Chapter Text
It had been a strange journey since the lunch meeting at the La Brea tar pits with Nigel Badminton.
Stede was puzzled when his former childhood bully turned up at his office out of the blue, extending an offer to ‘catch up on the last few decades’ over lunch.
“Fill me in on your ‘exciting’ paleontology research,” Nigel sneered, as if he’d ever once been interested in anything that Stede had done in their entire lives.
Despite the pile of red flags, a lifetime of not causing waves or saying no led Stede to a table at La Brea-d & Butter (Sandwiches, Salads, and Snacks). Stede had always been fond of the tar pits, ever since the first time his family went “on holiday” to LA (holidays always seemed to be conveniently located near a global office).
While his father was in some stuffy investors meeting, Stede’s mother took him to La Brea. It was a life changing experience that started his fascination with extinct fauna, which had led to his current position in the paleontology department of the university, which led him to this very moment.
(It had also started his fascination with fauna that most people didn’t think ever existed, but that was something the university didn’t like him to talk about.)
Of course Nigel was running late. Stede sat at the table Nigel reserved for them, anxiously twisting his garnet ring, an heirloom from a great-great-great aunt twice removed. It was one of the very few things he inherited that he actually liked, and always gave him an extra boost of confidence and felt like a lucky charm, which he greatly needed to get through this lunch.
Stede was as ready as possible to tell Nigel about paleontology (and its likely connection to cryptozoology, if Nigel was open to it), delusionally hopeful that perhaps Nigel wanted to fund research out of the kindness of his heart. It was a nice thought.
But alas, no. Instead, it turned out that Nigel discovered that he had demon lineage, like some sort of evil 23andMe result, and that the whole lunch was a trap so that Nigel could raise a horde of ancient demons from beneath the millions of fossils that lay within the tar.
“Do you know what I’ve always disliked about you, Bonnet?” Nigel had asked gleefully as he hacked off chunks of his well-done steak, a predatory smile on his face like one of the Smilodons that had been excavated from the pits. “Your obliviousness and lack of backbone. You’re soft.”
Stede frowned and tried to come up with a rebuttal. Nigel never gave him the chance.
“Of course, now I’m counting on that.” Nigel spoke and chewed with his mouth open. Stede scrunched up his face in displeasure. Nigel didn’t seem to notice, throwing a thick book down on the table in front of him.
“You don’t even know what you are, what I am, or what is even possible. For all your ‘research’. For all your studying. Never in your Baby Bonnet Brain could you have dreamed of the ultimate power that exists within me.” Nigel leered, his thin upper lip exposing his teeth.
Nigel kept talking, the grandiose villain monologue all becoming a sort of white noise. Stede caught fragments of it, lots of words like “glorious purpose”, “Slayer Lineage”, “righteous demonic revenge”, but his eyes were on the heavy book. It was extremely old, with VAMPYR stamped across it in 300pt font. Stede felt a strange connection to it, and as soon as Nigel turned his back, Stede swept it off the table and into his laptop bag.
Nigel’s back wasn’t turned for long, and with his returned attention came an ancient scroll, several jangly pendants, and a large, thin knife with inscriptions in Ecclesiastical Latin running down the blade and a bulbous gem on the handle.
Stede knew something bad was about to happen, knew he should try and stop it, but he was frozen in place as Nigel opened the scroll and chanted incantations in a dead language.
The ground beneath the restaurant oozed and cracked, as large bones erupted through the tar. The other patrons of the cafe ran away screaming. Nigel’s eyes rolled back in his head and his voice deepened. The words coming out of his mouth were no longer any language that Stede recognised, striking a deep fear into the core of his being.
Stede unfroze and panicked. Then did the same thing he always did when he panicked:
Called his TA, Lucius.
“Lucius! I’m at lunch! And - oh God, I can’t explain. I’m putting you on the camera!” He half expected Nigel to rip the phone out of his grasp, but whatever state Nigel was in, he seemed to be oblivious to Stede’s actions.
“Stede, I swear to God if this is like the time you needed me to tell you if your shirt was too transparent in natural lighting —” Lucius interrupted himself with a shriek.
“AND NOW, WITH THIS RING, I SUMMON FORTH THE FIRE IN MY VEINS. BRING FORWARD THE POWERS THE SLAYERS STOLE FROM MY ANCESTORS” Nigel’s voice boomed. He plunged the knife towards Stede’s finger, attempting to hack off the garnet ring.
Stede yelped and drew back, saving his finger but flinging his phone into the air. It spun in a perfect spiral, blaring Lucius screams of “OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK” as it careened into Nigel’s head.
BONK. The phone smacked into Nigel’s skull. SQUISH. Nigel’s face fell onto the knife, eye first.
The floor underneath Nigel split open, and Nigel’s body… there wasn’t a great way to describe it besides “melted”. Nigel’s former body became one with the tar.
Stede scrambled to gather his phone, the scroll, the miscellaneous pendants, and the knife before they fell into the goo with the Nigel puddle and told Lucius that he’d have to call him back.
After that, it was a bit of a blur. There were police, but no charges filed because none of the witnesses could explain what they saw, so it was chalked up to a combination of a freak medical accident, and “sometimes tectonic plates shift, and the tar pits crack open, what can you do? It’s Southern California”.
There was mandated therapy, which was eye opening and useful. Not because it helped Stede process what he saw (absolutely completely useless for that), but it did help him realize he was gay, so that was a silver lining.
Stede did not get additional funding. Instead, the University fired him (and Lucius by extension), claiming Stede was mentally unstable in the wake of The Incident. Appealing the decision was pointless, as the Badminton family had served on the school board for generations and had made it very clear that they blamed Stede for what happened to Nigel.
And so, jobless, traumatized, full of questions (but also a sense of purpose!), Stede and Lucius set off to find answers.