Shadows of the Night - Brahms Heelshire x Reader [The Boy 2016]

Chapter 3: The First Strike

You wake up with a start, blindly reaching out to turn off the blaring alarm on your phone. You groan and rub your eyes, stretching your whole body out, almost reaching the edges of the bed. You kick your blankets off dramatically and roll out of your bed, just barely catching yourself from falling to the ground. Still half blind from sleep you fish out some clothes and step into the shower. When you're ready for the day, or as ready as you can be since your bed is still loudly calling your name, you step into Brahms' room.

You walk over to his bed and look down at him with an impassive face. You don't mind the doll much, you actually kind of enjoy its presence, but the rule you were given by the Heelshire's to 'wake' him up at seven in the morning was annoying. You silently vow that you are only waking up this early for the first day, you know for good impressions or whatever, but the rest of the next couple months you're going to play by your own rules. It's not like the doll had an opinion on the matter and the Heelshires aren't there to keep you in check.

You dress him in his signature outfit of sweater vest, button up shirt, and spiffy little slacks. You muse that Brahms even when he was alive had probably never touched denim let alone something so informal as a t-shirt. The two of you had been an odd pairing as kids, a little boy looking as if perpetually on his way to church and a little girl in ripped jeans, sweatshirts, and clothes always splattered in paint. You were always covered in art materials from hastily cleaned up projects and speckled with cuts and bruises from rough housing with Malcolm and his friends. Brahms was always as neat and stiff as a portrait, cold and clean as if he had always just come from a shower.

At least that's how he was with others, you always knew him as a puppy-like pouter with a jealous streak. That was only made worse when Emily was introduced to the two person friend group. You flinch at the memory of her, pausing halfway down the hall. You look over at the Heelshire family portrait, remembering the little blonde girl you barely knew, and only remembered the worst of.

Emily wasn't a kind child, hell, you would describe her as the bad seed with an English accent, but she was nice to you. She was too scared of Brahms to try anything with him but she had been selfish with you which only stoked Brahms' over the top possessiveness. She would goad him, make him jealous and angry enough to cry and beg you to stop hanging out with her. You would have obliged but Emily wasn't your choice, she was specifically chosen as a friend for Brahms, and by extension you, by his parents who liked the boost in status they got from being associated with her historical family. The Cribbs name was famous in the posh circles they ran in and so you and Brahms were often stuck with Emily while their parents drank tea and your parents served cookies and cleaned.

His birthday isn't something you remember well. The days and weeks after were filled with tears and the phantom burn in your lungs from the smoke that took him away from you, and the nightmares of the bloody rock next to the matted blonde hair of Emily. You could only imagine what had driven Brahms to such violence but you really couldn't blame him much, she had a habit of sticking pins in her pet kittens and of yelling slurs at anyone with a tan. Her parents weren't much better and beyond accepting the lavish condolences after her death they had settled out with the Heelshires for no small sum and moved to a city in the midwestern U.S., something like Possum Town or something. You hadn't heard anything about them since...

You shake yourself out of your memories and move into the kitchen, setting the Brahms doll on the counter. You make yourself a [favorite breakfast food] and eat it intermittently as you tidy up. You chatter to the doll this time explaining in explicit detail the ins and outs of the relationships and drama of your undergrad years.

Art school had been the most volatile years of your life but you had survived, barely, and were now taking your gap year before going on to a master's at an art college in London. You have moderate success as a painter and quite a lot of extremely secret success as a not-safe-for-work slasher fan art producer. Michael Myers has unknowingly paid your bills by being railed a thousand different ways over the years and you are quite grateful for it.