#also not sure what he would be sketching maybe it's ghost from earlier in the day maybe it's a cat he saw that was cute who knowsss | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bpro-cardstories · 3 years

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Goshi Kaneshiro SSR

2018 ーDripping Water [滴るしずく]

“To be honest….. There are rumours that ghosts appear in that thicket…..”

『Event: Simmering Winter Onsen Trip (16th - 29th January 2018)』

Part 1

ーTHRIVE’s apartment.ー

Tsubasa: ‘Kaneshiro-san and Yuta-kun will be at the hot spring location starting tomorrow, did you two finish your preparations?’

Yuta: ‘Yep! When I put the cards and the board game in my bag later, it will be all perfect~.’

Goshi: ‘Oi, there’s no need for those things.’

Yuta: ‘That’s not true. Let’s play games with everyone after we ate dinner and went into the hot spring?’

Goshi: ‘As if I’d do that. Geez, we aren’t going there to have fun.’

Kento (sighs): ‘And to add, you’re going to be with Tsubasa at the hot spring, how envious.’

Yuta (laughs): ‘That’s a shame, but Kenken has a gravure photoshoot for a magazine, right?’

Kento: ‘Yeah. Although I don’t have a choice…..’

Kento (laughs): ‘Oh, right. How about going with just the two of us next time?’

Tsubasa: ‘Ahaha….. I appreciate your feelings, but…..’

Kento: ‘So, in what kind of place is the location?’

Tsubasa: ‘It is a long-established traditional inn located in Morizu, but it is popular for being surrounded by a thicket and because it is quiet and relaxing there.’

Kento: ‘Hee, that sounds nice. So you can enjoy the hot spring, while bathing in the forest.’

Tsubasa: ‘Yes. However, uhm….. There are rumours around that place…..’

Goshi: ‘Rumours…..?’

Tsubasa: ‘To be honest….. It seems like there are ….. Appearing in the thicket close to the inn.’

Yuta: ‘What’s appearing? Ah! Perhaps beetles!?’

Kento: ‘There’s no way they’re appearing at this time of the year. We’re talking about the thicket…..’

Tsubasa: ‘….. Ghosts.’

Yuta: ‘Ghosts!?’

Goshi (shocked): ‘….. Ngh.’

Kento (laughs): ‘Tsubasa, that can’t be.’

Tsubasa: ‘I think so too, but it seems that there are many witnesses…..’

Yuta: ‘Eeh!! Then aren’t they real!? Gochin, what should we do, if they appear at the inn~~!’

Goshi (shocked): ‘…..…..’

Yuta: ‘Oh, Gochin, what’s wrong?’

Goshi: ‘W-What. There’s nothing.’

Yuta: ‘Because you were so quiet since a while ago.’

Yuta: ‘Ah! Did you become scared maybe~?’

Goshi: ‘What!? I am not scared!’

Kento: ‘Hmm…..’

Goshi: ‘Tch….. Enough, I’m gonna sleep now since it’s going to be early tomorrow.’

Yuta: ‘Ah, he’s gone…..’

Tsubasa: ‘I wonder if we exaggerated a bit? It is good, if the project will not be exposed, but…..’

Kento: ‘It’s fine though? That bit is perfect for Goshi.’

Yuta: ‘True, true! I’m so excited to see Gochin’s scared face~!’

(We did receive permission from Shuji-san, but I wonder if it’s really okay to set something up like a test of courage prank…..)

Part 2

ーAt the inn.ー

Yuta: ‘Haa~, the hot spring felt so good~!’

Yuduki: ‘You’re right. It felt so good, I almost fell asleep.’

Miroku: ‘That said, you actually were half-asleep, weren’t you. It’s dangerous, so be careful.’

Yuduki (smiles): ‘Yes, understood.’

Miroku (smiles): ‘Compared to Yuduki, Onzai-san left the bathtub surprisingly early.’

Momotaro: ‘Yeah, it’s because my blood rushed to my head instantly.’

Mikado: ‘Wait, Tono-sama! You weren’t expecting to see a blushing Momotasu in the hot spring, were you!?’

Miroku: ‘Excuse me?’

Tatsuhiro: ‘Stop with that, Sekimura.’

Yuta: ‘Hey, hey, everyone! It’s too early to go to sleep yet, so let’s go see the hot spring district!’

Goshi: ‘What? At this hour?’

Mikado: ‘Because the opening times are short in the hot spring district, the shops must be closed now though?’

Yuta: ‘Is that so!? Eeh~, what a bummer…..’

Momotaro: ‘In this case, how about we go see the night skyline instead?’

Yuduki: ‘The night skyline?’

Momotaro: ‘I heard that you can see the beautiful night skyline, if you pass through the thicket near the inn.’

Miroku: ‘Something like that sounds good once in a while. But isn’t it dangerous entering the thicket at this hour?’

Tatsuhiro: ‘Even if we say thicket, it’s close to the inn. With this large number of people, it’s alright. What do you think, Sumisora?’

Tsubasa: ‘If it is not too late, it is fine.’

Yuta: ‘Yay!’

Goshi: ‘….. I’m gonna pass. I’m not interested in that night skyline.’

Yuta: ‘Eeh~!! Gochin, come - with - us~!’

Goshi: ‘So noisy! I said I won’t go, didn’t I!’

Mikado (smirks): ‘When you are that against it, there has to be some special reason.’

Yuta: ‘Gochin, could you perhaps be bothered by what Tsubasa-chan said?’

Goshi: ‘Geh….. That’s not it!’

Momotaro: ‘What was it?

Tsubasa: ‘To be honest….. There are rumours that ghosts appear in that thicket…..’

Mikado: ‘I understand, that was the reason. Then I have a plan to make this situation more enjoyable!’

Tatsuhiro: ‘What plan?’

Mikado (winks): ‘How about we do a test of courage with everyone?’

Goshi: ‘Come again!?’

Yuta: ‘Waah~! Yes, yes!’

Yuduki (smiles): ‘It’s a bit scary, but it sounds fun.’

Miroku (smiles): ‘Well, it’s fine I think.’

Mikado: ‘Look, everyone looks like they agree. For Kane-san to be the only one to not participateーー’

Goshi: ‘Tch. Fine. I’ll go with you.’

Yuta: ‘Yay~~~! I can’t wait! Gochin ♪.’

Goshi: ‘…..…..’

Tsubasa: ‘Because I have a meeting with the staff from the TV program, please be careful, everyone.’

(I’m glad that Kaneshiro-san will also participate in the test of courage.)

(Good, I will secretly follow them…..)

Part 3

Mikado: ‘Well then, we have arrived at the thicket…..’

Yuta: ‘Waah~, it’s quite dark here.’

Miroku: ‘Indeed, it feels like something might come out.’

Momotaro: ‘…..….. It looks like it’s fine now.’

Goshi: ‘Oi, Momotaro, if you say that then it’s no joke. Stop with that.’

Mikado: ‘I have a suggestion. It will be boring, if we all go together as this is a test of courage, so how about going one by one?’

Goshi: ‘Wh…..!’

Tatsuhiro: ‘You have a point. Seems like it’s a straight path, Yuta shouldn’t get lost then.’

Yuta: ‘Count on me~!’

Goshi (sighs): ‘That’s ridiculous, I’m going back.’

Mikado: ‘Oh, oh~? Are you sure it is fine to say that~?’

Goshi: ‘W-What.’

Yuta: ‘Right! If you go back, I will tell Kenken without fail! About how Gochin got scared and couldn’t participate!’

Goshi: ‘What the!?’

Mikado: ‘That is true, I also might expand on the humorous story and turn it into material for work.’

Momotaro: ‘What will you do? It doesn’t look good.’

Yuduki: ‘Kaneshiro-san…..’

Goshi: ‘Fine! Bring it on!’

Mikado: ‘Tunk! Just what you’d expect of Kaneshiro-san! Then, let us decide with whom to start.’

Yuduki: ‘I have a notebook with me. How about we decide the order by a raffle made from the notebook?’

Mikado: ‘That sounds good. With this, let us start!’ ________

Goshi: ‘Tch, why do I need to do this…..’

Goshi: Damn, it’s too quiet.’

A noise comes from the bushes.

Goshi: ‘…..!?’

Goshi: ‘What the heck…..’

Goshi: ‘….. Let’s go ahead and catch up with Sekimura for now.’

???: ‘Gyaah…..!!!’

Goshi: ‘!? That scream just now, was it Sekimura!?’

Goshi: ‘…..…..’

Goshi: ‘Oi, oi, that’s no joke.’

Part 4

ーMeanwhile somewhere else.ー

Yuta: ‘Tsubasa-chan, how is Gochin doing~?’

Tsubasa: ‘Yes, it looks like it is going well. Can you see the monitor?’

Yuta: ‘Yep.’

Tatsuhiro: ‘Oi, Yuta, not so loud. Kaneshiro will find out otherwise.’

Yuta: ‘Ah, sorry, sorry.’

Momotaro: ‘Kaneshiro is doing his best, huh.’

Tsubasa: ‘Yes…..’

(His face isn’t so visible on the monitor, so I wonder if he’s really doing okay…..)

Staff: ‘Sumisora-san, he is coming closer, so please put your ghost mask on and stand by.’

Tsubasa: ‘I understand…..!’

Yuta: ‘Then, we’ll also get ready~.’

Tsubasa: ‘I am counting on you.’

(Nevertheless, when it’s one of the members I might be on guard and won’t come closer. It sure feels heavy to be the one to frighten someone…..)

(I’m sorry, Kaneshiro-san!) ________

Goshi: ‘Geez, how much longer do I need to walk? Why do I have to go along with such a stupid thing.’

Goshi (sighs): ‘In the first place, what was that scream from Sekimura earlier even…..’

Goshi: ‘Hm…..? Someone collapsed in the middle of the path…..’

Goshi: ‘Sumisora!?’

He runs to her.

Goshi: ‘Hey, are you okay!?’

Tsubasa: ‘Uuh…..’

Goshi: ‘Get it together! Hey!’

Goshi: ‘….., uwaaah!?’

Goshi: ‘A, A ghost…..!? For real…..!?’

Yuta: ‘Tadaa~♪. The prank was a - big - suc-cess~!’

Goshi (perplexed): ‘….. What?’

Part 5

ーBack at the inn.ー

(We returned to the inn after the prank ended, but…..)

Goshi (upset): ‘…..…..’

(It’s no surprise since he was tricked, though Kaneshiro-san is in an exceptionally bad mood…..)

Mikado: ‘Oh my~, I did not think it would go so well. It sure enough is all thanks to my realistic acting!’

Tatsuhiro: ‘You think? You exaggerated a bit.’

Miroku: ‘That’s true. It felt like a sketch comedy I think.’

Mikado (surprised): ‘Hm hm, you two do not understand. Since Kane-san was startled by it, so when talking about the outcome, there’s no doubt that my acting was effective.’

Goshi (upset): ‘You lot…..’

Tsubasa: ‘Kaneshiro-san, I am very sorry! It was an idea by the program staff and they said a test of courage is standard for a hot spring location…..’

Goshi: ‘So why me, huh!’

Mikado: ‘Eh, that is what you are asking?’

Goshi: ‘What!?’

Yuta: ‘Gee~, until when are you going to stay mad, aren’t you overreacting, Gochin? It was the president who gave the permission, so blaming Tsubasa-chan is wrong, don’t you think?’

Tsubasa: ‘No, it was undoubtedly me who did the frightening….. I am really sorry!’

Yuta: ‘Gochin?’

Goshi: ‘….. Tch, I know.’

Mikado (laughs): ‘Even so, it was the first time I saw Kane-san in this state.’

Yuta: ‘Hehehe, Gochin fell on his butt, didn’t he!’

Goshi: ‘You lot…..!’

Yuduki: ‘Uhm….. Kaneshiro-san.’

Goshi: ‘Hm?’

Yuduki: ‘It’s fine. I also love Kaneshiro-san, who is not good with ghosts.’

Goshi: ‘Eh…..?’

Momotaro: ‘Yudu, that’s where you’re not supposed to follow up.’

Yuduki: ‘Eh?’

Goshi: ‘Haa….. . Good grief, you lost me. I’m going to take a bath.’

Yuta: ‘Wait, wait! Take me with you then~!’

(Did Kaneshiro-san’s anger kind of calm down…..?)

(I never thought that I’m the one to frighten him, but it might have been a little bit fun. But let’s keep this a secret from Kaneshiro-san…..)

END

#b project #b-project #goshi kaneshiro #thrive #myps #card:2018

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dem-obscure-imagines · 4 years

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Snowflake

Jack Frost x Reader

Prompt: Hi there! I saw you wrote for Jack Frost and was hoping to request a Jack Frost x reader imagine for Soulmate au the one where you and your soulmate have matching marks and the marks glow when you’re near your soulmate.

Note: LOVE THIS CONCEPTTTTT. I was scrolling through requests and this one REALLY spoke to me. Haven’t written for Jack in a while, but I love the boy. And, as always, you know I love a good soulmate au.

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 1.9k

You were proud of your soulmark. You really were. How could you not be? After all, it represented not only your future, but the person you were destined to spend the rest of your life with, whoever that was. It also happened to be in a really cool shape: a gorgeous snowflake etched into your wrist. You found yourself staring at it a lot, sketching it in the corners of your papers for school, sketching it on everything, really.

It only made sense that winter became your aesthetic. You had sweaters and sweaters covered in snowflakes, you had snowflake earrings, snowflake rings, snowflake necklaces and notebooks and pencil toppers. You loved winter and the coziness the cold season brought. You loved bundling up in cute scarves and boots and jackets and hats, you loved drinking hot cocoa and decking the house out in decorations and going ice skating with friends.

It was your freshman year in college and you still hadn’t found whoever your snowflake was supposed to lead you to, and once the snow started falling, you couldn’t help but hope that maybe, this was the year it was supposed to happen. This was the winter that would matter.

You were on your way back to the freshman housing from the university library the first time you felt what you called a spark. A cold gust of wind blew past you and when it did, you felt your mark jolt. You stopped in your tracks, snow gently falling all around you. You heart was racing and you stood there frozen, unfamiliar with the feeling that had just coursed through you all at once, intense and sudden.

Curious, you pulled up your sleeve to look down at your snowflake. Flickers of light shimmered before fading away to nothing. You looked around, but the courtyard was empty. There was no one even near you, and no one had been a few seconds earlier.

Weird.

You walked the rest of the way home, flinching at every noise, looking around for people at ever turn, and checking your wrist every once in a while just to be sure. The further you walked, you were sure you had imagined it, and yet, nothing that vivid could possibly be a figment of your imagination. Right?

Classes continued, new layers of snow came down every few days, covering the campus in its sparkling beauty. The window of your dorm room was covered in a thick layer of ice, thoroughly frosted and cold to the touch. You’d look at it sometimes while laying on your bed, tracing your soulmark with the tip of your finger absently. Your heart raced when you thought of the moment you’d finally felt something, only for it to slip away just as quickly.

Maybe it was a glitch in the system, you reasoned. But…maybe it wasn’t…

***

About a week later, you were out walking the campus with some friends. It was the weekend, and you were out to grab a bite to eat. After lunch, the three of you went outside to fool around in the snow. Together, you started assembling a snowman, packing the snow together and rolling three giant snowballs to form his body.

Once you had him built and stuck some sticks in his sides to be arms, you bent down and packed a snowball in your hands, a mischievous grin slowly stretching across your face. Then, you straightened up and threw it at your closest friend, making her giggle before racing to make her own. In seconds, a snowball fight broke out.

While you were playing around in the snow, you felt the feeling again and you froze, standing completely still as the now-familiar chill pulsed in your wrist. A snowball exploded across your chest, your friends laughing before they realized something was wrong.

You rolled up your sleeve to look at your mark, and this time, instead of disappearing flickers of light, the entire mark was lit, but faintly. You gasped, staring at it for a long time, your heart racing. Finally, you remembered to look around. As it was a weekend, there were a lot of people roaming around, but none of them seemed to be affected in the way you were, and when you looked back down at the mark, the light had gone out.

“H-holy shit…” You whispered, heart still racing and fingers trembling.

“Do you want to look around?”

“Yeah.” You nodded. The three of you wandered around campus, monitoring your wrist like it was a GPS, but no matter how far you looked, it didn’t light up again. Weird, you decided. A little deflated, you returned to your dorm and took off your jacket and gloves and climbed up onto your bed, getting out some homework to work on before Monday reared its ugly head.

You put in your earbuds and started grinding through your Stats homework, and then when you were done, you pulled out a sketchbook and started drawing snowflakes. When you finally looked up at your window, there was a snowflake traced there. The same one that was on your wrist, tingling ever so slightly, little pinpricks of light dancing around the mark like pixie dust.

Your heart raced. Your room was on the fourth floor. There was no way someone could just…be outside your window tracing that there. Something didn’t quite…line up. It was really starting to freak you out a little.

Maybe…maybe your soulmate was a ghost…

***

You endured another week of classes, the occasional tingling on your wrist, but aside from that, nothing weird had happened that pertained to the snowflake permanently etched into your skin. You did, however, find yourself dreaming about it almost every single night.

When Friday finally rolled around, instead of going to a party with some friends, you grabbed your ice skates (you’d found them at a thrift store a few years back and they’d served you well) and headed to the little ice rink they’d set up in one of the courtyards of campus. There were a few people there, the traffic was pretty low, as it usually was on Friday nights when people were out partying. It was a more popular place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. But no, you liked to go to this place on Friday nights, especially when there was a lot on your mind, and boy, was there ever.

You skated around for a while in the cold, snow falling gently all around. The sun set and one by one, the stars started to appear. As they did, and the streetlights came on, slowly, the people who were there skating started to leave until finally, you were the only one left circling around the rink.

Eventually, after a few more lonely laps, you stopped in the middle of the rink and just stared up at the sky, at the big fluffy snowflakes drifting down, and at the bright full moon shining down on you.

And in that quiet moment, you felt another patch of tingles on your wrist. You gasped and your breath fogged up in front of you in a puff of steam that floated up into the chilly night air. Moving carefully, you reached for your sleeve and tugged it higher, so you could see the mark. The light escalated from starry little dots to the full mark glowing faintly at first. You looked around you into the emptiness surrounding you and then back down at the mark, which was steadily growing brighter.

“H-hello?” You called out shakily, looking for some sign of someone there, but there was no one. The campus was empty this late at night when everyone else was inside in the warmth. Quieter, you asked, “Are you there?”

You did not expect a reply, but you did get one. It was faint, a wintry whisper, his voice deeper than you expected, shaking like he was as nervous as you felt. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

You immediately slipped and fell back onto the ice, sitting there in shock. You stared into the air in front of you, where you’d heard the voice. His voice. It was impossible and you knew that, and yet, your mark was glowing brighter than it ever had before.

“Who are you?” You asked, blinking up at the empty space before adding, “Where are you?”

The voice gasped. “Y-you can hear me?!” He sounded surprised. Before you could reply, he popped into existence right in front of you, crouched down so he was on your level. “C-can…” He paused, looking down before looking right into your eyes with his icy blue eyes. “Can you see me?”

“Now I can.” Your voice shook. You laughed in disbelief. He did too.

He reached forward with his hand, his wrist glowing as brightly as yours was. He was tentative, as if he wouldn’t be able to touch you, like his hand would go right through yours, but you reached up and pressed your hand against his. Your wrists were shining as bright as LEDs, blinding almost. His hand was large and cold, his skin as pale as the snow falling around you, his hair so blonde it was white.

His fingers intertwined with yours and he let out a long breath, staring at you. He smiled slowly, tears welling in those blue, blue eyes. “I’m Jack. Frost.” He introduced, your hand still tightly in his.

“(Y/N) (L/N).” You laughed, shaking your head. This was not happening. “Why did I have a feeling you would say that?”

He chuckled and shrugged. “I’ve been told I look like a Jack Frost.”

You laughed at that, admiring him for a long time before he finally helped you up off of the ice. You wobbled on nervous legs, but he held you steady.

“Woah, easy there…” He whispered. “I’ve got you.”

Your arms wound around his shoulders. The height boost your skates gave you made you about eye level with him. “How long have you been…around here?”

“The last few weeks…” He admitted. “I was flying by and…well,” he motioned to his wrist, “something finally felt different.” He paused, looking down. “I’m so sorry I didn’t find you sooner. I’ve been looking everywhere. And then you had classes and I—”

“It’s okay.” You shook your head, a hand reaching up to touch his cheek. He melted against your touch, leaning into the warmth of your palm. “You’re here now.”

“I’m here now.” He repeated, nodding. Tears welled up in his eyes once again and he inhaled a shaking breath. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Sorry I took so long.” You apologized.

“Don’t be sorry.” He shook his head. His expression softened, his eyes locked on your lips for a moment before he started leaning in. You met him halfway, relishing in the cold but pleasant feeling, tingles running from your mark up your arm and then down your spine. This was right. This was how it was meant to be. When you pulled apart, he finally whispered, “You were worth every minute.”

#jack frost #jack frost x reader #jack frost imagine #rise of the guardians #rise of the guardians imagine #rotg #rotg imagine

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daydream-believin · 3 years

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Flowers Have Feelings

summary: it's valentines and you're making some gifts for your good pal douxie,,, also confessing

warnings: swearing probably, no proofread cause tired

word count: 2659

a/n: i've been struggling with writers block. i guess. i've returned to this only to write like, a paragraph so many times. which is bad cause like cheese designed the bouqeut and this should have been done ages ago. idk idk bon appetit

tags: @yagirlcheesely, is for you

image below: sketch of the bouquet

You jumped out of bed and slammed your alarm. Today was the day. You had to get everything ready today. Tonight would be the presentation. The night you finally do it. The night you confessed to your closest friend and crush, Douxie. Also happened to be Valentine’s day.

Your friends may have told you: “Just be patient. Drop hints. If he likes you, he’ll let you know.” But you weren’t about that passive love life. You liked to grab that strawberry cow by the horns. Subtly was boring and took far too long. You were in love with your friend and you were gonna let him know frankly if it killed you. It probably would, to be honest.

As confident as this makes you sound, you were aware of the possibility of him not liking you back, and that was okay. Sure, your heart would be shattered and you might not be very peachy for, say, a month or six, but you accepted that. At first, you had resigned yourself to just adoring him secretly. But you quickly grew impatient with that. What were you afraid of, really? Him letting you down gently, and ushering you two into an era of awkwardness? Okay so maybe that was worth considering. But not really. You wouldn’t let it come to that. Even if he did turn you down, you weren’t about to let that fact taint your friendship like that. You two were very close, and Douxie wasn’t the kind of guy to suddenly treat you differently after such a thing. Just a few weeks of awkwardness at most before all was forgotten (on his end at least). Only a problem for you. But, boy, it would be really, really nice, and not awkward, if he reciprocated.

You and Douxie were thick as thieves. There wasn’t a thing you hadn’t told each other. Not a secret between a pair of buddies as close as you. Oh, one thing, you know. The fact that you had caught feelings, that was definitely something you had kept secret from him. As eager as you were to do so, you couldn’t just drop a bombshell like that at any old time. That’s why you chose today of all days to confess; a little extra luck from St. Valentine. A little magic to give you a boost, placebo or not. This was going to happen. This was going to work.

You strapped on your helmet, safety first, before heading out on your bike. You cleared your schedule for the day cause you weren’t really sure if everything would work out or not. You could have everything done and ended wrapped up neatly in a few hours, or you could have a complete disaster on your hands, which could take up all your time. Time you would happily give, since you were determined for everything to be perfect. It was also nice to know you didn’t have to come in to work later,, lest you spend the whole night, crying your eyes out. You shuddered at the possibility. You were gonna stop thinking about that now. Yeah, only confidence now.

You may be a teensy bit sleep deprived. Only a teensy bit. You chugged a monster this morning, you’ll be fine. It wasn’t your fault you were up all night researching flower language. There were so many flowers, and those flowers had so many feelings. Eventually though, you managed to settle on a bouquet of roses, daisies, and dandelions. Fern leaves for greenery too. Greenery was important for flower arrangements. It tied the whole thing together. While it wouldn’t be the most on theme color scheme, the yellows, whites, reds, and greens, would mix together prettily. You definitely didn’t have to go as far as this, and you were banking on the fact that Douxie even knew flower language, but it was sweet, it was romantic. And you were going to be romantic about this, dammit.

Daisies, for friendship. It was really important that you communicate just how much you valued Douxie’s friendship and how nothing would change between you two if he were to not return your feelings. Red, red roses, classic romance. There was a reason the blooms were so strongly associated with the valentines holiday itself; no one sees a red rose and thinks of anything other than love and romance. A clear message to your beloved. And well, the dandelions? Cheery, beautiful, resilient, common weeds, never to be approved of, finding the strength to bloom despite assholes like Merlin’s best efforts. Dandelions were Douxie’s favorite flower.

Too bad the florist didn’t even consider them to be anything but said common weed. You had included them in your order when you called it in and you could hear the florist laugh, but muffled as if he put his hand over the receiver, before returning to the phone to inform you that you would have to add them yourself. Pretty rude, if you say so. No matter, hand-picked dandelions would be romantic, anyways. Even if no one else knew about it but you.

You placed the bouquet neatly into the basket of your bike. You’d pick the dandelions to complete it later, right before the big confession, in order to keep them fresh. But as of now, the bouquet peaked out of your basket, the floral fragrance wafting up to your face as you made your way to the next store.

Last week, you had seen such an adorable little box of chocolates. It had chocolates shaped like little skulls, flowers, and ghost cats, and the box had a silly pun about death. Goth chocolate, def. It would have been perfect for the edgy wizard in your life, but alas, it was way too fucking expensive. Like obscenely expensive. But no matter, you’d just steal the idea. How hard could making chocolate be anyway?

You left the grocery store with your haul safe in your skull-patterned reusable shopping bag. Wizard-chic and eco-friendly, it was your favorite bag. The contents of the much-loved bag? Melting chocolates, a jar of marmalade, a jar of raspberry jam, a jar of strawberry jam, and a new roll of wax paper, since you were out. Now you weren’t as ambitious as to make your own jam here. This was a failsafe. There are only so many ways to ruin chocolates if you did not make the chocolate nor the filling yourself. Now just a quick run in the stationary shop on your way home for a cute box, and you were all ready to start your chocolatier career.

* * *

Douxie was getting antsy. Not many patrons had paid a visit to his bookstore this afternoon. Which was strange for valentine’s. and it left him with nothing but his thoughts to entertain his anxious mind. Doux had a lot to worry about. His band had a gig in a new town, so he wasn’t sure how they would be received. He was waiting on a shipment of books that was supposed to show up days ago. It may have gotten lost. That Lake kid was getting himself into more and more trouble these days and it was starting to become hard to help out without overstepping his vaguely imposed bounds. But most of all, at the very moment, he was worried about you.

You had asked him to meet up for dinner tonight. Okay, pretty normal for a Sunday night. Not that the weekend meant anything to either of you, but you normally set aside Sunday for dinner hangout. So nothing to abnormal. But then. Then, you said, something… Douxie actually can’t recall what you said, per se, just that it was along the lines of “we need to talk.” And that your tone sounded nervous. He did not like that one bit, nope nope. He had spent a great part of the day just revisiting every interaction the two of you had had in the last month or so, desperate to figure out if he did something wrong. But he was coming up blank, for all his efforts. Across the room, the clock ticked on. It would be closing time soon enough, and then he’d no longer have to wonder just what he did wrong, as you would be there to tell him directly. Fuzzbuckets, he couldn’t wait.

* * *

You wiped the goopy chocolate off of your cheek with the back of your hand. So far this wasn’t a total disaster. You had at least seven chocolate skulls filled and drying in the molds. The white chocolate seemed to have melted smoother than the regular chocolate? The regular chocolate ones looked kind of lumpy. You hoped they came out of the molds okay. Not to mention the ones you already messed up. A little mountain of chocolate pieces and jam had started rising from your table top corner.

It had been lots of fun at the start. melting the chocolates with a double boil, planning out which molds would be which flavors. But actually filling those molds? A messy, messy ordeal. You had chocolate and jam all over your kitchen, up to your exposed elbows, and even a little in your hair. But that was okay. You’d clean the kitchen later. With the molds in the freezer to set, your priority now was cleaning yourself up rather than the kitchen.

And you cleaned up nice, if you did say so yourself. You got the chocolate out of your hair, and had on a fresh outfit, taking a little time to put effort into your style. You looked snazzy, but not too fancy. You needed to stay casual. Something that you hoped would make Douxie be like ‘wow they look pretty okay’ but not freak him out with formality. Yeah. This was good.

Your watch beeped. Okay, you needed to get out of here, no more dilly dallying. You pulled the candies you made out of the freezer. Moment of truth. Thank the stars, all of the chocolates came out of the molds smoothly without breaking. You arranged them in the cute circular box you set up earlier and folded the tissue paper over them. They all fit in perfectly. The cheesy valentine card, the most important part, didn’t quite fit on top of the candies, you’d have to put it with the bouquet. You slid the lid onto the box and fastened a bow around it with a blue ribbon. Maybe this was a bit overkill, but Douxie knew how to appreciate the dramatic. He’d love it, you were sure.

Last but not least, you headed to the greenspace across the street from your apartment for the final ingredient in your Douxie wooing, dandelions. You were lucky that the empty lot had recently bloomed an entire garden’s worth of the yellow things. The chilly breeze mussed up your newly-fixed hair as you danced about gathering the tiny flowers, adding to the bouquet until you felt like it was enough. Which took longer than you had hoped. You definitely could have kept adding in more dandelions but your watch beeped once again and you had no choice but to make peace with the level of yellow and book it to the bookstore where you and Douxie were supposed to meet before heading out for the night.

* * *

Hearing the ding of the door chime, Douxie turned around to kindly inform the customer who came in that he wasn’t open, but the words caught in his throat when he was met with your smile. There you were, standing in the shop with a box in one hand and flowers in the other. You looked cute. Really cute. But Douxie chased that thought away. He fumbled with the book he had been re-shelving. It fell out of his hand unceremoniously, landing with a thud.

“Hey,” Doux managed to get out. “What’s all-”

“These are for you!” you shoved the presents into his now empty hands. That courage you had earlier? Gone. Your resolve? Dissolving as we speak. You had to get this over with before you chickened out. He was just so good, okay. And why did you think this was a good idea. Douxie looked down at the gifts in his hands confused, before blushing. If he could have reached a hand behind his head and rubbed the back of his neck he would have.

“I didn’t know we were doing Valentine’s, uh. I feel bad I didn’t get you anything.”

“Oh! Don’t be. I just,, felt like doing something nice for you and uh, special,” Douxie tilted his head. You took the box, freeing up his hand. “These are chocolates I made, like, like you’re supposed to do.” You waltzed over to the counter to place them out of the way. “The bouquet is the real star here, uh, I picked them out very carefully.” You tucked your arms behind your back. “I, uh- I brushed up on flower language, and I hope I got it right.”

Now Douxie may have been a Victorian once upon a time but he had barely any surviving memory of the frilly flower language people socialized through in those days. But thankfully, the blooms in the bouquet in front of him were straight forward enough that he did in fact get the message without taking too much gear turning in that noggin of his. Although, the friendly daisies with the red roses were kind of sending him some mixed signals. He knew what he wanted them to mean, but he could just be misinterpreting. You seemed to notice his hesitation.

“Um, there’s a card too. In the flowers somewhere. That. Probably explains what I’m trying to say a little clearer.” You carded your fingers through your hair. You had anticipated not being able to really speak with your voice, as you barely could now, so you’d written it all out on the card as backup. But damn, that card had everything on it. You maybe got a little carried away. There wasn’t going to be any going back from this.

Douxie dug out the card from amidst the blooms. It was handmade, with a cheesy little drawing on the front complete with a pun. And then he opened it. It was almost solid black with ink. Yeah, you had written that much in there. Both sides. And a little on the back. Wow. Doux tried his best to keep up a poker face while reading it but failed quickly as the first few lines alone left him flushed. It was true, everything was on it. From how much you adored Douxie as a person, to how much you valued his friendship, to how pretty you thought he was, to how you longed for something more, with him? Douxie felt like his hands were getting the card all sweaty.

It was nerve wracking watching him read that card. It seemed like he was finished, since his eyes stopped raking through it, but now he was staring intensely at the words written on the pages, in a trance. He broke focus, looking to the bouquet, back to the card, and then finally settled on you.

“Wow.”

“… is that a good wow?”

Douxie caught you by surprise. He pulled into a hug. “Yeah, a good wow.”

You and Douxie’s first non-platonic hug? Yes please. You didn’t even mind the flowers pressing into your back. Okay so a few rose thorns were poking you but that was fine. Douxie smelled like something you couldn’t name, but it was spicy, and cozy. He let you go sooner than you were ready to, but he grinned at you as he left to rummage through his things in the back for a vase. He turned to you as he proudly displayed them on the store’s counter, right where he could look at them all workday,

“So, where are we going tonight? For our first date?” Doux chuckled, “and, technically, our first Valentine’s day too.”

#valentines💘#douxie x reader #douxie x y/n #hisirdoux casperan x reader #douxie casperan x reader #hisirdoux x reader #douxie imagine #hisirdoux casperan imagine #douxie casperan imagine #tales of arcadia x reader #tales of arcadia imagine #douxie #hisirdoux casperan #my writing

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yunhowhoitiss · 3 years

Text

𝐜𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐮𝐦

𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭!𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐡𝐨 𝐱 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 (𝐟𝐞𝐦)

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.5k+

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff, fantasy au (?), slow burn, angst if you squint, ft co-worker jongho :)

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: You’re finally starting to make ends meet when you start working at your school’s local café, but the world is so full of surprises.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: reader panics a bit(?)

𝐚/𝐧: I came up with this at 4am a couple days ago so it’s not my proudest, but I felt bad just letting it sit in my drafts so here you go :) enjoy!

masterlist

The gentle smell of freshly baked pastries, accompanied by the stronger aroma of ground coffee beans, wafted through the comfy café. There was a constant chatter as customers scattered around the joint whilst waiting, disguising the soft hum coming from behind the coffee machine. Your face was out of sight, except your hair peeked out above the espresso machine where you were pouring a latté, entertaining yourself by decorating a small heart in the foam. A smile tugged at the corners of your lips as your eyes turned to soft crescents when soft wisps of your hair had fallen out of your bun and across the sides of your forehead. The steam floating from the cup caressed your hands as you picked up the mug along with an assortment of macaroons.

“Order for Julie: four macaroons, a chai latté, and an espresso affogato, extra dry!” You announced through the coffee shop, turning a few heads.

You made your way back to the station to continue other orders but stopped as you noticed something missing; you had run out of cinnamon to top off drinks. Your coworker ought to know where another carton would be, so you turned towards the kitchen to find him wrist-deep in bread dough.

“Jongho, where are the extra containers of cinnamon again?”

“Oh, those are in the grey cabinet below the pastry display,” he smiled back, all the while kneading the dough.

Flashing him an ‘ok’ sign, you headed back to the front of the shop. You hadn’t been working at the Crescent Café very long, but you happened to be a pretty fast learner, according to Jongho; you could make latte art before other trainees could even make a latte. Quickly getting back to work, you served a customer until something caught you eye whilst jotting down an order on your notepad; had the writing been on your wrist all day? It must just be something I wrote down earlier, you thought.

As the sun made its way towards the horizon, you returned to the comfort of your small apartment to freshen up, eat dinner, and momentarily forget your academic responsibilities— homework, ugh-- before heading to school again the next day. You entered you apartment with a relived sigh and threw your keys onto a nearby dresser, mumbling "I'm home" to nobody in particular. Too lazy to go to your room, you simply undressed as you walked towards the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothing behind you. Note to self: clean that up later.

The moment you stepped into the shower, your shoulders loosened as the hot water washed away your tension. The writing on your wrist caught your eye again. Scrutinizing the messy handwriting, you saw what seemed to be a shopping list.

“Eggs, lucky charms, and aftershave,” you read aloud.

Aftershave? I don’t use that. Could it be… you were lost thought, not noticing the warm steam filling the bathroom. You rubbed at your soapy skin frantically in an attempt to wash off the pen, to no avail. Lately, although rarely, you’d started to notice small bruises or random marks on your skin; you’d never seen writing, though. You briefly wondered if there was possibly another person causing this, but you only saw such things in movies or books... right?

Your heart rate started to pick up, and a heavy sensation built up in your chest. It isn’t possible, it can’t be. The cramped space of your shower started to feel suffocating. Nearly slipping, you jumped out of the shower and dried yourself off. You got dressed in whatever shirt and sweats you found hanging around your bedroom. Was something wrong with you? Am I imagining things? I’m not going crazy, right? Worrisome thoughts flooded your mind as you spiralled deeper into a panic. Calm down. Don’t skip to conclusions. You threw yourself onto the bed. In and out. It’s that simple, you consoled yourself. Slowly but surely, you felt your heart come to a rest.

When you lifted your hand up above your head the writing was still there, unchanged. So you weren’t losing your mind. Could somebody else be the cause of this? Was someone else somehow writing on your skin? No, you felt stupid for even considering the thought; otherworldly things like that only happened in comics or movies. Nevertheless, it was the only possibility that made sense to you in the moment. You let your curiosity get the best of you, and paced towards the living room to grab a pen off the coffee table. On your right hand, you simply wrote "Hi," in hopes of eliciting some sort of response.

The following day proved to be a rather sunny, warm Monday, but you had to spend your time in a closed lecture hall. The cold-toned ceiling lights were much too bright for your liking, and the monotonous professor spouted information maybe only a handful of people were genuinely listening to. That morning, you had woken up to find the list on your wrist gone, leaving only your own message from the night before. You started to think you'd really had a hallucination of some sort.

Half an hour into the lecture, you were already bored out of your mind and absentmindedly sketching intricate doodles on your notebook. I should just give up on biochemistry and become an artist, you mused to yourself. You remained focused on your art, while marks started to take shape on the back of your hand. Your soft eyes widened almost comically at the sight, and you shot a brief look to the people around you to make sure they hadn’t seen anything. Whipping your head back to your hand, you saw that the words stopped writing themselves, leaving a short message saying “Am I going nuts?”

Wondering the same thing yourself, you jotted down a response below it: “I dunno, you tell me,” followed by a cheeky smiley face. If this really was real, you might as well make a good first impression.

Weeks trickled into months as you made short exchanges with your newly discovered friend. Some nights you would write “good night” followed by a drawn heart, earning a sweet “sleep well” in return. You would frequently wake up to thoughtful words written on the palm of your hand, or you'd kindly ask your companion how they were doing when you had a quiet day at work. Even so, all you had learned about this person was their name, age, and that they were a student as well. Yunho was a twenty-one-year-old elementary education major with a minor in physiology-- he also worked as a dance teacher on weekends. You still didn’t know much about each other, so the messages never went further than greetings and simple conversations.

Be that as it may, you liked it like that. Your relationship wasn’t complex; it felt comfortable and pure, and you didn’t want to change it.

Mellow spring afternoons at the café had always been your favourite. The wispy clouds in the sky were painted a buttery yellow by the slowly setting sun, and a steady stream of nearby students stopped by for coffee. Your new friend had sweetly noted "It's golden hour. Made me think of you," on your palm, leaving you in a bubbly mood. You had started your shift by drawing a heart on your wrist, hoping your secret companion would see it.

You worked by the espresso machine as usual, humming to yourself as always. The bell rang, indicating that customers had arrived; it was a group of what seemed to be three guys and a girl.

“We’ll be right with you!” you called. You turned towards the kitchen. “Jongho, can you take their orders?” Silence. “Pretty please? I need to clean up my station.” you persisted.

“Fine, yeah,” you heard your colleague grumble.

As you tidied up behind the machine, you felt as though someone was watching you from the counter. You lifted your head curiously, meeting a pair of inquisitive doe eyes coloured a soft hazelnut brown. The warm eyes instantly turned into friendly half-moons as the boy smiled shyly upon being caught staring. You hurried back to cleaning up your station, hoping to hide the pink tint of your cheeks, but the red shade consuming your ears gave you away.

Jongho handed you the cups for their orders and walked over to the pastry display. You got started on a hot chocolate and three iced americanos, getting back into your “barista brain,” as you liked to call it. After finishing the drinks, you called out "Three iced americanos, a hot chocolate, and two blueberry muffins!”

You turned around to grab straws, and you overheard one of the guys say “I’ll grab ‘em, you guys can stay here.” You made your way back to the counter, looking up only to be met with the boy from earlier. Butterflies littered your stomach, fluttering up into your chest. “Oh, um, here are some straws,” you smiled gingerly.

“Thanks. Could I please get a sleeve as well?” he asked, “For my hot chocolate.”

“Of course!”

As you handed him the cardboard sleeve, his hands caught your eye. Not only were they the most beautiful hands you'd ever laid eyes on, but the boy had a heart drawn on the valley of skin between his left thumb and wrist, exactly where you had drawn one on your own hand just a while earlier. He seemed to recognize the message on your palm as well; a confused expression ghosted over his face. Gathering all your courage, you nodded towards his hand and did your best to form a coherent sentence. “That’s—”

“Your heart,” he interrupted, “Right?”

You giggled softly in response, barely containing your excitement.

“Right,” you smiled down at your feet in an attempt to hide the bashful grin that pulled at your lips. A hand popped up in front of you.

“Nice to meet you, y/n. My name’s Yunho-- Oh, but you know that already, don’t you?” Yunho chuckled sheepishly. You looked up and slipped your hand into his, shaking it gently. His hands were warm, fingertips ever so soft.

“Nice to meet you too.”

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davidmann95 · 3 years

Note

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

* Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

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darkredehmption · 3 years

Text

Class Is In

#SL #ClassIsIn

Written by @DamagedBrother and @OfFeatherNFang

****

Mal:

I shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t even the first time, but thank fuck, none of my new ‘students’ seemed to notice. As each of the Brothers filed in, taking various seats at the front of the room, I resisted the urge to up and fucking leave. Instead I clenched the black dry erase marker, my eyes straying to Zsadist, who watched me with a small, reassuring smile. My free hand absently brushed over the new scar beneath my shirt, reminding me of what I was doing, and why.

My most recent hospital stay had ended only a few days earlier, and while I’d been approved to teach a classroom full of muscle clad, would-kick-the-shit-out-of-satan killers, I was still black listed from actually leaving the manse to go on rotation. So I had to take what I could get I guess.

As silence crept in with everyone settling the fuck down, I felt the even more uncomfortable weight of eyes on me, waiting for how I was going to wow them. I mean, this wasn’t a class on explosives, firearms, or the 52 ways you could kill a guy with your thumb. This was on the supernatural. Or, I guess, everything ELSE that was supernatural other than… well, us.

“Right, shit, well… here we go. Never been a public speaker, so bear the fuck with me while I figure this shit out,” I mutter, tapping the marker against my free hand. Rhage, helpfully, grinned and said ‘here, here’.

“Well, let’s start by cutting straight to the why’s of being here,” I say firmly, looking to Zsadist and giving a small nod. “Z had a demon hitch a ride. He was possessed,” I say flatly. “And demons gossip around the lava water cooler worse than chicks in a high school. If we don’t start taking precautions now, we could be seeing more of them. Or more of what happened…”

I managed to keep myself from brushing the scar this time, but nothing could quell the furious fire burning in me to ensure Zsadist would never, ever have to go through that shit again.

Zsadist:

I couldn’t help but keep my eyes locked onto my male. I mean let’s face it, I always wanted my eyes on him. But even more lately with what had gone down recently. I could have lost him. Lost the most important person in life at the hands of myself. Well technically not myself, but still, this meeting was important. It was important for the Brotherhood to learn some knowledge on a new threat we had.

Demons.

Shaking the thought from my head as I give my male an encouraging smile. He looked nervous as hell to be in front of the Brotherhood right now, about to teach them a thing or two of his enemies. Though I wanted to believe that my Brothers would behave and give them his full attention.

I couldn’t help but notice Mal’s hand as it crept closer to the new scar that I helped make on his body. Yes, this wasn’t my doing completely, but my hand was the one wielding the dagger. I had to stop letting myself believe this was all my fault, because it wasn’t.

The demons were another enemy that we needed to take down. So I made sure everyone was paying attention before my eyes landed on Mal once again.

Mal:

“I can honestly say I’ve never dealt with a demon possessing a vampire before, but then again, I don’t think the regular vampires they’re used to quite cut it…”

I frowned at that thought, but shrugged and kept going.

“Anyway, we’ll deal with the other breeds of vampires in another lesson,” I say absently, shaking my head. “And ghouls… werewolves… wendigos… poltergeists… well, you get the idea.” I waved my hand as if it would dismiss all the other breeds of supernatural beasties I’d just thrown out there. “Demons are our most pressing issue. How to identify one…”

Turning to the white board, I popped the top on my marker and started to write as I spoke.

“Flickering lights. While also a sign of a malevolent spirit, it can be an indicator that a strong demon is nearby. In their raw form, they look like dark black smoke. That smoke will seek access to your body through your nose and mouth,” I instruct, turning to look back at the Brothers.

All of whom were staring at me, wide eyed and… damn, I wasn’t sure. Angry? Disbelieving? Incredulous? I couldn’t pin it. But this shit was definitely not what they were used to dealing with, and I was going to need to give them a minute to absorb.

“Uh… ask questions, if you want. If it… makes it easier.”

Zsadist:

Whoa okay. That was a lot of knowledge my male just spilled. I was just accepting the fact that demons had entered our world, but all those other things? Hell no.

As I looked around the room I couldn’t help but notice my Brothers with the same blank look on their faces. Vishous was the first one to recover. I watched carefully as he lit a blunt then leaned across his desk.

“Well shit. Always figured there was more to life than just us and the humans.” Vishous said with a shrug.

Rhage’s brows drew in as he raised his hand. I couldn’t help but laugh as he played the role as a student. Once called on, by the very sexy teacher, he drops his hand and unwraps a lollipop.

“So...like all those things you are saying is bad? But how can that be true? I mean...Hadrian is a shifter and he isn’t bad. Used for bad things, sure, but that isn’t his fault. I guess what I’m saying is, what is trying to come for us currently? Do the demons work with the other parties that were mentioned?”

Ah yes, Hadrian.

Even though we were connected, I had a weird feeling that Rhage was tight with the male as well. Rhage once told me that he can relate to Hadrian in some way and hopes that they would get the chance to spend more time together.

Speaking of, I needed to check in with the shifter and make sure he was doing alright. We did manage to be on rotation together every now and then, but rarely did we have the time to chit chat. Maybe next time Mal was out fighting and I was at home I could see if Hadrian wanted to grab a beer. Couldn’t hurt.

Mal:

“Not all shifters are bad the way not all vampires are bad,” I conceded, nodding my head. “Hadrian is a special example too. Even in his world, being able to shift into more than one creature is rare. Most shifters, like werewolves, are bound to one animal.”

Pausing, I took in a breath, trying not to let myself be distracted by thoughts of Hadrian. The shifter being metaphysically bound to my mate was still a raw point for me, but I was working through it. Y’know. Slowly.

“But back to demons…” Lifting a hand to my shirt, I tugged down the collar just enough to reveal the pentacle tattoo across my chest. I also tried to ignore the quick way Z’s golden eyes narrowed at my potentially showing skin to his Brothers, but in this instance he was definitely going to have to breathe. “There are ways of ensuring a demon can’t possess you,” I explain. “This symbol is a protective one that repels demons. They can’t possess me. You can also wear the symbol, or other various amulets and protective talismans, to prevent it.”

Letting go of the shirt, I start a list.

“So, symbols. Talismans. Holy water,” I add, my tone rueful as I figured some of them were, undoubtedly, rolling their eyes. After all, holy water was also a mythical vampire repellent. “If a demon has already possessed a body, you can sometimes provoke them into revealing themselves by saying the name of God in latin.” I glance back at all of them. “Their eyes will turn a complete and glossy black with no iris at all. If they turn any other colour… well. Run like hell while screaming my name,” I say dryly.

Zsadist:

My eyes narrowed dangerously low when I watched Mal reveal his chest to my Brothers. Sure, they’ve seen his bare torso, but that doesn’t mean I wanted them sneaking a peek.

Quickly my head snaps in Vishous’s direction when he starts sketching in the notebook he brought to Mal’s class. Leaning over my desk to look over his shoulder only to reveal a drawing of the tattoo my male wore on his chest. Vishous continued to underline the shape as I leaned back into my seat. He probably had a plan of making some amulets for us to wear while out on rotation.

Everything Mal described sounded...insane. But I knew first hand that this was serious, and everything that he was saying was true.

“I can’t believe we are going to turn into demon hunters!” Rhage chimes in with a goofy smile.

I hold back a snort, turning my attention towards Tohrment as he clears his throat. All heads turn towards his direction.

“So...do these demons have a main purpose? Or do they just run around trying to find people to possess. Like we know what the lessers want...I was just wondering if these demons had an end goal.” Tohr murmurs as he crosses his arms.

Mal:

“Woah, hold your horses dragon boy,” I snort, shaking my head. “I don’t want to turn the Brotherhood into hunters. Believe it or not, there are hunters out there ready to track down demons and the like when they pop up and send them back to Hell. The ‘only’ reason I am teaching ‘anything’ right now is because… well, me being here could bring more of the nasties into our radar, and I want everyone at least prepared to handle it.”

Yeah. Fuck. I ‘so’ did not need to lead these leather clad killers into metaphysical battles. They were all about the bang bang motherfuckers, and you couldn’t waste a ghost or half the things I’d fought with just lead and blades alone.

“Case in point,” I continue, arching a brow. “Half the shit I deal with can’t be snuffed out with a few bullets or a well placed knife to the heart cavity, yeah? Banishing demons requires the seal of solomon and exorcism chants and a whole whack of shit. In the case of possession? Prevention is so much better than cure, so I just want everyone able to avoid it. Depending on who excels at these classes, I may go further to teach exorcisms.”

My eyes flicked to Zsadist, then to Vishous, the two I’d already pegged as most likely to be taught an exorcism. If Vishous didn’t go ahead and research the latin for it without me I’d be shocked.

“As far as a demon’s purpose…” I trailed off, sighed then shrugged. “Really, they want mayhem. They want souls. They don’t want to be in hell. So, all of the above and then some. The better their vessel, the more situated they are to get other demons up and included. So, a breed of rich, powerful vampires with all manner of weapons at their disposal would be ‘very’ appealing,” I add dryly. “So, to reiterate… demons flinch at the latin name of God, burn at the touch of holy water, have dark eyes and look like dark clouds of smoke when they come at you in raw form. Any questions?”

Zsadist:

Everyone kinda stayed quiet, some shook their heads as Mal asked if anyone had questions. Which honestly I was a little relieved at. That means that my Brothers were taking this seriously. Then again after they discovered Hadrian, and learned about shifters, they must believe that anything is possible at this point.

“Think this is a good starting point. We need to continue on and train to be able to handle the demons. Mal is right in a sense where we don’t need to go out and look for demons to destroy, but more so be equipped to handle them if they get in the way from our main goal.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly as Rhage’s face fell. Maybe one day Rhage could go on a mission if any of Mal’s hunter friends ever needs a hand. Then again Hollywood actually might cause more damage.

Snorting at the thought as I look up to watch them file out slowly. Vishous stops in front of my mate to show him some things he wrote down then bumps his shoulder before following out after Butch. Figures V would be all about this. I’m sure he would be up all night doing research.

I lean back in my desk, keeping my eyes on my mate as a private smile slowly forms on my face. Something that my Brothers wouldn’t get to see. Slowly I move to get up, the wooden chair creaking beneath me as I shift my weight off of it.

“Well, that went...well.” I rumbled as I made my way over to the very handsome teacher. “What do you think?” My arms cross over my broad chest.

Mal:

With everyone getting the basics down and with no further questions, class seemed to be dismissed. As Vishous stopped to show me his mockup of the tattoo on my chest, I nodded, agreeing with his ideas of necklaces and arm bands bearing the symbol to protect the Brothers. They needed things that were easy to put on or keep close that wouldn’t get in the way of the fight.

Waiting for Z to come up, I felt myself relaxing the closer he got, until he was right there and I was leaning over to steal a kiss.

“You think it went well?” I murmur, grateful to hear it. “Could you tell I was nervous? Teaching classes is not really my schtick, but everyone seemed to… take it well.”

Sighing, I leant against the desk at the front and gestured backward at the board and the notes I’d made.

“I know this is new to everyone, but… I appreciate the enthusiasm.” Pausing, I looked my male over and felt a familiar and welcome rush of affection. “You okay?”

Zsadist:

The kiss was soft and I welcomed it by sliding my arms around Mal’s waist. Holding my mate against me as my hand lifted to graze his cheek.

“Yeah, now that everything's okay and you are healed.” I murmur as I avoid his gaze for a moment. Trying not to picture the moment I stabbed my own mate in the chest.

Clears my throat. “This is good. We needed this done in case we came in contact with another demon. It seems like everyone took it serious for the most part.” I snort thinking of Rhage then shrugs. “Do you feel good about continuing the lessons? I want to make sure every Brother is well equipped to take care of a demon if we come across one. Scribe, don’t need anyone else getting possessed and stabbing people in the manse.”

Mal could have died. So we needed to take this seriously and make sure everyone in the mansion was safe at all times. To think that we let a threat in, that I let a threat in, was unsettling.

Mal:

Nodding, I rubbed a hand down my mate’s arm reassuringly, looking at the empty classroom. I’d already started to take precautions of my own. The second I’d been released from the med wing I’d sought out, of all people, Fritz, asking for a layout of the grounds and every entrance. From there, I’d gone to each one and set up holy seals - wards to keep out demons and trap any that tried to enter.

“I’ve spoken with Vishous,” I murmur, still thinking about the wards. “I let him know about the wards I put near the entrances - asked him to figure out more permanent solutions to my chalk and salt displays. I think Fritz almost had a coronary when I drew on everything, threw salt everywhere, and told him he couldn’t clean it,” I add ruefully, flashing Z a smile. “But at least that’s a start. I should’ve thought of that when I moved in…”

The admission tasted sour on my tongue, and I looked away from the intensity of that golden gaze to better process my guilt. If I’d had devil’s traps set when I moved in, Zsadist and the demon hitching a ride wouldn’t have got past the door. He’d have been trapped, but performing an exorcism at that point would’ve been a lot fucking easier. But instead I’d been naive, thinking the demons and all the beasties I’d hunted would never find me in Caldwell. And Z had almost paid the price.

“I’m good with continuing lessons, not just on demons,” I said finally, letting out a breath. “And while I was honest when I said I don’t want the Brothers going hunting if I can help it, there is a perk to knowing I have back up if something goes down in our backyard.”

Zsadist:

“Don’t beat yourself up about that. Hell, I’m surprised this is the first time we have come in contact with them. With all the shit we dabble in you would have thought we would have seen them before” I shrug before reaching for my male. My hand cups his nape, forcing his gaze back to mine.

“Hey. You can’t beat yourself up over this, just like you told me that I can’t even though I do.” I snorted. “It’s done and you are safe in my arms.” My voice cracks slightly at that, holding him a little tighter in my arms.

“Everything is going well, and I’m grateful to have you teach us how to handle these demons.” I nod before slowly pulling away.

“Now...come on, let’s head back upstairs…”

My scarred lips turn up into a playful smirk as I start down the hallway. I couldn’t wait to have my male in our bed and to know that he was safe with me.

#EndSL #ClassIsIn

#SLS BlackDaggerBrotherhood

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angelswithcigarettes · 3 years

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“To find a way to cope”

Summary: Morgan finds Spencer's notebooks filled with partly disturbing drawings and poems and learns once again how much of what Spencer feels he doesn't know how to express and how much happened in his childhood he never talks about.

AU: [This is an AU in which Morgan and Reid share a house (as friends). The parts can be read independently.]

Warnings: Past Sexual Abuse

Relevant Tags: Autistic Spencer Reid, Suicidal Thoughts

Word Count: 4626

First Chapter:

Notes: Since this series is the follow up serious to another one of mine "Green" (I will link it in the endnote) there can be some confusion if you haven't read it. But here is a short summary of it so you don't have to read it all and can still 'enjoy' this:

In the story "Green" Spencer gets together with Lola who abuses him following up this abuse he stays with Morgan who helps him recover as much as that is possible. Spencer doesn't want to go back to his apartment so Morgan decides that it is time for a change, they move in together in one of the houses Morgan renovated ones.

They each have their own privacy, their own floors including bathrooms and bedrooms and each of them has their own office but its not a secret to anyone that they also don't have much privacy because at some part after living together for so many years the embarrassment or shame for many things just faded.

However when Morgan picks up a box of books in the basement while looking for his old baseball equipment he feels bad when he looks inside of them.

They are notebooks, written in with black ink and he can tell that it's Spencer handwriting. There is a date on the corner, the note book is hardly a month old. He puts it away and grabs one from further down, revealing another date from eight years ago and he opens up a random page and starts reading.

"And if you look at me

Look at me for another moment

See me

If you really see me

Can you look at me the same again."

It's seems to be an attempt of poetry and Morgan opens another page finding a scetch of a person. Also in blank ink. Their hands scratching at their eyes, looking like they are screaming.

He reads another poem.

"Can you hear me screaming?

Did you hear me screaming for you? You hands burning my skin,you hands burning my innocence.

Can you hear me screaming?

In the latest night, can you hear me screaming?

Did you hear him burning my skin, his hands burning my innocence."

Morgan can feel an unsettling feeling spread through his body, these are too old to be from the time with Lola, judging by the date he must have been in his early twenties.

He looks into another notebook finding a lot of sketches and a few of them look similar to people Morgan had seen before, he figures they are unsubs and then he opens another scatch and it looks like a women, warning a gun holster and having a glass in her hand, her hair shoulder long and judging by the date this is Elle.

Morgan picks up another one, it is dated for approximately a year ago. The drawing shows their house but the windows are barricaded with wood and nails, only a light shining out of Morgan's room and a kitten is sitting in front of their doorstep, skinny and looking up to the doorbell handing in front of the door that is also barricaded.

The next one is a drawing from their kitchen and it shows Morgan, at least he thinks so, sitting at the table with his hand on his head the other around a coffee cup and on the kitchen counter are files stacked and the kitchen table is filled with overflowing cups.

There is a third, showing their bathroom and there is a liquid on the floor,again every drawing is held black ink but he guesses its blood and a handprint on the mirror and in front of the puddle and then there is a hand sticking out from behind the curtain from which the liquid drops down.

The fourth is what makes Morgan want take the notebook with him, it's a man standing in the door and by the tattoos he can make out that it is supposed to be him but he is wearing a mask and he is holding Spencer's stuff animal in his hand while wearing only Jean's and boots no shirt. Morgan can make out that this is supposed to be Spencer's room.

The worst he finds in that notebook is one of a women, sitting on a chair, her head leaned back and her arms sliced open, blood dripping down on the floor and by the necklace, the gun at her hip and the long slightly curly hair Morgan dares to assume that this is supposed to be JJ.

He puts the notebook aside and pulls out one from the time when he started at the BAU and the first drawing is of a little boy with glasses standing in the bullpen that is crowded with files. The second is a room filled with bees at the wall and an empty chair in the middle.

Morgan knew Spencer can draw he didn't know how well he does.

There are a few sketches of Morgan and Gideon and a lot of JJ. And many butterflies and with the ripped out pages in between he guessed that he draw them for her.

He quickly puts everything away when he hears Spencer walking down the stairs but goes back down to grab the one with the poem about the 'burning hands' the one with the sketch from Elle and the one with the drawings from the house and the women on the chair and for weeks he hides them in his office and eventually started profiling a few of them but quickly stopped that, feeling uncomfortable.

"What are you drawing?" He asks stepping into Spencer's office and the man shuts the notebook again.

"I don't draw."

"You don't?"

"No, I haven't in years."

"You haven't?"

"No, I am horrible at that." Morgan steps closer and it fits what he had found downstairs. The little pencil case open, only black pens inside and a pencil with a rubber. "What did you want?"

"Nothing just wanted to check in on you." Looking over he sees another stack of papers, and in a box next to his desk watercolours. "Its getting pretty stuffed in here."

"I like it. And I would like for you to leave now."

"I will." Apologetic Morgan takes his hands up and leaves the room.

There is a high chance that Spencer knows himself that his drawings are concerning and that that is the reason he is so defensive over people knowing he draws.

He keeps his findings a secret for a few more days until he gets to concerned and tries again talking to him about it but the moment he takes the word drawings in his mouth Spencer denies having drawn in the last years and accuses him of having sniffed around his office for things he draw as a teenager.

So he takes the notebooks and in a quiet moment walks up to Hotch's office who is similar concerned by them. For him the worst is one of Spencer himself, someone pressing a hand over his mouth and him into a pillow next to a poem about the lyrical I suffocating.

"There are more that hint at sexual abuse."

"He has a history we know that."

"Some are older than what happened with Lola."

"Did you try talking to him about these?"

"He claims he hasn't drawn in years." Hotch looks further through it finding more and more thinks he finds concerning.

"There are quite a lot of you."

"That's why I am here. I was hoping he maybe would rather talk to you about it. I can't explain why the drawings are portraying me like that." Hotch looks down on the page of a drawing of Morgan laying on the couch, the TV running but he is sleeping. On the table a ashtray with smoke coming from it on the floor next to the couch, multiple books that block his way and lianas hanging from the ceiling one close to curling itself completely around his neck.

"You have a theory?"

"My first guess was that something in the house made him feel captured, or even me but I am not sure."

"I would actually say that it's the opposite. That he feels like he captures you."

"Me?"

"This doesn't look like he is the one captured." He points at another painting showing Morgan standing in the kitchen, one half of his body having spiders all over it his other side being completely normal beside the fingers that in the end turn into bees and more bees flying away from it. "Are you okay?"

"You see this drawings and you ask if I am okay?"

"Besides that these drawing are definitely not something that leave you unaffected there are a few that a showing you in a vulnerable state he probably saw this before drawing it in his own interpretation."

"I am fine, I don't know why he draws me like that."

"Alright I will talk to him about it." Morgan initially wanted to go to JJ with this but she really doesn't need to see the drawings of herself being death by suicide. There is the one on the chair but also one hanging out of a tree with wings on her back.

For Hotch the most disturbing once are the two from a child, being beaten and in the other drawing having wings sitting on top of a clip, stars around them.

Morgan brings him the other notebooks too and in the earlier once its clear that he draws what he sees on cases and around himself. The poems not so much.

But the younger the note books the more it concerns his friends and random children.

Hotch doesn't find many of himself, but there is a notebook around the time Emily died that breaks his heart and when she came back the drawings change to something with more anger and eventually one that shows Spencer and him sitting in his office, Spencer looking at Hotch, Hotch doing the same but behind Hotch stands Emily or JJ he can't tell having a hand on his shoulder and covering his mouth while Spencer has a ghost behind him, covering his eyes.

He thinks long about if he wants to talk to him about the notebooks because Spencer seems to use this to cope and that is a good thing no matter how violent they look but on the other hand it seems like something is really bothering him so after weeks of debating he hands Morgan the box back saying that it feels wrong for him to interfere and Morgan first gets angry but then agrees that it is better if he first talks to him and then can offers Spencer to talk to Hotch if he rather wants that.

So eventually Morgan breaks the ice at a dinner picking up the box and placing it on the table. "You know what this is?"

"A box"

"You know what's in it?" He asks and Spencer nods with worry in his eyes. "I found it in the basement while cleaning it out."

"Did you-" Nervous he bites on the inside of his lip.

"I did"

"They are mine" He tells him, the fear clearly audible in his voice.

"I know, I am just a little bit worried about you, there is some pretty dark stuff in there."

"You weren't supposed to see."

"But I did and I just want to make sure that everything is alright."

"Yes they are just drawings."

"They are not just drawings."

"And poems."

"Not what I mean kid" Morgan grabs the notebook on top and sits down in front of him opening the page with the drawing of their house. "Is this our house?"

"Yes"

"Can you tell me why you draw this?" Spencer shrugs ones, tears in his eyes. "These are yours and I am not judging you or am mad I just think that some of these, because this notebook was finished a few weeks ago, need talking about. And I am just trying to help you."

"I don't know why I draw this."

"What about the cat? Is that Garfield?" Garfield is an old cat they adapted years ago and died.

"Yes"

"You still miss him?"

"Sometimes I wish he comes home again but then nothing is open here anymore."

"Garfield is dead and even if he wasn't dead when we got the call he would be by now." Morgan tells him in a gentle voice. "So this is about Garfield not coming back in,not you feeling captured in here?"

A nod.

"See that's why I think talking about this is good because I completely miss interpreted this."

"Did you see all of them?"

"Yes"

"All of them?"

"Yeah, I looked through them." He nods and then a tears rolls down his face. "Come on we go over to the couch for this, we cuddle up with your stuff lion and we talk about these, you can lean against me no need to look me in the eyes or for me to see your face." Morgan over the years found out that that is what makes him feel the most comfortable while talking. Either on car rides when Morgan can't tear his eyes from the road or while walking somewhere or placed so that Morgan isn't looking into his face.

Spencer ignores the offer to get his stuff animal from upstairs but he takes the thick blanket while Morgan pulls out the cautions from underneath making the couch bigger and then leans against him and Morgan opens the next page.

It's the drawing from Morgan in the kitchen, the files everywhere and the cups on the table. "What's with the Cubs?"

"I don't remember."

"Mr I have an eidetic memory that's very hard to believe."

"Sometimes everything gets dirty in our kitchen."

"And that bothers you?"

"I try cleaning it but it seems like it doesn't get better even when everything is properly stored."

"And the files?"

"It always happens when we have many cases after another and then it isn't fun coming home anymore."

"Because its dirty?"

"Because it's all tight" He tries to explain how the house feels to him. "We can't move in here."

"Is that the same thing you wanted to express with this?" Morgan asks opening the page of him laying on the couch with the lianas from the ceiling.

"Yes and- and that I- that I take your energy away."

"Okay one point after the other, what is it with the house being to tight? We have a lot of space and a lot of garden and everything, what makes it tight?"

"I don't know sometimes it just is." He tells him moving his head back on Morgan's arm shutting his eyes for a moment and then breathing in deeply.

"We don't have to do this all now if its to much for you" He tells him worried about how this affects Reid. "You just explain it the best way you think I will see about the rest."

"You won't get me."

"I do, it's tight in here sometimes, like you can't move."

"Yes"

"And cleaning doesn't help"

"Yes"

"See not that bad"

"It makes me feel bad." He continues and then hits his thigh ones. "Like I need to run."

"Like you need to run?"

"Yes. Like I have to move. Like my legs haven't moved enough."

"Because it's to tight in here?"

"Yes."

"What about you taking my energy away? What do you mean by that?" Spencer turns his head away not looking at the page but then eventually speaks.

"I am really not an easy friend."

"For me you are."

"No I am not."

"You are not taking my energy away."

"You could do a lot more thinks if it wasn't for me." Spencer justifies his statement.

"Like what?" But he just shakes his head still facing away from him and Morgan tries encouraging him to talk to Hotch but Spencer denies the offer so Morgan moves his hand down around his waist and pulls him closer again. "C'mon you did so good with the first drawings and we won't have to talk about this one any more we can just move on to another.”

Rest on Ao3 (I can’t post more words in here I’m sorry):

#criminal minds #spencer reid #derek morgan #ao3 author #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fanfiction #autistic spencer reid #jennifer jareau

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starshine583 · 3 years

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Journal Entries (4)

(This journal entry is connected to Chapter 5 of New Girl on the Block!)

Entry 1 / Entry 3

Friday, January 18th

The mystery of Marinette Dupain-Cheng continues to unfold before my very eyes. To start this off, I’ll explain how I came across the new clues in the first place. I visited the Dupain-Cheng bakery (a very quaint shop) to learn how to bake croissants today, as I mentioned the day before.. Marinette’s parents were extremely open and welcoming to us (much like my own mother) and showed us around the kitchen. It was a decent size with at least four ovens. I’d expect nothing less for a successful bakery. M. Tom, Marinette’s father, was the one to teach us, and his teaching skills were relatively easy to follow, especially since I had Marinette as a partner. She may not remember how to watch the time, but she certainly knows how to mix and measure ingredients. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Claude to throw our group into chaos once again. Mlle. Sabine requested M. Tom’s assistance for a minimum of five minutes, and in that time, Claude managed to cover himself and Allegra in flour by accidentally dumping the bag. Then, when Marinette tried to get more flour, she tripped and caused us both to fall to the flour, inevitably dumping the flour on myself as well. In hindsight, I probably should have expected her to fall due to her clumsy nature, but at the time, I was too busy rolling my eyes at Claude for wasting the Dupain-Cheng’s assets. After we fell, she picked up the flour bag (Which was extremely heavy. I still don’t know how she lifted it with one hand. Does she secretly lift weights or is she simply accustomed to carrying bags of flour for her father?) and apologized. I told her it was fine, because what could I have done? We were both already ghost white with flour. Getting upset wouldn’t do anything but make her feel worse. Allan started laughing at us, so Marinette threw flour onto him as well. I have to admit, it was the highlight of my day. That is, however, until M. Tom re-entered the room. He was extremely forgiving about the matter, though, even laughing and telling us we had the “baking spirit”. I have yet to find out what that means. Anyway, we finished the croissants, and Marinette’s parents sent us up to her room to take a shower and get changed. Marinette had outfits that she’d designed to give to us. They were positively exquisite. I have no doubt that she’ll make a fine fashion designer once she’s old enough to join the competitive world. Her bedroom is also where I found the “clues” I was referred to earlier. It was a large chest full of various gifts, and upon further inspection, I discovered that they were all gifts for a single person by the name of “Adrien”. My theory is that this “Adrien” fellow is an old flame and possibly the person who’s been following her (She mentioned the perpetrator being a “he”). Could he be trying to reconcile with her? That would certainly explain why she’s avoiding him and why she appeared to be distressed at his presence. I shall do my best to uncover more information.

A few extra things to note, should they be important:

1. Marinette’s room is completely covered in pink. That leads me to believe it is her favorite color.

2. Her love of fashion is quite evident, as there are sketches and sewing needles and such everywhere. She even has a mannequin.

3. She has a few different cat toys strewn across the room, yet I didn’t see a single cat during our visit. Perhaps they put the cat in another room, or she simply plays with the strays that often roam around Paris.

That is all, for now. I’ll be sure to make an update as soon as I can.

Dear Diary,

Today was a total blast! Allan, Allegra, Claude, and Felix all came over as planned, and we had so much fun! Felix actually got here a little early, but Maman and Papa definitely didn’t mind. I kind of felt bad for him, though, because that meant he got singled out with their hugs, but he said it was fine. He also said that his mother was kind of like my parents, which is pretty cool. I never really thought about what Felix’s parents would be like, but with how collected and short he can be, I assumed they would be the same way. Knowing that his mom acted like mine makes him feel more.. Human. If that makes sense. Anyway, baking was great. Claude accidentally spilled the flour, though. Then I did a few minutes later. (Right onto Felix too! It was so embarrassing. We were both completely covered) Allan started laughing at us, so Felix suggested that I throw the flour onto him too, which I totally did. We were all dying of laughter. I didn’t think Felix could be such a jokester- aside from his sarcastic remarks -but I guess I’m learning a lot about him now. Papa found our mess right after I threw the flour and asked what happened. Even though I knew we wouldn’t be in trouble, I panicked and just said it was my fault, but everyone immediately stood up for me. Even Felix! It was super sweet. After the croissants, I gave everyone some extra outfits that I finished making recently. They all loved them. :D Then we played games and really just hung out in general. Claude and Allan kept trying to beat me at Mecha Strike 3, but of course, I creamed them. That didn’t stop them from trying, though. Allan said that he had tons of games at his house, and that we should all come over sometime to play! I hope we actually get to do that soon. Maman called us down for supper sometime after that, and Claude absolutely loved it. He scarfed down every bit of it and even asked for some to go! I kind of wonder how he stays so fit with everything he eats. Maybe he just has a fast metabolism. Anyway, they left not too long after that, which I was kind of sad about, but I’ll see them Monday! Chat came by later tonight too, and I noticed he was acting kind of weird. He kept asking me about Dupont and my old friends.. I hope he’s doing okay.

I have to start on homework now, but I’ll talk to you again soon. Goodbye for now, Dear Diary!

#felinette #Felix Culpa #Marinette #Journal Entries #Rosemary AU

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smiting-finger · 4 years

Text

Previous HP AU parts: Here, here, here and here

“So, Requiem,” Wei Wuxian says as soon as the image on the surface of the bronze mirror ripples out into the uppermost three quarters of Nie Huaisang’s head.

(“My brother hung it in the office when he took over as Sect Leader,” Nie Huaisang explains during their first mirror-call after Wei Wuxian’s return.

Wei Wuxian immediately drops the topic.

“Do the other Sect Leaders just … let it go?” he asks Lan Zhan later, and receives a small headshake in reply.

“He adds extra seat cushions to his chair during official meetings,” Lan Zhan says, his voice uncoloured by emotion, his gaze steady as he turns to meet Wei Wuxian’s. “But he says they’re difficult to balance on.”

Wei Wuxian drops the topic a second time.)

“The song that we learned at school for calming restless souls?” Nie Huaisang asks with three quarters of an appraising look, and then adds, “Those of us who weren’t tone-deaf, anyway.”

“That’s the one,” Wei Wuxian agrees, and if that’s a dig at the time he deliberately played out of tune and almost sent old Professor Lan beyond the veil to soothe the spirits of the dead in person, he stands by his choices.

(If it’s a reference to Wen Ning, then - well, the poor boy tried his best. You can’t be good at everything.)

“I was thinking,” he continues, leaning back in his chair. He waves his wand at the small pile of paper birds in front of him, which line up obediently along the desk edge and take turns to divebomb the makeshift target drawn on the back of his office door.

“We use Requiem as a conduit to magically encourage emotional calm - so there’s no reason, in theory, that we couldn’t use music to do the opposite, is there?”

Nie Huaisang taps his fan against his chin a few times (or, at least, that’s what Wei Wuxian assumes is causing the soft patting sounds he hears, since his line of sight stops at Nie Huaisang’s upper lip), before asking:

“You want to ... compose a song that makes souls restless?”

“Not restless,” Wei Wuxian doesn’t need magic to do that, “I just want to … encourage them to feel certain things. Or have certain states of mind.”

He slings a dart at the door and sighs when it only barely makes it into the target’s outermost boundary.

“You mean,” Nie Huaisang begins slowly, “like that time with Professor Lan and your shitty flute playing in third year?”

“Well, yes,” Wuxian allows, because technically that is what happened, “but also no. I’m also thinking more through the actual music than the quality thereof. And ... I’m also possibly not looking to induce rage?”

His second dart lands closer to the centre, but not by much. A paper bird embedded into the next section over starts to shake its butt at him in a smug victory dance.

Rude.

“So instead,” Nie Huaisang prompts gently, “you’re looking to induce…?”

“...arousal?” Wei Wuxian offers hopefully.

There’s a moment of silence, which is eventually broken by the slide of Nie Huaisang’s fan as he flicks it open.

“Why?” he asks finally, doing a remarkable job of keeping the judgment out of his face.

“The pursuit of knowledge is a worthwhile goal in and of itself,” Wei Wuxian supplies in his loftiest impression of Lan Qiren’s lecture-voice.

Nie Huaisang simply looks at him.

“And maybe in this case, the knowledge might have some personal application, too,” Wei Wuxian admits, and is met with a second moment of silence.

“I truly don’t know if Lan Wangji deserves my condolences or congratulations,” Nie Huaisang says eventually, and shakes his head.

“Why not both?” Wei Wuxian shrugs.

“It comes down to a question of whether lust is fundamentally physical or spiritual, doesn’t it?” Lan Xichen muses between stirs. “Could you pass me the three-legged crow feathers, please? They’re in the box on the - no, the one next to - yes, that one, thank you.”

He takes the dish from Wei Wuxian, scatters the feathers evenly across the bubbling surface of whatever potion he’s brewing and immediately takes a step back, drawing Wei Wuxian along by the elbow. A second later, the feathers begin to spark, whizzing around in jerky figure-eights before finally sinking into the pale liquid with a soft hiss and a few wisps of white smoke.

“Now where were we?” Lan Xichen asks himself, picking up his wooden ladle to resume his gentle stirring. “Oh yes, that’s right. Requiem acts on the metaphysical component of the being - the mind and soul, if you will. We know that because of its effectiveness on ghosts, who possess no physical component at all. Therefore, it follows that if lust is purely - or, otherwise necessarily - physical, then Requiem will not be a useful basis for what you’re trying to achieve.”

“Right,” Wei Wuxian says, nodding slowly. “And that’s not even considering that the physical and mental components of lust might vary in comparative size from person to person...”

Lan Xichen hums in agreement and opens a box of yao grass, carefully selecting a sprig and then slipping off the small cord binding it together.

“We’ll just have to test it, then,” Wei Wuxian decides firmly.

To Lan Xichen’s credit, his hand, outstretched as it is over the mouth of the cauldron, only pauses for the briefest of moments before his fingers uncurl to allow the yao grass to fall in.

“I look forward to your findings,” he says serenely.

“Get out,” Lan Qiren says.

“But-” Wei Wuxian protests, because he has an entire speech prepared to explain why, as the Theory of Magic teacher, Lan Qiren should be absolutely be interested in this project.

“OUT,” Lan Qiren thunders.

Wei Wuxian gets.

“Can ghosts even … release?” Nie Huaisang wonders from his perch on the edge of the water, on one of his rare visit to the Gusu Academy.

With both classes and Nie Huaisang’s official business finished for the day, the afternoon presents a perfect opportunity for Wei Wuxian to indulge in nostalgia for their schooling days. And so, as soon as lunch is over, he drags Nie Huaisang and Wen Ning out the door and into a romp all over the grounds to marvel at all the things that have changed, as well as all the things that haven’t.

Somehow they’ve ended up at the cold springs, the scene of many a student tryst (tragically, not a single one of them involving Wei Wuxian), and countless youthful fantasies.

None of which the three of them are calling to mind, sitting as they are with their pant legs rolled up to their knees so that they can soak their feet (or, in Wen Ning’s case, hold their feet above the water in a good approximation thereof) like the old men they are.

It’s not quite like the old days (the absence of a familiar, derisive snort; of the loud words that are almost sharp enough to hide the fondness thrumming beneath them like heartbeats under breastbone, is too pronounced for that), but in the miracle of After, it’s more than Wei Wuxian thought he’d be able to have.

(It’s enough.)

“Let’s say lust is metaphysical enough for your reverse-Requiem to work,” Nie Huaisang continues, “and then you play it for a spirit, and get them worked up. What do they ... do with that? Can ghosts-”

He makes an unmistakeable jerking gesture with his hand.

Wei Wuxian frowns. He hadn’t considered that.

And then, with an eerie synchronisation that Wei Wuxian can only attribute to the seven formative years they spent living in each other’s pockets, they turn as one to look at Wen Ning, who lets out an alarmed squeak.

“Does it matter?” Wei Wuxian asks, deciding to take pity on Wen Ning and refrain from pursuing that line of inquiry,

“Well,” Nie Huaisang answers, turning to him with a significant wide-eyed glance, “think about it this way: if you were a resentful spirit, and someone played a song for you that made you build up all this lust that had nowhere to go … wouldn’t you become more resentful?”

Wen Ning squeaks again, his eyes like black saucers in his pale face.

“Hm,” Wei Wuxian says, pausing to consider this most excellent point.

“Actually, wait” Nie Huaisang says after a moment. “There’s at least one outlet that I’ve just thought of-”

“Possession,” Wei Wuxian supplies immediately.

“Right?” Nie Huaisang exclaims, waving his fan excitedly. “Can you imagine, a horny, possessed horde-”

“-charging around the countryside” Wei Wuxian continues, grinning with mixed horror and delight, “humping everything in its path-”

(They spend the next hour casting bubble-head charms on themselves and taking turns to swim to the bottom of the cold spring so that they can promise Wen Ning that no, they certainly won’t be asking him to help them test any of this, and they won’t be testing anywhere near him, either, Wei Wuxian will make sure that all testing happens far, far away, so can he please come back out now, the students would be sad if he stayed hiding inside the pool forever-)

“WHY ARE YOU SO EMBARRASSING?” Jin Ling yells, not letting the fact that he’s currently upside-down and hanging from the ceiling get in the way of his outrage.

“Students who break into my office to poke around my things have no right to complain about what they find,” Wei Wuxian replies calmly, leaning back in his chair so that he can look up at the two bodies suspended in mid-air and wriggling fruitlessly against the confines of their bindings.

“IT WAS A DARE,” Jin Ling shouts defensively, starting to swing back and forth from the force of his own righteousness.

“I wouldn’t be so proud of that if I were you,” Lan Jingyi mutters under his breath.

“Oh?” Wei Wuxian inquires politely, leaning forward so that he can rest his elbows on his desk and pointedly steeple his fingers at his miscreant students.

“A dare to look through my notes?”

“No,” Jin Ling shoots back hotly, before subsiding into a muttered, “I just looked at those because they were there. AND,” he resumes, remembering his earlier indignation, “when I did,” it turned out to be all - all -”

What the boys have managed to find are actually all Wei Wuxian’s half-sketched plans of ways to surpass (or just match, Wei Wuxian would be more than happy with even approximately matching) Lan Zhan’s patently unmatchable love confession.

(Ten years of waiting and the first thing out of his mouth when he sees Wei Wuxian’s face again is “Wei Ying, I love you.”

What was the first thing that came out of Wei Wuxian’s mouth after seeing Lan Zhan’s face again?

“Ho ho ho, you think your puny barrier charm is gonna make me sleep in this box when I could be sleeping in your bed? Well think again!”

It really doesn’t compare.)

So far, each one has ended in a frustrated jumble of scribbled-out lines and some variation on WHAT WAS I THINKING? THIS DOESN’T EVEN COME CLOSE, but he’ll get there eventually.

“-all-” Jin Ling continues to splutter, “plans to - to have your way with Professor Lan!”

Wei Wuxian hums in agreement. What a charmingly missish turn of phrase - Jiang Cheng’s fingerprints are all over the boy’s upbringing.

“Everyone’s always talking about all the things you invented during the War,” Jin Ling continues to rage, unaware that his intended audience is only half-listening, “talking about how you were the best mind of your generation - The best mind, and THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE WASTING IT ON?”

“Can you stop?” Lan Jingyi hisses. “If you make him angry, he’ll never let us go!”

He jerks his hip in a clear attempt to nudge his fellow prisoner. Unfortunately for him, he uses too much force and overshoots the mark, excess momentum instead sending them both spiralling around each other as the charmed ropes holding them up begin to rapidly intertwine.

“What else would I use it on?” Wei Wuxian asks, watching with badly-concealed amusement as the boys’ efforts to stop spinning only make them spin faster. “I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t think of anything more important than getting into Lan Zhan’s-”

“SHAMELESS!” Jin Ling howls as he and Lan Jingyi begin to spin in the opposite direction.

“STOP YELLING!” Lan Jingyi yells.

“You wouldn’t have seen it, because I haven’t written it down yet,” Wei Wuxian continues mercilessly over the top of the resultant shouting match. “But if the song doesn’t work, there’s this part-human creature in Europe that does an apparently irresistible seduction dance. It shouldn’t take me too long to learn it-”

Jin Ling’s answering bellow of rage, Wei Wuxian notes fondly, is almost an exact copy of Jiang Cheng’s.

“So what’s this actually about?” Nie Huaisang asks during their next mirror-call, after Wei Wuxian plays another three notes that create a curl of something in his belly that could maybe be mild interest (or could maybe be just gas).

“What do you mean, ‘actually’?” Wei Wuxian asks reflexively, picking up his brush and carefully crossing yet another failed stanza off his list. “It’s about what it’s about - expanding my foreplay repertoire so that Lan Zhan doesn’t get bored and leave me for Mianmian.”

“You said it wasn’t about inciting rage,” Nie Huaisang continues thoughtfully, completely ignoring him. “So what else would you need to draw out of people?”

He tilts his face up towards the ceiling and purses his lips.

“It wouldn’t be happiness - we’ve already got charms for that - sadness? But why would you-”

Nie Huaisang freezes, and then slowly, carefully, brings his eyes back down to meet Wei Wuxian’s.

Theirs is a generation that grew up in war. Who among them doesn’t have unresolved grief? Who doesn’t have emotions they’ve repressed (trauma, resentment, guilt) - at first because there wasn’t the time or energy between the fighting and the surviving to properly work through them, and then afterwards because it just seemed easier to move on and try to forget?

(How many ghosts are unable to move on because they cannot resolve worldly attachments that they’re too afraid to remember?)

Nie Huaisang clears his throat.

“Why don’t you play me that last one again?” he suggests lightly. “I think you inverted one of the chords wrong. After we fix that, maybe it’ll work better.”

“Oh good, you’re back,” Wei Wuxian says when he steps into the Jingshi to find Lan Zhan already waiting. “Shall we-”

“Am I not passionate enough for you?” Lan Zhan cuts in, apropos of nothing. His voice is mild, but there’s a glint in his eyes that puts Wei Wuxian on immediate alert.

(And Little Wei Wuxian on immediate alert too, but that’s basically a given when Lan Zhan is involved.)

“...no? What makes you think that?” Wei Wuxian asks carefully, and Lan Zhan mutely lifts up a very familiar, half-finished composition.

Ah.

“I can explain,” Wei Wuxian offers quickly, holding his arms out between them and automatically stepping backwards in response to Lan Zhan’s very forceful (and very long!) step forwards.

“I have very valid reasons,” he adds, continuing to scramble back as Lan Zhan continues to advance, until he finds himself pinned between a rock and Lan Zhan’s hard, manly chest, “none of which are in any way a challenge to the strength of your ardour-”

He has just enough time for a half-laugh, half-yelp as he’s picked up and thrown onto the bed, and then all further protests are put on hold while Lan Zhan proves, aggressively and comprehensively, that he’s more than passionate enough.

With Lan Zhan’s musical expertise involved, the deconstruction of Requiem into its core magical components goes a lot more smoothly, and much more quickly.

The “testing” of Wei Wuxian’s derivative composition also becomes a lot more fun, if a lot less reliable in terms of producing valid results.

In the end, Wei Wuxian is only a little disappointed that they don’t manage to get an aphrodisiac song out of it.*

In the second year after his return, Yiling Patriarch Wei Wuxian developed the song Release, which has since been adapted for a wide range of therapeutic applications, including use in treatments for anxiety, depression, stress and trauma.

With assistance from noted symphonimagus Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian deconstructed the then-established Requiem and, by applying its foundational magical principles in reverse, was able to create a song that, when played, encouraged the controlled expression of emotion under the player’s guidance.

Unfortunately, his notes and experimental logs have since been lost.

-excerpt from the Annals of the Cloud Recesses

“LAN ZHAN, LOOK!” Wei Wuxian shrieks, running down the side of the hill towards him, waving a handful of leaves and flowers, “APHRODISIAC GRASS!”

#The Untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #wangxian #HP AU #CQL

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kazoo5480 · 3 years

Link

Ruby eyed Killian as he opened the door, and when Emma came in the door she squealed running toward her.

“Are you insane! I was terrified when you disappeared! You didn’t answer your phone, I was so worried” Ruby admonished while hugging her in a rocking motion. She kissed Emma’s cheek leaving a red imprint, and Emma smiled.

“Thank you, Rubes. I needed exactly what you gave me” she said and hugged her friend.

Ruby nodded and glanced at Killian. He stepped forward and Ruby hugged him, whispering in his ear that she had just been trying to protect them both.

He nodded, and Ruby cupped his cheek. She handed her keys to Emma before they could ask, and said she would have food ready for them on their way out.

Killian walked into Emma’s room and noticed her bed looked very slept in. Like a nest of pillows and blankets.

“Swan, did you have guests?” He asked, and she nodded.

“Ruby and M’s slept with me,” she said and his heart squeezed.

“C'mere, Swan” and patted the bed. She sat and he cupped her jaw. “No more running, I’m not, I need you to not either. Do you need space? We argue, I’ll give you space but we don’t leave our house angry, or scared. Ok?” His eyes bore into hers, and she nodded.

“Ok. But what if we need actual space?” She asked moving to stand.

He shrugged. I’ll get a couch for the office, sleep in the shop. But no, Granny’s isn’t our safe haven when we fight. That’s something I’ve been thinking about too" he said.

Emma looked at him curiously. “What do you mean? She asked.

"A house. For us. More space, I don’t know. It was just a thought” he said as he shoved her laptop bag full and zipped it.

Emma didn’t respond, and when he looked at her she sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck.

“I’m sorry again. My rationale was that I ran somewhere nearby where I could straighten myself out. You had Graham, but my lack of communication sent you to a dark place. I trusted you, I knew you wouldn’t do that to me. But I needed the space to make sure my feelings were under control, that I wouldn’t hurt you just out of retaliation for your horrible ex-girlfriend. I didn’t plan to run out of town, that’s why I came here. A block away, I just needed to make sure that I was able to be rational, tell you why I did this to myself, and apologize to you” she said softly, and he let her continue.

“I hurt you by not trusting myself. I don’t know how to make that up to you. I am sorry you felt alone, I just was so afraid I’d say something to make it worse when really by saying nothing made it worse than words probably ever could have. I’ll just try to be better for you, every day.” she finished.

Killian wiped the stray tears on her cheeks away. “Ground rules Swan. No running. You wanna yell, fine. You want to run, you tell me why, and then you can yell some more when I won’t let you run. You just can’t do that to me, it made me feel insane because I lost the one person I depend on. Who held my happiness inside of her, and while on some level I knew you had to be nearby, I couldn’t say a word" he said, swallowing.

“You didn’t pick up calls, I didn’t know where you were. Had it been me who stumbled in and saw you in that way, I would have probably hit the guy too. The difference is I would have stopped, and asked if you were ok, and taken you home. You ran, like a ghost with no way for me to find you. I get it from your past, the abandonment, I forgive you, but I can’t have you do it ever again. It isn’t fair to me” he finished.

Emma nodded and hugged him. “I promise” she whispered and he hugged her tighter.

Killian kissed her, “now let’s get you home. We can watch all 7 Harry Potters since I probably won’t be letting you out of my sight for a while,” he said with a small chuckle.

Emma nodded, “fair enough”. She set her forehead against his.

“Are you sure that you can forgive me?” She asked and he nodded.

“I did the moment you left the note on your pillow, I just wish you’d have said where you were” he whispered.

“I knew you’d break the door down, and I wasn’t ready,” she said, stroking his hair.

Killian grabbed her bag, and she took one last look and they headed home, grabbing the bag off the counter from Ruby.

Emma unpacked quickly and changed into her pajamas wrapping one of Killian’s flannels around her as she ate her grilled cheese watching Harry Potter. Killian polished off his burger, and Emma laid atop him snuggling into him.

Killian’s phone chirped and he opened it, Emma watching the TV. Marco emailed him. He kissed Emma’s hair and said he would be right back, and headed into the bathroom.

Marco had sketched something incredibly similar to the photo, and he had priced out different stones giving him an idea. Killian typed out the number, one he had crunched every which way to make sure it was a smart choice and emailed him back asking what his options for the stone, the ring, and Marcos work would be totaled together.

He brushed his teeth and plugged his phone in. He smiled. Marco had said it could be ready by June, if not earlier. He shook the thought away and smiled at Emma curled up. He came back, and she sat up making room for him.

"Can we get a bigger couch? Like a sectional? She asked and he laughed beneath her cheek.

"Why? You don’t want to share couch space?” He asked her.

“No it’s not that, but it would be nice to get something more comfortable, maybe with one of those chaise things we can snuggle on together,” she said, her bottom lip jutting out and he laughed.

"As you wish” and kissed her forehead.

Emma headed to bed and snuggled into Killian. “Is it cold in here to you? She asked him.

He shook his head and felt her forehead, and frowned. "You don’t feel warm, do you not feel well?” He asked.

She shook her head, “just cold” she said.

“What do you think about a dog?” He mused as he played with her hair.

Emma looked at him, “I always wanted one,” she said with a small smile, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a little hopefulness.

He smiled,“ let’s get one. Someone for you to run with,” he said.

Emma smiled, “We don’t have a yard, the concrete out back would hurt its paws,” she said sadly.

He thought about it and nodded. “What if we fostered one for the holiday season? Graham always says they need foster homes since the staff wants to be with their families.”

“I think that would be okay,” she said, “just a foster until we have more room.”

“Are you allergic to anything?” He mused. She smiled and nodded, “penicillin.” He was surprised, but it was good to know.

“Are you?” She responded, and he shook his head, “not that I know of, but that’s good to know. Is August?” He asked and she shook her head.

“I should probably update my forms,” she said absentmindedly.

“Forms?” He asked her, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yeah, medical forms, emergency contact information. I can add you, and keep August” she said.

He nodded. “I should probably do that too. Graham is mine,” he said. Emma nodded and kissed his jaw.

“You really aren’t cold?” She asked him again, and he shook his head pulling her closer. He started worrying, what if she got sick.

She curled her legs, tucking her feet between his calves. Killian yelped.

“What the bloody hell is that? You’re that cold?” She smiled and nodded at him.

“I’ll plastic the windows this weekend,” he said and kissed her forehead.

“I love you” she whispered, her head tucked under his chin.

“I love you more than anything. Sleep, I have a busy day tomorrow” and cuddled her tighter.

Killian’s breath evened out, and Emma couldn’t sleep. She laid there thinking, unable to turn her brain off. She began reading work emails, and deciding which cases she would take and those she wouldn’t. She knew she wanted to quit her job, but she also knew she had to give Graham an answer.

She rolled over on her side, looking at Storybrooke real estate. A large Gray victorian was for sale. It looked like it needed a lot of TLC, but it wasn’t crazy expensive. She would run past it tomorrow.

“Emma, sleep” Killian grumbled pulling her back into his chest, curling around her.

She shut her eyes, and finally drifted off to sleep, his body heat warming her.

Killian snuck out of bed and dressed, opening the shop up. He had a full day and was grateful for it. He had a ring to buy after all so he should probably try to keep the garage as full as possible.

He texted August and said he did want some help with stocks after all. Maybe a few investments were not a bad idea. He also thought about Emma’s approaching birthday, and his thought was interrupted as the new neighbor Ingrid pulled into the lot.

He waved and walked out to greet her. He apologized for his behavior, and she smiled knowingly. “

I’ve met Emma, she is lovely,“ she said and he nodded.

She needed help with her new ice cream truck and asked if he could have it towed, it needed quite a bit of work and a paint job. He happily accepted and promised to drop by around lunch. She left her car for an oil change, and he said he would drive it back to her when he came to see the truck.

Billy walked up the lot and Killian waved him in, and he turned on the radio getting to work.

Emma got up and pulled her email up, groaning when she saw a new case waiting in her inbox. She read the file, it was something local in Portland, so she agreed and said she would take it up tomorrow. That would be the last one she decided and would tell him after she turned the skip in, and got paid.

She headed down, Killian was under a car so she lowered the music waving to Billy. “Jones?” she called out.

Killian slid out and sat up, and she knelt before him. Pulling her phone out she showed him her maps, “I made sure you had access, I promise not to ever turn it off, even if I get mad. Ok?” she said and he pulled her to him and kissed her.

“Enjoy your run” and he kissed her again and she stood up, watching him slide back under the car.

Emma put her headphones in, and thought to the gray house, typing the address into her app and following the route. She hit play, and her music came to life. She tried to focus on the scenery, the people who smiled at her as she ran by, waving back. She tried to pick apart the last few days, tomorrow and analyzed why she was even running past this house.

She found herself running along the road, the beach and water to her right, and she noticed the houses were spread out further here. She wondered if she was lost, and then she saw it. She slowed to a walk stopping outside the white picket fence.

The house was massive and looked like it was in quite a state of disrepair. She noticed a flyer box on the for sale sign sitting on the lawn. She grabbed one, and walked around the back of the house, taking it in. The lawn was overgrown but there was a good size garage, three cars maybe, and the yard had a big tree, a lot of sun, and privacy.

She looked at the flyer again, and it was a pretty big house on the inside, whatever that looked like. The photos looked older, but she knew it wouldn’t be right to look at it without Killian.

When she got back she went upstairs and changed, heading to the market. She grabbed everything for the week, and some stuff to take to Portland with her on the off chance she was stuck overnight. She started making stir fry, and Killian walked in as it was almost done.

“No offense love, but you need a shower,” he said and kissed her neck. She laughed at him and told him to scoot. Killian headed down the hall, and she finished up, setting the dinner aside.

She stripped off her clothes and got in the shower. Killian’s back was to her and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist,” he said and turned around smiling down at her.

“Never said I would,” she said and lifted on her toes to kiss him. “But I do need a shower,” she said.

Killian hummed in appreciation, and grabbed the showerhead, holding it over her, and she started washing her hair, and he poured a generous amount of her body wash in her hand, rubbing it over her back, and slipping his soapy hands around, washing her everywhere except where she wanted him.

He was driving her insane on purpose. Emma smiled, let him continue, and began smearing the soap everywhere he wasn’t touching her, giving him a little show. Killian sat on the bench while she rinsed and shaved, and she watched as he took himself in hand, clearly trying to kill her with sexual tension.

Killian watched her close her eyes, sighing as the hot water ran over her body, her full breasts rosy pink, the cloud of vanilla encompassing the shower. He watched as she rubbed the soap off her chest, sliding her hands down and she threw him a saucy smirk, turning around and letting him take in a full view of her ass.

He groaned, his hand gently tugging his shaft, his skin flushed from the steam and before he was too far gone, he sat back, the cool glass against his back. Emma stood before him and kneeled. She tugged his lips to hers, her tongue seeking entrance to his mouth, and his arms banded around her pulling her closer.

Emma ran her hands down his chest, her nails scraping over his thighs, and he smirked at her, she kissed her way down before taking his thick cock in her hand and running her tongue across the weeping tip. She felt Killian’s hand weave into her hair, and she took him inside to her throat.

“Gods love, just like that,” he said and she sucked softly, swirling her tongue around the head before pumping him, and licking him sac to tip. His fingers tightened, scraping her scalp. She went back to doting on him, gently caressing his sac, and taint, paying special attention to the thick vein that ran up the length of him and he moaned her name loud enough for it to echo off the tiles.

“Emma” he cried, and she went faster. He was rutting his hips, holding her hair so tightly that he was fucking her mouth. She let him set the pace, and continued rubbing and cupping him, urging him on. She felt him swell and knew he was getting close. She sucked harder, her tongue rolling over the tip of him, and he growled as he came in her mouth.

Emma slowed her movements, gently letting him ride out the aftershocks and she looked up and him, his head tipped against the glass and eyes shut. She smirked and stood, washing her face and brushing her teeth quickly. She looked over, and his chest was heaving but he was looking at her with a wicked grin.

She shut the water off and reached for a towel which he promptly snatched away. He backed her against the tile and tossed the towel over the glass. “Oh love, I’m not done with you yet” he purred, and his fingers traced lines down Emma’s sides, tickling her.

Killian smirked as she giggled at him, and he glided his hands up to cup the heavy weights of her breasts, running his thumbs across the peaks. He kept his eyes locked on hers, watching the green darken, and she bit down on her lip. He tugged and rolled each nipple, getting her attention.

“I want to hear you,” he said and leaned in to kiss the column of her throat. Nipping and sucking the sensitive points, until she finally sighed, and her hips bucked. He smirked and felt his cock begin to harden again, felt the need for her crackling in his veins. He tugged her away from the wall and guided her to face the bench, lifting her leg to it, opening her.

He knelt behind her, and kissed over the globes of her perfect ass, leaving light bite marks in his wake as he moved her foot over slightly to widen her. Emma gasped above him, her hands planted on the glass in front of her for balance.

Killian licked and kneaded her cheeks until they were pink, and he smirked. He moved his way up, kissing her spine as he rose, and Emma trembled, goosebumps rising on her flesh. He nosed along her shoulder, lightly biting down on her neck, his tongue running over the marks left behind.

“Killian” she whispered, and he ran his palms across her belly, and hips until he finally ran his fingers across her slippery folds earning him a cry that would haunt him. “Please” she begged.

“Mmm, I like when you beg. What do you want, Swan?” He murmured as he continued touching her so delicately, that he could see her hands curling against the glass in frustration as he avoided the pressure he knew would make her body sing for him.

“I want you” she panted.

“Where?” he asked in a taunting tone.

Emma looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes flashing defiantly, and she lowered her leg off the bench to the ground. She grabbed the towel and left him there, and he cocked his head at her, as he watched her towel off.

“I didn’t say you could leave,” he said to her.

“I didn’t ask you to edge me as punishment,” she said and he could see her getting mad. On some level he wanted her mad, wanted her frustrated, to fuck their way through this, but he had to tread carefully with her right now, he could see the emotions flickering across her face. Anger, fear, anxiety, frustration.

He strode to her, pulling the towel gently from her and letting it pool on the floor. She said nothing, he gripped her hips, sliding his palms over her ass, and pulled her against him. Emma’s eyes were filled with fire when he looked into them.

“I am not punishing you, my love,” he said, nipping at her lip, sinking his teeth into it, his tongue running over it, and he felt her hands go to his chest, her nails scraping his skin.

Emma felt his fingers digging into her ass, hard enough to bruise her. He was pushing her towards something, but she didn’t know what it was yet. Killian had never used sex as a weapon or punishment, she trusted his instincts, to always show her love. But right now, his eyes were blazing with blue fire.

Emma took a deep breath, her body trembling. “I am desperate for you,” she whispered. “I need you to love me” she admitted feeling ashamed at her admission. Killian released her ass and his arms banded around her back lifting her, he walked her to the bed, and laid her down, stretching out on top of her.

“I do love you, more than anything Emma,” he said and kissed her hard. “I need you, I am just as desperate for you, to have you want me, to love me, to choose me,” he said and kissed her deeply. Emma moaned as he rubbed his cock through her folds, his hands tangled in her hair.

“I would do anything to have you be mine, give up everything for you. So long as you were mine, and only mine” he practically growled.

Emma’s mind was reeling too many thoughts, and his words, his hips driving her mad as they rubbed against her, her arousal skyrocketing.

“I am yours” she sighed, as he sucked a nipple into his mouth, taking a deep pull on it, making her back arch. “Just yours,” she said in a breathy cry, and he released her nosing at the opposite one, teasing it to a tight peak.

“Why won’t you make love to me?” She asked, and the tone of her voice sounded broken.

“I am. Focus on me, on us, what we are doing right now, in our bed. What do we always do in our bed? Tell me,” he said harshly, his eyes boring into hers as he hovered above her.

“Love. We always love each other” she said softly and he nodded.

“I am loving you, I am showing you I love you, only you. You are mine, and I am yours, whether I fuck you, make love slowly to you, or hold you, I am only ever showing you love Emma” and he guided himself inside of her, pushing the tip of his cock into her slowly.

Emma cried out, as he inched in, pumping in and out in shallow thrusts, preparing her to take him in. Her walls so tight and hot around him, he groaned at the intense feeling shooting up his spine, his heart hammering in his chest. Emma’s eyes squeezed shut at the intrusion, her breaths coming in short pants, ghosting over his lips. They snapped open the moment he was fully seated within her.

He snapped his hips and plunged into her as deep as he could in one stroke, filling her, stretching her, erasing every inch of space that she was feeling. His hands were everywhere. His skin touched every inch of hers that they could manage, and he never took his eyes off hers.

Every thrust, he never looked away, couldn’t look away. He kept his eyes on hers, forcing her to understand that he was hers, he wasn’t leaving, she owned him as much as he owned her. He pushed her legs wider apart, her hands clenched in the sheets, gripping them tightly.

Her green eyes sparkled with unshed tears, he leaned down to kiss her swollen lips. Their tongues tangled, sucking, and massaging each other’s so that they could hardly breathe. Emma felt like she was drowning, in pleasure, in him, in the feelings he was pouring into her with each thrust.

She locked her legs around his hips dragging him deeper inside, her arms around his neck hanging on as he fucked her hard, their moans and cries, skin slapping echoed through the empty loft.

Killian was reaching his breaking point, his release building quickly, and he wasn’t going over the edge without dragging her with him. He reached down, lightly rubbing the swollen nub, and Emma cried his name, her eyes snapped shut.

Emma was going to come, it was brewing hard inside of her, and it was going to tear through her, every roll of his hips, the tip of his cock rubbing so deeply inside of her, she closed her eyes at the onslaught of sensations, tensing around him. Her thighs trembled, and he wasn’t slowing down.

Emma’s nails were digging into his shoulders, almost painfully. He felt her clench down on him, her whimpers and moaning music to his ears, and the sensation of her squeezing his dick so tightly almost made him let go, but not without her. He changed angles, hitching her legs off his hips he pushed them to her chest and plunged in hard and fast, their headboard shook against the wall, banging against it with each thrust.

As soon as he pushed her legs to her chest, pushing in deeper than ever before, Emma screamed.

“Oh god” she chanted over and over as her orgasm rolled through her, and Killian roared as he spent himself inside of her, unable to hold it back any longer. His hands clasped around her wrists and he held them above her head pinning her still, as he emptied himself, nearly collapsing from the force of it.

Killian stayed hunched over her and pushed her legs down collapsing on her chest, releasing her hands as his heart pounded. Emma’s own heart was thudding beneath his ear while he felt her fingers sift through his hair lazily, both of them too tired to move yet.

He turned his head resting his chin on her chest. “Did I prove my point?” he asked with a light laugh, his chest still heaving and Emma huffed out a giggle and nodded.

He dipped his head down and kissed the skin over her heart. “I love you” she whispered, and he kissed her skin again in response. He pulled out of her slowly, and at this point didn’t care if the sheets got dirty. He pulled her into his chest, and they dozed off wrapped in each other.

Emma woke up, and glanced at the clock, it was nearly eight, she felt sticky, and went into the bathroom shutting the door. She used a washcloth and cleaned herself up, and tugged her robe on. She went to the kitchen where the stir fry had been long forgotten, but started the rice anyway, and heard the water run in the bathroom.

Killian came out in his sweats and grabbed a glass of water. He came to Emma and picked her up, setting her on the island and kissed her.

“Nice nap?” he asked her and she nodded, and hugged him.

“I have to work tomorrow, and I wanted to show you something,” she said and he nodded.

“Just to portland?” he asked and she nodded, sliding off the counter and grabbing the folded flyer out from under her laptop.

“I will do this job, and I am going to put in my notice, which leads me to the other thing I wanted to show you. But it can wait, it’s not important” she said, and he shook his head, plucking the paper from her fingers quickly. He opened it, and his eyes widened.

Emma blushed, watching him look it over.

“You want to buy a house?” he asked, kind of shocked. Emma shrugged.

“I thought we could look at it,” she said quietly. Killian could tell that she was holding something back.

“Talk to me Em, what is this about?” he asked.

Emma went to stir the stirfry that she was heating back up, placing the lid back over it.

“If I quit my job, and we want to buy it, I would have time to do stuff myself. I know it is a lot of work, but I thought you might like it. I ran past it, grabbed the flyer. I didn’t decide to buy a house without you, I just took the flyer, and I thought you might like the water being out your front door is all” she said and turned around, feeling her cheeks turn pink.

Killian looked at the paper, “This is Gold’s old house” he said. He read through it, it was a big house, a really big, old house. He thought about the ring he was about to buy, and a house wasn’t factored into that right now too. He needed to talk to August.

Emma leaned against the counter, “I would buy the house. In cash” she said, and Killian’s eyes went wide.

“What do you mean in cash? Who has that much cash in the bank? Do you even have a bank account?” he teased.

“August handles the money, I have it, I just never used it” she shrugged.

Killian’s head was spinning. “You just have 230 grand sitting in the bank?” he said skeptically. She shook her head.

“August handles it all, he invested everything we had ever earned aside from rent. He wanted us to be sure that we would never be poor or worry about money ever again, learned everything about stocks and that stuff, I have it, and probably the renovation costs too if I cashed some stuff out. I haven’t told him yet, but he sends me the statements” she said.

Killian leaned back, kind of shocked. “Em, you didn’t want to adopt a pet, two days ago you were hiding from me, and now you want to buy a house? I am just a little lost here, and the money thing, I don’t care about that. But a house, a big house is a huge step here, and that makes me nervous” he says honestly.

Emma nodded. “I know, I didn’t expect it. I just ran past it and poked around the yard looking at it. It was odd, I felt something I haven’t ever felt unless I was with you, or August” she said avoiding his eyes.

Killian stepped toward her and tipped her chin up, “and what is that, love?”

“Home. It felt like it could be a home, a real one” she whispered, and looked down almost seeming embarrassed. Killian wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. He sighed.

“We can look at it, ok?” Make an appointment for the weekend, or when you get back from work, we have to go get your car this weekend too,” he said and she nodded.

“Do you think we will ever do things in a normal time frame?” She smiled at him.

He grinned back, “probably not. We are absolutely mad, but it’s ok. It is us.”

He went to her laptop and pulled the listing up, looking over some of the photos, the place needed a lot, but it had good bones, and he thought of Liam. When he walked into the shop which was a dump, he said it has good bones, and they built the business in it, the good bones holding it up.

He smiled as Emma slid a plate to him and grabbed her own, and they sat looking through the pictures. “It might have good bones, we will see. Just don’t get your hopes up ok?” he said and she nodded.

“So tell me about the skip tomorrow,” he asked her. She told him, it was a quick find she thought, a few hours, and she already tracked his debit card to three ATMs, so she had an idea of where he might be and who to lean on. He was overwhelmed but nodded.

“Are you sure you want to quit?” he asked her as they put fresh sheets on, and climbed into bed.

Emma looked at him, “Do you think I shouldn’t? I don’t have to. I just thought…” and Killian kissed her.

“That wasn’t what I asked Swan, or said. I said, are you sure you want to quit?” he said.

“I know I don’t want random trips out of town anymore. I know I want to be with you, and here would be easier. I don’t think or know if I want to work with Graham but it’s a job, and whatever, and I am sure August would give me work too, so I could do it from home but I would need an office area. We are just a little tight on space up here, so I could use the office downstairs and get a better door if the drills are going” she said.

He nodded, “Ok, as long as you know that I am not asking you to quit. I am not telling you to. I don’t mind that you aren’t chasing criminals anymore, but that it is your choice. It is always your choice,” he said and smoothed her curls back.

I know, she said, and he nodded, pulling her into his chest and stroking her arm.

“So a house, huh? I assume a dog? Anything else on that list you have in your head?” he mused.

Emma smiled against his chest, “Not yet” she said.

“That means that there is more, but just not yet?” he asked her, feeling a weird sense of hope flutter in his chest.

She nodded, “not yet,” she said and buried her cold feet between his calves making his whole body jerk.

He rolled out of bed. “That’s it, you are sleeping in socks from now until summer,” he said and pulled wool socks over her feet. He climbed back in and she curled in, kissing his jaw.

“Spoilsport” she teased.

“Aye, I am the spoilsport who doesn’t want frostbite,” he said and kissed her head turning out the light.

“Get some rest, I love you,” he said and she snugged in burrowing into his side.

“I love you too,” she said.

Emma got up and showered, grabbing her overnight bag hopefully for the last time in a long while, and Killian sent her out the door with a breakfast burrito and a kiss. She smiled and got in her car, making one last trek to Portland.

She dialed August, who picked up immediately.

“Hey sunshine, what’s up?” he said.

“How much do I have in the bank and stocks?” she asked, watching the traffic in front of her.

“Are you running somewhere?” He asked.

“No. But seriously, how much?” She heard him typing.

“How much do you need?” he asked.

“Probably 230. Maybe less, maybe more. Do I have that?” she asked.

August whistled. “You are being incredibly cryptic. You’re not asking for ten grand, so tell me why” he said.

She sighed, “a house. I’m considering buying one. Roots and all that,” she said.

He went quiet, and she heard more typing. “You’d have to cash in some stock, but you would still have a healthy portfolio even if we moved some stuff around. Do you want to buy a house? You were just considering leaving” he said pointedly.

“I didn’t run. I needed a breath, and you were right. I took that breath and put on my big girl panties, and now I am interested in a house August” she said irritatedly.

“I want to see it,” he said.

She sent him the link and waited.

“Wow. That’s a whole lot of house. Why is it so cheap, is that on the water?” he asked, and she heard clicking.

“It needs work. A lot of it. But if I can talk the owner down 30k, it could be a good investment once it was done,” she pointed out.

“Em, this place needs like everything from the looks of it. You’re sure?” he asked.

“I just had a feeling,” she said quietly.

“It felt like a home, didn’t it?” he asked.

Of course, he would understand. “Yeah, or the possibility of one. Holidays, and a bunch of things, just a feeling.”

He hummed. “Okay. Well, talk to the owner. See what she says, try to get her to 190. The roof alone will be 30k to replace, not to mention the new driveway, and probably pipes and electrical.”

Emma scoffed, “How do you know that?” she asked.

He laughed, “Emma you called me. I’m pulling permits and records on the house. It’s actually historical,” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just a thought” she said.

“Does Killian know?” he asked.

“Yeah, we talked about it a little. I just wanted to see it, if it was even reasonable, he agreed to look at it, mentioned good bones or something, but not to get my hopes up” she said.

He laughed. “Well, at least he is being smart. Good bones and everything” he said chuckling.

“I don’t know, it was just a question, could I afford it if I wanted it, I wasn’t sure how much liquid I had, I mean I see the statements but that doesn’t equal liquid cash,” she said.

“You lived like a fraternity kid for the last ten years, rarely splurging and I manage all of our money. If you want the house you can get it and not even touch Killian’s money. Did you show him your statement? Please tell me you didn’t” he said.

“No, I didn’t, your stuff is on it too. So no, of course not. Wait, you have access to his accounts?” she asked.

“Just his personal ones, I don’t look at them. But I offered him help a while back if he wanted to do stock options” he said.

Emma was surprised, and then she wasn’t. August made sure they would never be poor again. If the important person in her life was going to be permanent, August would ensure they wanted for nothing.

“I’m considering quitting my job, I am actually on my way to Portland now,” she said.

August went quiet and coughed. “What? Why? He didn’t ask you, did he?”

“No, no. I just did some thinking before the fight, it doesn’t really make me happy anymore. I hate being gone a lot, and I kind of hate not being here, and if I want to come to see you, or travel I want to just go and live that life you and I always talked about, ya know?”

“Ah. I see. Well, come work for me. Work from home, make your own hours, but don’t be the fucking deputy” he laughed.

“Hey! I didn’t accept the offer. I feel bad because he does need help, it’s a local dependable job” she argued.

“Don’t ever wear a uniform or I will disown you” he laughed. “Brown is not your color duckling.”

“Ugh, alright mom, I have to go. I am nearly there. I’ll call you after. Love you byeeeee” and hung up.

The moment Emma left the lot Killian called Marco.

“Hello, Marco? Killian Jones” he said.

“Ah, good morning my boy. I saw your response, but since you called I can walk you through it. Is it a safe time to speak?” he asked.

“Sure. Now is good” Killian said.

“The design itself is not troublesome, what size stone do you think?” he asked and Killian looked through his notes.

“between one and two carats, I think the round would look nice,” he said.

“That is a fine choice for Emma. Now, do you have a preference for the Diamond?” he asked.

“Marco, I don’t know anything about diamonds. What are my options? Killian asked.

“Well, a 1.5 carat Diamond, with almost perfect clarity can run quite a lot. But I did some digging around, and I would be able to get you an almost flawless diamond for around Sixteen thousand. I would take no fee because it is for Emma, it would be my pleasure and my gift to you both” he said.

“So the diamond, and what about the setting? What would it be?” he asked.

“Do you want platinum, white gold, yellow gold, or rose gold?” Marco asked, and Killian heard typing.

Killian pulled the picture up, “The photo is white gold” he said, and Marco went back to typing.

“I could do the design, with that stone, the sapphires are small, in white gold and it would total to around twenty-four thousand, waiving all of my fees and labor,” he said.

“Marco, that isn’t fair. You are making a ring” he said.

“I am making something special for a child I was lucky enough to have in my life when I had none of my own. I told you, my gift is to do this for Emma” he said.

Killian scratched behind his ear. “That is incredibly generous of you, but I need you to be sure, I want you to be absolutely sure, you run a business,” he said.

Marco hummed. “Fine, you can pay me one dollar for fees,” he said, sounding like he was smiling.

Killian laughed, “you are an amazing man Marco. One dollar, accepted.”

“When can I expect to see you?” Marco asked.

“Um, I can probably swing a trip sometime after the holidays. Can you email me updates or photos in the meantime” Killian asked, suddenly nervous.

“Of course. I will send you all the details and receipts and call my guy now” Marco said. “You will make her very happy Killian, I am glad for you both. Thank you for including me” he said.

Killian blushed, “thank you, Marco,” he said and the man hung up.

He felt a rush of relief, that was all done. They had plenty of time to figure it out until it was ready, and a year was more than enough time to be together before an engagement.

The house crossed his mind, and just what else might be on Emma’s mental list, but he wouldn’t push. They needed to talk more about all these thoughts he was having, but he needed to get his head out of the clouds and work so he could pay for this ring.

Billy and he cranked out 6 oil changes, two tune-ups, and rolled Ingrid’s truck into the shop when everything was in the lot for pickup.

They stood side by side and looked at it. Billy whistled, “this is going to be a lot of work,” he said, and Killian nodded.

He sat back on the stool and lit a smoke, and grabbed his clipboard. He had Billy crawl under and start calling out things, Killian made a list of parts, and figured out how to get this thing running.

He was grateful when his cell rang, and August’s name flashed.

"Hello August,” he said.

“Jones. You got a second?”

“Sure, one minute”, Killian went into the office closing the door. “What’s up?”

“You two are moving things along arent you?” He said cryptically.

Killian sighed. “Did you call to bust my balls because I am actually working.”

“No, just between Emma’s thoughts, and you, you two are like speed racers. What is the rush with you two?” He asked.

“What do you mean? Did she says something?” Killian got anxious.

“Listen, I think it’s time we do some investing on your part. Emma is covered, but let me play around a bit with yours, put you in our options, grow that little nest egg you are sitting on” August said and Killian heard typing.

“Are you looking at my bank account?” He demanded.

“No, no. But Emma mentioned the house, and I am sure you are already considering a ring, it would be a wise choice to start making some moves to build that egg, and lucky for you, I am good at it” August said.

He scratched behind his ear, nervous. “Aug I don’t know, I need cash right now, and this house, if she wants it…”

“Emma has the house covered Jones” August said like it was nothing.

“That isn’t right mate if we buy a house we buy it together” he protested.

“Well, I know you don’t love her for money, you didn’t even know she had any since she lived like a child. So just do me a favor and let her buy the house. You can pay her back by being wise, and investing smartly to protect the offspring you two will inevitably have with the rate you two go at each other” he said sounding like he was laughing

Killian almost dropped the phone, “Wait. Does Emma tell you about our sex life!”

“No, she doesn’t need to thank god. I can tell by looking at you two, easy Jones. Anyways let me make some moves, give me ten to play with. If I lose it, I will put it back. If I triple it, you can thank me and name your child after me” he said laughing.

Killian laughed too, “you want ten grand to play with, like monopoly? And if you lose it, you put it back out of your own money? Fine.”

“Excellent. I mean I could do twenty. You have over seventy in the savings…” August said like he was talking about pennies.

“August, get out of my account. Ten. Start there, if you do it, I will let you take over, but please get out of my account. Seriously” Killian said, growing agitated.

“Fine, fine. Scott! He said yes”, August called out. Killian groaned.

“Love you both, bye”, Killian said ending the call. God her brother was a pain the ass, he looked at the ceiling pinching the bridge of his nose, a pang of longing for his own brother crossing his heart.

He came out and Billy handed him a completed list. They rolled the whiteboard out, and Billy did a crude mock-up of the truck and began writing. He looked at the clock, it was nearing six.

“Hey man, head out, I will see you in the morning,” Killian said and Billy nodded, just as exhausted as he was.

Killian closed up and headed upstairs to shower. He charged his phone and she still had not called after the text of arriving.

He dialed her as he dressed. “Hey babe, call you back,” she said and hung up.

She sounded like she was running. He sat on the bed and rubbed his hands over his face, and pulled up the tracking app. He followed her, she was most definitely running or driving very fast, but he zoomed in, the dot stopped. He waited a few minutes watching it, still not moving.

What the fuck, he thought. His heart relaxed when he saw it move again, slowly, but it moved. She must have got him.

He waited another hour, and the phone rang. “Swan, are you ok?” he asked.

“Yeah, um I am going to be a little late,” she said.

“Oh, ok. But you are heading back?”

“Ouch” she bit out and he heard a male’s voice in the background.

“Swan? What is going on?” he asked standing.

“Um, he had a knife, ouch! And he cut my arm, I’m being stitched. Easy man, it isn’t falling off,“ she barked at the medic.

"I’m coming to get you,” he said pulling a shirt on, trying to find his jeans.

“No, no. Seriously ill send you a photo, it isn’t bad, it was just a weird angle that caught me. I am ok, really. I turned him in, and tomorrow I am sending in my notice, I just wanted to get paid.”

“ You really decided to go out with a bang huh?” He said completely unamused.

Emma sighed, “I have had worse, I am ok. Hey, are you done? Can I go? Alright, babe, I am done. I will be out of here in a few and heading home. See you in like two hours or so.”

“Ok, just please be safe,” he said feeling defeated and anxiety building.

“I will. Killian, I love you” she said quickly.

He smiled, “I love you more than anything, one piece Swan. Not tiny pieces, not cut pieces. One whole piece,” he said.

“Aye Aye Captain,” she said and cut the call off.

He smiled and climbed into bed. He turned the laptop on and put on a movie, they needed a tv for in here, seriously.

He went on amazon and ordered a small one and a wall mounting kit.

He woke up when he heard the door shut. Emma came in quietly and went into the bathroom, and the shower turned on. He heard her wince, and was at the door knocking a second later.

“Em, open up,” he said through the door.

She opened the door, looking a bit worse for wear. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I need to shower.”

Killian walked in and took a look at her outstretched arm. It was a nasty gash.

“Do you need help?” He asked, and she shook her head.

“I’ll be out in a few, sorry I woke you up.”

Emma held her arm out of the spray and washed the night off of her. She came out and Killian had Tylenol and a glass of water on her nightstand as he sat and waited for her.

She pulled on a flannel of his and crawled into bed, and he propped her arm up on some extra pillows.

“Thanks,” she said. “I am sorry.”

“Well, we got roughly 5 months in with you unscathed, and if this is your last one, then I say you did alright,” and kissed her forehead.

She nodded and was grateful it was her left arm and not her right. She yawned, and Killian tucked her damp curls behind her ear, and snuggled in closer to her, wrapping his hand around her good one as they fell asleep.

Killian got up with the sun, watching Emma sound asleep. He took in her golden curls in the morning light, her dark lashes on the apples of her cheeks. The dusting of freckles coating her nose. He just soaked her in, completely at peace.

“You’re watching me sleep again, Jones. It’s weird,” she mumbled with a small smile and snuggled into his chest.

He smiled and held her as best as he could without moving her arm. She would need Tylenol, he waited a few minutes before he headed to the kitchen and got everything, laying it on her nightstand. He kissed her cheek and headed down to the shop buttoning his coveralls.

He rolled the garage door up, and lit a smoke, grabbing the list they had started and placed an order for the parts they knew so far, getting a head start.

He grabbed the creeper and had just slid under the car when he heard Emma scream.

He bolted up the stairs and ran to the bathroom, “Emma!” He called and opened the door.

“I popped a stitch. Do you have a thread or a kit? She asked, and he nodded, taking in the blood soaking through the cloth she had against it.

"Babe it’s just a stitch, hurry” she pleaded and he ran down the stairs grabbing the red box.

He ran in and opened it on the counter, searching for the sutures. He found the steri strips and pulled them out, tearing one off.

He took her arm and he pulled the cloth away, Emma winced. He held her arm up above her head for a few seconds, and quickly pulled it down, securing her skin and adding a second for good measure.

Emma watched how quickly he worked, with soft touches. She smiled as he finished. “ Thank you,” she said and kissed him.

He nodded, do you need anything else? He asked, gazing at her softly. Emma shook her head.

Killian nodded and washed the blood off his hands. “I’ll be right downstairs if you need help.”

Emma kissed him and he headed down the hall. She finished brushing her teeth and pulled leggings on. She went to her laptop, popped it open, and dialed her boss.

After a long discussion, she gave her resignation. Her boss was a little pissed but she said after last night, her decision was made. She recommended two people she knew in Boston who did side work, and he appreciated it. She thanked him and ended the call.

She saw a missed text from August but it could wait. She shot a photo and sent it saying she would call later.

She called the number on the flyer, and spoke to a woman named Astrid, setting a viewing of the house up for tomorrow at lunchtime, and that was set.

She looked around the loft, if they bought a house what would they do with the space? Maybe Killian would want to rent it, extra income would be nice.

She slid on shoes and made her way downstairs, there was no way she could box, so she took a look at the whiteboard.

Billy slid out on the creeper and waved, Killian on the phone in the office. He came out a minute later with a sheet and taped it on the board.

“Hi, you ok,?” He asked.

Emma nodded and looked at the behemoth sitting on the lift. “Ingrids?” She asked and Killian nodded.

“Do you need help? I can order parts if you give me a list” she offered and he smiled.

“I just finished, go lay down,” he said. Emma sighed and nodded.

“Oh, tomorrow at 11, the house tour,” she said and he smiled at her.

She grabbed a book and went to sit on her chair, and grabbed her phone. She looked at couches, she bookmarked a few to show Killian, and when he came up for lunch, she began showing him the couches while he ate.

They agreed on one, and she ordered it. She looked around and decided with Halloween approaching, some decorations were needed. She ordered some and realized her birthday was now weeks away.

She booked that little place in Vermont for the week she had planned on and smiled. She was restless, so she went downstairs again, deciding on a walk. Killian nodded, and she headed out.

She walked the whole town and came across a little hair salon. She walked in, and made an appointment for herself, and headed home. She decided to establish an OB and a new doctor here, and she needed a dentist too. She completed her paperwork to include Killian as her contact first and August second for the first time ever.

When Killian finally headed up, Emma was asleep on the couch, a book laying on the floor. He smiled and snapped a photo, tucked it away, and called in Chinese before he hopped in the shower.

Emma woke up and the buzzer was going off. She looked around disoriented and headed down signing for the food. She popped some of the painkillers the doctor gave her and cleaned the cut.

Killian came out in his sweats and plated dinner up. She told him what she did, and he smiled.

“I’ve never put anyone else as an emergency contact besides August. It’s a big deal, and don’t tell him” she warned and he laughed.

Killian told her about August’s financial game, and she smiled.

“Babe, you don’t have to do that. I have enough if we want the house” she said.

He nodded, “well how about the car. Still a go?” He asked and she nodded. “Have you thought about what you want to do yet?” He asked.

Emma shook her head, “a break. Oh! I got the Vermont house booked for next month too” she said and he smiled nodding as she told him all the little details.

They curled up on the couches, and he decided to bring up those pesky thoughts. “Swan?”

“Hmm”

“Do you want kids someday?” He asked.

Emma’s mouth went dry. Not sure what he was meaning. “Like kids, plural?” She asked.

“Aye,” he said back amused.

“I’ve considered it, if it were the right time, right person…” she said.

She looked up at him, eyes searching his. “Do you?”

Killian nodded at her “Someday I do, very much,” he said.

“Ok,” she said smiling, and he kissed her hair and pictured a tiny blonde girl with blue-green eyes, a pregnant Emma, a family. He was really happy he called Marco.

Killian heard the door buzz and went down to the door. An amazon truck was there and the guy handed him his TV. He thanked him and headed upstairs, and Emma was already in bed.

“What is that?” She asked, her eyes widening at the sight of the box.

“A TV for in here,” he said tilting the box.

Emma laughed, “as if we need another reason to not leave our bed” she giggled. He winked at her and proceeded to unpack the TV, setting it up on the dresser for now, and sat on the edge of the bed setting the remote up. He finally crawled under the covers and Emma was sound asleep.

He smiled, turned on a movie on low, and set the timer. He fell asleep thinking about blonde-haired babies and Emma in a white dress.

@sailtoafarawayland @omgmarvelous

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#emma swan #killian jones #storybrooke #ouat #ouat au #once upon a time

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infiniteoddball · 3 years

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A/n: Chapter One . I know I don’t usually switch POV’s in stories, but for this story, it feels quite relevant and needed. This story is going to be heavily based in Angst & some happiness and smartassery here and there. (In exciting news! this marks my 1,000 post!) Tags: Angst; Hints at Sex: Talks of possible sexual abuse Tagging: @storiesofsvu @svushots @barsonaddict @wall1418 @vivis-ghost-wife @teyamarra

Olivia sat across from Barba, pushing her food around her plate. She didn’t know what to say about her earlier conversation, or if she should even bring it up. Rita’s words sat heavily in her conscious. She didn’t know what to make of it. She knew she could possibly be going down a rabbit hole, or she might be right. She took a sip of her wine, but still stayed silent.

“Okay, spill. What is going on?” He quipped.

“Nothing...I mean...” Olivia sighed, “It’s just, this conversation that I had with Rita is not sitting well with me. It feels like she confessed something but didn’t at the same time.”

“Olivia,” He evenly said, “What are you talking about? I am completely lost here.”

“You know Rita better than me. Why did she leave the district attorney’s office?” Olivia looked up at him, wondering why she was thinking so heavily into this.

“Why are you asking? What conversation?”

“She said something to me today that makes me think she left because of abuse,” She bit her lip, pushing her semi-full plate away, “I mean-What she said was concerning to me. I have never seen her so small. She has never been that sloppy in court...” Olivia’s words drifted off as she slipped into her thoughts.

“Liv,” Rafael snapped his fingers to pull her attention back, “Rita? Sloppy? What are you talking about? Hello?” He took her hand into his, running his thumb over her knuckles, “Talk to me.”

Olivia blushed, turning her hand upwards as she grazed her fingers over his wrist, “Okay. I have never seen Rita, in all these years, threatened to be held in contempt of court. Have you ever seen that happen with her? I mean, not only that, but Carisi told me that she was semi-combative with the judge. I am pretty sure that didn’t help Chip Gallagher. Also, I mean, I have seen her be hostile with witness, but only ever when she has asked to treat them like a hostile witness. However, something just...I honestly don’t know if I am overthinking this. ”

Rafael shook his head, “Never. But why are you asking about her leaving the district attorney? Does this have to do with the conversation you had with her?”

“Today, I was in the elevator with her. I asked her why she was still defending men like Chip Gallagher. She said if I didn’t get on the proper side that my career would become marginalized. Normally, that isn’t something that bothers me, but it was the way that Rita said it. She said it as if it was a warning that she shouldn’t be giving. More so, it was the last thing she said to me that got me. She said, verbatim, ‘my advice...lie back and pretend you’re enjoying it.’ I got a chill down my spine. It was almost like she shrunk by two inches after she said that.” Liv looked up at Rafael, “What do you think? Maybe this might not be anything, but she also wasn’t wearing her normal tailored suits. What she was wearing was kind of baggy on her.”

“Rita left the District Attorney after losing a case that would have been hard on anyone. She fought harder than I ever saw her fight. She wanted justice for her victim that she was defending, but she lost. She seemed very disconnected, disillusioned and quite frankly? Emotional. Especially since she was very close with the victim. It was the first and last time I saw her connect past a professional relationship with a victim, or currently known as a client.” Rafael sighed heavily, “She never disclosed to me if that is what you are getting at. As far as I know, there were no disclosures or firings for abuse of power the year that she left, but I can always check for you.” Rafael stated.

Olivia leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand, “Am I overthinking this?”

Rafael leaned forward, pausing as he kissed her briefly, “With what you have right now, I would call it circumstantial, but in all my years I have known you, you have never been wrong about these kinds of things. Why are you second guessing yourself now?”

“Because it’s Rita Calhoun. For as long as I have known Rita Calhoun, this is completely out of her realm of behavior. Wait, you said she was connected with the victim? What was the case?”

“I don’t know Liv. That was years ago. Look, all I can remember is she was almost charged with contempt. Then that night, she told me over a glass of bourbon that she put her notice in effective immediately. A few weeks later, I was facing her in court.” Rafael shrugged.

“Contempt? Rafi, I know I am grasping for straws, but this has got to be connected. Was she close to anyone else?”

“Liv,” Rafael cupped her cheeks, tilting her head upwards, “Rabbit hole. You are grasping for straws. Why don’t you talk to her? She disclosed something to you. Or she was warning you. Either way, you need to talk to her before you go jumping to conclusions, because clearly, whatever it is that she is trying to tell you is important and it will effect you one way or another.”

“Rafael I am not-“

Her words were cut short as Rafael pulled her in for a long, languid kiss. He slowly pulled away, “Let’s go to bed before you get too far in.” He grinned.

—————————————

Olivia threw the covers back, getting up nearly an hour before her alarm would be going off. She stood, pulling her shirt and panties on before she made her way to the bathroom. She managed to sleep a few hours since Rafael had worn her out, but this...it just wasn’t sitting well with her. Everything that Rafael had told her was making her mind race.

She flicked the handle upwards on the sink, getting herself a glass of water before making herself comfortable on Rafael’s couch. She sipped her drink slowly, thinking about Rita. She sighed deeply, massaging her temple. She felt her stomach clench. She knew, deep down, Rita wasn’t a person that got sloppy. She knew that she wasn’t crazy. Something happened to Rita.

She glanced at the clock, sighing with the fact that it was only six am. She dropped head against the back of the couch as she sank further into the comfortable fabric. She finished her drink before standing. She grabbed one of his legal pads before sitting at his desk, “She was admitting something to me,” She mumbled.

By the time Olivia had to get ready for work, she had a basic timeline sketched out. She also had written down any names of judges, current or present, that were known for their abuse. Olivia was so lost in thought that she nearly screamed as Rafael grazed his lips along her neck.

“When did you get up?”

“A couple of hours ago,” She said honestly, flipping the notepad over, “I need to get going, I will call you when I can come over again,” She gave him a hurried kiss before leaving him in the dining room to get dressed.

*** “Rita!” Olivia called as she ran down the courthouse steps, “Hey! Got a minute?”

Rita glanced over her shoulder, feeling her stomach clench, “Benson, not really. I am headed to meet a client.”

Olivia drank in the fact that she was wearing a tailored pants suit, “I can walk and talk,” She stated as she caught up with Rita, “I just wanted to ask you a question!” Olivia gently touched Rita’s arm to catch her attention, “Why did you leave the district attorney?”

Rita felt her stomach drop as she turned to face Olivia, “Why are you asking me about this?”

“Because you are hiding something,” Olivia bluntly stated, “You admitted something to me in that elevator. What I can’t figure out if it was intentional or to protect me.”

Rita looked over her face, knowing she was screwed. The past was finally coming to haunt her, “I regularly go up against you in court defending rapists, and criminals. Now, you are questioning why I am doing this?”

“Yes.”

Rita rubbed her temple, turning away from her, “I have to go. I don’t have time for this.”

Olivia grabbed her elbow, standing in front of her, “Clearly you do if you were acting so out of character to the point you basically insinuated that I should turn a blind eye to corruption. What happened?” She questioned.

Rita felt her nostrils flare as she took a deep breath, “I grew close to a victim named Natalie Burse and I promised her that I would win her case. A case that broke the both of us. Are you done with your witch hunt now?!” She snapped.

Olivia dropped her arm, “I have more questions. Call me when you can,” She stated as she stepped out of her way. Olivia waited until she was around the corner before she called Fin, “Hey, I need you to dig up everything that you can with a victim by the name of Natalie Burse.”

#frenzied notions #rita calhoun #barson #rafael barba #law and order: svu #SVU #fic #calhoun #original character

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creepy-spooghetti · 3 years

Text

A Hapless Endearment [Creepypasta x F. Reader]

Chapter 6- I’m Awake, I’m Alive

Most of that day is spent keeping herself busy and distracted with various things; reading, sketching, scrolling through YouTube and hoping to find something entertaining. Even over the course of several hours, her message to the unknown number has yet to be answered, but she never really expected it to be. And there’s always the chance that it wasn’t ever meant for her; perhaps they were trying to reach another Y\n.

It would be a big coincidence, but not one totally unbelievable. More likely than not though, it’s just some kid pulling a cheap prank. And she chooses to chalk it up to that exact thing. At around four-thirty in the evening, she decides to go downstairs and find something to eat, while also conversing a bit with her grandparents in an attempt to get rid of some of the unseen tension between the three of them.

The news that Darcy and Marvin were murdered and that her cousin is missing, likely dead and decaying in the woods somewhere, is still sinking in, and she assumes it will for quite a while yet. Something like that can’t just be brushed aside as if it’s completely meaningless, or at least, that’s what Y\n thought. But her careless father managed to do it. Impressive or just incredibly cold-hearted? A little bit of both, in her opinion.

She sees her grandmother in the kitchen, pulling a pan of something out of the oven, its sweet, enticing aroma traveling through the air and drifting up to her nose, therefore drawing her interest. She catches herself wandering into the room, recognizing the scent slightly though not wanting to outright assume anything. Nana turns, noticing Y\n’s abrupt appearance and looking almost surprised as she pulls the oven mitt off of her hand.

“Hi, dear,” she says, keeping her voice mellow and pointing at the stovetop. “I made cookies.” Ah, cookies. The first thing that’s sounded appetizing since breakfast, and that’s been hours ago. Her stomach rumbles mildly from within the confines of her torso, and only now does she realize how hungry that she’s quickly starting to become. Perhaps a couple of cookies can ease that for a bit longer until she feels like eating something more filling.

“Oh.” She steps closer to get a better view, tilting her head to the side curiously. “What kind?”

“Oatmeal chocolate chip. Your old favorite, remember?” Recalling the distant memories of her childhood self stuffing her face with the delightful treat without a care in the world makes her want to laugh, despite the constant nagging in her gut and the aching in her chest. God, I was so naive.

“Yeah, I remember,” she replies, a ghost of a smile sweeping over her face for the briefest of moments before being replaced by an eager expression as she takes another whiff of the cookies. “They smell so good.” Nana releases a small chuckle and shakes her head.

“I’m glad. Dig in, I made them especially for you.”

“Ah, you didn’t have to do that.” She meets the woman’s gaze with a sincere one of her own, knowing in the back of her mind that she only made them to act as a sort of comfort food for Y\n, and though she’s greatly appreciative, the idea of being pitied doesn’t sit well with her. Still, she won’t say anything about it. Nana did it solely out of compassion and love for her, and she isn’t going to reject that.

“Of course I did.” Her hand finds its way to the girl’s shoulder and squeezes it affectionately. “You’re only here for a few weeks. I have to make sure you know how much we love you.”

“I already do know, Nana.” Her voice is uncharacteristically soft as she looks to Farrah, touched at what the lady’s saying and trying to figure out how her father could have straight-up abandoned her without blinking an eye. “I don’t need cookies just to realize that.”

“Come here, baby,” she says, reaching her arms out and wrapping them around Y\n’s b\s frame in a gentle, caring embrace. The h\c leans into her, snaking her own arms around her but squeezing a bit more softly, relishing in the warmth of her grandmother’s hug. She knows that this is a temporary comfort; once her parents come back and she leaves, she likely won’t be returning until after she’s eighteen. That’s too long for her to wait. What if something terrible happens while she’s gone, like what took place at her cousin’s house just a couple of years ago?

She wouldn’t know how to react. Every emblem of love that’s left within her family can be found here, in this quaint household, and she isn’t ready to lose that. Especially since she only just rediscovered it. Nuzzling her face in the nook between Nana’a shoulder and neck, she squeezes her eyes shut and savors this feeling, fighting the tears threatening to form. She won’t cry and worry her; she has enough stress surrounding her as it is. The last thing Y\n wants is to be the cause of stress, for both of her grandparents.

A minute passes and Nana leisurely pulls away, grabbing a paper plate and napkin from off the counter and handing it to Y\n. At first, she thinks that maybe the napkin’s to wipe away tears that, unbeknownst to her, are slipping down her cheeks, though after she’s flashed with a sweet smile and Nana nods toward the tray of cookies, she realizes what it’s for and takes both from her hold. “Thanks.”

“No need to thank me, dear.” Y\n carefully picks up two of the cookies from the pan, being extra cautious so she doesn’t get burnt, and places them on the paper surface in her hand. She then grabs a glass of milk and heads to the living room, seeing Pops sitting in his chair, seemingly content as he watches reruns of Full House on the TV. Nervousness swivels in the depths of her chest, and she eases her way toward the couch, knowing that there’s likely to be a bit of anxiety lingering in the air between them since their conversation this morning.

Her throat, at this point, feels much better than it had previously, and she’s hopeful that no real damage was done to it during her unnerving, confusing spell of agony earlier. By tomorrow, maybe she’ll be able to talk in her regular voice without having the slightest twinge of pain in the back. She sets her glass on the coffee table, pretending not to notice the way her grandpa side-eyes her every few seconds, as if apprehensive about something.

Her eyes travel to look at the TV screen, trying to seem more interested in the show currently playing than she really is, until she can’t handle the pressure on her shoulders to just say something, break the ice in some way. Meeting his eyes timidly, she finally speaks, her tone honest. “Pops… I hope you know that I’m not mad at you for anything. I really do appreciate you telling me what happened.”

“Oh darlin’, I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you.” He twists around in his chair slightly to face her. “I know that news like that, especially after having just got here, has to be difficult to comprehend.” She shrugs solemnly as Nana makes her appearance, taking a seat beside her on the couch with her own cookies and milk held in her hands.

“You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Though her voice is disheartened, her facial expression is earnest as she takes a small bite of her cookie, a wave of nostalgia hitting her as she does so. “It can’t be harder on me than it is you guys. I’m sorry that happened.” She doesn’t see the sorrowful look that her grandparents share with each other before moving their attention on her, once again.

“We are too, Y\n,” Farrah says, lacking any better words as she pats her back comfortably. Y\n, after another drawn-out silence, wants nothing more than to just find a different subject to talk about so everybody in this house won’t feel so sad. Taking a sip of her milk, she glances at Pops.

“...So what season is this?” The question is directed at the TV show flashing across the screen, and he answers soon enough.

“Four.”

“What episode?”

“Eight, I think.”

“Ah. So DJ’s going on her ‘crash diet’.” He nods. She remembers aspects of the show quite well, having watched it constantly as a young kid and having a very distinctive crush on Jesse, though she hasn’t seen it in years so she isn’t 100% knowledgeable on everything about it. Episode 8 was fairly popular, though, so she’s able to recall certain details about it that she can’t about others. She doesn’t leave the living room again for another four and a half hours, using this time to visit with them and enjoying their enlightening company.

She can feel her eyelids start to droop as the sun begins its slow descent behind the trees, the bright silver moon replacing its glorious rays of light with something more gentle but just as majestic, soon accompanied by thousands of glimmering stars that pepper themselves all in the sky. Glancing out through the window to her right, she’s able to see a fluffy, white, and grey lump sitting on a chair outside and grooming itself, and she stands, going toward the front door to grant him entrance.

Once it’s open, his head shoots up and he stares at her a moment before hopping down and rubbing against her legs as he walks inside. She reaches down toward him and he briefly stands on his hind legs, bumping his head into her palm in greeting as she shuts the door. “Hey, Marshmallow,” she says, voice quiet. As expected, he soon walks away from her, in search of his food bowl, and she rolls her eyes, and her gaze trails back into the living room. Nana gets to her feet, releasing a yawn and running her fingers through her thin, grey hair. “Are you going to bed?”

“Yes, I am. Phil and I have to get up early and go to the store tomorrow to buy groceries.” Y\n’s lips form an “o” shape as she leans against the doorframe, fiddling with her fingers absentmindedly. “Will you be okay here alone for a little while?” A mildly concerned expression forms across Nana’s face. “Or do you want to come with us?”

Y\n thinks it over a second. She really doesn’t feel like going anywhere, but then again she could help them out and spend quality time with them. But she’d be in public. What if she were to have another coughing fit? Not only would it draw loads of attention, but it would make her grandparents frantic. She definitely doesn’t want that; they’ve got enough to worry about as it is. Not giving herself any more time to consider against staying home, she shakes her head lightly. “N-no, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m used to staying home alone anyways.” Nana looks a bit hesitant, though doesn’t further argue the point and instead nods.

“Alright. If you say so.” She pulls her in for a quick hug, which Y\n eagerly returns. “Goodnight, sweetheart. Call if you need anything.”

“You, too.” She watches as Farrah walks slowly up the stairs, going over what she’s going to preoccupy herself with, both tonight and tomorrow. She doesn’t want to go back to sleep for fear of having another nightmare, this one even more horrendous and bone-chilling than the last one. What’s her mind going to predict next? Marshmallow falling from the roof and dying? Her grandma slipping on mud and breaking her arm? She’s afraid of whatever it will be, which is why she’s decided to stay awake tonight for as long as possible.

She’s going to go to sleep at some point, whether she likes it or not, that much is inevitable. She just wants to delay that process for as long as possible. After all, how hard can it be? She’s pulled all-nighters before. All she has to do is participate in mind-jogging activities. Nothing relaxing like music, or tea, or reading. Things like sketching, or exercising, or listening to Jacksepticeye and Markiplier play horror games on full volume.

Then again, maybe horror games aren’t the best things to watch in her lowkey paranoid state. Perhaps she should instead watch things like babies falling asleep while eating an ice cream cone, or kittens playing with each other, or memes about the Avengers. Something entertaining and yet energizing at the same time. She turns to go put the cookies away so they won’t get stale sitting out, and as she does so, Pops switches the TV off, rises from his seat, and walks toward her, likely to inform her that he’s following his wife to bed.

"I'm gonna go to bed too, hummingbird." Yup. She thinks as he pats her on the shoulder. "Sweet dreams. Love you."

"Love you, too. Goodnight," she says, watching him walk away and up the stairs after Nana. If only I could actually have sweet dreams. She stretches the plastic wrap over the plate of cookies and begins to walk out of the kitchen, though not before switching the overhead light off and grabbing a stick of string cheese from the fridge to snack on while she finds something to do. Watch TV? Maybe there's something good on. But that may disturb Nana and Pops' sleep, so she decides against it. She takes her phone out of her pocket and scrolls through her Tumblr blog, a small smile stretching across her face each time she reads a supportive comment about her 'amazing' art skills.

She originally logged into Tumblr a couple of years ago, whenever her parents refused to give her constructive criticism, or any criticism at all, in fact, about her paintings, so one day she just gave up and turned to the internet. At the time, most of her friends had Tumblr blogs, so she figured, why not join in? So she began posting artwork that she did, and within a month's time, she had over a thousand followers. Way more than she ever expected to get.

Her last picture was posted on the 21st of June, one week before she was hauled all the way across two different states and dropped off at her grandparents' house without a second thought. Not that she can complain now, though. Her grandparents love her way more than her actual parents do, she's sure of it. And even if she's wrong, it would be nice to hear the words 'I love you' come from their mouths every once in a while. But she supposes she just isn't that lucky.

Marshmallow emerges from the darkened dining room, just having eaten his supper and likely ready for a long, relaxing nap. He hops onto the couch and kneads the cushion with his claws before slinking onto her thighs, curling into a fuzzy ball, and closing his eyes. Her hand finds its way to his head and she strokes softly, able to feel his body vibrate against her legs as he purs in content. She scrolls through notifications, watches YouTube compilations (on low volume as to not wake Nana and Pops), and plays games like Among Us and Agar.io until her phone battery is at 2% and the screen is dimmed to the lowest possible setting by default.

She looks at the time in the top right corner, now finding that it's 12:29 at night. Her charger is all the way upstairs, and to get to it she would have to disturb the resting feline. He's shuffled about and changed positions a couple of times during the past four hours, but has overall slept peacefully. With a defeated sigh, she drops her hand-held device next to her on a pillow and throws her head back, leaning into the couch cushions and staring up at the ceiling. Now that she has nothing to do but sit here in silence, she can't stop the giant wave of thoughts, questions, and concerns from hitting her and boosting her anxieties.

So many things seemed to have already happened in the mere four days that she's been here, ranging from mild and questionable to utterly fear-inducing or depressing. For starters, the terrible dreams she's been having almost every night? Or the way her latest dream basically predicted what she was going to be told only a day later? How about the random coughing fit, or the way Jack seemed to just disappear out of thin air? All these incidents plus some have her aching to know more, but at the same time, she's scared to know more. She has no clue what's happening. Maybe a bad case of allergies?

Yeah, right. Allergies don't predict the future or make weird men in white masks stare at you from the woods. She feels her eyelids grow heavy once more, though she shakes her head and bumps her temple with the heel of her hand to keep herself from becoming drowsy. You can not afford to go to sleep, right now. Her eyes land on a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, and she blinks, focusing perhaps a little too hard on it as she tries to see a spider or any other living creature nestled inside, but fails to.

She studies it for so long that her vision becomes blurry and the only thing she can center her attention on is that same cobweb. Random ideas pop up in her mind, thoughts that would normally be considered strange by individuals who get enough sleep at night, but they're only intriguing to Y\n. How long has the web been there? Did its weaver die? Did it once protect thousands of baby spiders until they hatched? Could she reach up and touch it if she were standing on a piece of furniture?

Before she can even comprehend it, her eyes are fluttering closed and she's drifting off into an alleviating sleep. At least, she would have been, had her body not jolted awake right beforehand and left her heart beating wildly within her chest from the sudden adrenaline rush she just experienced. Glancing around, she quickly recalls where exactly she is and releases a huff from her nose, raking a hand through her hair. Oh yes, what a classic. Falling from a building and waking up before you hit the ground. How exciting.

Her abrupt movements shake Marshmallow and he, too, wakes from his deep sleep, looking a bit alarmed before letting out a yawn, his white canines on full display for the shortest of moments before he rests his head on his paws, once more. Y\n slides her hands beneath his small body, however, and lifts him up, kissing his cheek preparatory to laying him on a particularly soft-looking pillow on her right. "Sorry, buddy. I've gotta get up before I go to sleep, too."

He shoots her a dissatisfied scowl and curls his tail in front of his eyes as if telling her he doesn't want to even look at her. She turns to head upstairs, albeit quietly, stopping by the bathroom to relieve her screaming bladder on her way to her bedroom. As she steps out from behind the door and turns off the light, though, she catches sight of her father's old room, the door shut for some peculiar reason. They probably just didn't want to be reminded that their once loving son left them behind without a care in the world.

Knowing she has better things to do than peer into a bit of her joke of a father's childhood, she lets out the tiniest of scoffs and goes to her own room, unable to ease the bit of pain that forms in her chest as she does so. The woman that this room used to belong to is gone. Dead. Out of the picture. This room will always hold a part of her in it. It shows what her personality was like back when she was Y\n's age, and beyond that. It's a sad and difficult revelation to come to, but Y\n bites the inside of her cheek and keeps the tears at bay. She doesn't want to cry, not right now. She just wants to avoid another scare that will take five more years off of her life. How does she do that? She refuses to sleep.

Although, when one doesn't rest for long periods of time, they can suffer hallucinations. Y\n does not want to suffer from hallucinations, but she supposes that at least she would know that they aren't real. They're merely figments of her imagination. Like that masked figure at the edge of the forest. Or the weird buzzing in her head. Heck, maybe Jack isn't even real. How else would he vanish without a trace? Or get black sludge on her face from what was supposed to have been a nosebleed? It's all a bit too baffling for her, so she just chooses to go with the most simple and less mind-boggling explanation; they were hallucinations. Granted, very vivid hallucinations, but hallucinations nonetheless.

It wouldn't be too far of a stretch. She hasn't been getting enough sleep lately, that on top of lacking a social life, her pathetically bad parents, and discovering three of her closest family members are gone would give just about any person mental strain. She grabs her sketchbook from her backpack, considering the blank canvas sitting inside a moment before disregarding the thought. Making some terribly-drawn pictures should keep her busy for a couple of hours more.

Her stomach rumbles, signifying that it's empty and wants something that will actually fill it up, and as she passes the kitchen after walking back down the stairs, sketchbook, and pencils in hand, her mind wanders. What could she eat that is both appetizing and satisfactory, that wouldn't take forever to make, and that wouldn't cause unnecessary racket? Nothing that she can think of. That string cheese appealed to her just fine. The same clearly can't be said for her stomach.

Perhaps she just isn't in the mood nor the mindset to care about eating anything else for the time being, but oh well. A bit of hunger never hurt anyone, right? She inwardly curses herself when she realizes that she forgot to grab her phone charger from her room while she was there, and now she'd have to trek all the way back up the stairs just to get it. She does not feel like she has the energy at the moment to do such a thing, but would she rather have a dead phone? What good is that? It isn't like I have people to contact, anymore. Or who contact me.

But what if her parents were to try and get ahold of her about something, but she wasn't available? What if one of them got in a car accident, or their trip got canceled and they were going to be returning tomorrow? Wouldn't she want to be notified of something like that? They're both highly doubtful scenarios, but they're a possibility, if only minor ones. "Agh, fine." She grumbles to herself, laying her things on the coffee table and spinning around to, once again, walk up the staircase that just seems to get longer each time she conquers it, going into her bedroom and being thankful that the lamp sitting on the desk is switched on to provide comforting light.

She unplugs the cord from the outlet and wraps it messily around her hand, being careful not to get it tangled. Tangled wires are the worst, every modern-era kid would agree. Especially earplugs. Once they're twisted and knotted, it either takes hours of work trying to fix and get them straightened out—valuable time most people don't have to waste—or spend more money buying a new set. Sure, she's never really had a problem with that whole money issue, but it's still frustrating because oftentimes she never has a ride and is forced to walk all the way to the store in order to buy a new pair, either that or wait a week for the ones from Amazon to be delivered. And who wants to do that?

Perceiving the fact that she just had a mental rant solely about tangled earbud wires, she snorts quietly and shakes her head in disbelief. God, I really am going crazy. She's about to head back toward the living room but stops in her tracks and instead averts her gaze outside, to the darkness blanketing the house in an eerie aura. She isn't sure what possesses her to do it in the first place, all she knows is that she leans in closer to the window, her eyes scanning the area as if looking for something. What that 'something' is, she hasn't a clue.

Just as she's about to give up and look away, she spots it. At the edge of the treeline, shrouded partly by bushes, is some sort of lanky figure. Maybe it looked too much like an actual tree that she easily looked over it the first few times, but now, it's like she can't take her eyes away. A familiar buzzing sound wraps around her mind as she has a one-sided staring contest with this... thing. Or is it really one-sided? She can't make out many details simply because it's too dark, but it looks to be wearing a formal outfit of some kind. Perhaps a suit? Its skin looks white almost, but that could also be the silvery beams from the moon shining down and reflecting off of it in a way that lacks any color.

Her chest tightens and her breathing quickens as she finally forces herself away, blinking frantically and rubbing at her eyes with her free hand. Another hallucination, that's all it is. There is nothing out there but nature, nothing scary at all. She's fine, she's only imagining it. That's what she repeats in her head, over and over for the next thirty seconds before willing herself to look outside, again, purely out of curiosity. To confirm what she's tried convincing herself.

The droning disappears from her mind, and she's more than relieved when she sees nothing but trees. No boogyman in the bushes, no lanky beast lurking behind the trees and waiting to murder her. It's fine. Rolling her eyes, she exits the room and walks back downstairs, into the living room. Marshmallow is still lying on the pillow, probably asleep by now, and she steps quietly to the couch, fitting the charger into an outlet nearby before plugging the other end into her phone and setting it back on the table.

She tries to get comfortable, sitting on the soft surface and resting her back against its arm. Her legs stretch out, though not all the way so she doesn't bump the fluffy feline and for the third time that night, disrupt his sleep. The lighting in the room is gentle and soothing, but still helpful, and it allows her to see the sketchpad propped in her hands and resting against her slightly bent legs fairly well. She takes a 6B pencil and begins tracing dainty lines across the paper, forming a mental image of what she wants to draw and slowly bringing it to life.

The hours pass by expeditiously as she creates one drawing after another, not particularly satisfied with any of them but just content that she found something to both keep her awake and entertained. Though try as she might, she just can't keep the drowsiness at bay for more than a few minutes at a time. She could make coffee. That has loads of caffeine. Caffeine keeps people awake, right? But she doesn't ever remember seeing either of her grandparents drinking it. Odd. Most of her old friends' grandparents and parents alike drank coffee all the time, for either work or just out of habit. Isn't coffee a known drink for older people?

Maybe Nana and Pops just don't like it. She supposes it is quite an acquired taste; she's tried it on multiple occasions and it wasn't exactly satisfactory, but it had a strong flavor. That's what she needs. But if her grandparents don't drink it, what can she get? Tea? No, people drink that specifically to relax. She wants to be anything but relaxed. Her breathing and heart rate slows steadily, and she loses her train of thought. Soda. Soda could work. It's tasty and it hypes you up, which is exactly what she desires.

She mentally screams at her body to get up, to move, but it seems to be too exhausted to do any such thing, much to her displeasure. Each time her eyes begin to close, she pries them open, again, and tries to concentrate fully on the drawing half-done in her hands. But alas, her decreased energy level and the lulling thought of rest wins the battle, and despite all her greatest efforts, her fingers become limp, she slides farther down into the couch and drifts off to sleep.

～

The first thing she notices is the smell. The rancid, horrid smell of something rotting. A smell that she recognizes all too well. The area surrounding her is dark, and she has to blindly walk around and hope that she doesn't bump into or trip over anything. A familiar fear sinks into her chest as she tries to be as quiet as possible. Drawing the attention of some hungry cryptid wouldn't be a very wise thing to do, after all.

Her body shakes mildly in apprehension, and she glances around desperately, eager to see something, anything, that could tell her where on earth she's currently standing. Or is she even on earth anymore? Is she on another planet, or been teleported to a whole different dimension? The possibilities seem endless, much like the questions swarming her mind, as she treks forward, cautiously. The gloom around her gradually lessens, and at last, she can make some form of sense from everything. This place. She knows this place. This is her aunt's and uncle's house.

It's the same as she remembers, save for the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and the knocked-over flower pots scattered along the floor. Aimlessly, she wanders through the household, looking for any sign of life that may possibly still reside here. The smell gets worse the farther she goes, and suddenly, she shivers. It's getting chilly. Cold is often an indication of death, not life. She turns, looking into the ominously dark hallway before her and hesitating. Does she want to go?

No, she doesn't. She wants to leave. Nobody's here, so she shouldn't be, either. But an invisible force pushes her forward, and slowly, she starts walking. Deeper into the dreadfully sinister corridor, the smell getting stronger and more repulsive, so much so that she's forced to cover her nose just to stop herself from gagging. Her feet get stopped by something lying in the middle of the floor, and she places a hand on the wall so she doesn't fall.

She squints her eyes at the ground, trying to see the object, and eventually just bends over and grabs it. This is no ordinary object. It's her uncle Marvin's javelin. The so-called 'murder weapon'. She stares down at it, ignoring the foreboding fog gripping at her feet. It's slippery. Why is it slippery?

A shriek of what she can only describe as agony erupts from the room at the end of the hall, the end that she finds herself too close to for her liking. The door is closed, obstructing her view from the inside, then again that may be a good thing. Subconsciously, she grips the javelin, suddenly not caring what's on it and why it's slippery. If anything comes barreling through that door at least she has something to stab it with.

She backs away anxiously, her breathing increasing as her eyes never leave the closed entrance. Her hands shake and her footsteps are uncoordinated, but she doesn't really mind it, just as long as she's able to escape before whatever happened to that person inside the room happens to her.

She bumps into something hard, and squeaks from alarm, twisting around, ready to attack. Though she only gasps when she sees a wall. No, surely not... it's impossible. But if it isn't...

Her eyes avert around, looking for another door, but all of them have disappeared. It's like whatever force surrounds her wants her trapped. All of her exits are gone. She has no escape, and she tries to blink away the distressed tears, gripping onto the javelin even tighter than before. Only now does she realize that the door from the end of the hallway has gotten closer, so close in fact, that she could take two steps and she'd be able to touch it.

Trepidation masks all of her previously sensible thoughts and a whimper escapes from between her lips as she wills herself to do it. Just do it and it'll be over. She'll know what lies behind the door. But at the expense of her life? It doesn't look like she has another choice.

Reluctantly, she reaches out and twists the knob, and to her dismay, the door creaks open. It's silent from the other side, meaning that whoever it was screaming before has been silenced. Likely by death, as that seems to be the only reasonable explanation. But maybe it's a prank?

She steps through, muscles tensed and weapon at the ready. Empty. The room is empty, with only a window allowing the moonlight to shine through and spill onto the floor. A crash from behind her, and she looks back, eyes widening when she sees the door slammed shut. Oh well, she could always go through the window. The real question is, who closed it? Another shiver wracks her body, and a whiff of that same powerful odor near about makes her throw up.

A loud static courses through her mind as she twists back around, not trying to hold back the tears that fall from her eyes once she notices two motionless bodies lying in the moonlight. They most certainly weren't there a second ago. Neither was all of the blood. Two large pools of it, beneath their mangled corpses, where they were mercilessly stabbed. But with what? A strangled sob climbs its way up her throat, and she drops the javelin, letting it clatter to the floor.

Blood is all over her hands. It's all over the javelin. There's no doubt in her mind where it came from. But if she has the murder weapon, where is the murderer? She turns on her heel, grabbing at the doorknob, trying to twist it open, but her hands are too wet. They slide down it each time.

"Let me out!" Her voice seems more voluminous than it would usually be, but she suddenly doesn't care who hears her, anymore. She just wants away. Out of this nightmare. Can't it just end already? The static grows stronger, more painful, and she takes to beating on the wooden portal, kicking it as hard as she can. Maybe it will rot away. Maybe she can escape. "Please!"

The desperation is thick in her horrified tone, and she musters up all of her strength, taking in a breath and slamming into it. To her relief, it snaps and she falls to the floor. Finally, she reached the other side. Finally, she can escape. A cold wind blows through her hair and she takes notice of the grass beneath her trembling frame. Grass? Wasn't she just in a house?

Trees. Endless trees surround her, their branches seeming like wicked beasts in the shrill moonlight and the shadows hovering around. There's one right in front of her, a large one. There's something carved into its trunk. She crawls forward a few inches in an effort to see what it is. A message maybe? It looks like a messily-crafted circle with an oversize 'X' in its center. What does that even mean? She almost wants to think that she's seen it, before, but she can't figure out where.

"I control you..." A whisper rides the wind and meets her ears, giving her goosebumps as she shakily stands to her feet.

"Who are you!?" she screams, wanting more than anything to know who is causing this torment.

"Where I go..."

"What do you want from me!?" Her voice cracks, and she looks around frantically for the source of the disembodied voice.

"...you will follow..."

～

Her eyes shoot open and her head turns to the side, trying to remember where she is currently as she attempts to slow her shaky, shallow breaths. The living room. She’s in the living room. Not her aunt’s house. She isn’t trapped, there are no dead bodies, no javelins. She’s safe. Tears well up in her eyes and she sniffs, looking back to the sketch pad still in her hands and being quite alarmed at what she sees. In the center of the page, drawn in dark grey and scribbled carelessly, or hurriedly, is a circle and an ‘X’ that’s placed inside, its limbs elongated and escaping out of the confines of the circle. It obscures her unfinished sketch beneath, making it look more like a background than an actual drawing.

She switches her attention down to her dominant hand, fingers clenched painfully around her pencil, as if she had just been gripping it for dear life, and releases her hold, letting it drop to her lap as she leisurely sits up and tries to gain control of her rapid heart rate. It was just another dream.

A low, threatening sound reaches her ears, and her eyes shift up toward the opposite end of the couch, instantly growing confused when she sees Marshmallow, ears folded back in aggression and tail swishing around as he stares at her warily. She furrows her eyebrows, wanting to reassure him that everything’s okay, and leans forward, reaching her hand out to him cautiously. “Hey, boy, i-it’s okay. Don’t be scared—” She’s cut off when he suddenly swipes at her hand, claws drawn, and slices through her skin, sending a burst of pain through her nerves.

She winces and yanks her arm back, examining the damage and seeing three vertical lines traveling the length of the back of her hand, blood quickly coming to the surface and making them much more noticeable. This seems to be the thing to drive her over the edge because she lets out a broken squeak as nausea starts to make its presence known.

She feels the abrupt urge to throw up, and tosses her sketchpad and pencil to the side, standing to her feet and hurrying to the nearest bathroom, the one on the first floor of the household. Her stomach swirls uncomfortably and makes her go even faster, not wanting to soak the floor in vomit, until she reaches the said bathroom, only bothering to switch on the light before collapsing in front of the toilet, pushing the seat up, and craning her neck forward.

With one hand, she pulls her hair back, and the other she grips the porcelain, hold tightening automatically as her stomach convulses, sending bile to the back of her throat. This alone makes her gag and forces the hot substance out of her mouth, where it lands in the toilet and makes a small splash. The odor finds its way up her nose and makes her gag once more as acid and half-processed food gets torn from her mouth, chunks of cookie, cheese, and bacon floating in the now discolored water, amongst the puke.

She takes deep, consoling breaths, trying to brace herself for another wave of inevitable retching as her fingers squeeze the toilet bowl, so hard her knuckles turn white. As expected, her stomach contracts, however this time the only thing that comes out is more acid and bloody mucus, much to her displeasure. She continues her aching process of heaving up nothing, strained tears slipping down her cheeks and dropping into the water mere inches away from her face at this point, until finally, her body has all the exertion it can take, and it gives out, allowing her to collect her bearings.

She gasps for breath and releases the toilet, leaning her back against the wall and zoning out as she stares at the floor. Her hands shake uncontrollably, and she swipes at her mouth in an effort to get rid of the sticky liquid residing on her lips, before letting out a sob and tucking her knees into her chest. Burying her face in her arms, she muffles her cries and whimpers pathetically. What the heck is going on? What’s wrong with me…?

#Creepypasta #Creepypasta x reader #female reader #Creepypasta fanfiction #Creepypasta fanfic #Marble Hornets #grandparents #summer vacation #Nana #Pops #Y\n L\n #nightmare #Operator symbol #Slenderman #death

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collecting-stories · 4 years

Text

Secret Santa - Connor Murphy

A/N: Getting some things out before Christmas comes. Ah!

It’s Christmas time and the reader got Connor Murphy for secret Santa.

“It’s secret Santa, it’s anonymous.” Jared pointed out, looking passed you toward the sign for the food court. It’d only been ten minutes since he parked the car and you walked inside but Panera was really starting to call to him.

“No, it’s supposed to be a surprise to the other person, it’s not anonymous.” You replied, ignoring his longing looks and starting to walk again, “What if we got each other? And then I give him his present and it’s shit and he’s gotten me something nice.”

“Knowing him he’ll have forgotten until the day of and end up giving whoever he got a joint.” Jared pointed out. “Or Wednesday Addams will have a freak-out and then no gifts.”

“Can you just help me?”

“Alright, alright. I gotta buy a present for Evan anyway.”

“You got Evan?” You asked.

“Unfortunately.” Jared had been tempted to the name back in Zoe’s jar and pick again, not exactly wanting to tackle buying a present for Evan. He would have preferred Alana or even Zoe, he could have just gotten off with an itunes giftcard and a cheesy card.

“Please, Evan is easy.” You had gotten Evan last year and given him a forest guide, plus when the weather cleared the two of you had taken a trip to the state park together. Connor had not participated last year.

“Connor is easy too, buy him a joint or lay on his bed naked...he’d probably be down for both.” It was no secret that you and Connor had a thing going on. If you could call awkward flirting and pinning over each other from a distance a thing.

You thought that going away to college would make it harder to keep in touch with everyone but somehow with Connor, it had become easier. While Evan had opted for in-state (closer to Zoe he claimed but closer to his mom you were sure), you and Jared had both ended up out of state, at the same college. Connor was “taking a year off” and working and yet you were certain he spent more time in your dorm than your roommate did. He drove the four hours up on Friday nights and stayed until Sunday evening, you texted him constantly and had managed to convince him to make a snapchat (“So I can see your beautiful face every day”). But you were just friends. Or something along that line, he hadn’t talked about wanting more and you were afraid that if you mentioned it he would want less.

“Jared!” You hissed, glaring at him.

“You could lay on my bed naked.” He smiled cheekily, earning an eye roll from you.

“Keep dreaming.”

“What about money?” It was what he was thinking about getting Evan and at least if you gave Connor money too then he wouldn’t get flack from Alana about his gift being impersonal.

“I was thinking something more personal than that. You’re not helpful.”

“I never said I would be. Besides I thought you got me and that’s why you wanted to go out.” Jared pointed out.

“I needed a car. You have a car.” You replied, shrugging.

“I can’t believe you used me for my car.”

“Jared, focus, presents.”

You weren’t surprised when Zoe told you that Connor would not be joining the party. He had, according to her, had a blow-out tantrum over something Larry had said earlier and had locked himself in his room. And despite her warning not to go upstairs you did anyway, carrying your giftbag with you. Willingly choosing to take your chances on Connor when you could easily stay downstairs with the rest of the party.

You knocked on his closed bedroom door, listening for his inevitable ‘fuck off’.

“What?” Connor shouted, a harsh tone to his voice.

“Is it okay if I come in?”

“Tell Zoe I’m not coming downstairs,” he yelled, “this whole thing is stupid.”

You waited for a minute, mulling over whether you should go back downstairs before finally deciding to try one more time. “Connor?”

“Go away.”

“I’m not here to drag you downstairs Connor, I got your name for secret Santa so, stupid or not I have a present for you,” you held up the bag as proof even though he couldn’t see it.

While you couldn’t hear the sigh that escaped his lips you could imagine it. “Come in.”

“So, it’s not much, but,” you handed over the present as you came in, standing awkwardly at the edge of his bed. He was laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling and throwing a hackey-sac up in the air. He looked over at you, managing to catch the sac before it landed on his face and sat up, taking the gift bag.

“I didn’t get you anything.” He mentioned, picking at tissue paper.

“It’s not a big deal, I got your name so-“ You shrugged.

“That’s what I mean. I got your name too.”

“Just give me a joint or something, it’s really not that important. If you don’t wanna participate you don’t have to.” Zoe made everyone pick names at her friends-giving, which Connor also made himself scarce from. He didn’t want to be part of the secret Santa and he’d told her enough times that she should have known but she insisted that he take part.

It didn’t matter to you that he hadn’t gotten you anything. Regardless of the idea, the intent of the tradition was not to receive. And besides, he had given you plenty. He stopped at Starbucks every Friday and brought you ridiculously overpriced lattes. He bought you packs of pens or notebooks or random things he found while stocking shelves at Target. He spent money on gas driving eight hours every weekend just to see you. No gift could top that.

“Yeah but I still feel shitty about it now.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t get you a present?”

“I thought Zoe would tell you I wasn’t gonna do it.” He replied, fiddling with the tag, you’d written his name in pretty cursive.

“Well too late for that, open your present, I wanna see if you like it.”

“Thought you said it wasn’t a big deal?”

“It’s not.”

“Seems like it.” He mumbled, pulling different tissue-wrapped gifts out. It wasn’t much. A pair of socks with marijuana leaves on them, a dark grey sweater that looked warm and that Evan had weirdly known the right size for, a moleskine sketch-book and some watercolors that you’d spent way too much money on, and a set of Christmas themed scrunchies as a gag. He held up the pack of scrunchies, shaking them and watching the bells on the red one jingle.

There was a long pause, thoughtful even, as he looked over the presents that you had spent the weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break mulling over. The green scrunchie in the pack was velvet and he tore the plastic binding them together so he could pull his hair back with that one. It was his favorite color and while he realized that it was just a stupid variety pack he recognized from a display at his Target, he knew there were two other packs as well. Maybe it was too much to be hopeful for but he sort of wished you had chosen that specific one because of the green.

You were still standing there, waiting in silence. Watching him patiently. You gave the best gifts, he knew from experience. In third grade you made everyone in class ornaments out of intricately folded paper. You’d made him a snowflake and glittered the edges dark green and told him you hoped he liked it because you knew that was his favorite color. The paper was a page from your favorite book, you had mentioned when he attempted to make out as many words as he could. Tuck Everlasting, you said you’d been to the town where they filmed and it was right by the beach.

He hadn’t said it then but he had thought about how fun it would be to go to the beach with you.

“Hold on,” Connor jumped up and went over to his desk. He made a show of rummaging through papers and drawers.

“Connor,” You stayed in place but twisted your body to follow his movements.

“I’ve got something I can give you.”

“It’s really not a-“

“Not a big deal, I know, I know, just, just close your eyes.” He requested, turning back toward you.

“Why?”

“Just do it okay?”

You closed your eyes and waited for whatever might happen next. His footsteps were muffled by the carpet but you felt his hands on your upper arms. You could hear him breath and, as he leaned in, you realized you could feel his breath on your face. Just as you were about to open your eyes and ask what he was doing you felt his nose brush against yours and his lips press a kiss to yours. It wasn’t anything especially romantic or passionate. It was quick, a closed mouth kiss, just the ghost of the feeling of Connor’s mouth on yours and then he was gone. You opened your eyes and he was still holding your upper arms but he was looking at you a little more vulnerably than before.

And you opened your mouth to say something intelligent but the only thing that came out was, “Oh, thank you.”

The nerves broke and Connor smiled, teeth and all, so close to laughter he let you go to cover his mouth, “did you just say thank you?”

“You said it was a present,” you dumbly replied, the heat of embarrassment warming your face.

“No one says thank you after someone kisses them.”

“Maybe they do if it’s a present.”

“I don’t think so.” Connor teased. He undid his bun and then tied it back up, a nervous habit you’d picked up on from all the times he spent at your dorm.

“Well next time I won’t say thank you.”

“You might. I might be that good a kisser.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” You tried for even an ounce of sass but all you could muster was the same tone of awe you’d had since he kissed you. He had kissed you and your whole body felt like it was tingling with a wonderful buzz of happiness.

“Who do you have to stack me up against other than Evan?” He joked, sitting back on his bed. He was trying to play it cool, doing a better job than you, though he was still filled with nerves. Had he read the situation right? Did you feel the same way about him that he felt about you?

“Oh god, Zoe told you about that?” You paled at the thought of Connor knowing about that kiss. A dare Freshmen year of high school.

“Jared.”

“That’s even worse!” You groaned.

“It’s not so bad.” Connor replied, “didn’t turn me off the idea of kissing you.”

I’m finally posting again and it’s still whatever I want...sorry, its the most I can do for now.

#Connor Murphy x Reader #connor murphy fanfic #connor murphy au #Connor Murphy imagine #deh fanfiction #deh imagine #deh au #deh fanfic #dear evan hansen imagine #dear Evan hansen fanfiction #dear evan hansen fanfic #dear Evan hansen au #collecting stories imagine

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