Writer: Sabaku No Kel
Fandom: Hellboy
Pairing: Hellboy x John Myers
Title: Photograph
Words: 2497
Rating: Overall rating M
Disclaimer: I don’t own Hellboy or it’s characters and do not make any money out of writing this.
AN1: Hi y’all! I would just like to thank you all for your kind words and such for last week’s story because during the writing/uploading process I was real nervous you guys weren’t going to like it but after receiving so much praise and compliments (which made me blush) I felt much better JSo once again thank you and never stop being awesome!
000 Photograph 000
“Remember this one?” Hellboy said as he pointed at the picture of him, John and a bunch of other agent’s someone had snapped of them right after their mission.
“I still crack up every time I see it. I mean just look at Clay’s face, he looks totally miserable!” The demon laughed as he looked at the picture again, easily locating the older agent in the group of suits. Clay was in the middle of the group, arms crossed over his chest and glaring at the camera as the rest of them laughed their asses off at their comrade. The man was covered from head to toe in green slime and bits off demon leftovers were clinging to his skin almost comically, though none of them were close enough to touch him in fear of getting slime on their own person John was the only one trying to hold back his laughter and help by offering out a towel to his superior agent.
“Or what about this one?” He said as he flipped the page of his photo album and saw the next picture. Another one of him and his nanny taken right after a mission. There was another man in the picture and though Hellboy recognized him he didn’t remember his name, didn’t really matter that much as he remembered that day as well as that specific mission all too well.
It was their first duo mission as official partners, though John had still remained his nanny for all these years that day he had also officially been upgraded to partner. Their mission was to take care of a family of ghosts haunting this really old house and bothering the current tenant, nothing too fancy just a simple find-out-why-they-stuck-around-and-convince-them-to-move-on run of the mill mission. Or at least that’s how it had seemed at first, it was never wise to trust first appearances in their line of work though.
He wasn’t going to go into detail about what had happened that day but let’s just say
a lot of expensive, fragile objects had been shattered into a million tiny pieces before they had managed to convince the spirits to move on to the after life. Luckily the owner of the place had been so glad to finally be rid of the ghosts he hadn’t made them pay for everything that had been broken. They had all taken a picture together a few minutes later, the three of them smiling happily with the no longer haunted house in the background with all its shattered windows. It wasn’t until they had returned to the Bureau though that they had noticed another shape in the picture, it was of a young girl, the youngest daughter of the family of ghosts who had apparently stuck around even though the rest of her family had moved on. They never did find out why she had decided to stay but since they never got another call from the owner of the house they figured she wasn’t causing any problems and had allowed her to stay where she was.
Hellboy gave the picture one last glance before flipping to the next page, eyes instantly catching on to a black and white picture. It was the picture that had been taken after his first ‘arrival’ on that small island of the coast of Scotland all those years ago. He had looked at this photograph so many times over the years he didn’t even need it anymore, it was etched into his memory perfectly. He moved on to the next picture, another one of his youth he realised, taken on the secret air force base in Mexico. He had been two years old at the time, though he certainly didn’t look it, and in the shot he was standing next to his young adoptive father as their dog Mac laid at his hooves lazily.
There was no story behind this picture, not a very interesting one at least, just that one of the officers at the base had gotten a new camera and had wanted to test it out. He had been allowed to keep the picture afterwards and had stuck it in his photo album simply because he didn’t know where else to put it after he had stumbled upon it again years later.
Another flip of the page presented him with a birthday picture, a picture of his seventieth birthday to be exact. There were as many people as possible squeezed into the tiny frame, all wearing silly hats and silently yelling ‘Cheese!’ as he blew out the candles on his huge ass birthday cake. Hellboy smiled fondly at the happy faces from his past before moving on to the next page.
“Now this is a nice one.” The demon said as his smile morphed into a grin. The picture in question was another one of his birthday, portraying the simple image of his young, blushing lover sitting on his lap as they kissed for all the world to see. John had been extremely embarrassed when he realized Liz had taken a picture with that camera of hers during such an intimate moment but had been helpless to do anything about it as Hellboy hadn’t allowed the human off his lap for the remainder of the night just to tease him some more.
“You looked so cute when you got mad at Liz for taking that picture and then you looked even cuter when you got even madder at me for allowing her to take it while you weren’t paying attention.” Hellboy chuckled at the memory, remembering all too well a certain red faced agent sulking on his lap for a good ten minutes before letting out a sigh and stealing the rest of his cake from his plate.
That had just gotten way out of hand he realized as he looked at the next picture, another one of way too many people though this time they were all running around covered in cake and squirting whipped cream at each other during their food fight. He wasn’t sure who had taken the picture or how it had survive that particular night without getting utterly destroyed but he was glad he had found it the day after the party.
He flipped the page again to another black and white photograph, this time taken during his ‘teen years’ as his father had dubbed the two years it had taken him to go through puberty. The picture was of him and his classmates from a secret ‘special people’ school located in Denmark, granted he didn’t often go to class but when he did it was incredibly fun as well as incredibly boring at the same time. Sure he got to hang with the other weirdo’s which was something he liked cause at least they didn’t judge him or giving him weird looks but it also meant sitting in class with a book and being quiet for
hours on end and that was just something he couldn’t do no matter how hard he tried.
Most of the time he would simply sneak out of the building to smoke a cigarette behind the janitor’s tool shed while on other days he would entertain himself by playing pranks on some of the teachers. Nothing too bad just harmless fun I assure you but sometimes his practical jokes got a little out of hand and they had too call his father to pick him up from school. He usually got grounded after that happened but that mattered little to him back then as he could break out of any place they tried to keep him in. A skill that came in handy later in life.
He turned to the next page of his album and found himself staring at a row of four tiny photographs this time. The pictures had been a spur of the moment thing he recalled, taken on the night of his first ‘date’ with John. The agent had been so excited when he had spotted the picture booth in the empty arcade that he had been unable to resist the puppy eyed request they take some pictures together. Luckily for them the guard that was supposed to be checking this place always fell asleep on the job as well as left all the machines on so they had no trouble whatsoever feeding the small booth some coins and taking their shots.
After a few seconds of trying to figure out how the machine worked they selected a pretty pink, heart covered background and stroke a pose. The first picture was silly, the two of them making weird faces at the camera and just generally looking stupid before they settled down and took a more serious attitude for their second picture. John was in front of him for that one, smiling shyly as Hellboy wrapped his arms around his waist and leaned his chin on top of the other agent’s head. The third picture was a little bit more suggestive than the other two, showing his nanny with a bright blush on his cheeks that clashed horribly with the pink background as the demon whispered something dirty in one of the human’s ear. The fourth and final picture was his favourite as it portrayed a frozen image of their first kiss turned make out session of the evening, it went without saying why this particular picture was his favourite.
Another flip of the pages later and he was looking at a different photograph once again. This picture was of him and Abe, taken long before John or even Liz had joined the BPRD and instead of being shot after the mission this one was taken before. In the photograph both him and Abe were wearing wetsuits because they were about to dive in a lake infested with mermaids though not the happy cartoon kind. For Abe this wasn’t much of a problem since he felt most at home in water but for the demon it was a whole different story simply because he didn’t much care for bodies of water larger than a bathtub. Unfortunately he had lost a bet to Clay and was being forced into going for a swim with flesh eating mermaids, yay him. The picture wasn’t all that interesting though, beside the fact that it showed him in a little too tight in certain area’s wetsuit but it was one of the few pictures he had of the Itchiyo Sapien so he had kept it for sentimental reasons.
He turned to the next page and found a picture without any people in it for once. “Oh, I remember Apocalypse.” Hellboy said with a grin as he took a second look at the photograph. Apocalypse, as some of you might be wondering, was a car, but not just any car,
oh no, it was a one of a kind, bright red Chevrolet Corvette from 1960. The sort of car that would make any man drool simply by looking at it. He and John had spent many nights in that car either out on the road for hours on end or doing a little bit more x-rated things without ever leaving the BPRD garage. Times were good back then but as fate would have it they were not meant to last for one night many years ago when the moon was full and the roads empty his little lover and he had taken their baby out for a harmless drive. They had barely been out for half an hour when a runaway demon suddenly attacked them out of nowhere. A huge fight had broken out and though both he and John had gotten out with only a few scratches Apocalypse had been totalled beyond repair.
“I sorta miss breaking out in the middle of the night and taking our baby out for a spin, just you and me on the open road singing along with every song on the radio.” He smiled at the memory of them singing to ‘Don’t stop believing’ by Journey, their favourite song, on repeat for most of the night as they drove on without really caring where they were going to end up.
Another turn of the pages and picture later presented him with quite an embarrassing snapshot if he did say so himself. It was a picture of himself, sleeping blissfully unaware, but instead of his hair being up in its usual samurai style ponytail it was down and very ‘prettily’ braided and tied with little pink ribbons. The culprits of his make over weren’t in the shot but he had found out quite quickly that John and Liz had decided to play a prank on him while he was knocked out on the plane to France. Of course he had woken up as soon as the camera had flashed and his picture was taken but it had taken him a little longer to realize why everyone was looking at him while trying not to laugh.
“I’ll admit it was a good one but I got you two back just as badly, didn’t I?” Hellboy said as the next picture portrayed an image of his payback. John with the words ‘Property of Hellboy’ written in sharpie on his forehead standing next to Liz who had the words ‘Hello, my name is Stupid’ in bold, black letters on hers. Both humans were glaring at the camera but were being good sports about having their picture taken as they had one of him as well.
The next couple of pictures were all of him and a bunch of other agents, every time the faces were different but he remembered each and every one of the men who had fought beside him during his many years at the BPRD. His father, Clay, Abe, Liz and John were in most of the shots though never all at once, not that that mattered to him. These people were his family and they would always be together in his thoughts and in his heart.
“I should get going before the suits back at base get another heart attack when they find out I’m not in my room again.” Hellboy said as he rose from the ground and patted at his clothes to get the dirt off. He closed the picture album he had been looking through and ran his fingers over the engraving in the cover gently, feeling the words ‘my memories’ with his fingers tips one final time before setting the small book down next to a bouquet of white roses and pink lilies.
“You can keep this, feel free to look through it whenever you miss us.” The demon said as he turned around and walked back out the graveyard the way he had come, leaving the freshly dug grave and new headstone engraved with the name of his young lover behind for his next visit.
000 Photograph 000
This ending how I hate it but no matter how many times I re-wrote it it never felt right so I eventually (aka last night) decided to let it go and leave it like this. My friends always say I’m too critical about my work but I can’t help it, when I write I want everything to be perfect and just how I had envisioned it to be though the end result is never how I expected it be and sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad but I suppose I’ll let you be the judge about that for this particular one.
Bye y’all, have a great week and see you next Saturday!
~~~Read long and prosper,
Sabaku No Kel~~~
