#that's why its called sketchy tour | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-saltiest-saltine · 11 months

Text

Enjoy this heartwarming fic about the importance of having reliable nondescript friends in the face of a scary situation. You and her can totally fight off a prospective attacker together, you’re sure - after all, you’ve got the power of friendship!

Yan!Chrollo x Reader

Word count: ~ 1.9k

Warnings: Yandere, stalking, implied voyeurism, implied torture

You’ve got a stalker. You know this for sure.

Wherever you go, you can feel a gaze.

Your train rides and walks through some of the dodgier parts of the central business district after a busy day have always had their fair share of sketchy characters - it’s been a near-daily part of your life since you first came here several weeks ago - but this feeling was different. It wasn’t some junkie looking for a punch-up, no. It was specific. It was targeted.

What started as a feeling of slight watching in public, became a metaphorical spotlight in your apartment, blinding and irritating. You keep your windows shut and locked, not wanting the biting chill of the smoggy winter air to creep its way inside your residence. This doesn’t stop you from constantly coming home to find your kitchen window wound open, all these stories up. You know it’s definitely impossible for a regular man to get up here from the outside, since your front door is always locked and there’s no balcony.

You wish he’d leave you alone at the library, at least. It’s nice and relatively quaint, a much-appreciated juxtaposition from your otherwise industrial setting, and the least your stalker could afford is some privacy so you can enjoy it to its fullest.

The stare is intense, filled with neediness and darkness. You’re sure the eyes of whoever is creating it are a void, the most unusual colour of emptiness and depravity. You can’t pinpoint any particular reason why this is happening - generally, you’re pretty quiet and unassuming. You have no rich family to pay a ransom, and your organs wouldn’t be worth much. Simply put, a person like you is not worth the trouble.

Your best cure for this feeling so far has been to simply sigh, and open up your latest novel, indulging in a few chapters. The feeling subsides after a little while. Perhaps he gets bored of watching you partake in an activity so unappealing to an outside viewer. Perhaps he grabs out his own book and indulges himself, though you doubt that’s the case (-but that would be a nice thought, wouldn’t it? Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery).

Tonight, you found a card on your kitchen bench. By the looks of it, it’s not a parting message, rather the opposite. The intricate red pattern on it is almost enough to be considered romantic, but you’re hardly feeling the charm. It’s unsettling, to say the least, but you can’t even bring yourself to be scared.

If anything, this issue annoys you now. It’s been a long, exhausting day at work. It gets uncomfortably cold if the window's left open. If someone’s going to kill you, they might as well just try already. Being stalked is so tiresome.

You don’t have enough tangible evidence to file a police report, simple sensings of a watcher not nearly enough proof to have police aid you. Funnily enough, this takes the bottom rung on the ladder of reasons why you can’t contact them. You can almost laugh at the thought of even trying. If this persists, you’ll call your friends instead.

Unfortunately, your welcome to this city has been anything but warm.

Luckily, you’ve got one modicum of hope.

There’s a woman in your life.

She’s beautiful, inside and out. Her smiles are a breath of fresh air in this wretched city. You can’t say you’re exactly dating yet, but whatever tier below it you’ve got now is certainly better than whatever was there before. Something like gratitude, as much as you’re naturally inclined to overlook it, hits you like a truck whenever you’re together.

Unlike you, she’s not new here. She’s been a great tour guide so far, introducing you to practically every street corner, every Indian restaurant, every speck of dirt and faeces on the wrecked footpaths that the slimy Mayor neglects. It’s hard to worry about a stalker when you’re being bombarded with random questions and consumed by her laugh, echoing between the skyscrapers and into comforting mugs of hot chocolate.

The time you spend with her is precious, sacred even. You won’t let the mystery man get in the way of that.

Long before that card made its way to your residence, you did call a friend, the friend, about your problem, getting a response within two rings. You told her about your stalker, sniffling and regularly hiccupping, telling her about how you think there’s someone after you. She was practically frantic, demanding that you come over to her apartment right that instant, barking out her address without hesitation. It’s only fifteen minutes away, she assured. You got there in seven.

She flung open the door at the first knock, saying your name with relief and letting you in. You spared her most of the details as you sat on her couch, not wanting her to put herself in harm’s way. Despite your shaky insistence that you’ll be fine regardless, she gave you some pepper spray to help defend yourself, and some tips on how to hold your keys between your knuckles most effectively.

I’ll protect you if anything happens, she says, her support of you positively admirable. You know she’d try and fight him off if you were together when he strikes.

You’re certain that your combined forces are enough to fight off a fully grown man, you declared in response - and you meant it. In fact, you added, scratch that, you’re absolutely convinced that your cumulative strength - consisting of four arms, pepper spray, and her high-pitched scream - is enough to fight off a bodybuilder pumped full of anything and everything you can get in the alleys behind the city’s numerous smoke shops. She laughed at that, but you know she still worries for you.

You can come with me anywhere if you’re uncomfortable, she said. Really, if you’re worried, just call me up. I can leave work early if you think you’re in danger, honestly. My manager is flexible enough.

Appreciation swirls around you in waves again. Naturally, you have your scepticism. It’s almost too generous, too forward, something you’re certainly not accustomed to. But alas, you’ll firmly grip whatever opportunities present themselves. She offers you what she can, and you don’t hold yourself back from accepting it with open arms.

You’ve accompanied her to the bar, to the library, to her favourite café. It’s pleasant. It’s peaceful. You’re still being watched for certain, but the ability to have a brief moment of levity whilst in her presence, something to help you forget about work and responsibilities and stalkers, is something to be treasured.

She’s so calming, so sweet, so caring…

And so, so oblivious.

You’ve accompanied her to the bar, to the library, to her favourite café. However, if you were to ask, she’d say with the utmost conviction that you were never there (and that she’d love to show you). You’ve accompanied her on her commute home, made cups of tea in her kitchen, folded dog ears in the untouched novels on her bookshelf, hoping she’ll note the romantic scenes and lines you’ve kindly bookmarked for her.

She’s promised to protect you. She never questioned why your little whimpers died down so suddenly after she gave you her address. She never questioned how you got there so fast. If she’d been wary enough to use the location services on her phone, she would’ve been able to see that seven minutes was actually a while to arrive, considering you were a twenty-metre walk down the hallway when you’d called.

She simply ate up your little performance over the phone, and in her apartment. And, soon enough, she’ll be coming to yours.

Yesterday, she told you about the new exhibit at the city’s museum - she went to get a glimpse of it the other day, and it looks promising.

You went to get a glimpse of it too, twenty metres behind her.

The day before, she told you about how she ordered a new drink at a café- it was absolutely to die for, and oh, by the way, did you know that café is her favourite in the city?

You inferred that much from her frequent visits there, following her routine so effortlessly that it became your own. You tried the drink out too, taking sips in time with hers, admiring her profile as she scrolled through her phone. She was so pleased to finally have an afternoon to herself, after a week of hectic shifts.

Something unfamiliar stokes inside of you as you make your observations. Perhaps it’s comparable to a parent seeing their child grow and develop, or a botanist seeing rare flowers bloom, or an astronomer observing the most uncommon and exquisite of meteorological events. It’s something like happiness, something like attachment, something like wonder, something like pride.

On the other hand, you must admit, you’re a little disappointed. She lied to you.

She didn’t tell you about the man she slept with from the bar last week. Technically, you never asked about it, considering that you weren’t supposed to be there, but you’re a man who considers lying by omission to be on an equal plane as wholehearted deception. She promised to never lie to you, but now she has. What should she have to do to earn your forgiveness?

Although, perhaps this encounter was no matter, the sounds she made being enough fuel for your frantic stroking outside her bedroom door, her whines teaching you what to do when you would be in the stranger’s place, a point in time that won’t be too far from now. For the sake of equality, though, you’ll let this one slide. After all, you didn’t tell her about the man’s fate after that night, about your other friend who’d assisted you, about the teeth scattered on the cold basement floor, about the strips of flesh that hung from his back and how you’d apathetically tugged on them.

She’s a very good source of information for you. Truly, you hadn’t expected to spend so long in this city, nor had you expected for the museum to open up again so quickly since your heist two months ago only a few towns over, locked down for precaution (a laughable concept, really). Without her, you wouldn’t have anyone to debate the validity of the Old Testament, the extent that Raskolnikov can be justified, or theories on what happens after death. Also, without her, you wouldn’t have found out about the museum’s new exhibit of Goya paintings so soon, teasingly left out in the open, ripe for the plucking mere minutes away from your penthouse. It’s a temptation you’ve never bothered resisting.

Despite being a Nen user, whoever’s stalking you doesn’t care to hide himself properly. His perfect Zetsu is rendered useless from his other behaviours. You can hear his footsteps outside of the window, see his shadow in your periphery, hear his heavy breathing and salacious groans as he watches you.

If you were more dramatic, you’d roll your eyes. With Skill Hunter available on command, you have no doubt that this fool would lose to you in a fight. You’ve been observing his patterns, feeling his aura, preparing yourself for the inevitable.

You’ve been doing the same for your friend, however loosely you may use the term.

Whatever the man following you wants, you’ll take from him tenfold. You pick up the playing card from the bench, a queen of hearts, and regard it between your fingers.

You’ve got a stalker. She’s got a stalker too. But, unlike you, she won’t have the means to counter his next move.

#yandere chrollo #chrollo #chrollo x reader #Yandere chrollo x reader #hunter x Hunter #hxh #hxh x reader #hunter x hunter x reader #yandere chrollo fic #yandere hunter x hunter

282 notes · View notes

marksbear · 1 year

Note

Gor 2 ideas for Hotch and Reader Hotch lol

1) Hotch finding out he and Sean have a younger brother from one of their father's affairs after Reader is mistaken for an unsub in a homicide

2) Hotch's singer brother comes to Quantico and when Hotch learns about it, he goes to see him on his tour. What is supposed to be a friendly meet and greet between reader and the gang turns into a crime scene when the drummer is found dead in Reader's hotel room

Im gonna do 2! Hope you enjoy.

HUGE ANGST.

AARON HOTCH X SINGER BROTHER READER

Why didn't he believe you! Why! He was supposed to be your big brother. And now hes treating you like a monster.

You were on tour.

You were becoming famous. A star you made your own name. Aaron wasn't really supportive of your dreams but later on life he became supportive.

Today you were on top of the world. This was your moment to show the whole world who you are. You wanted to keep it a secret but Sean's big fat mouth had brought it over a brother game night at Aaron's house. "So A-ron are you going to lil bro's big day?"

You give him a stop before i'll kill you. look but still doesn't get the hint.

You even mouthed "stop it". You try to change the subject but Aaron beats you to it. "Big day? What is it?" He asks looking at the two of you. "It's nothing A. Really its nothing-"

You get cut off by your brother saying "What!?! Y/n kidding the kid has his biggest concert yet on Monday! Hes gonna be a star if it does good and I know it's gonna be good! Sean yells out slinging his arm around your shoulder bringing you closer.

"Really Y/n why didn't you tell me? I'm your big brother. " The oldest hotch asked looking at the youngest betrayed.

"Because I thought you'll just speak down about it. Like you always do you kill my mood!" You answer with all honestly. "You don't mean that. You just make bad decisions and I have to look after you. Cause someone won't call them out for being dumb call me the mean brother im just playing my part." He answers back not caring about how you felt. You get up and cuss him out while getting your things storming out the house.

"Fuck you Aaron!" The last thing you say before slamming the door. Aaron looks at his window watching you leave.

You feel a pair of eyes staring at you so you turn around looking at the curtain flipping him off.

PRESENT DAY

It was time for your concert and You were a nervous wreck. Waiting to be announced you pace back and forth and double check things and overthink.

The drummer named Romeo walks over to you and wraps his arms around you giving you a bear hug. Being in Ramon arms always had calmed you down and soon you melted in his touch. "We're gonna be great babe." He says looking at you cupping your cheeks staring deeply into your eyes. You get lost in his and lean forward to give him a deep kiss.

A LITTLE BACK STORY OF YOU AND Romeo.

When you two were in highschool freshmen. You both were in band class together. You two shared other classes but y'all two really became friends in band. You two were always with one another during that class. Giving tips to one another about like the others posture or if they played the wrong note. Slowly you two started to talk during lunch or break periods and growing more comfortable talking and hanging out in the other class periods you shared.

One day after school he saw you walking home. So he rode to you on his bike and told you to hop on. You agreed and got behind him standing and holding on his shoulders while he pelted. "Where are we going romeo?" You ask confused since hes driving to the part of the neighborhood you've never been by.

Always getting told by both brothers to stay away from this side. "Going to my house n/n"

You hum in response looking around thinking this place is sketchy and creepy. He rides his back to the back of a big house and helps you off holding your hand while you get off the bike.

You both get off the bike with no trouble but Romeo makes no effort to let go of your hand. In fact pulling you inside the house. "Hey ma. And other mom"

he smiles at his mothers and tries to walk upstairs fast holding onto your hand tight trying to rush up stairs before they ask questions. "Ah. Ah. A young man who's the boy?" His step mom asks seeing Romeo shoves you upstairs "No funny business young man!" His biological mom yells. With her and her wife laughing at their sons embarrassment.

Romeo leads you to his room and never lets go of your hand while you look around his room. "Do you like princesses?" You ask looking at the dolls. Romeo picks up the dolls and throws them in his closet.

"And you like pink. That's cute it used to be my favorite color until my father found out."

You set your stuff down and lay down on his princess themed bed. "Y/n?" "Yeah." "I like men." The room falls silent. Romeo is shaking thinking that he just lost his best friend and long term crush. "Oh...Me to I think at least. I like girls and boys." You say sitting up rubbing Romeos back when you saw how nervous he became when he came out to you.

"Romeo if it makes you feel better. Can I kiss you?" You ask not wanting to see your best friend sad. Romeo tackles Y/n onto the bed making out. Y/n flips Romeo over pulling away from the heated make out looking into his eyes deeply before kissing him again.

The two horny teenagers begin to fumble around their clothes trying to take them off. Romeo takes Y/n shirt off and begins to kiss him again until they hear someone clear their throat. Romeo kicks off Y/n and quickly covers himself breathing heavy and hair all messy clothes wrinkled. The moms laughs at the new young couple and shuts the door and yells "use protection". Both boys cover their faces in embarrassment.

And that moment starts a new chapter in both of your lives.

Romeo was scared that it was just a one time thing but boy how was he wrong. You two spent everyday outside of school hanging out. Like going to the movies, night bike rides, eating dinner with his family, dressing him as a princess while you're the prince.

You two never argued or fought. Any time y'all disagreed on something you both respected the other decisions no matter what the topic or thing. You two grew up with each other spending the rest of your highschool and college years together. Once you two graduated you two got jobs and bought a small apartment together. Once you two had gotten settled into adulthood you began to make music with each other. Achieving yalls dreams.

TINY STORY DONE.

After the concert you were full of adrenaline. Jumping everywhere and shouting about what you did. Just acting like a cute hyper mess. Romeo skips towards you feeling the blood pumping in his veins too. "We did it Romeo! Like how we dreamed!" Wrapping your arms on his waist. Kissing and sucking on his neck leaving marks on Romeo's neck.

Romeo moans out and holds his fiance holding onto Y/n shoulders grinding on him. Y/n was about to lift him up and take him to his dressing room until he heard someone wolf whistling and whispering.

"Who knew Hotchner three had some game." An unknown voice says to you and your fiance with a big group stand beside him laughing and agreeing.

You stare at them until you notice your brother's face behind all of them. "So your brother's team its nice to meet you all!" You say waving and smiling at them while they introduce themselves and praise you for the performance.

"Who's the man you're holding Y/n?" You sigh and respond with a "Wow not even a good job or hi. Always in my business before me." You hold your fiance's hand bringing him closer so they can get a better look. "This is Romeo lane's future Hotchner." Now that had everyone quiet.

"You can't just marry a man I never met! Y/n you never even mentioned him once!" He shouts. You roll your eyes and begin to walk away holding your fiance's hand leaving the stadium not even in the mood to do anything but sleep.

You and your fiance go to the five star hotel and have dinner and get ready for bed.

Your husband kisses you deeply full of passion. "I love you no matter what happens to me or you in the future. You are my soulmate." Romeo says looking serious at you holding your hand.

"I love you to Romo. No matter how deep we are in trouble if something terrible happens I love you."

You woke up to yelling and someone kicking down the door "FBI PUT YOUR HANDS UP!!" You look around looking for Romeo.

"Romo what's going on. where are you?"

You look down and see blood everywhere on your body. You scream and look around for Romeo.

You see his lifeless body on the floor you try to stand up and walk towards it but falls because your body is drench of blood head to toe. You crawl towards the body holding his lifeless cold body.

"Rome! Please baby wake up!" Blood covers both of you and the floor. You scream and cry on his body praying that it's just a dream.

"Romeo! Baby please!"

People start to take you away from his body and you kick and scream reaching out to him. You begin to cry when you feel the handcuffs on you.

Starting from the very begining.

Why didn't he believe you. Why. He was supposed to be your big brother. And now hes treating you like a monster. "You disgust me Y/n. You're just a low life monster." You remember him telling you that.

You hated him with every inch of your body when it turned out you were innocent. You proved the whole world wrong that you were innocent. How you were framed.

You couldn't handle life without Romeo. You just couldn't. You tried everything but one thing You stand at at Romeo grave. And pulled out your gun closing your eyes. You place it on your head and plugged the trigger.

Your body falls on the ground

smiling towards your husbands grave

One last time.

#criminal minds x male reader #angst #x male reader #the bear club #aaron hotchner x male reader #aaron hotch #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotch x male reader

222 notes · View notes

shewhotellsstories · 1 year

Note

Oh that Vareity article? Reylos still crying over that really shows their obsession with John. Not only was it taken out of context because John very much supports his costar, but the same interviewer has a history of setting up his Black guests like this

I was so annoyed I totally skipped over the writer of that article being Adam B. Vary. I remember hearing about him because a similar thing happened with Anthony Mackie and he did that disgrace of a rehabilitation tour story for Joss Whedon where he called Ray Fisher a bad actor and spewed a bunch of fake nice-guy rhetoric about how he couldn't help but sleep with his subordinates because he couldn't get date in high school. (Gee I wonder why.) It honestly felt sketchy as hell because in addition to Whedon being allowed to call his victims either liars or just bad at English Vary was whining on Twitter about how Ray Fisher wouldn't do an interview with him about the Whedon of it all. Honestly, if I were a PR person in Hollywood I would advise any client of mine with melanin to decline any interview with Vary, he seems to have a nasty habit of running with quotes that could get the most rage clicks. But yeah, thanks for pointing that out to me.

Fun story, once in college I was interviewing an administrator about mental health policies. He was from the South and very brusque and blunt. He said, "if you want to kill yourself, that's fine, we can't kick you out of school for it," because I was asking him about students being forced to take time off indefinitely after mental health crises. Now, if you read that quote on its own you might think that he was saying that suicide is fine, but when I asked a follow-up question he explained that he meant that if someone is in crisis they should be encouraged to seek help, but it was against the ADA to force someone to move out of student housing due or withdraw from classes indefinitely to self-harm or suicidal ideation because being mentally ill doesn't necessarily make you unfit to be a student. I feel like Adam Vary would've just run with "if you want to kill yourself, that's fine."

#asked and answered #fandom racism #anti-reylo #john boyega #ray fisher #anti joss whedon #anthony mackie #adam b. vary #tw: suicide

6 notes · View notes

annlarimer · 2 years

Photo

So, see this tree? It's an American music history tree. It’s in front of a Target parking lot now, but it used to be next to a chicken restaurant called The Drumstick. This was back when 48th Street was lined with restaurants instead of strip malls. (To the right of the pawn shop across the street was a Shakey's Pizza, to tell you how long ago this was.)

On their first national tour, which I imagine involved sleeping in a VW Microbus, REM's agent booked them into The Drumstick, which he assumed from the name must be a music venue. So this weirdass band out of some Georgia college town nobody had ever heard of played Murrican New Wave while Midwesterners ate their chicken.

I mean, it’s not a great story, but I see the tree every time I buy groceries. So now you have to see it too.

The only other local music history* I know is that Downtown, on a now demolished bit of 11th Street, there was a dive of a Mexican restaurant called something like La Paloma, but not really. Its exterior was plastered an alarming shade of orange, but its food was cheap and absolutely delicious. It was still going when I was in college and I saw a student production of El Grande de Coca Cola there that nearly made me puke with laughter. The cast was about five feet away. Remember that bit.

Now, I am the last of five children, and spent much of my childhood being hauled around in my siblings' cars, because Why don't you take Annie with you? I was little trouble except for the time Billy took me to see 2001 at the drive-in, I got scared of the monkeys, and barfed in his car. I also suspect Mom thought they would drive more safely, since killing your baby sister because you ran a stop sign was a bad look, and would be less likely to shoot up the Mary Jane or whatever they did back then.** So I knew most every street in town by the time I was in kindergarten. I promise this is going somewhere.

One day, when I'm like six or seven, I'm in the back of Mom's car with Kim and her boyfriend David (later her husband after some obligatory age 20s drama), and we go past La Paloma, and its tiny sign says:

TONIGHT BOB DYLAN

And I don't know much about music at that age, but I think, He's like really famous, isn't he? I see him on those funky-tasting Columbia Record Club stamps that come in the Sunday paper. Y’know, with musicians like Melanie and The Singing Nun. Then I think, Nahhhhh, it must be a different Bob Dylan, because any musician whose name I knew absolutely would not be playing in Lincoln, let alone at a restaurant even a 7-year-old can tell is kinda sketchy. And Kim and Dave aren't saying anything, and they’re adults and therefor KNOW EVERYTHING. So it must be some other Bob Dylan who lives here or in Omaha or something. I picture an adult in a brown accountant suit, possibly doing shitty comedy like my parents watch on Ed Sullivan.

Maybe 40 years later I'm reading some book on music and it mentions the time Bob Dylan got sick of giant audiences, so he went across the US, stopping at little holes in the wall and asking if he could maybe play?

So that is the story of how my older siblings have never learned that they could have seen Bob fucking Dylan from five feet away for maybe four bucks if they had been paying fucking attention. I will never tell them. YOU MUST NEVER TELL THEM.

*Neil Hefti, jazz trumpeter and composer of the Batman theme, was Nebraskan but from a different town. Yes, THAT Batman theme.

**Two of my other siblings once tried to bake dried banana peels to smoke. I may have overestimated the intelligence of those born a decade+ before I was.

#Music history #But not particularly good music history #Bob Dylan #REM #neil hefti #2001 a space odyssey

12 notes · View notes

self-proclaimed-chaotic-good · 2 years

Text

Finding Significance in Simple Things | Jancy

Prompt: Future AU/Post-Canon

Words: 2364

Fandom: Stranger Things

A/N: A spin-off set a year after the [Somebody to Love] series. Could be read as a stand-alone, since they’re mostly background in that series. Tentative -verse name is “We Will Always Have Hawkins” or WWAHH-verse lol I think it just sounds neat and I got it from one the series' future chapters. Mentions Steddie and Jopper.

Summary: Freelance photography work had been coming in steadily, but after a while, Jonathan started to look for something more. One night, he heard rumors of sketchy activities that sounded all too familiar in a small town in Long Island.

He didn’t realize that a small place like Montauk would have this many expensive places. It was a small town east of Long Island that thrived in the fishing and tourism industry. Unlike Hawkins that didn’t really have anything noteworthy besides the so-called curse and the rest of the messed up stuff that the government covered up. What was similar, though, was the rumors behind this seemingly unassuming town. There were articles about residents reporting strange activities at the old military base, UFO sightings, random blackouts across town, clocks stopped working properly, and people going missing.

Jonathan placed the Montauk Point tour guide book down and sighed, looking at the array of articles he managed to find. It was overwhelming. While he managed to track down the connections, he still thought that Nancy would have been quicker. Nancy…

When college got busy and adjusting to life in big cities got a bit much, he and Nancy hadn’t had the chance to talk. Last time they spoke, Nancy expressed her frustrations with the school’s newspaper, how picky they were with their stories and how they always published the same people that wrote biased articles. She said that it was almost as worse than working at Hawkins Post, which was saying something.

NYU was a culture shock for Jonathan for sure. A lot of rich kids from the city that made Junior year Steve Harrington look like an innocent country bumpkin. There was also a mixture of art snobs, both elitists and nonconformists. Often, they make the same points but for different reasons. He tried to not lose sight of why he loved photography. People can lie to your face, but a moment in time can reveal many things about them. Freelance work wasn’t so bad and he used it as an opportunity to explore the city and its stories.

It was at a hole-in-a-wall nightclub where a slam poetry group was performing when Jonathan heard about the Montauk project. He snapped a photo of the next performer on stage before sitting down, getting a glass of water from the bar. There was a couple sitting next to him, speaking in hushed tones as they leaned back on the bar, facing the small stage on the other side of the room.

Jonathan took a big gulp of water and turned in his seat, eyes scanning the crowd as the performer’s voice echoed through the old dusty speakers. Many were enraptured by the performer’s voice while those on the outskirts of the tables were either zoning out or whispering amongst themselves.

“No shit!” the man sitting next to Jonathan exclaimed.

His partner hushed him, smacking his arm. “I’m serious!” they hissed, leaning in closer, “My cousin said that even the magnets stopped working. Like, how is that possible?”

The man shrugged. “Could be a coincidence. Could be something. I mean, the whole town of Montauk? There’s not even anything significant about that place.”

“Anything could be significant if something special happens to it. Who would have even given a shit about Roswell until those UFO sightings, huh? Your birthdate wouldn’t hold any significance to me if I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

“Thanks a lot, babe.”

“But, you get my point, right? This time, I know someone who saw it. The blackouts, the broken magnets, even the hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations?”

“Yeah, she said that she was walking along the beach when she thought she saw something hovering over the old air force base. Something big. It was floating in the air, then it dropped so fast that it exploded and the ground shook. Lights were flashing and everything. When she blinked, it was as if the air force was untouched, completely abandoned, and the sky was darker.”

“That’s freaky stuff.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Are you coming over for Christmas?” Will asked hopefully.

Jonathan glanced at his calendar marked with deadlines and events. Christmas was closing in fast, faster than he thought possible now that he was in a big city. Decorations were being put up since the end of October and Christmas parties were being organized. It was a good time to pick up work and as tempting as it was, he was really missing home. His family was everything to him and this was the longest he had gone away from them.

“And miss mom’s burnt gingerbread cookies? Not a chance,” Jonathan said, smiling at the memory of when their mom got distracted by something and forgot to check the oven.

The brothers fell into a comfortable silence, the sound of rustling papers could be heard from Will’s side. He had been working on a new art project when Jonathan had called. It took Will some time to readjust to life back in Hawkins, especially when Jonathan left, but with El and their friends at his side, it almost felt like he never left.

DnD had been temporarily moved to Steve’s new apartment after the school had put a halt to the Hellfire Club for the time being. Eddie was bummed out about it. He worked so hard to get it made and opened its doors to all those who were lost and sought for escapism where one could shape their own narrative in a fantasy game. El was learning how to skateboard from Max when she wasn’t being a Hawkins High undercover superhero, making bullies trip on nothing or their shorts falling down in the middle of the hallway.

“How’s it been? The city sounds crazy from how you described it,” Will said.

Jonathan huffed out a laugh, nodding. “Yeah. It feels like… everything and nothing is happening, you know? Everyone’s got their own thing going on, always on the move. When you’ve got nothing going on… it’s just nothing.”

“Are you saying that you’re bored of living in New York City?” he asked incredulously.

“No. No, it’s not that. It’s just… I don’t know.” Jonathan sat down with his chest leaning against the back of the chair. “I feel like back in Hawkins, if I don’t figure out what I wanna do with my life, then I’m stuck there. In New York, if I don’t figure it out, then I’ll be swept away.”

“So, same thing, different pace,” Will surmised.

Now that they were older, the brothers found that their talks seemed almost at an equal footing. It was always Jonathan comforting and protecting Will, but now, he’s been seeing more and more of that wiseness that Will’s friends were always talking about. Not that he didn’t know about it before, but Will was his baby brother. He was supposed to be the one to give him advice and take care of him. Finding a friend in Argyle who, while near constantly in a stoned state, had advised that he try to lessen the burden he had placed on himself and let people help take care of him.

“Yeah. I’m just looking for something to do. Things have been getting monotonous, relatively speaking. I guess with everything we’ve been through, all these things that people find so… significant seem so trivial now.”

“Maybe you need to find something worth putting value in to make it significant. Things almost feel like nothing matters, right?”

Jonathan sorted through the newspaper clippings he had and stacked them neatly in chronological order. He thought back to the couple at the slam poetry night, about how something wasn’t significant until something special happened to it.

Hawkins was a place that no one even knew about until he and Nancy released the story that got Hawkins Lab shut down and the news that covered the mess at Starcourt Mall. A cursed town in Indiana. But, it was also Jonathan’s home, where everyone that mattered to him was. Well, almost everyone.

He looked down at his palm where the scar, shining slightly under the desk lamp light, served as a reminder of the night where he and Nancy lured out the demogorgon, knowing that they could potentially die. He sometimes wondered if she ever looked at her matching scar or covered it up to forget about it.

Will knew the gears were turning in his head, going by his brother’s silence. “They’re opening up a new mall here,” he said, “Several of the local businesses are planning to relocate there. There’s even going to be a skating rink and a music stage. El’s excited about that. She managed a kickflip the other day!”

“That’s so cool. Tell her I wanna see it when I get there. No evil Russian labs under the mall this time, right?”

“Not that we know of. I’m sure that once me and El sense something, mom and Hop will catch on quickly.”

“Mom should be a detective by now. Those two make quite a duo, don’t they?” Jonathan laughed before trailing off. “How are things with them? Mom’s happy, right? No bad fights?”

“Yeah, yeah, no, she’s really happy. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time,” Will said. “Hopper… He treats her right and… he’s cool, I guess. Hey, did you know that Steve’s debating whether he should join the police force?”

“What? No way. A police officer with a former drug dealer and murder suspect for a partner?” Jonathan tried to picture Steve in that blue uniform looking exasperated at a handcuffed Eddie wearing a wide cheeky grin and snorted. He thinks that they might actually play it up and did not want to think about it any further.

“Stranger things have happened in Hawkins.”

“Oh, don’t remind me.”

“I am the reminder.”

There was no point in getting a car in New York. If he can’t walk to his destination, he’ll take the subway or the bus. If he was desperate, he’d take the cab. Getting to Montauk was going to take almost three hours of sitting in one spot, then getting a cab to one of the cheaper motels. He didn’t know why he decided to go. Maybe it was the familiarity, painful curiosity. He didn’t know what to expect either. Certainly not Nancy Wheeler at the train station.

“Nance?”

She turned, her brown curly hair swishing off her shoulders. There was a thick knitted scarf wrapped around her neck and a long trench coat tied tightly by the waist. Her large luggage was by her feet, her backpack slung over one shoulder as she bounced in her high ankle boots. Her round eyes widened when she saw him and a smile automatically spread across her face.

“Jonathan!”

The wind was knocked out of him and he wasn’t sure whether it was from the sight of her or when she slammed her body into his. His arms felt familiar around her small frame, his face aching from the sudden stretch of his lips as he felt her practically melting into him. He closed his eyes, breathing her in. Her light floral perfume, her fruity scented shampoo, and that hairspray she liked to use when her hair gets out of control.

“Nance, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be heading back home?” Jonathan asked, taking her luggage without question as he adjusted the strap of his backpack and small duffle bag.

“I was,” she said, still smiling, “But then I heard about something. Something big. I had to come and… and… I need to know what it is.”

There was that glint in her eye that he always loved. It was when she got excited, so passionate, and driven. Emerson’s school newspaper must be filled with idiots if they’re not jumping on the chance to use her stories.

“Is it the military base in Montauk?”

She nodded, grabbing his arm and leaned in to whisper, “You, too?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Wanted to take pictures that weren’t art scenes and street views for once. Think there’s an alien spacecraft? Some green people?”

Nancy rolled her eyes, walking with him towards the train. “Yeah, maybe like E.T.”

They hurried to a seat before the surge of people pushed them around and potentially separated them. They leaned back in their chairs with a sigh, taking a moment to relax and wait until everyone in the train settled for departure. Their hands were centimeters apart, but Jonathan didn’t dare to grab hers. They were on a break, a mutual decision to remain friends as they went off on their separate paths.

An hour into the ride, Nancy had dozed off, resting her head on Jonathan’s shoulder. Her left hand was slightly turned up, her matching scar on her palm peeking out. To anyone else, that scar could mean anything. Clumsiness, mostly, or accident prone. It would just be any old scar from their reckless teen years.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Nancy said softly, lifting her head slowly to look at him with a small smile.

He smiled back, bringing his left hand over next to hers. She grabbed his gently, running her smooth fingers over his scar, his own fingers giving a small twitch at the tickling sensation, before comparing them.

“Mine’s bigger,” she said, smirking.

He scoffed playfully. “Okay, it’s not a competition. I…” He trailed off as she entwined their fingers together and squeezed his hand.

“I really missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” He squeezed her hand back.

She reluctantly pulled away to dig through her backpack for her journal. Of course, she already had notes about all the abnormal sightings written in neat handwriting with notes of what they knew about Hawkins Lab and about the signs of anything related to the Upside Down. No matter how many times they helped El close the portals, that wouldn’t stop people like the Russian military from trying to open it again.

His frustration and anger of governments seeking to control something that they do not understand overrode his exhaustion from the constant fighting to keep his friends and family safe. If what’s happening in Montauk is what he and Nancy think it is, they need to stop it.

“Ready to hunt down another government conspiracy?”

“I’ll get the perfect shot if you write the perfect story.”

Nancy nodded firmly with determination in her eyes. “Just like old times.”

#writersmonth2022 #writer's month #jancy #jonathan byers x nancy wheeler #jonathan x nancy #stranger things fic #jancy fic #stranger things imagine #jancy imagine #jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #background steddie #hopper byers family #will namedrops the show

2 notes · View notes

sock-ness-monster · 3 years

Note

Excuse is granted. Please. I beg of you. Infodump away

Thank you so much I love telling people about this guy

So, to preface this, I'll be telling this story exactly how it was told to me by our camp counselor at a Caveing camp I went to, so it's very much an oral history that maybe can't be fact checked but the broad strokes are genuinely 100% true

TRIGGER WARNINGS: DEATH, DARKNESS, CLAUSTROPHOBIA, GRAVE DESECRATION, CRICKETS

Now that that's out of the way (and please mention if there's any other TW's I should add) the story of

Floyd Collins, The Man Who Was Buried Six Times

This story begins in Kentucky in 19very early, a young Floyd was plowing his family's field when he suddenly dropped through the ground and discovered an unknown cave system. Super cool! Now, people back then did not have television, keep in mind, so caves were really big deals and they were a brand new and lucrative tourist escapade. Floyd's family seized the idea and quickly made a little tourist attraction out of it and started raking in the dough. But they weren't the only ones who had a cave you could tour, Kentucky's geology is super unique in that it has tons of limestone and sandstone which is perfect for underground rivers to carve cool caves out of. They are everywhere in Kentucky and the surrounding area, there was a lot of competition for who had the best, the biggest, the longest cave. And Floyd and his brothers were seized by cave fever and were exploring all around looking for new tunnels and chambers. A large part of this business, unfortunately, was not just walking people through the caves but was letting them take home souvenirs. People could carve their names in the wall, take a stalagmite or stalactite or whatever cool rock they found. Destroying the sensitive ecosystem of the caves. Floyd, the cool dude that he was, was one of the only people who was against this at the time. Good for him! Salamanders are important!

Anyway, Floyd and his brothers are always on the lookout for new opportunities, and there were tons in that area. But, not all of them would pan out. Floyd had heard rumblings about a new cave system called Sand Cave that wasn't far from his family's original cave, which by now had been dubbed Crystal Cave. It didn't seem that promising to most, but Floyd was hoping it actually connected to Crystal cave, and they could tack on so many feet to how big their cave was. So he set off to see if he could find a connection.

He had been surveying the cave for a few hours, and decided to call it quits. He was crawling through a tight tunnel upwards toward the opening of the cave when a rock slide pinned his ankle down tight. He was laying flat with his hands reaching upwards, and there was no way for him to reach back behind him to free his ankle.

He had gone on this expedition without telling anyone.

This was the first time he got buried.

Three days pass, and his brother Homer finally finds him. He tries everything he can think of to free floyd, to no effect. Realizing that this may be a bigger endeavor than he can pull off, he crawls back out to go and find help. It is January of 1925, what else is there to do but go to the newspaper? They publish the story of the man trapped in a crawl way, and it's a huge hit!? People are fascinated by Floyds predicament. They want to help, they want to see, they want to know more. It even makes it on the radio! The three biggest news stories of the time were

1) the war (oof)

2)Charles Lindbergh (will come up again later)

And 3) Floyd in the hole

Everyone in America is anxious to find out how they rescue Floyd. "They" being everyone from the local cave experts to the military corps of engineers to the freakin freemasons, they're all trying to figure out how to free Floyd. Who, ya know, is just chillin in the cave, because caves stay at a constant temperature of ~54° , not too bad for January. His brothers and a reporter take turns crawling down to deliver him the three essentials; food, whiskey, and news. The reporter, "Skeets" Miller, would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his correspondence with floyd in the shaft. Now, as mentioned before, it is a cold and snowy January, but people (nearly 10,000 according to some reports) are so fascinated by the goings on at Sand Cave that they travel from far and wide to be there at the triumphant moment when Floyd emerges. Weeks have gone by at this point. Radio stations are reporting every day, Charles Lindbergh is hired to take photographs of the terrain from above. It's like a big party up top.

They camp out around the cave mouth.

They build fires for food and warmth.

The snow melts.

The cold water trickles down into the cave.

Floyd....... starts to cough.

The cave's already sketchy structure is further compromised.

There's another rock slide.

Floyd is now cut off from contact with the up side world, and the engineers panic and go with a last ditch effort they had been debating beforehand. They can't go around they can't go behind, the only path left was straight down. They drill a hole that reaches the 150 feet from daylight to Floyd's prison. They are too late. He was estimated to have died three to four days before they reached him. His leg is still stuck, and half his face has been consumed by cave crickets. And they just.....leave him there. Whatreyagonnado they shrug, he's already gone we can stop now. They fill in the shaft again.

This is the second time Floyd is buried.

Homer, his closest brother, can't accept this as his final resting place. A few weeks later, they un block the hole and carry Floyd to their family's funeral plot and have a small service with just his closest friends and family present.

This is the third time Floyd Collins is buried.

A few years go by, and the Collins family sells their farm and cave. Unfortunately, they did not see the part of the deed that entitled the new owners to everything in and under the property. Floyd's body is now legally theirs. He is exhumed and placed on display in a glass coffin in Crystal Cave (which years and years later would eventually be proven to connect to Sand Cave).

This is the fourth time Floyd is buried.

If you haven't pieced it together yet, caves were a pretty big deal. We now enter a time in Kentucky history known as the Cave Wars, and they are brutal. How brutal, you ask? Well, to answer with one scenario that happens to be related to this story, the owners of nearby cave were jealous of the attention Crystal Cave was getting from their cool exhibit of Floyd's body, against his family's wishes. Why, the only logical thing to do is steal the man's body and throw it off a cliff. Crystal Cave's new owners would recover it, though minus the left leg. And the next logical thing of course is to put him back on display but this time with a bunch more chains.

This is the fifth time Floyd Collins is buried.

Then, the 60s roll around and Crystal Cave and Floyd are purchased by the National Parks Service on the grounds of being connected to the Mammoth Cave System (the longest cave system in the entire world now). Floyds family is still fighting for his body, and in the 80s they finally get their wish. Floyd is removed from the cave in a 15 day trip and buried at a real cemetery again.

This, is the sixth time he is buried.

A pillar is constructed in honor and perhaps in reparations to all he's gone through, but it is struck by a semi truck and demolished less than a week after its unveiling.

Floyd.......went through a lot. All he ever wanted to do was see some cool rocks and support his family. And to this day, cavers do their best to do right by him. When entering Mammoth Cave, they often ask the darkness to look after them. They aren't talking to the darkness, of course, that darkness that can never be described properly. They are talking to Floyd. Asking him to watch over them as they wish he had someone to watch over him. In the caves everyone is above you, but that's not what they mean. And when they hear a whistle through the tunnels, they like to imagine it's Floyd. Floyd, who was right. The cave was so much more than people thought, in so many different ways. To this day, there's a saying in the caveing community.

"Floyd Lives"

It's like the geology version of "Eddie Would Go". As long as we carry on his legacy of exploring bravely, daring to go where noone has gone before, and do our best to preserve the natural beauty and habitat of the caves, floyd will live on. Floyd lives in our memories and hearts and the drips of water that will one day be pillars.

I don't really know how to end this. Here's a picture of the man himself;

(the picture above is not the tunnel he was trapped in, to be clear)

#cave camp had just such a peofimf impact on me omg #the best week of my whole life #and to think i almost chickened out the night before leaving #i still keep in contact with those guys #we all have tshirts with you guessed it floyd on them #floyd collins #caves #geology #stories #humanity #infodump #*profound i meant #claustrophobia tw #buried alive tw #darkness tw #longish post

93 notes · View notes

xgryffinwhore · 3 years

Text

mama i’m in love with a hitman

summary: two years with barry what could go wrong? oh yeah hes a murderer-

warnings: some angst, marriage proprosal oop-

you had originally begun acting because it was the only affordable option to get you some time away from your family. ya, you still lived with your family.

anyways, acting became kind of like a release for you. you had been going for about 4 months now, you loved everyone you worked with, they were such great people.

then one day, barry berkman showed up,

and basically changed your life.

the first day you saw him, your heart basically feel out of your ass. holy shit was this guy hot; tall, mysterious, and awkward as hell. perfect.

you took him under your wing, immediately engaging with him and bugging him about his person endeavors and whatnot. you two became inseparable, youre bascially the only reason he even uses his messaging app.

you showed him the ropes of LA, giving him tours of sketchy venues, shitty Chinese restaurants. you always felt so awful for him, dragging him around to every place.

"I'm sorry, barry, im just trying to give you the full LA experience"

"its ok, being seen with the prettiest girl in LA isnt so bad"

yeah, one thing led to another, and you had moved into barry's apartment a year after. your relationship was strong; you cuddle, argue, fuck, all of that modern day romance contraband.

everything was exceptional, other than the fact that he was dragging his feet on marrying you...

yeah, you had dropped some major hints. wedding magazines everywhere, leaving honeymoon deals up on the desktop, evening face timing your friend and talking obnoxiously loud about the idea of getting hitched.

tomorrow was your two year anniversary, and you two had been buzzing about it all week, all the lovey dovey language and such.

"babe, tomorrows the day" he squeezed your shoulders from behind you. you were sitting at the coffee table, and he had just served you toast. "i know old man, didnt think we'd last did ya?" "first of all, im only like four years older than you, second" he kissed you on your temple "i knew you were the one."

in the midst of sipping your coffee and passing back and forth news papers, barry’s phone begins to vibrate; the name “Fuches” catches your eye. who was fuches and why did barry have to step out of the room to answer it?

when he came back he looked ghostly, his complexion pale and his lips quivering slightly. “all ok?” you ask, trying to sound lowkey; “uh um- yep. just have to head out for a bit, they need me at work.”

he left abruptly after, grabbing a hat and his black coat. weird. it was the middle june.

you hadn’t heard from him all day, except for a text at lunch that said

barry: Won’t be home tonight, dont forget to lock up.

your heart sunk, the day before your two year. i mean really what was his damage? you didn’t realize how hard it was to fall asleep without him, you tossed and turned until you eventually caved in and called.

ring...... ring.....

ring..........ring......

‘hey! it’s barry berk-uh um block! leave a message if you want to i guess um ok bye howthefuck do i turnthisthing off-OHH!’

oh how you missed that dorky man, true, it had only been a few hours but his touch was your saving grace. the line beeped and you decided to leave him something

“aha hey bar, y/n here. beds cold without you. miss you. be safe.”

the night way cold and long, you were drifting to sleep. but you heard the front door jangle. you sleepily run down the hall way and run straight into barry. you hugged him, his bosy was stiff and he was trying to inch away from you. "bar!" you whined looking up at him, his nose was bloody and he had a black eye.

“bar?” you wiped his cupid’s bow, the sleepy haze quickly wearing off. he pushes past you “just fell, please just wait for me in bed.” by the time you caught up with him at the bathroom, the door was already shut.

you heard the shower turn on, and you could hear him faintly hiss in pain. he was in there for a while, by the time he got back you could hear the birds chirp, which means it must have been close to 5 am. the sun was still down, and you watch his dark figure slip into bed next you to.

“i love you.” he whispered

“i love you too.” you turned to face him, you knew something was up, you knew he had been hiding something.

“you always leave in the night, when i’m sleeping you always leave barry. is it another women?” barry’s face contorts into a confused scribble. “y/n what? you’re the only one.”

“then why don’t you tell me what you’re really up to. go’s we’ve been dating for two years and you can’t even tell me why you sneak away in the night?!”

barry grabs your hands and puts them close to his face “god y/n i’m sorry happy two years” he gushed and kisses your fingers. a tear trailed down his stubbly cheek. “there are just things i can’t tell you because i don’t want to lose you.”

this hurt you, barry knew all of your deepest secrets, the things you never told anyone other then him. all of this had you worked up, how could he speak to you this way the day of your two year mark? despite his protests, you packed a tooth brush and drove to your friends to stay the night. this was just too much for 3am, you needed space. to clear your head.

you didnt sleep at all that night, you nodded off from 8am to 10, your friend waking you up. "girl i know you dont want to hear this... but barry is outside, hes been parked here since 9" she threw your jeans at you "now go outside and work this shit out, im not prepared to deal with your heart boken ass."

so you put on jeans, and headed for disaster.

you came outside, 'sleepy always looks so good on her' barry thought to himself. you loved him so much, it was so hard to fight with him.

"listen bar, im sorry im just sensitive you know th-"

"y/n"

barry never interrupted you. for as long as you remember there has never once been a time where barry talked over you, or interrupted what you were saying. its something you loved about him, he always seemed so interested in what you had to say, he thought your words where so important.

"yes?"

he pulled a rolled up magazine out of his pack pocket, it was yours, it had faded circles on what cakes and dresses you wanted. he unrolled it and scurried to the 5th page. he pointed at the big raise ranch that you put exclamation points next to.

"this house, i want this house."

he went to the 8th page.

"and this car, we could have that if i stop going to wendys so much"

he giggled to himself and mumbled something about how he knows a guy that can re pair a cooling system.

'uh-um ok barry, what does this have to do with anything? house, car, is this what you drove over here to tell me? you want a better car? you need a bigger house."

he shook his head and trialed to the second page with that beautiful sheath wedding dress, you remembered that.

"youll wear this yeah? some time in the early fall. wouldnt that be nice, still warm, and the leaves-oh the leaves- orange and yellow bring out your eyes so i just figured."

he pulled out the rock, and shit, it didn’t disappoint. you’re not materialistic but what the FUCK?! how did he even afford that-

he slipped it on your finger and you both embraced. messy kisses all over whatever skin you two could find. it was bliss, it was happiness.

you hugged for a while. just sat there reflecting on how far you two had come, and how happy he was going to make you feel for the res rod your life. it’s crazy, you thought marriage wasn’t in the cards for you. but with barry, you can see 5 kids, a dog, and a stupid picket fence.

you were so captured in this moment, you didn’t notice barry’s demeanor change. you looked up and him, he was pale white, staring behind his shoulder at the street. you leaned over his forearm and saw a beat up mom car.

in it was a shaggy dude, didn’t look too much older then barry. he was plump in the face, and his face was aged.

“fuches!?” barry exclaimed.

“come on. we have a hit, i habe your sniper in the back. now.”

another WHAT?

#bill hader #bill hader imagine #bill hader fluff #barry #barry berkman #barry block #barry bergman imagine #barry berkman fluff #fluff #angst #barry x reader #barry x you #barry fluff #marriage

106 notes · View notes

nat-20s · 3 years

Text

what’s poppin everyone please have this fun lil writing warmup/short story inspired by me thinking “Dancing in the Moonlight” was definitely 100% about werewolves

~*~

“So, this your first transformation?”

The counselor? Leader? Tour guide? Asked this with a perfectly jovial tone, as if the typical social mores surrounding, ugh, lycanthropy, didn’t apply to her. They didn’t know what exact title to call her, and her name tag just said “Luna”, which, reflecting on it, either was a joke on her part or a reflection of her parents’ sense of humor.

Picking at the scabs from last month, they cringed and replied, “No. Uh. Second.”

Luna lets out a low whistle. “Oof. That sucks. Guessing you got bitten rather than inherited the ol’ wolfman gene?”

“That’s...kind of personal?”

Unlocking the front door of the log cabin that served as King Harvest’s Headquarters, Luna shrugs and says, “Shit, sorry. Forgot the whole weird stigma around your source of the once monthly nightmare, as if it fuckin matters. Also, I know, I know, ass out of you and me. Hey, you got any dietary restrictions? Gluten, peanut allergies, the like?”

Voice flat, they tell her, “I’m vegetarian,” and waits for the obvious response.

As they wander through the cabin towards the kitchen, Luna flipping on the light switches, generic club music starts to filter in. Instead of the obvious response, Luna asks, “You like veggie burgers? Or maybe pasta? I’d offer salad, but that’s really not gonna cut it for tonight.”

“I ate before I came.”

With a snort, she tells them, “Oh yeah? Did you have about 4000 calories?”

“No? Why would I have?”

Sweeping out her arm, she gestures at the food laying out on the counter and tells them, “Then eat up! 4000 is really a minimum for the night if you don’t want to feel like someone physically beat out all of your energy in the morning. 6000 is more the target area, but we got, hmm, about 15 minutes before things get uncomfortable, and half an hour max before things get dire.”

They glance down to the food, and, admittedly, the broccoli alfredo does look pretty appealing. Still, they have to ask, “Is this a cult?”

Luna lets out a bark of a laugh that has nothing to do with her (maybe) being a werewolf. “Okay, first of all, what kind of cult is like ‘fuck yeah, we’re a cult’? Secondly, despite the first thing, I can say that we’re not a cult. I know how “King Harvest: Center for Movement Therapy” sounds, both clinical and vague enough to be suspicious as hell, but I didn’t come up with the title, blame my long deceased dad for that one. Plus, ‘King Harvest: Bitchin’ Wolf Dance House’ probably wouldn’t look good on the grant applications.”

“Grants?”

“Oh yeah. This bad boy’s been publicly funded since its opening in 1972. Hence no membership fees.”

“Is that why animal control is giving out your business card? Are they one of your sponsors?”

“Nah, that’s just Jack. Me ‘n’ him go way back, hell, to his park ranger days. I mean, yeah, I think he’ll campaign for us, but mostly I think he just hates capturing a wolf in the night only to have a naked, trembling human in the morning, and he knows that our program significantly reduces the odds of that happening, at least in this neck of the woods.”

They let out a hum, then glance back down to the food. As appealing as it down look, they’re still about..30% convinced this is an elaborate organ harvesting operation. Or sketchy sex thing.

Apparently sensing their hesitation, Luna says, “You got a favorite chip?”

“Salt and vinegar.”

Grabbing a sealed family sized bag from the overhead cabinets, Luna tosses it to them. “If you come back next full moon, either eat enough in advance or have a real meal here. That being said, excuse the turn of phrase, you should wolf that down. It’s sure as hell better than nothing.”

They catch it, and the bag opens with a puff of air that speaks to a reassuring lack of tampering. As they toss a chip into their mouth, Luna grabs a water bottle from the fridge and places it down next to them. “So? Any questions for me? We’ve still got about ten minutes before we have to go out there.”

Rolling their eyes, they tell her, “No. None at all.”

“Great! Soon as you’re done eating we’ll get you started.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Yeah, no shit, smart-ass. Seriously, what are your, we haven’t got much time.”

“I don’t know? The whole..thing? I mean, how is it supposed to..work? Like? At all?”

“You ever see Amok Time?”

“Is that relevant?”

“It’s a yes or no question babe.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then the explanation is going to be a lot more technical and take a lot longer, ultimately to likely make less sense.”

“...I’ve seen it.”

“Great! So, Pon Farr is basically this chemical blood imbalance that results in fuck or die disorder, yeah? But then Spock neither fucks nor dies, and eventually the vulcans get their shit together and find out that an intense fight can serve the same function, and the blood fever chills out. Lycanthropy operates on a similar enough basis for comparison. You’re compelled to act out on energetically heavy base instincts, returning to the ways of the wolf or whatever. Traditionally, that’s done through running and hunting, which has, historically, been a crapshoot at best. Theoretically, sex can also get the job done, but I’m sure you can imagine how that gets extremely dicey extremely quickly. Either restraints or isolation has been implemented for a while, but, c’mon, they’re bandaid solutions, and they’re far from foolproof. Luckily for us all, my grandmother decided to connect back with her ancestors, and there was a handful of stories having huge festivals to deal with ‘moon violence’. She tried it out, and, yeah, dancing works.”

“That sounds…”

They don’t know how that sounds. Made up, mostly.

“Like a bunch of hippie bullshit? Yeah, it kind of is, Grandma Josephine was a huge hippie, but it’s hippie bullshit that works. In fact, let’s go see the others, it almost always makes things clearer.”

Figuring that whatever they’re about to see can’t be worse than their transformation last month. They head through the sliding glass door out the back, the thump of the music suddenly loud enough to be felt in their chest. The sight that awaits them makes them drop their chips and let out a gasp. Barely able to speak, they exhale out, “None of them...they’re not wolves. How..how??”

Indeed, the roughly forty people jumping to the pulse of whatever they’re listening to (some to the in house DJ, some, apparently, to what’s playing over the large headphones they have adorned), resemble the image of a wolfman much more accurately. They bare claws, fangs, elongated snouts, upright ears, and serious amounts of hair, but they’re on two legs, and moving like humans. Some of them are even singing along to the lyrics, which really shouldn’t be possible.

Luna grins, making it obvious that she’s used to this level of shell shocks. “Ultimately, you do have to give into some damn rigorous instincts. But dancing is a human instinct, not a canine one, so you end up, well, humanoid. Pretty nifty, huh?”

“And they all..they all keep their minds? I didn’t...they don’t blackout?”

“Not since we banned alcohol in the 90s! Here, watch this.”

Luna nods her head at the DJ, and the DJ, obligingly, turns down the music for a moment. The members of the crowd not listening to their own music pause, then look towards the door. She cries out, “Hey gang! HOW WE ALL DOIN’ TONIGHT?”, and gets a mix between a howl and “WOO!” cried back. The DJ then turns the music back up, and the general movement of the crowd resumes.

They should be more skeptical. They want to be more skeptical, they were just minutes before, but it’s hard to disagree with something right in front of you. “This will work for me? I just..have to dance?”

“Well, it’s not guaranteed. Few things are. But we have yet to have someone turn violent on us. If you start to fell yourself slipping from consciousness, though, I do ask that you start heading further into the woods, as to not hurt other guest. If you find yourself just getting tired, there’s beds inside, and a fair amount of pillows around the edge of the quote unquote dance floor, if you end up in more of a nesting mood. Also, I recommend taking off your shoes before you start.”

“What? Why?”

Luna gives a pointed glance at the dancers’ feet, which, ah. They’re about twice as large as normal and at least twice as sharp. The converse on their feet would be no match. “Ah.”

“Ready?”

They shove off their shoes and place the remainder of their chips aside. “As I’ll ever be.”

Good thing, too, as they’re starting to feel an uncomfortable pressure in their chest that was the prelude to disaster last month.

Luna strides to the center of the dance floor, which is really a plush lawn surrounded by forest. The crowd naturally moves around her, and she yells out, “Aiyana! Play my song!”

Aiyana gives a nod, and the opening notes of “Dancing in the Moonlight” start to sound out. “Seriously?”

Luna shrugs, grinning like a fool, and says, “It’s a classic!”

“It’s cliché at best.”

Luna shrugs, and then begins dancing. She’s hardly elegant, but she is dazzlingly joyful in her uncoordinated movements. As the song reaches the first chorus, she gives a twirl, and in the split second it takes, she’s transformed. They blink in shock, not knowing you could transform that seamlessly, that quickly, that painlessly. Luna in half wolf form is just as expressive as the human Luna, and she gives a nod over her shoulder as if to say Come on.

Feeling somewhat foolish, they start to bop their head to the tune. Luna lets out a huff and grabs their hands, spinning them around and forcing them to get moving. At first, it’s them indulging Luna, but as they let themselves get lost in rhythm, they feel a stretching sensation in their face and limbs. It’s not unpleasant, more like when you wake up and work out the tension in your spine. They open their eyes and look down at their hands, now covered in fur in and made for slashing. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt, and they’re still themselves, and they had no idea that full moons could be like this, maybe for the rest of their lives.

They turn their head to the night sky, and their body can’t help but continue to dance. Despite all their fear, all their dread, “movement therapy” worked, and they can admit, at least to themselves, that they feel warm and bright.

#my writing #nats journey into writing short stories based on 70s songs continues lmao

66 notes · View notes

luvspence · 3 years

Text

roommates (III)

i’m literally obsssed

I, II , IV<- additional roommate fluff

prompts i used: 1 2 3

spencer reid x reader

synopsis: and they were roommates

word count: 1.3k

masterlist

————

sunday paper

to you the paper was just something to be eventually recycled

but to spencer it was something so special, so special he’d wake up at 8 am on a sunday just to grab it. usually waking you up in the process

“spencer why”

he was perched on his chair, coffee in hand getting settled in to read

“why what?”

“why must you get up at 8 am, that stupid news paper would still be there at noon”

“i don’t wanna risk the neighbors stealing it, they’re sketchy y/n”

“believe me spencer no one wants to steal your news paper, and anyways wake up when you want but you don’t need to be so loud”

“hey it’s not my fault i tripped over your 100 cords plugged into the wall”

you rolled your eyes are we about to go back to bed when spencer called out

“so you don’t want the cross word y/n?”

you immediately turned around, you had a love for crosswords

you stood in front of him “give it”

he tuts “i thought you said my news paper was stupid”

“it is, give me the cross word”

“you have to respect the newspaper to get the cross word”

you scoffed

“fine i respect the news paper”

“and?”

“and??????”

“what else”

“it’s very cool and it’s totally not a waste of paper and ink when you could just look at news online”

he nods and hands you the crossword, that you work on fervently

——

white board

you and spencer had a little white board that was on your fridge, you’d write little notes to each other as you came and went

“we’re out of coffee creamer

- reid”

“okay i’ll get more creamer, why do you sign your name? there’s only two people living here

-l/n”

“the new creamers great, thanks. and i don’t know what if someone broke in and decided to leave a note. it could’ve been them

-reid”

“fair enough, have a good day spence!

-l/n”

—

“y/n, question that’s too awkward to ask any other way: do you miss me when i leave on cases?

-reid”

“yeah of course i do, i miss having someone to talk to constantly, of course i miss my best friend when he’s gone spencer was kind of question is that. but it’s not too bad because we work together and we’re always on the phone. anyway yeah i do

-l/n”

“oh okay, that’s good to hear because i miss you too, i never wake up in the middle of the night to find morgan baking in our hotel. and i miss hearing the singing from the bathroom. anyways,,, we’re leaving on a case tonight (as your most likely aware). don’t forget to feed the fish for me!

-reid”

“have a good day y/n!

-reid

p.s. attached is a drawing of a lady bug!“

“i quite enjoy your lady bug spencer, have a good day as well!

-l/n

p.s. i tried to draw a bee”

“y/n i love you but that’s the most a.) terrible drawing of a bee and b.) most scientifically un accurate bee i’ve ever seen, why is its stinger so big?

-reid”

“dont stinger shame my bee, he likes himself how he is

-l/n”

——-

blackouts

you and spencer were both in the home office, you were sitting through emails and spencer was reading a book under the lamp, when suddenly the light went out

“my computer! i was just- my emails!!”

“ugh now i can’t see my book”

“dont you have that book memorized at this point spencer”

“yes, but i like to re read”

you laughed and went under the sink to pull out the flash lights

you stood up, immediately tripping over spencer

“jesus christ spencer dont sneak up on me like that”

he caught you mid fall

“apologies, do the flash lights work?”

you clicked them on and off, gave the back of them a good smack as well

“shoot no, i think i have some candles”

you wandered off into your room, spencer hearing another loud thump and rushing to see if you were okay

“y/n?? are you okay?”

“yes i’m fine, this wall came out of no where”

you found the few candles and the lighter, giving a couple to spencer to spread around the apartment

you were criminally bored, your whole life revolves around your computers, which were useless without an electricity

spencer was reading his book next to one of the candles, he looked like an 18th century philosopher, crouched down with a tiny worn out book in his hands, next to the light of a candle

you were hanging backwards off the couch in boredom

“spencerrrrrrrr”

“yes?”

“i’m bored. the super said the power won’t be back for a whole TWO hours”

spencer looked around, your apartment wasn’t nearly illuminated enough to play any sort of game

“do you want me to read to you?”

he flashed you the book, “the prince” by niccolo machiavelli

“it is much more secure to be feared than loved”

“ahh you’re an expert already”

he crawled on the couch next to you, moving another candle near him to start and reading the pages to you

you listening peacefully as spencer read the pages to you, his voice like music to your ears

———

spiders

spencer was finishing up his nightly routine, about to enter his bed when he heard a scream from tour room

he immediately ran in “what’s wrong? are you okay?”

you trembled as you pointed to the spider on your wall, you then took refuge under spencer’s arm

“y/n seriously? it’s not going to hurt you”

“i don’t careeeeeee!! spence kill it please please please”

he looked at you, you were glossy eyed and had a terrible fear of spiders. he didn’t wanna kill it, but he’d do anything for you, including insect murder

he grabbed a tissue and crushed the spider, disposing of it in the trash

“my hero!” you flung your arms around him, he stroked the back of your head

“y/n if the food chain in this apartment is thrown off now i’m blaming you”

———

keys

“hey y/n you ready to go home?”

you wearing in the cave with penelope

“hey tonight i’m gonna stay a little late, penelope can give me a ride home”

“oh okay, see you at home then”

you guys waved to each other

penelope started to tease

“you’re so in love”

“am not!”

penelope put her best spencer impression on

“are you ready to go home the dearest y/n? ready to come with me? your genuis future boyfriend?”

you threw a piece of paper at her

“shut up! oh my gosh it’s not even like that”

a couple minutes later you get a call from spencer

“hey spence what’s up?”

“okay so, i um. am locked out? i t-think my key fell out on the jet?? i’ll check tomorrow but for now can you please come and open the door for me”

you laughed and told penelope

“yes of course i can my love, sit tight i’ll see you soon”

“okay thank you y/n, bye”

you put down your phone and laughed to yourself a bit

penelope dropped you off at your yet apartment, you found spenxer sitting on the steps on the front door

“spencer?”

“oh hi y/n sorry for making you come out”

“hey no worries, i live here too”

you opened the door and spencer followed you in

“thank you y/n, you’re the very best roommate”

you nodded but in your head you said

“if you like me as a roommate you should see me as a girlfriend”

#criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fluffy #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer x y/n

98 notes · View notes

conradscrime · 3 years

Text

The Watcher

March 28, 2021

In June 2014 Derek Broaddus and his wife Maria closed in on their dream home located at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey. The house was beautiful and included 6 bedrooms, which was perfect because the Broaddus family had three children. It was spacious and the perfect family home. Maria had been raised in Westfield and this new home was only a few blocks away from her childhood home. Derek had grown up in Maine and worked for an insurance company and had worked his way to becoming senior vice-president.

The Broaddus’ wanted some renovations done and a few days after closing in on the house Derek went to do some painting of his own. While he was there he happened to check the mail and found an envelope with the words to “The New Owner” scrawled in chunky letters.

The letter read,

“Dearest new neighbour at 657 Boulevard, allow me to welcome you to the neighbourhood. 657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out.“

Whoever had written the letter seemed to already know a decent amount of information about the Broaddus family including their children, knowing how many they had, though the writer had not yet identified their names.

A letter from the writer about the children is as follows,

“Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too [sic] me.“

The Broaddus family had no idea who could be sending the letters, the writer only signed them as being written by “The Watcher.”

Derek was obviously freaked out at the amount of information this unknown person already knew about the family. Also the way the letters are written is very strange and very sinister, it doesn’t really seem like a joke. Derek called the police who were just as confused as him over the contents of the letters and asked if Derek had any known enemies.

The Broaddus family could not think of anyone that would be sending these kinds of letters to them. They contacted the couple that had sold them the house, John and Andrea Woods and asked them if they had ever received any letters during the time they lived at 657 Boulevard. Andrea Woods claimed that a few days before they moved out of the house they had in fact received a sketchy letter in the mail from someone referring to themselves as The Watcher. However, that was the only letter John and Andrea had ever received from The Watcher and they had lived in the house for 23 years. They did think the letter was odd but didn’t think much of it and threw it out.

The police felt that whoever this Watcher person was must be a neighbour living near the house. They advised the Broaddus family to not mention these letters to anyone while they investigated potential neighbourhood suspects.

In the coming weeks the Broaddus family was starting to unpack things into the house and it seemed as though the Watcher was present for all of this. Maria had received another letter this time addressing both her and Derek as “Mr. and Mrs. Braddus.” Though the Watcher spelled their last name wrong they were obviously close enough in earshot to hear. The Watcher also named the three children in birth order and knew of their nicknames.

The letters started getting even creepier. One letter in particular mentioned the sleeping arrangements and what bedrooms the children would have.

“Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I’ll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.“

A suspicious thing happened when one day Derek was showing the renovations they made to another couple living on the block. During the tour the wife said, “It’ll be nice to have some young blood in the neighbourhood.” Young blood is something that only the Watcher had said in their letters about the Broaddus children.

Closer and closer to move in day and the Watcher was definitely around.

“I pass by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too Braddus family. Welcome to the product of your greed! Greed is what brought the past three families to 657 Boulevard and now it has brought you to me.Have a happy moving in day. You know I will be watching.“

The Broaddus’ seemed too afraid to move into their new dream home due to the letters and they were scared for their children’s safety. One potential suspect, a man named Michael Langford who lived in a house nearby and did not work. He lived with his mother, Peggy Langford who was up in her 90′s. Several of Peggy’s adult children lived with her, most of them in their 60′s which seemed odd to Derek.

The Langford’s had lived there since the 1960′s which the first letter from the Watcher confirmed that’s when their father had started watching 657 Boulevard. Richard Langford died 12 years earlier and it would make sense that Michael took over for him, considering the Watcher’s letter said they had been watching for ‘the better part of two decades.’

Michael was questioned but there was never enough evidence to charge him with anything. The police were pretty much tied with no evidence which led Derek and Maria to become quite frustrated. They didn’t feel safe in their new home, their dream home that they just wanted to enjoy. Derek and Maria tried to investigate themselves, finding out that the only family that had lived in the neighbourhood since the 1960′s was the Langfords. They even hired their own private investigator but no new information was found.

There were a few other sketchy occurrences. For example, one of the housepainters noticed that the couple who lived behind the Broaddus family had two lawn chairs that seemed to be really close to the Broaddus house. One day the painter looked out the window and noticed the man sitting in one of the chairs, facing the Broaddus’ house.

The Broaddus family did not feel comfortable moving into 657 Boulevard and they had already sold their house so they moved in with Maria’s parents for the time being. They still paid the mortgage and property taxes on 657 Boulevard, but refused to live there and put their children in harms way.

Six months after buying 657 Boulevard, the Broaddus family put it up on the market. They originally priced it higher than they had paid for because they made a lot of renovations, but no one wanted to buy it because of gossip about the Watcher.

Derek and Maria filed a legal complaint against the Woods’ on June 2, 2015 about a year after they first bought the house. They felt that the Woods’ should have let them know that they had received a letter from the Watcher before selling them the house. The Woods’ claim that they did not disclose the information about the letter because they didn’t find it threatening, they had never felt ‘watched’ in 23 years, in fact they rarely ever locked their doors while living there.

The Watcher sent the Broaddus family 3 letters in total, all about details about the house and their life. It was reported that a neighbour living at 633 Boulevard had also received a letter from the Watcher around the same time the Broaddus family did, though not a whole lot of information has come out about that.

In July 2019 the Broaddus family finally sold 657 Boulevard for $959,000, about $400,000 cheaper than they paid for it. Some people believe that the Broaddus family themselves were writing the letters to themselves as some scheme, to get a movie deal or maybe realized they couldn’t afford to have the house and wanted to get out of the deal, though to me it seems strange that they would do that because they lost their dream home and they lost a lot of money in the process of selling the house.

No one has ever been charged for being The Watcher and this case remains unsolved.

#unsolved #unsolved true crime #true crime #truecrime #the watcher #newjersey

23 notes · View notes

freebooter4ever · 2 years

Text

Guys i might do something completely batshit and take the cabin room

My programmer buddy, who lived in laurel canyon himself and was singing its praises when i first mentioned i responded to an ad there, is now being my voice of reason and voting no but my mind is all over the place - and it might be the sleep deprivation.

My poor friend, i called him the minute i drove away tonight but he was like 'yeah by the second hour i was ready to send out a rescue party'. Cause what started as 'im just going to see the place at night' turned into an hour and a half long conversation with an old tennant now living in nyc, and then another tour of the house with more details about how each piece was built. The 'writers' room was panneled in ceder - which is like...my safe wood, my home, i owned a beautiful ceder chest as a child that sat at the foot of my bed and sometimes i would crawl into it just to be surrounded by that smell, it's the only furniture from my dad's house that i kept.

Tonight felt reminiscent of that first night i came to LA and ended up at the artist's house, still grieving, lost and desperate for guidance, and me and this total stranger sat on the back porch and talked for hours about art and philosophy. And now they are so a part of my life i cant imagine it without them.

You know those people who can see people? Sometimes i imagine myself to be one, but then you meet someone who sees people even better than you and its just like wait, no, lol i dont know if i WANT someone to see those parts of me im not comfortable with just within a few hours. Some big personality things but also little things like how i remember my grandfather with his old jeans jacket and hydroplane pin, or my grandma's silly red knit vest. And the owner of this house read my entire email. I dont like sending one default email to all these rooms and houses ive been applying to - i customize each one, and ive been getting so so worried that i put too much of my personality into these stupid intro emails, and that maybe thats why i keep getting rejected because who wants to live with this much stupid personality so i started reducing the amount of info i dumped into them. (also so many times i gave out my insta when requested and immediately got ghosted - i dont know what it is about my insta that is off putting bc it feels benign to me just snapshots and selfies and too many turtles but????)(its not influencer style LA...at all. And sometimes i think thats what people are looking for and i feel like shit for not measuring up) But with this ad i thought a)it was so slightly sketchy i didnt think there was any actual chance it could work out and b)didnt have anything to lose anyway? So i just put it all out there in writing and he liked it. Said he felt i would fit.

There are plenty of logical reasons NOT to take the room. And there are a few emotional reasons as well - i think i am running from the rigid weirdness my current place has unintentionally turned into (i blame the pandemic and close quarters) and this cabin is total chaos in comparison. And this cabin feels more established. Not so egaltarian of a community as say the burbank house with the yellow rocking chair named tiffany.

Im going to sleep. Im going to sleep for more than five hours tonight and when i wake up i'll be more sane again and i will probably not take the room. But in an alternate universe somewhere i was a little bit braver and i totally did lol.

#My friend has never seen this side of me #I think i put him in a bit of a shock lol #I dont really advertize it to my more programming minded people #Journal shit

5 notes · View notes

winghero-writing · 4 years

Note

Can u please do a hawks x winged reader? Like maybe one day hes doing a night flight but sees someone zooming by, so he becomes confused because as far as he knows hes the only hero with wings in bis area. So he goes to check it oht but its just some civilian and from there they quickly become interested in each other? srry if thats too specific

Hey! Sorry, this took so long but I hope that you enjoy it!

Have a great day and take care!

It wasn't weird in Kyushu to see the Number Two Hero patrolling at night. Civilians could see him flying above in the day and night. Only him, the hero known for his red wings in his prefecture. And the only one with wings in Kyushu.

Like any other night, Hawks was patrolling. Tsukuyomi wasn't with him anymore since he needed to go back to UA so he didn't have a partner to talk to in his night strolls.

This nocturnal patrolling always made him feel alone but when Tsukuyomi came along it was different. He finally had someone to talk to and enjoy his time.

Sadly, right now, he doesn't have a partner to accompany him.

Trying to get rid of the lonely feeling, he tried to search for some building high enough to see Kyushu from the roof.

'Ah, that one is perfect!'

It didn't take him long to get to it and get comfortable. His posture relaxed but he was still ready for anything that could happen.

Time began to pass and nothing happened in Kyushu. The prefecture is peaceful and calm and with the Number Two in there, villains don't show up so much.

What Hawks didn't expect was to see something pass right before his eyes. Pass? More like flew.

It was a bird, this thing was bigger so it couldn't be an animal.

His curiosity took the best of him, he found himself following this thing. He took notice of how fast it was since it was difficult to keep up with it.

After some minutes following it, the thing (that's how he calls it) stopped flying and just as he did before, it got comfortable in some building's roof.

As he began to get closer, he could finally see some characteristics. The first thing that caught his attention was the wings. They similar to his own, one could say that they were the same, but his were red, the other person had white wings.

His thoughts stopped when he found himself in front of this person.

Finally, he could see that the other winged person was a girl. She looked like his age, maybe one year younger. She didn't have a hero costume.

'A civilian?'

"Uh... Hey?" Hawks was cut off his thoughts again by the voice of the girl in front of him.

He smiled instantly at the girl, a poor attempt to hid his surprise.

"Hey! I haven't seen you here before." He pointed at the space beside the girl, asking her silently if he could sit beside her.

She just nodded. "I arrive a few days ago." She turned to look at the city.

"Mmh, I expected that. I didn't know anybody with wings here. At least not a hero."

"Yeah..."

Hawks didn't let go unnoticed the way the girl answered. He hasn't seen this girl before and she was kind of sketchy. But even if he found this girl beside him a little suspicious, he is still excited to meet someone with wings like him.

"I'm no criminal if that's what you're thinking..."

"And why should I believe you?"

"You got me there." She chuckled. "Believe me, I got here a few days ago and I was just seeing go is the city. I haven't had the chance to roam around so I took what I had at the moment and when out for a night tour."

Hawks likes to think of him as smart. And his job as a hero makes him believe that even more. The Commission has always price him and told him that he is good at it too. He didn't found anything weird or out of place with this girl after what she said.

'Yeah... She sounds normal.'

He hummed to himself.

"Okay then. I'll believe you." He didn't let his guard down yet. "So. Why are you in Kyushu? Not gonna lie, it's exciting to meet someone with wings like me!"

Y/N didn't answer him immediately, and again, this doesn't go unnoticed by Hawks.

"Work."

He let out a sigh. He wouldn't be able to get information out of her if he keeps making questions. He decided to change the topic and have a friendly conversation. So he asks her for her name

"Oh, sorry! My name is Y/N." She smiled at him. Hawks didn't know why he felt something in his stomach when he saw her smile directed to him.

"It's fine. I was the one who started talking to you, I should have present myself. I'm Hawks!"

"I've heard about you! The Number Two right?"

He laughed a little and nodded her head at her.

They kept talking freely. Hawks tried to push his thoughts about the girl's suspicion answers but they stay there. When it was getting too late for her to stay out she said goodbye and left the place.

Hawks was interested in her. She was attractive in appearance and intellect. He found himself thinking about the possibility of meeting again.

- Time Skip -

A week has passed since their encounter. Hawks had seen Y/N walking around like any other civilian and some nights they meet in the same roof.

Right now he is in his nightly patrolling like always. He didn't see Y/N in the usual roof but he couldn't worry for long with the sounds of fighting were near him.

Hawks flew towards the noises. He was sure it was a villain trying to cause havoc in the city, he was prepared to meet that kind of sight.

So when he was met with Y/N, the same Y/N that he has been talking to this past week, who he knew that she wasn't a hero, fighting against these two guys and winning, it was a big surprise.

It didn't take her long to pin them to the floor and make the two villains surrender. She was about to take out some cuffs to put in their wrists when she found Hawks grinning at her.

"Well~ if it isn't Miss 'I'm not a hero'" He saw her smile a little at his comment. It made him happy to know that she smiled when he talked.

"Technically, I'm not a hero. What I do is illegal since I don't have a license." She finished her previous action, the two villains were handcuffed now. "I'm more of a vigilante." Hawks blushed when she smirked at him.

He took the guys from her hands and with his feathers, he took them to the nearest police station. He knew that the police could recognize his feathers so they knew what to do when the villains arrive there.

"Well then Miss Vigilante. Would you let this hero take you out on a date?"

Y/N put her fingers above her mouth like she was thinking. She was just teasing him. She wouldn't pass the opportunity to go out with him.

"I think I have some free time I'm the night." She turned to smile at him.

"See you in the roof?"

"You can count on me."

The two of them got out of the alley with a big smiled on both of their faces.

The two of them had the same thought on their heads at the moment.

'Tomorrow night is going to be interesting.'

#my hero academia keigo takami #hawks x reader #takami keigo x reader #keigo takami x reader #takami keigo #bnha hawks #hawksbnha #mha hawks #boku no hero academia hawks #bnha x reader #mha x reader #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero academia x reader #boku no hero x reader

356 notes · View notes

secretlynestaarcheron · 3 years

Text

ANGSTMAS DAY SIX

Nessian AU // the wedding

“How did you know I was here?” Cassian asks as he looks at Nesta who looked out of place against the stark white walls of the hospital room. She shuts the door and turns back towards him, crossing her arms as she looks him up and down.

He suddenly felt very exposed as he sat in the hospital bed connected to IVs. He couldn’t get away from her stare even if he wanted too. “How do you think? Mor texted me to ask if I could bring you a duffle bag of fresh clothes. Why didn’t you tell me you were admitted?” she asks the hurt clear in her eyes. “I didn’t even know your cancer was back.”

Cassian swallows. “Did Mor tell you anything else?” he asks.

“I know you’ve been lying to me,” she replies, looking down at her shoes as she looks back up at him. “You’ve been going to chemo for a month. How did I not see it? I-,” her voice cracks and she looks up at the ceiling blinking back her tears as she looks back at him. “Did you not trust me?”

Cassian frowns as he reaches out towards her. She takes the few steps to close the distance, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his shoulder. “I had too, for me, and its not because I don’t trust you,” Cassian replies. “You were there for me as a friend when I went through chemo the first time in highschool, then there for me as a girlfriend when it came back in college, I couldn’t have you be here now as a fiancé. I felt ashamed.”

She pulls away from him to look at him. “Why would you feel ashamed? You can’t help this Cassian,” she says, reaching over to put a hand on his cheek he leans into her touch. “I would have been here with you, I know how hard it was to go through chemo alone.”

“You just published a novel, you have a book tour, you’re working on a sequel. I didn’t want to pull you away from your work,” he says.

She frowns, her eyes softening as she looks at him, she says, “I would do anything for you Cassian, especially if it was my work. I can write another book in a year or ten, I don’t care.”

“I didn’t want to believe it,” he explains. “Three times the charm, right?” he laughs as he puts his head in his hands but they quickly turn into sobs. “I don’t want to go through it again. I don’t want to do this again. I didn’t think I was going to make it last time, I was so weak.”

Nesta pulls him into her chest as he continues crying. “I am sorry, Cassian. I’ll never know what you’re going through but I am here for you. I will always be here for you, Cas.” she says.

He pulls away from her to look at her. “I got my scans back, it's worse. It’s so much worse than last time, it’s spread,” he says, his voice breaking. “I made an actual will a couple of days ago. Rhysand went with me. I want you to have everything.”

Nesta swallows, running a hand through his hair as she puts her chin on the top of his head. He shakes his head, “If I am still alive by the wedding I doubt I’ll even be able to participate,” he retorts. “All I want right now is to get married to you.”

“We will get married, you’re not going anywhere until you see my dress,” she whispers against his head. “I look really hot.”

He chuckles, kissing the crook of her neck before pulling away to look at her fully. “I am in love with you,” he says, falling back onto the pillow and inhaling, she could tell how weak he must be feeling. She could see it in his eyes.

“I love you too,” she whispers, squeezing his hand as she leans down to kiss his cheek. His eyelids are heavy as he looks at her. “I’ll let you sleep. I’ll be back tonight, okay?”

He nods, opening his mouth to say something but sleep grabs him first. She lifts hand to wipe the stray tear that fell. She remembers how bad it was in highschool, but Cassian’s positivity never faltered, but when he went in for a check up junior year to learn his cancer was back he was heartbroken. He was angry at the world.

She didn’t think he would make it because of how weak he was.

She turns to look at him before exiting the room and shutting the door between them. He was giving up. That’s why he didn’t want her to know, he knew that she asked him to fight but he didn’t want to. He may not even be doing it subconsciously but she could see he was done.

She pulls out her phone, dialing Mor who answers immediately. “Mor, I need your help.”

“Anything.” Mor replies just as quickly.

They were able to set everything up in about six hours. Nesta looks around a meeting room located on the same hospital floor as Cassian. They pulled out all the furniture, sent up a small arch with fairy lights and flowers spread about the room. “I love it, thank you so much, Mor,” Nesta says.

Mor pulls her into a hug. “I am sorry you’re going through this,” Mor says, “But I am so happy for you and Cassian.” Nesta smiles as she squeezes her best friend closely. “Rhy and Az are getting Cassian dressed as we speak and all we need to do is get you dolled up.”

Nesta pulls away from Mor and wipes her tears. “Don’t mess up your makeup, Nes!” Mor says quickly as she waves her hand in front of her face. “Come on, Elain is waiting to do your hair.”

Nesta was nervous as she looked at herself in the mirror. She felt overwhelmed. It was everything she could hope for, her dress was beautiful, Mor did her makeup and Elain did her hair, but she couldn’t help but be reminded of the sadness of the situation when she would hear a code announced over the intercom or hear the nurses chatting.

She was getting married in a hospital because her husband to be was dying.

Feyre comes up next to her in the mirror. “Mom would be so proud of you,” she says, pulling Nesta into a side hug. “You’re beautiful, Nes. You ready?”

Nesta gives her a small smile and nods. “As I’ll ever be,” she states and Feyre hands her a small boutique of flowers. She waits outside the door, biting her thumb nail as Feyre holds her other hand. They hear the faint hum of music and Feyre squeezes her hand. “Let's get you hitched.”

Feyre walks through the door, followed shortly by Nesta. Cassian was standing at the top of the makeshift aisle, Rhysand and Azriel behind him. Elain, Lucien, Mor, and Amren stood alongside the aisle. Cassian looked exhausted, but he broke out into a big smile when he saw her appear.

She made the short walk towards, handing the boutique to Mor who was standing in the front before taking his hands. Rhysand stepped up and says, “Thanks to working in politics I have been able to get a wedding certificate and thanks to a sketchy ordain website I can legally get these two hitched.”

The group laughs, as Cassian wraps her arm around her waist to better steady himself, Nesta grips his forearm and gives him a concerned look. He gives her a soft smile, “I am fine,” he whispers and she nods, but not believing it. “And you were right.”

She gives him a quizzical expression. “Right about what?”

He smirks, “You do look hot in your dress,” he whispers in her ear as Rhysand begins the wedding ceremony.

For the first three months of their marriage it would consist of Nesta working in the day and popping in during lunch or for a quick hello and squeezing next to each on the small hospital bed. Nesta knew he was putting on a brave face for her, he would smile and joke but once she shut the door she could hear the loud coughing he had been trying to keep down.

Nesta had been hoping and praying to every god to let her have more time with him. She thought her prayers had been answered when she walked into the hospital one evening to Cassian standing in regular clothes with a packed duffle bag next to him. “I get to go home,” he says, breaking out into a grin.

“Are you serious?” she asks, once he nods she quickly moves towards him and throws her arms around him. “You get to come home,” she whispers.

He was home for a week before it got bad again. He would wake up shaking and coughing, running to the bathroom to throw up. He fell back into bed, his face pale and a layer of sweat on his forehead, she pressed her hand against his forehead. “We should go to the hospital, Cas,” Nesta whispers.

Cassian shakes his head, his eyes closed, he turned on his side and reached out to pull her close to him. “You are burning up, Cassian. We should go to the hospital,” she says, beginning to pull away and look around the dark room for her phone. “I am calling an ambulance.”

He grabs onto her. “Just let me hold you, okay,” he says his voice cracking.

She falters, looking at his face, his eyes were still closed but he looked peaceful. Her breath hitched in her throat as he gripped her waist. She would sit for one minute, then she would force him to go to the hospital. She didn’t get to the full minute before he became shaking uncontrollably, she reached over and flicked on her lamp. She tried shaking him but he was unresponsive. She reaches for her phone and dials 911, cursing herself for waiting so long but part of her knew that this could be the last time she got to feel his embrace and she wanted to savor it. It was selfish.

They were married for three months and one week before Nesta became a widow.

#angstmas 2020 #nessian fanficition #nessian #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #nesta and cassian au #nesta x cassian au #nesta x cassian fanficition #acotar au #acotar fanfiction

31 notes · View notes

katcadecascade · 3 years

Text

ORV DND Episode 2

The GM tells us five PC that Main Scenario #2 has begun right as the bus we’re in breaks down in the middle of the road.

It’s called The Guide where we have to meet some guide, meaning that now things are going to divert from canon Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. My GM friend already warned me not to expect the scenarios to be the same but I’m still paranoid to what’s to come because then this sub scenario pops up.

Sub Scenario: Survive Mental Prison.

A fog cloaks our surroundings and we must roll a constitution check. Two PC use their attribute skills to be immune to the fog, while the rest of us roll our dice. I succeed but the other two PC fail and thus describe their selves in a state of panic.

It takes a while for us to drag those two out of the bus as we run to the safety of an abandoned convenient store. Along the way we had to discard half our of equipment to speed up our progress. It took a lot of our braincells to remember that our suitcases can weigh us down.

Anyway we escape the fog and rest in the store. We eat some food, rest up, have our PCs interact and name a cat Sprinkles.

Okay so I forgot to mention this in the last episode post, there was a cat that I thought about killing for the first scenario but in the end I choose to kill a person. As for the cat, well it killed a rat and survived. Does this cat have a constellation sponsor? I don’t know.

We’re still deciding what to do at this point. Our only leads are from an email that brought us all to that bus that was supposed to take us to Disneyland. Our best guess is that Disneyland is where our guide for the second scenario is.

And then busting out of the employee only door is a bunch of hooded people. These new NPCs are clearly in a well organized group, they have gas masks and bags full of food. The NPC with a sword interrogates us, asking how we survived the first scenario. The PCs who only killed insects or a plant are open about it but me and last PC reluctantly share that we killed people.

From an insight roll, the NPCs were not expecting that. My guess was that they also killed people and to hear that there was another way pass that to survive was tough to realize.

The sword NPC then tells us that there are people sheltered in a mall nearby. Their group has it barricaded and their leader sent them out to get more food supply. We get to talking a bit more and with some high charisma rolls we learn something important.

The NPCs shared that they were from different Scenario #1 groups and that their Scenario #2 are also different.

As a reader of ORV, I did not see that coming. Lowkey, I did expect the GM to directly use canon scenarios but the idea of people getting different scenarios and advancing at different paces did not form in my brain.

One PC raises the question of what if these NPCs has a scenario to kill us.

Another PC suggests we have the cat do a vibe check.

Sprinkles the cat looks at the NPCs and meows in approval.

So we go with them. They give us their extra gas masks and we go through the fog and reach a mall. If you’ve ever seen Netflix’ Daybreak, the mall is like that, the shuttered pulled down and barricaded. Inside we meet the leader of all these hoods.

I quickly realize this is like a thuggish version of Inho Cheon and Geumho Station. This leader NPC believes in survival of the fittest and gathers other strong people to follow his lead. The mall has the same division of power, people who have low stats and have to pay a coin fee to the leader’s group of high stat people.

This leader NPC is also okay for any of us to leave the mall, he expects us to die but still, we have the option to leave. Problem is that the Mental Prison fog is still out there so we hatch a plan to steal some gas masks before we bail this place.

Meanwhile, we get a tour of the place. Again it’s kind of like Geumho Station where the scavenger group gets access to the food supply but also the mattresses store, and running water while the large group of low stats people gets none of that. Classic power imbalance, yah know.

But then my entire being stops when the NPC casually points at the movie theater and says, “That’s the theater dungeon.”

The other PCs get confused and poke fun at the dungeon part, thinking this NPC made a sex dungeon until they get the explanation that the theater itself really is a dungeon and people with low stats died in there while his strong group survived.

As for me, out of character I tell my friends, “I’m going into the theater dungeon no matter what.”

“All we do is give our characters pain,” a PC comments.

Anyway, we wander off to talk about how to steal or buy off the gas masks because one, our Scenario #2 is probably not here and two, this place is sketchy as fuck. Sprinkles has been hissing at the leader and we all agree with this cat.

This is where I turn to the GM and ask to roll for my personal skill to predict the future.

So this is how the GM and I hatched out this skill. My PC is not a true prophet like Anna Croft cause that’ll be too overpowered. We decided on using percentile dice and make my skill into an accuracy reading on what routes I pick. If you know about the fortune teller from the Danganronpa series, its like that.

So I ask questions on what would happen if we stay here and if we can leave safely. I roll sort of high and the GM messages me this.

There will be a bloody fight in the future, innocents will die, you may not leave.

Again, the GM reminds me that this is only like a seventy percent accurate. Nonetheless, me and my PC are shocked and scared. I retell my accursed knowledge to the other PCs and things are looking grim.

That’s when a kid NPC approaches us, asking if we’re strong. This kid tells us his friend went into the theater dungeon and hasn’t came out yet.

Before a PC could say ‘you’re friend is probably dead’ a sub scenario pops up.

It’s basically a rescue quest to save the kid’s friend. From the two hour time limit, the friend is still probably alive we guess. What really catches out attention is the reward of having this NPC use a skill to increase our bond or power with our constellation sponsors. We take up the the quest and head off to the theater.

There the sword NPC from earlier is guarding the entrance and warns us that we might die but the rewards are pretty good. Then she asks if we’re really taking our cat with us.

Sprinkles has chosen only one PC to be his designated human so that PC tries to hand off Sprinkles to the care of the NPC.

“Wait just a second,” our GM announces and we hear the roll of a dice.

Sprinkles decides no, jumps out of the arms of the NPC and runs into the theater dungeon.

Things are going great.

We head into the theater, its just the main lobby and two hallways. We see Sprinkles head to the left hallway but we try to investigate the lobby first. We get some clues about the NPC we’re supposed to rescue but not enough to know where he is. Eventually we decide to go left and trust the cat is leading us in the right direction.

The hallway has posters with slash marks, later explained to be done by the sword girl NPC accompanying us. She’s just here for the cat. Sword NPC explains how this dungeon works and like canon, we would get sucked into the movie according to its poster. We make jokes about avoiding Avengers: Infinity War.

Anyway we spy Sprinkles at the end of the hallway in front of a movie poster that has not been slashed out.

GM has us roll perception. Four of us roll low and only get a look at some woodland picture. We all make guesses like Pet Cemetery, Blair Witch, Cabin in the Woods.

The PC who rolled high gets messaged the movie name.

“Guys,” the PC is almost choked up in shock but exclaims, “It’s Bambi!”

We all go ‘oh no’ and think it can’t be that bad right? We go approach the poster and get sucked in.

We appear in cottage in winter, dressed in hunting gear and the GM tells us that we are freezing and starved. Oh and we all have shotguns.

Outside we explore and see a bunch of animals, two of which are deers.

Yeah, we’re in Bambi alright.

Somewhere along the way, we think the way to get out of here is to shoot every other animal but the deers. It takes a while cause some of us rolled low, argued about the ethics of this, pull the trigger, and we make it out with the shotguns as our rewards.

We head off to the other hallway, similarly enough there’s only one unslashed poster for us.

Again we do a perception roll and again only one of us rolls high to be messaged by the GM.

“Wait, is this the reboot or original?”

“Original.”

“Guys, it’s Dumbo.”

At this point, we’re convinced all this Disney stuff really is a clue for us to go to Disneyland. Like, that’s why we were all on the bus right when the first scenario started. It’s all. an elaborate. conspiracy.

So we enter the movie and appear backstage of a circus tent. The ringmaster yells at us to prepare for our acts. We split up into pairs. The clowns are up first.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” PC says rather dully, evident in their frowny face clown makeup.

I honestly don’t remember the end of that joke because immediately it was a low performance roll and everyone, including us PCs, booed.

Smiley face PC holds up a large peanut bag and asks, “Want some of deetz nutz?”

That gets the crowd roaring with laughter except for the mysterious cloaked figure in the audience.

The clown PCs notice this and tries to do a fire extinguisher prank to hose the NPC out. It doesn’t work that well as they got other audience members and the ringmaster kicks the clowns backstage. They warn the rest of us about the cloaked figure right as me and my PC partner are suddenly up high for our trapeze act.

PC partner unfortunately rolls low for acrobatics and is falling. I roll high to swing on a rope and catch them and we basically recreate the Rewrite the Stars song. During that we notice the cloaked figure is leaving the audience. We both get the brilliant idea of me throwing my partner at the cloak figure.

Yeah, um, PC ends up pile diving on the audience. Nonetheless that PC chases after the cloaked figure as the third act begins. Basically its the fifth PC and the NPC riding horses through rings of fire. They do really well.

Back with the mysterious cloaked figure, PC confronts them but the only response is this NPC throwing smoke bombs into the tent and running away.

Pink smoke spreads out through the circus tent and the GM tells us to roll for a constitution saving throw. The entire audience and half of the party suddenly become drunk and a PC explains in horror that this is the pink elephant scene from Dumbo.

I do not remember much from the movie so my friend explains that this infamous scene is about Dumbo getting drunk on champagne. Wow.

Anyway me and another PC have to watch over our drunk party members. It does not help that they still have the shotguns and they want to shoot at the birds they see in their drunken state.

Meanwhile, the last sober PC runs out to find the mysterious cloaked figure who caused this but no. Instead the GM gives that PC a bunch of angst and describes how this stressing situation is enough to give the PC a panic attack. It’s all about character development, gotta give them conflict in nature to their backstory.

Backstage, I’m trying to pry away the shotguns from another PC. It does not go well and my PC gets fed up, decides fine, shoot the birds.

Low and behold, shooting the birds that’s only seen in this state is what gets us out of the movie. As we’re all relieved that we made it out, the GM points out that the mysterious cloaked NPC has also made it out with us.

We chase after him to the lobby and we manage to tackle him down. The hood is now off and we see that this NPC is the kid we’re supposed to rescue in the first place. But there’s obvious something off, his eyes are glowing.

Classic signs of mind control.

The NPC struggles out of hold and suddenly the lobby starts to slip apart before our very eyes. Our allied sword NPC tells us that this should not be happening, that this is not normal as the theater lobby shifts to become a battle ring.

Next to the mind controlled NPC, two caricatured figures appear, also with glowing eyes. A PC manages to perceive the nametags they’re wearing, one is labeled ‘Dumb.’

We all immediately guess we’re somehow in Wonderland without a movie poster. Right as we’re doing that, the GM rolls a die and the mind controlled NPC shapeshifts to look like one of us PC.

We roll for initiate.

Okay not really, that’s where we called it a night. You all have no idea how excited I was when I learned that the theater dungeon is here. Like I was grinning so much. So what I got so far is that GM is pulling plot devices from canon as resources but yah know, twisting it into their own direction.

Thanks for reading!

#orv dnd #orv #dnd #ahhhh #omniscient reader's viewpoint #omniscient reader

11 notes · View notes

let-me-write-shit · 4 years

Text

Somebody To You: 26

Friendly reminder to please Like and/or Reblog. It helps more than you think! :)

It’s not quiiiite my post day yet, but why not??

Word Count: 3,031

Click Here For Previous Chapter & Other Completed Stories

PLEASE let me know what you think

-----------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Last night was draining and Zoey hardly got any sleep. There were too many thoughts running through her head. Being back home gave her mixed emotions. There were so many great memories filled with lots of great people, but there was so much loss, as well. She felt like she was on a death march, visiting a terminally ill man, a son who is about to lose his father, and bereaved parents. The knowledge of the losses made her normally bright and cheery little suburb feel dark and gray. How was she supposed to make light in these situations? She stressed, trying to figure out how she was supposed to act when she met Mr. and Mrs. Lewis for lunch.

“Just relax, it’s going to be fine,” Michael tried soothing her in the car on the way to their house. “You don’t have to impress them. They’ve known you for years. Just act normal.”

Zoey took a deep breath, nodding. He was right. This isn’t her first time spending time with them. But it was her first visit since she’s moved to LA on their dime and she felt pressured to explain or justify all that has been going on in her life since moving there. How do you thank the people responsible for changing your life in so many different ways?

The first thing Zoey noticed when they pulled up to the house was the different flower beds by the front door. They had done some rearranging. Honestly, it was refreshing to see at least a minor change in scenery. Still, her nerves began to grow as they made their way to the front door. She began to contemplate whether she should knock or just go right in, having always done that in the past. But she figured its been too long since she’s been here to just walk in, so she knocked, bouncing anxiously on her toes. Within seconds the door flew open and was instantly being enveloped by Mrs. Lewis’s curly blonde hair. Zoey’s worry eased at the sound of the woman’s delighted laughter, pulling away to take a good look at each other.

“Oh, Zoey, you look beautiful with your hair down,” Mrs. Lewis cooed, smiling adoringly at her, “Come in, Mr. Lewis should be back any minute with the pizza. Hello, Michael, how are you?”

“I’m doing well, thank you,” Michael grinned as they followed Mrs. Lewis inside, closing the door behind them and making their way to the eat-in kitchen.

Mrs. Lewis looked different than the last time Zoey saw her. She was more put-together, wearing a little bit more makeup and in business-casual clothes, instead of the robes and oversized sweaters that she had gotten used to wearing after the death of her daughter. Her eyes weren’t sunken and dark any longer, instead, they were bright blue and she had a glow about her that radiated through her smile; something she hadn’t seen Mrs. Lewis do in over a year. She seemed to be doing better, and Zoey couldn’t have been happier about that.

“I was so happy to get that phone call from you yesterday, Michael. I didn’t know you were going to be in town,” Mrs. Lewis turned to Zoey, pulling out cups and plates in preparation for her husband’s arrival with their lunch.

“I didn’t either,” Zoey admitted, “It was a last-minute plan to come after hearing about Paul.”

Mrs. Lewis nodded seriously, “Yes, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad, Michael. How are you feeling?”

Mrs. Lewis listened intently as Michael confessed himself to her; something Zoey was surprised by. Michael was never one to delve into his feelings too much, but it seemed that he had so many thoughts pent up, understandably, that when provided with an outlet to express his feelings without the worry of judgment or hurting anyone else’s feelings (like he would have had he expressed these thoughts to his parents, perhaps) he was able to really dig deep to the root of his worry and have a weight lifted off his shoulders from the burden it carried.

Michael wasn’t an emotional person. He could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him cry. So when she saw a tear trickle down his cheek, Zoey couldn’t help but get emotional and cry along with him. She felt for him. What do you say to a person who is about to lose their father?

She felt guilty for not being there for him sooner. For letting their ties loosen so much that he felt he couldn’t confide in her anymore. It was no wonder he didn’t absolutely hate her for it. He deserved much better than what she’s offered him in the past five months.

When Michael had reached the end of his rant, Zoey felt the urge to hug him, pulling him into the tightest, warmest hug she could muster as she pushed her tears aside. He relaxed into her embrace and felt the shuddering of his body begin to calm until his breathing evened out. She’d never seen him in so much pain before and she couldn’t blame him for breaking down in front of Mrs. Lewis. But if anyone would understand what he’s going through, it was her.

Mrs. Lewis rounded the table and wrapped her arms around Michael, motherly shushing him and gently rocking him back and forth making a grown twenty-eight-year-old man look like a child in her arms. Michael seemed to calm from his uneasiness and cleared his throat, wiping his eyes as Mrs. Lewis sat back down in his seat. He was embarrassed, but neither of them criticized him for it. How could they? He had every right to feel what he was feeling.

Not even a minute later, Mr. Lewis came stumbling through the front door, making his way back and beaming when he saw the two of them sitting at the table.

“You made it!” he exclaimed, plopping the boxes of pizza in the center of the table and reaching out for a quick hug while his wife began serving slices. He noticed Michael’s puffy red eyes and looked as though he was about to say something, but decided not to at the last minute, resorting to, “Dig in, I want to hear all about what you two have been up to.”

They each had a bite of their pizza while Mrs. Lewis eyed them curiously, asking, “So, are you two back together, or…?”

“No,” Zoey hurriedly responded, swallowing down her bite of food, “No, Mikey, here, has found himself a girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend yet,” Michael narrowed his eyes at her.

Zoey grinned in amusement, wiggling her eyebrows at Mr. and Mrs. Lewis who laughed, “So how did you meet this girl?”

“She’s a new hire at work. She’s the receptionist.”

“So no dating apps for you, then, huh?” Mr. Lewis joked before turning to Zoey, “What about you? Any boyfriends in LA?”

Zoey shrugged, feeling a little more confident in being more open now that she knew she didn’t have to worry about Michael being hurt. But she didn’t want to get into too much detail. Surely they didn’t need to know about all of her one night stands, friends with benefits, and sleeping with an international celebrity. So she simply said, “I’ve been dipping my toes in the dating scene, but nothing serious so far.”

“No?” Mrs. Lewis asked, expression bordering confusion, “I thought your mom said you had a boyfriend who took you and your sister to Italy for your birthday?”

Zoey’s eyes widened, unsure of what to say. Certainly, no one ever told her mother that Harry and she were a thing. Mrs. Lewis must have misunderstood. At least she was none the wiser on who the supposed ‘boyfriend’ was. She shook her head, laughing in an attempt to conceal her surprise, “No, no, no. I mean, yeah, I went to Italy, but it was with several of my friends. Boy friends, not boyfriend.”

She stared at them fixedly to make sure they believed her. When they nodded and continued to ask her about her trip to Italy, she felt Michael’s suspicious gaze on the side of her face. She ignored it, telling them all about the guided tour, Katie’s crush on a cute Italian boy, shopping in the lanes, pizza making, wine tasting, and all of the dreamy nights spent poolside underneath the stars.

“We’ve only been there once on our honeymoon,” Mrs. Lewis fondly recalled, smiling dewy-eyed, “I’m so glad you were able to meet some nice friends in LA. Jess would be so happy for you.”

Mr. Lewis placed a supportive hand on his wife’s back and Zoey pursed her lips with wide puppy-eyes. She missed Jess and wished, more than anything, she could have experienced all of this with her. She wanted to make new friends in LA with her, immerse themselves in Italian culture, she wanted to go on double dates with Jess, she wanted to go on more beach trips with her and ride on the back of sketchy motorcycles side-by-side, she wanted to tell Jess all about Harry and all the gross, cliche, sappy little moments between them that made the butterflies in her stomach go crazy. She wished Jess were here as a lending ear to hear her rant about the absurdity that came along with stupid boy crushes and as a shoulder to cry on when the unavoidable overwhelming grief took over her when Paul was no longer here.

They’ll be together, she told herself. She’ll be in safe hands with Paul. They’ll be looking down on all of us, proud. They did this. The two of them. Jess and Paul were the light of this town, the reason why so many were compassionate, kind, and happy. And Zoey took solace in knowing that the world was a better place because of those two people. She was a better person because of them. And she will love them until the day she meets them again.

The minor display of emotion caused a group hug between the four of them and when they pulled away, they all laughed. After lunch, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis took the two of them to the poolhouse to check out Jess’s old living space. They hadn’t done much with it. They explained that they had plans to eventually make it into a guest house. They wanted to paint and get new furniture, but they hadn’t had the heart to change it entirely just yet. Most of her things were still there. Framed pictures of her with her friends, books that she was reading, most of her wardrobe still in the closet and dresser drawers. But it looked cleaner and more organized. There weren’t random clothes strewn about the floor or makeup covering the vanity. It felt different.

“Do you mind….can I have this?” Zoey asked, holding up a framed picture of her and Jess sitting on Zoey’s trampoline.

Mrs. Lewis smiled, nodding a yes. They talked a little longer before they decided it was probably time to get going and the couple led them to the front. “I’m so glad you were able to stop by, you guys. Thank you for thinking of us,” Mrs. Lewis sang.

“Thanks for having us. And for the pizza,” Michael smiled, giving them each a hug, followed by Zoey.

As they made their way towards Michael’s car, Zoey suddenly remembered and turned, calling out, “Oh! I almost forgot. My parents are having a BBQ tomorrow around 2. It’ll be my last night here before I catch the red-eye home. Would you two like to come? Michael’s parents will be there, too.”

The two of them smiled, looking at each other briefly before nodding and Mr. Lewis said, “We’ll see you two tomorrow, then.”

She grinned at them before jumping in Michael’s car and heading back to her parents’ house. The journey back was mostly discussions reflecting on Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and how happy they were to see the two of them in a better mental state than the previous year, but by the time they reached Zoey’s house, the conversation had changed to bets on which parent got drunk at the BBQ first. Zoey bet Paul would be first while Michael had bet on Mr. Lewis.

She had assumed that Michael would only be dropping her off at home, saying a quick goodbye to her parents on the way out. But her mom had cornered him, practically forcing him to stay for dinner as she was making her ‘world-famous shepherds pie’, which honestly had no taste to it and had no business being called ‘world-famous’. Not wanting to be rude, Michael accepted and stayed to eat. Throughout dinner Mary subtly hinted at her desire for Zoey to move back home, discussing the office remodel, mentioning little trips they could take as a family, and visits to Katie in college. It was clear that she was suffering from pre-empty nest syndrome, but she was laying it on thick.

After dinner was finished, Zoey had offered to clear the table, and with the help of Michael, loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. She dried her hands on a spare dish rag that sat on the countertop, staring at the framed picture of her and Jess that she had placed there right before they ate. Michael looked over at her, then to the yard, and back at her.

“Come on,” he urged, taking the picture and leading the way towards the back door.

Zoey followed him outside, the sun setting and the faint, flickering glow of the lightning bugs hovered and the warm porch lights illuminated the garden. Michael climbed onto the trampoline, bouncing on his knees as she climbed on after him. The lack of netting surrounding the trampoline always terrified her mom, but she and her sister always hated the idea of being confined, so she left it open.

The springs from the trampoline squeaked and creaked as they sat cross-legged, facing each other. Zoey slipped the picture out of Michael’s hands, running a few fingers across Jess’s face. She hadn’t seen her in so long that she was beginning to feel like Jess was a made-up imaginary friend. She needed these pictures and trinkets, like her bracelet, as proof of her existence.

“Can’t believe it’s been a year,” Zoey hushed.

Michael nodded, pausing before wondering, “What do you think we’d be doing right now if she was still here?”

“We’d probably still be together,” Zoey said, laughing and looking up at him, teary-eyed “My life has changed so much in the past year. I’ve experienced more in the last four months than I have my whole entire life and she wasn’t here for any of it.”

“She was there,” Michael placed a reassuring hand on her knee, “you know that.”

“It’s not the same,” she shook her head, laying down on her back to look up at the stars, her hair scattering around her while holding the picture to her stomach.

Michael laid down beside her, sighing. The two of them had been through so much in the past year, and it still wasn’t over. He was glad that someone else understood what he was going through, but the fact that they had to go through this at all was ridiculous. There was a long silence before Zoey finally spoke again, the subject changed.

“So...tell me about this new girl of yours. Has she met the parents yet?”

Michael groaned again, “No because it’s not serious yet.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me. I broke up with you, remember?”

“There’s just not much to say. It’s too new,” Micheal shrugged, turning his attention towards her. “Besides, what about you?”

“What about me?” she asked defensively, furrowing her eyebrows at him.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” he smirked, “you don’t think I noticed the panic in your voice when Mrs. Lewis mentioned the ‘FRIEND’ who took you and Katie to Italy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she blushed, looking back up at the night’s sky.

“I was with you for over four years. I know when you’re lying.”

Zoey rolled her eyes in annoyance, hating how predictable and easy-to-read she was. Hating the fact that she was about to talk about a man she considered to be her soulmate to a man she thought she would end up marrying. When did her life become this complicated?

“First of all, he was never my boyfriend. Nothing even happened before the trip to Italy,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, so things happened in Italy, then?” He sounded cheeky, “Tell me about him. What’s he like?”

Zoey chuckled, trying to connect the dots of the stars above her, seeing what sort of pictures she could make out of them, “You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you,” she said under her breath. Sighing, she spoke louder, “It doesn’t matter, though. We kind of got into a fight. I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

“A fight about what?”

“Something stupid,” she admitted, “I called him out because he can’t ever make up his mind about what he wants and I basically told him I didn’t want to waste my time. He’s the one that called at dinner last night.”

“Is that why you came inside looking all upset?” Michael turned to look at Zoey, earning a nod in response. Michael slowly turned to look back up at the sky, putting his hands behind his head to elevate it a bit more, “Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re right. You deserve to be prioritized. You’re worth it.”

“Thanks, Mikey.”

“No problem.”

The two of them laid there in comfortable silence for what felt like an hour, counting the stars when they heard a crack from the back door opening and closing. She figured it would just be Katie wanting to join in on the conversation. But when a deep, humble, monotone voice sounded her name from behind them, the two of them sat up, surprised by the unexpected visitor.

“Harry?!”

KEEP READING

------------------------------------------

Taglist for Somebody To You:

@thurhomish , @stilljosiegrossie , @odetostep , @apples2019 , @stylesmioamore , @inyourhaven

24 notes · View notes