If you're looking for an adventure in the morally grey, and a crash course of the human condition, this is the story for you! What is good and evil? Where is that line drawn, and who decides that? Packed with humor, danger, feels, and awkward relati...
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"Mom, how did I do?" Tanner jumped up and down excitedly in the park, and Rachel looked up pityingly to Halen. "Only one of them hit him this time." Tanner beamed with pride as Halen gasped, pinned to the tree with knives around him, one biting into the side of his thigh.
Poor Halen was getting too old for this.
"Good job, we don't have to take him to the hospital today. I think we can bandage that one on our own." Rachel patted her son on the head from where she was sitting on the picnic blanket, and his green-flecked eyes glowed back at her with adoration.
"I'll get the bandages!" Tanner went into the car to grab the first aid kit that lived stocked in their possession. They used it too often, but she was part of the Moceri family and her son did like his knives.
As he came back from the car, his golden curls wagged behind him, having gotten long enough that he could ponytail it in the back into a little nub. After seeing pictures of his father, he'd wanted so badly to have long hair like him.
Right now, he wanted it up, like the old pictures of Tanner from when he'd been in the circus, his hair pulled back, a cowboy hat on, and knives running from his shoulder to his waist on a belt around his body. There had been so many pictures of Tanner's younger days in his things after he'd passed. They had delivered it all to Oliver, who had been named his beneficiary, and Oliver had promptly dropped it all on her.
After he set the first aid kit next to her on the blanket, Tanner flew off to retrieve the knives from around Halen's legs. Tanner pulled them out as Halen removed the ones from around his arms. Until Tanner got better at aiming, they had agreed to keep them away from the head and center mass. Halen could dodge if one came at him too close, but not as easily if it were flung at his abdomen.
A cringe-causing whine drew her attention as Tanner pulled out the one that had bit into Halen's thigh.
"You're just like your father. Good job." Halen's words were tight, in pain, and an insult, but Tanner was too young to know and instead glowed from the perceived praise.
"Mom, Hale says I'm just like dad. Am I?"
Halen collapsed next to them, pulling his pants off as Tanner begged for praise. This was a private park so no one was here, but it was still pretty morbid watching him cut away his boxers with the scissors. Rachel gave him her jacket to cover the rest of his groin area and legs and he accepted it gratefully.
"You are just like your pops, little man." A voice came from behind her, and Tanner squealed in delight, running up to him.
"Julian!" Tanner loved Julian.
Lifting Tanner up into his arms, Julian had trouble holding him with how big he was getting now, but Tanner always expected it. When the boy jumped him at eighteen, he might take poor Julian out. Though he'd grown, Julian was still skinny in comparison to other guys. It was warm out in early June and Julian had on a dark shirt that left his arms bare to the shoulders. As always, Tanner played with the ridges of his tattoos in awe and reverence.
