𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐎
divine decree

𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓, Silas doesn't believe in any religious denomination.

The idea that he had some imminent destiny that was rigorously inspected by some subsistence with a 'godly' birthright was difficult to accept. What were the gods but a pack of tyrants who built their celestial sovereignty on the granular bones of believers and sinners?

Silas had bartered, cracked fists and spat at enough men who claimed to be gods. Eccleston College was a glaring confirmation that if you were affluent enough and insured by Daddy's money and leverage, you too could become some version of a God. If Silas had to worship some pharisaic git named Henry Hetherington, he wouldn't flinch when the flesh was torn from his body from the speed of propelling himself down the highway to hell.

On the off chance that there was some God out there who was burdened with the obligation of overseeing his life – it must have some sick, distorted sense of humour. They say that when the Devil comes knocking, pray that your saints protect you.

But when the Devil comes reincarnated in the form of a stoned delinquent darkening your peripheral just as you were hurling your guts up into a storm drain, Silas vows that if Sung-Hoon fucked off, he'd take it as a sign to find God. He'd join a clergy in a wretched cathedral in Eastern Europe and live out the rest of his cataclysmic life in a perpetual state of sexual frustration. Ava fucking Maria.

Silas flattens his tongue against the roof of his mouth, nearly retching again at the familiar zest of vomit and orange-flavoured electrolyte water. Spitting once more into the drain, he scrapes the back of his hand over his spit-coated lips and rolls his taut shoulders. He had almost forgotten the brutal cycle of weaning off medication. A course where his body violently reacts to the purging of ineffective pharmaceuticals and substituting them for the alternative. Almost, because how could he forget the miserable homecoming of his aching chest and cramped throat?

After one final shaky breath that felt like a king hit to his chest, Silas unfurls himself from his hunched position against Sung-Hoon's Subaru and uses the momentum to unceremoniously collapse on the sidewalk outside Kuznetsov Kar Intel, mindful of the vomit that had missed the drain and stained the asphalt

"That was rough." Sung-Hoon comments offhandedly as he rifles through Kol's backpack, irritation banding across his strong brows. An unlit cigarette was perched between his dry lips, glued to his bottom lip with the last remaining moisture the frigid Fork's air set on annulling.

Silas shot him a soul-immolating glare but accepted the white pill that lay supine on his dry, cracked palm, "Well if someone didn't Harry Houdini my shit, we wouldn't have this bonding moment." Without a second thought, Silas chases the capsule down, alongside the taste of bile with a mouthful of flat Red Bull.

It was rough. He had abruptly woken up in delirium in the back seat, clawing at Kol for the medication he had pocketed before leaving his house. Silas spent vital seconds choking down the tsunami of nausea that steamed its way up his oesophagus and the loathing that came with the intense dependency. However, his prescription had infuriatingly disappeared from Kol's jean pocket. During this, his body had lurched forward in the mad scramble to locate the bright orange bottle and he found himself keeling over and expelling the scopes of his stomach outside Nikolai's father's mechanic shop.

With a soft grunt and a sharp cracking of his joints, Sung-Hoon drops down next to him, his knees colliding with Silas's jean-clad ones. Having found a lighter during the entire ordeal, he takes a callous drag of his cigarette, smoke billowing from his mouth. Sculpted by the smoke, the cool air of Fork is revealed as it swirls and flows. Silas transfixes himself on it to alleviate the nausea that came in tides. It was something to focus on so he wouldn't see the nuanced distress lining Sung-Hoon's eyes. Sung-Hoon offers him a strip of spearmint gum, which he snatches with shaky hands.

"Aren't these pills supposed to help you fight your hellfire demons?"

"Funny, I didn't think the packaging came with instructions on how to swing on my mother."

There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by a bitter, sardonic smile that graced Sung-Hoon's face. Unlike Silas, Sung-Hoon's face betrayed everything. Everything cooped up inside his lanky frame brands across his face like a stinging slap. Silas reads the tension in it, notes the furrowed eyebrow and the sharp inhale he takes before opening his mouth.

"I don't want to hear it." Silas starts, attempting to cut Sung-Hoon off before he inevitably goes on one of his de-trop tangents.

"Look, so your relationship with your mother is non-existent. Which fucking sucks," He states, as a matter of fact, a contemplative frown quickly flitting away to instead appear cautiously encouraging. "But wouldn't, you know, not defying her all the time and just taking your medication...I don't know, help the overall situation?"

"Blah de fucking lah" Silas's expression was scorched, "So this is how it's going to be, huh? I haven't seen you for three years and you've developed the audacity to comment on a situation that doesn't concern you."

"It concerns me when I'm holding your hair back from the linings of your stomach."

"No one asked for your chivalry." Silas snaps sharply, fingers self-consciously playing with the ties of his hoodie. Vomit free due to Sung-Hoon's aforementioned courtesy.

A surge of irritation pricked through his body, causing the blood in his veins to heat to a slow boil. He would rather harvest his organs than admit that perhaps he was purposely resisting his medication to defy his mother. On the same note, he knew Sung-Hoon was right, a sentiment that didn't bode well for him. Like a bone not set right. Pride could be a tacky thing, but Silas had an abundance of it, something he could subconsciously elect as a scapegoat. It was pride that bedimmed his body's insistent reminders, drew slow blanks to the ache that settled deep in his marrow and sent him toppling into unconsciousness from the sheer exhaustion of it all.

He came to a disquieting realisation that he couldn't recall the last time he had a legitimate grip on the reins of his life. It wasn't an incremental process where he acknowledged that with each finger unhooked, his hold was slackening. It was a savage yank that tore the skin raw from his palm and wrenched his shoulder from its gaping socket. It was almost paralysing.

"Fine," Sung-Hoon scoffed, nose wrinkling but his eyes unfaltering in a look that only meant we'd be talking about this later, "Throw yourself into an early grave, pulmonary aspiration is very fitting."

"Only if Kol sings at my funeral."

"Whose funeral am I singing at?" Kol said, slipping next to Sung-Hoon on the sidewalk, stealing the cigarette from between his fingers in lieu of a greeting, "If it's Silas, better ring the funeral director. Told Nikolai of your little episode and now he's pissed, he only just hosed down that drain."

"He probably deserves it, he's got red in his ledger and karma on his arse. I bet Erik Yorkey is still pissed at him for freshman year." Sung-Hoon says, waving a hand through the air in a fluid motion.

"That's sugarcoating it," Kol drawls, drumming his fingers against the curb, cigarette dangling behind his chapped lips, "Livid is more like it, I've never met someone who could benefit more from smoking a little weed."

"What did Nikolai do that he can accuse Yorkie of pursuing a vendetta against him?" Silas hums, dragging his nails down the material of his jeans. He could kill for a cigarette but with the steady rolling of his guts, nicotine wasn't on the breakfast menu, "Kinda pissed you didn't text, you know I like it when we're mean to Yorkie."

"Ran over his camera. The little twit was just starting up his feature and was taking photos of everything and anyone," Kol ran his tongue over his teeth, passing the withering cigarette back to Sung-Hoon's eager fingers before flexing and cracking his knuckles, "Nikolai was convinced he harboured evidence of his illicit hobbies. Better safe than sorry, yeah?"

Sung-Hoon snorts unattractively, "If you count Yorkie flaming Nikolai in his features whenever he can, you could say the outcome was good."

"Free publicity."

"As if you'd want the motherfucking bloodhound to know of the hoodwinked shit you get yourself into."

Before Kol could angrily retort, the unmistakable sound of a door rebounding off the wall violently cleaves the conversation to a stop.

"Silas fucking Verbatten!" Nikolai bellows from the shop's front entrance, the unmistakable rage in his friend's voice hits the group like a freight train. He began to stalk forward, eyebrows creased deeply, "This isn't the souvenir I wanted from you!"

Kol's eyes widened as he fought to keep a pacifying smile on his face, "Oh you're so fucked."

"Silas!" The call came again, "I'm going to fuck you up."

Silas didn't bother looking back at him. Biting down hard on the gum caught in the grooves of his molars, he stands and brushes the imaginary dust from his lap before hooking his fingers into the car handle and pulls. The smell of cigarette smoke and artificial tropical floods his senses, barely holding back a grimace, he launches himself into the passenger seat.

"I'm guessing some people don't take to vomit that well." Sung-Hoon muses. Sliding into the driver's seat next to Silas, he quickly closes the door on Nikolai's unamused face. Outside, Nikolai throws his hands up in indignation and yells something unintelligible at Kol before stalking across the sidewalk into the shop, assumingly grabbing supplies. Kol quickly joins them in the backseat, the leather creaking at the sudden disruption.

"I wouldn't take well to a vaguely threatening Russian man crowding you into a corner and running a quick 101 crash course for dummies on cleaning up your friend's bodily fluids," Silas admits, fully aware of the consequences of his actions he didn't pretend to ignore, "Not when he's some local, ancient omnipotent entity."

"An omnipotent entity," Kol trails off, leaning forward so he's wedged between the middle console, face twisted in disbelief, "We are talking about Papa Kuznetsov, right? The man who sits in stony silence in his office while Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous Girl plays at full volume, resisting the temptation to text Waylon Forge back something insulting?"

"Have some respect for his name," Sung-Hoon mutters distractedly, casting a sideways look out the window to Nikolai dumping absorbent over Silas's mess. After a moment, his eyes snap back to him, "Are you going to be alright today?" A crease appears between his eyes as he searches Silas's face for a reaction that he could read too deeply into. Unfortunately, Silas's face remains blank. "I know you dislike the attention."

"I won't keep repeating myself, you know better than to worry after me," Silas coolly broods, leaning forward to wedge the dial on the temperature control to warm in preparation for their drive to school, "I can fend for myself."

"Jessica Stanley is a real bitch," Kol says, narrowing his eyes at Silas knowingly, "But you already know that, don't you? Like you know there are already rumours circulating that you tried to torch your roommate."

"I would've been disappointed if she didn't come up with something. She has all that forehead and years to brew on it," Silas adds, and as an afterthought, "I wonder how she would react if one of her lies manifested."

"Burn the witch." says Sung-Hoon, and leaves it at that.

𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐒 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 a doubt that Forks was a town where people came to die. It wasn't a quaint seaside city that became gentrified to house the retired generation, it was where ambitions and dreams came to deteriorate. It was a shared sentiment, universally acknowledged by the youth, the adults and the decomposing bodies left rolling in their lilliputian graves. Once you're in and settled, the likelihood of leaving the dinky town is as abnormal as a warm day without the threat of unfriendly showers and a storm congealing on the horizon.

So, that's why the cursory, stainless steel key digging into his blistered palm came as a surprise. Silas had never counted upon his mother to encourage him to stay longer than functionally, to say the least. To give him something symbolic of permanence, to almost instigate him to take root without the threat of pesticides. It had always been chaos after chaos with Jacqueline, from the moment she had been given custody over her neurotypical son - the unwanted aftermath of a boozy one-night stand. Which is to the misery of Silas, pretty characteristic of their typical relationship.

Silas was many things: a pyromaniac, an absentee older brother, a sullen step-son, unwanted, troubled enough that the darkening eye bags only deepened to a gaunt violaceous, a sinner, a bastard...but fuck, he was no fool.

Since his arrival last Tuesday, the town seemed tenser, as if it were holding its breath. Like the calm before the storm, they were anxiously anticipating for him to poison their community with his chemical herbicide. Silas wasn't going to give in and give them something to pick apart to only discard when it no longer entertained a diversion in their monotonous life. He no longer yearned for the chaos he was addicted to, no longer willing to admit that's how he felt love. How he found peace he didn't have to scream for, admiration he didn't have to bleed for.

With the cool teeth of the house keys sealing in an optimism he hadn't felt in years, Silas watches on in faint annoyance as the cafeteria readily fills up with his vociferous peers. Even from a cautious distance, out of reach from clawed hands dressed up as pacifying, he can still feel the weight of their judgement. Forks residents never excelled in the art of subtlety, evident from their poorly masked side eyes and quirked lips revealing poison sheened teeth carving out a monsoon of assumptions.

By the time Silas slumped into an uncomfortable plastic chair around his group's appointed table towards the exit of the cafeteria, the appeal of pegging a Molotov cocktail straight into Jessica Stanley's freckled face sounded increasingly appealing.

"So, how is your first day back so far?" Nikolai crooned in fake delight, fingers curling determinedly into his loose curls, yanking the strands unceremoniously causing Silas's head to snap back. With a hiss, Silas curls his fist and swings at Nikolai who recoils back in time, cackling. Silas knows he was only pissing him off as a means to garner revenge from this morning, but he was in no mood to entertain him. 

"It would be better if I could mount your head on a stick," Silas sneers, kicking his feet out in an attempt to trip Nikolai up. The blonde male only carves himself out of the way and shoves himself into the chair across from the table, throwing his lunch tray nonchalantly onto the sticky surface. Silas watches as his lone apple trundles across the surface before falling with a soft thunk onto the scuffed flooring, rolling out of sight.

"Tone it down Vlad the Impaler. There are other ways to say Stanley got to you, huh?" Head balanced on his entwined fingers, he sends a cursory look around the room, searching for the rest of their miscellaneous group, "Heard the newest, apparently you're on Oxfordshire's most wanted list."

"Shut up, I don't want to hear it."

Nikolai's eyes were on him. "No stopping it now, Verbatten. If you didn't have a reputation beforehand, you sure do now."

"This isn't news and you're boring me," Silas jeers, fingers tearing open a packet of salt and vinegar chips he plucked from Nikolai's tray, "Where's Sung-Hoon? He won't piss me off."

"Dunno, probably at football practice."

"Since when was Sung-Hoon into sports?"

'Well, since he found that he could pummel people into the ground without getting a detention," Grinning wolfishly, Nikolai trekked Kol and Daia falling into the seats next to Silas, "And be the devil's advocate at any given chance."

"Being the devil's advocate isn't a sport."

"Sure, but you'd think otherwise with his passion."

Sighing in exasperation, Kol waved his tattered Biology book in the air. "Don't glorify Sung-Hoon's habits. You'll only encourage him to rile Lauren up further."

"Daia already has her riled up," Nikolai snickers. Silas sends the group's newest recruit a look of venom. Daia's head snaps up from the sandwich she had been wolfing down, cheeks full and crumbs on the corner of her mouth as she blinks dumbly, a blank look in her eyes as if she had no idea what Nikolai was implying. Silas's blood simmers quietly beneath his skin. He'd only been in Forks for a little under a week and already Daia had wormed his way into Silas's little world, his body hadn't even cooled. 

"Last I saw of Sung-Hoon he was talking to pretty boy Cullen." Daia offered up, voice too loud for Silas's comfort, keeping her eyes locked on Silas. Much to his annoyance, the corner of her mouth pulled into a little grin, as if she was happy to help in some way, as if they were friends, as if she belonged. Her presence was irritating him like an ulcer in his mouth. She was a problem he had to sever quickly lest he wanted to consistently be looking over his shoulder, unable to be vulnerable in arguably his lowest. As by some scrap of mercy from a sympathetic higher power, Daia wasn't there for his humbling experience that morning.

Nikolai scoffed. "Which one?"

Daia, finally tearing her eyes away from Silas and swallowing her mouthful of sandwich, shrugged. "The twitchy blonde one, you know?" She said mimicking said person's unnerving stare. "If you so much as bumped into him he would either have a mental breakdown or go apeshit and massacre a classroom of kids?"

"Ah, the Southern darling." Kol hums in agreement.

"Who the fuck are you talking about?" Silas said, unbridled curiosity lacing his tone despite his best efforts to smother any notions of interest. It didn't bode well for Silas that his heart stuttered to a panic when there were variables he hadn't accounted for. It seemed Isabella Swan, Daia Priestley and the Southern Darling were the first of many. This was his first mistake.

Pride had him overly confident that this humdrum town couldn't bear any more permutation in fear that it would collapse into a minefield of rubble and debris. Any change wasn't well received by inhabitants whose bones have fused into traditions. Silas Verbatten and Co were bound to be two sides of the same coin, but only one would make it out relatively unscathed when the chances were decided.

"Jasper Hale?" Nikolai deadpans as if the mere question was the most numbing concept he's heard. All too quickly, amusement flashes in his dark eyes and an infuriating smirk blossoms across his face, "Oh, that's right! You wouldn't know about Fork's little micro-celebrities because someone got sent away to some education penitentiary for setting the locker room on fire."

"Glad to know after all these years, you're still a dickhead," Silas slants Nikolai an accusatory look before shoving his clenched fists into the warmth of his hoodie pockets, fingers clenching around the tattered lighter he confiscated from his mother's portable vault that morning, "You always bring up the little things. If I recall correctly, weren't you the one who suggested testing out deodorant and fire? Fuck if you had a reason, no one would take me seriously because you can't have a conscience if you're mentally ill. What's a boy meant to do?"

"Well, it certainly made a lasting impression on your criminal record than your actual cause, whatever that was." Whatever cause that was. Reprieve for a boy who could no longer oil his own back so the caustic remarks could glide off it, who at the startling age of 14, was sempiternally swaddled in a downpour of intense self hatred. Whose only outlet for the gut wrenching promptings was through the reassurance of burning, through the danger that felt as if he hooked himself on a live wire. What was he meant to do? Life had never spelt out its purpose for Silas Verbatten.

"Go big or go home."

"You're just lucky that your mother managed to pay your way out of an official court case. If you're going to keep doing reckless shit, then run faster."

Silas scowled dangerously at Kol. "Trust me, I would have rather spent those three or so months doing gruelling community service than being at that college."

"Why, did it resemble the Stanford Prison Experiment or something?"

"Not that it concerns you," Silas says, tight-voiced, to Daia, who remains staring at him with a mottled expression of bewilderment and apprehensiveness. Then, as an afterthought, he snaps, "Make yourself useful to me and tell me of Jasper."

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," Nikolai loudly declares, shooting an irked look Silas's way, "Jasper Hale, one of the five children of the Cullen-Hale family. They moved here from Alaska a few years ago, if I can recall, just after you left for Europe. Anyway, total city snobs as Stanley would say because apparently, they're too good for the rest of us small-town bumpkins."

A humorous laugh slices its way out of Silas's throat, "Don't see how that's their problem. So, what if they're selective with who they talk to? You can't expect to go through life with the reassurance that everyone tolerates you. "

"Normally I'd agree with you...but then the unthinkable happened. Edward Cullen, the broody one out of the bunch, strikes up a friendship with Isabella Swan and then Jasper Hale is seen conversing with our one and only Sung-Hoon. Naturally, this sends Jessica into a tissy because out of everyone, it's the bland Swan girl and deadbeat Kim."

"Poor her," Kol cooes in a voice so soft Silas almost misses it. Silas smirks slightly at the indifference banding across Kol's face, "Preppy white girl realises the world doesn't revolve around her, a tragic development."

"Speaking of tragic developments, look what has arrived on our doorstep," Nikolai says, jumping up from his seat to instead replace it with his left foot, cloaked in a pair of ratty Converses, "Lo and behold Silas, if you peer over your shoulder, you'll catch a glimpse of our local celebrities" Nikolai's arms sweep out to facetiously welcome the sight behind him.

Silas looks over his shoulder to scrutinise the Cullens and immediately flinches. As if hyper-fixated by precipitous, sharp movements, the curly haired male's vibrant eyes catch Silas's dark ones. In the coruscating, artificial lights of the cafeteria, Silas tastes the danger that lurks amongst the sharp lines of the stranger's ethereal face. It was all too familiar to him, men built like Hercules with a lethal heaviness to their bones. His gilded eyes drink Silas's in, and something almost fierce twists his features, disrupting the once skin-deep nonchalance that settled his face. It made the hair on his arms rise.

There's no denying the uneasiness that settles muggily in his bones, the terror that sharpens into knife-point hysteria. The familiar steel voice that fans the flames that forge his malady, steps in, screaming at him to flick her thumb against the spark wheel and burn. Only months ago, that same voice that poisoned his assailable consciousness into pressing the determined flame into skin. He remembers the scream of his mouth and lungs, the scream of his eyes and soul - the sickening smell of charred flesh. Burn, burn, BURN.

Silas's blood turns to mire. Hastily grabbing the straps of his bag, he throws it over his shoulder and careens out of his chair. The raucous screech of plastic sliding across the waxed floors is deafening. Around him, conversations come to a halt, people twist around in their chairs to stare at Silas abnormally. His stomach roiled at the onslaught of attention but he was far too panicked to dwell on it, he would inevitably mull over it later that night.

"Silas? What the fuck-"

Darting past Nikolai's startled disposition and the group's prodding looks, he rushes towards the exit, ankles jolting painfully at the abrupt movement. As he reaches the doorway, to Silas's incessant calamity, Sung-Hoon rounds the corner with a taunt, golden haired male.

Catching his friend's frenzied expression, Sung-Hoon lunges forward and seizes Silas's shoulders with both hands, halting him to a lopsided stop. Silas's bag drops off his shoulder and onto the ground with a sharp clatter, its contents spilling across the floor but neither party take notice. Silas doesn't notice either when Daia leaps out of her chair to grab his bag on the floor, bare knees thumping against the sticky linoleum as she scrambles to pluck its contents from the floor. Silas lets out a low snarl and twists sharply in Sung-Hoon's arms, trying to buck off his hold. The golden haired male lurches forward marginally but abruptly stops, looking at something over Silas's shoulder, his face twists unpleasantly.

"Si, what's wrong? Ow, stop fighting me!" Sung-Hoon bleats in his ear, voice low but edged with a terrifying concern that cinched his throat. Silas could feel the tremors of anger and terror rattle down his spine.

Silas clamps his hand over Sung-Hoon's right hand which rests worryingly on his shoulder. Squeezing tightly so he might feel the intense warning, he wrenches Sung-Hoon's touch away from him. Obsidian eyes flashing, he snarls, "Fuck off! Don't touch me."

Ignoring Sung-Hoon's distraught yelling, Silas shoves past him, shoulders knocking into the blonde's, and barrelling straight into a crouched Daia just as she's finished stuffing his belongings back into his bag. She yelps like a kicked dog when the underside of his Doc Martens snaps against the softness of her thighs. Pain immediately blossoms at the points of contact, but it quickly settles into a dull throb as the adrenaline pumps its ichor into his thrumming body. Distantly, he can hear the shrieking of chairs and the whispers from behind cupped hands.

Without a glance over his shoulder, Silas tears off in the direction of the car park. In the depths of his mind, terror and conniption fulminate violently, blinding his vision with eruptions of crimson and heliotrope. Panic seizes once it all settles in.

How ludicrous of him to think that his trauma would lay dormant, that it wouldn't follow him despite his best efforts to shackle its monstrosity in Oxfordshire.

He lets the terror have its way with him, consumes him and then chases it away with the rhythmic flick of his blistered thumb on the spark wheel.

Boys like him were never meant to find peace, no matter how far they ran. 

━━━━━━ 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞

if you're not running away terrified at the sight of your future man, what the fuck are ya'll doing?