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this-lioness · 5 years

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Keeping busy

My goal is to get 10k words written by the end of September, but at this rate that is going to be a struggle.

I’ll talk more about writing stuff in another post, though, because that’s really sort of a separate entity. For once it’s less about lack of desire and more about lack of actual time. Shit’s been crazy for like two weeks straight now.

Rosie had her vet appointment last Wednesday, and did well. She still has pretty persistent diarrhea, so in addition to the second round of Panacur (which starts Tuesday) they’re trying her out on a pro-biotic, and something else for colitis / intestinal issues. We’re on day two of both, still no improvement, but we’ll keep at it. They thought she looked better, brighter and healthier overall, though, and she gained almost a pound!

The cabinet doors have all arrived (I’m pretty sure, we need to take a complete inventory, but it looks like everything), which means that we can start working on the cabinets at any time. I picked up a palm sander last weekend, which will help enormously in the sanding / priming / painting cycle.

Part of the kitchen “back splash” is covered in this stuff called Z-brick, which was popular in the 1970s. It’s essentially a faux thin-brick panel, except it isn’t in sheets like actual panel. Rather, you have to basically chisel the shit off the wall, and it’s going to take a lot of the underlying sheetrock with it.

To that end we’ve decided to just whitewash the z-brick where it sits, since it’s really not all that awful to look at. The balance of the back splash is just exposed wall, so today I was talking to Marc about doing a custom tile back splash.

I’d like to either buy some hand-painted Italian tiles, or buy fired bisque tiles that we can paint, fire and glaze ourselves at one of the local paint-your-own ceramics places. It would be really nice, especially, to do one of those six-piece mosaics with a kind of custom illustration... maybe cats and berry plants.

We’ve also been hitting the cat room / office / geek room conversion pretty hard. I think I already mentioned that we moved the treadmill into the cat room, and last weekend we emptied a bunch of crap from the studio and Marc framed and built a floating shelf along the whole width of the back wall:

There’s now room enough for the laptop, external monitor, tablet, printer, AND an area to paint, plus plenty of storage underneath. He really did a bang-up job, I spent most of Wednesday working and it was super comfortable and cozy.

In the days since he assembled two new bookshelves, and brought down two more from the attic, filling them with the trades that he’s decided to keep from his initial collection.

We ALSO found a used sleeper loveseat at a yard sale on Saturday for just $25! It was a bit of a struggle to get it upstairs, but now it’s in place in front of the studio / geek room TV, and I’m looking forward to long winter afternoons camped out there with a laptop and some cocoa. Plus! Extra room for guests.

We’ve since moved a fourth bookcase (this one small and low) into place behind the sofa. We’ve got one more to move downstairs, as well, at which point he can start filling the remaining space with books, figurines, whatever he’s decided to keep.

This means there’s now room in the attic to move the Glowforge and the little computer desk. Rather than having it take up a huge, awkward chunk of the studio, I can now just tote the laptop upstairs to do my cutting as needed.

The room has an inset closet that right now is being used as extra art storage. One of my goals this weekend is to really do a deep dive into the materials that I have and sell / trade away stuff that I know I’m not going to use. I have a hoarding problem with certain craft stuff, but realistically I know that a) it’s too much of a PITA to take out and use and b) there are other types of art that are more easily accessible and fun to use. Time to get rid of the excess.

The linocut stuff, for instance. I really enjoyed the hell out of it, but if I’m being honest it’s a fucking hassle from beginning to end. It makes a huge mess, making prints is a mess AND a headache and -- big surprise! -- nobody wants to buy the prints.

The bottom half of the closet will be art storage, and the top half will be more display. Marc has designs on making a kind of diorama display for his He-Man figures, which I think is just brilliant. It would be fun to do a whole painted backdrop for it!

Things are winding down in the garden. We have a couple handfuls of blackberries that are waiting to ripen, and I’m starting to eye up how I’m going to bring in the outdoor plants for the winter. It turns out that the elephant ear is going to have to get dug up and overwintered as a rhizome (!!!!), and I’m going to need to find somewhere to stash the brown turkey fig, as apparently both need to have a kind of winter dormancy to stay healthy. Lugging the latter up to the attic is not an option so, haha... this will be exciting.

We had a visitor in the back yard earlier this week, as well:

Marc was closing things up for bed when he called me downstairs. I saw it on the patio at first and was like, “Oh, is that another kitten!??”

Spolier alert: not a kitten.

I’d noticed a kind of hollow dug under one of our fence panels, and I guess now we know what made it. He was very polite, took a few bites of cat food and then went on about his way. Hopefully he and Fidget give each other a wide berth, as I don’t relish having to give a tomato juice bath to a half-feral cat.

Rosie was VERY excited, however, and I think a little put out that we didn’t let her play with / consume it.

My worries about giving her Panacur were unfounded, by the way. We mixed it into some baby food, added in a little juice from a can of chunked chicken, and she inhaled it. We’ve since had to give her some apparently nasty-tasting pills, and as long as it is located somewhere in her bowl she doesn’t even pause for breath. It’s gone in seconds.

She continues to be amazing and wonderful.

#oc #home improvement #adventure #cats

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 5 years

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On a photo of a not exactly human face I sculpted....

labratbren said: What do you do with them when they are done? Do you ever post pictures of the finished product?

Ah, well, um....short answer? Nothing.

Here’s the longer answer (VERY long)....

While I was always drawn to sculpting, I really didn’t sculpt growing up.

I mean, I tried to use clay I dug out of the ground, drying it in the sun, when I was tiny. Naturally it crumbled except for this lump of a head I still have. In Kindergarden the art teacher had his own kiln and let us use the scraps left over from the pots he had us make. I still have a loop armed alien and creature head I made, but he left with his kiln the next year. The dough art they had us make in second grade was gone by the next year, ‘cause this buggy and humid climate doesn’t agree with it. My parents gave me modling clay, but I hated it. I wanted something that would “stay”.

But everyone acted like sculpting was hard, so maybe I wasn’t missing out.

Then one day, when I was 19 or so, my hands got bored. Anyone would have laughed if I’d said I was bored right then. I had a book open to one side of me, a magazine on the other, as I went back and forth reading both. I was also listening to music AND watching the movie The Brothers Karamazov at the same time. I have this problem where I always feel like I should be doing more, and when I am doing something I get itchy to be doing something else. Like my brain isn’t fully occupied even if I’m really enjoying whatever. That day my hands needed something to do, and there was this block of clay left over from a project one of Pop’s projects (a river system display, I think) It was just sittin’ there on the porch so....

And it turned out sculpting was easy! I mean, maybe not art bit doodling around having fun making faces. Do NOT be intimidated by sculpting! It comes so much more easiy than trying to convert our 3D world into some 2D drawing. Seriously, try drawing a nose head on! But toss on any wedge on a sculpted face and you have a nose...

Ok, maybe I just am bad at drawing! But I really do wish more people would try sculpting.

Anyway, the clay was another dead end, but it did inspire me to hunt for something I could “make stay”. And that something was sculpey.

Whenever I was certain I would have the place completely to myself for a full hour I’d go stand out on the ramp behind the house and sculpt. It wasn’t too often, what with the house also being the office of the family business and my family being the sort of close one that did everything together. I couldn’t sculpt and be watched. All I needed was an our because I sculpted quickly. In an hour I’d have a little bust, rough as heck but with some detail I liked.

But then I ran out of places to put my busts in my already overstuffed bedroom. I solved this by just slicing the faces off and just baking them. I could glue magnets to them and line all the edges of my metal bookcases.

I did dabble in other things. I tried a full figure and made a few little stick figures. I sculpted something from Babylon 5 for my brother, mixed my box painting (I used to paint boxes when I had a table) with sculpting for a Discworld box for Mom, Easter bunnies for my parents, magnets for everyone, Christmas ornaments...

When she saw the Christmas tree ornaments my cousin Katharine, dollhouse collector, roped my into making her a doll. She had specific requirements for a 6″ tall Beast in what I gathered were Regency era clothes from her decription. In my ignorance I assumed the doll would have to have a jointed body, fabric clothes and furry fur, which kinda drove me nuts! But somehow I pulled it off! I sculpted a few more of those little dolls (no sewing on these!) as gifts for my parents and brother, as well as a bit of goofing around for myself (I liked my little Sleestack a couple decades late for little me). But that was that.

Then the weirdest darn thing happened: I was suddenly stricken with a full imaginative block!

I stopped sculpting. I stopped painting boxes. I stopped writing stories. Worst of all I stopped dreaming! I still remember how upsetting that was, this sense of loss. It was like having a part of me paralyzed.

It lasted years. Terrible years.

When my father became sick right after my irreparable rift with my brother, as I was facing the most terrible external loss of my life, something woke back up in me. Constant, vivid dreams, elaborate epics spiraling through night after night, images and stories that writing didn’t full satisfy the need to express. I started painting miniature boxes again. Box after box after box....

But no sculpting.

I dunno why I still didn’t sculpt. I just didn’t.

Then my father died.

Pop’s death was a devistating moment. My father. My best friend. When Pop was sick I told him he couldn’t die because I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. There is a lot of truth in that. I love Mom dearly, but our brains work very differently. Pop might have been smarter, and his depth of knowledge was certainly mind blowing, but our mental wiring followed a similar eccentric pattern. That said, somewhere along the line my parents and I had become a sort of unit, functioning as one. Think one of those anime giant robots made of smaller ships, Voltron or something. Then imagine it functioning with the head section missing. Five years later we still feel that void.

So anyway, Pop was dead, the family business gone with him, and I was unemployed with no qualifications in a rural area with few job opportunities anyway. This was, and frankly still is, not a good situation. And my cousin Katharine thought she had a solution.

Katharine sent me a letter suggesting I make dolls. She’d shown the doll I’d made her to a dealer who said I had talent, and she sent me a copy of Art Doll Quarterly to show me that my “weird” stuff might have a market...

Honestly I felt inspired by this. I immediately seriously considered it. I’d work a bit bigger than 6″ scale, sculpt the clothes instead of the stress and tedium of sewing, and figure out a way to do ball joints. Because each thing would be unique (until I could teach myself mold making) and letting go of something I make is soooo hard for me, I decided to use the story of one of my painted boxes as inspiration. I’d make wolf people, which I figured would create enough sameness to help me let go, but enough variety to keep me from being bored. I quickly sketched out a reasonable design and got to work.

Obviously things didn’t turn out to be so simple. Sculpting ball joints by hand is fiddly to manage. It would need a bit of experimenting. I could do a head on day, casually. I could do the upper body, arms and waist joint with a lot of effort another day. A third day would be waist and legs. Fourth day was the hellish threading. I wasn’t set up for safely storing unbaked work in progress, so I had to do these marathon one sitting sculptings on the bodies. Then I’d rest up a few days and just sculpt a few heads.

The ball jointing drove me nuts. So I gave myself permission to not worry about wolfheads, but just sculpt whatever head happened. From the backlog of heads I’d just pick one to experiment with body making. In just a couple months I was making progress.

The first discouragement came with an art show. The county has a sort of art society and they were having a sculpture show. I was scared silly to show my work to anyone, since at that point it was 2014 and I wasn’t even on Tumblr. No one had seen them. Still, when I went to see about entering the lady there was encouraging. I was soooo nervous and tentatively hopeful when I went to the grand opening with Mom amd my cousin Shirley. I was soon deflated. No one seemed to notice my figures. My work was the odd one out anyway in a sea of found object sculptures, colored paper masks and ceramics abstractly suggesting the figural. Also, everyone there knew each other and so no one was talking to me. At one point I did this really sad thing of hovering near my figures in case anyone came near so I could sorta maybe get them to notice them....

When the show ended a few weeks later the lady very nicely said at least a couple school children had liked weird figures, ‘cause, you know, kids like that fantasy stuff. I definitely should sculpt a lot bigger and maybe use terra cotta instead....

Yeah. I felt my stuff was crap. I was crap. Why had I ever thought anyone would like my crap? Heck, I’d thought I’d at least find a club I could join, belonging, friends....

But, I kept at the doll making experimenting, crap or not. That winter it was too cold for much sculpting in my unheated house, but I could work on trying to figure out how to paint them....

Then life happened don’t ya know. At first I thought it was a temporary break while I dealt with crisis after another. I kept sculpting heads, strictly sculpting a head a day (still just an hour each)....until the spreading collapsed floor situation forced me to move the box I’d made for storing the bodiless heads out. And that was that for doll making.

Still, I kept sculpting. I went back to just the faces....

And that’s where I am now. I gave up sculpting every day, because I no longer have time. I watch a movie and sculpt. I bake the face and take pics I post on here. I wrap ‘em in tissue and put them in a storage container....

And that’s it.

I don’t do anything with them. I’m not entirely convinced there is any point anymore. My life isn’t going to include free time. Or tables to work on. It has been years after all, and it gets less and less likely I’ll make anything more than a few boxes full of chipped up sculpey faces for the nephews to find when I die. Well, unless they follow my brother’s advice and throw them out unopened! LOL

I sculpt just ‘cause I sculpt. I post pics of them on Tumblr, ‘cause Mom isn’t really all that interested in looking at them. They aren’t ever going to be anything, but I guess if I enjoy making them and someone out there likes looking at them that’s okay. They may be nothing, but that’s something.

#comments #art #sculpting #artists on tumblr

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chuuyaaf · 7 years

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Living to Die - Parts 5&6

I’m counting down the days until classes start T_T

I’m posting two parts again because both these parts have a lot of flirting and Dazai being a little shit and you being a tsundere, which makes me very happy~ Also, if you guys want scenarios based in this universe, feel free to send it some~

TW: mentions of nonconsensual sex

[Beginning]

<< Previous | Next >>

You stared at the now deceased body of the human trafficking boss known as Takahashi Eito. Part of you was disgusted with yourself for nearly sleeping with him in order to kill him, but another part of you was proud that you were able to accomplish it. Although, killing him wasn’t enough to satisfy you.

You dug your hands into his pocket and located a cell phone. On the surface, everything seemed normal.

"..."

I technically finished the mission...Besides, how would he have been able to tell...?

You smirked and sent an electric jolt through the device. The screen flickered and then a hidden chat log came up.

Perfect.

"Done already?"

Dazai was already waiting for you at the extraction point. He was leaning up against the limo, playing on his handheld, not even bothering to look up at you.

"Did you underestimate me?" you said as you approached the limo.

"Not a bit," Dazai said as he peeked up from his handheld with a smirk. Once you were next to him, he gently pushed you against the limo, his hands pressed down next to both sides of your face.

You clenched your jaw and stared at him.

Shit, he knows.

"Oh? Not even a reaction to my advances? Did nearly sleeping with that pervert really turn you off that much?”

Once you realized that Dazai wasn't being confrontational because he realized that you used your powers, your face immediately flushed up. But you kept yourself composed.

"Or maybe you're just bad at turning me on~" you teased with a smirk.

"Is that a challenge?" Dazai leaned closer until your faces were just inches apart. He dropped his hands and placed them on your waist, his grip gentle but firm.

Your heart fluttered at this. Dazai was indeed attractive and over the course of the past few weeks, you had become both his subordinate and friend. Part of you knew that you wouldn't mind being something more.

But you were not one to lose so easily. You grabbed at the collar of his suit and pulled him a little closer, your lips barely touching.

"Finally unable to resist my charm, eh?"

You scoffed and looked him in the eye. "Maybe..."

You placed your palms on his chest.

"...I have no interest in being charmed, Dazai-kun~"

And with that, you pushed him away from you, internally giggling at the pout that appeared on his face afterwards.

You ignored him and opened the door to the limo, opening up a secret compartment that stored emergency weapons. You grabbed a handgun and your dagger as well as your belt of spikes. You turned around and looked at Dazai, waving your hand to indicate that you wanted some privacy.

When he turned around, you lifted up your dress, exposing your ass. You attached the buckle onto you right below your chest so that it doubled as both armor and a weapons storage area.

This usually goes on my thigh, but since I'm in a dress...it'll have to do.

While you were adjusting the buckle, Dazai subtly glanced over at you, his face immediately flushing in the process.

And within the next second, Dazai yelped in pain as one of your metal strips bounced off his head after you threw it at him.

"EYES OFF, PERVERT."

He rubbed his head with a defeated expression on his face as the metal strip floated back to you and reattached itself to your belt, which was now underneath your dress. You were standing and glaring at Dazai in a complete tsundere-like mode.

"Ah, (y/n)-chan, why do you have to be so rough?" Dazai whined like a child, which made you roll your eyes at him before walking past him and away.

"? Where are you going?"

You looked back at him. "Ah...going to have a drink with Chuuya~ Gotta celebrate after passing the test, right?"

"Eh? You're going drinking with that shortie?"

A vein popped in your head and you turned around with your fist raised in the air. "WELL IT'S NOT LIKE I CAN GO DRINKING WITH YOU WHEN YOU'RE HITTING ON ME ALL THE TIME!" You sighed and then turned back around. "Besides, you're my superior, it wouldn't be appropriate."

You continued walking and then sighed again. "I'll see you tomorrow...Dazai."

So this is where that bastard keeps his victims before they're sold...

You observed the warehouse that seemed empty on the outside. You kept your rage internalized as you scanned the area utilizing vibrations through the Earth, confirming your intel.

This warehouse housed the victims of Takahashi Eito before they're sold to buyers. While they were here, they were used as "bribes" for the guards. Tonight, you planned on freeing everyone.

It wasn't a part of your mission. Only an instinct, telling you that you had to.

And since this wasn't a part of your mission, it meant that you could use your abilities.

A smirk appeared on your face and you flew onto the roof of the warehouse silently, the wind blowing up your dress in the process, which caused you to pull it back down quickly in embarrassment.

Good thing no one was here to see that.

You walked over to the side of the building and used magnetism to let yourself slide down the wall in front of the nearest window without falling. The room inside was an office and was currently empty. Just from looking at the position of the handle of the window, you could tell that the window was locked.

But once again, that wasn't an issue. You used magnetism to manipulate the metal handle to unlock the window and pushed your way inside, shutting the window behind you.

From what information I've gathered, the girls are kept up here and the downstairs is disguised as a regular warehouse in case it ever got raided. I need to--!!!

Your senses became alert as you sensed an explosion near the building. The lights in the building went out and you heard guards running around in a panic.

An enemy?! But who?

You took advantage of the chaos and snuck out of the room once it was clear. Since the guards were on high alert now, you couldn't afford to waste any time. You looked across the walkway and saw four girls locked in a cage, clothed in rags. One of them was crying and another was comforting her, only fueling your rage.

No one lives.

The scientists that kept you locked up for years wanted you for the sole purpose of weaponizing your abilities. You were one of the few ability users that they created that had massive destructive ability. However, the one ability they wanted you to use took you ages to perfect. It also took a lot of sacrifices, staining your heart with a darkness that could never be removed.

1,354.

You remembered that number every time you used this ability. One thousand three hundred fifty four people had died in order for you to perfect this ability.

“I don’t want to! I can’t! They’ll die just like the others.”

“(y/n)-chan, if you don’t utilize these tests subjects, we’ll just find other uses for them. Will you let their deaths be in vain or will you let their sacrifice be meant for something?”

You remembered all of their faces and all of their names. You remembered the last thing they said or did before you were forced to use your imperfect ability on them.

You once swore that you’d never use this ability again.

But if you never used it again, wouldn’t that mean that those 1,354 people had died in vain?

This wretched ability, the one you loathed, but still depended on was the ability to control a human’s body by manipulating the blood flow inside of them.

The human body had a rigid system with many factors keeping it stable and functioning. It was constantly in homeostasis. Any external factor introduced to it and the body will shut down.

You knew this very well. For it took you so long to perfect this ability because you couldn’t control the blood pressure of the people you were testing this ability on. And as a result, their veins ruptured and they died.

But now that you have control of it, it made you one of the most powerful ability users in the city. Although you didn’t like it, you made use of this wretched ability for them. You won’t let their deaths be in vain. In whatever way, you will hold onto whatever little light you have inside of you. You will utilize this ability. The ability called Blood Flow.

With a blank face, you held out your hand and used Blood Flow to pull one of the nearby guards to you, gripping his throat and looking at him with pure rage.

"Die."

The guard yowled in pain as you slowly heated up the molecules in his body, setting him ablaze. After he died, you looted his body for the key to the cage. You quickly located the other guards in sight and took out your handgun before running along the walkway towards the cage, shooting any guards that noticed or came close to you.

You jammed the key into the cage and opened the door, pulling the prisoners out.

"Go! You're free now, there's a police station about half a mile over, they can help you!"

All of the prisoners were ecstatic at their release.

All except for the crying girl, who was curled up in the corner.

"T-They can't help us...I-I've tried and it just..."

You kneeled down. "The boss is dead."

"!!!"

"I'm going to kill all the guards here. After tonight, there won't be anyone left to track you down. You'll be free, I-”

As you were talking, the girl slowly stood up at walked towards you. But unbeknownst to you, this wasn't a sign of growing comfort. That was evident when the girl pulled out a dagger and jammed it into your ribcage.

“They’ll just punish us more when they find us!” The girl was hysterical and in tears, her eyes full of fear.

"Ngh!" you grunted out in pain.

Instinctively, you activated your powers and used Blood Flow to send the girl flying back and crashing into the wall, knocking her unconscious. You gripped the handle of the dagger and was about to stand up when you heard the clicking of a gun.

"Well well well, you must be the one causing all this trouble for us," one of the guards said. "Should we kill you...or should we keep you?"

You felt your skin crawl at the malice coming from them. The barrel of the gun was pressed right up against your skull, so you couldn't activate your shield.

But before you could do anything, a flash grenade got thrown into the room. You covered your eyes and heard a struggle behind you.

"In there!" a bunch of guards yelled from the bottom floor, noticing the commotion.

Someone tackled you to the floor just as bullets went flying at you. You opened your eyes once the flash disappeared only to see chocolate-colored orbs staring right back at you.

"Dazai?!"

"I can't really say that you're bad at lying...But you're bad at lying to me~" he said with that signature smirk of his. He looked down your body and saw the handle of the knife sticking out of you. His face immediately went from cocky to worried. "Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine," you said before pushing him off of you. You grabbed at the handle, winced and ripped the blade out, throwing it across the room. Your hand hovered above your wound and the wound slowly began to heal.

Heh, she got me right above the armor. Bad luck.

"Ah, so that's what you meant when you said that you don't need armor.”

You didn't have a chance to respond as the rushing footsteps of guards running down the metal walkway grew louder. You got up and pushed Dazai out of the way. You stomped on the ground, sending a surge of electricity reaching up to 1000 volts down the walkway, promptly frying the guards on it.

"What are you doing here?"

"Saving you~"

You squinted your eyes at him. "Who said that I needed any saving?"

"Well...it looked like that guy had a gun up against your head."

You scoffed. "I could've dealt with that myself."

Dazai pouted. "A simple thank you would be nice," he whined.

You looked away, your face flushing slightly. "...Thank you..." you whispered.

"What was that?"

"Thank you..." you said a bit louder.

"I can't heeeaaar yooouuu~"

"I SAID THANK YOU, YOU IDIOT!" you said, raising your fist at him once again.

"Oh, why you're welcome, (y/n)-chan!" Dazai said, giving his childish smile at you.

"Ugh!" you stomped away, your face now red from anger instead of embarrassment.

#dazais a little shit and i love it #admin kat #ltd #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #dazai x reader

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corvid-knight · 6 years

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Demon Eyes - chapter 12

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740258/chapters/32108052

"I got blood on you," you tell Karkat, as you (reluctantly) let him go. And you did; kind of a lot of blood. Looking at the stains on his shirt sets off a chain reaction of association—blood on Karkat, blood on the white sheets, Dirk's shirt soaked in blood—

"Dave. Hey. This isn't my blood." Karkat makes a deep soft sound, hands coming up to cup your face and make you look him in the eyes. "Dirk's fine, right now. Do we need to go see him before you clean up?"

"No." I believe you.

Karkat's proud of you for that answer, you realize as he lets go of your face. That knowledge feels...good. Really fucking good.

"Sit down for me," he tells you, gently pushing you to sit on the lid of the toilet. "I think I'm going to cut your shirt off; you'll get blood on your face otherwise, and I really fucking doubt we need to handle that right now."

But he doesn't move, and you sit there confused for a minute before you figure out that he's not just telling you what he's about to do. He's not just giving you warning, he's asking for permission.

You can't find your voice to give it to him, but you nod. Go for it, man.

When he leans forward with that sickle, though, you have to close your eyes. Sharp metal near your skin while you're unarmed and helpless isn't something you're okay with seeing. You can feel Karkat hesitate, try to dip into your mind and check to make sure you're still all right; he doesn't move to cut your shirt until you think reassurances at him.

When he does move, though, all you feel is a little tug at the neckline, hear a quick sharp tearing sound, and then the clink of metal as he lays his sickle down on the counter. You open your eyes again so you can kind of squirm out of the remains of your shirt, even if Karkat still does most of the work.

This leaves you shirtless, though, nothing on your upper body but smears of blood, and god damn but there's the panic again. You have to take a breath, watch Karkat as he opens cabinets in search of a washcloth, and remind yourself, he already knows what scars I have; he saw them the first night when he healed me in the hotel. And this is Karkat; he won't use my fucking weak spots against me—

"Scars don't mark weak spots, anyway." Karkat shakes his head and runs water from the sink over the washcloth he's found, then takes your hand, wiping your wrist and arm clean. The blood comes away easily, maybe because he knows how to wipe and maybe just because he's the one with dominion over blood and he wants it to. "If anything, they're strong spots. Nobody wants to get fucked up the exact same way twice."

...he has a point. Although if you were given the choice of being hurt repeatedly in one place, or of just taking the spread-out patchwork of marks you actually have, you'd take the former. "One really bad patch of scars'd be better and easier to hide than this shitshow."

"Yeah, but you get hurt in the same place often enough and you get so you can't stand to be touched there." Karkat taps the back of his own neck with his free hand, before moving to your other arm. "Right?"

You remember how you shuddered when he touched you in that spot before, and almost shudder again. "That one, that's a...a memory thing, for me. Association. Not like it was the worst I ever got hurt..."

"It still counts. Even if that wasn't the most painful thing, you're stuck associating it with the other shit." Karkat shrugs a bit, moving to start cleaning off your chest and immediately stopping when you can't help but flinch away from his hands. "Dave? Do I need to—"

"Just give me a sec." You close your eyes and take a deep breath, relaxing a bit as he takes your hand instead of touching you anywhere else. "Can't handle touching if you wanna talk about Bro fucking me."

He winces. You can feel it in your head. "Sorry." That could be an apology for bringing it up, for it happening at all, for anything at all. The vagueness is nice. Means you don't have to reply to it. "...do you want me to heal your hands?"

"Not if it's gonna make you pass out." And only if you want to.

"It won't." He snorts, adding, of course I want to, dumbass. Then, "This is a little thing. And I just ate; even after closing Dirk's wound I've got energy to burn."

His fingers trailing across the raw spots on your hands feels like grabbing a handful of dry ice. "Ow, shit—ate?"

"Three of those weirdass hybrids." At least he moves fast; he lets go of your hand and moves to the other in less than ten seconds. "Did you see what they were, or...?"

"I saw—" Dirk. John. You. Bro. You have to check that Karkat's still there even though he's holding your hand in both of his, and you get your eyes open in time to see him wince again.

"Fuck, Dave."

"What'd you see?"

"Not that." He pauses, thinking for a second, then puts one hand under your chin to get you to look at his face for a moment. When he blinks, for just an instant you see a snapshot of a being that's definitely not a siren—something hairless and almost skeletal, low cunning but not much actual intelligence written on its greyish-skinned face. The damn thing's mouth doesn't close properly over its jagged teeth, and one hand has claws that're significantly longer than its fingers.

"Holy shit, 'kat." Nasty.

"Since they can fuck around with humans' minds, 'nasty' doesn't even start to cover it." He shakes his head, letting go of your chin and brushing his fingertips across your shoulders, finding a set of spots that sting at his touch. That'd be where the beast that looked like him grabbed your shoulder, right? "You almost got hurt really fucking bad...next time, we don't split up."

There will be a next time.

Maybe you should feel—worried? Concerned? Resigned?—about that, but you really don't. You're used to hunting; it's been your life since Bro decided you were old enough to handle a gun.

(Eight. You were eight. He guided your hands to aim and fire at a demon lying bound and bleeding in a summoning circle. Perhaps because he was the one holding you steady, the bullet took the demon almost dead-center in the forehead; it made an ungodly mess but killed him fast. Bro dug the deformed bullet out, laughing at your unwillingness to watch him doing it, and got it made into a charm that was almost always either around his neck or dangling from the rearview mirror. Lucky charm from my lil' man, he called it, and you hated the memories it brought up but never dared tell him that. You're sure he knew anyway.)

There's always been a next time, after every hunt. And yeah, that knowledge has made you feel hopeless before—you don't have control, you don't know what you'll be expected to kill next, whether Bro is going to make it quick and clean or drag it out for hours, whether you'll have to watch or even participate, whether it'll be one who's a true danger or some poor innocent bastard.

But now? Karkat's the one partnering you here, and he has some fucking idea of the difference between a monster and a demon. Bro doesn't.

"Didn't," Karkat murmurs as he drops the washcloth in the sink.

"Oh. Yeah." Past tense is...hard.

He nods and touches your cheek again, light and gentle and gone before you can even try to lean against his hand. "I'm going to go get you clean clothes. Your pants are fucked too; you can wait until I come back and let me help, or clean yourself up while I'm gone." I'm okay with the latter, but I know you might not be.

"Thanks," you tell him, because you don't know how to say you're right, I'm not, I'm sorry.

Maybe Karkat gets the meaning of it even though you don't think it at him either, because he pats your cheek again, smiles, and then leaves you alone in the bathroom.

Ten minute later you're dressed, mostly presentable (well, as good as you're going to get without the shower you can't handle taking right now) and heading into the kitchen with Karkat close enough behind you that you feel his body heat. The only person there is Hal, who's got two laptops open on the table in front of him. He's typing into an open chat on one, but seems to have his focus mostly on the other; it's hooked up to what looks like some kind of storage device or external hard drive, with four videos playing at once in split-screen.

You lean over his shoulder to look at the latter. Top right is what you're going to guess is a real-time stream of Dirk, laid out in bed, unconscious and with his bloody shirt gone. The other three are footage from the little devices Hal put on your shirt—and Karkat's, and Dirk's, and Jake's. Jake's cam isn't displayed, but the rest of them are.

Damn, those bastards are ugly, you think, watching yourself decapitate one. Did you really do that?

"Are you going to be all right." Hal's voice doesn't rise at the end of the sentence, and it takes you a second to realize that he's asking you a question. Especially since he doesn't look up.

"Shook up a lil, but fine. Karkat, uh. Did some damage control."

"Oh." Hal nods, relaxing just a tiny bit. He still doesn't take his eyes off the text onscreen, though. "Jake, um. Jake might need 'damage control' as well. And Dirk."

Karkat reaches out to tap the screen. "You're keeping an eye on Dirk—where's Jake?"

"John's cleaning him up. He's fucked up; I don't know if you really spoke with him—"

"If he's anything like Dave was, I don't fucking need to." Karkat growls quietly, crossing his arms. "Did you get those fuckers ID'ed yet?"

The shikigami shakes his head. "Nobody I've contacted has seen anything like them before—which isn't surprising, since I'm fairly sure they're some kind of hybrid. Possibly a new species, if they bred true—"

Karkat's growl is louder and more unhappy this time. "Yeah. They probably did. You don't get that many from one fucking litter, not from sirens or vamps, and they were luring in guys. The one that went after Dave first was pretty obvious about what it wanted."

Huh. Okay. You already can only kind of remember that. Like, you know it happened, you remember Karkat—well, not Karkat, the hybrid demon—and you remember killing the damn thing, but the details are already going soft in that memory.

Karkat's watching you curiously when you look up at him. You alright? he asks

Can't remember that shit. You open your mind to him as well as you can, will him to see the weirdly vague memory.

Surprisingly, he grins. Good.

Hal taps a few keys and glances over at the other monitor. "Well,now they're an extinct species. Fuck them. A cleanup team's on its way. It'll be a day or two; I asked for Rox instead of anyone closer, which is a bit of a security risk but I don't fucking care. I want her here."

He's scared, you realize. You don't quite know why.

Then he says, "Is it possible for you to fix whatever's fucked up in Dirk's mind now, or do you have to wait until he wakes up." And you get it. Hal's worrying about Dirk, because that's what normal fucking families do.

Karkat, you can fix him, right?

Not exactly. But I'll make sure he ends up okay, I swear. "He'll sleep for a while longer. Keep an eye on him and don't fucking leave Jake by himself, all right? Do you guys keep chalk around, or do hunters not bother to do that anymore?"

"Top drawer on the left." Hal points without looking, and pulls the laptop with the chat back towards himself, beginning to type again.

Karkat mumbles a thank-you and yanks the drawer open, getting what he wants and then heading for the door. You trail behind him, slightly confused.

What're we doing?

I mean, I'm summoning a demon. Well. Assuming you'll give me a hand, since there's this stupid fucking loophole that won't let demons summon their own kind.

Okay, you have no idea what he's planning. Oh well. "Cool, never done that before. Lead the way, 'kat."

Karkat spends ten minutes drawing the circle on the concreted portion of the backyard. You feel like it's there precisely for this purpose, or something kind of like it.

Technically, what he draws is a double circle, one within the other. You sit in the grass and watch as he adds lettering in the space between the two—some of it's Latin, some runes, and the rest symbols that you don't recognize. They have meaning, though; you don't doubt that for a second.

"Hey." Karkat sits back on his heels, dropping the half-used piece on chalk and looking over at you. "Come here and test this for me."

He sends you an almost-image of what exactly he wants, so you know to get up and step closer to the circle, cautiously putting your hand into it. If there was a summoned demon in there, this'd be dangerous as hell; you can feel the tingle of magic as the circle's temporarily broken by having you bridge inside and outside.

"It's complete," you tell him, and pull your hand back. The feeling of magic reminded you of a question, though. "There's a barrier around the house, remember? Won't that—"

"Fuck this up? No." Karkat shakes his head, putting a hand on your shoulder to pull you back a few steps. "I asked John about that—it's not even for demons at all; it's a ward against curses and ill-willed magic. He said they use this place as a safehouse for hunters who've ended up with especially bad fuckers—the kind with access to more powerful magic—after them." He glances at you, the corners of his mouth twitching up for a second. "A barrier to stop demons would be a fucking hassle; poor Hal's demon enough to trip it. He'd be stuck either in, or out."

You can just imagine. "And pissed over it too, huh?"

"Exactly." He snorts and moves to stand behind you, hands resting on your shoulders. "Are you ready to try this out?"

"I still don't know what I'm doing, but...yeah."

"Okay." It's simple. I'm going to put the words you need in your head, you speak them. As long as you trust me, it'll be easy. His hands tighten, just a little. Anxiety, you think. "Do you trust me?"

"Hell yes." Breathe in, breathe out. This'll be a cakewalk. Let's get this show on the road.

He snorts out a soft laugh, and starts feeding you words.

It's weird, doing this. For the first couple seconds you can't figure out how to keep up with his pace—it's too quick, maybe you can speak that fast but there's a lag between your mind and your mouth that screws everything up.

Then you realize that all you have to do to minimize that lag is open up a little more to him. Let him in your head just a bit farther.

You have almost no problem with doing that, even if it makes you stumble over a syllable as you do it. You can feel Karkat's relief that you came to this conclusion, as he settles in your mind and starts speaking the words of summoning through you.

(It actually occurs to you that he's pretty much possessing you, right now. It's a mark of the kind of shit that's happened in the last week that instead of being worried, you find that funny.)

(Also pretty damn nice. Means he's close to you.)

So you just relax, and you let him make you do what he wants. There's a lot of words that go into calling a demon, apparently, because it's at least ten minutes before Karkat pauses, you feel something twist in your chest—some measure of power leaving you—and in the circle, something changes.

Someone arrives.

You only get a flash of red and the impression of a startled face, though, because your sight immediately wavers and goes blurry. Karkat seems to know what's happening, maybe expect it, because he catches you before you can do more than start to fall.

"Karkat," whatever you've summoned says reasonably, "if you've harmed that boy—"

"Shut up for a fucking second, Kankri," Karkat growls.

Your brain's too fuzzy to remember why you know that name. Eh, you'll figure it out when you wake up...

#demon eyes

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