Heart of the Storm (Part 1)
Title: Heart of the Storm
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Summary: AU loosely based on the plot of "Frozen". Wayne Schlumper discovers as a child that he has the ability to create lightning and electricity. He also discovers how terrifyingly dangerous it would be for his little brother Oscar to get too close. Twenty years later, the two are partner scientists. But when Wayne's lightning is revealed, Oscar sets off with his sudden girlfriend to track his brother down and bring him home. Electricity isn’t the only danger waiting, however, and the two must confront truths about each other and about themselves. (Now with 100% less trolls, terrible parenting, and talking snowmen!)
Big Bang Masterpost is over here.
Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
Strike For Love
Wayne Schlumper had fallen asleep early that night, lulled into slumber by the distant sound of rain. And the eight-year-old could have contently slept the whole night through had two small hands not started shaking his shoulders.
“Wayne,” Oscar said as he prodded at his older brother. “Wayne, wake up.” He shook Wayne harder. “Wake up. Wake up.”
Wayne blinked two sleepy eyes but quickly closed them again when he realized the sun was not shining and it was still dark.
“Go back to sleep, Oscar,” he mumbled, not knowing what his energetic little brother was doing up and not really caring at the moment.
Oscar climbed up on Wayne and flopped down on him. “I don’t wanna,” he said. “The sky’s too loud and I’m not sleepy and I’m bored. I wanna play.”
“Go play by yourself,” Wayne said, trying to flip over and hide under his pillows and finding it very difficult to do so with Oscar squirming around on top of him. To his dismay, Oscar’s plan seemed to be working and he was beginning to wake up against his will. And if he woke up now, he’d never get back to sleep.
Oscar was nothing if not determined though and said the magic words that always worked on the both of them.
“We could go do some science,” Oscar told Wayne.
Wayne’s eyes opened back up again and much as he wanted to resist, he couldn’t help but break into a smile. He definitely couldn’t go back to sleep now.
“Oh all right,” he said and his smiled widened a bit more as Oscar bounced happily on his bed.
“Come on!” Oscar said, scrambling off of the mattress and tugging on Wayne’s arm. “To the lab, Insano!” he squealed excitedly.
Wayne chuckled and tossed his blankets off. “To the lab, Linksano!” he answered back, his eagerness increasing as they slipped into the codenames they had decided one afternoon sounded very ‘science-y’.
Their ‘lab’ wasn’t exactly a real lab. It was truthfully just a playroom. But to the two young Schlumpers and their boundless imaginations, it might as well have been an elaborate lab.
Thunder rumbled off in the distance as the two turned on the lights and giggled to themselves.
“Let’s play with this!” Oscar said as he grabbed their junior chemistry set. They were hardly all that knowledgeable about real chemistry yet, but the little packets that had come in the kit allowed them to make glowing mixtures that they were always fascinated by.
“Okay!” Wayne agreed. He tiptoed over to the bathroom to get a cup of water for the gel while Oscar sorted out what colors they still had left in the box. But as Wayne tried to sneak quietly, he couldn’t help but start scratching at his hands. His fingers felt weird and itchy. They had actually been sort of tingly on and off for a few days but he had ignored it. It was hard to ignore it now though when his hands kept making odd little twitches. Wayne rubbed them against his pajama pants and tried to focus instead on getting the cup of water.
When he had succeeded at his small mission, he made his way over to their pretend lab where Oscar was sitting on the floor with their little plastic beakers and test tubes.
“Ready, Insano!” he announced brightly.
Wayne smiled back, ready to begin their great experiment. “Okay, Linksano,” he nodded, reaching his hand out to fill one of the test tubes with water. But his hands kept itching and prickling and the water began to spill on the carpet instead of going into the test tube.
Wayne tried to put the cup down without making an even bigger mess, and Oscar scooted over closer.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, watching Wayne scratch his hands.
“I don’t know, my fingers are itchy,” Wayne said.
“Like bug bites?” Oscar asked, tilting his head and staring hard and his brother’s hands without seeing anything wrong.
“No, it’s like…um, like…” Wayne struggled to put the sensation into words, but he suddenly let out a small cry of surprise when a hot burst of bright light sparked off his hands.
The two Schlumper brothers were quiet for a moment, watching with gaping expressions as small electrical bolts crackled in the air.
“Is that science?” Oscar asked with wide, curious eyes.
“It was like…lightning,” Wayne said, trying to figure out what was happening. He stared down at his hands with a fluttering feeling in his stomach.
“Science lightning,” Oscar whispered in wonder. “Can you do it again?”
"I dunno. I'm not sure what I did in the first place." Wayne turned his palms over. "I think it was..." He jerked back a little as another little bolt of white light lit up the playroom, then vanished again just as quickly. "Whoa."
Oscar flinched back for moment but was quickly back to peering over Wayne's hands. "I wanna try!" he exclaimed and flipped his palms over. But no matter how hard he concentrated, nothing happened. "Older brothers get all the cool stuff," he mumbled in disappointment.
Wayne focused hard on his hands and his eyes widened as sparks began to scurry over the edges of his fingers. "Cool! Oscar, lookit! I'll never need a flashlight again!" He let his concentration die down and watched the sparks fizzle out, then focused hard again to make them come back. He giggled as he switched the glow on and off.
Oscar watched as a larger arc of sizzling bright heat leapt off Wayne's hands. "My arms feel all tingly too," Oscar giggled. His close proximity to the static was making the hairs on his arm begin to stand up. When the glow had ceased, Oscar curiously reached out to poke at his brother's wrist and let out a little yelp of surprise when he received a small shock.
Wayne grinned and poked his little brother in the side, keeping just enough of the sparks in his fingers to deliver a gentle tingly prick. When Oscar squeaked and doubled over, the grin became more mischievous. "Uh oh. Looks like I have extra tickle powers now." He descended upon the five-year-old, showering him with tiny zaps of static.
"No f-fair!" Oscar protested as he laughed, trying and failing to hold Wayne off. He squealed, flailing around on the floor while Wayne tickled him until he was breathless. All the while the static slowly began to creep up in intensity, causing the hair on both of their heads to splay out, which only further served to make them laugh. "You look silly!" Oscar said.
"So do you!" Wayne told him back. Bright sparkles were jumping freely from his fingers but he didn't mind, holding one hand over his little brother's head and moving it around to make the static pull Oscar's hair first one way, then the other.
A close crash of thunder echoed from outside and Wayne jumped, accidentally sending several stray bolts flying out into the air, narrowly missing the two of them. "Oops."
The lights suddenly flickered for a moment or two before resuming their function. Oscar stared up at the ceiling in wonder, not understanding what was happening, only that he thought Wayne must be amazing for doing it. It was like magic to him, seeing things move and react without Wayne ever even touching them.
Oscar tried to put his hands on Wayne and tell him that he didn't need to be afraid of the thunder outside when he had such a cool superpower, but another shock went through him and it was less tingly and more painful. "Ow," he pouted, not happy that he couldn't nuzzle up against Wayne anymore. "Can you turn it off now?"
"I, um..." Wayne's heart was still pounding from how close the thunder had been. He looked back and forth between his hands and tried to pull back on the static, but this time the electricity didn't die down completely. It lessened, but the tips of his fingers still crackled.
He stuck his tongue between his teeth and tried again, but the sparks stayed put. "I'm not sure how to make it stop," he answered, suddenly nervous. What if he couldn't turn it off? As if in response to that thought, the crackling intensified again until it was back around his whole hands. He tensed up as the lightning stopped being magical and started being frightening. "Oscar, I - I don't know how."
Oscar watched, mesmerized, as the bolts began to spread out throughout the room, growing brighter and more numerous by the second. “Wow…”
“Stop it, stop it,” Wayne muttered frantically at his hands, pressing down on them as though to physically shove the lightning back inside. A jagged streak of it erupted from his fingers to strike across the room and he yelped in fear.
A second streak narrowly missed his brother, who scrambled backwards. “Hey!”
“Oscar, look out!” He threw out a hand to push the five-year-old away to safety but a burst of lightning lanced forward, striking the younger boy in the head and sending him flying.
Wayne cried out and raced over to where his brother had been thrown across the room. “Oscar!” Oscar was lying with his eyes closed, unmoving on the floor. A streak of his hair just above his right ear had been singed away, and he refused to respond no matter how hard Wayne shook him. “Oscar?!”
Wayne scooped his little brother into his arms, terror taking over him. Electricity exploded through the air around him, lancing out for the easiest way out of the room - the outlets in the walls. The light bulbs in the ceiling fan and the table lamp shattered at the sudden influx of power, plunging the room into blackness as Wayne clutched the little figure to him.
“Mom!” he screamed desperately, tears starting to stream down his face. “Mom! Dad!” He cradled his brother’s head tightly. “Don’t be dead, Oscar. Don’t be dead, I’m so sorry, please don’t be dead…”
The door flew open and a pair of flashlights flooded into the room. “Oscar!” His mother was at his side in an instant, taking his baby brother from him. “Wayne, what happened?!”
“It was - I didn’t -” Wayne was sobbing too hard to get proper sentences out. “L-lightning…I couldn’t stop it…h-hit him-”
His father turned one flashlight from Oscar’s singed hair to the blackened wallpaper around the nearby electric outlet. “That power surge got the whole house. He must have been standing too close to the wall socket when it happened - the electricity arced and struck him.”
“D-don’t let him be dead, don’t let him be dead-”
“He’s not dead,” his mother confirmed. “But we’re going to the ER. Get Wayne in the car, honey, we’re leaving right away.”
Wayne sobbed uncontrollably during the trip to the hospital and could not be calmed down even as he sat in the waiting area while his mother stayed with Oscar. His father assured him over and over that it wasn’t his fault and that things would be all right, but Wayne couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth about where the lightning had come from. How furious would they be if they found out it was his fault? What if Oscar died because of him? What if his little brother was hurt forever and it was all his fault…?
At long last, the doctors let them into a wide, open white room to see his brother sluggishly waking up in a giant bed that made him look tiny and fragile by comparison. Oscar would be fine, they said. He would be cranky for a few hours and he likely wouldn’t remember the past day or two, but other than that he would be fine.
Wayne wanted nothing more than to hug his brother and never let go but instead he clutched his hands to his chest as he tried to stop sniffling, not wanting to get too close.
He had already hurt Oscar once. What if he did it again?
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Summary: AU loosely based on the plot of "Frozen". Wayne Schlumper discovers as a child that he has the ability to create lightning and electricity. He also discovers how terrifyingly dangerous it would be for his little brother Oscar to get too close. Twenty years later, the two are partner scientists. But when Wayne's lightning is revealed, Oscar sets off with his sudden girlfriend to track his brother down and bring him home. Electricity isn’t the only danger waiting, however, and the two must confront truths about each other and about themselves. (Now with 100% less trolls, terrible parenting, and talking snowmen!)
Big Bang Masterpost is over here.
Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
Strike For Love
Wayne Schlumper had fallen asleep early that night, lulled into slumber by the distant sound of rain. And the eight-year-old could have contently slept the whole night through had two small hands not started shaking his shoulders.
“Wayne,” Oscar said as he prodded at his older brother. “Wayne, wake up.” He shook Wayne harder. “Wake up. Wake up.”
Wayne blinked two sleepy eyes but quickly closed them again when he realized the sun was not shining and it was still dark.
“Go back to sleep, Oscar,” he mumbled, not knowing what his energetic little brother was doing up and not really caring at the moment.
Oscar climbed up on Wayne and flopped down on him. “I don’t wanna,” he said. “The sky’s too loud and I’m not sleepy and I’m bored. I wanna play.”
“Go play by yourself,” Wayne said, trying to flip over and hide under his pillows and finding it very difficult to do so with Oscar squirming around on top of him. To his dismay, Oscar’s plan seemed to be working and he was beginning to wake up against his will. And if he woke up now, he’d never get back to sleep.
Oscar was nothing if not determined though and said the magic words that always worked on the both of them.
“We could go do some science,” Oscar told Wayne.
Wayne’s eyes opened back up again and much as he wanted to resist, he couldn’t help but break into a smile. He definitely couldn’t go back to sleep now.
“Oh all right,” he said and his smiled widened a bit more as Oscar bounced happily on his bed.
“Come on!” Oscar said, scrambling off of the mattress and tugging on Wayne’s arm. “To the lab, Insano!” he squealed excitedly.
Wayne chuckled and tossed his blankets off. “To the lab, Linksano!” he answered back, his eagerness increasing as they slipped into the codenames they had decided one afternoon sounded very ‘science-y’.
Their ‘lab’ wasn’t exactly a real lab. It was truthfully just a playroom. But to the two young Schlumpers and their boundless imaginations, it might as well have been an elaborate lab.
Thunder rumbled off in the distance as the two turned on the lights and giggled to themselves.
“Let’s play with this!” Oscar said as he grabbed their junior chemistry set. They were hardly all that knowledgeable about real chemistry yet, but the little packets that had come in the kit allowed them to make glowing mixtures that they were always fascinated by.
“Okay!” Wayne agreed. He tiptoed over to the bathroom to get a cup of water for the gel while Oscar sorted out what colors they still had left in the box. But as Wayne tried to sneak quietly, he couldn’t help but start scratching at his hands. His fingers felt weird and itchy. They had actually been sort of tingly on and off for a few days but he had ignored it. It was hard to ignore it now though when his hands kept making odd little twitches. Wayne rubbed them against his pajama pants and tried to focus instead on getting the cup of water.
When he had succeeded at his small mission, he made his way over to their pretend lab where Oscar was sitting on the floor with their little plastic beakers and test tubes.
“Ready, Insano!” he announced brightly.
Wayne smiled back, ready to begin their great experiment. “Okay, Linksano,” he nodded, reaching his hand out to fill one of the test tubes with water. But his hands kept itching and prickling and the water began to spill on the carpet instead of going into the test tube.
Wayne tried to put the cup down without making an even bigger mess, and Oscar scooted over closer.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, watching Wayne scratch his hands.
“I don’t know, my fingers are itchy,” Wayne said.
“Like bug bites?” Oscar asked, tilting his head and staring hard and his brother’s hands without seeing anything wrong.
“No, it’s like…um, like…” Wayne struggled to put the sensation into words, but he suddenly let out a small cry of surprise when a hot burst of bright light sparked off his hands.
The two Schlumper brothers were quiet for a moment, watching with gaping expressions as small electrical bolts crackled in the air.
“Is that science?” Oscar asked with wide, curious eyes.
“It was like…lightning,” Wayne said, trying to figure out what was happening. He stared down at his hands with a fluttering feeling in his stomach.
“Science lightning,” Oscar whispered in wonder. “Can you do it again?”
"I dunno. I'm not sure what I did in the first place." Wayne turned his palms over. "I think it was..." He jerked back a little as another little bolt of white light lit up the playroom, then vanished again just as quickly. "Whoa."
Oscar flinched back for moment but was quickly back to peering over Wayne's hands. "I wanna try!" he exclaimed and flipped his palms over. But no matter how hard he concentrated, nothing happened. "Older brothers get all the cool stuff," he mumbled in disappointment.
Wayne focused hard on his hands and his eyes widened as sparks began to scurry over the edges of his fingers. "Cool! Oscar, lookit! I'll never need a flashlight again!" He let his concentration die down and watched the sparks fizzle out, then focused hard again to make them come back. He giggled as he switched the glow on and off.
Oscar watched as a larger arc of sizzling bright heat leapt off Wayne's hands. "My arms feel all tingly too," Oscar giggled. His close proximity to the static was making the hairs on his arm begin to stand up. When the glow had ceased, Oscar curiously reached out to poke at his brother's wrist and let out a little yelp of surprise when he received a small shock.
Wayne grinned and poked his little brother in the side, keeping just enough of the sparks in his fingers to deliver a gentle tingly prick. When Oscar squeaked and doubled over, the grin became more mischievous. "Uh oh. Looks like I have extra tickle powers now." He descended upon the five-year-old, showering him with tiny zaps of static.
"No f-fair!" Oscar protested as he laughed, trying and failing to hold Wayne off. He squealed, flailing around on the floor while Wayne tickled him until he was breathless. All the while the static slowly began to creep up in intensity, causing the hair on both of their heads to splay out, which only further served to make them laugh. "You look silly!" Oscar said.
"So do you!" Wayne told him back. Bright sparkles were jumping freely from his fingers but he didn't mind, holding one hand over his little brother's head and moving it around to make the static pull Oscar's hair first one way, then the other.
A close crash of thunder echoed from outside and Wayne jumped, accidentally sending several stray bolts flying out into the air, narrowly missing the two of them. "Oops."
The lights suddenly flickered for a moment or two before resuming their function. Oscar stared up at the ceiling in wonder, not understanding what was happening, only that he thought Wayne must be amazing for doing it. It was like magic to him, seeing things move and react without Wayne ever even touching them.
Oscar tried to put his hands on Wayne and tell him that he didn't need to be afraid of the thunder outside when he had such a cool superpower, but another shock went through him and it was less tingly and more painful. "Ow," he pouted, not happy that he couldn't nuzzle up against Wayne anymore. "Can you turn it off now?"
"I, um..." Wayne's heart was still pounding from how close the thunder had been. He looked back and forth between his hands and tried to pull back on the static, but this time the electricity didn't die down completely. It lessened, but the tips of his fingers still crackled.
He stuck his tongue between his teeth and tried again, but the sparks stayed put. "I'm not sure how to make it stop," he answered, suddenly nervous. What if he couldn't turn it off? As if in response to that thought, the crackling intensified again until it was back around his whole hands. He tensed up as the lightning stopped being magical and started being frightening. "Oscar, I - I don't know how."
Oscar watched, mesmerized, as the bolts began to spread out throughout the room, growing brighter and more numerous by the second. “Wow…”
“Stop it, stop it,” Wayne muttered frantically at his hands, pressing down on them as though to physically shove the lightning back inside. A jagged streak of it erupted from his fingers to strike across the room and he yelped in fear.
A second streak narrowly missed his brother, who scrambled backwards. “Hey!”
“Oscar, look out!” He threw out a hand to push the five-year-old away to safety but a burst of lightning lanced forward, striking the younger boy in the head and sending him flying.
Wayne cried out and raced over to where his brother had been thrown across the room. “Oscar!” Oscar was lying with his eyes closed, unmoving on the floor. A streak of his hair just above his right ear had been singed away, and he refused to respond no matter how hard Wayne shook him. “Oscar?!”
Wayne scooped his little brother into his arms, terror taking over him. Electricity exploded through the air around him, lancing out for the easiest way out of the room - the outlets in the walls. The light bulbs in the ceiling fan and the table lamp shattered at the sudden influx of power, plunging the room into blackness as Wayne clutched the little figure to him.
“Mom!” he screamed desperately, tears starting to stream down his face. “Mom! Dad!” He cradled his brother’s head tightly. “Don’t be dead, Oscar. Don’t be dead, I’m so sorry, please don’t be dead…”
The door flew open and a pair of flashlights flooded into the room. “Oscar!” His mother was at his side in an instant, taking his baby brother from him. “Wayne, what happened?!”
“It was - I didn’t -” Wayne was sobbing too hard to get proper sentences out. “L-lightning…I couldn’t stop it…h-hit him-”
His father turned one flashlight from Oscar’s singed hair to the blackened wallpaper around the nearby electric outlet. “That power surge got the whole house. He must have been standing too close to the wall socket when it happened - the electricity arced and struck him.”
“D-don’t let him be dead, don’t let him be dead-”
“He’s not dead,” his mother confirmed. “But we’re going to the ER. Get Wayne in the car, honey, we’re leaving right away.”
Wayne sobbed uncontrollably during the trip to the hospital and could not be calmed down even as he sat in the waiting area while his mother stayed with Oscar. His father assured him over and over that it wasn’t his fault and that things would be all right, but Wayne couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth about where the lightning had come from. How furious would they be if they found out it was his fault? What if Oscar died because of him? What if his little brother was hurt forever and it was all his fault…?
At long last, the doctors let them into a wide, open white room to see his brother sluggishly waking up in a giant bed that made him look tiny and fragile by comparison. Oscar would be fine, they said. He would be cranky for a few hours and he likely wouldn’t remember the past day or two, but other than that he would be fine.
Wayne wanted nothing more than to hug his brother and never let go but instead he clutched his hands to his chest as he tried to stop sniffling, not wanting to get too close.
He had already hurt Oscar once. What if he did it again?