Work Text:
It starts with Shelby.
Somehow, she found herself privy to the news that Owen had a… falling out, if one could call it that, with the doctor. How she knew, he wasn’t sure—maybe it has something to do with her love of gossip (was that what Scott said?)—but it left him receiving condolences from her.
Condolences, really. Owen doesn’t want to know what she thought was going on there.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry about you and the doctor!” she exclaims upon seeing him. She places her hand on her chin in thoughtful pose. “You know, if you want to get back at him, or keep some distance, well—you know what they say about keeping doctors away!”
Owen raises an eyebrow. “What do they say?” he asks.
Shelby gasps, “You haven’t heard?” she pauses, “Oh right, you’ve been asleep for a while, huh. Man, you must’ve missed out on so much! I don’t want to sleep for 200 years, I know I’d be getting some real FOMO.”
Owen stares. He’s not even going to question what “FOMO” is.
“Oh, right.” Shelby readjusts herself to a more serious demeanor. “Back on topic. There’s a saying that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’. If you want to get rid of him, maybe you’ve got to eat some apples!”
He blinks. Apples? Doesn’t sound the like the best idea to be eating them. Maybe throwing them at the doctor would be more efficient?
“Though, I guess we are vampires, so it might not be the best idea…”
Shelby looks a bit downtrodden at this realization. Despite them not being especially close, he does feel bad for shooting down her dreams, so he tries to reassure her. “Well, I mean, it might work…?” He probably could’ve sounded more convinced by her idea.
Her eyes light up. “You know, you’re right, the superstition of it might just be enough!” Shelby takes his hand, and begins to lead him out of the castle. “I’ll help you get some apples, and you can be rid of the bad doctor for good!”
Owen sighs, and resigns himself to his fate. It’s harvest season, may as well have some fun with it and go scavenging for some apples.
By sundown, he and Shelby have a bag full of apples.
Owen doesn’t begin by eating the apples, no. Regardless of Shelby’s advice, he’s not going to make himself unnecessarily ill over the doctor. Still, that doesn’t solve his new issue of having too many apples. He has to use them somehow.
In his bat form, Owen flies into town with an apple in his bat claws. Oakhurst seems empty by now, but he remains stealthy just in case. Some of the townsfolk are rather good at keeping quiet and unseen, so best not to assume there’s no one here.
The doctor’s house is where he remembers it being, and easily identifiable from above as one of the two with a mossy roof.
He has to be quick if he wants to be able to make some distance away from the town with his bat form, given its relatively quick expiration. Invisibility is still an option, but he’d rather wait until he’s in a pinch before needing to use that—it’s something he likes to save up for scaring the others.
Entering the house isn’t exactly an option, as much as he’d like. His plan would have much better effect if he could. Alas.
Instead, Owen drops the apple in front of Legundo’s front door. If the phrase is something that Shelby’s heard of, sure the doctor would know of it as well. This apple was a message—a threat: stay away. Though, he may have to return and give Legs a few more over the course of the next few days for him to understand the message, since the saying was ‘an apple a day…’.
Owen flies away satisfied.
When Legundo returns home from the tavern meeting, there’s an apple on his doorstep. Yes, an apple.
He looks at it for a moment, before picking it up and examining it. It looks… fine? Maybe a bit bruised. And it was on the ground, so it could use a wash. Legs wonders for a moment how it got there, before waving the thought away.
Legundo enters his house, washes the apple, and takes a bite. Nice and ripe!
For the next week, every single day, Owen leaves him an apple at his doorstep.
At the next meeting in the tavern bunker, Legs says, “The apples have been really tasty. Who’s been giving them out?”
“Uh, apples?” Abolish asks.
Pearl agrees, “Yeah, what apples are you talking about?”
Legs blinks, confused. “Someone’s been leaving apples outside my house. Was that not one of you?”
At everyone’s no’s and shaking heads, Martyn barks out a laugh, “Ha! Sounds like you’ve got yourself an enemy, doc!”
Legs tilts his head. “An enemy?”
“Seriously, how old are you? Haven’t you heard? An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Legs stares at Martyn for a moment, before sighing.
The next time Shelby enters his room and sees the bag of apples, she says, “Wow, Owen, you’ve really made a dent in that!”
“Mmm,” Owen hums noncommittally. He’s been having a day, to say the least. Not interested in idle chit-chat.
“Uh, Owen?” Her voices takes on a more worried tone.
“Hmm?”
“Are you feeling alright?” She asks, “I mean, I know I told you to eat those apples to get back at Doctor Legs, but if they’re making you sick, you should probably stop.”
He doesn’t catch most of what she said, but at the word sick, Owen comes back to reality and meets her gaze. Her eyes look concern. “Sick? I’m not sick.” He’s not doing the best right now, but the last time he felt sick was when… (the taste of garlic still stings.)
“You don’t have to lie. Eating that many apples would make any vampire sick! I’m worried about you.”
Owen falters. “Oh, um. You don’t have to worry. I, uh, I haven’t been eating them.”
Shelby raises an eyebrow. “Really? What have you been doing with the apples, then?”
“Oh, that,” he says, “I’ve been leaving them at Legs’s house. Like you said, one a day.” It truly is quite ingenious work, if he says so himself.
“Uhh… Now I’m confused, I thought you were mad at him. Are you trying to make up with him instead?” She asks.
Make up with him? Who does Shelby think he is?
“Make up with him? What makes you say that? It’s—it’s a threat, you know… Stay away, that sort of thing…” he trails off. Something begins to dawn on him, but he’s not quite sure what exactly that is.
Shelby appears to be trying not to laugh. “Owen, you know what this sounds like?” Owen groans, and puts his face in his hands. He’s not going to like whatever comes out of her mouth. “It’s like… You’re like a clingy ex trying to win him back with presents.”
Owen drags his hands back down, pulling at his skin. The prospect of Legundo thinking of him like that… unacceptable. “Ugh. Maybe I really should eat them instead.”
The apples stop appearing on Legundo’s doorstep.
He wonders who might’ve been responsible for them. It’s most definitely a vampire—leaving them outside of his house rather than inside (where they’d be much more threatening, in his opinion, since whoever put them there would have invaded his privacy) was a clear indicator. His first thought was Owen—given, well, everything—but Legs is pretty sure that saying about doctors and apples is younger than him, so… it wouldn’t make the most sense. It could be Drift, or Avid, if they’ve decided to go fully against the town since turning, but the apples feel too personal toward him specifically; he’s been pretty nice to the both of them, letting them into his lab, so it doesn’t seem apt for them to feel malice toward him and not the rest of the town. It wouldn’t really make sense, but possibly Cleo, or Apo, then?
Next time he encounters a vampire, he’ll certainly have to ask.
Owen remembers eating apples when he was a human. He was always more fond of oranges, but apples were still good. Red, a bit of sweetness, juicy.
His eyes are practically burning a hole through the apple in his hand, the way he’s staring at it. Owen knows that when he bites into this, it’s going to taste disgusting. The notion of the tastiness of apples will be soiled by this one experience.
He stalls.
Instead of preparing to bite into it, he decides to head into the castle’s meeting room, and produces a knife. A kitchen would have been more appropriate, but the castle doesn’t have a kitchen, since none of its inhabitants eat food that requires preparing (usually).
Owen slices the apple into bits that can be eaten in only a few bites. He takes a slice, stares at it for a few moments in hesitation, and eats it.
Ugh.
Well, they’re definitely still juicy, but everything else about the flavor profile of an apple registers completely differently as a vampire. It tastes like dirt on his tongue, a perverted sweetness that does not agree with him in the slightest. He barely restrains the desire to spit the chewed food out, but he manages to swallow.
Owen nearly regurgitates it, but pushes it back down.
Then, he goes through the rest of the slices. Slowly. And painfully.
By the end of it, he can feel his stomach acting up, and his mouth feels gross. So, he tops it off with a bottle of crimson to freshen up, per se.
This is Owen’s new ritual.
“Cleo?” Legundo asks at the end of of one of their conversations as she walks away.
Cleo turns around and stops walking. “Yeah?”
“Do you know anything about… apples?” Because, after a week of confusion, he wants answers now.
“Um, you eat them…? I’m pretty sure I’ve told you I was more of a livestock farmhand than anything else.”
“No, no!” Legs gestures wildly. “I mean,” he sighs, “Someone’s been leaving apples outside of my house; they started about a week or so ago, and stopped a few days ago. I think it was a vampire, but I can’t figure out who it could’ve been, so… Do you know anything?”
There’s a beat of silence, likely consideration, before Cleo answers, “I heard from Shelby that she collected some apples with… someone. I’m not sure who. I think it was about a week ago. Do you think… do you think she gave them to you?”
Legs looks down. “Would you mind asking her about it? It’s weird behavior, at the very least. I have some suspicions about who they’re from… But I’d like confirmation before I try to speak with them.”
“Sure.”
The apples are getting old very quickly. Not as in overripe, just disgusting. Unpleasant. Why on earth is he still doing this?
Owen’s slicing an apple in the meeting room when Cleo approaches him.
“Owen.”
He quickly glances over to her, says a quick, “Hey, Cleo,” before going back to his apple slicing.
“Are you the one who’s been sending Legundo apples?” Cleo pointedly looks directly at the apple beneath his fingers.
Owen doesn’t look at her. “I’m not sending him anything.” He continues cutting the apple. It’s almost done.
“Really, now?” she asks. “You sure about that?”
“Mmm.” Fully cut.
“So it’s not you, who is for whatever reason cutting up an apple, sending Legundo apples.”
“Yup.” Owen pops the apple slices into his mouth. It still doesn’t taste any better, but he’s getting used to it.
“Right.” She doesn’t sound convinced.
“Pretty sure it’s Owen,” Cleo says, after appearing from thin air.
Legundo jumps.
“What—what’s Owen, again?” he asks. “Other than a vampire, I mean.”
“Your apple guy.” She flips her white hair over her shoulder. “Might want to check up on him, if you and him are still—I dunno. He’s been, um, eating apples…? last I checked.”
“Eating them?”
Cleo shrugs. “Not really sure what’s going on in his mind right now for that to be happening, but I’m sure you and your boyfriend can figure it out.”
“My what—?”
Cleo bats away.
“Huh…?”
Owen is in the forest, waiting in the shade of a tall pine tree idly tossing an apple in the air, when the doctor catches him unawares.
“Owen—”
He jumps, sue him. Out of instinct, he pelts the apple as hard as he can into the doctor’s face.
Legundo groans, and caresses the spot where the apple hit him as he crouches down to pick it up from the ground. “I… wanted to speak with you.” He gives his new bruise one final poke before returning his hand to his side.
Owen gives him a disdainful look. “What about?” He thinks he knows. “Why shouldn’t I just attack you right here, right now?”
Legs glances at Owen’s sharpened claws. “Well, I wanted to talk about these, actually,” he says as he holds the thrown apple out to Owen.
He feigns ignorance, choosing to raise an eyebrow without saying a word.
After an awkward beat of silence where Legundo is clearly waiting for Owen to speak, he decided to cut through the tension on his own. “You’ve been leaving these at my house. Why?”
“I was leaving them,” he admits, “It was meant to be a threat, after what you said to me about the cure—Shelby told me about that saying about keeping doctors away with apples. After I started, she told me that it could be… misinterpreted if I kept sending them. So I stopped.”
There’s a flash of guilt on Legs’s face. He doesn’t speak on it. “I was told that you’re… eating apples now.” Legs doesn’t ask the obvious question.
“Isn’t that what you’re actually meant to do, in keeping the doctor away?”
Legs has a pained look on his face. “Well—yeah, but. It’s like. The saying is based on humans, right? Not vampires. It’s supposed to be a reminder to eat healthy so you don’t have to deal with going to the doctor.” Legs lets out a shaky breath that almost became a laugh. He really shouldn’t laugh at Owen, who hates him, right now. This is such a stupid conversation, god. “It’s not meant to be superstition against getting rid of doctors. I’d argue what you’ve done has had the opposite effect of what it’s meant to since you’re a vampire—eating apples isn’t healthy for you.”
Owen looks down. “Right.”
“So, I guess I’m here to tell you to stop eating apples. Coming from a doctor, it won’t help in either getting rid of me or making you feel better. So. Yeah.”
Owen hums in acknowledgement, and then narrows his eyes as he meets Legs’s gaze. “Is that all?”
“No.” Legs pockets the apple; that discussion is clearly over with. “I want to apologize. Everything to do with the cure… it’s clear you’re, ah, violently uninterested. I don’t want to—I don’t want to be responsible for taking something so dear to you away, it’s—that would be cruel of me, and unbefitting of the doctor I want to be. I’d rather remain on good terms, even after all you’ve said and done, and I don’t think that trust we had before was for nothing.”
An olive branch? After everything?
Owen hesitates.
But he takes it.
“Thank you,” he starts, “I… don’t forgive you. Not yet, maybe not ever. Just talking about getting rid of my vampirism, getting rid of what remains of Louis, as something hopeful… that hurt. But I accept your apology.” Owen inhales. Exhales.
It would be appropriate for Owen to apologize for his own violent behavior during that encounter here, but Owen’s not going to put himself through that. Just the thought of Legs trying to speak to him again has been enough to make him put himself through hell as some internal sort of revenge against him, he doesn’t need any further placation from Owen.
Not yet, anyway.
Still, his words, limited as they are, are enough to make Legs happy enough, if the small smile on his face in anything to go by.
“Um. I’ve got a lot more apples back at the castle, if you want them. I mean, I certainly don’t have any use for them. Neither do any of the other vampires.”
Legs barks out a laugh. “Sure, sure. Thank you.”