Weekend at Vin's

Chapter 1: Desperate Times

Summary:

It's the early 2000's. Elend Venture lives in Luthadel. A once great mid-west city, now run down and littered with abandoned Dominion Metals factories. His latest fight with his father causes him to take a pile of his books and drive away in his muscle car. Running out of plans and options, he remembers the weird girl he drove home after prom and ends up at the compound where she lives with a group of shady friends to see if he can crash for the night. Before long, Elend finds himself thrown head-first into a weekend of romance, surprises, lust, crime, and vengeance, all while trying to untangle a sticky love triangle and survive.

Notes:

This is definitely going to be a slow burn with lots of plot, character development, and setups that will hopefully pay off. Feedback and suggestions are greatly encouraged! Chapters 1-6 are definitely teen-rated but chapter seven is when it gets explicit so I've updated the rating to match that, but don't expect smut from the get-go. If you want to skip to the smut, you're more than welcome to start with chapter 7 but I hope the buildup and payoff are worth it for those who read the earlier chapters, too. Enjoy!

Chapter 1:

The speedometer hits 120 but the engine's roar only pisses me off more.

What the hell am I doing?

I slam on the breaks and feel myself losing control. I spin out, swerving off the road and drifting into a dusty patch of earth. The dust settles, and I can see the lights of Luthadel through ever-present veil of smog and soot that rarely ever goes away.

At least it's quiet out here.

I shut down the engine and lean the seat back.

You have to drive pretty far to see the stars. All I can see here are those low drifting clouds, tinged black from the smoke and ash from the hundreds of smokestacks of the city.

What the hell am I doing?

That question is too annoying to answer in the larger sense, so instead, I reach over into the passenger seat and pluck out one of the books from the pile there. "The Folly of Progress: Rethinking Economic Growth from an Ethical Framework" by Marcel DuClerc.

I read a couple of chapters. It helps to calm me down, but now I just feel depressed. I toss the book back onto the pile and look around. It's not Luthadel, but somehow it's worse. Before Dominion Metals built its metallurgy plants here, this place was a farming paradise. There used to be fields of corn and other crops for hundreds of miles south of Lake Tyrian.

With Dominion came the explosion of Luthadel into a major metropolis, then came the pollution, then the land died.

Luthadel is many things, but there's something especially awful dead land as far as the eye can see.

I turn the engine back on and begin the drive back home.

I don't think I'm going home home. I'll probably say things to the old man that would get me permanently cut off from the family fortune. I think that's what he wants though. Old man staff wants me to go too far so he can have an excuse to cut me off, so he doesn't have to pay for me to go off to school at Seran University.

No, I'll have to find somewhere to crash.

But where can I go?

Old man always finds out anytime I go to my friends'. I swear, he must have at least one maid at all their houses on his payroll just to spy on me. Either that or their parents snitch to my family to try and gain dad's favor.