to her yet.
“What if your mom looks in?” he asks.
“We can lock the door.” The bolt’s at a slightly strange angle - Lyla installed it herself - but it works. “And she knows I’d literally murder her if she turned you in, anyway.”
Sean doesn’t look convinced. “Won’t she be suspicious? You know, if she notices the door is locked?”
“She’s learned not to ask questions.” Lyla’s mom has asked why her door was bolted exactly once. Lyla yelled back through the door that she was masturbating. Never happened again.
(It wasn’t even true. She was Photoshopping sparkles onto the members of Misty Mice, during her ironic Twilight phase that accidentally kind of became an actual Twilight phase. She just went with the explanation that would be less embarrassing.)
“Come on,” she says. “Stay here. Or I’ll just sleep out on the streets with you, and I’ll be pissed you made me do it.”
Sean looks back at her for a long moment.
“God, Lyla,” he says, his voice breaking, “I love you so much.”
“That’s a yes,” Lyla says. “You don’t get to take it back.” She pauses. “But I’m calling the cops on you if you don’t take a shower.”
-
They haven’t actually shared a bed before. It feels like they should have. But you don’t do that much sleeping over when your houses are a three-minute walk apart.
They’ve shared a tent. And they’ve fallen asleep on each other, sure. On the couch, marathoning bad movies on Netflix.
(Sean’s dad took a photo of them like that once. Threatened to use it as blackmail material. Sean had protested that that was weird, looked to Lyla for backup.
She’d just laughed, asked Esteban to send her the photo. It was a nice picture. She’d had it up on the wall of her room for a while, just to make Sean uncomfortable, until her mom had started asking questions about it.
It still doesn’t seem real that Esteban could be dead.)
Anyway. They’ve never actually shared a bed. But it still feels comfortable and familiar, tucking herself into Sean’s arms.
From the way Sean tenses up, maybe it’s less comfortable for him.
“Something wrong?” she asks, quietly.
“Not really,” he mutters. “I just... I slept like this with Daniel most nights.”
It tears at her heart to picture it. The two of them always on the move, clinging to each other because they didn’t have anything else.
She won’t let Sean strand himself alone.
“We’ll find him,” she whispers.
He presses his face into her neck. “Yeah.”