#and that the gravestone in his one card is hers BUT

[cerealmonster15]

ok solomon make up ur mind about the damn ocean lol

[long post sorry i stacked pictures]

^student id says he dislikes the ocean, right?

summer fireworks frenzy item, he says he hates summer lol, which isnt really about the ocean but theyre often associated

^shoutout to @ Syam on youtube bc i knew he mentioned it in the Pearls and Beach event but didnt have screenshots of specifically this solomon dialogue i needed, where he says hes specifically not fond of the ocean!!!

but i DID have this from my own screenshots of that same event:

hes not fond of the ocean or summer, but he does in fact know how to talk to sea creatures, for some reason lol. i think this comes up again in another recent event or two with fish but idr which / the point’s the same basically [even tho this is a dolphin but whatever fjdlskfd]

and then in the devilgram, solomon’s box, in the fourth part, if you ask him to tell you something he’s never told anyone -

hes like yea i published a fish book bc i know a lot about them. huh????

and THEN in the bonus story piece in HARD MODE lesson 45, solomon gives us this

i mean, at the end there he starts letting his feelings for MC take over the convo lol, but still, hes speaking so fondly of the ocean here. i guess the dude changed his mind at some point in his many centuries of life lmao. also ive read both here and in my own googling that it’s probs referencing the actual bible guys solomon and asmodeus throwing each other into the sea or whatever lolol

anyway solomons VA likes fish

and hes gonna be the next one to throw solomon back into the ocean or whatever

#obey me solomon #obm liveblogging #ok i needed all of these together so i could see them nicely lolol it was #makin me crazy #ummmm another tangent about solomon and not fish tho #i saw in the wiki comments #someone things solomon and lilith were lovers bc it said she loved a human #and they think it's implied to be her #and that the gravestone in his one card is hers BUT #i was thinking didnt she marry that person ?? and didnt they both die or whatever? #BUT THEN when i was ^ looking up the asmo solomon ocean thingy #i did see. that in some depictions. there are instances said that solomon and lilith were like married or something #and i was like HUH??? #listen i went to episcopalian schools but my bible lore was always pretty weak if it wasnt like #the main stuff youd hear. i did not know most of these demon names before obey me #had never heard of an asmodeus or belphegor or barbatos before lolol #anyway solomon says in lesson 46 that he maybe had unrequited feelings for someone #he is super vague but mentions he maybe felt someone in his life was special #but then says maybe they didnt feel the same / either way he has no one in his life like that now #it wasnt inherently romantic in the context but i think it was kind of implied #anyway. what if tho. WHAT IF they make some kind of solomon-lilith connection #but not like. not like marriage or whatever that'd be too weird if he was in the fam tree LOL no thanks god thatd be so weird #actually it is still a little weird to think about but fjdkljfsdlj okay i dont wanna think about that too hard #anyway. anyway. this was about solomon and the ocean but that lore i tripped over was #making me crazy i had to think it out somewhere #theres so much about solomon we dont know and they implied theres still stuff #hes keepin to himself at like the end of s3 and i am just. foaming at the mouth #for more solomon backstory hhhghghghghghghg #was not in the cards for s4 but maybe s5 <3

[deadsetobsessions]

This is based off of that one tiktok from @sorruna where it’s the audio from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.

——

Dick Grayson was a sneaky, intelligent little shit.

He was also dumb. These things are not mutually exclusive.

To this day, one of his best kept secrets- one of the many, many that he had now- was something he’d take to his grave.

Or to Jason’s grave, at least.

Dick sat down and began telling the story to ears that would never truly hear it.

——

Batman’s voice rumbled behind him as Dick, in his Robin suit, stood blankly on top of a roof.

“I know you snuck out last night, Robin.”

Dick froze, train of thought about his dinner derailed. Holy busted, Batman! Quick! Play dumb!

“Who’s Robin?” He asked, the years of performing in front of a large crowd coming to save his ass.

Not that dumb!

Batman sent him a dry look, reprimand already poised on his lips. Dick, however, was nothing but a good performer. Nay, a dedicated performer.

Quick! Do something out of character! He shouted at himself, panicking visibly. He stepped backwards, an idea appearing in his head. In his defense, it sounded like an amazing idea at the time. He had no idea it would blow up into a Justice League issue. If he had known… Dick would have lied better, probably. There was no way he was going to let B bench him for weeks!

“Who the fuck are you?!” He yelped. Dick apologized mentally to Alfred and his parents. Batman paused, stunned.

“That’s my question. Who are you?!” Bruce asked, immediately hostile. His son doesn’t curse. Well, not in any normal way anyways. Dick quickly backpedaled by yelling at him with a heavy Vlax dialect, missing his parents terribly as he screamed stranger danger in rudimentary Romany. After this, he was going to have to convince Bruce to get him a language tutor. He refused to forget one of the only ties he had left to his parents.

“Wait, wait- you’re my son.” Bruce replied back, in perfect Romany. He looked more convinced but still skeptical.

“My dad is a circus performer! Not a flying rat!” Dick screeched back. He couldn’t help but feel touched about Bruce seeing him like a son.

“Oy! Keep it down out there, you assholes! Some of us like our sleep, damn!” A random Gothamite screamed out of their window.

“Yo, shut the fuck up! The vigilantes are helping to keep the rent low, motherfucker!” Another Gothamite shouted back.

….

Needless to say, Bruce quickly brought Dick back to the cave- with precautions to make sure he didn’t figure out where the Cave was if Dick was actually someone else.

——

“You would have loved it, Little Wing. B was running around like a headless chicken. The memory loss protocol was actually made because of me, you know.” Dick chuckled, sniffling as he talked to the carved gravestone.

It did not reply.

——

The blood tests came back. Yeppers, Dick sarcastically thought, who woulda thought I’m me?

Reinforcements were called in.

Meaning, Batgirl.

“Watch him while I contact Justice League Dark.”

“You think it’s magic?” Barbara asked.

“Yes. There was no one else near our vicinity that could affect Dick like this. He has no head wounds.”

“Eesh. Okay, go. I’ll watch him.”

Bruce disappeared in his zeta tube, looking harried. So, to everyone that’s not a Bat, he looked absolutely terrifying.

“What did you get yourself into now, Boy Wonder?” Barbara sighed. Dick was careful to keep any signs of recognition out of his face.

“Stop calling me that! Where are my parents?!” He asked back. Barbara coughed and looked uncomfortably away.

That’s right, Babs. I’m pulling out the orphan card. Feel bad. Dick hid his feral grin.

“They’re… uh, busy.” Busy being dead, Barbara thought, immediately wincing at her own thoughts. Apparently, Dick thought the excuse was lame too, and he sent her an incredulous look.

“Would you like refreshments, Master Dick?”

“What?”

Alfred held out some cookies on a platter, giving Babs a quelling look as she tried to reach for his share.

“Oh, wow, these are really good!” Dick said as he shoveled cookies into his mouth. He tried to replicate the reaction he had when he tried these for the first time, and from Alfred’s satisfied look, Dick nailed it.

——

“Robin doesn’t remember who he is.” Batman rumbled as he all but dragged Zatanna and Constantine by the scuff of their jackets towards the zeta tubes.

“Hey, wait-”

“We have no time.” Batman snarled, tossing the two magic users into the zeta. He punched in the destination.

When they got there, he glared at the two magic users until they got into the cave.

“Damn, Bats. Really living up to your name, huh?”

“Not bad,” Zatanna said as she looked around.

“Robin,” Batman- Bruce- reminded them. He did a quick glance over to check on his kids, and found them satisfactorily uninjured. Though, Barbara was looking worse for wear. Bruce quickly found out why as she stalked to him.

“You deal with him.” She muttered. “I’m going home.”

Bruce blinked and nodded. “Get home safe.”

Zatanna and Constantine followed Batman as he walked towards Robin. It was odd to see the normally laughing child frown.

“It’s you! The kidnapper! Where are my parents?!”

Bruce winced which, for him, was akin to a full body flinch and recoil. No wonder Barbara was so tired.

“Fix it.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Batsy.” Constantine grumbled.

“Well help, Batman. Though… I’m not sure if he should be doing that.”

Bruce sharply turned his head back to where Dick was. Emphasis on was. Because now, he’s halfway up the giant dinosaur the Robin had insisted they keep.

“Robin, get down from there!”

“Stranger Danger!” Dick hollered back.

Batman- Bruce Wayne- sighed.

“That’s high level magic,” Zatanna hummed. “I can’t feel anything, but I know for sure that he won’t die. Magic like that either dissipates naturally or…”

“Lasts forever,” Constantine finished.

Bruce groaned, shooting off a grappling line and swooping upwards to catch Dick as he fell from the giant dinosaur.

——

“I pretended to get my memories back later,” Dick chuckled. “And pretended to forget the whole thing. Bruce was so relieved that I stopped knocking things over and trying to do cartwheels in high places that he totally forgot I snuck out.”

Dick patted the headstone.

“But between you and me? I’m pretty sure Alfred knew. I think B pissed him off that week.”

#y’all is the Romani language spelled Romany #idk if im reading that wrong but did you know the Vlad dialect is the most widespread? #nightwing #dick grayson robin #dick grayson #dick grayson’s gaslight gatekeeper girl boss moment #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Batman and the trials of parenthood #google what to do when your vigilante child seems to have forgotten that he’s a vigilante #Batman using the magic Justice League like a wiki how #minors angst disguised as crack #also my favorite thing to write is brice and dick coping by talking to graves #but not actually talking to the grave’s owner who is actually alive #dick gets better about it #Bruce? not really #English is the fucking worst #Jason Todd #jason Todd’s grave

[harmonictechnicality]

*wrote this for @vecnuthy's birthday, so here you go babe! i baked you a word cake 🥰🎂* *ao3 link here*

Nobody gets cool shit on their birthday after the age of sixteen - Steve stands by this statement firmly. That year, he got his permit. And by yuppie parent default-mode, he also received his first car.

He almost, almost had a quarter-life crisis on his twenty-fifth birthday. Steve was seconds away from buying a motorcycle. Robin was very dramatic about this decision, kept threatening to order his gravestone if he followed through on an impulse purchase. 

This, however, would’ve nullified his Adults Get Lame Birthday Gifts theory entirely. So Steve apologized to the salesperson, and tucked his credit card back into his wallet. Robin canceled the order on his gravestone as well, thank god.

Gifts have continued to be lackluster every year since then. And his 30th birthday is no exception to this rule.

A gift card from his parents. A pair of athletic socks from Dustin. And a t-shirt from Robin. Essentially, the starter pack of Welcome to Adulthood. 

Except for one minor detail:

The shirt from Robin is exceptionally soft. Bamboo fibers or something, he wasn’t really listening to her description. Even the color is soft. Muted red, almost pink. Everything about it is soft. Airy. 

Touchable.

Okay - that’s not an observation Steve makes upon receiving it. But it’s one that Eddie Munson will never let him forget. 

The first time it happens is a week after Steve’s birthday. The two of them hit up a bar on the outskirts of town. A place Eddie frequents a lot, occasionally dragging Steve along as his Token 9 to 5 Friend.

“Welcome to the Dirty Thirty Club, man!” Eddie crows, already diving into Steve’s atmosphere for a hug. 

“Thanks! Good to see you, Munson.” Steve chokes out, returning the massive hug with a single pat on Eddie's back.

The guy always gives the most suffocating hugs, fucking cages Steve into his arms and steals the breath of out his lungs with one squeeze. Steve has to inhale through his nose, smells the soapy steam rolling off Eddie’s skin.

Shower. Eddie just showered before meeting him here. It’s so fucking clear by the way he feels damp, smells clean.

Steve hates that he notices that. Wishes he didn’t care about Eddie’s hygiene schedule. But the scent of shower gel is addictive, breathing it in fast. Big gulps of fresh air. Lungs extending like they can capture Eddie's atmosphere and keep it there.

Okay, seriously. Steve thought his Eddie Munson Crush had been buried with the rest of his trauma back in 1993.

“Dude. This shirt is so soft, holy shit.” Eddie is rubbing his hand all over the back of Steve’s shirt, fingertips pushing into the fabric.

“Uh yeah. Sure is.”

Eddie must’ve blazed up back at his place, it’s the only reasonable explanation as to why they’re hugging for this long. Gotta be some strong shit too - strong enough to make him sound completely blissed out over a damn shirt.

He’s is humming now, both hands petting Steve’s shoulders, one on each side. Pinching the material, twisting it till it curls around his index finger.

“Gotta get me one of these bad boys.” Eddie chuckles, turns it into a playful growling sound. “Could touch this all day.” 

“I don’t doubt it.” Steve does an awkward wiggle out of the embrace. He looks down at his shoes, cheeks growing warmer as he continues to take Eddie’s words entirely out of context. 

Look, the sensible part of his brain knows that Eddie is talking about the shirt. That’s it. But the insufferably needy and more prominent part of his brain wants Eddie to be talking about himself in general.

That he could touch Steve all day long - shirt or no shirt.

Right. Steve needs a splash of water on his face. Could use a splash of water on his goddamn imagination too. Dilute the delusion for christ’s sake.

It happens again about four months later. Lucas invites the whole crew over to throw a surprise party for Max’s promotion at work.

Of course, Eddie is running late - he didn’t fail senior year twice solely from his shitty GPA. But showing up late to a surprise party? That’s a new level of risky. Not everything has to be a thrill-worthy adventure. Ugh.

“Max should be getting off work right about now.” Lucas explains, peering around the living room. “So everyone should head to your designated hiding spots.”

Nobody budges, just carrying on with their conversation.

“Alright, asshats - you heard Sinclair!” Steve snaps at each of them, glares for good measure. “Find a hiding spot or get the fuck out.” He gives a quick nod to Lucas, who still looks severely stressed, eyes ready to bust out of his skull any minute.

The coach-esque threat does the job. Everyone, ducks into place, voices descending into whispers. Whispers descending into shushes as the minutes draw closer to Max’s arrival. Steve is folded up behind the couch, arms wrapped around his knees. 

There’s a small creak coming from the front door. A few people yell 'surprise.' Steve peaks to the side to see Lucas shaking his head at them.

“No, nobody move.” He instructs, voice caught between a yell and whisper. “I was just letting Eddie inside.”

Instinct takes over. Steve twists around the corner of the couch, needing to see for himself that Eddie is here. That he really came.

Clearly, he didn’t move fast enough. Although he could’ve sworn he moved so embarrassingly fast that the vertebras in his back sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies (post-milk). 

But no one is there. No Eddie. No Lucas. No one.

“What the-” Something grabs the back of Steve’s shirt, pulling at his collar. A few people start aggressively shushing him.

“Chill out, Stevie.” Eddie is right there, meeting Steve’s face with a lopsided smirk. He’s close, way too close. Still holding the collar of Steve’s shirt with one hand, stretching it out. Keeping them close.

“Just trying to check the tag,” He releases Steve just an inch or so. His voice is so hushed, the quietest Steve has ever fucking heard it. “Wanted to see where I might be able to purchase such a godly article of clothing.”

“Ever heard of a thing called boundaries?” Steve hisses, swatting a strand of Eddie’s hair out of his face.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.”

They haven’t talked much since that night, barely any interaction for four months. But watching Eddie lean in, angling his head lower to study the tag on Steve’s shirt, hot breath on his neck…

It resets the clock. Flips the hourglass on Steve’s feelings for him.

He’s infatuated all over again, and all it took was Eddie invading his personal space. Just like he always does.

“You’ll have to ask Robin.” Steve whispers. Tries not to flinch when Eddie smooths Steve’s shirt collar back into place. “She’s the one that bought it for me.”

“Damn. Buckley has good taste.”

“Sure does.”

No distance is created. Neither of them move away. Eddie’s eyes continue to sketch over every stitch in Steve’s shirt, every hemline. He seems hyper fixated on it, too fixated to notice Steve’s pink-ish cheeks, thank god. 

If it weren’t for the shirt, Steve would assume Eddie is checking him out, looking him up and down with a heavy gaze. Dark pupils, casted darker by the dim lighting.

“Can I?” Eddie raises a hand out to Steve’s shoulder. He pauses, lifts an eyebrow at the end of his question.

Steve’s jaw is too tight to answer or counter back with a joke about how Eddie never asks permission before popping personal bubbles. All he can do is nod a little too eagerly.

Eddie reaches into Steve’s sleeve, rubs the material from the inside. A small grin forms on his face. He looks so pleased, purely amused. That’s enough to untangle Steve’s muscles, relaxing under Eddie’s light touch. 

But that’s the other thing. He’s barely touching Steve. Every now and then, his knuckles roll over Steve’s skin. Really, that’s it, that’s all he’s doing. And god, Steve craves more.

Eventually, Eddie switches it up, pinching the material between the pads of his fingers. He scoots closer to Steve’s side to do so. 

Time feels paused. Time feels rapid. It’s going nowhere and already slipping through his grasp. All Steve can think about is placing his hand underneath Eddie’s chin, bringing his lips up to his own. Kissing him till the clock stops ticking. Till the sand stops running.

“Softest shirt ever.” Eddie gives the material a slight tug. Smiles wider.

Steve gulps. “If you say so.”

“I mean, seriously - it must be made from the glow off an angel’s halo or something, cause damn.”

“You’re a trip, Munson.” 

Steve has to keep telling himself that Eddie is obsessed with touching his clothes - he’s not thinking about taking them off of Steve. No matter how much he wants that to be the reality of the situation. 

It’s not.

They stay like this till the doorknob clicks, turns. Steve almost forgot that he was at a party, surrounded by other people. 

Immediately, all of his senses flip back into Extrovert Autopilot. Everyone jumps out, yells a combination of surprise and congratulations (because they failed to coordinate that apparently).

He stays in this zone for the rest of the party. Talkative and breezy. Charming the pants off Max’s coworkers with silly little anecdotes about her as a kid. 

Steve is damn good at hosting. It’s probably in his white-collar bloodline or some shit. Still, anytime Eddie walks by, he glitches up. Temporarily out of sync.

He doesn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Eddie ducks out early, waving broadly before slipping through the front door.

Time does that weird thing again. Feels paused and rapid all at once as he watches the door shut behind Eddie.

“You okay, man?” Lucas nudges him.

“Yeah.” The gentle gesture returns time back to normal. Brings Steve back into this moment.

“Doing just fine.”

It’s all he thinks about for weeks. Anytime there’s a lull at work or a commercial break on television, Steve drifts. Pictures Eddie is in his shirt, the one he’s so obsessed with.

At first, it’s just that. Basic. Eddie standing in front of him, wearing that muted red, almost pink, shirt. Sometimes smiling, sometimes expectant. Either way, it’s always enough to make Steve’s neck feel flushed, creeping up to his cheeks.

Gradually, it evolves into something more complex. A fantasy, almost dreamlike. He imagines Eddie running his hands all over himself, his torso, his chest. The thin material of the shirt moving and shifting under his palms. His head tipping back, lips plush and red from where he’s gritting down, biting hard. Holding back sounds.

Those images get Steve in trouble. Panting on conference calls and boners at his work desk. 

He’s alone in his apartment when it grows, branches off into darker urges. Desires. Steve glances down at the floor, can’t help but wonder what Eddie might look like down there, staring up at him. Wearing Steve’s clothes. Begging Steve to take them off. Rip them, ruin them.

“That fucking does it.” Steve scolds himself, scolds his dick too. He’s calling Eddie Munson right now - before he has time to overthink it.

His hand is trembling as he picks up the house phone, dials out the number he didn’t even know he had memorized. The trembling thing is kinda embarrassing, but it's still better than sticking it down his pants and jerking off while the Cooking Network plays reruns in the background.

Every ring feels drawn out. Stretching time like taffy. 

Eddie picks up on the fourth taffy-length ring. “Eddie here.”

“Hey, man.” His voice comes out all strained, bone-dry.

“Shit. That really you, Harrington?” 

Apparently his voice comes out unrecognizable too.

“The one and only.”

Eddie snorts loudly into the phone speaker. “Doubt that very much - seems like a common enough name.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever, smartass.” Steve rubs his neck, scratching his skin. Working his way to extracting the words out of his throat. “So um… you busy tonight?”

“Nope.” Eddie answers.

“Cool. Me neither.”

There’s silence after that. Well, almost silence. Just a slight hissing sound from the phone line can be heard. Not enough sound to make things less awkward though.

Steve has no good reason to be so antsy, so wired with anxiety. They’ve been friends since metaphorical shit hit the metaphorical fan back in ‘86. So being outwardly weird around Eddie? It’s too damn fishy. 

“Is that it?” Eddie says. “Did you just want to bond over our empty schedules?” 

Of fucking course, Eddie would call Steve out on his weird bullshit. Doesn’t know subtlety if it bit him in the ass. 

Bad time to think about Eddie’s ass.

“Come over.” Steve blurts out. Needs to say something before a parade of ass-centric images start back up in his mind. “I ordered way too much takeout and there's a stack of movie rentals that I need to binge to minimize those late fees, so yeah… come over.”

No response, even the background hissing from the speaker cuts out. Maybe the phone line went dead. Or maybe Eddie hung up. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s abruptly ended a conversation, perpetually flouncing to whatever is new and shiny. Always distracted. 

“What kind of takeout?” He finally responds.

“The Greek place with the kickass tzatziki sauce.” Steve smirks, already knows the answer before Eddie can utter another word. 

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

Eddie arrives in less than an hour, actually. Knocks on Steve’s door exactly 51 minutes after Steve gets off the phone with him. It’s slightly disturbing that Steve suddenly turns into a math whiz when he’s fawning over someone.

Someone that fawns over his clothes more than him, but who gives a shit about logistics?

“Fucking starving.” Eddie says, slamming the door behind him. 

Steve smiles, motions his head toward the kitchen. “Help yourself, dude.”

The plan is so stupid. Half-baked at best: get Eddie out of his shirt (and jacket), and into Steve’s shirt instead. That’s it. That’s all Steve’s got so far.

But it’s better than nothing. So what the hell? It’s worth a shot.

He waits until Eddie has stuffed his face with a decent amount of spanakopita, fully reclining on Steve’s couch. Looks incredibly comfy, too comfy to move.

Good.

Steve grabs the strawberry sorbet from his freezer, the one Robin forced him to buy after going vegan last spring. He scoops a bowl for himself and a bowl for Eddie. Exhales the last bit of his self-respect before returning to the living room with the most boring dessert option ever.

“Here you go.” Steve says.

Eddie scrunches his nose at it. “The fuck is this?”

“Sorbet.”

“Why am I not surprised that the former rich kid prefers sorbet over ice cream?”

Steve sputters, takes the bowl back before it further offends Eddie somehow. “That’s not… I didn’t… it’s actually-”

“Deep breath, Stevie. I’m just teasing you.” Eddie yanks the bowl back, shovels a brain-freezing amount into his mouth. “Far too easy, by the way. Give me a bit of a challenge next time. Makes it more fun… for one of us, at least.”

“Fun. Sure.”

“The one of us being me.”

“Got that.”

Steve decides to take Eddie’s ‘challenge’ remark as the perfect cue to set his stupid plan into action.

Steve pretends to shift around on the couch cushion, getting situated. Does this until he ‘accidentally’ fumbles the sorbet. Spills it all over Eddie’s clothes, his distressed black shirt, his dark gray sweatpants. All of it. Makes a much bigger mess than he intended to.

Eddie jumps up. “Goddamnit, Harrington!”

“I am so sorry!” No he’s not. If anything, his apology is more smug than sincere.

“This shit is sticky as hell.” 

“Really sorry, man.” Steve hands Eddie a few stray napkins, like that’s going to make a difference.

“Don’t be. It was an accident.”

Except it wasn’t. It was one of the most juvenile tactic that Steve has ever pulled. Truly, it tops the overused movie theater-yawn tactic.

“Here - let me get you a change of clothes.” Steve offers, already heading to his bedroom. He’s walking and talking and fucking fidgeting. Suddenly paranoid that Eddie can see right through him, see all his desperation on display. Splattered everywhere like strawberry sorbet.

He turns back around for a split second. “I’ll throw those in the wash. Have them dry and ready to wear again by the time you head out.”

“Oh…” Eddie keeps patting down his clothes with a sopping napkin, barely listening. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

His acting performance is fucking dismal. Over the top. Porno-level obvious. Must be karma for all of those times he gave Robin and Eddie shit about being in an improv club. Makes a mental note to never mock their nerdy hobbies for the rest of his life.

“Well, it must be my lucky night.” Eddie calls out from the bathroom door, causing Steve to wince at the sheer volume.

“What makes you say that?”

“Bestowing the holy grail of shirts upon me? Allowing me even one hour in downy-soft paradise?” Eddie is using that tone, the one that’s boozy and savory. Borderline mean. Equally hot and annoying. “Possibly the greatest of olive branches you could’ve offered up.”

“Christ, you’re dramatic.” Which is so hypocritical after the stunt he just pulled.

The bathroom door swings open and nothing could’ve prepared Steve for how good Eddie looks in his clothes. The shirt is snug through the sleeves, loose through his chest. Makes Steve realize how differently built they are. The waistband on the athletic shorts is sitting low on his hips, maybe a size too big. If they were any bigger, they’d slip right off. Landing all tousled around his bare feet…

Okay, Steve has got to snap the fuck out of it. He rubs aggressively at his eyes. Needs soap or military-strength detergent to fucking cleanse whatever is going on with him lately. 

“We could watch something.” Steve says, even though that’s exactly what he’s already doing.

Watching.

Eddie shrugs. Leans against the wall. “We could.”

“Or… I don’t know.” Steve can’t rip his gaze away from Eddie’s arms. His pale skin looks even lighter against the reddish tones. The waves and curls of black ink look even darker. Just a splash of color has turned him into a landscape of extremes. 

“You don’t?” 

“Um…” Steve flops, flounders. Scrambling for an idea. A coherent thought. Anything. “Cards. We could play cards.”

Eddie’s forehead wrinkles, then quickly straightens back out. Nodding politely. “Sure, we can do that. If that’s what you want to do.”

Steve mumbles something about grabbing a card deck from the storage closet, although he’s pretty sure it’s unintelligible. Makes a quick escape, jogs at the weirdest tempo known to mankind. 

Flirting with a longtime friend is throwing him for a loop. Many loops actually. Theme park amount of loops. All of his usual ease and charm are being denied access. Not tall enough to ride this ride.

The closet is packed with junk, so finding a deck of cards is obnoxiously difficult. He’s tossing coats into piles and shoving shoes into corners. Between his nerves and his determination, Steve is working up a goddamn sweat.

“Need a hand in here?” Eddie’s voice startles him. Steve jolts backwards, straight into a shelf of puzzles. Tons of pieces go flying, some landing in Steve’s hair. Redecorating the fucking closet with tiny bits of colored cardboard.

Fantastic.

Eddie backs away, arms crossing into his chest. “Jesus, man. You’re freaking me out.” 

“Sorry.” Steve says. Shakes the puzzle pieces out of his hair.

“Is it the shirt?” The question sounds genuine. No jokes, no sarcasm. “Does it look that bad on me?”

“Oh.” Steve doesn’t know how to respond. The shirt looks amazing, that’s not the problem at all. It’s just… “Um, actually-”

“Look, I know I’m not a pastel heartthrob.” Eddie gestures directly to Steve before waving his arms around. He starts pacing in the tiny closet, just ranting away. “And let’s fucking face it. I’m not getting any younger, so I doubt I can pull off this slim-cut style the way I used to… but come on. It can’t be that repulsive, right?”

“Eddie.” Steve frowns. 

“Shit, that bad?” Eddie smacks a hand to the top of his hand. Grabs a fistful of his hair and looks down at the shirt, still rambling. “We’re using first names now? What’s next? Gonna bust out my full legal name? My birth certificate? Then we’ll really mean business.”

Okay, yikes. And Steve thought he was the stressed one. This is going south very, very fast. He needs to curb the self-destruction that’s happening in front of him. Just… reach out. 

“Hey.” And Steve does. Literally. He places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, sucks in some courage. He waits until Eddie makes eye contact, breathes at a less neurotic speed. Then he exhales all the courage. Turns it into honesty instead. “You look… you look good.”

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah right.”

“No, I mean it. It’s different. But in a good way.” Steve skims his nails against the fabric, drawing shapes into Eddie’s shoulder. “I like it.”

“You do?”

Steve nods. Bites down on his lip, flicks his eyes to Eddie’s mouth. “Like it on you.”

The energy between them is thick, clinging to Steve’s skin. It’s new except it’s not. Steve has felt it before. At the bar, the party, that random Thursday in 1993. He recognizes the flex and curl in his stomach as Eddie takes one step forward, then two. The feeling is familiar and strange combined. Knotted tight.

Eddie raises an eyebrow before taking another step. Like the day behind the couch. Quiet permission, one he doesn’t ask for often. Only when it means something.

Steve lets the hand on Eddie’s shoulder fall slowly. Catching the material at the bottom, tugging it forward. Prays to fucking god that’s all the permission Eddie needs.

“You were right.” Steve lets his hand drift back up, landing in the center of Eddie’s chest. Wrinkling and smoothing the fabric underneath. “It really is soft.”

Eddie’s breath hitches up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Steve’s voice drops lower, richer. “Could touch this all day.”

Eddie thumbs over Steve’s bottom lip, drifting into the small space between them. He places both hands on Steve's cheeks and kisses him firmly. Steve presses in deeper, breathes out through his nose so that he doesn’t have to break away. 

It’s so good, kissing like they’re teenagers behind the bleachers. So swept away in the heat and hunger that they’d be late for class. Showing up to study hall with blotchy skin and achy lips. They keep kissing just like that. Feeling, exploring. Lingering in all the areas that seem to make the other person hum or gasp.

“Steve.” Eddie whispers. His hands push up into Steve’s hair, combing it back, pulling in down with an edge. Hard enough to make Steve tilt his head, mouth dropping open.

“Yeah?” Steve replies. Barely a question, too lost in the feeling of Eddie’s lips on his neck. 

Eddie rubs his mouth over the edge of Steve’s jaw. “You’re so…” 

The sentence stops right there, never gets finished either. He nuzzles over the wet spots of skin covering Steve’s neck. Marks them all up with a gentle nip, not enough to leave bruises. Just enough to make Steve shiver.

Steve is making so many breathy noises, which should be humiliating. Pathetic for someone who’s had fucking loads of first kisses, even more makeout sessions.

But none of that really matters, his age or experience or slutty track record. Nothing counts when being kissed like this. Nothing can stop Steve from taking this moment, eating up all of the sounds and sensations. 

Fuck, he wants all of it. Wants Eddie closer somehow, on top of him, beneath him, surrounding him.

He can’t stop tugging at Eddie’s shirt, well… his shirt. No doubt that it’s stretching out, close to ripping it. Keeps pulling it anyways - dragging Eddie into him till Steve’s back is pressed up against the wall.

“Come here.” Steve curls a finger under Eddie’s chin, brings his face back up to him. Not nearly done kissing him stupid, square on the lips. His mouth is warmer now, a few degrees hotter from sucking Steve’s neck. Licks into Steve’s mouth, gets him to whine at how good it feels. 

The washing machine timer goes off, buzzing throughout the whole apartment. But Steve can’t let this end, he can’t.

Except for the buzzing won’t let up. Continuously interrupting all the delicious noises that Eddie makes whenever Steve bites over his bottom lip, gets it nice and puffy between his teeth. 

“Should we...?” Eddie smushes his nose into Steve’s before motioning to the door. 

“Yeah probably,” Steve unclaws his hand from Eddie’s waist. Kisses him once more before sliding out of reach.

As he walks down the hallway, heading into he laundry room, he hears it. Eddie’s voice, still inside the closet. Chanting the same phrase over and over again:

‘Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Holy fucking shit!’

Steve cracks a smile. Kind of hard to believe his heart is chanting the same damn phrase. So full of adrenaline, fucking crumbling under this wave of raw emotion.

Really, he never thought he’d find himself in this situation. Holding Eddie’s clean clothes in one hand, thumbing over his kiss-bitten lips with his other hand. Impatiently craving to get back to where they left off, hopefully on the couch or bed or floor this time.

“Hurry it up, will ya?” Eddie whistles behind him.

“What’s the rush?” Steve tosses the clothes into the dryer, doesn’t turn around because his self-restraint will be fucked if he does. 

“My lips are getting cold.”

“That’s the best line you got?”

“For now, yeah.” Eddie says. “You sucked out all of my brain cells with your mouth. Can’t expect me to be Swayze-level smooth after something like that.”

No way he’s allowed to be so damn cute comparing himself to Patrick Swayze. As if they're even in the same league. Endearing, really.

“You can head back to the living room. I’ll be there in a minute.” Steve pushes a few buttons on the dryer. The timer starts, another reset on the clock.

Feelings that flip the hourglass once again. 

He really fucking hopes it never runs out this time. 

Eddie is perched on the floor, flipping through the channels on the tv. He's squinting at the harsh light because for some insane reason, he always insists on watching the tv in total darkness.

Even that’s cute now. Annoyingly cute.

Steve joins him on the floor, instantly slouching into Eddie’s arms because he can do that now. Completely allowed to be sweet and gross and smitten. 

“Guess my theory was wrong after all.”

“Hm?” Eddie replies, still mindlessly channel-surfing.

Steve gives Eddie a quick kiss on the cheek (because he can do that now too), and looks at the shirt. Muted red, almost pink. Soft and touchable. “Apparently, you do get cool birthday gifts as an adult.”

“What are you mumbling about?”

This thing between him and Eddie. It feels longer than running sand or ticking timers. Longer than their years of friendship. Maybe not timeless…

“I’ll tell you later, Eddie.”

But pretty damn close.

#steddie #steddie fic #Steve has a really soft shirt and Eddie can't stop touching it #that's it. that's the plot lol.

[stinkysatan]

Fem!Reader x Alhaitham, bit of angst, fluff, comfort, estabilished relationship, possibly ooc alhaitham?

Reader feels inferior and unworthy of her lover, who decides to prove her wrong. (Not proofread)

"Are you stupid?" Dehya asked, taking another sip of her beer. "Wait, don't reply. It's my time to talk." She continued, while glaring daggers at her friend - you, and you couldnt help but feel stumped at the way she interrupted her ranting.

"(Y/N), you were enrolled in the akademiya, you're one of the best fighters I have seen and yet you do actually claim to be dumb?" She asked, but didn't even leave time for an answer. "Yeah, I don't buy that. We both know that Alhaitham wouldn't even glance at you if you were right."

She was right - of course. She always was. That's why you were her best friend. But still, the insecure part of your brain wasn't listening to a word of this conversation. A sigh escaped your lips, as you chugged your wine as if it was water. "I'm just saying... if I didn't drop out, I would've failed my classes anyway." You mumbled out the last words.

Just as the mercenary was about to chew you out, she looked behind you and smirked. "Finally, I was thinking you were bailing on us." She said, making you turn around. You saw the rest of your friend, Cyno and Tighnari, along with a certain scribe.

"I apologize, i lost the track of time." Alhaitham said, as he placed a hand on your shoulder. Despite being in relationship for almost a year, you couldn't help but blush at his touch. "It's alright, at least you guys are here now." You replied with a hint of a smile, placing your hand on his, as he sat next to you.

The five of you spent time playing Genius Invocation TCG, chatting and drinking. The rare night out with friends almost made you forget about your insecurities. That is, until you were thrown Into a lose-streak, making you irritated, much more when you were intoxicated.

"Hm, you should have used this one." Said the scribe, pointing at your wolf's gravestone card. His remarks didn't help, even If you knew he just had your best interest at heart. You huffed and tossed your cards onto the table. "Fine, I surrender." You mumbled, to which Cyno shot you a grin. That's his 5th win in a row.

Your mood gradually went downhill from there. You downed another glass of wine before standing up. "Alright guys, I'm calling it a night. I'm too drunk to play anyway." You said, noticing how your boyfriend glanced at you, before getting up himself. "I suppose I shall be leaving as well. I'll walk you home." He said, sneaking a hand around your waist.

Everyone said they goodbyes, but when Dehya pulled you into a hug she whispered into your ear. "You better talk it out with him." Making you grimace. There wasn't much to talk about, really. You just had to accept you weren't much compared to your partner. Still, you nodded harfheartedly and departed.

It was late, not many people out in the streets. Alhaitham still had his arm around your waist, and he couldn't help but to notice you haven't been yourself lately. "Kaveh actually left for a week this afternoon. I thought you'd maybe want to stay with me for a while? We didn't get to see each other lately after all." He said, the tips of his ears turning bright red. All this time, and he's still not used to having you for himself for such a long time.

Unfortunately your response wasn't something that he had hoped for. Not excited or embarrassed like always. Instead you just hummed, much to scribe's dismay. He had stopped in his tracks, making you turn to look at him. His beautiful eyes full of worry, as his hand made it's way onto your cheek. He was glad it was late, at least not many people were around to witness his act of affection.

"Will you finally tell me what's wrong with you lately?" He asked bluntly, caressing your cheek. "You haven't been yourself, and frankly it's troublesome. It's making me worry about you, not only is it hard to focus on my work, I'm also starting to think you're not content with your relationship." His words made you shake your head instantly, and take his free hand in yours in an act of reassurance.

"No, no 'haitham. It has nothing to do with you I just..." You let out a heavy sighed, as your eyes darted away from him. "I think you deserve more. Than me. I'm not really good at anything, I'm not smart like you. You can't have intellectual conversations with me. I think I make you... bored you know?"

Tears welled up in your eyes at the thought of the love of your life leaving you because of that. You were brought back by a flick on the forehead. Alhaitham couldn't believe his ears. His eyebrows were furrowed, as he pulled you closer.

"If we were interested in the same things there wouldn't be much to talk about, really. Besides i actually enjoy indulging you when you bother me about some obscure facts." He admitted, making you smile just a little bit.

"I'm going to say this only once, (y/n). I wouldn't change you for anyone or anything else. You are enough. I couldn't be bored with you, even if i tried. Don't sell yourself short. I... Like it when you tell me some facts about flowers you picked up while on a trip in Liyue, or various other things that I usually don't care about."

You didn't even notice the stupid grin forming on your face through your boyfriends whole rant. He really did make you feel loved. You pulled him into a passionate kiss, trying to let him know how much you appreciate him.

"Thank you, 'haitham. I needed that." You said with a soft smile. "And I'd love to spend the week with you." You added, taking his hand In yours. A shadow of a smile appeared on the scribe's face, as he caressed your hand with his thumb. "I'm glad to hear that."

Dehya watched from a far with a satisfied smile on her face. Her left hand reached out to Cyno, who rolled his eyes and tossed her a bag of mora. "I told you, he has a soft spot for her." She said with a smirk. Tighnari just shook his head at the two.

#al haitham x reader #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham x fem!reader #genshin x you #genshin imagines #genshin x reader #genshin impact #genshin alhaitham #alhaitham x y/n #alhaitham

[sssailorvanya]

i’m miss world [riddle rosehearts]

part one | not edited, please ignore any mistakes! | wc: roughly 1k

You’re not entirely sure how you became the King of Hearts. You had always fancied yourself to be more of an Alice—bold and bright and daring, charming in a roguish manner, curious to a fault. Not to mention your status as an inter-dimensional traveler. Like Alice, you had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in a fascinating new world, so different to the one you called your own.

And now you had been thrusted into the role of the meek King, a pitiful figure that many knew nothing about. Searching through Twisted Wonderland’s expansive historical records yielded nothing. The King’s name was never recorded and his mythical gravestone, lost to time itself, supposedly had the carving: ‘The husband of the legendary Queen of Hearts.’

That was it. Nobody knew his name, the duration of his life, his birthplace; the historians of Twisted Wonderland could never uncover any information regarding the King of Hearts, despite their greatest efforts. He was rarely ever seen in public during his lifetime, and he was firmly attached to the Queen’s side the few times he was presented to the world. There was a total of three pictures which had been taken of him, all very similar: a blank-faced King leaning into his eternally furious Queen, her hand forcefully latched over his.

You were surprised to find that the King’s appearance did not match the puny cartoon depiction of your world. If anything, he greatly resembled you.

Riddle had painstakingly explained to you how the three existing pictures of the King were heavily coveted. One picture belonged to the ruling family of the Briar Valley, another belonged to the royals of Sunset Savanna, and the final picture belonged to the Rosehearts.

“The Queen is very important to my family,” He spoke stiffly, holding your gaze intently. You found it harder and harder to look him in the eye as the days passed and the weeks blurred together. “We are not her direct descendants, but we are connected to her through her sister’s children.” And didn’t that just send you down another furious spiral of tireless research and ink-stained hands? This fearsome, bloody Queen supposedly had a sister. A sister who had children of her own. A sister who was the ancestor of the red-haired boy who was holding you captive.

You remember your shaky hands preparing tea for him in the exact order you knew he preferred. You remember him tucking a lock of your hair behind your ear. You remember the bright red roses – authentic, not painted – decorating the vase which had been placed on the table. You remember the exact moment when you asked, “Did the Queen not have any children of her own?”

And you remember the hideous look in his eyes as he answered your innocuous question.

“She did not. The King did not give her any.” He raised a delicate pinky finger as he sipped his tea, a clear sign that the conversation was over.

You swiftly moved on and you did your best to forget his bizarre mannerisms and ominous answers.

Because if your suspicions were confirmed to be valid (and if you were right—oh, if you were right, you would eat your own beating heart), then you knew that you had more in common with the King of Hearts beyond physical appearance.

“There’s not much about him, your majesty,” Cater Diamond laughs pointedly as he avoids your gaze, his eyes trained on his phone. “Even his Magicam hashtag has, like, nothing. That’s totes sad!” His laugh becomes slightly shrill as you say nothing, your eyes boring into him. Out of all the card soldiers, it is Cater who sympathises with your plight the most. Perhaps it reminds him of the days when he, too, was a captive, forced to dress in glitter and frills for his sisters’ amusement. He never looks at you anymore.

“I have never known much about him,” Trey Clover admits gently as he smiles down at you weakly. “He’s a proper mystery. Very unique too. The other members of the Great Seven didn’t have spouses, but the Queen did.” He is kneading dough as he talks with you, preparing treats for the upcoming Unbirthday party. “Why the sudden interest, your majesty?”

You don’t like being referred to as ‘your majesty’. It is a recent development, urged by Riddle who resented other people for having the audacity to say your name.

You smile and shake your head, leaving him to bake his treats. You’ll get your answer from someone more rebellious. Someone far less willing to be complicit to your unhappiness for the sake of his Housewarden.

You find Ace Trappola in the endless, beautiful gardens of Heartslabyul. He’s dressed in pink from head-to-toe and he’s looking very disgruntled about it. The flamingos are milling about him as he sorts through their food. He is alone, which is strange, but it works in your favour.

“On Wednesdays, we wear pink!” You say cheerily, unable to help yourself. Ace stiffens and then relaxes, turning to face you with raised shoulders. “Hey,” He says nonchalantly.

Ace doesn’t call you ‘your majesty’. He doesn’t use your name either, but this is something you’re willing to forgive. Being on the end of Riddle’s genuine wrath is terrifying and some battles are not worth picking, let alone fighting.

“It’s a reference to a film from my world,” You say easily, falling into step beside him and ignoring his obvious flinch. “I think you’d enjoy watching it.” Ace frowns at you, as if to express doubt, and then shakes his head. “Whatever. You need something?” He asks carefully, but you don’t miss how his bright eyes dart around the area. He’s looking—no, he’s checking to see if there is any trace of Riddle nearby.

After all, wherever you are, Riddle is only a few steps behind.

“Do you remember when we met?” Your tone is hushed now. “It was you who explained the Queen of Hearts to me.” By the mutinous expression which is slowly spreading across Ace’s face, he clearly remembers your chaotic first meeting.

“Help me, Ace Trappola. You’re my only hope.” You say quietly. Your words are heavy and your tone is grave. You feel guilty for burdening him, but you do not feel bad enough to retract your words. What you said is true. Caged in the rose-scented, ivory-leafed walls of Heartslabyul, your only ally is the hotheaded ginger.

Ace is silent. His solemn expression greatly contrasts with his hot pink clothes. He sighs and then he frowns, his lips forming a rebellious pout.

“C’mon then, Prefect. Lay it on me.”

You smile, and it is genuine. You haven’t been called ‘Prefect’ in a long while.

“I need you to—“

Once you finish explaining exactly what you needed from Ace Trappola, you step back and stare at him. He meets your gaze evenly and then shrugs his shoulders.

“Alright, Prefect. I’ll see what I can do for ya.”

Before your lips can form another real smile, he holds up his palm. His face is troubled and his eyes are unreadable.

“Don’t get your hopes up. It won’t be easy,” He warns, and then he picks up the flamingo closest to him. The flamingo blends into his pink jacket seamlessly. It’s a cute animal, you notice idly. The bright eyes, soft feathers, and fascinating beak support your thoughts; the flamingoes are really, really cute.

You’ve always been more interested in the hedgehogs, though.

“Bye.” Ace says warily, looking behind you as if a hideous monster had suddenly materialised into thin air. He takes the flamingo with him and you watch the pink pair go on their merry way, wishing – not for the first time – that you could be as free as the animals of your rose-adorned prison.

A steady hand lands on your shoulder. You don’t need to turn around to see who it is.

You already know.

You always do.

“Hello, Riddle,” You say mildly, still staring in the direction Ace went in, “It’s a nice day for a stroll, isn’t it?”

He hums in lieu of an actual answer. You turn around, lace your fingers with his, and let him lead you back to your shared dorm room.

Tomorrow will be a new day. It’ll be different.

You’re counting on it.

#riddle rosehearts #riddle rosehearts x reader #riddle rosehearts x yuu #riddle rosehearts x mc #disney twst #twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twst x yuu #twst x you #twst x mc #riddle rosehearts x you #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland x yuu #twisted wonderland x mc #heartslabyul #cater diamond #trey clover #ace trappola #twst riddle #queen of hearts #king of hearts #he got you locked up #NOT EDITED NOT BETA READ #IGNORE MY MISTAKES PLEEEEEASE #yandere riddle rosehearts #yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland #yandere x reader

[apalapucian]

crossbow, gun, and magic

i. lily evans knows archery. loves it. grew up to it. she likes the power, the aesthetic. the quiet sort of majesty. the associated memories of her father in one of her wealthy uncle's farms, where he taught her how to shoot. everything was as green and blue as they could get. the field was so vast it felt endless to her as a child. the mountains on the horizon were crayon drippings of the sky, crushed cornflower, galaxies away. somehow they have all shrunk over time, so impossibly small when she visits, much later. (with james, a day after graduation, two years after her dad's death. dad, she says to the gravestone under the old apple tree, this is my boyfriend, james. the target board is chipped and fading but still nailed on the trunk. james's hand is laced with hers, his thumb running soothing lines along the length of her index finger. hello, sir, he says. bows slightly; makes lily chuckle. a real honor. and lily's heart soars, feels like the smooth swoosh of an arrow being let go; the sweet, clean piercing of the highest possible score.)

ii. sirius black's mum teaches him how to use a gun at as early as four years old. by the time he's seven, he's considered a prodigy. by the time he's nine, he's seen more dead bodies than he ought to at his age. (at any age, he realizes later, but not till much so.) by the time he's eleven, he's known enough to really question the 'family business', but not enough to know for sure who is safe to ask. the grey in his eyes turns from storm to smog, mellows from waves to murk, and he hates these words, loathes them; they are as horrid as what he's turning into. he hates almost everything. his reflection in the mirror. his reflection in his brother. god. hates hates hates watching himself in regulus. that same shift. that same — deadening. hates how he tries to stop it but he can't. by the time he's sixteen, he leaves. refuses pointblank for things to be too late for him, and runs. calls the storm back, yells, thrashes in his sleep. recreates the chaos, angers the elements. doesn't ever stay still long enough for the haunting to drag him back there. to — the itch of a starched suit in church, bags of money in candle-lit rooms. shiny red sneers around shiny white teeth. for as long as he lives he refuses to enter any establishment with stained-glass windows. vows to never touch a gun ever again.

iii. the kind of magic james potter does is the card-guessing sleight-of-hand kind, the same kind that won his mum over in a pub many many summers ago; the dust swirling in shafts of light as vivid now in memory as during its time. the way her index finger traced the rim of her topaz drink. the way her hair moved in the afternoon sun. if i guess your card, they ask, like father like son, will you let me buy you a drink? and it's the same old story. ace of spades. a smile that can't be helped. crooked skeptics muttering, of course that fucking boy gets that kinda girl; such is the unfair way of life. jukebox nostalgia and hazy florals on the dance floor and the girl saying yes once that one time, twice another, and then, somehow, by some miracle, yes forever. in this universe the kind of magic james does is the rabbit-out-of-the-hat coin-behind-your-ear flowers-out-of-nowhere kind; harry's peals of laughter high and bright in the yellow-painted nursery.

like stars, harry, sirius said. like uncle padfoot.

like how you boys make me feel, lily said.

iv. (the kind of magic james does is resurrecting hurricanes and hitting bullseye without really knowing it.)

#jily #jily* #jily modern au #james potter #lily evans #sirius black #jily au #jily fanfiction #jple #jily fic #??????? #brain dump warm up dsjkfhdsfh sorry #writerisms #apalapucian*

[gabbykinneysupremacy]

So… I’ve watched the original X-Men tas probably five or six times, and I was so excited for the new episodes today!!

So I broke down all the Easter eggs I saw in the first episode! I hope to do this with every episode and I’m going to start the second one tonight. This probably isn’t all of them, so comment if I missed something.

If you want a really good analysis of this episode, you should watch the YouTube channel New Rockstars. They do amazing breakdowns of everything nerdy and have the coolest merch!!

Obviously, spoilers for episode one of X-Men ‘97’

Logo update on title card

1:16: The panning of the city shows signs that advertise Ashida, Stark industries, VistaCorp and Da Costa. Noriko Ashida is mutant Surge, who was introduced in New Mutants in January of 2008. Stark industries is obviously Tony Stark. The original show featured a story with both Wolverine and Captain America, so we know the avengers exist in some form. And Da Costa: Roberto Da Costa AKA sunspot appears in the opening of the show, captured by the FOH. Sunspot made his appearance as a member of the original New Mutants.

1:20 Anti mutant graffiti and X logo spray painted over “Report Mutants” flyer on pole.

2:00 FOH has same arm bands and military style berets. They also appear to have sentinal technology as wearable weapons.

2:47 There’s a missing poster for a woman who appears to be Marrow, another frequent X-Men character and Morlock.

4:55 Daily Bugle, the news paper known to Spider-Man fans, flashes by. Again, spider man was in an episode of the original X-men animated series, confirming the universes are one. This paper advertises “Benetton’s Mutant Fashion Show”, the cover notably features four mutants, two of which are resubmit recognized and Banshee and Dust.

5:03 Gambit is rocking a crop top that says “Rock.” From the design, it looks like he cropped the shirt himself. He’s also sporting a necklace with a blue/ white gem. Here, he’s making Begets, a traditional Cajun treat, reflecting on Gambit’s own roots in the French quarter of New Orleans.

5:18 Rogue is back in her pink dress, the same dress she wore in the pilot of the original animated series.

6:54 Beasts’s book collection features Animal
Farm by George Orwell, the book he read in prison in the original series.

7:37 Both Beast and Jubilee mention that Bishop is a time traveler, but neither mention why he’s staying in their time with the X-Men.

8:52 The Danger Room simulation features the rubble of the UN, Magneto flying above it. This foreshadows later in the second episode where he does use his powers at the UN.

9:20 Jubilee lists off powers to Sunspot, asking which are his. She mentions shooting gold balls from his body, saying that would be weird. This references Goldballs, a very real and very weird X-Men.

9:57 Scott stares at a picture of the original X-Men with Xavier. In the comics, the original five are Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Ice Man and Beast. In the show, we’ve seen all five but never all together. And Angel never acknowledges being in the original X-men.

10:00 Scott and Jean talk to Dr. Cooper; aka Valerie Cooper. In comics, she’s an assistant to the president on the context of superhumans.

10:54 The team play basketball outside, just like Wolverine, Gambit and Jubilee did in the original show.

11:08 Charles’ death certificate reveals that the date of his death is 11/11/1996, and that his middle name is Francis.

12:13 Jean confirms for the first time that her and Cyclops’ baby is a boy, most likely Nathan Summers.

18:42 Jean sees a child’s hand drawing a picture when she uses cerebro. Is this a flash to the future of her son?

19:04 The baby jean holds is wrapped in a yellow X-Men blanket.

19:35 The rocks behind Jean turn into gravestones.

23:28 The sentinels call out an omega level threat. This refers to Storm’s Omega level status, one of the first times we’ve talked about power rankings in tas.

23:42 Where Storms’s lightening hits the sand, it turns into glass. This is a natural phenomenon and the glass structures are called fulgurites.

24:50 The soldiers and helicopters that come to take Trask are labeled as UN forces. They’re accompanied by Valerie Cooper, her second appearance this episode.

28:12 When Magneto moves the book, only the metal corners light up as being manipulated by his powers, just a fun detail.

And of course, updated title cards in the end credits

#x men 97 #cyclops #scott summers #x men cartoon #x men comics #jean grey #phoenix #storm #ororo munroe #rogue #anna marie #anna marie lebeau #remy lebeau #gambit #morph #wolverine #logan howlett #james logan howlett #beast #hank mccoy #jubilee #new rockstars

[hypnotherapy-blog-blog]

The Black Bag - Part 1.

The Black Bag.

Rob Hadley

Introduction.

When I wrote The Black Bag I had it in mind that many of the people likely to read it would already have a knowledge of Tarot. However, that’s proved to have been a miscalculation. I have been pleased to see many readers have a curiosity about Tarot, but not much familiarity with it.  As a result, I often suggest readers step into this journey with a Tarot deck at hand.  It will help you see the cards mentioned, and to participate in a manner that gives you a deeper connection to the story.  Each reader, does after all, have their own relationship to the cards. Indeed each card relates to each reader differently. As you make your way through these pages, perhaps you will have insights that will make the story unique for you.

My intent is for you to enjoy these pages, and maybe pick up a few ideas along the way. I don’t propose for an instant that any given card has set or established meanings. My own view is that context is everything. The cards tend to match up with your own particular situation and can have very different meanings at different times. I hope you’ll enjoy this journey. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know your own experiences.

My best wishes as you embark on this journey,

Rob Hadley

[email protected]

The Black Bag

By Rob Hadley

C.2024

It is fair to say that the one person you least expect to see following your mother’s funeral is your mother. Yet, as Grahame Bickerton stepped out of the small chapel and into the daylight and looked across the well tended gardens he was shocked to find himself staring at a figure in the distance that bore an unmistakeable resemblance to the very person he had just witnessed being extended that last of human dignities.

The coffin had slid silently away behind the curtain in the funeral home, and he’d been shocked to find himself craning to see the final glimpse as it moved irresistibly into the cremation chamber. And yet here, across this beautifully laid out garden there seemed to be someone that could be his very own mother sitting in mournful contemplation by one of the gravestones, their back to him.

Grahame felt a hand on his sleeve and turned.  It was the only other person that had been at the service. An elderly woman with a cane, bent almost double, the result of some form of spinal deformity.  The woman spoke to him gently, her eyes moist with tears.

“I will miss you mother,” she said. “I feel your loss.”

“You’re very kind,” said Grahame trying not to be too dismissive but wanting to pull away and see the woman in the distance more clearly. She’d got up and was walking away.

“I used to work with her you know, at the college. Geography,” she said. “She spoke of you regularly.”

“Geography?” replied Grahame, completely lost.

“I teach Geography at the college. We used to have tea together often,” she continued.

Grahame didn’t wish to be rude and turned and tried to catch sight of the person in the garden, but she was hurrying away.

“If I can help,” she said, “you can find me at the college.”

Grahame pulled away and started walking across the gardens leaving the old woman staring after him as he strode away.

“Poor man,” she said to herself leaning on her cane. “He’s obviously terribly upset.”

Grahame hurried across the lawns in the direction of the woman he had seen. Soon he stopped. The crows were rising from some trees by the seat the woman had been sitting on but was gone from view now. It was almost as if she’d never been there. He walked on, but after a few moments realised it was no good. He couldn’t see which way she’d gone.

“Christ,” he muttered, then thinking more clearly calmed himself.

“I have to get a grip,” he said to himself. “This is ridiculous, I’m a bloody engineer, dammit.”

With that Grahame dismissed the notion that anything out of the norm had happened. He was obviously overreacting.

+++

It was mid morning several weeks later when Grahame received the call from the car dealership. The fall sunlight cast the city in a flat light that lacked the warmth of the summer so recently ended. He stood looking out of his meagre office at the glass towers of the downtown core and the cranes that perched beside every spare inch of buildable space.

How very different those offices were from his own. From the office beside his he could hear his boss shouting down the phone at one of the project planners. The congestion on the road today was holding things up for everybody. He was well aware that they were pouring concrete on several projects today, and with those cement trucks stranded in the unexpected traffic chaos caused by this morning’s power outage there was sure to be hell to pay. As luck would have it none of his teams were pumping today, so while the atmosphere in the office would be toxic, it didn’t directly affect any of his people.

He’d been lucky, pacing himself lately. The recent death of his mother had forced him to scale back some of his work commitments. As the executor of the will there were assets to be disposed of, taxes to pay, and all the administrative chaos that accompanies the end of life. And that brought him back to the phone call. It had been the dealership he’d taken his mother’s old Town Car to.  She’d loved that vehicle, but it had no business being on the road with gas prices the way they are today. Getting rid of it had been the only thing to do, and yet in spite of his having thoroughly cleaned the vehicle before leaving it at the second hand car lot, the manager had called and informed him that they’d found some old playing cards and some journals when the car was made ready for sale.

“We didn’t want to toss them out,” said the manager. “They may be something you want.”

The manager had sounded awkward. He was aware the car had been Grahame’s mother’s vehicle, being acquainted with old lady. He’d been servicing the car since he’d joined the dealership over a decade previously.

A phone slammed down in the cubicle beside his and Grahame winced. Did the workplace have to be so toxic, he wondered. Looking at his diary he could see he didn’t need to be here at present, and if he were to walk the dozen blocks to the car lot he could get away early and then slip home to work the rest of the day from there.

He placed a file into his brief case and made for the door. His boss was already on the phone to the next project manager, wringing his hands and looking intently at the screen of his laptop and chewing his lip, a nervous habit he’d nursed every day since Grahame had joined the company. He nodded as he made his way out of the building but went by unnoticed. As he walked out across the car park he felt the sun on his face and a sense of relief in his heart. It was good to be out of the cramped office space.

He loved the city, and being part of the construction trade he was enjoying the fruits of a building boom, but it wasn’t lost on him that he worked for a small consultancy firm, and the glass palaces of downtown were far from his reality. The firm he worked for may be part of the construction team, but he was under no illusions about the work. Twice in the last year his boss had been forced to ask his staff to wait a week for their wages, and if his suspicions were correct, it would happen again. In the hierarchy of the building trade, the company he was working for was not what anyone would describe as a highflyer.

He walked smartly across town, the sound of horns blaring a fitting backdrop to the stationary traffic. Another set of lights up ahead had blown out and a crew was struggling to get their vehicle to somewhere they could work on the switchgear.

Grahame tuned out the sound of the city. He thought of his mother, and that he’d only seen her three times in the year prior to her death. They’d had dinner back in April, and then he had driven out to the cottage in mid summer, and then Rose had told him she was going in for some tests. She seemed unworried about it at the time, and he hadn’t really thought much of it.

Deconstructing things later Grahame realised that Rose had suffered in silence for some time before having these tests run. Indeed by the time pancreatic cancer was diagnosed it was already far advanced. She had suffered briefly, and Grahame had visited, but soon after that last time she had succumbed, slid into a coma and within two weeks had died leaving a great chasm in Graham’s life. A chasm he promptly filled with his own guilt for not being a better son, and more available to his mother.

He was being too hard on himself, but that was nothing new.

+++

At the car dealership the manager had placed the collection of journals and other bits and pieces in a large envelope for Grahame to collect.  He walked into reception and the young lady on the desk reached beneath her desk and passed it to him, recognising him from previous visits. Grahame thanked her and took the package, then decided he’d walk home through the park.

There was little point returning to the office today. He didn’t feel up to working, and the traffic chaos of the morning would soon be merging with the afternoon rush hour, as people tried to leave work early to beat the rush.

Taking a moment to sit in the sunshine he stopped at a park bench and opened the package. It contained three journals, all closely handwritten in his mothers handwriting, and one small black bag. He drew this out and inspected it. Inside he found some cards, but not the playing cards you’d expect an old lady to have should she find herself compelled to get into a game of gin rummy. These were altogether more colorful, and well used.

He inspected them and realised that these were tarot cards. He had no idea his mother had an interest in tarot. While not something he had any knowledge of, Grahame recognised some of the symbols on the cards as he rifled through them. He found the cards strangely puzzling, feeling rather like he’d discovered something secret. He slid the blag bag back into the envelope continued his journey home. They were a mystery he would examine further at a later date.

As he walked he lamented the fact that he had few of his mothers belongings, even though he was her sole heir. The reality was that his small modern apartment was hardly a suitable venue for an ancient armoire, or dining table for eight people.

When he emerged out of the far side of the park he was only a couple of blocks from his apartment. Walking to work today had been a good choice, even here the traffic was log jammed.

+++

The loss of his sole surviving parent had forced something of a pause in Graham’s life.  It was a moment in which he was compelled to take stock and look at where he was.

He had recently ended a fruitless relationship of eighteen months. It had been a perfunctory affair, neither very passionate nor disastrous, but lacking in so many of the things he felt his life needed.

They’d found each other online, were both ‘self actualised professionals looking to share all life has to offer,’ according to their dating profiles, but were neither very self actualised (he still wasn’t sure what that meant) nor very willing to share very much. He’d decided he didn’t really trust the person he was dating, and realised she didn’t trust him either. They’d decided to ‘have a two week break’ two months ago and he hadn’t heard from her since.

Surprisingly he didn’t miss the woman either. It was as if the relationship had not really happened at all. And he felt no compulsion to reconnect.

If he were quite honest with himself it was much the same with his job.  He’d been working as a project manager for several years, and it paid reasonably well. While his job didn’t excite him, it provided security enough for him to live in the city, pay a disturbingly high proportion of his income in rent, and to own a car that he could drive at barely 20 miles an hour anywhere he chose. And then pay a fortune for parking. Like the relationship, his job didn’t fill him with passion either.

Grahame was gradually coming to the conclusion that there were patterns emerging in his life that didn’t fill him with joyful expectation. In his mid thirties he had expected something more of life. Was this really it?

These were Grahame’s thoughts as he walked alongside the stationary traffic and glanced at the frustrated drivers in their little tin boxes. Just a few blocks from home Grahame watched an episode play out before him.

A driver in a Jeep was blowing his horn at a car in front. The yellow haired woman sat in a little pale blue convertible, studiously ignoring the increasingly insistent honking. Judging by the body language the young lady had not had a good day, sitting arms crossed and lips pursed determined to ignore the blaring of the horn behind.

“Hey lady,” came the voice. A tee shirt clad young man, physically toned and cocksure, leaned from his car window and called to her.

Finally having had enough, the young woman, her hair tightly curled up in a bun, turned in her seat and shouted back at the man, “For god’s sake! I have a boyfriend!”

She then turned and sat, arms folded defiantly in the stationary traffic, red faced and flustered now with her eyes locked on the licence plate before her. At that instant a gap opened in the lane beside her and the jeep bucked forward and pulled alongside her for a moment as vehicles shifted in the Tetris game of traffic flow.

“Lady, I just wanted to tell you,” said the man, a little more gently now, “You have a flat tire.”

Taken aback, the young woman checked behind her to see that the traffic was not moving, and then stepped out of her car to take a closer look. She wore a smart pencil skirt and lemon blouse, the picture of propriety. She came back a moment later and sat behind the wheel looking perplexed.

She seemed nonplussed for a moment, and then composing herself turned and politely addressed the man in the jeep.

“Can you help me fix it?” she called across the traffic lane.

The young man lit up a cigarette in a slow languid style, and then said, “Like you said, lady. You’ve got a boyfriend.”

The traffic shifted and the Jeep advanced progressing up the line of cars.

Grahame, abreast of the little convertible looked at the woman, and saw the tears welling up in her eyes. He guessed she’d maybe not fixed a tire before. And with so many cars around she would be stuck blocking traffic before long as the tire deflated. He knew that on any other day he would have gone with his old habits and just not got involved, but today was just a little different.

“Would you like a hand?” he asked softly.

“That would be so kind,” said the woman, relief spreading across her face. Suddenly she didn’t seem quite so prickly.

“Just pull in to one of the spaces up here,” said Graham. “I live a block up the road, I’ll help you change the tire. Just let me go up to my apartment and change out of my office clothes. I won’t be more than five minutes.”

“That’s so kind of you,” said the young woman. “You’re like a real knight in shining armour.”

“Well, not really. But I can change a tire.  Give me five minutes and I’ll be back.”

With that he left her and hurried toward his apartment.

+++

Grahame hurried along the street, the sound of construction crowding in on him after the quiet of the park.  That poor woman, he thought. Some men really could be thoughtless.

He hurried into his apartment, tossed the envelope carelessly onto the coffee table, as if by reflex turned on the kettle to boil water for a cup of tea and went to his bedroom. A moment later he’d got out of his work suit and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater.

He turned and was about to hurry down to the street to help the woman change her tire, when he noticed the envelope had spilled its contents across the surface of the coffee table.

Not wanting to keep the woman downstairs waiting, he casually glanced at the table. Cards were slewed across the flat surface in an arc. It looked almost artistic. One card lay face up.

Grahame glanced at it, and then retrieved his keys and made for the door. As he stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor, the front door of the building opened and his neighbour, old Mrs. Willoughby entered the vestibule.

At that moment there was a terrible crashing sound from outside. Mrs. Willoughby turned and looked out at the street, a startled look of shock on her face.

Grahame rushed to the door and stared out to see what on earth had happened. Cars were stopped now, honking and people climbing from them and rushing back down the road. It took only a moment for Grahame to realise the sound had come from the building site on the next block, just by where he could see the woman’s car pulled over.

He hurried toward the car, and as he got closer realised this was the centre of the commotion. The woman was standing back, leaning against the siding at the edge of the construction site. He hurried to her side.

The little blue convertible was wrecked. It lay smashed beneath a series of scaffolding poles, looking as though it had been speared in some ghastly hunt.

White faced and shocked the woman stood back, shocked but unharmed, against the siding.

“Good god, what happened?” he said to her after he’d pushed his way through the crowd.

People were looking up, staring at a crane’s hook and some chain suspended seventy feet above the road. A man with a hard hat came barrelling out of the building site and rushed to the car. By-standers were already photographing the wrecked car, and posting them to social media on their phones.

“Was anyone hurt?” the workman was asking in panic, looking around wildly.

“Are you ok?” Grahame said, steadying the woman with a kindly hand.

“I’m ok,” she said rapidly. “I’m ok!”

She was white faced and shaking. Grahame turned to the assembled crowd and said, “Does anyone have some water?”

A bottle was developed and passed to the woman.

Grahame turned to the crowd and asked, “Who saw what happened?”

Several voices piped up. Grahame looked at the man in the hardhat and said, “Are you the foreman?”

He nodded nervously.

“Thank god no one was hurt,” he replied. “You’d better get these people’s statements. The police will be along soon. It’s going to make things a lot better if people are able to describe it.”

The foreman nodded and corralled the witnesses while Grahame turned back to the woman.

“You’re going to need a cup of tea, aren’t you,” he said gently. “Let’s get you out of here and calm things down.”

Grahame handed his card to the foreman, and one of the witnesses.

“When the cops show up can you let them know she’s at my place up the road,” said Grahame.

There was sympathetic nod and Grahame and the woman pressed their way through the crowd and made their way down the block to his apartment building.

+++

Grahame made the tea as his frightened guest sat in the open plan living room.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” said Graham, wanting to keep the woman talking.

“I’m Sunshine,” she said. “And that’s my mother’s car.”

“Oh, dear,” he said. “It’s a very nice little car. Well, it was. How did you come to be unharmed? I mean, it looks like a hell of a mess.”

Grahame poured the tea and placed a cup and saucer before Sunshine.

“I stepped out of the car to look at the tire, and that’s when it happened,” she said. “There was just this rush of air, and a terrible sound. Like bells ringing, and then those scaffolding poles all around me.”

“What a thing to happen,” Grahame said.

“I guess,” she replied beginning to calm down. “I could have been killed.”

She sipped the tea, her hand still trembling. That was when Sunshine started sobbing.

+++

The statement to the police, a visit from the foreman and an exchange of documents all took time and Sunshine seemed to go through the process in a daze. She was glad to be somewhere quiet and safe, and Grahame remained largely quiet in the background as the questions were asked and answered. It was a terribly unfortunate accident, but as the police officer pointed out, no one was hurt. The insurance companies would sort out the wrecked car which was now safely off the road. The construction company manager said the company would be up to their necks in investigations, but seemed co-operative, almost as upset by the whole situation as Sunshine was herself.

“That could have been my own daughter,” said the manager as Grahame had shown him out. It happened that he knew Grahame from the local planning department meetings that he’d sometimes have to attend for his company.

“Terrible thing,” he’d said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Those clamps don’t just fail.”

“Thank heavens no one was hurt,” echoed Graham.

+++

At length the police officer left, and they found themselves alone in the quiet apartment. Noticing the journals and the tarot cards on the table, Sunshine asked, “What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.  Just some things of my mother’s,” replied Graham.

“Don’t you see it?” said Sunshine, looking at the upturned card.

“What do you mean,” said Graham.

“You don’t think it looks like all those scaffolding poles that fell on my car?” said Sunshine as she picked up the card.

Grahame stared at the card. The Eight of Wands.  He wondered what it meant.

“I suppose,” said Graham.  “It’s really not my thing,” he added and then as an afterthought said, “I’m an engineer.”

Sunshine looked at the card once more, and then at Grahame trying to find the link between not being able to see the visual connection and being an engineer. She failed.

“I wonder what made you turn over this particular card then,” she said. “Probably something subconscious.”

“I didn’t pick that card.  I mean, I just left some things on the table, they just fell like that, and then I came down to help you.”

“And that was before you heard the crash,” asked Sunshine with newly sparked curiosity.

“Yes,” replied Graham, noticing for the first time how the image in the card did look a little like the scaffolding poles.

“That’s quite the coincidence,” murmured Sunshine.

“Oh, I doubt it,” said Graham. “There’s probably no end of these cards look like falling scaffolding.”

His voice trailed off as he realised how he sounded. Sunshine picked up the cards and started shuffling them.

“So, your mother’s into tarot?” asked Sunshine.

“No. Well, yes,” stammered Graham.

“I see,” said Sunshine.

“I mean she died,” said Graham. “And these were among her things. I should sort them out.  I don’t really know anything about the cards.”

Sunshine looked at the journals, and then asked, “Were you close?”

“Not as close as I wish we had been,” replied Graham.

“So, you never knew she was interested in Tarot?”

“Never had a clue,” confessed Graham.

Sunshine turned the cards over in her hands and then said, “You’re lucky then.  This gives you a chance to get to know her through the cards.”

The words hung in the air. 

“What do you mean,” asked Graham.

“Look at these cards,” she said. “You can see they’ve been well used.  These are quite old. Well used. Your mother must have been adept at the cards. Can’t you see it? There’s a lot of her in these particular cards.”

An awkward silence fell between them as Grahame thought about this. It was true, the journals and these cards were like a voice reaching out across the abyss of death. They were a connection.

The silence was broken by the chirp of Sunshine’s cell phone.

She looked at the display and then said, “Mother. This might be a little awkward.”

___________________________________________

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Many Thanks

RH

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[kyber-kisses]

A Glimpse of Us

Steve Harrington x Reader

Warnings: severe angst? Blood, tears, I can’t give too much away

Summary: when you’re trying to save the world, not everyone walks away unscathed

A/N: I would literally sacrifice myself for Steve Harrington, y’all do not understand. If the duffers kill my boy I will be raising hell.

Steve didn’t want to be here.

Hell, if he was being honest he knew no one wanted to be here. It wasn’t exactly an event that people got excited over. If anything it was one that people dreaded.

He can sense Dustin shift on his feet besides him, every once and while giving him a slide glance as well. He knows Dustin wants to say something, try anything to comfort Steve—but the kid remains silent.

And internally he thanks him for it.

Robins here too. It’s the first time Steve sees her quiet for such a long period of time. He knows she’s trying to process too.

Everyone is.

Despite the fresh spring air and the bursts of color sprouting from the flower beds and tree branches, Steve feels like he’s drowning in a sea of black— but he doesn’t try to paddle or reach for the surface. He allows it to settle around him.

Usually he would play notice to the soft chatter of voices around him, but today he doesn’t. Instead he lets his brain block it all out.

The only thing Steve is focusing on is the large portrait set against the stand several feet away, the base of it overflowing with lilies and daisies and hydrangeas.

God was there a massive amount of hydrangeas.

Then again they always were your favorite.

As he stood there he could see you beaming back at him from the framed photograph, completely unaware that your life like so many of those before you, was drawing to a close.

Despite everything that had happened in the past four years, Steve thought he would be immune to being caught off guard and surprised. . . Yet here he was. It had been two weeks and yet he still couldn’t wrap his head and heart around the fact that you were gone and not coming back.

He would have to walk back into work Monday morning with Robin and act like everything was normal even thought it wasn’t. You wouldn’t be stocking the shelves from all the Sunday evening movie returns or stealing his milk duds. All you would be is a headline article and a picture in the Hawkins Post.

He takes a painful glance at the headstone a few feet away, only to move his eyes back to his shoes. Your life could never be marked by a gravestone, something so cold and immobile. Perhaps a tree with a wind-chime in the branches could do you more justice, or a simple song sung into the wind. What lied in the ground is only flesh and blood, and that was never what you were.

You were so much more than that.

You were sunsets and big smiles. You were rose colored sunglasses and hand written birthday cards. You were pressed Pennie’s and never remembering to set your alarm. You were warm summer nights and loud contagious laughter.

You were. . . You.

And Steve loved every bit, he was just to late to realize it. And when he did he was ready, he was so ready to tell you—

And then you slipped through his fingers like grains of sand.

And now he was here.

Watching as your casket was lowered into the ground The fact that he would forever be six feet apart from you settled heavy over him.

Six feet never felt so far until now.

Feeling a hand squeeze his shoulder, he lifts his head- eyes till stuck to the casket. “Hmm?”

“Dustin and I will meet you at the Y/L/Ns. Take your time though.” Robins voice was gentle and soft as she gave him one more squeeze and departed his side along with Dustin.

Sticking his hands into his suit pocket, he squeezed a fist around the piece of paper tucked inside- trying everything int his power to ground himself to reality before he slipped back into that nightmare of a memory.

*. *. *. *. *. *.

“You son of a bitch!” You yelled, giving Steve a firm shove as you inhaled deeply, slightly out of breath.

“Me?! You were the one that just went running headfirst into danger!”

“Only because you were in danger to begin with!” You jammed a finger into his chest. “Could you not make me worry for five damn minutes Harrington?”

If someone told you a week ago that you would be standing in the middle of some back road outside Hawkins in the middle of the night right after climbing out of a nasty ass hell gate you would have emmediatly nodded and gone and raided your parents liquor cabinet—-

Yet here you were, covered in dirt, blood, and god knows what else.

A few yards away lay the damn portal, glowing a henious red and smelling like literal sewage. Things had gone sideways on your return trip to the upside down, leaving you and Steve spectated from the rest of the group and running for your life as those stupid bats flooded across the landscape.

Luckily Dustin had figured out earlier that a portal opened up every time Vecna took another victim, which had you and Steve aiming for the one were Fred had died.

It was a whole other miracle that no one in Hawkins had stumbled across the gate that was smack dab in the middle of a road.

Taking in a shuttered breath, you stumbled slightly back. With the adreline in your body starting to wear off you were beginning to feel all the aches and pains of the last two hours.

Grabbing at your side you winced, god did that hurt.

Seeing the change expression, Steve’s face shifted. “Y/N?”

And then like a switch being flicked, your knees buckled and Steve was rushing forward to catch you before you slammed into the pavement.

“Y/N!”

“Must be more tired than I originally thought.” You breathed, allowing Steve to lower you gently to the ground, unaware that you had now soaked Steve’s hands in deep crimson, making his face fall all the more.

“Oh god.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Looking up at Steve you felt your own face fall and then you saw his eyes directed at his shaking palms, thick red blood coating his fingers from where he had caught you.

So maybe one of those bats had gotten you way worse than you originally thought.

The pain wasn’t the worst part though. No, it was the look of sheer panic on Steve’s face.

Steve. The boy you’d been friends with since first grade, who used to share his snacks with you at recess and ride bikes with you. The Boy who pulled pranks on you and would push you into his pool when you were kids.

The boy you fell in love with a few years back but never had the courage to tell.

“We Uh, shit- we gotta get you to a hospital. He breathed, running bloody hands through sweat drenched hair.

“Steve let’s think rationally here. My side is literally ripped open, the hospital is on the other side of town and we have no way of getting there.”

He was silent for a moment and then his eyes widened and he was scrambling across the pavement. Then there was the distinct hiss of static and Steve playing with the dials of the walk-in talkie the two of you had.

“Dustin?! Come in Dustin!” The panic was so heavy in Steve’s voice it made you slightly wince. You didn’t like seeing him like this.

Within another moment he was back at you side, peeking off his shirt as he tried to staunch the flow of blood coming from your abdomen. The walk-in crackled to life besides him.

“Steve?! Thank god, we thought we had lost you guys! What the hell happened?!” Dustins voice breaking through the heavy breathing coming from your friend.

“Dustin! I’ll fill you in later, but I need you to grab Max and get down here to Dawson Road as fast as you can?”

“What’s going o-“

“Nows not the time Henderson! I left my keys on Eddie’s counter, have Max drive-“

“Wait now you want Max to drive?”

“We don’t really have another choice! Just get your asses down here! We need help!” At this point Steve was practically screaming into the walkie, the pain in his voice only getting stronger.

“Copy that. We’re on our way.”

With a heavy sigh Steve tossed town the walkie yet again, before returning all his attention to you. With one hand pressed firmly against your abdomen and the other gripping your hand tightly, he tried to fight back the nausea stirring in his belly.

You looked so fragile in this moment, your eyelids drooping as you weakly held his hand. Your pulse growing weaker by the minute as he kept one of his fingers pressed to your wrist. Despite how dark it was outside he could still see the blood on both of your sets of hands. Real blood was nothing like movie blood, just as real death was nothing like movie death. There is no amount of horror that can prepare a person for seeing the life ebb from another, the hopelessness.

“Hey talk to me Y/N, you gotta stay awake.”

Humming a response you brought your eyes up to look at Steve, “how bout just a little nap?”

“Nope, nope-“ he shook his head, still trying to keep the fear from bubbling up. “Come on, stay with me.” Steve paused, trying to think of anything to keep you talking and awake. “Hey, tell me about one of your favorite memories.

“Memories?”

“Yeah, there’s gotta be one. You’ve lived a pretty exciting life.” He mused, giving your hand another squeeze as he moved to brush a stray hair away from your face.

You answer came quick, so quick in fact it caught Steve off guard. “Probably that time we sat in that empty parking lot of that gas station off I-20 and ate shitty gas station snacks.”

“Wait really? You could have gone with anything and you went with that?” He cracked a smile at you, fortunately getting a weak one in return.

“Yeah, cause that’s when I realized I had fallen in love with my best friend.” You voice was so quiet but the words so loud.

It was enough to stun Steve Harrington into complete silence.

“Wait, you—“

“Since junior year.”

“Why- why didn’t you ever say anything?” He breathed, trying to ignore the war raging between the fear of losing you and the euphoria you saying you loved him.

“Monsters we’re taking over Hawkins, and I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

“Oh well that’s kind of lame.” He tried joking, only to fail miserably due to how you shot him a glare.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your favorite memory?”

Falling silent yet again, Steve squeezed your hand even tighter. “The night after Starcourt,” he slowly admitted, “when we sat in your living room and ate that pint of cherry jubilee. Despite everything that had just happened you still managed to find a way to smile and crack jokes. That’s when I realized I had loved you way longer than I thought I had.” He paused, glancing down at his hand in embrassment. “Sorry, that shit was cheesy as hell.”

“I’ve known you since first grade. I’m used to it.” You mused weakly, finding it increasingly harder to keep your eyes open.

You knew they weren’t gonna get here in time. But you stayed silent.

Letting out another rattled breath, you casted your eyes towards the night sky. It least you were here and not in the Upside Down. Here there were stars, a whole canopy of them just beyond your reach.

“Y/N?”

The sound of your name brought your eyes back to Steve, his big brown irises locking onto your own.

“It’s not such a bad way to go.” You admitted, giving him a weak and tired smile, “at least I’m here with you.”

“And you said, I’m cheesy?” He smiled, before feeling his face slowly drop. He could feel you slipping, even though he had been trying his damndest to ignore it.

In that moment you knew you were saying goodbye but neither of you want to admit it. Because of you said it out loud it was real. Steve locked his eyes onto yours and brought you into his chest, each of you bathed in your blood. Steve felt his face crack into the look he had seen at the hospital several times before, that point of no return, when love is torn apart. Your hair tumbled over your face and so he swept it back, feeling the coldness of your skin, before gently leaning down and placing a delicate kiss to your lips. You smiled so briefly before your breathing became a noisy rattle...

And then you were gone.

Just like that. One minute you were looking up a Steve with that famous Y/N smile, and the next—

That's how Dustin and Max found the two of you. You departed, Steve sitting in a pool of cold blood, hugging your body as if you were still in there somewhere.

You never figured you would die at eighteen. But then again you never figured you’d fall in love with your best friend either.

*. *. *. *. *. *. *. *.

Once the last person had trickled out of the cemetery, Steve found the courage to fish the small paper out of his pocket. Your parents had asked him if he would write a euology for your funeral, and he did. . . He just didn’t read it, not to everyone.

These words were for you.

Only you.

He unfolded it with shaky hands, doing his best to smooth out the creases in the wrinkled paper.

“I’m not very good at writing sentimental shit so your gonna have to bear with me.” He breathed, glancing over at your portrait once more.

“Your parents told me I should do this, that it might help with your passing. . . But I don’t think anything could help with that. I mean, shit- how the hell Am I supposed to go back to a normal life when your not in it. You’ve been in my life since we were kids. You are my normal.

I think I was in love with you for way longer than I realized. I can’t really pin point when it started. All I know is that all of a sudden I was in the middle of it. If I’m begin honest you were the only thing keeping me sane for a long time in this godforsaken town. But then you introduced me to Robin and all three of us became friends. . . And nothings been the same since.”

Each word that left his tongue felt like a weight being lifted off his shoulders. He should have said these things to you in person, but hey- he was a coward so this was as good as it was going to get.

“I know your dead. I mean, I know it in my head, but it doesn’t seem real. I still feel like your here, with me somehow, like one night you’ll be sneaking into family video after close, back from sneaking out after curfew to tell me and Robin about some solo adventure you went on.

I wish you could tell me where you are now. I mean, like I said, I know your gone, but I think there must be something in a person that can’t just disappear.

I guess that’s my formal invitation for you to haunt my ass until the end of time.

I know your out there. Somewhere. Just give me a sign when you can.

In the meantime don’t worry about me. Vecnas gone, and I’m not alone. Robin and Dustin are still looking out for me.

I’m grateful that I got to grow up with you as my best friend, and for all that you showed me.

Yours Forever,

Steve

The End.

#steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington #stranger things season 4 #stranger things #stranger things x reader

[mitsvriii]

How would they react to getting a call from Death-Cast?

Based on “They Both Die at the End” book cause I’m still not over that ending Characters: Kazuha, Kaveh, Tighnari, & Ayaka More: modern au, Ayato isn't around for SHIT, Tighnari is Tighnari, Kaveh’s a drunkard, Kazuha tries to be nice but dies wow so original, angst, death, mention of how each character dies, not explicit, guess how everyone died and I’ll give you a cookie, I got lazy like halfway through my bad g, Tighnari’s part sucks LMAO, not really proofread, if it's weird blame grammarly Word Count: 680+

whole fic under the cut

Kazuha: I believe it would be like when a bird hits the glass in those cartoons and somewhat childish movies. It would start as a shock, then, as the bird slowly falls down the windows, Kazuha’s wall that holds back his emotions would slowly break. He would most likely ponder on whether to inform Beidou or not. His mind immediately goes to his old friend who had gotten a similar call, and how his world had stopped then just as it does now. Will and can live his last day alive to the fullest. He decides to try new foods, checks a few things off of his bucket list, and leaves a note for Beidou, not building up the courage and having to deal with his guilt to tell her face-to-face. Writes one final poem that summarizes his life before submitting it to be put on his gravestone. Out of the corner of his eye, Kazuha spots a woman in trouble, a man trying to snatch her purse from her. Pushing aside the fact he was going to die today, he set out to help her, unaccounted for the pocketknife the man had on him. He would soon later be seen by Beidou, but the location, however, would be in a morgue. 

Kaveh: Shrugs it off as a joke, actually believes Alhaitham hacked or paid the Death-Cast company and directors to freak him out. When he finally stops shouting a string of curses to Alhaitham, he finds himself somewhat believing what Death-Cast said and knows logically Alhaitham wouldn’t stoop this low. So Kaveh does what Kaveh does best when he’s stressed, he drinks. He did so while pondering over how his life would be over today. After all he did to help his mom, after all he did studying to be an architect, after all he did to get where he is now; he was going to die today without any knowledge of how he was going to die. All he could do was sigh as he took another sip of his drink. It’s a shame, though, that one’s liver can only withstand so much alcohol.

Tighnari: Is so close to having a breakdown. What do you mean he’s going to die today? He still had research to do, more things to teach Collei, and even a TCG game scheduled for late afternoon. He does what Tighnari does best, prepares. He makes a list of goodbye cards, makes a short will, seemingly uncaring of who gets what, and reads through a joke book Cyno had the nerve to send him one last time and goes to cancel all of his upcoming assignments. Exhausted after his tasks, Tighnari went to lay his head down on his desk, eyes dropping. Surprisingly, he didn’t catch the bag of toxic mushroomed powder that was directly under the way of his head, though. 

Ayaka: Is a mess. Her sobs shook her body after she got the call, and the only person who could get her to calm down enough so she could tell what had happened was Thoma. Ayato was nowhere to be found, most likely in one of his meetings. However, Thoma had sworn that he would get Ayato to come home and see her as soon as possible. Ayaka knew that it was only a matter of time before she would meet with her parents again, yet somehow had hoped she would beat death. She was constricted to her room to protect herself from whatever or whoever was going to end her time alive. She could do nothing but stay locked up in her room, wondering if she was going to get assassinated because of her status, or if she was going to get involved in a freak accident by tripping or something. Ayaka would soon find out when an unfamiliar servant went to serve Ayaka her nightly tea, and the bitter taste would soon feel like it was spreading throughout her entire throat. And of course, when her brother arrived, the only thing he would find would be his dead sister, head face-down on her dresser.

#I DISAPPEAR AND RETURN WITH ANGST #astronetwrk #・ nouveau livre ˎˊ˗ #☾ bell’s works #genshin angst #kazuha angst #ayaka angst #kaveh angst #tighnari angst #genshin headcannons #kazuha headcanons #ayaka headcanons #kaveh headcanons #tighnari headcanons

[cecilysass]

All the Dead Mulders

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic CW: depression, PTSD

Very early in the morning he takes Scully’s car and drives to North Carolina. It’s a dick move, because he showed up asking to sleep on her couch and then stole her keys before she woke up. It’s an even bigger dick move because she’ll have no way to get to work.

But as he sees it, he had to do it. He has no car himself anymore. He has no wallet with which to rent one. No friends who would drive him. At least no friends who would drive him and not tell her.

He doesn’t know why the small plot of Mulder family graves feels like an important place for him to visit, or why it feels like he needs to visit it right now, today, this morning. Actually, he’s been told it’s where he’s been spending the past few months. So homesickness, maybe?

Or maybe he just wants to touch his mom’s gravestone. And Samantha’s. A really selfish whim for him to indulge on week two of being newly undead, not to mention a risky one. He doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license anymore. An overzealous North Carolina traffic cop could really upset the apple cart.

But all that completely, cosmically just doesn’t matter. Mulder knows emotional numbness. He has had experience with several gradients of it before, dating back to early adolescence. But this? This takes the cake. This lack of feeling is a whole new level.

He sees all of the very good reasons not to steal Scully’s car and drive to North Carolina that morning—he understands them perfectly and could articulate them if someone asked—but they’re so far away from him that he can’t touch them, much less feel them.

He’s looking at them from miles above, like he never came back from orbit at all.

Anyway, she will be fine. Angry, frustrated, yes, but unharmed. The new partner will come pick her up for work, Mulder’s sure of it. He sounds like a considerate guy. Above reproach, she said.

Scully has given him a new cell phone, something sleek and small and silver. She gave it to him so that he could keep in touch with her—in case of emergency, she said. He turns it off somewhere around Prince William State Park, when the sun is just beginning to rise.

*** The sky is steel gray when he arrives at the cemetery, and there’s a misty rain hitting him in the face as he ambles over to the Mulder plot. Theirs is a small segment of an open field of headstones, but as he approaches it, he can see it looks particularly verdant and lush this morning. Fertilized by the flesh of all the dead Mulders, he supposes.

He instantly recognizes this as a poetic but fundamentally inaccurate statement. It’s really only his mother’s body fertilizing anything here. His father’s and sister’s corpses are not here; his father’s is actually enriching a cemetery in Massachusetts, and his sister is, well, precise whereabouts unknown. If Skinner hadn’t been such a pain in the ass about digging him up, his own body still could have been here. Contributing to something useful for a change.

Given his recent residency, he’d thought it might feel extra familiar around the old plot—something like visiting your former apartment, maybe—but it really doesn’t. He only recognizes it as the location of his dutiful semi-regular visits to pay tribute to his dead family. A nice place, but not a comfortable one.

As he comes closer, he sees there are fresh flowers on the ground before the headstone—for his parents, for his sister. Even his own ruined grave, which still stands there eerily with freshly upturned soil before it, has the same bouquet placed incongruously next to the earth-spattered headstone.

Three arrangements. He leans down to examine the flowers, feeling the petals lightly with his fingertips. Pale pink tulips, baby’s breath. There is a small card attached at the bottom of the arrangement with the name of the florist.

He recognizes the name, the mortuary florist; a little bell rings in his mind.

Could it only have been a year ago he arranged for flowers to be placed on his mother’s grave monthly, automatic debit? As if through mottled glass, he remembers the conversation over the phone from his apartment. The solicitous tone of the florist, her southern accent. That was shortly after his mother’s death. He’d only arranged for flowers for her. Not in his father’s name, not in Samantha’s, and certainly not in his own.

*** An elderly man in a dapper striped suit and bow tie, shoulders slightly stooped, is visiting a grave at the next plot. He sees Mulder and points a finger towards the clouded sky.

“Not a good day for this, is it?” He has a slight southern accent, a twinkle in his eye.

“I guess not,” Mulder says.

“Never going to skip it, though,” the man says, looking down tenderly at the headstone he’s facing. “She’s my girl. She’ll always be my best girl.”

Mulder nods, uncertain what to say. The slightest prick of something, though, makes its way through the numbness. It catches him off guard.

The man smiles at Mulder. “I’m not sure I’ve seen you here before,” he says. “Are you a family member?”

“They’re my parents,” Mulder says, gesturing to the headstone with their names in front of him.

“Oh, I see,” the man says sympathetically. “I didn’t know there was another son. I’m sorry about your brother.”

Mulder blinks once, slowly, realizing that the man is gazing at the upturned grave of Fox Mulder. It’s impossible to explain, so he doesn’t try.

“How is your brother’s wife doing?” asks the man. “I’ve spoken to her a few times.”

Again Mulder blinks, focusing his stare on the man. “His wife?”

“I admit I’ve worried for her, out here all by herself. Does she have people to watch out for her? So sad to lose her husband when she’s expecting a baby.” He sighs. “She told me her first name, but I’ve forgotten it.”

“Dana,” Mulder says softly.

“Yes,” he says. “Like a war widow from another age, that woman. So stoic. I’ve never seen her cry, but that’s almost worse, isn’t it? She looks like there’s just nothing left in her.”

“Yeah.”

“We talked sometimes. About losing your spouse. It’s not an experience many share. You?” Mulder shakes his head. “You’re very fortunate. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Mulder doesn’t say anything.

“Were you and your brother close?” the man says kindly.

“No. Not really.”

“You must watch out for his widow, though?”

“I don’t think… I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of that.”

“I’m sure you will,” the man says gently. “We’re not ourselves, right after a death.”

Mulder nods heavily, gazing at his family’s headstone.

*** The florist’s shop is empty, with only a single silver-haired woman wiping off the glass case. Mulder walks in feeling as he always does now: like he isn’t really there, like he’s looking at all these lavish arrangements of peonies and gardenias and roses from a lofty distance.

He shows the woman the cards for the arrangements on the Mulder plots, and he explains where he found them. “Can you tell me whose account is paying for this? These are my family members, and I’m not familiar with what’s been arranged.”

“I can try,” she says affably. “We have this all on the computer now, so that supposedly makes it easy.” She sits down at a computer and opens it up, her eyes darting across the screen.

“Mulder, you say, sir?”

“That’s right,” Mulder says. “Teena, Samantha, William.”

“Well, let’s see, at first it was one arrangement for Teena Mulder paid for by her son Fox, but the son died, very sad. Then that account was taken over by Mulder grandchild, looks like.”

“Grandchild?”

“That’s the note I have—grandchild will take over. At that time two other arrangements were added, too.”

“Grandchild,” Mulder repeats stupidly. “You don’t have a name on a credit card?”

“I do,” the woman says. She looks at him sideways. “But who are you, exactly, sir?”

“I’m a family member.”

“Then shouldn’t you know?”

“I want to take over the account,” he says suddenly. “I want to pay. I’m the one that should pay.” He feels his pockets for his wallet, but of course he doesn’t have one. “Uh, I don’t have my card now, but I’ll call back, and I’ll switch it over.”

“Well, all right. The credit card now is a Dana K. Scully,” the woman says. “On behalf of Mulder grandchild. So you might want to talk to her first.”

“Yeah,” he says, remembering the three arrangements of pink tulips, of baby’s breath. “Yeah. Okay.”

“She’s the widow,” the woman explains. “The son’s widow.”

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes taking in the elaborate floral arrangements behind the woman’s head. They’re spilling over with intense color, fiery blossoms like beaks of exotic birds, feathery stalks shooting out the top. Someone’s gaudy way of expressing their feelings, he supposes. “Yeah, I know who she is.”

*** Mulder sits in Scully’s car, parked on the street outside the florist. It’s really raining now, which is frustrating, because he had wanted to walk to the Mulder plot one more time before driving back.

He wants to see the flowers there again, now that he has this strange piece of information to roll over in his mind. He wants to look at the tulips on his mother’s grave and think about why they’re there.

On behalf of Mulder grandchild. Flowers for one dead family member sent on behalf of another who is currently unborn. Living Mulders apparently don’t need to be involved at all.

The rain pours down the windshield in gleaming streaks. There is a rumble of thunder. Mulder should drive back to D.C., go back to return Scully’s car. His eyes fall on the silver cell phone sitting next to him on the passenger seat, silent and accusing.

*** When Mulder’s mother died, he’d become preoccupied with thoughts about the afterlife. Growing up he’d never believed in it, not even as a little boy listening curiously during his father’s family’s tepid Presbyterian church services. His inconsistent education in Judaism on his mother’s side never really touched on what happens after death. But his experiences in recent years, on the X-files, had opened up multiple windows on post-death experience. Conversations with those who are gone. Reincarnation. Hauntings. He could no longer dismiss the notion.

Not only that, Scully believed. And as he clung to Scully, as her fingers ran soothingly through his hair as he sobbed against her for his mother, he wondered if her firm belief in heaven could somehow transfer to him, just as his belief sometimes did to her. He’d prayed that it might. Maybe, he’d thought, it would be a comfort.

Later, they found out Scully’s beliefs were true. In a way. There was a better place, and Samantha was there. Happy and safe. That was a comfort, an unbelievable comfort. He remembers a different kind of weeping. A different kind of clinging to Scully.

None of that seems real to Mulder now. He tries to access the specific sense memory of his grief for his mother, his joy in discovering a happy afterlife for his sister. Sitting in Scully’s car, watching the rain surround him, he knows that he used to have those emotions, but he can’t remember what they felt like.

He soothingly rubs his own arms, up and down, willing himself to come back, come back.

He thinks he can remember one thing. What it was like to cling to Scully in those moments. The play of her fingers in his hair.

*** He falls asleep. He’s woken up by a firm, insistent rapping on the driver’s side window. He opens his eyes and focuses on the pale face distorted there behind the glittering raindrops.

Scully, disheveled with wet hair, her forehead creased in a frown. She’s calling his name through the glass.

He unlocks the door and gestures for her to come around to the passenger side. Another dick move, considering it’s her car.

She opens the passenger door and maneuvers herself gracelessly into the seat. He forgets every time he sees her now that her abdomen is so large. That yes, she is really and truly knocked up.

For a moment she just sits there, breathing heavy, facing the dashboard, dripping water all over the interior of the car. Her head is bent, just slightly, and rain plops off the ends of her hair.

He expects her to be furious. It seems the fitting emotion. He knows that, from back when he had emotions.

“Mulder,” she says: voice low, not especially angry. “Before I say anything else, I just want you to know that I don’t have any expectations of you.”

“Expectations?”

“I don’t know what’s going through your mind,” Scully says. Her voice is level, but her eyes, staring straight ahead through the front windshield, are very wide and wet. “I have no idea. But if this is about the baby. I know you might not be ready for…” Her gaze slides to him. “Well, I want you to know I have no expectations.”

He realizes what she is saying. She thinks he is running off because he is afraid of her pregnancy, because the idea freaks him out.

“It’s not about your baby, Scully,” Mulder says. He looks over at her in time to register that his statement of clarification has somehow hurt her. She has the look of someone who has just been struck across the face. He can’t really make sense of it.

“Okay,” she says, barely more than a whisper. “Then what?”

“Scully, I’m sorry,” he says, sighing wearily. “I thought your partner could give you a ride to work. I thought I’d return your car by the end of the day.”

“My car,” she repeats stonily. “You think I was worried about my car.”

“How did you get here?” Mulder wonders. He glances around out the windows. “Did your partner drive you?”

“I borrowed a car,” Scully says with precision. “I had the Gunmen find the last cell phone tower your phone pinged. I put two and two together. I’ve been … I’ve been physically sick with worry, Mulder. It was only months ago that I … How am I supposed to know what you’re…”

She stops. Tears are silently streaming down her cheeks.

“I’ve been thinking that this behavior is PTSD, that it’s trauma,” she says in a fragile voice. “But am I wrong? Do you need to be free from me? Is this deeper than…?”

She stops again. “I’m sorry,” she says, pressing her sleeve to her eyes. “I’m sorry. Just give me a second.”

He watches her fight her tears, and to his surprise, some sensation pushes through. It hurts a little. It reminds him of the feeling he had when talking to the man by his wife’s grave in the rain this morning. “She’s my girl. She’ll always be my best girl.”

“I don’t want to be free from you,” Mulder announces abruptly, surprising even himself. His voice sounds too loud.

Scully looks at him incredulously and wipes her eyes again. “Okay,” she says.

She’s looking at him warily, expectantly, as though she assumes there will now be some explanation forthcoming.

“I never want to be free from you,” he adds, voice softer. He closes his mouth in confusion. He’s talking without thinking, and he tries to determine how those words feel now that he’s said them.

They feel right, he decides. Like a starting place.

“Then why did you leave in the middle of the night with my car?” she asks. “Why did you come to Raleigh? To the cemetery?”

He just shakes his head, blinking at the steering wheel.

“You’re not trying to … you’re not trying to go back, are you?”

Now Mulder turns abruptly to her and studies her face. Scully habitually tries not to show her fear, even when she is in fact very afraid, but he can see that her mouth is drawn now, her lips bloodless.

“I don’t think so,” Mulder manages. “No.” He reaches out and takes her hand in his, linking fingers. She is the only starting place that makes sense, the only spot in the world he is feeling anything at all. “I just needed to … see my family, I guess. Even if they’re dead. It was selfish, I know. But can you understand that at all?”

Her stare hasn’t wavered. “Your family isn’t dead, Mulder.”

It takes him a moment to understand what she means. Of course his family is dead—they both know his mother and father died; they both know what happened to Samantha.

Grandchild will take over, he remembers. On behalf of Mulder grandchild.

His eyes hold hers. He doesn’t dare blink.

“You were pregnant when I left,” he says. “Weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Her eyebrows flicker together briefly. “Of course I was.”

“Of course you were,” he repeats. His eyes drop to their linked hands again. “I, uh, thought so, but I didn’t…” He starts again. “I didn’t know for sure until the woman at the florist said the flowers on the graves were sent on behalf of the Mulder grandchild.” He shrugs helplessly. “I had to think about it. I thought, I don’t know any Mulder grandchild.”

A beat. “You don’t know one yet,” she says. Her tongue darts out over her lips. “I want you to.”

There is a faint rumbling thunder somewhere outside.

“Yeah. I … want that, too,” he says. He doesn’t know how to think of himself as someone with children. He can’t help but look at her rounded belly, thinking of how disorienting and strange it is. That someone else related to him is under there, growing under all the protective layers of Scully.

Mulder swallows. “Paying for those flowers. For my family. It was really … nice of you, Scully.”

“Nice?”

“Yeah,” he says, puzzled by her sharp tone.

She sucks her teeth in frustration. “No, it wasn’t,” she says. “It wasn’t nice. When I called to arrange it with the florist, I was really angry with you, actually.”

“You were…?”

“Angry you’d left me to go to Oregon, angry you left period, angry you’d been hiding this fucking disease from me, angry you’d had this flower arrangement and this gravestone in Raleigh and I knew nothing about it.”

“Well, you arranged flowers for my whole family anyway,” Mulder says. “I’m grateful.”

Scully places both hands over her face, trying to compose herself. She removes her hands and looks at him. “I didn’t arrange them for your family,” she says. “I arranged them for mine. For the baby’s.”

So sad to lose her husband when she’s expecting a baby.

“Okay,” he says hesitantly. “Yeah.”

“At your funeral,” Scully continues, “I looked down, you in your family plot … and I said to Skinner, ‘He was the last.’”

Mulder’s forehead creases. It’s stupid, but he hadn’t completely visualized that Scully must have attended his funeral. Of course she did. Imagining the reality of that is another little painful skewer.

“Do you know what Skinner said?” she asks. “He said, ‘I don’t think Mulder was the last.’”

“Because he knew about the baby?” he guesses.

“No, Mulder,” she says. “Not because of the baby.”

Not because of the baby. He lets that sink in.

He tries to think about how to explain to her what’s happening with him. He knows he should, but his capacity for language is starting to fail him.

“For days after that,” she says, “I didn’t feel anything at all. For …weeks. Sometimes I wondered if I was dead, too. If this was what hell was like.”

That’s it, he thinks, amazed. That’s exactly it.

“What did you do?” Mulder whispers. “What helped you?”

“I guess I kept thinking about the baby and me being the last,” she says, her eyes widening. She leans towards him a little, as though sharing a secret. “Truthfully though? What really helped?”

He’s surprised to realize there are tears in his eyes, too. He nods.

“You came back.”

His mouth forms into a tiny smile then, and he sees her reflect his smile back. And although their smiles are fleeting, they’re a reminder of another feeling, something else he’d forgotten.

“Let’s go home, Mulder,” she says roughly. “I’ll buy you a pizza.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds like a plan.”

“You want me to drive?”

“What about the car you drove here? Don’t you need to drive it back?”

“We’ll worry about it later. The Gunmen will help us. Or Doggett. Let’s just go home.”

He slowly nods his agreement. He’s not sure what she means by home—his or hers, together or singly—but he’s ready to do whatever she wants at this point. He hands her the keys, preparing to make the jog in the rain around to the passenger side. She’s the one with the valid driver’s license, and it’s her car.

But Scully doesn’t take the keys. She’s been distracted by seeing something in the back seat. She points. “Mulder, what in the world…?”

“Oh,” he says. He’d forgotten. It seems strange now, difficult to explain. “I picked those up for you.”

“Picked them up? Where?” Scully reaches back and lifts a bundle of damp and slightly-muddy flowers: pink tulips, baby’s breath. As if by instinct, she raises a tulip to her nose and sniffs it experimentally.

“Off my grave, actually,” Mulder says.

Other women might have recoiled, but Scully only raises a curious eyebrow. “These are from your grave?”

“Yeah,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “I figured they were mine, so it’s not really stealing.”

Scully looks at him in disbelief, still holding the single tulip against her cheek.

“And you paid for them, after all,” he adds. He’s hit with a sudden rapid-fire burst of feeling, emotions he remembers all too well: guilt. Regret. Self-blame. “I would have gotten you a better flower arrangement, to say I’m sorry. But … I don’t have my wallet anymore.”

Wide blue eyes stare back at him. Then, to his surprise, she bursts into dark laughter.

“We should get you access to your money again,” she says weakly, wiping her eyes. “And a license, a car. Since you’re officially living.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Probably so.”

“Not today.”

“No, I was promised a pizza.”

He’s about to open the door to switch places again when she grabs his sleeve.

Surprised, he waits as she leans over to touch his face. He’s taken aback. She hasn’t touched him much since the hospital.

Her expression is intent and serious, and she lets her fingers run over the stubbly contours of his cheeks and jaw, which have so recently been cratered by the scars of death. Her fingers wind up stroking his hair gently, gently.

She doesn’t say a word, but her lip begins to tremble.

Mulder just remains still, letting her do what she needs to. It’s probably the least he can do. Besides, he can’t deny it. Something in her touch is nudging him closer, bringing to life another emotion.

Before they drive away, he notices she turns around from the driver’s seat to arrange the bedraggled bouquet in the back seat possessively. And Mulder’s heart continues its slow descent back to earth.

#the x files #x files fanfic #xfiles fanfic #deadalive #three words #season 8

[aballadforbarbatos]

a gift for satan, the master tutor

btw this one is like. 80 points long so gl with that. i had fun with it though! hopefully you do too ^.^

“listen. satan. let’s go out.”

his brain totally stops at that. nobody else seems to notice- did you whisper it? he can’t quite remember! he needs to reboot his brain, hold on a second MC

“hellooo? satan? i asked if you wanted to go out with me to town? on a shopping trip?”

so not a date then. WELL NO WONDER NOBODY LOOKED OVER AT THEM BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T ASKING IN THE FIRST PLACE

there also wasn’t a single question there, so he can’t help but suspect you were trying to tease him with the possibility of reciprocated love…

you smile at him. he thinks about saying no in retaliation. but then… what if asmo goes with you instead… or mammon… can he really risk that? no.

great day in town too btw. nice and warm and peaceful. you say something about how lucifer would give you his credit card if you got 100% on all your exams, and you did! satan thinks about how lucifer is such a goddamn sap when it comes to you. grow a backbone, loser

“so where are we going?”

“clothes shopping!”

ugh. he hates clothes shopping. it’s so boring, and he has enough in his wardrobe. so do you actually, why are you choosing to go CLOTHES shopping with lucifer’s credit card?? you already have enough?!

he voices this. but nicely. you shake your head and laugh.

“no, silly! we are going clothes shopping for YOU.”

we what now

“no offence, and i mean this with my whole heart, but your clothes are so incredibly ugly. it always looks like you got dressed in the dark. this belt looks like the one i had when i was 11.”

ok, rude

“it’s a good thing you’re a demon bc your closet is a sin in itself”

:( he thinks it looks nice!

“tbh i am embarrassed to be out with you looking like that, but for today it's fine because it’s for the greater good”

apparently it does not look as nice as he originally thought. ok

well, it’s lucifer’s credit card, and he gets to spend the day with you, so it COULD be worse

majolish is up first

he does a lot of standing around while you play around with clothes

“it’s kinda hard to see how this would look on you because your jacket is so goddamn ugly. can you take off your shirt for a second”

TOTALLY misses the flirtatious tone in that sentence and is just offended instead

then it clicks what you asked him. but he still doesn’t get what you were talking about and just gets nervous

“mc we are in public?????????”

you give him a Look.

he doesn’t understand why (he will hours later) (he will burst into your room while there’s another brother in there and say “i’ll take my shirt off for you mc!” and pull it off and the brother will punch him in the stomach. i’m thinking of mammon when i write this)

you find a sales attendant

“hey so i’m gonna burn all his current clothes because they’re awful”

you gesture at his outfit

YOU’RE GOING TO BURN ALL HIS CLOTHES??

WHY IS THE ATTENDANT NODDING LIKE SHE UNDERSTANDS??

“the jacket is distracting me because it’s ugly. can you help me out here?”

“have you tried taking it off?”

“i asked but he whined”

YOU DIDN’T ASK DON’T LIE AND DON’T LIE ABOUT HIM?

the attendant purses her lips but keeps her mouth shut. probably because he’s the avatar of wrath

“it’s so terrible because when you look at his face he’s hot, but then you look at the rest of his outfit and realise you value your dignity more. imagine how much of a heartthrob he could be if he didn’t permanently look like he was getting dressed in the dark!”

mc. what the fuck? HE’S NEVER HEARD SUCH A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT

“i see. this could cost a lot of money…”

“it’s okay. we have his dad’s credit card.”

he’s going to strangle you. he starts thinking about how to kill you. au revoir mc. it is the end of your life. you will not get a gravestone.

then he remembers how much he’ll miss you. FUCK.

satan settles for a very strong glare. scowl and everything

“um. what size is he?”

“great question. satan take off your shirt so we can find out”

he does not. he still doesn’t get it. he does know his size though so he lets the demon know and then she does her thing.

then it’s trying on clothes. DAMN he hates this. this is terrible and SO BORING. how tf does asmo do it

it takes forever too :(

the demon whispers in your ear.

“hey satan have you tried wearing pants that fit you so we don’t have to suffer through the ugly belts you choose”

at least asmo isn’t here with you???

he finishes shopping with you at SEVEN O’CLOCK. HE SPENT NINE HOURS SUFFERING THROUGH THIS

you even asked if he could wear one of his new outfits out of the store and fold up the other one, and that’s how he ended up wearing something more “stylish”

you pay for them to deliver his new clothes to the house of lamentation via truck because you decide you can’t be bothered carrying the boxes.

not that it would be possible there’s like 20 there and they’re NOT small

“i feel like we’ve hit the spending limit on lucifer’s card even though it doesn’t have a limit”

honestly he feels like that too. but he’s a lot less remorseful about it than you apparently are

you grab his hand and squeeze it and look at him with such a lovely warm smile that it makes this whole day worth it.

you really wipe away all his suffering with a smile. this is really bad for him, satan is in for a whole world of trouble with you

you squeeze his hand

augh he’s so in love with you this is terrible. but so GOOD at the same time it’s a complicated thing don’t ask him to explain it

“now we get to go home and have fun!”

have fun…?

OH RIGHT YOU’RE GOING TO BURN ALL HIS CLOTHES HE TOTALLY FORGOT

“we don’t have to go that far”

“no we do. we can get belphie and asmo in on it too!”

so that’s how he’s spending his saturday night. burning all his clothes.

asmo says this is a celebration and brings music

belphie brings gasoline

asmo says that it’s fabric so there’s no need for gasoline

belphie pours more on the clothes like he’s making a point. satan has no idea what the point is

you bring out the rest of his clothes and tell him to kiss them goodbye

“can i at least keep the jacket?”

loud sigh from you! whY??

“ok sure whatever. now lets light these things on fire!”

asmo and you are having a great time. belphie is watching them all go up in flames from his spot on the ground

lucifer comes out and yells at you both but you’re too busy dancing in front of the fire to pay attention

“dance with me?”

satan feels a smile tug at his lips as he takes your hand.

he’s in love with you.

he’s so in love with you.

his heart will beat for you forever, taken in by your evil doings and gentle ways.

and tonight he’ll dance with you until the flames subside and you tell him to stop.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me swd #obey me satan #obey me mc #obey me satan x reader #kind of #obey me crack #do these count. as headcanons. i'll put them up anyway and then someone can complain if not #obey me headcanons #majolish #fashion disaster catboy kid #the son. satan #bullying #satan headcanons

[anonymousewrites]

A Study of the Heart and Brain (Book 3) Chapter Seventeen

Father Figure! Sherlock Holmes x Teen! Reader

Chapter Seventeen: Honest Confrontations

Summary: Sherlock and (Y/N) organize a talk with Mary.

            Sherlock and (Y/N) had spent all of their genius energy in laying their…well, not trap but something of the sort. They had uncovered all they could about the real Mary Watson, and now it was time to talk to her face-to-face. The father and child had made their decisions about her. Now it was time to see how she acted.

            Sherlock peered out of their hiding place and lifted their phone. His network had just handed Mary the burner phone. He looked at (Y/N).

            They nodded. They knew it was time.

            Sherlock dialed the number, and Mary lifted the phone to her ear.

            “Where are you two?” she said instantly, not missing a beat.

            “Can’t you see us?” said Sherlock.

            “Well, what am I looking for?” asked Mary, turning around.

            “The lie—the lie in Leinster Gardens—hidden in plain sight,” said (Y/N). “No one notices. People live here their whole lives and never spot it, but if you are what we think you are, it’ll take you less than a minute.”

            “The houses, Mary, look at the houses,” said Sherlock as Mary peered around herself.

            “How did you two know I’d come here?” she asked.

            “We knew you’d talk to people no one else would both with,” said Sherlock.

            “I thought I was being clever,” said Mary.

            “You were. We just made sure you had the clues to be,” said (Y/N).

            Mary paused as she faced a house. She had found it.

            “Thirty seconds,” said (Y/N).

            “What am I looking at?” she said as she gazed at it.

            “No doorknobs, no letter box, painted windows. Twenty-three and twenty-four Leinster Gardens…the empty houses,” said Sherlock.

            “They were demolished years ago to make way for the London Underground. They acted as a vent for old steam trains. Only the very front of the house remains. It’s just a façade,” said (Y/N). “Does it remind you of anything? Masks and facades?”

            Sherlock pressed a button, and a projector hidden on the other side of the street switched on. A picture of John and Mary’s wedding illuminated the facades of the houses. Mary’s eyes widened slightly as she looked.

            “Sorry. I can’t resist a touch of drama,” said Sherlock into the phone.

            “Come on in,” said (Y/N).

            “It’s a little cramped,” warned Sherlock.

            “Do you own this place?” said Mary as she headed towards the door.

            “I won it in a card game with the Clarance House Cannibal. Nearly cost me my kidneys, but fortunately, I had a straight flush,” said Sherlock. “Quite the gambler, that woman.”

            Mary pushed open the door and stepped inside the empty houses. All that remained was a single, long corridor. It was dark and shadowy except for a bright beam of light shining into her eyes. She blinked, trying to make out a shape inside it. All she could spy was silhouettes, nothing concrete.

            “What do you two want?” said Mary.

            “Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972,” said (Y/N). “Her gravestone sits in Chiswick Cemetery.”

            “Five years ago, you acquired her name and date of birth and, thereafter, her identity,” said Sherlock. “That’s why you don’t have ‘friends’ from before that date.”

            Mary took slow, careful steps down the hallway.

            “It’s an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can recognize a skip code on sight,” said Sherlock.

            “And have extraordinarily retentive memories,” added (Y/N).

            “You two were very slow,” said Mary.

            “How good a shot are you?” asked Sherlock.

            Mary reached into her coat, pulled out a pistol, and aimed at the silhouettes. “How badly do you two want to find out?” she remarked coolly.

            “If we die here, our bodies will be found in a building with your face projected on the front of it. Even Scotland Yard could get somewhere with that,” said Sherlock.

            And if I was right about where she was aiming on Sherlock to begin with…then she doesn’t want to kill us, thought (Y/N). But not wanting to and being unable to are two different things.

            “Show us how good you are,” said (Y/N).

            Mary reached into her bag and pulled out a fifty pence coin. She flicked it into the air and fired upwards. It clattered to the ground.

            “May we see?” said Sherlock, stepping out behind Mary.

            She turned to face him and glanced at (Y/N), partly obscured by a doorway. “They’re dummies, I suppose. It was a fairly obvious trick.” She chuckled quietly and crossed to where the coin had fallen. She slid it with her foot to Sherlock and (Y/N).

            Sherlock crouched and picked it up since (Y/N)’s injury meant they should stay upright. He held it up to reveal the hole in it, perfect and precise.

            “You’re an excellent shot.” (Y/N) looked at Mary. “But when you aimed at my dad, at a distance of six feet, you wouldn’t have made a kill shot. You didn’t even make a kill shot in the split second it took when I pushed my dad out of the way.”

            “Enough to hospitalize. Not enough to kill. That wasn’t a miss,” said Sherlock. “It was surgery.”

            Mary lowered her eyes.

            “We’ll take the case,” said (Y/N).

            Mary looked up again. “What case?” she asked, confused.

            “Yours,” said (Y/N).

            “Why didn’t you come to us in the first place?” questioned Sherlock, a bit frustrated.

            “Because John can’t ever know that I lied to him,” said Mary. “It would break him, and I would lose him forever—and Sherlock, (Y/N), I will never let that happen.” Sherlock and (Y/N) glanced at each other and turned their backs on Mary. “Please…understand,” she said, stepping towards them. “There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.”

            (Y/N) faced her again. “Sorry.” Mary frowned. “The trick wasn’t that obvious.” They flicked a switch on the fuse box.

            The harsh beam of light shut off. One dummy was revealed at the end of the hall. John sat next to it. Mary gasped. John stood and straightened his collar.

            “Talk,” said (Y/N). The pair looked at them. “Sort it out. Now.”

            They turned away and walked out of the house with Sherlock beside them. The moment they stepped to the street, (Y/N) groaned and grabbed the back of a bench. Their other hand went to their chest. The pain had returned.

            “(Y/N)?” Sherlock supported them. “You need to—”

            “I’m fine. Just an ache.” (Y/N) forced themself to stand up. They needed to see this through, first. “Let’s just get back to Baker Street.”

            Sherlock gazed at them worriedly and squeezed their shoulder. “Are you sure?” He could put his own health above a gaze, but he wouldn’t sacrifice theirs.

            “I want to finish this,” said (Y/N).

            Sherlock looked at them. They truly had grown so strong.

l

            Sherlock, (Y/N), John, and Mary—all in awkward silence since John and Mary hadn’t quite found the words to speak yet—walked into 221 Baker Street.

            “Oh, John, Mary! How wonderful,” said Mrs. Hudson, smiling widely. She frowned as she saw the tense expressions on their faces and (Y/N)’s sickly paleness. “What’s going on?”

            “Bloody good question,” muttered John.

            “The Watsons are about to have a domestic,” said Sherlock.

            “I hope they do it quickly,” said (Y/N) as pain spread through their chest as they breathed.

            “I have a better question,” said John angrily. “Is everyone I’ve ever met a psychopath?!”

            “Yes,” said Sherlock and (Y/N), and Mary nodded.

            “Good, we’ve settled that,” said Sherlock. “Anyway, we—”

            “Shut up!” shouted John. “And stay shut up, the both of you, because this is not funny. Not this time.”

            (Y/N) nodded. They knew John was feeling confused and betrayed. They imagined it was similar to how they felt when Sherlock revealed himself to be alive. I believe this is “empathy.” That’s unusual…I must be going delirious.

            John turned on Mary. “You. What have I ever done, hm? My whole life…to deserve you?” The normally kind words turned sickly, poisoned by lies.

            “Everything,” said Sherlock.

            “Sherlock, I’ve told you to shut up,” snapped John.

            “He’s being serious,” said (Y/N), furrowing their brow. The need to breath was battling with the ache in their chest. “Everything you’ve done brought you here.” Everyone looked at them, and John furrowed his brow. “You were the man who went to war. You were the man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. One of your best friends is a sociopath who solves crimes to keep from getting bored. You’re the uncle to a teenager whose biological father is a psychopath and is a sociopath themself. Our landlady used to run a drug cartel.”

            (Y/N) sighed and cocked their head. “Isn’t it obvious that you’re addicted to a certain lifestyle? You’re abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people, so it’s not surprising that the woman you’ve fallen in love with conforms to that pattern.”

            John’s gaze went to Mary. He let out a shaky breath. “But she wasn’t supposed to be like that. Why is she like that?” His voice broke on the words.

            “You chose her,” said (Y/N) quietly.

            John let out a shout and kicked a chair. “Why is everything my fault?!”

            “Oh, the neighbors!” cried Mrs. Hudson, rushing out to the door to do damage control.

            “John, listen. Answer me,” said Sherlock. “Who is she?”

            “My lying wife?” said John, still staring at Mary. He was caught between sadness and anger.

            “No. Who is she?” repeated Sherlock.

            “The woman who’s carrying my child who has lied to me since the day I met her?” said John.

            “No. Not in this flat, not in this room. Right here, right now. Who is she?” said Sherlock.

            John sniffed and looked down. He squared his shoulders. “Okay. Your way. Always your way.” He pulled out a dining room chair to face the couch, armchair, and his chair. It had returned oh-so-suddenly to Baker Street. “Sit.”

            Mary looked at John. “Why?”

            “Because that’s where they sit—the people who come in here with their stories,” said John. “Th-the clients. That’s all you are now, Mary. You’re a client.” He was dealing with this as best he could. “This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.” He sniffled, stifled any weaknesses, and stiffly sat down.

            Sherlock and (Y/N) exchanged a glance before walking to the living room and sitting down in their spots. Mary watched them before taking her own place across from them. She placed her purse down, adjusted her outfit, and looked at John. He couldn’t help but look back. Mary removed a flash drive from her bag and placed it on the side table of his chair. She withdrew her hand quickly. Everyone sat in silence as she moved.

            “A.G.R.A,” said (Y/N), reading the label on the drive. “What is it?”

            “My initials,” said Mary, deciding to be truthful. Lies wouldn’t keep John. “Everything about who I was is on there. If you love me, don’t read it in front of me.”

            “Why?” said John.

            “Because you won’t love me when you’ve finished, and I don’t want that to happen,” said Mary, fighting back her tears. She cleared her throat fruitlessly and looked at (Y/N) and Sherlock. “How much d’you know?”

            “By your skill set, you are, or were, an intelligence agent,” said Sherlock. “Your accent is currently English, but we suspect you’re not. You’re on the run from something; you’ve used your skill to disappear.”

            “Magnussen knows your secret. That’s why you were going to kill him, and you befriended Janine to get close to him,” said (Y/N).

            Mary nodded. “The stuff Magnussen has on me…I would go to prison for the rest of my life.”

            “So you were just gonna kill him,” said John.

            “People like Magnussen should be killed. That’s why there are people like me,” said Mary.

            “Perfect! So that’s what you were: an assassin!” said John in disbelief. “How could I not see that?”

            “You did see that…and you married me,” said Mary, gazing at him softly. “Because they are right. It’s what you like.”

            “So, Mary, any documents that Magnussen has concerning you, you want…extracted and returned,” said Sherlock.

            “Why would you help me?” said Mary.

            “Because (Y/N) forgives you,” said Sherlock.

            Mary scoffed.

            “And you phoned the ambulance,” said Sherlock. “The ambulance that saved their life.”

            “Sherlock phoned the ambulance,” said John.

            “I did,” said Sherlock. “But mine wouldn’t get there in time. Mary’s did.”

            “So, John, Magnussen is all that matters now,” said (Y/N), moving to lay down on the couch. “You can trust Mary. She saved my life.”

            “She shot you,” said John.

            “Mixed messages,” said (Y/N), sighing and closing their eyes. “Are we all on the same page?”

            “I believe so,” said Sherlock.

            “Good, because I lied about just having an ache,” said (Y/N). “I’m bleeding internally.”

            Sherlock jumped up, and John let out a cry.

            “Someone should call an ambulance,” said (Y/N), promptly fainting.

Taglist:

@stilesstilinskiforlife-blog

@im-making-an-effort

@ilse235

@schrodingers-intelligence

@awsedrftgyhujikol

@lxserthxngzzz

@forever1313

@mentallyunstablemanlover

#a study of the heart and brain #x reader #gn reader #nb reader #x gn reader #x nb reader #x teen!reader #x teen reader #teen reader #teen!reader #sherlock x reader #sherlock fanfic #sherlock bbc #sherlock & co #bbc sherlock #sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes x reader #parentlock #sherlock x teen!reader #sherlock x teen reader #father figure #found family #found family trope #platonic #platonic x reader

[darhknight]

X-Men 97 Reaction

Reacting to Episode 7. Bright Eyes

• WARNING •

Spoliers under the cut. Do not read unless you seen the episode or don't care about spoilers. I warned you.

The gravestone and speech from Nightcrawler broke my heart

"He say it was just in the cards" my heartstrings

Every gambler has a tell. Modesty was Gambit's.

Not Jubliee crying. Someone give her a hug

Dad Wolverine to the rescue

Jubliee is right tho. Where the crap is Rogue?

Found her

Love how Nightcrawler knew Rogue was f*cking stuff up. Like that's a good brother.

HULK NAME DROP

General Ross? Sir she might kill you be nice

CAP'S SHIELD. CAP'S SHIELD

STEVEN ROGERS BOIIIIIIIS

Love how Rogue was like five seconds from fighting Steve and Steve was like 'nah let me just show you what I found and maybe we can work together once I get the ok.'

she said no

then she proceeded to throw his shield into the mountains somewhere

Big Boss Energy

A resort ... mmm Kay. Who's paying his bill guys?

Kick his butt. Kick his butt. Kick his butt

Annnnnd we are back to the other X-men

Is that BEAST'S GIRLFRIEND THE LOVELY CARLY OR CARY I CANT SPELL HER NAME THE REPORTER LADY

Love how the same mutants show up everytime in the background

Not the statue heads of Magneto and Charles 😢

Jubliee convincing Reberto to tell his parents. I'm so proud of him. 👏

BEAST IS ANGRY 😡

A little Jean and Scott moment. Good for them they need it.

Why am I not surprised EMMA FROST is the first survivor they find

Also sorry Scott. We know you love Jean and Madelyn. (That's not how her names spelt my bad)

Back to Rogue

Nightcrawler being a good brother

Him KNOWING ABOUT HER AND MAGNETO

No she's crying.

Their all there for her. I'm so happy

IS THAT BASTION?!

EVIL NASTY MAN. EVIL NASTY MAN

HE Killed Him. He killed Gyrich.

I skipped over Jubliee and Roberto. My bad.

Love how his mom knew

Shes like honey if your weren't a mutant I be concerned

'It was your secret to tell.'

'Spriters anyone?' Like ma'am. You just made a reference to him maybe not seeing Jubliee anymore and your offering drinks?

Back to the other X-men

Forgot to mention how much I enjoyed watching Trask tell them the truth

Also Morph being like 'He created the master mold let's like not trust him.' Aka he's evillll. 😈

Sleeping GAS

(Notice as I was typing this that I have the scenes backwards. Whoops)

Is it me or do those robots kinda look like ultron?

Trask really be losing his mind right now. I actually feel bad for him.

Love how Trask is ratting out Sinister tho

Like he took one look at what Sinsiter did and went NOPE. Gonna go rat him out to the group of mutants I have been trying to kill since season one of the original show.

ROGUE DROPPING HIM

GIRRRRRRRL

SHE DEADLY

'Is this what we are now?' A great question Morph. The answer is ... complicated.

HUMAN SENTINEL!!

Dude he knocked Rogue OUT

Love the little Nightcrawler saving Rogue moment. Thank you creators for my fill of sweet siblings.

Morph getting hurt and Wolverine yelling his name

I ship it

You GET YOUR HAND OFF SCOTT

Never in my life have I liked Cyclops but this show has changed me

SO GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SON

CABLE. CABLE. CABLE.

Jean reading his mind to figure it out

'Let's skip the reunion dad.' I'm dying

My son is meeting his son guys. Their meeting!

BASTION IS BACK

EVIL HUMAN SENTINEL CYBORG.

NASTY MAN

Oh Sinister is here too I guess.

rip the human race. Bastion gonna turn them all into sentinels. bet.

THEY KNOW ABOUT XAVIER

OH NO

XAVIER YOU DONE MESSED UP

That Song. I don't know if I hate it or love it.

MAGNETO!

ERIK MAGNUS LESNHARR

MY HUSBAND?!

BASTION YOU GET YOUR NASTY HANDS OFF MY MAGNETIC HUSBAND

I don't care if he has facial hair you don't touch him

Also love how Magneto has the mutant collar AND tape over his mouth

Plus cuffs around his hands sticking him to the chair

Like I understand the collar and the chair but like the tape?

This man is the master of magnetism not screaming really loud

Also you be in the middle of nowhere

Who's gonna hear him?

But once again

GET YOUR HANDS AND THAT BLADE AWAY FROM MY HUSBAND YOU D*CK

'Just obey. Just listen. You were made for this.'

Leave Erik alone.

• Maybe a few unfavorable opinions •

Erik is a holocaust victim. And jewish/german. Was treated like crap and Bastion is out here telling him that he was made to obey to be Bastion's plaything?

That he was made to be a Slave

cause I don't know if you all got that vibe from that scene but I definitely did

Especially if you know ANYTHING about Bastion

The guy makes Red Skull look sane

Bro I hope Rogue finds you and tears you a new one

Or Charles.

Or any of the X-men for that matter

Actually in my honest opinion it probably be Wolverine. Like I'm gonna call it right now. If Charles doesn't find Magento telepathically. Five bucks says somehow Wolverine does.

Or Bastion turns Magento into a sentinel

Actually don't do that

Please

Leave my somewhat questionable but trying his best to play nice with humans master of magnetism husband alone.

He deserves better

They all do

Expect Sinister.

He can die in a ditch for all I care

And Bastion ... sadly

For plot reasons we gotta sacrifice Bastion

Sorry bud

Gonna say also that Cable might have to go back in time cause I don't feel like they are going to keep Gambit dead.

But that's just me.

Thanks for reading my ranting

#x men 97 #x men #magneto #wolverine #gambit #rogue #jean grey #scott summers #cable #beast #jubliee #charles xavier #mister sinister #bastion #spoliers #just a rant #marvel #Why we can't have nice things #I went for a bit #My bad but this episode gave me chills #Not as much as episode 5 did tho. I cried watching that one

[not-so-mundane-after-all]

Dick & Rachel and the Invisible String theory (part 3)

Let's continue with season 2! (You'll find part 1 and part 2 here) Good news is, I fixed the problem of the image limit (silly me didn't know I can put up to 30 images in a post on my laptop). Also good news — season 2 has so many clues that I had to give ONE ENTIRE EPISODE a separate post!

Season 2 is interesting when it comes to the Invisible String because it all seems to be very chaotic and all over the place, which is kind of reflecting the state of both of Dick and Rachel's minds this season. Dick, quite literally haunted by his past, is fighting hallucinations of Bruce Wayne, while Rachel is trying and failing to rein in her newly upgraded powers and struggling with her sense of identity. Their problems are pulling them in different directions, making them deal with stuff separately rather than together. The String becomes frayed and loses some of its integrity. Until, finally having enough of the bullshit, it takes the matters into its own hands (ropes?), so to speak.

And in episode 2x11 "E.L._.O.", sends Rachel a dream.

It's a blaring alarm. A wailing siren. Code Red, it screams, he's doing something really really stupid and it's going to get him killed. It urges her to go, now, before it's too late.

But first a little reminder how we got there.

Dick revealed the truth about what really happened to Jericho. Mad that he kept it a secret and blaming him, everyone (including Rachel) leaves him and goes their separate ways — except for Kory, who leaves to deal with her own stuff but promises to be back, and Gar who ends up the only one staying at the Tower. Dick leaves as well, packs a bag and goes to visit Jericho's mother. After a confrontation with her and Slade, he heads for the airport, a plan to go somewhere remote and away from everyone on his mind. But once he's there, he experiences something like a psychotic breakdown, gets himself detained and sent to prison, being convinced that this is what he deserves for all his fuck ups and mistakes.

Rachel originally goes with Donna but ends up ditching her as well and finds her way to a homeless shelter, where she meets a girl named Dani. Dani invites Rachel to an abandoned house where she and her friends have their place, and tells her she can stay with them. This is where Rachel has the nightmare.

It's all very symbolic this time. A cemetery, a funeral, a gravestone with Dick's name on it. Rachel's reaction to it is heartbreaking to watch. Then Dick appears behind her, dressed in a suit and tie as if attending his own funeral, and begs her not to give up. On him? On Titans? Rachel grabs his hand to look into his mind and find out what's going on but all she sees is some place called Elko diner in the middle of nowhere, which at the time doesn't make much sense. She wants to ask, but a sword is driven right through Dick's chest, Slade standing behind him, and she watches in horror as Dick chokes on his own blood and dies. She wakes up screaming, tires to call him, but his voicemail box is full.

When she doesn't leave immediately, the String tugs at her again. Dani gives her a reading from Tarot cards and the reading is terrifyingly accurate:

"Your past. The Tower. Upheaval. It leads to a period of darkness." — fighting amongst the team, Titans breaking apart.

"Your present. The Moon. The realm of dreams. Your unconscious knows the way back to the light. You have to trust your intuition. It will guide you to your purpose." — THE REALM OF DREAMS!!! GUIDE YOU!!!! TO YOUR PURPOSE!!!! Do I even have to explain?!

"Your future. The hanged man. Brutality is coming your way. You must prepare to make a great sacrifice or... suffer a great loss." — explains the meaning of the vision and predicts the future. The hanged man is Dick, his life is in danger. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Rachel gets another scary vision:

Something insane hit me while I was rewatching this scene and making these gifs. Something that made my jaw drop to the floor.

Dani could be the personification of the Invisible String.

She's only in this one episode, we never see her again. Rachel doesn't get the vision of Dick's death until she's at her place. Her only purpose seems to be to have this scene with Rachel, read her from the cards and help her understand this dream. She's literally guiding Rachel on the right path, a path that will take her back to Dick.

Rachel leaves right after that and heads for the bus station. This is another example of the String working in mysterious ways, because it's a direct callback to the moment from the pilot where Rachel decides to go to Detroit. This time it's a little more intentional — Rachel picks Elko because she recognized the name of the diner from her dream — but the two scenes are done nearly shot for shot to remind us that neither of the instances is coincidental. Just like the previous season, the String is leading her to Dick.

On the bus she has another dream. She's in the same cemetery, sees Dick standing over his own grave. Deathstroke emerges from behind the trees with his sword in hand and Rachel tries to warn Dick but she's unable to move and he can't hear her. Deathstroke kills him again and Rachel jerks awake just when she's about to miss her stop.

Meanwhile, weird things start happening with some of the others. Donna gets a strange call from Rachel, but the static cuts off her voice. Kory, who ended up in Vegas, sees a commercial of the Elko diner on TV. Dawn hears Rachel's voice on the radio as she's driving. All three get the same message: get to the Elko diner.

When they get there, though, Rachel is actually shocked to see them all there and claims she didn't do anything. Then none other than Bruce Wayne walks in and has a nice little chat with them. (Btw Bruce is preaching in this scene. Amen to these words!)

He gives a speech about putting the gang back together despite all the hurt that broke them apart, then simply leaves. Kory, Donna and Dawn aren't too convinced, the latter two deciding to leave. But before they do, a small TV in the back of the empty diner turns itself on and shows news footage informing that Dick is in a nearby prison and apparently helped two men escape. Convenient, right?

All of this is so weird, isn't it? So random. You watch it and immediately claim it "shitty writing" because the way these events happen is so goddamn ridiculous. It feels like it doesn't make much sense.

Or does it?

Because it's not really Bruce. Because in the season finale, when Kory thanks Bruce for coming and his advice, Bruce tells her he doesn't know what she's talking about because he was never there.

But if it wasn't Bruce, who or what was it?

At this point, Dick is having hallucinations all the time. While locked in solitary confinement, he has no one but his mind's projection of his adoptive father for company. They talk, they argue, even fight. Bruce has been appearing to him throughout the entire season, most of the time uninvited (as hallucinations do) and Dick couldn't get rid of him. But the one time when Dick actually does want Bruce to appear, he doesn't.

Bruce doesn't show up, but a large bird appears in a window of the cell and catches Dick's attention.

The only way I can describe Dick's face when he sees it is relief. Man nearly looks like he could cry. He immediately jumps to his feet, eyes never leaving the bird, and softly calls to it, but the bird flies away and doesn't come back even when Dick is shouting after it. Left alone again, Dick hangs his head and drops back to the floor, where he curls, crushed and defeated, as if the last glimmer of hope he had just died.

Bruce comes back shortly after that, and at the question "Where did you go?" he ominously replies that Dick needed to rest, and then changes the topic.

Okay but why pay attention to some bird? It's just a random bird, right? Wrong.

It's Rachel. Her "soul self" as she calls it in season 4. Still linked to Dick's subconscious even after leaving the dream, she "borrowed" Bruce's projection to bring him to the diner and sent the Raven as a replacement. Even Kory and Dawn came to a similar conclusion in the finale:

What's more, Dick must have recognized her in the bird. Otherwise, why would the bird catch his attention? Why would it cause such a range of emotions on his face? The bird doesn't stay for long, it flies away almost immediately, but I'd say this way Rachel now knows where to look. The bird comes back, the tv turns on and now they have the location.

One extra clue that proves it is that the scene in the cell happens right after the scene at the diner, which implies that the two moments might be happening at the same time.

How did Rachel do all of that? Found her way to some random diner in Nevada, brought the girls and Bruce together, sent out a projection of herself to Dick and did it all unconsciously ? Is it her powers or is it the String pulling her forward? Or both? It could be her instinct, her fear, her helplessness and desperation because she's just a kid and she's alone, and she just had a premonition of Dick's death. There's not a lot of time and she needs help. Outside of the diner, she's begging Donna and Dawn to stay, tears shine in her eyes and her breath hitches while she explains to them how she saw Dick die, but ultimately only Kory stays by her side. She gets some of the help but not all, and Dick eventually finds them before they get to find him, but all these weird things didn't stop happening until the threat of Dick dying went away.

As for Dick's end of the String, it kind of only makes a cameo. In his last hallucination, after Dick and Bruce exchange a few kicks and blows, Dick finds himself standing in front of several screens showing some important, pivotal moments from his life, moments that shaped him into who he is. There's many different things here: Robin's violence, his parents' killer's death, cutting Bruce's tracker from his arm, Jason falling from a building — and two memories of Rachel. The first meeting in Detroit and the moment she appeared in Trigon's dreamscape to save him (which also proves something I'll be talking about in season 3, so remember that detail).

And honestly, I can't think of an explanation to this other than the String's mere presence. It doesn't do anything — the scene's purpose is for Dick to figure out a clue left by Jericho. But I find the choice of picking not one but two important memories of her for this scene a really interesting and thought-provoking detail. Especially that the way this entire section is constructed draws your attention to it. We hear Rachel saying "It's you, you're the boy from the circus" in the background and her voice doesn't drown in the cacophony of others from different memories, but it's distinct, standing out from the rest — we as the audience are meant to hear it and recognize it. All the memories on the screens change, some appear on different screens at different times, but everything, from the camera angle and blocking, to editing and effects, made sure these two memories were seen at the same time. They're not the focus of the scene of course but you can tell there's been a lot of thought put into making sure they end up where they ended up.

You know, it's funny how I used to not take this episode too seriously — like most of the fandom — because of all the stuff at the diner and how there's seemingly no explanation to it and it feels so random. Because of how stupid some of the characters decisions seem. We always blame it on the writing, shit on the writers for leaving plotholes and making retcons, and 99% of the time we are right to do it. But maybe we just have to look deeper. Maybe we're supposed to look deeper. Because after looking at these events through the perspective of The Invisible String, this episode will never not make sense to me again. It's not dumb anymore, it's not random. It's actually fucking brilliant. I think it speaks of something that I had to give it a whole separate post to explain it — and that was something I did not plan when I sat down to write this theory.

Now we move to seasons 3 & 4. And check out Part 4!

#dc titans #titans #dcu titans #tv: titans #titans season 1 #titans season 2 #titans season 3 #titans season 4 #dick grayson #rachel roth #dick and rachel #nightwing #raven #kory anders #garfield logan #graysonfam #titans meta #fathers and daughters y'all

[bakedbakermom]

Stained

Chapter 6: Subterranean // start at the beginning

tagging @today-in-fic @ao3feed-msr

subterranean adjective 1. beneath the ground 2. hidden; secret --- Before she can move forward, Scully must first look back.

She is weightless light dancing through the clouds; she is a floating mote on an endless ocean; she is cradled in a bower of roots buried deep within the warm, dark earth. She is in all of these places, and nowhere, at once.

She is not alone; she is with a woman, or she is with three, or she is with every woman who has ever been or will be. The woman is barely more than a girl, rose-blooming and doe-eyed in the fullness of her youth; she is a mother, soft-eyed and soft-armed font of life; she is a crone, withered and stooped, the milky-eyed abyss. She is Scully’s mother, her sister, her daughter. She is all of these things in turns and at once.

Scully knows this with all the surety of a dreamer, who can hold wonder and nonsense in either hand and see no difference.

They touch her face with one hand, three, a thousand—spotted with age, plump with the last dreams of baby fat, roughened palms that smell of milk and bread. They stroke her cheek as a mother would, thumbing away the bright and shining tears spilling from her eyes. In their touch she feels peace, forgiveness, the promise of a place lush and quiet where she can lay down and let go.

“We see you,” they say in a chorus of voices, in one voice and in the silence beneath the world. “We see you both.”

Scully’s memories flash before her like a shuffling deck of cards, like a thumb rifling through a book. Laughing in a cemetery as rain pelted down around them. Drums and fire and a swinging axe, and his fingers brushing her hair away from her face. Superstars of the Superbowl. A hospital, a revolver, his hand trembling as the barrel moves toward her like a dark eye. The hallway with a sting in her neck and the barest brush of his lush bottom lip against hers before darkness closed in.

These and so many more, pouring through her like a torrent, like a firestorm, her soul laid bare before the Morrígna who watch with a loving and sorrowful gaze on their ever-shifting face.

And then a brick wall slamming into her, a locked box where her memories should be. The Morrígna frown, their hands patting the air or the water or the surface of the darkness. “You are incomplete,” they say, confusion in every voice, infinite brows knitting above infinite eyes. “What comes next must be faced with no lies, no secrets. The flame must be pure if it is to burn the darkness away.”

Scully wants to tell them no, wants to beg them to leave the lid and the locks and the chains where they are. She doesn’t want to see what’s inside.

But already she is falling, hands clawing toward the surface as she is sucked down into the darkness, and then—

Silver starlight trickled through the trees. The scent of wet grass hung in the air like a memory or a promise and the night breeze tasted of wilting flowers, the sweet and cloying lushness of decay. A hush lay over the cemetery, heavy and deep as six feet of damp earth.

A hush broken only by the sounds of an old and familiar argument.

“What the hell are we even doing out here Mulder?” Scully asked, though it was mostly rhetorical. She knew he wouldn’t really listen; he never did. She just needed to hear something more than the bone-dry whisper of the wind in the trees and the deep silence of the dead. “It’s two in the morning, the coffee ran out an hour ago, and neither of us has slept in two days. Can we just give it up for the night, go back to the motel, and get some sleep?”

“Not a chance, Scully,” he said from his perch atop a particularly massive gravestone. It was a family plot, with the earliest death dating back over two hundred years to the town’s founding; the most recent was only a few days ago, a boy named Edward Butters who was three months shy of his twentieth birthday. His mother and father’s names had already been inscribed, birth dates carved in stone but blank spaces where their deaths would someday go; how sad, she thought, for a parent to bury their child. She thought of her own daughter’s grave, just a few hours’ drive to the south, and wondered if she might find time to lay flowers on it before they left California.

Mulder spit a sunflower seed shell into the freshly turned earth, where funeral footprints were still clearly visible; the flowers beside the stone had barely begun to wilt. “Anyway,” he continued, oblivious to her train of thought, “we’re not hunting. We’re waiting. I have it on good authority that this young man is going to rise from his grave.”

“Mulder, your ‘good authority’ is a nineteen year old girl who thinks she’s a witch, that you met in a chatroom called Myth or Myth-staken: the Truth about the Supernatural World. I autopsied that boy myself; believe me when I say if he wasn’t dead when I started, he absolutely was by the time I finished.”

“See that’s the thing about this town—the dead don’t always stay that way.”

Scully dug her knuckles into her orbital sockets, fighting back a yawn and a migraine. The young man in the grave at her feet was just the latest in a string of what Mulder claimed were vampire slayings and she insisted were the work of a serial killer: a young man would be found dead and drained of blood, and then on the night of his funeral, his grave would be robbed and the body of his lover left in his place, covered in gray ash, her own heart clasped in her lifeless hands. What became of the men, no one was yet sure, but here they were on a stakeout—no pun intended—hoping to find out.

The cycle had repeated four times already, with the death of Edward Butters marking the beginning of the fifth. The males had all died in the same way: a cluster of puncture wounds to the neck—something the local coroner had listed as “neck rupture”—through which nearly all of their blood had been removed. Moderate amounts of blood had been found inside the victims’ mouths and stomachs, suggesting it had been ingested close to time of death. The blood matched the saliva found around the puncture wounds, but had not been connected to any suspects yet.

The female victims, on the other hand, had met a variety of more brutal ends. Scully shuddered, recalling the crime scene photographs and autopsy reports that Mulder’s little cadre of internet friends had sent, projected three feet tall on the screen back in their basement office as he enthused all over her about the potentiality of a vampire serial killer. All suffered various degrees of brutalization; two had broken arms, one a fractured collarbone. Bite marks had been found on all of them, but never in the same places: thigh, arm, torso, throat, breasts—all had been bitten in one or more of the victims, but always different patterns, different teeth impressions, often but not exclusively accompanied by clusters of deep punctures.

The saliva around the bite marks was a match to each woman’s partner, and their hearts had all been carved from their chests with the same blade, possibly while they were still alive.

Both Mulder and Scully agreed there had to be two killers working together, but that was where the agreement ended; Scully thought they had to be taking samples from the dead boys to use in the murder of the girlfriends, whereas Mulder thought the second killer in each case was the dead boy in question.

“And the dust found on the female victims?” she had asked.

“That’s what happens when a vampire is staked through the heart.”

Scully could only roll her eyes so hard before worrying they would fall right out of her head—no matter what her knowledge of anatomy might insist. “So your theory ,” she’d said, clenching her fists to keep from making sarcastic air quotes, “is that there is a vampire out there somewhere changing these young men—”

“Siring,” he corrected. “New vampires are ‘sired’ or ‘turned.’”

“Of course they are. So there is a vampire siring these men, siccing them on their own girlfriends, and then staking them when the deed is done?”

“See, Scully,” he’d said, grabbing their plane tickets off the desk and his jacket from its hook on the door, “it’s like we share a mind.”

Yeah , she thought, looking around the dark and silent cemetery, and I have custody of it six days a week . She kicked mud off her shoes and began to pace around the grave site, trying to work some blood into her chilled limbs. She had wanted to stay in the car, but the cemetery was so expansive that they hadn’t been able to park anywhere with a view of this particular grave. She longed for a fresh thermos of coffee, the blanket she had started packing for long nights like these, the trashy novel she’d picked up in the airport and had only barely gotten to start.

She stepped a few paces away, studying the names of Edward Butters’ neighbors. The headstones stretched in all directions, row after row, until they disappeared into the mist. So many graves for such a small town . And this was just one of dozens of graveyards nearby. A chill ran down her spine. “Mulder, shouldn’t guarding the grave of a potential vampire who could rise any minute be the responsibility of your precious Slayer and her friends? They’re the ones who called us in on this, after all.”

No response.

“Mulder?” she called, heart lurching painfully in her chest. Her hand moved to the holster at her back and she crept back toward the grave, crouching to keep her head below the level of the gravestones as best she could. She drew her gun as she came around the front of the large stone, hoping that she would startle him, hoping he would tease her for getting spooked, hoping they could share a laugh and then leave together.

But Mulder was nowhere to be seen.

Scully clutched her weapon tightly with one hand, reaching down to touch the damp soil with the other. The grave itself was still intact, but skid marks marred the mounded earth as if from a brief struggle, and then two deep lines from something being dragged. She eyed the woods in the distance, the open ground between here and there, wondering how a man of Mulder’s size could have been subdued and moved so quickly and quietly. I was only a few yards away.

She had no warning; one moment she was crouched on a fresh grave and the next she was on her back, head ringing like a gong. Her vision swam as she tried to aim her gun, but it was knocked from her hands. Something—no, some one— pressed their weight into her chest and she gasped for breath. A hand closed around her throat, impossibly strong, and though she thrashed and tried to roll her attacker, they cut off her air with ruthless efficiency; her vision turned black at the edges, her struggles weakened, and then the darkness came flooding in.

—

Pain. That was the first thing Scully knew when she came back to herself, a throbbing ache throughout her body and a bright, clear agony behind her eyes. The overwhelming waves of it almost pushed her out of consciousness again, but she forced herself to breathe, slowly, in and out, checking in with herself piece by piece. Her fingers and toes wiggled without tingling; nothing seemed broken or dislocated; and though she tasted blood in her mouth, and the pounding in the back of her head was a sure sign she had a concussion, she was surprised to find herself otherwise intact.

Unfortunately, she was also bound quite tightly, ankles together and wrists behind her back in what felt like metal shackles.

Experimentally, she cracked open one eye. Even the dim light speared like a hot needle into her brain, and the world swam; her stomach revolted violently, and she might have collapsed if she wasn’t already on the ground.

“Oh look, it’s waking up,” cooed a soft, feminine voice. “Look, foxy, it stirs.”

Scully fought through the pain and nausea and forced her eyes open again, glancing quickly around the dark, damp cavern before landing on the sickening tableau at its center.

A creature—there was no other word to describe it—held Mulder on his knees like a spider wrapped around a fly, its legs twined around him from behind and pinning him against itself. It was dressed in tatters of what might once have been a lovely dress, maybe even a bridal gown, but now the beads were dull and the fabric gray with age, stained with what could only be blood—both the bright red splashes of fresh and the brown, flaking remnants of old. It had one clawed hand clenched in his hair, holding him in place. Its other hand held both of his wrists behind his back.

Mulder’s shirt was dark and clinging to his chest; it took Scully a moment to realize it was soaked with his blood. The creature had punctured his neck and was lapping tenderly at the little fountain of crimson. Not punctured , Scully realized as its face caught the dim light from the candles scattered around the space. Bitten . The thing turned its yellow eyes to her, beneath a monstrous brow of bumps and ridges, and smiled, revealing teeth sharp and long and smeared with blood. Scully felt a deep chill settle into her very bones.

She was staring at a vampire.

Her limbs began to tremble, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. The pounding in her head doubled and redoubled until bright colors exploded across her vision like fireworks. She felt herself slipping into hysteria.

Then Mulder moaned, a weak and tiny noise in the darkness. His eyes were open but rolling wildly inside his head. The sound hit her like a splash of cold water. It washed away the mindless terror, leaving her with a more familiar, focused kind of fear. Survive now, scream endlessly later , she told herself.

“Mulder!” she called, or tried to. Her voice was barely more than a painful rasp, and she wondered distantly if her larynx was bruised. “Mulder,” she tried again, clearer this time, “can you hear me?”

“Scully?” he finally answered, woozily. His swimming eyes focused on her for a brief moment before sliding away again. He sounded drunk, and his skin was so pale. How long had she been unconscious? How long had that thing been feeding on him?

“He’s a tasty little foxy,” the vampire mused, licking languidly from his collarbone to his ear, like a child with an enormous ice cream cone. It hummed in satisfaction as it swallowed. “I just couldn’t resist taking a little taste before the party. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of fun to be had.”

Its laugh was the rattle of bones in the pit, the rustle of a coiling snake, the rasp of stone against a blade. Scully’s heart thundered in her chest, the pressure of it setting off more bursts of color in her vision. The claw in Mulder’s hair tightened, wrenching his head to one side until his neck strained nearly to the breaking point, exposing the long, golden line of his throat; the artery there throbbed beneath the skin, skittering with fear like a trapped animal. His eyes found hers again, wide and wild and pleading.

The vampire reared back like a cobra, then buried its fangs in his throat.

Blood gushed around its mouth, spilling in thick rivulets down Mulder’s shirt. His spine arched and he thrashed in its grip until she thought he would snap his neck, but the vampire didn’t seem to notice. Strange, primitive sounds of fear came from his mouth, a whimpering counterpoint to the vampire’s slurping moans of pleasure. It held him until his struggles weakened and he sagged in its grasp, his head rolling on his red-stained neck like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

All Scully could do was watch, straining against her cuffs until she bruised and bled against the edges of them, crying out his name in helpless fury as the light drained from his eyes.

When Mulder was limp and glassy-eyed, the vampire lifted its own wrist to its mouth and bit down; thick, black blood trickled from the wound. It held the blood out to him like a gift, and he turned away with a weak sound of protest. “Don’t be rude, little foxy,” it chided, pulling his head backwards and jamming a cruel finger into his mouth to pry open his lips. “Lettie’s got a treat for you.”

Blood dripped into his protesting mouth, and the thing that called itself Lettie pinched his nose shut until he was forced to swallow.

The vampire released him and he sagged bonelessly to the floor. He gave one last, weak cry of, “Scully,” and then lay horribly, finally still.

She screamed and struggled toward him as best she could with her arms and legs bound, inch by agonizing inch. The rough stone scraped skin off her cheek, her knuckles, her knees; it tore at her clothing, and somewhere along the way she lost a shoe.

“Poor little pet,” the vampire crooned, watching her struggle with a mocking pout. Its voice rubbed against the inside of her skin like sandpaper. “I know it hurts.”

She was just a few feet away from his body when Lettie stepped into her path and leaned down close to her, the sickly sweet scent of blood and death clinging to it like a perfume. She cringed away, but it didn’t attack; it simply grabbed her chin in its vice grip until she had no choice but to meet its glowing, golden eyes. “It’s going to hurt so, so much more when he wakes up.”

It let go, almost dismissively, and left the cavern in a swish of tattered cloth.

Finally Scully wriggled her way across the cold, damp stone to where her partner lay. “Mulder?” she said in a trembling voice. “Mulder, please. Wake up.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she nudged him with her hip. He didn’t move. She managed to sit up, then rested her head on his chest, praying to hear a heartbeat.

She was met with only silence.

Not one but TWO major character deaths in one fic!? Yes, I am a deeply terrible person. You're welcome. Picture me kicking my feet, blushing and twirling my hair as I read your comments.

#stained #my writing #my fanfic #crossover #txt #the x files #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #fox mulder #dana scully #buffy summers #willow rosenberg #tara maclay #xander harris #rupert giles #spike btvs #anya jenkins