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uncouth-the-fifth · 5 months

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pythia, a supernatural rewrite. phantom traveler, p.3

read it on ao3.

words: 14k notes: hello!!! on the wings of an absolute ARMY of betas, here is a fresh new chapter for you!! since the last one was a little short i took the time to really flesh this one out. I'm a shy idiot who is SO bad at responding, but i see your comments and they mean the world to me. i literally have a folder on my computer full of the sweet words this fic has been given, and i think i've re-read the comments in that folder at least a million times over by now. ty so much for reading, and i hope you enjoy!! bloody mary is next! a very special thank you to my beta readers, bear, M, venice, feeb, and daff, who easily made this my best chapter yet. thank you specifically for keeping me coherent and sane lol <3

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 4th.

You don’t have to be psychic to know precisely what your mother is going to say when she answers the phone. She’ll pick up on the fourth ring with an occupied, scathing drawl and say, Look who finally has cell service.

Alright. So you’re not the best, most communicative daughter in the world. You call when you can, you honestly do, but there’s not exactly loads of emotional bandwidth to spare on the road. Peeling off all the layers of case anxiety and Winchester grief takes a while, dammit!

Maybe you’d feel less guilty if you vented to Sam or Dean, but it’s kind of lousy to bitch about Mom-stuff to, uh. Yeah. The boys. You could use a simple, uncomplicated statement like, talking to my Mom reminds me of how much of a disappointment I must be to her, and Dean would hear matricide instead. Sam’s blank, uncomprehending look wouldn’t be much better. Looks like you’re alone on this one.

When there’s a natural break in the day’s long research-fest the three of you are riding, you slip away, pace beside the Impala for a while, then finally bite the bullet and call her. Cars whisk through the slurry of snow on the road. Your phone charms rattle in the icy breeze. One ring, two rings… She knew you were going to call, she could sense it, but of course she has to torture you… three rings, four.

“I didn’t know cell service was so hard to come by in Pittsburg,” Beth greets you, sounding preoccupied. Damn, do you know her well or what?

“Hey, Mom,” you sigh. The wind is loud, so you pull your phone further down your face and try to come up with an excuse that is even halfway reasonable. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been ages since I’ve been around the boys, and I guess I get a little caught up with them sometimes.”

This is objectively true. She used to have a rule about you getting your homework done before they came over, purely because you forgot about everything and anything else the second Sam and Dean entered the house.

“Forget those losers. You’re my baby, I love you most,” Beth gushes, and you understand that this is her way of saying that you’re forgiven. Both of you have fallen victim to the Winchester spell before, so she can’t exactly blame you.

You’re a little embarrassed by her mushiness, but a relieved, bubbly laugh jumps out of you. “Alright, consider them forgotten. Now… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you not to freak out or overthink it, kay?”

Beth snorts. “You mean my two jobs as a mother? Go ahead, shoot.”

This is not the kind of question that you just “shoot,” though. It takes you a moment to string together how you’re going to ask this, and of course, you’re nothing but graceful and delicate about it. “...What do you know about demons?”

Your mother doesn’t say anything for a long, yawning second. Still, you can sense her rising swarm of questions and outrage all the way from Pennsylvania, and you try to stop her onslaught before it starts. “Hey! No questions! Just answers. I promise I would tell you if this was outrageously dangerous.”

“Then you’ve already broken your promise,” Beth utters, slipping into her Sage Grandmaster Psychic voice. Just hearing it makes you deflate. She predicts, “...Let me guess. You’ve felt nauseous. Suffocated. Hungry, but everything you eat comes right back up again.”

You toe a chunk of ice on the asphalt with your boot, grumbling, “...Yeah.”

“Then you’re lucky,” she reveals, her words still ringing with the same crystal ball clarity from your childhood. “That means you haven’t come into direct contact with it yet. I’d hope you never would, but… you are your father’s daughter…”

You know your mom. You know that’s just her way of warning you about the kind of danger you’re in, here, but all the comment does is bolster your resolve. Damn right. You are his motherfuckin’ daughter.

“Tell me,” you push.

Beth sighs through her nose. There’s a squeak on the other line, and you can imagine her at home, dropping heavily into the massive, millennia-old armchair she always took her readings in.

“Demons… well, I won’t explain to you what you can already guess. They’re unlike most legends we know of, because everything that’s written about them is utterly true. Most spirits that walk the natural earth are here to feed—vampires, werewolves—or to take care of unfinished business. But demons… they come to earth to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Welp. Your mother is truly a pillar of optimism. You’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of, don’t worry, sweetheart, they’re just really messed up ghosts. Instead of, y’know. The most evil creatures man encountered in the bible. Bible, capital B. An uncomfortable, existential shiver rolls down your spine. Now this was something you could bitch to Dean and Sam about.

You’d grown up surrounded by the idea of demons. Even before you’d fully understood that monsters were real, sometimes you’d slip into your mother’s reading parlor while she was gone and play a game with the strange, segmented star pattern on the giant worn-smooth carpet. Don’t hop on any of the lines! Only step in the points of the star! Or, jump from sigil to sigil!

The one time you’d gotten carried away and played for too long, your mother had appeared through the beaded curtain with a stiff frown on her face. Don’t play on the devil’s trap. It’s not a toy.

There was the fraying devil’s trap in your mother’s parlor room, which was one of the hundreds of sigils burned into your mind at a young age. You’d shaken hands with demon hunters before. Most of the rituals your family practiced were in Latin; and the list went on and on into oblivion. You’d always known demons existed, but as you pace the parking lot and take in what Beth is telling you, the ramifications start to stack. Demons. Actual, literal demons. The thing that took down flight 2485—the suffocating, unimaginable presence from your vision—was a real-life demon. When you’d stood in the skeletal remains of the plane and reached out with your Gift, you’d been sensing the lingering presence of a fucking creation of Lucifer. What the actual fuck.

In a strange, backward way, you’re kind of relieved. Anyone would be fainting all over the place in the presence of an actual, real-life demon. Especially somebody like you, with all their senses turned up to 100. It makes sense that you were having such intense reactions before.

What the fucking fuck. You’re suddenly grateful to be on the phone with your mom.

You wandered toward the Impala, (checked first that you weren’t wearing the kind of jeans with the little studs that would scrape the paint), then leaned against it. “...Um. Okay. That’s just… awesome… How do they get… up here, then?”

“I’m not sure,” your mother hums, thinking. “Your great-great-aunt Miriam wrote in her records that they find their way top-side on their own. Bugs through cracks, that sort of thing. Apparently, there used to be a whole lot more of em’—in Miriam’s day it was a Proctor’s job to shove them back where they belonged, but… I dunno.” Beth helpfully jokes, “Maybe we got most of them.”

You huff out a laugh, but it’s not the most sincere. “Maybe we did,” you cough. “But, um, do we have any Proctor family secrets that could help me out here? Did great-great-aunt Miriam have a trunk somewhere full of demon-killing grenades or something?”

Beth smirks. “Great-great-aunt Miriam turned the house into a brothel and carved terrifying sigils in all the ceilings. That’s all we got from her.”

Of course. How could you possibly forget? “Oh, huh. I was wondering why we have old chains and whips in the basement. That fills in a lot more for me, thank you.”

Your mom barks out a laugh at your joke, which gets you laughing too. The sound trails off. There’s that funny pause where you both remember what you just said, then start giggling all over again—and man, does it feel good to just have a moment with your mom. The boys both have an unforgiving radar for “bonding,” and the second they realize that you love them and they’re your friends, they creep right back into their shells. Neither of them were very good at absorbing that sort of thing.

Your mom is just as skilled at spoiling the moment.

“But, seriously…” She stresses. “Please be careful. Avoid contact with these things at all costs, especially with your Gift. It’s made to find the truth, and demons are made of lies. Not a good mix. They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to. This is a lot more hands-on than you should ever be with your Gift, ____.”

“...Right,” you say through your teeth.

This is the part where you start awkwardly shoving in a goodbye without coming across as an asshole. You open your mouth, about to say something stiff and unsure, when you sense a spike of alarm ripple out from where the boys are still researching in your motel room.

Phone call forgotten, you jolt off the Impala and whip towards the door. Not a second later, Dean’s slipping out onto the stoop and sweeping the parking lot with a calm, guarded stare. He doesn’t look at you—just gestures you inside, holding the door open. Even from the parking lot, you can make out the insane amount of notes and papers Sam has coated your motel room with.

“Jerry just called,” Dean utters. “The surviving pilot from 2485? Chuck Lambert? …He just went down in a plane crash.”

You snap your phone shut and follow him inside.

The three of you head to the site of the next crash as fast as you can. But first, you have the pleasure of watching the boys play Winchester Telepathy when you insist on coming along. They’re still worried. You would be too, in their position. (In fact, if the roles were reversed, you’d probably chain Sam to a radiator and call it a day.) But Chuck went down in a twin plane, not a massive, two-hundred-person graveyard, so your Gift should have the legs to handle it.

…And knowing what you’re dealing with has steeled your confidence. You weren’t slashing at the dark anymore, even if what was in the dark was, um. Proof that hell exists. After days of being totally screwed over by this thing, you finally had even the slightest leg up on what was going on. You were going to take that win and run with it.

Chuck’s twin plane was hardly a twin anymore; both the engines had been shredded, the white body of the cockpit twisted like a wrung-out washcloth. The plane had dove so hard into the farmland that the snow around it had melted. You still kind of felt like tossing your lunch, but more out of sympathy than psychic backlash. People had been in that plane. The thought made you taste bile.

Sam and Dean only hover a little bit (a lot) while you open your Gift to the wreckage. You take your glove off with your teeth and touch your right hand to the ashen, snow-soaked remains of the pilot’s chair… and there it was again, the leeching, seeping, violating presence from the vision that’d brought all of you to Pittsburg. A demon.

Your Gift wrings out another scraggly, disconnected vision for you. Chuck was beyond anxious to get back in the saddle after 2485. The co-pilot, Lou, had pep-talked him like any good friend would, reassuring him that the flight would go smoothly. After that, everything—gassing up the engine, takeoff, and the brutal, horrific crash—was blotted with poison ink. Every time you tried to steer towards Chuck with your senses, it was as if the strip of film playing your vision had been burned away. His face had been scratched out of every frame. He had become something else; something terribly familiar.

The research Sam had compiled began to link with what you’re seeing. You could feel, even through the leftover wisp of the demon’s presence on the plane, that it had done this many times before.

You jolted to your feet, scrubbing the palm with the eye tattoo off on your slacks. Dean and Sam reeled back, since they’d both been looming an inch behind you as you worked.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Dean said, bracing himself.

You turn from the wreckage and bee-line straight for the road, eager to avoid a repeat of last time. The boys follow your lead. They fall into step on either side of you, and for once you feel like the specialist Sam always said you were, complete with stern-faced bodyguards.

“Full-on Pazuzu, just like last time,” you confirm, cursing. You shove your glove back on and stomp through the snow. “I-I get it now. God, it feels so fucking obvious. It’s—it’s playing. It finds these disasters, or it makes them, and then it picks off all the survivors one by one. Chuck Lambert, George Phelps. It possessed them. Like some sort of twisted cosmic-order thing.”

Sam pulls a face. “Final Destination style?”

“Minus the hot girls and the tanning beds, apparently,” Dean pouts.

“It’s trying to finish them off, boys,” you say, swallowing hard. “That’s something we can work with. If it’s only using disasters to do the job, then…”

“...then we need to see if any of the survivors are flying soon,” Sam realizes, finishing your thought.

The second the Impala’s on the road again, Sam is fishing out the passenger manifests from the first flight and chasing down any phone numbers he can find. There is a part of every hunt where your run is forced to become a sprint, and this is that turn-over moment, tensions ramping high. What once was seven people is now five.

As Dean hauls ass back to Pittsburg, you and Sam get to calling. You thank the Mother Goddess above for shitty, awful customer service, because posing as some lousy Delta Airlines representative has Dennis Holloway sitting in seat 21A and Kathleen Willard (seat 25E) swearing off flying for good. Sam uses a similar tactic on Blaine Sanderson (seat 14D). The two of you take the safe bet that the parents of Ava Struder (seat 1C), an unaccompanied minor, aren’t fucking idiots dumping their kid on another flight the second she survives one. That leaves you with Amanda Walker. A flight attendant on 2485… because of course, this job can never be easy.

Sam tries her phone. While it rings, you cross your fingers and hope that she has quit her job and started a new life as a dedicated couch potato. Sam’s forced to leave a message. He snaps his flip phone shut with a curse and throws it into the footwell, where it clatters against his boots.

You curl a cold hand around Sam’s shoulder, soothing, “Gimme the list, baby. I’ll try her emergency contact, at least find out where she is.”

Sam sulkily passes it to you, never once shifting under your hand. You do get a small, grateful look from him over his shoulder, and the urgency and anxiety there makes your gut twist. It would be more than easy to comfort him, to stroke your fingers through his hair, to rub his collar and tell him everything’s going to be fine.

But you’re a shit liar, so you open up your phone and make the next call. Sam’s lingering gaze ducks back down into his lap.

Of course, your luck continues to flourish. Amanda doesn’t answer her phone. But her sister does, and she informs you that Amanda, being a flight attendant, is in fucking Indianapolis for a flight. Indianapolis. As in, a good five-hour drive from Philly—and in the complete opposite direction of where you were going. Dean barely waits until the road is wide enough to turn the Impala around. The u-ey he hits sends you, and all your stuff, careening from the right end of the bench all the way to the left.

The drive is not fast. Staring ahead and silently revving yourself up can only waste so much time, so you pull out the mini sewing kit from under the seat and do your best to patch a rip in Dean’s jeans, struggling to thread the needle even more than usual. You feel a bit like a bad hunter distracting yourself from what’s ahead, but just one of you stuffing the car with anxious brooding is enough. Sam passes back a sudoku booklet for you and then goes straight back to his thousand-yard stare.

He used to be excellent when things came down to the wire like this. After years spent in empty motel rooms, counting pennies and waiting for John and Dean to come home, Sam’s patience was unimaginable. But losing Jess… had tilted his axis. These last few hunts, you’ve noticed how crazed he gets on the last couple steps to the finish line—when none of you are sure if there’ll be anybody to save. It happens. But you’re scared of what another round of it could do to Sam, even with a stranger like Amanda; he cared so much…

Dean isn’t happy, either, but he at least has something to do. He alternates between playing brain-melting Metallica or forgetting to reload the tape, so the drive is a strange mix of music you can feel in your eardrums and silence that’s just as loud. The first piece of levity you get is thirty straight minutes of Dean over-explaining the album to you. And, thank god you ask, because Dean rattling on about the “bass and drums feeding off each other” and the “musical integrity of a locked-in rhythms section” bring Sam out of his trance. He pries his eyes away from the rolling fields of snow, scrunches up his face, and sighs, “Can we at least listen to ‘...And Justice for All?’”

You’re an excellent tactician, so you use this opening to nudge them both toward the most surefire argument starter in the Winchester handbook: What’s the best album of all time? It would’ve been harder to lure flies into honey. Dean argues more with himself than he argues with the two of you, dancing indecisively between Zeppelin II, Dark Side of the Moon, and at least twenty other albums that you are vaguely aware exist. Sam outlines that there is a difference between someone’s favorite album (Californication in Sam’s case) and the best album objectively by sales (Thriller).

All three of you play into the argument more than usual. Guess you’re not the only one desperate to think about something other than the two hundred other people who might die tonight. By the time there’s enough of a break in the conversation for you to throw your hat into the distraction-ring, you’re thirty minutes from the Indianapolis International Airport.

“Both of you are wrong,” you decide. “There’s only one reasonable answer to that question, and it’s Rumours.”

Dean audibly grumbles, and when the Impala jams to a stop in front of a red light, he dramatically points at you in the rear-view mirrors and declares: “You are obligated by hippie, witchy-girl bullshit to love that album, Proctor. And it’s good, but it’s not the best. It’s mostly…” he flashes you a mean, big-brother smile, “girly music.”

You know you’re right, so his comment rolls right over you. Cooly, you remind him, “Nuh-uh. Sam loves Fleetwood Mac, too.”

You’d figured that was a good counter-point, since Sam was hardly girly. The hand he was using to keep his notepad on his knee was all kinds of veiny and calloused, and on top of being taller than Dean, he was a lot more comfortable with his masculinity. He didn’t have mile-long lashes or glazed donut cheekbones, either.

Sam hums in agreement, like you knew he would; the two of you listened to Go Your Own Way and The Chain endlessly before he left for school. Sometimes he’d even dance around the attic at home with you.

Dean side-eyes his brother, then barks out a hearty laugh. “Case in point.”

Sam elects to pretend he didn’t hear that, and instead turns around to talk straight to you: “I mean, the end of Silver Springs alone…”

…Maybe if Dean listened to more “girly music,” he’d have more women melting over him the way you melt when Sam says that. Even though you’ve gotten used to having him in front of you again, there are moments like these where you’re stunned by how similar the two of you still are. Dreams would play in your attic and Sam would already be offering you his hands, gangly and shy and bright red for you and only you…

You listened to Silver Springs a lot after Sam started dating Jessica.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 4th, night.

All three of you must’ve been hyper-planning what to do the second the Impala parked, because you fan out as soon as Dean jams the break.

Sam uncaps the travel-sized hand sanitizer from your purse and empties it out onto the pavement. You’re a little sad to say goodbye to pumpkin cupcake, but then he starts pouring as much holy water as he can into the teeny bottle, and you’re reminded how clever he is. When Dean gives him a weird look, Sam explains, “3.4 ounces or less per liquid item, dude.”

“Shit,” Dean curses. Right. Travel size restrictions. That cuts your only physical weapon against the demon in half—or into a fucking fifth, I guess. But it’s something. “At least he’ll fuckin’ smell good when we send him to hell. Great.”

You give Sam the marshmallow pumpkin latte sanitizer, too. You’re going to look painfully suspicious walking into an airport with nothing but hand sanitizer and an occult journal, but there’s nothing you can do. There’s no time to check bags or trudge through security lines. Hopefully you won’t have to board, but knowing your luck…

You’re about to go peeling out of the parking lot at top speed, when you turn your boot and feel the warm piece of metal pressed against your ankle. Shit. “God, this is stupid,” you curse, and drop onto a knee. You lose the pocket knife in your boot, then dig around for the loose rock salt shells rolling around in your pockets. There’s a visible pout on your face when you abandon your iron knuckles. Anything that’d be caught by security or picked up on a metal detector goes straight into the trunk.

When you pull your butterfly knife out of your bra, Sam is suddenly very interested in the color of the sky.

The boys follow suit. By the time you’re through the doors and among the harried, criss-crossing crowd of travelers, you’ve lost ten pounds in weapons each. Dean grumbles the whole way about feeling naked. Everything in the airport is overstimulating, even at this time of night. The long, endless squares of glass looking out over the runway reflect the too-bright lights in big glossy spots, and the air is flooded with a constant stream of intercom updates and civilian chatter. You duck and weave all the way to the departure schedule, which is just the right font size to make you anxious.

Sam scans the chart. “They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”

Shit. You wrack your mind for something that could coax Amanda off her flight. But the gears in your head are suddenly muddy, and Dean’s faster than you, anyway. His eyes dart around the floor of the airport. “Okay… we still got some cards to play. We need to find a phone.”

Sam and Dean dart off like twin bomb-sniffing dogs. You move to follow them, but something tethers you in place. The buzzing, bustling commotion in the air pitches up, and then your ears are ringing, and your whole body is stinging with the ugly leeching feelings from before. The demon. It’s close.

You blindly walk in the direction your internal Winchester compass gives you, and just when Dean’s about to take a courtesy phone off its hook, your body extracts the phone from his hand on autopilot. For a brief flickering moment, you’re not yourself. Your powers talk through you.

Your Gift foresees, “That won’t work. Your only option is to board the plane.”

The boys exchange an unsettled look. For a second you’re confused why they’re giving you their Freaked Out faces, then you feel the hollow plastic of the phone in your hand, and you realize you’re a whole twenty feet from where you started. Man… you hate the whole psychic-possession thing. Just for fun, your Gift loves to take over and course-correct you when it thinks you’re being stupid. You drop the phone back on its hook with a heavy click. It takes Dean a second to answer, and he’s still giving you that look. After a long pause, he knocks up his chin and not-so-happily mutters, “...Uh, okay.”

Sam, at least, has learned to roll with your weird psychic bullshit. His voice is soft with conviction. “Fine. Plan B, then. We gotta get on that plane.”

You run your palms down your face, then steel yourself. There’s no other way, and no time to second-guess. Even your Gift has decided it’s your best plan. “Okay. Fuck it.”

The usual authority in Dean’s voice hikes up with a note of panic. “Uh, woah. Let’s just hold on a second–”

“Dean,” you wince, and your hands drop heavily at your sides. “We gotta. I’m sorry.”

Sam, per usual, reads Dean’s hesitance as something else. “That plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, it’s gonna crash. We have to–”

You watch as they have their usual back and forth; Sam, eager to throw himself at this, and Dean gnawing on the inside of his cheek. It’s easy for you to sense the steam of real, nail-biting terror radiating off your best friend. You feel Dean’s fear all the time–and even then it’s hard for you to picture him being afraid of much of anything, much less planes. It’s even harder for Sam to look past his little brother glasses.

“...Flying?” Sam puts it together. His voice is understanding, but super confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Dean flails. He fists his hands as he talks, swaying back and forth to try and work up the nerve. He glances at you, the only other witness to his weakness, just once. “Why do you think I fuckin’ drive everywhere, Sam?”

Sam is genuinely stunned. Slapped-in-the-face stunned. But he takes it in stride, and, also glancing at you only once, he blurts out: “Alright. Uh, I’ll go.”

The anticipation of boarding the flight is making your skin prickle with anxiety, and you can’t help but inch back toward the ticket counter as they talk. But when Sam says this, without question or complaint, you’re instantly stepping up to his side and demanding, “Then I’m going with you.”

You brace yourself to shut down the argument you know is coming, but this Sam continues to be different from the guy you knew four years ago. This answer is just as easy for him, too. “Okay.”

Not, you’re staying here, or even, I won’t let you risk yourself like this. Just a plain and simple, okay. It bugs you. You don’t even have time to dwell on it, though, because Sam’s blatant courage tugs Dean over his fear.

“Man…” Dean utters, face twisted with nervousness. He gives in with a helpless scrunch of his shoulders, and taking that as permission, Sam twists around to buy your tickets not two seconds later.

You both watch him rush off, neither of you over the moon about this situation. Dean’s so anxious that his hands are clammy, and you can tell because he clutches at the sleeve of your jacket like a little kid. He knocks his forehead down on your shoulder with a groan, and your palm automatically loops around to give his back a soothing rub.

“This is fucking… awesome,” Dean gripes. “No guns. Can’t even bring a damn bottle of holy water. Is there some kind of psychic Xanax you can give me?”

Maybe some of your Gift drains into your voice when you promise, “We won’t have to worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean doesn’t make his Freaked Out face this time. He does, however, bump his forehead against your shoulder again, and sink into your touch with a rough sigh.

FLIGHT 424 - Dec. 4th.

You’d felt bad for Dean the whole time he’d struggled to get on the plane. Now, you kind of felt like choking him with your bare hands.

So many people crammed into one space was enough to flatten your Gift with the weight. Adding Dean to the mix, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder against you with his jitters ramped up to eleven, made you feel like picking your brain out with a fork. Your Gift ping-ponged between Dean and Sam, making you bounce between chattering your teeth with fear and thinking things like, wow, I just love the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe it was a good thing. You’d much rather be in one of their heads than yours.

All day, you’d done a pretty good job not obsessing over the things your mom had said over the phone. It was hard with so much time to marinate in the car, but the massive weight of the existence of demons only slammed on top of you once or twice. Boarding had managed to keep you occupied, but then the colossal body of the plane had shuddered and heaved its weight off the tarmac, leaving all chances for escape behind on the ground.

A part of you was resigned to it; it is a simple fact of your life that evil things are real. So what’s one more, right? But at the same time, you thought about the cross Sam wore under his shirt… you thought about being one of those things, being “made of lies,” like Mom had said. That, too, had been gnawing at you—what had she seen to learn all that? How did she know that a demon would “tear into your mind?” The Vague Psychic Thing is fun, until you’re on the receiving end.

“Can you sense who it’s possessing?” Sam’s smooth, calculating voice interrupted your thoughts.

…Oh, right. You’d gotten so swept up in your own head, no doubt influenced by Dean’s incessant foot-tapping, that you’d totally forgotten to scan the plane. Tilting away from Dean and his panic, you subconsciously shifted toward eerily calm, level-headed Sam. Just catching a wisp of the clean cologne he wears cools you down a little bit. Okay. No more freaking out—it’s game time.

You’d hoped that the white noise of the flight would settle your nerves, but the air tasted painfully sterile, dry, and cottony against the back of your throat. Everything felt like cold metal touching an open nerve. If the demon’s influence wasn’t making your powers touchy, then the woman across the aisle definitely was, oozing with homesickness as she watched Indianapolis shrink far below—or maybe it was the guy two rows back, replaying an argument again and again in his head—or maybe the other two hundred fucking people stuffing the plane with their boredom and their tiredness.

You push your knee into Sam’s. He pushes back.

After a tense beat, you whisper to him over the chatter of passengers, “Too many people. There’s no way I can narrow it down to one person—not unless they’re right in front of me.” Sam’s gaze turns expectantly to Dean, who’s still in full-on dissociation mode. He’d spent the whole boarding process humming tracks from St. Anger, and you knew he was really going through it, purely because he’d stopped and restarted Some Kind of Monster three different times now. Poor guy.

One of the things that made the three of you such a natural team was your ability to rotate leadership. In moments like these, with Dean way too wigged out to take charge, you’d usually step into his shoes without much trouble. But Sam has fielded your fainting spells and panic attacks all week, so he’s already got a pep-talk prepared for the two of you.

“...Okay.” Sam checks his watch. His voice still has that touch of classic Sam softness, probably because he knows how hard this is going to sound: “Stay focused. We got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, figure out who it’s possessing, and perform a full-on exorcism.” You’re about to make a comment about how blissfully easy he makes things seem, but Dean beats you to it. He snipes, “Yeah, on a crowded plane. That’s gonna be easy.”

You snap one of your bracelets against your wrist a few times, thinking. “Who would it want to possess?”

This gets Dean’s head in the game. Easily, he recites: “It’s usually somebody with some sort’a weakness, y’know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or emotional distress.”

As he explains this, you unlatch Dean’s claws from their death-grip on your arm and give the top of his hand a little soothing pat. Your gaze remains fixed on the pattern of the seat in front of you. “For a regular demon, maybe. This thing might not even need a chink. It wants maximum damage here—so maybe it’d go for the pilot?”

This is not a soothing thought. Checking his watch again, Sam suggests, “Or Amanda… Surviving a crash like that? I’d be pretty messed up if I was her. We should check both.”

You’re happy to spend the little time you have left wisely, so you’re quick to push out of your seat and get moving. Dean puts on a brave face and follows your lead. There are only two ends of the plane to check—this thing can’t hide forever. Just when you start to do an awkward side-shuffle to nudge Dean out into the aisle with your hip, the whole plane thrashes top to bottom, and there he goes, dropping like a rock back into his seat. His spike of panic is so genuine that you end up dropping with him.

“Come on!” Dean hisses through his teeth. “That can’t be normal!”

You and Sam immediately get to shushing and soothing him, and suddenly you understand how married couples feel when their kid starts crying on a flight. Shifty eyes in other seats pretend they’re not glaring at you. Summoning as much strength as you can to share with him, you drop a hand on Dean’s shoulder and order: “Breathe, dude. You’re okay.”

“I’m not fuckin’ four,” Dean whisper-shouts, sulking flat back into his seat.

“She’s right,” Sam whispers back. Should it be worrying you how much he’s been agreeing with you lately? Stern, he says, “Listen—if you’re panicked, you’re wide open to possession. So you need to calm yourself down. Right now.”

A weird part of you is grateful that Dean is having a rough go of it, because it’s giving you something to focus on. You’re usually pretty good with planes. But for a minute there, when the turbulence had hit, your mind had defaulted to oh shit, this is real, we’re all going to die. A slideshow of the last crash had blitzed through your thoughts. Thoughts that had nothing to do with the anxiety you were picking up from Dean.

You know you despise it when Dean uses his Parent Voice on you, so you try not to use it on him when you urge, “C’mon. I think Amanda’s in the back of the plane. I’ll check up front.”

Dean gives an unconvinced, “I’ll go talk to her,” then makes grabby hands at Sam’s pockets, “pass me one of the hand-sanitizers. Fuckin’ uh, pumpkin latte—don’t gimme that face, _____, not all of us can tell with just a look. What if it’s in her?”

“It’s a bit more than a look—” you begin to clarify, but Sam stops your back and forth with a shake of his head. He pulls out the little orange plastic container of your pumpkin cupcake holy water and passes it to Dean.

“We should try to conserve what we got,” he warns, passing you the only other weapon against the demon (marshmallow pumpkin latte). “Go more subtle—if she’s possessed, she’ll flinch at the name of god.”

Now that you’re running out of both time and options, the second Dean unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out into the aisle on coltish legs, you take the opening and bolt out of your cramped middle seat. Anything you can do to get closer to finding this thing will make you feel loads better.

You start down the aisle. As the chatter of the boys fades into the all-encompassing thrum of the plane behind you, you take slow unhurried steps past each row of seats, soaking up what you can get. A girl listens to music in her headphones. A businessman clicks away at his laptop. Each of them you comb over with your powers, and each pass feels like scooping your hand into a bowl of tacks and waiting to get stabbed.

They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to, Mom had said. You waited for that moment, steeling your nerves the closer you came to the cockpit. If the demon’s on this side of the plane, and it sensed you, would it immediately press into your mind? Would just being near you snap its presence to you like a magnet? You didn’t like the mental feeling that gave you; the stark secret-seeking white of your Gift clashing with the black choking smoke that’d been chasing you all week. When you spoke to a spirit through your Gift, it felt like you were touching fingertips through a curtain. Would it be like that? Would this demon press its claws through the veil and dig around for something to tear, to grab?

The other flight attendant on board pushes past you with her cart, leaving no barrier between you and the cockpit. Behind you, bobbing in a sea of blurry people, your Gift could distinctly make out Sam (practicing the exorcism) and Dean (talking to Amanda). You’re just a few paces from the front exit of the plane when a man emerges from the bathroom cabin, and—

He twists to meet eyes with you. Expecting you.

You’re flashed a clever, haunting smile, then—a set of glossy void-black eyes.

You wait for it. And in its own way, the presence of the demon does overpower you, bringing the heavy-as-the-sky, parasitic feeling from your visions into the real world. For a long ringing moment, you are blasted with dark leeching power hot enough to singe the entire front of your body—like a nuclear bomb had dropped down just a few steps from you. It is spidery and vicious and knowing and awful—

…but the conquering sensation never comes. Beth had said that it would root into your mind, that just feeling it with your Gift, as you are right now, would tear you to pieces. Yet all that really happens is you staring at it and it staring at you, before it shoulders its way through the cockpit door and disappears inside. The only thing you really experience is the shock of seeing it in somebody, puppeting around a person with dreams and thoughts and memories.

For a few moments, you suck down heaving breaths through your nose and stare at the closed door.

Something about it nagged at you. Besides the obvious—how different it felt compared to what your mother had described—you swear you felt something else, some ringing sense of strangeness that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe it was the fact that you’d just made eye contact with a real creature of hell, an evil spirit, whatever. But you made eye contact with evil spirits all the time. This was… closer to home than that. Underneath the writhing mass of bloody, black ink that made up the demon, your Gift had recognized something unimaginably familiar.

Sensing the demon in person had reminded you of… of a sensory memory, almost. It smelled like… warm static. The old staticy TV in your house, the ancient one that sat square and unattractively on your Mom’s slanting sideboard in the living room. You remembered her crystal ashtray propped up on the top, the fizzy sound the TV made when you’d shut it off…

On the nights when it was just you and Sam home, and the house felt so big and empty that the silence throbbed in your ears, the two of you would set up a fort in front of that TV and watch old horror movies well past your bedtime. The silly effects and the dated acting were easy to tease together. You’d much rather watch movies on the newer screen in your Mom’s room, but for whatever reason, Sam insisted on the clunker in your living room.

Y’wanna know somethin’ cool? He’d asked you once, running a finger through the film of static bubbling on the surface of the glass. A little bit of the static in TVs is actually radiation leftover from the Big Bang. How weird is that? Something so old and powerful, picked up by this random piece of junk.

Sam always crashed first, leaving you alone with the white static the TV defaulted to when the movie ended. You could vividly remember how your shoulders bumped against the hard floor through the thin sleeping bag the two of you had shared—how Sam’s warmth had seeped into your shirt where he was curled up behind you, his soft sleepy breaths tickling your hair.

When you’d pulled his arm around your waist to snuggle, a spark of static had shocked you through his touch. When you’d closed your eyes and tried to go to sleep, you swore that the ancient, cosmic hum of the static in the TV ebbed and flowed at the same exact time as Sam’s breath.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh. Crackling as he breathed.

It wasn’t the demon you were scared of anymore. The ancient, ever-present sting of static you’d felt deep down inside it… that scared you a million, a billion times more, because—

You felt that static every time you felt Sam.

It’s like trying to describe the smell of your childhood home.

Logically, you know your house must smell like something. But when you’re in one place long enough your brain filters it out as background noise, and it becomes something you can only notice after a long time away.

You’d known Sam since you were in diapers. Back then, the meager threads of your Gift were already taking him in and absorbing him into your memory. Eventually, you felt him so often that all the pain and optimism in his core, all the stuff that made Sam himself, had smoothed out into warm, familiar background noise to your Gift.

Then he’d left for Stanford. Four years passed, and the only exposure your Gift had to him was the flimsy thread stretched two thousand miles down to California. Because it’d been so long since you’d sensed him in person, hugging him outside his apartment had been like stepping into your home after a long time away—for a brief moment, the filter over your psychic perceptions of him had lifted. You’d sensed for the first time what had always been there, buried deep. The Static.

At the time, you’d gotten so swept up in Sam, Dean, and the adventure of finding their Dad, that it was easy to get sidetracked. Things came up. You got used to Sam again, and his Static faded to background noise.

Until you’d felt that demon with your Gift.

A demon. A creation of Lucifer. You’d always remember what Sam felt like—you’d never forget the smell of home—but in one of them?

Your mind whirls with so many questions that it flat-out pops, failing you. Pulled along on a cloud of white noise, you somehow manage to turn away from the cockpit and start back down the aisle. The demon is possessing the pilot. You have forty minutes, less than, to exorcize it and save the two hundred people on this flight. These are all truths floating around in your head, but no matter how much you try to circle back to one, the static of the demon overcomes you again.

Static. You think of Sam, the crackle of his soft raspy voice through the phone. Your heart is pounding in your ears, thudding away in your chest like a piston. The static had burned in the demon, burned like busted speakers and smoking plane wreckage. Little pins all over your skin pressing in. The space you have until you make it to Sam’s seat seems to yawn, your footfalls sluggish and shivery. Why do they feel the same? Why does he feel the same? The static of the demon worms under your fizzing skin, bubbling, boiling—

You stop in front of Sam’s row, and he’s already looking at you when you get close. He asks you a question. You stare at him, the whole world filled with that awful roaring buzzing, the air tight and dessert dry in the back of your throat. Even though he’s right in front of you, you feel like you barely see him—just the vague burning outline of him in your powers.

Sam reaches out to grab your wrist, tugging it away from the long marks you’re viciously scratching into the flesh of your arm. The touch of his hand causes a literal static shock to jolt from his fingers to yours. You yelp in surprise, but it’s—

It’s different. There’s a similarity, definitely, between what you sensed in the demon and what’s always been in Sam… but his Static is hot chocolate warm and fuzzy and so good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Your surroundings filter back in, and there are his soft, worried eyes looking up at you under his brow, and his big hand soothing over the irritated skin you’ve scratched raw. Sam. The same Sam he’s always been.

…Whatever it is, whatever weird connection you’ve just made, you’re sure there’s a lot more to it than Sam having something in common with a demon. Right?

Sam takes one look at you, your insane reaction, and your mysterious reappearance, then easily puts two and two together: “One of the pilots?”

“Co-pilot,” you tell him, and one of your absent-minded hands drifts up to scratch at your arm again.

And again, Sam fishes his fingers around your wrist and pulls it away. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can’t un-notice it. His touch makes your fingertips and the ends of your ears tingle, and not completely in the boy-crush way. In the psychic way.

He asks, “You gonna be okay? We got twenty-two minutes.”

That jolts you back to life. Twenty-two minutes until this plane is smoking ashes in a Pennsylvania cornfield. Though the last ten minutes have easily overcomplicated all twenty-four years of your life, you won’t have a life period if you don’t see this job through. When Dean returns from investigating a very un-possessed Amanda, he feels the exact same way.

Your resolve hardens, and you manage to give Sam an absent-minded smile. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s no time for arguing. Dean and Sam unanimously agree that the only possible place to exorcize the demon would be in the back, where Amanda is, since you can’t exactly jump the guy in the middle of economy. You don’t exactly like the idea of roping her into this, but Amanda’s the only one who could potentially lure that—thing to the rear of the plane. It is the world’s shittiest ambush. But by the time the three of you decide what to do, you’ve burned ten whole minutes on anxious chatter. A shitty ambush is the only plan you’ve got.

Dean starts down the aisle for the back of the plane. You stare at nothing for a beat, and only remember to get out of your seat when Sam nudges your elbow. He presses his lips together like he wants to ask you the million-dollar question (“Are you sure you’re okay?”), but there is literally no time. In a haze, you shuffle out of your seat after Dean and make a feeble attempt to get your head into gear. Sam does not make it easy. One of his broad hands brushes against the small of your back as you both squeeze out of the row, and you feel like you’ve just gone down one of those static-charged plastic playground slides.

Your Gift is exaggerating it. It has to be, right? Making big connections out of little things, picking at a fresh bruise. For weeks, you’ve been crammed into a little car with Sam, into teeny motel beds with him with no room between you. Why hadn’t you felt it? Why now? Not when you were four, napping in the same bed after playtime—not when you were twelve, and Sam was the first person outside your family that your Gift had connected with. Had it always been there, living inside him? Had you missed it?

You reach the back of the plane. Amanda is there, a pale, blonde flight attendant straight out of a commercial. You are dully aware that you have twelve minutes left before the demon makes its move, always on the forty-minute mark (...and you don’t like the line suddenly drawn between Sam and such an old, biblically evil thing).

The boys talk. A familiar conversation occurs over your head, which might be why it’s easy for you to tune out. Your mind returns again to thoughts of Sam, so intense and loud in your head that it all fizzles out to nothing, and you’re left standing there with the air pressure making your ears ring. Sam. The demon. It’s stupid and intangible and you’d have no fucking clue how to explain it out loud, but your Gift is made to find the truth. Something inside that demon exists in Sam, too. Something.

You try to reassure yourself that maybe, just this once, your Gift is wrong. Maybe this is the demon getting into your mind—learning your deepest fears and bringing them to life.

Sure enough, Dean’s charm and Sam’s earnest face must win Amanda over, because she flits out of the back room like a frightened bird. The boys peer through the curtain to watch her go, the two of them as still and sharp-eared as twin watchdogs. You’re slapped back to life by the sudden tension in the room, and quickly scuttle up behind them. Right. Amanda’s getting the co-pilot. These next ten minutes will determine the rest of your life.

In the same beat, you and Dean ready your holy water, and Sam gets the written exorcism from their dad’s journal out in front of him. There’s no need for the three of you to say a word. An understanding passes between each of you, hammered in from years of hunting as a team. Sam slides up next to you and Dean gives you a firm nod, squashing your last wisps of fear. You’re here to do a damn job.

A man’s voice floats toward the closed curtain to the back room, followed not-so-closely by Amanda’s. You’re glad she’s not the first one into the room—because Dean instantly slams a fist into their face.

The co-pilot—or really, the thing inside him—goes sprawling. You’ve got a strip of duct tape bridled over his mouth before he even fully collides with you, and for the blissful moment you have him pinned, Dean gets another fierce hit in.

While he’s still stunned, you whip the co-pilot to the grated metal floor. Dean clambers on top of him and keeps him there with a firm fist twisted in his rumpled button-up.

Amanda panics, “W-what are you doing? Y-you said you we-were gonna talk to him—!”

“We are gonna talk to him,” Dean grits.

Then, you’re hosing him down with holy water, splashing it brutally in the man’s pain-twisted face. Your gut clenches with empathy. Did the demon leave his body already? You’re terrified for a moment that you got the wrong guy… until you smell the smoke. It’s not just sulfur, but full-on dead body bloat, steaming up from the big black boils that spring up where the holy water hits skin. You get a mouth and noseful vile enough to make you gag. This thing fighting you? This is definitely not a man.

Amanda watches the demon’s skin sizzle, the usual terror and confusion on her face. “O-oh my god, what’s wrong with him?”

You pour all the psychic clarity and calmness into your voice when you whip around and tell her: “It’s going to be okay. Be calm, go outside the curtain, and don’t let anybody in. Can you do that, Amanda?”

You don’t stop to listen to her answer. Sam’s already tearing through the opening to the exorcism at ninety miles an hour, his pronunciation punchy and fatally clear. That had been one of the less exciting parts of the five-hour drive here; when Sam had run through it over and over, re-training himself. One misspoken word could get everyone on this plane killed.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

The demon thrashes viciously in your grip, twisting and contorting under Dean in ways the human body can’t bend. Bile rises in your throat as you hear a snap, then two, as the demon does everything it can to buck Dean off. By the time you go to stun it with another splash of holy water, it’s more of a dribble. That’s your first mistake.

Two people are not nearly enough to keep this thing down. It gets a hand loose that instantly sends Dean flying, and before you even see where he lands, it cranks your head all the way to the left in one vicious slap.

Your whole face is blasted with red, stinging pain. You go down hard, smashed sideways into the cramped wall.

The pain stuns you out of the headspace you built to distract yourself, and all at once the presence of the demon is thrust upon you. The black, molten psychic power of it crackles through your body, filling your nose and mouth with the same terror hanging in your visions all week. Until you realize— It fucking backhanded you.

Trying to see past the dots swimming in your vision, you mindlessly shove off the wall, snarling with rage. No fucking way.

And then it speaks (to Sam?), and in the fizzing noise of pressure in your ears you hear it promise, “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” The constant stream of Sam’s exorcism stops cold.

When the demon speaks again, its voice, a spectral twist of the co-pilot’s and something older, drooled with pleasure. “She died screaming,” it rasped, “Even now, she's burning.”

A lot happens in the next precious seconds. First, the little circular light flushed flat to the back cabin’s ceiling explodes. Just—bursts, in shock, spraying sparks and glass all over the little room. You’re stunned enough as it is getting hit in the face, so one more thing to fuck up your vision doesn’t help. But you heard what the demon said to Sam. Through the suffocating evil flooding your mind, you feel the sharp spike of hurt and rage and grief in your best friend—and that’s the precise moment when you decide that you’ve had e-fucking-nough.

These last few days have not been winners. And though you live a pretty shitty life with an impressive amount of shitty days, even before you got to Pennsylvania, your streak of bad luck had only just gotten started. This demon has screwed with your Gift on an unimaginable level. Your last few nights have been plagued with nightmares straight from hell, and your days haven’t been much better, riddled with useless visions that get more and more disconnected every time you faint. It made it even more obvious than usual that you’re deadweight for Sam and Dean. They had to handle your boiling water burns and your freakouts, not to mention your mood swings and your unhelpful visions.

The demon hurt Dean, which is enough to get your teeth grinding. And Sam—it had cut him much deeper.

You wanted to tear it apart. You wanted to reach into it the same way it had reached into you, dig in with your nails, and rip something out. Your mom’s words buzz in your head: contact, truth, lies, rip, apart. Rationally, you know you should listen to her warning. If just looking into its eyes has forever changed your view of the man you’ve loved since you were little, then looking deeper could kill you—scramble your mind. You know that. But beside the rage and exhaustion fizzing under your skin is this desperate need to know.

Demons are made of lies. What if it was lying about Sam? What if it had screwed with your Gift in some new way, tweaking the image of him in your mind? It had to be lying. The Static in him, as warm and as good as you swore it was—it came from something evil. Sam. The man you love, the boy you’d fallen in love with, his soft sleepy breaths as he lays on the floor beside your bed, his freckly arms swimming in his too-big sleeves. How could any part of him be evil? He couldn’t be. N-not your Sam. How could he ever have something like that inside him?

You need to be sure. Consequences be damned.

As the demon rears up to keep snarling in Sam’s face, you slap a hand over its forehead—reach in—and start ripping.

She died screaming.

Sam can’t pull a full breath in. The words burn through his body like a syringe of poison, spreading from limb to limb. The demon snarls up at him, its foamy spit hitting Sam’s face and its teeth snapping around Jess’s name—until.

_____’s hand seals over the demon’s face. The demon’s jaw snaps shut. There is a terrible hanging moment where Sam’s brain struggles to connect the touch to what she’s doing; she never, ever psychically connected with the full face of her palm tattoo. Even with her mom Sam knew she put up a barrier, reading Beth with the smooth back of her knuckles instead.

Shit. Another fresh shot of horror lances through him. What the hell is she doing to it?

The effect is instant. Whatever button _____ had just hit, it activates every horror-movie, Exorcist-level instinct in the demon’s body. Surprised yelps echo down the back of the plane as the lights violently flicker. In electrified, strobing flashes, Sam sees it. The co-pilot’s body is diagonal on the floor one moment, and then it’s arching its back three feet in the air, lurching up into ______’s palm like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. The demon floats up and stays up.

…Until Dean brings it smashing back to the floor again, throwing his weight on top of the co-pilot. He barks, “Sam!” Right. Whatever she’s doing to it, it’s the only working distraction they’ve got. Slapped back to focus, Sam stutters out where he left off: “...O-omnis congregatio et secta diabolica—” It’s a blessing that he makes it through the next lines of the exorcism. Sam pours all of his willpower into keeping his eyes on the stained notebook page it’s written on, no matter how many times his gut begs him to check on her. All he can do is have faith. This is what she does—when Dean’s not strong enough and Sam’s too weak, she finds a damn way, come hell or high water. Sam has always had endless faith in that. So when the whole plane gives that terrible shudder that he was expecting, and then tips, and tips, and tips into a full pitch forward, Sam grips that faith with both hands. The demon’s power ripples through the rest of the plane. Everything descends into chaos. Past the curtain, the lights go out in one silent burst, followed by the explosive, concussive screams of the passengers as the oxygen masks drop. Movies are unfortunately good at capturing this precise moment, but nothing could ever replicate the way Sam’s belly swoops as all five hundred tons of the plane heads straight for the ground. Sam and Dean both go flying, crashing sideways into the walls of the back cabin. The turbulence rips the journal from his hands, and of course, with their fucking luck, it goes skidding through the curtain and down the aisle to ricochet under the seats. “Grab it!” Dean screams.

Sam can’t hear him. He staggers into the open doorway of the back cabin, clutching the frame for dear life. A terrifying, unnatural howl whistles through the cabin, even louder than the wails of the passengers. Its wind flutters his hair around his face and sends luggage toppling out of the overhead bins. For a moment, Sam wonders if the plane’s been hit or the demon has done something—but no. It’s her. He flattens himself to the floor—or rather, gravity flattens him—crawling on his belly towards the shadow of the journal under the seats. The passengers sob and shriek. The air is singed with smoky fear, and riding that same fear, Sam surges ahead, lunging for the book where it’s lodged between tossed luggage. He has to twist to get his hands on it, and it’s then that he feels it.

Down the aisle behind him, the wind drags luggage and loose papers into the void-like darkness of the back cabin—where the great, cleansing, sweeping power of her is fighting the demon. Sam believes in what he’s seen; Sam believes in angels.

She’ll buy him enough time. He knows she will.

Sam’s hands don’t shake as he pries the journal open to the right page.

“Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus,” he shouts, and the words ring as clear and clean as a bell. The plane tries to toss him again, but Sam grits his teeth and persists, “audi nos!”

He waits. Sam sees it more than he hears it. Deep in the blackhole darkness of the plane’s cabin, something red and fiery flashes to life… flickers… and dies.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels the demon fizzle out. The heaviness in the air melts away. The lights, which Sam realizes had been snapping on and off, turn on for good. The hissing of the turbines spins to its normal hum. The plane swooshes back up with a slow coasting motion, then sets itself back on its peaceful forward track.

Gasps and sobs of relief chorus all around Sam, and sprawled in the middle of the aisle, he finds himself doing the same. Overhead, the pilot’s voice crackles reassurances over the intercom. As big wuffs of air cycle in and out of Sam, he waits for the moment for his heart to stop thumping, for the big “we won” moment to wash over him—but it never really does. It sits with him. For a long terrible moment, he is on the bed in his apartment in Palo Alto, Jessica’s blood boiling holes in his neck.

Even now, she’s still burning.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 5th, early morning.

Somehow, amid all the noise of swarming paramedics, feds, airline authorities, and stunned 424 passengers, Sam manages to remain lost in his own head. He clenches his jaw til’ his ears pop. How had it known about Jess?

The terminal is quickly packed. He’s not in airports often enough to know whether they should be packed at one in the morning, but he’s gonna guess not. It is all background noise for him. Passengers whirl past, getting cleared by cops to go home, and Dean subtly nudges the three of them into the leaving crowd. Sam has a vague notion that he’s putting one foot in front of the other, but everything feels distant and hazy. His neck blazes with that terrible tingling feeling, and he digs into it with his nails until Dean stops him.

“Sam,” Dean orders, dipping his head towards the direction of the parking lot. Apparently Sam isn’t cooperating well. “Let’s get the hell outta’ here.” For a brief moment, the awful burning feeling covering him in a fog parts long enough for him to think, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t know where _____ is. Panic lances through his chest so fast that he sobers all at once, and he opens his mouth to panic more—until he sees her, scrunched up behind Dean.

Well, clutching Dean. Left shameless by whatever she saw in that demon’s head, she’s got Dean’s hand and wrist in a deathgrip, trailing him so close that her shoes catch the heels of his boots. She does not look good. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks straight through everyone and everything, still tethered to the other dimension her powers live in. She’s got her elbows pressed into her ribs and her body bunched up so tight that Sam can almost feel her psychic overstimulation from where he’s standing.

“S’okay, sweetheart, ” Dean hushes, the first in a long, quiet string of reassurances.

Sam stares at her. Even if she’s in her own world, she must be able to feel it, ‘cause she physically leans out of his way. That should hurt him—should make him burn with sympathy—but instead, all he can think is, she would know. She would know if the demon was lying. Sam’s connected with her like that—there’s absolutely nothing to hide, even if you wanted to, so there’s no way she couldn’t see if the demon had been telling the truth.

The line of people seeping through security to get out of the airport slows to a stop, making way for the pack of paramedics hauling 424’s copilot away on a stretcher. The black boils from the holy water have left his body entirely.

He’ll ask her once. He has to try. Sam lets the two of them in front of him, Dean, then _____, almost pressing her face into Dean’s back. When they’re stopped in line, Sam lifts a hand to touch her—but stops himself, not wanting her to feel any worse. “_____,” Sam swallows, trying to keep his voice even. “What did you see? H-How did it know about Jessica?”

Before she even has the opportunity to answer, (if she can even hear him), Dean swings around to shoot Sam a pained look. “Dude, look at her. Now is not the fuckin’ time. Let her get a full breath in before you start with the interrogations, okay?”

Sam recoils. The gnashing, rebellious fire he usually saves for Dad pours out here, instead, and before Sam knows it he’s snarling back, “I can’t ask one question about my dead girlfriend?”

It lasts only for an instant, but Sam gets to watch in real time the way that hit lands. He’s aware that it’s deeply fucked up of him to enjoy throwing Jess in Dean’s face, but it is his backward, comforting reminder that she was a real person; not a four-year-long fever dream he invented to escape. No one says her name but him anymore. At least, when he talks about her, someone else is forced to feel something too.

Dean sets his jaw. He makes the mistake of trying to turn towards Sam, which _____ thinks is an attempt to shake her off—and she lets out this awful, hoarse sob sound that stops them both cold.

Sam feels like a rail spike has been driven through his chest. Dean gives him a look, then mercifully drops it.

Immediately, Dean’s wheeling her back in and soothing her. The angle at which she’s clinging to him is awkward for all three of them, so he endures her trembling and hitching little sobs as he peels off her hands and re-arranges them. Dean loops an arm around her back so he can stroke her shuddering shoulders, uttering, “S’okay, kiddo, s’ all over… ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you…”

And of course, because Sam can never exist in peace, he watches the way ______ drops all her weight onto Dean and feels his chest squeeze. Suddenly, he’s very aware of what four years have changed between her and his brother.

The rush back to the car is silent, but for _____’s little sniffling breathes. After making it out of the blistering lights of the chattering airport and out into the peaceful snowy parking lot, things calm down.

Four separate times Sam thinks about reaching out to comfort her. The Gift always leaves her freezing cold, and early December in Indiana on top of that has her making audible little shivering sounds as they walk. Sam’s boiling under his coat. He unzips it, then zips it up again, unsure if she’d even want it. Dean gets her in the car and puts a warm blanket around her before Sam can get over his indecision.

They just saved two hundred people. In hindsight, that’s a massive win. Maybe if the demon hadn’t said what it’d said, and maybe if it hadn’t reduced her to this, Sam could celebrate. Seeing her so messed up always throws him. Less than an hour ago, she was the powerful psychic that used to have Dad clutching his telepathy-blocking charm under his shirt.

Sam scrubs his hand down his face, staring blankly at the trembling lump of blanket lying across the backseat. Now, she’s… whatever she saw in that demon.

Dean tucks her feet up onto the seat, then nudges the door closed with his hip. Sam stares past him, through him, at her silhouette in the Impala’s dark glass, because that’s somehow easier than looking at Dean.

The smattering of snow growing on the asphalt makes the whole world sound muffled. Sam feels like he’s talking to empty air when he croaks, “It knew about Jessica.”

“Sam,” Dean calls, softer this time. Asking for Sam to look at him. When he manages to heave his head up, Dean’s face is firm and reassuring. “These things—they read minds. They lie, just like Beth said. That’s all it was. Don’t let that thing get into your head, okay?”

Sam forces himself to nod. They both spare the shaking shape in the backseat one more look, then Dean’s rounding the car for the driver’s seat, and Sam’s sliding in next to him without another word.

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 5th, night.

Green. It had to be the ugliest color a motel room could be, Sam thought as he stared at the empty room. The walls were this sad limey green color that managed to look awful even in the dark, some parts made even limey-er by the huge neon green vacancy sign right outside their window. Their room was parked right next to it, so there was no escaping the sign even with the curtains pulled shut.

You and Dean, who were positioned right under the ugly green light, had somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. The only sound in the whole world was your soft breathing across the room and the crackle of the ancient TV.

Right now, it was playing a rerun of some televangelist in a big shiny white suit. He paced the screen on mute as Sam watched, curled on his side, laying diagonal to face the screen. Nightmares were so common for him now that the hardest part of the battle was getting to sleep in the first place. His strategy was to get so bored and so tired that his body would simply have nothing else to do but crash. Bored was the key word—Sam had tried reading, sudoku, and counting cars as they whisked by, but all of that occupied his mind too much to work. Tonight was another night where his mind was just too full to sleep.

He hoped Dean was right. He prayed that the demon had just been lying, lips pressed to the cross he kept under his shirt. Most days, Sam dropped into bed and sent off a brief prayer before the fight for sleep began. Tonight, though—tonight was one of those nights where he clasped his cross in both hands and poured his heart out. Sam prayed for his brother, his Dad, and for you, like usual, pleading for protection and strength. Sam prayed for Jessica, too.

(But never for her forgiveness—he knew he didn’t deserve that).

When Sam had first started getting comfortable with prayer, he’d always worried that he was being greedy or selfish by asking for so much. Health, food, lunch money, for Dad and Dean to get home okay. Now, it’s a natural comfort to him. To open yourself up to something higher than you, to give up your pride and ask for help—that is a mark of holiness. Goodness. Sam closes out his prayers and feels clean.

Across the room, Sam hears the covers in the opposite bed shift. He squints sleepy eyes at your silhouette, and even sluggish and drained, the shifting colors from the TV and the vacancy sign illuminate you like something not entirely from this world.

You pad over to his bedside. A soft, ice-cold hand shakes his arm. When you get up close and realize Sam’s awake, you scuttle back in surprise. “Uh.”

Sam shoves his face into his pillow. With his mind still on Jess, it’s hard for him to look at you right now. “What is it?”

It’s funny. From the moment you got off flight 424, you’d been glued to Dean’s side. Sam had kept his teeth pressed together through the entire thing, watching from a distance as you reached for Dean, spoke to Dean, took the food Dean gave you. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d figure you were avoiding him. Now you’ve decided you want something from him?

The second you touch his arm, every wisp of jealousy in Sam dries up. Not at all in the mood to be touched, he squirms out from under your hand and hoarsely repeats, “What?” You speak to him for the first time in hours. You sound rough and broken, and the edge of that awful sob from earlier today threatens to tip into your voice. “Can I…?”

Sam keeps his face planted in the pillow. At first he’s unsure what you’re even asking for—until you drop a hand on the mattress and he feels your weight tilt closer, wanting to… to lay with him. Like when you were little. When you share beds on the road, there’s often space left between you. That’s not what you’re asking for. If that’s what you wanted right now, you’d be in Dean’s bed.

The soft, choked little voice he can’t resist begs, “I just need to feel you.”

The last sliver of guilt and self-loathing that Sam has been holding onto instantly slips out of his grasp, hearing that. For the millionth time since this morning, he’s reminded of how awful he was to you. You’d been brought to the brink with your powers in a way they hadn’t seen in years, and Sam chose that precise moment to freak out. He wished he’d been better to you. Maybe he can’t pray for Jess’s forgiveness, but he can work to earn yours now.

Sam shuffles back on the mattress and opens the covers for you. “C’mere.”

As quiet as a mouse, you duck under his arm and slip under the covers. Sam immediately realizes that he should’ve fucking braced himself or something, because holy shit, you are so close. He accidentally gave you very little room in the already small bed. To keep from tumbling off the mattress and onto the questionable carpet, you reasonably and logically slot right up against him, your back against his chest and your heads on the same pillow. Holy shit, he did not think this through. Sam has very few gentlemanly places to lay his arm. And even if he found one, your icy cold hand picks up his warm one and—right, okay, you take it and wrap it right around your middle. That’s fine too. Cool. Awesome.

Okay. Forgetting every way he could sabotage this for himself for just a moment, Sam realizes that he missed this. God, he missed it so much. You wiggle back into his body and Sam gives you a big, indulgent squeeze around the tummy, earning this watery little sigh that makes his already racing heart zing out into orbit. Friendly snuggling became a lot less friendly when you were pushing seventeen instead of nine, so Sam hasn’t allowed himself to properly, um… cuddle you… in ages.

That isn’t even the best part. That little squeeze makes him realize just how pleasantly cold you are, a wonderful ice cube in blazing hot soup. Sam’s practically cooking under the covers—and that must be perfect for you and your chilly hands, because you make the same pitiful happy noise that Sam does as you get comfortable against each other.

Maybe if this were any other moment, after any other day, that would be something you might laugh about together. Instead, Sam’s prayers are filled with you and your incredible burden. He hesitates to go all in and hold you like he wants to… until your breath makes that tight, hitching sound again, and Sam’s sure you’re holding back tears. Screw it, Sam thinks. He’ll take care of you this time. Sam presses his face into your hair and entwines your hands on your belly, unsure of what to say and yet wanting to say so much. Dean can’t hold you like this—this is something you only want from Sam.

You both go still. Sam feels you hold your breath. His legs are itching to shift under the covers and your hand awkwardly holds his, the two of you afraid to disturb the magic.

Your thumb slowly caresses along the flat side of his hand. His heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to relax. You need this. Finally, it’s his turn to comfort you.

Sam swallows hard. There’s no way you can’t feel his heart thudding away, inches from popping clean out of his chest. Neither of you are stupid. If Dean were to wake up, you know exactly what this would look like to him—to the cleaning lady, to the strangers out on the street. But right now, in this frozen moment, there’s no one awake in the world but the two of you and the TV. It is so, so wrong. But when you touch him, Sam feels clean.

Bit by bit, you adjust to one another. Your breath syncs up. The whole time, your eyes never move from the TV, but if Sam focusses he swears something washes over him—that same great, sweeping, cleansing power from the plane, as light as moth wings on his skin. He has to bite back his smile. If you did that to anyone else, they’d find you creepy as hell.

After what feels like forever, you plainly croak, “It was lying about her. It was made of lies.”

That hits Sam like a slap to the face. That’s… yeah. That sounds right. He absorbs the impact as best he can, because although his faith was thin, Sam trusted Dean’s word and he trusts yours, too. There’s—so much that he feels about that, but he doesn’t want any more of his grief to overwhelm your Gift. Sam’s not naive. No matter how good of a person you are, no matter how considerate and understanding and empathetic you can be, Sam knows that talking about Jessica brings you some level of pain. It hurts him, too. And he has zero clue where that conversation would even begin, so he stores his shame and his loss and gives a shaky nod.

Instead, Sam asks, “...What did you see? When you looked into its head?”

Right. Cause’ that was such a better question to ask her, Sam.

You go silent. It’s a weighty, knowing silence, one that chokes the whole room. Sam readies himself for whatever you’re about to share with him. Admittedly, he’s curious. When the Gift was something new in your life, Sam used to pile on question after question about what the world felt like to you. ‘What does it feel like when Dean’s happy?’ A car motor turning on. ‘What does my happiness feel like?’ Dimples and a mystery being solved. ‘You’re joking.’ Not even a little. It fascinated Sam—how does a demon feel in comparison to a regular spirit?

“...It was just an evil spirit, Sammy,” you dismiss. “That’s all.”

Sam highly doubts that’s true. If it was just a spirit, then why did it screw with you so deeply? What had you seen in its head that had scared you? You, of all people, who was built for this? He knows there’s something more here, but after this week and all the ways you’ve fought to avoid being a burden, the fact that you’d crawl to Sam for comfort is a sign of surrender. You’ve given up. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about it. Sam isn’t going to push you. God knows he’s done that enough.

When Sam doesn’t push you, you shudder out a wet sigh and pick up his hand. At this point, Sam expects you in this state to do something weird—and sure enough, you do. You pick up Sam’s hand and you just stare at it. Just stare. Your thumb presses into the meat of his palm, almost like you’re looking for something. Feeling him. Sam’s heart gives another pathetic, noticeable throb. Feeling him and being close to him is, after everything, still a source of comfort for you. His cheeks burn.

Just to fill the silence, Sam whispers, “I’ve lost a lot of my calluses.”

Per usual, his little creep says nothing. You’re still feeling him. Your other hand comes up to investigate too, adding even more soft gentle touching to Sam’s already overloaded system. Your thumbs press into the center of his palm (reading it, maybe?), then over each bump, confirming for yourself that Sam’s real.

Maybe he’d be a bit more resilient if you were doing this to him in a crowded diner or a rowdy college party. Instead, Sam can feel the rise and fall of your breath through your thin shirt, and it’s the only sound in the dead world besides the buzzing static on the TV.

Your gaze turns to the TV. The fingers caressing his hand stop cold.

Sam says your name. He can feel your heart thud thud thudding deep in your chest, like rabbit’s feet hitting snow.

Again, absorbed completely in your own task, you don’t answer him. You roll over very suddenly under the covers. Sam hopes for a minute that being face to face with you will give him some answers, but the flash of your face he sees only serves to scare the shit out of him. You give him no time to process before you’re full-body hugging him, shoving a hand between his side and the mattress and fisting one in his shirt to bodily haul him against you. Sam sputters out a sharp noise and awkwardly slopes his hands down your back. The sudden intimacy gives him a whole world of shameful butterflies and freaks him out enough, but…

You looked terrified. The same bone-deep horror you had on your face after you saw the demon in person—when you trudged up to Sam with those haunting Proctor eyes, staring straight through him and right at his future. What had you seen in that demon?

Sam tries to speak, but you talk over him, just as haunted as you’d been on that plane.

“I love you. So much, Sam. You know that?”

It’s not a sweet, reminiscent kind of question. It is a genuine, unironic, please-tell-me-the-truth, You know that?

Sam’s brain stalls. “...Yeah. O-Of course.”

In case that wasn’t worrying enough, your hands needily grasp at his back, refusing to let Sam go as you duck your face into his shoulder. Sam can feel your entire body trembling from head to toe, can feel your hot breath on his neck choking back tears. “You’re a good person,” you tell him, insisting. “The best to me.”

“That’s—”

“I can feel it, okay?” You snap. One of your hands slips up his chest to smooth over Sam’s heart, and you squeeze him against you, promising, “Here. Right here.”

…Okay. Consider him officially freaked out. Sam manages an unconvinced, “...Thank you.”

You’re so wound up that you’re gritting your teeth, digging your nails into his shirt and clawing him as close as possible. This has to be an effect of what you saw. Which is strange, because that… whatever that was, did not feel like psychic possession or a psychic panic attack or any kind of psychic anything. It felt like you, trying to convince Sam that he’s a good person. It strikes a cold, dark chord somewhere deep within him that he doesn’t like. You’re just… you’re just reacting to what the demon showed you. You’re overwhelmed from stretching your Gift so thin. T-that’s. Yeah. Regardless, you’re scared. You need him. That, at least, is something he can work with.

“Shh,” Sam coos. He rubs a warm hand from the base of your scalp all the way down your back, then up, and back again, repeating the soothing motion until his arm goes numb. “You’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

You mumble something non-committal under your breath.

Sam hushes you, blindly reaching for comforting things to say. “S’ okay. You’re okay, baby. You can fall asleep on me.”

Maybe the demon showed you visions of Sam getting hurt. Something. That would explain this, maybe. He fixates on it, purely because it’s a problem in front of him that is much easier to think about than how scared he is for you, and worse, how much he loves this. Being your person. It’s a stupid, selfish thought to have in a moment like this, but—Sam wishes he could take care of you like this all the time.

As your frantic breathing smooths out into a clear, easy in-and-out, Sam wonders, wherever Jess is, what she would think if she saw this.

He closes his eyes and tries to steady his own breathing, the TV still crackling away on the dresser.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh.

- tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydennyy @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan

#uncouthspn #spn #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #sam winchester x reader #pythia #sam winchester imagine #supernatural rewrite

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come-rain-come-shine · 6 months

Text

As I was watching "Day of Death" a couple of weeks ago (as one does), I paused on this whiteboard to see what it said, and something stuck out to me.

On this whiteboard detailing the events of the night that Lucy was abducted, someone wrote this:

The board says:

hates cats (won't tell anyone)

sucks on lemons

This seems to be personal facts about Lucy that have been included with facts about the case. It's possible these points are about Caleb — maybe things that Lucy relayed to Tim while she was looking Caleb up on social media — but since it's stated repeatedly in the episode that they have "squat" to go on about him, it's more likely that these points are about Lucy.

I have two theories for why these bizarre points are on this board: an in-universe explanation (grounded in the story and the characters), and an out-of-universe explanation (grounded in reasons related to the actual creation of the show).

In-universe: Tim and/or Jackson, desperate to contribute to the investigation, were yelling out whatever they could think of to help build the case.

Now, I can't guess why anyone could have seen these particular tidbits as possibly relevant. But since they all had so little to go on, it would seem that they were throwing absolutely anything at the wall to see what would stick.

This theory mostly stems from the way that Tim was regurgitating every little thing he knew about Caleb the moment he knew that Lucy was missing. His wild spouting of facts is rather out of character: Tim is usually in control, focused on the job. But when Lucy is missing, logic flies out the window for him.

He tells Grey about the video of Caleb playing with a puppy, why?? Because it's all the information he has to offer to the case. Even if it's not really pertinent, he says it, because he doesn't know what could help Lucy. Also, he's not fully in control of his actions, and he's possibly suffering from motormouth.

I include Jackson as a possible contributor because he is probably the person who is second-most concerned about Lucy, plus one of the people who knows her best, and he has a history of babbling when stressed (I'm thinking of season 1, episode 13, "Caught Stealing," when he tells the Internal Affairs investigator about the gifted creme brulee completely unprompted lol). But in my Chenford shipper heart, I want to say Tim was the one to make these less than helpful contributions.

I can picture Armstrong writing out all this information about Lucy's whereabouts the night of her abduction, stating facts that they know, and Tim and/or Jackson blurting out personal details that might (somehow) give them a clue about where Lucy is now. Maybe Armstrong writes out the addresses of where she was on December 8th, then the stuff about other victims, and then he says, "What else do we know?" and then Tim and/or Jackson start wildly interjecting. They know literally nothing else that is relevant, so all they can say is random trivia about Lucy. And Armstrong, who can see that emotions are very high right now, writes it down to placate them? Or because he's like, "Irrelevant information is better than no information"? (I'm not sure how a detective would think in this scenario.)

Out-of-universe: Some of the set decorators or other crew were messing around, writing down whatever on the boards, and someone forgot to erase this. 😆

I like the in-universe explanation better, since the writing is rather large and this behaviour by Tim and/or Jackson would be consistent with what we see earlier in the episode.

#the rookie #analysis #season 2 #day of death #lucy chen #tim bradford #chenford #my posts #2x11

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harus-simp · 1 year

Text

When you have a stan account dedicated to them

Jiwoong, Keita,Jongwoo,Taerae, Wumuti

Genre: fluff, but a little bit sad on some parts :((

Requested: How about Jongwoo, Jiwoong, Taerae, Keita (and anyone you want to add) reacting to you having a stan twitter account dedicated to them lol? (Anonymous)

Author's note: I think I didn't specify it as a twitter account in some of them,so I hope you're fine with it anon. I added Wumuti because I'm this close to create an account for him I'm not even joking, although it is a little bit sad so beware of it. Hope you like it :)) (Might be a little bit long haha I got carried away 😛)

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The boys know that you've been supporting them for sure watching boys planet and that you've been rooting for them however, they didn't expect you to take your supporting that far.

Jiwoong

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

After days and hours of practice and hard work Jiwoong was able to take a breath as the dual position battle had finished. He felt so proud of being able to go to Mcountdown with his team at last,his efforts paying off.

He called you immediately excited to let you know about his week. You picked up really confused to his sudden call, but smiling about his happiness.

You asked him if you could spend a little time with him and go celebrate it to a nearby restaurant, you offering to treat him to which he accepted with a smile on his face, making him look like an idiot talking to his phone.

While waiting for you to arrive he decided to search his name on Twitter to see all the support he had been receiving from his fans. He looked at each one of the posts with such detail and care, as he though of how everyone had dedicated him time, so he opted for doing exactly the same.

While looking carefully at all the letters, messages and pictures, one particular post stood out to him, it was a picture with a short but sweet message attached to it:

-Not only my boy is an awesome actor but he's a really talented rapper, singer and dancer so please vote for him. Jiwoong hwaiting!!!

He found it so endearing and flattering how he was surrounded by amazing people who were willing to make him debut, however what caught his attention was the photo that followed the message.

He found it oddly familiar for some reason but couldn't figure out why, until he finally remembered, that was a photo he hadn't published in his social media, that was indeed a photo he had only sent to you to cheer you up on your exams.

His thoughts were interrupted by you calling his name from afar.

"Jiwoong"you called waving your hand at him.

He smiled fondly and reunited with you to go eat together, interlacing your hands in the process.

"How you doing, baby?"he asked you

"I should be asking you that you winner!"you responded giggling and expecting him to answer.

"Well, it has been a rollercoaster of emotions"

"Oh, I could definitely tell"

You guys continued with your conversation as you were eating,and when you were asking for dessert he confronted you about the post he found suspiciously similar to all you were telling him throughout the lunch, throwing him lots of compliments and sweet words.

Does the account Jiwoong's number one supporter sounds familiar to you?"he asked naturally.

You were taken aback for a moment right there, until you laughed awkwardly saying: "ha.ha.ha no, I don't know what that is"

"Well, that's funny cause I've only sent this photo to you" he said laughing it off and smiling cutely.

*Oh, I forgot about that*you thought to yourself.

He watched as the smiled was washed off from your face, realisation hitting you like a truck.

He awaited for a response as you finally buried your face in your hands, accepting defeat.

"So it really was you" he smiled dedicating you a look were he expressed all his admiration for you while taking your hands in his. "No need to be embarrassed about it love, I find it really cute"

You looked back at him and laughed softly at his antics: "Well it's not like I've told any lies there" you responded.

This only made Jiwoong want to pamper you with kisses till he was satisfied, but instead he sat at your side and hugged you tightly, as the later option was best for you to not be redder than you were, besides you were still in public.

"I'm so thankful y/nnie"he broke the hug and pecked you quickly on your forehead just before the desserts arrived.

Keita

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡

Being Keita is not an easy job, being that talented is difficult. How can someone be so good at everything? He's good at singing, dancing, rapping, producing his own songs. Lirerally perfection.

You as his girlfriend had always wandered how he could be such a perfect all rounder, but most importantly you always kept thinking how he could be yours.

However, as good as he was (like he excels at everything) he was also human, he struggled, he had his own worries and preoccupations. So when you caught him one day a little lower than usual you decided to listen to him and he decided to open up to you sincerely.

He talked about how Ciipher needed more support and that they weren't going through their best moments, although he sweetened it with other words, saying he wanted another challenge so he decided to audition to boys planet in search of an opportunity to debut.

And of course you supported him, how could you not? He deserved the entire world in your eyes and even more than that.

A few days after passing the auditions for the programme, he was preparing his song with the other japanese trainees "Zero for Conduct" and helping them as well with their korean.

When the practice ended he decided to visit you and rest for a while before going back to the doorms, where he was working with his team mates.

When he got to your house the first thing he did was look for you on the sofa, where he knew you were gonna be for sure watching a movie, a series or just scrolling through your phone, turns out the last option was the correct one.

You were so immersed on whatever you were doing you didn't even felt his presence behind you, making it a perfect opportunity for him to surprise you. He got close from behind with the intention of scaring you, however when he saw you were writing from an account by the name of keita's-simp he couldn't help but forget his plan and say out loud : "What are you doing right there?".

You jumped a little bit and looked back at him hiding your phone under a pillow.

"God damn Keita, don't scare me like that!"you told him back.

"No but seriously, what were you doing?"

"Oh, nothing important really, just watching videos honestly"

"So you are hiding your phone due to...?"he looked at you oddly.

"Due to you scaring the shit out of me?"you answered with an obvious expression.

He shrugged it off and accepted your response, although not very convinced of it.

After spending some time together just talking casually, you excused yourself for a moment to go the restroom. He wanted to take a look at whatever you were doing before, which he considered quite suspicious imo, but he wanted to respect your privacy. However, when he was about to continue with his activities your phone received a notification from that Twitter account,which he had seen previously. His curiosity gaining the best of him made him check out that little message, leading him to an account dedicated completely to him. He began scrolling through the posts revealing all kinds of sweet and short supporting messages.

He smiled revealing his cute little teeth and thinking of thousands of ways to tease his bae, until seeing that some of the posts dated from 2018 approximately. He was still a trainee back there so, he was confused, like really confused.

"Alright I'm ba-"you were saying when you saw him scrolling through your phone on your account.

"Are you looking through my things without my permission Mr Terazono?"you asked furrowing your eyebrows.

"Are you using an account named keita's-simp?"he asked you ironically and with a smug grin.

"Ye-, yes I am"you answered shyly.

"Then why are some posts so old?"

You sighed, knowing you couldn't escape the situation at all : "Well that' because YG TREASURE BOX started by that date".

He couldn't help but smile thinking of all the time you had been rooting for him : "Oh, really?"he raised his eyebrows in a teasing manner.

"Yeah..."

He got closer to you causing you to back off and fall to the sofa, as he then hugged you like a koala being on top of you.

"You don't have any idea of how thankful and blessed I am to have you"he said hiding his face

You just smiled at him and caressed his hair softly, making him fall asleep and not go back to his doorms, and although he was scolded, he didn't regret it in any way.

Jongwoo

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

Jongwoo had been struggling on his path through Boys Planet, and although he was fighting for his dreams,he didn't find it as easy as he thought.

At first, he started smoothly with his group having good reviews and feedback from the star masters, which gave him some hope about his future. However, as the revaluation came and his stars dropped he lost some confidence and self-esteem.

Later, the K vs G group battle begun, where he was able to portray a better version of himself. He was even questioned why his star were so low when he had the talent and the ability to do more, that felt great to him, being praised for your hard work was amazing and it made him feel very proud. And it all payed off as his team won and he got the privilege to go to Mcountdown.

Then, the dual position battle arrived and he was pushed from the team he wanted,hurting his pride on the process.He wanted that team so bad and it just slipped through his fingers like it was nothing. Nevertheless, he slayed his performance anyways and could win individually. He felt relieved once again and really joyful. How could he not when his purpose of debuting started to make sense.

That leave us to his next mission, the Artist battle. He worked so hard for his song, Over Me. He suggested choreo, lyrics and lead his team perfectly. So being kicked out of it felt so wrong, it hurted so much, it made him think that he worked for nothing. He wasn't able to fight for what he wanted. When he got to the Switch team, he was really discouraged so he decided to not apply for the killing part.

Right now, he was preparing for a little event with star creators, which somehow gave him the strength to continue and give an amazing performance. However, when the curtain fell there were more than star creators, there were everyone's family and friends. Jongwoo could distinguish his friends from everyone else filling with giddiness and excitement. They were performing before people they cared about, and that was everything that mattered to him.

When he got time to talk to his friends he felt nothing but pure happiness.

"Jongwoo, you are doing great!"commented one of his friends.

"Thank you so much for coming guys, I appreciate it so much"

"Yeah, we've been watching all your performances and all twitter support you"someone said.

"You have lots of fans that support you!"

He was so happy to hear that, no one could imagine.

"Speaking of, there is this particular account that I see literally everywhere, they are really big fans. Look here it is"they said as they showed him.

He looked carefully and realised something, that way of writing was really familiar to him, way too familiar. And then something suddenly clicked, that was his girlfriend's way of speaking right there. How could he be so bland? All this time in the programme and he didn't thought of you once, how could he be so self absorbed?

After that day, in which they discovered it was a evaluation from their relatives and friends, he decided (although not adequate) to sneek from the planet camp and go to your apartment. He might regret it later, but at the moment you were the only thing on his mind.

When he got there, he unlocked the door and saw you preparing some food for you to eat, he felt so lucky to have you in his life. He hugged you from behind, hiding his face on the crook of your neck while you smiled knowing already who was the one that initiated that sign of affection.

"Hey baby, how's everything going on boys planet?"you asked him while still cooking peacefully.

"..."he didn't answered but started kissing your neck softly instead.

"Hehe that tickles"

You stopped smiling once you started to hear a silent whimpering sound.

"Hey Jongwoo, what's wrong?"you asked him as you stopped everything you were doing and turned around to see his face.

"Nothing, it's just-"

"Come on tell me" you encouraged him while whipping off his tears softly.

"It has been really hard, and I've just been so concentrated on winning that I forgot about my own girlfriend's existence, I've just missed you so much but couldn't think of it myself and-"

You silenced him by pressing a soft and sweet kiss on his lips, he corresponded eagerly and once you pulled apart you said to him: "Look, I'm not mad at that, I understand how hard it has been for you and all the hard work you've put in every single performance".

"Yes, but seeing your account has hitted my sensible spot"he said.

"Hahaha, you know I'll always be your number 1 fan. I'm so proud of you for raising so much on the rankings and having so much support from star creators".

"You are amazing, you know that? But jongwoo's-wifey, really?"he teased you.

You blushed at his remark.

"Well, I'm just being a fan, what do you expect?"

He giggled silently and got closer to your ear saying: "Well, if so you must call me your husbie"

"What?"

"Husband"

You turned redder than a tomatoe if that was even possible, getting away from him and hitting his arm playfully.

Did he mean it? We'll never know 👀

Taerae

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡

It had been a really tiring day for Taerae, practising por Switch was nothing but easy. It was complicated for him as his dancing didn't stood out as the best, but could you ever be mad at it? No, his singing made up for it tho (and the dance is really fast paced, so💀💀💀).

He practiced and practiced and practiced, and practiced once again lead by phanbin,a really detailed person and a perfectionist, but at least being as strict as he was with the dance moves was helping him improve in some way.

All the hours and effort he had put into the performance were starting to make everyone tired, so phanbin decided to let everyone go home and rest for the next day.

When Taerae finally got home, he couldn't help but wanting to take a shower and just sleep for 3 days straight. So that's exactly what he did. He took a cold shower as he had sweated so much and as he was changing to something comfortable you got home being greeted warmly by your boyfriend.

"Hey y/nnie, how was work?"he asked you

"Exhausting actually, how's your practice for the Artist battle going tae?

"I can't wait for you to see it" he smiled brightly at you.

After showering and changing clothes as well, you both decided to just go with a session of cuddles and a movie for you to rest from your respective work and to just enjoy your time with each other.

You put a silly rom com to lighten your moods and basically to have it as background noises as you knew perfectly you would just talk through it.

You were resting your head on taerae's chest as he had his arms wrapped around you securely and protectively, leaving you reassured of nothing bad happening to you.

Right after finishing the movie (it was really bad, like horribly made), you excused yourself to go to the kitchen for a snack, he decided to enter Twitter and see what all star creators were up to. He saw from letters to drawings to threads looking carefully at every post were he was being showered with love and affection from his fans. However, he saw an account that looked familiar,it was his more loyal fan account taerae's-dimples.

He laughed once again at the silly name the person had opted to name the account. However, there was something really heartfelt about the way that the posts were made.

Not only did they complimented his physique and his looks, but they also bragged about their vocals and the way he had improved his dancing, knowing himself he wasn't a perfect dancer he appreciated it a lot.

They talked about how he laughed when he was with Junhyeon, about his adorable and lovely smile, his cute dimples, his amazing personality,how he was loved by lots of star creators, and the list goes on.

He was grateful for all his fans, but something about that particular person, just made him really like them .

So was his admiration for them that he decided to thank them personally (well not like face to face) using wake one's account. He slid through their dm's writing a short but sentimental message to them that could express all his feelings towards them.

He then pressed the send button and smiled satisfied of his little act of service, when suddenly your phone rang with a notification. He actually didn't pay much attention to that til you came back with some pizza and pop corn for you to eat while watching another film you both had chosen.

While eating, you checked your phone and saw Taerae's message:

-Thank you so much dear fan, thank you for always being there for me and supporting me in every way you can. It means so much to me, I'll show you a better version of myself. Hwaiting!!

You chuckled and laughed internally at Taerae, he was so sweet with everyone it made you fell more for him. You turned around and said to him:

"You can't be cuter seriously"

"What?"

"Your way of thanking your fans is adorable"

He looked at you confused as you showed him his message on your account.

He couldn't believe it, all this time and it was you.

"That was you?"

"Yeah"

He started laughing uncontrollably and looked at you with his mouth opened.

"Really,why are you like this?"he asked sighing.

Now you were the confused one: "huh?"

"You were making me fall in love over again, I can't stand you" he said while bringing you to his arms, too embarrassed to let go.

You giggled softly and hugged him back : "I'm just simply too cute"

"You sure are darling"

Wumuti

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

The 2nd elimination had finished in boys planet and it was a little bit disappointing for you, a loyal supporter of your boy Wumuti. Placing 34th felt so close yet so far, feeling sad about it and can't help but worring of his current state as well, if it was hard for you to watch you couldn't imagine how hard was for him to experience.

There were a mix of emotions on the pit of your stomach, sadness, anger,pity, empathy, to name but a few.

You knew he wanted this so bad and seeing all his efforts on the Switch team being gripped out of him felt so wrong. Hearing him say he couldn't see the performance if he wasn't there was tough as well and you felt so bad for him.

However, this was not the end, you knew it perfectly. Now he had lots of more fans who supported him making you feel like all your promoting didn't go to waste. Yes, you did have an account dedicated to him, how else would you help him be voted by star creators? Your main purpose was to help him raise in rankings, but the most important was to be there for him as his number 1 fan and help him be happy chasing after his dreams.

Right after this, you decided to not be discouraged and still ask people to support him everywhere he went and with everything he did.

You suddenly heard the bell ringing, making you leave your phone immediately and run to the door suspecting who was gonna be at your door. When you opened it your guesses were right, it was Wumuti himself waiting for you to let him inside. He was standing there with a serious expression that changed when you opened the door to the biggest grin you had ever seen in your entire life.

"Babyyyy, I've missed you so muchhhh"he said hugging you tightly, a hug that expressed perfectly all his emotions.

You hugged him with the same passion throwing yourself at him in order to not have any space left between both of you.

"I've missed you moreeee, let's go inside first"you insisted.

As you entered your apartment you gave him a sweet kiss which he gladly accepted smiling right into it.

"I can't believe they've eliminated you when I've been working my ass off to promote you, people are blind I swear to God!"you finally let out your irritated state.

"Promote me?"he asked, confusion being present in his features.

"Yes,I think I've never used Twitter so much in my entire life, I have probably used it more in 2 months than ever"you showed him your phone with your account.

"Wumuti-ti-ti's-girl? Do you have an account for me?"he asked shocked, he really wasn't expecting that.

"Of course, what did you expect from me?

In that moment he felt the luckiest person on earth, wondering how could he deserve you and all your love for him.

He felt so overwhelmed by it tears started to fall from his eyes, we don't know if they were from sadness from being eliminated or from happiness from having you on his side or from both of them.

When you saw him like that you absolutely panicked at first, but you snapped out of it and brought him to your arms carresing his hair softly.

"Shhh it's okay baby, just take your time"

Instead of hugging you back he just (gonna die) let you comfort him telling him sweet words filled with truth on them.

When he finally stopped crying he separated his face from your shoulder and made eye contact with you dedicating you a soft smile that melted you.

"You mean so much to me you don't have any idea, I don't know what I'd do without you"he said sincerely.

"Well, you probably wouldn't do much"you said teasing him.

"Probably"

"But, I love you like that"you told him kissing his cheek.

"I love you too"

"Now let's talk why certain people don't deserve to be there as much as you do"

"Babe, no-"

"No yes, I will fight Mnet and some star creators I swear it".

°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°◇°

#boys planet #boys planet drabbles #boys planet fanfics #boys planet headcanons #boys planet reactions #boys planet x reader #kim jiwoong #terazono keita #yoon jongwoo #kim taerae #wumuti ti ti #kpop

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its-chelisey-stuff · 1 month

Text

is this a classic in the making?? Too early too tell but I really miss obsessing over kdramas, so maybe this brings back into it?

finally caught up with Queen of Tears and I must confess I don't know what to make of Kim SooHyun's character yet. I get that the guy is only human, but the fact that his first thought at finding out his wife might die from a rare decease is happiness, it's cold. And wrong.

I mean I guess that's kinda the point, right? This guy thinking he's happy at this terrible news, is clearly an indication that the situation he's been living in since he married has messed up his head, but... I dislike him a lot for it anyway hahaha

And I know that it takes two to tango, and the way their marriage has come to this is definitely something that holds both people responsible. I see that the toxicity, manipulation and constant scrutiny from the Hong family (mixed up with the fact that HyunWoo's family is quite dependant economically on him and his marriage) could drive a guy insane, particularly a guy who seemed so in love with his wife at the start ready to take on everything and everyone, in the name of love.

But of course, now we have the added layer of the miscarriage/baby loss and it definitely complicates a loooot of things while also explaining them in a way. I could say HaeIn just shut off completely and decided to use Elsa's method of conceal don't feel, while the opposite happened to HyunWoo and the guy just couldn't help but feel everything. All the pain, the hurt, shame and stuff caused by the overbearing family in law and even his wife. I get it. But still, you once loved this woman, how can you feel happy at the thought of her death? Sociopath dare I say.

If it wasn't clear enough, at this moment, I'm on HaeIn's side, meaning that I feel more for her and her situation than I do for Hyunwoo, because I can relate a bit to her way of shutting everything out and where she's coming from. It's clear as day that she has experienced a lot of trauma from her early years (the loss of her brother, her mother blaming her for it) and now facing the terrible news that she might die on top of having scary episodes in which she doesn't remember shit. And she doesn't know how to properly deal with any of it. I'm sure that, when she first married, she was happily in love and in the bliss of it all, she forgot all of this unresolved trauma, but now that so much more has piled in, her only way of dealing is becoming ice. And I find that a lot more tragic than Hyunwoo's situation, so don't argue with me lol you won't make me change my mind

but damn, I still do root for them and want them to find a way back to each other...

I know kdramas and I know this writer and eventually, HyunWoo is gonna wake up to the fact that underneath all that resentment and poor communication, he still loves her. A LOT. I roll my eyes at the fact that another man had to come into the picture for him to start feeling dormant emotions and finding his wife attractive and beautiful, but I guess I'll take what I can. I know he will suffer terribly in upcoming eps, cause you don't just cast KimSooHyun to make him happy and silly. NO. You cast him to make him suffer and make him cry and cry and cry. (I still tear up at his breakdown scene from The Moon that Embraces the Sun).

At the end, if I'm to be guided by old dramas from this writer, my guess is that HaeIn will recover and live in the end. I'd be very surprised if she doesn't but tbh I'm preparing for that possibility. What I do know is that my girl is gonna suffer, and for that, I'm not that well prepared, nor do I look forward to it as with HyunWoo's pain and misery.

I mean, look at that face! I will protect and defend her till the end!

#queen of tears #kdrama #kim soo hyun #kim jiwon #does it make sense that I had this drama on my radar bc of ksh but I'm staying for jiwon?#i mean the drama is called queen of tears for a reason

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merakiui · 1 month

Note

Are there any mangas or anime you really enjoy?

Yes!!! :D here are just a few I especially love:

✧ Summertime Render - I LOVE THIS ANIME/MANGA OMG...... I cannot hype it enough. The plot and its twists had me at the edge of my seat throughout. All of the characters have such strong personalities, the villains are really well done, the mystery and action are executed wonderfully, the pacing is great, the setting is amazing, the ost scratches my brain!!! In short, everything about this series is 10/10 for me.

✧ Great Pretender - another series I love to pieces! The backgrounds are so aesthetically pleasing,,, uuuwaaaa. The characters are so memorable, and the plots for each individual con are amazing. I'm left breathless every time because somehow the stakes just keep raising. It's so good!!!!! The opening song is also such a banger?!?!!??!! orz I could listen to it forever.

✧ THEO by Aono Nachi - it's such a cute BL. 🥺 I loved the dynamic between Theo and Rei. Maybe it's because I'm weak to master-servant dynamics, but then I also like how emotional their romance is and how stubborn Rei is. It was really wonderful!!

✧ Marriage to the Wolf by Inui Hana - another lovely BL!! I adored the dynamic between Kaede and Ren. The way they couldn't stand each other in the beginning..... slowly growing closer and softening to each other. The way they're both doing things out of obligation at first because it's an arranged marriage and the fact that Ren is holding back for Kaede's sake...... THEIR BANTER!!!!!! orz orz

✧ Devilman Crybaby (the netflix adaptation) - THIS SHOW. It hurts me every time I watch it. The ost is a banger, the art style is amazing, the way I cried ugly the first time I watched it. The "why am I the only one speaking, Akira?" haunts me to this day. I highly recommend it.

✧ ODDTAXI - the plot and the twist omg!!!!!! And the mystery!!!!! I may be biased because Riddle's VA voices Odokawa and I love anything that Natsuki Hanae does!! His work is always outstanding. The opening is also another banger. I can't say much without spoiling something major, but I highly recommend this anime. It's definitely worth the watch!!!

✧ The Disastrous Life of Saiki K - Saiki K my beloved. It always manages to make me laugh. I love Saiki's character. He's so funny, as is the rest of the cast. Kaidou never fails to make me laugh, especially in the dub. He's so silly. I think about "drowning in inch-deep water isn't easy" every day LOL.

✧ Romantic Killer - AAAAA I LOVED THIS SHOW!!!!! Maybe it's because Anzu is such a relatable female lead to me (but also because Riddle and Leona's VAs voice two of the main love interests hehe). It's so fun! It also handles the serious aspects of its plot really well. I loved Anzu's dynamic with Riri.

✧ Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess - it's been a moment since I've caught up with this manhwa, but I love it!!! The characters are all really striking. Most of all, I really like Penelope's character!!! <3 she's such a strong female lead. I like her interactions with all of the characters.

✧ Toilet-bound Hanako-kun - this manga is everything to me!!!! I absolutely adore the plot and its characters. Hanako and Yashiro's dynamic is really cute. :D I forgot what chapter I left off on, but I remember it left me in shambles. T^T

#chit chat #about meraki

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skunkes · 11 months

Note

can u tell us more abt al and smunker lore!!

its not really anything tangible or even interesting its just the current backdrop for my little continuous daydream i explore before sleeps

Foundational info:

(in past) Cow Al is struggling to recover from emotional crisis experienced in college (traumatic relationship), + tries to hold down some jawb but finds himself unable to stay in that environment away from home (none of his "friends" acknowledge the turmoil which makes him feel more lost), + moves back to family farm.

He likes doing different kinds of manual jobs which are always needed around + he does have that "my parents are my best friends" thing going on so he kind of just stays there to present day.

He lives in a little, idk what else to call it but a mobile home, but its the longer rectangular ones ykwim, some ways off the main Hub. (Also there's lots of focus on community in my furryverse + there's lots of non al family furs living in and working on the place + sharing resources and work and such. Its not a HUGE place but its big ^_^)

Anyway, Smunker moves in to the little forest that you cld walk to from the farm area. He lives in a little sunken tree stump den thing hee heeeee. Not many other furs live there, + there's actually more Lesser Animals (what i call just regular non furry animals) present

The two of em meet at a grocery store, there was a relevant little point here that I forgot, which was that one of em wasn't even supposed to be there that first day for (x reason). Whatever.

The area that Cow Al lives in doesn't have very many Different looking furs. Al's family is actually all natural colors too. So he sees this pink smunk and goes a little insane (positive) (he promises later its not just because smunker looks different, but it was what drew his eye) but they never really interact (al keeps going to that same store Just In Case lol) until one day (cliche incoming) the little wheeled ladder that helps smaller furs get to higher shelves isn't available + he gets to help smunker get something from high up (he all but runs to be able to be the person to do this LOL)

Al actually has game + is confident, he's just out of practice from prior Events. He loves being social and misses making/being able to make friends so he does in fact manage to build up on interactions with Smunker...they become friends ➡️ realize they live close to each other.

Al actually accidentally damages smunker's home at some point by accident, + houses them while it's fixed, and there's another instance where smunker gets his leg caught in an illegal bear/foot trap on the walk back home at night, and then Al is also adamant on keeping an eye on him while he heals (+ is also the one who had to go help him get out of said trap...its literally a whole dramatic thing.)

I think I'm keeping both of these events as canon because it leads to the funny little situation of Al being like no wayyyyy i actually for real like this guy now that we've spent more time together like this...i need him to sleep on my belly to live :3 and cant stop having weird dreams about him. Idk if he feels the same. heeeeeeeeeelp. While skunker is like. Im for real going to kill myself for inconveniencing this person. He probably thinks im the biggest nuisance ever. I've overstayed my welcome for sure.

I haven't yet decided on the event that gets em Together. Might just be a little "date" at nearby ducky pond or something LOL. Skunker is shocked either way like huhh I didn't even know you liked me... Al has to get used to having a small partner again + navigate a relationship that doesn't suck ass again. Smunker has to get used to having big nice bf who cares about them. They like each other

#oc text #long post -#skunk mail #anonymous #dis is all subject to change and also its very boring

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leefl00f · 6 months

Text

Pie Thieves

By Leefloof and SisterPaw125

Summary: Uzi and Doll decide to steal a couple slices of pie before their Aunt finds out only for it to backfire in their faces. In short, never mess with a Country Worker’s pie.

Ft. Uzi, Doll, and Alice

Day 6 and 30 of Tickletober: Chase/Caught (Promptlist by @tickletober!)

Note: I've been wanting to do this idea for quite a while and I thought it would be perfect for this year's Tickletober! I had a headcanon that when Uzi and Doll were younger(5-7), they would try to steal Alice's homemade deserts to eat (along with Nori and Yeva, but they wouldn’t admit to doing it to anybody else lol). Big thanks to Sisterpaw that collabed with me to make it! Anyways, enjoy the fic!

⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

Warning(s): None, this is a sfw tickle fic, Don’t like keep scrolling

DNI N$FW/F3T!$H accounts!!! 🚫🔫

Words: 3,127

~🍂⋆˙⊹🕸️ ˖⁺.🕯️༶ 🎃 ༶🕯️.˙⊹ 🕸️˖⁺.🍂~

“Uzi, I’m not so sure about this, what if we get caught?” Doll asked nervously as she continued to look out for any of the sentinels

“Us? Getting caught? The chances of that happening is lower than the planet’s core!”

Uzi laughed

The two were currently in the ventilation system in Alice’s home right above their prey. Said prey being a steaming hot, glazed oil pie sprinkled with shredded metal slices.

Earlier that day, Nori and Yeva had to attend to their usual business with William. Unfortunately, the babysitters were unable to arrive on time due to their own busy schedules. Fortunately, Alice was available and kindly offered to look after the girls while they were away. During that time, Alice was baking a pie, which tempted them to devour the entire thing while it was still unattended.

“Now, grab onto my tail and lower me slowly.” Uzi instructed

Uzi slithers her tail in Doll’s hands, which she grabbed firmly but gently. She slowly began to ease the tail down, causing Uzi to descend towards the pie. Just when the droneling was about to reach it, the defending came to a halt. She looked up at

Doll who had an anxious expression on her face.

“Doll! I’m almost there! You have to lower me down a little more!” Uzi whisper shouted just in case that Alice was still in ear shot

“I can’t!” Doll whispered back

“If you’re thinking about bailing now, it’s too late for that!”

“No! I really can’t! That’s as far as your tail goes!”

There was a moment of silence until the young rebel spoke again.

“Huh, forgot my tail was short.” Uzi chuckled out of embarrassment

She suddenly felt Doll try to pull her up from the desert, earning a small shout of surprise from her.

“We should just get out of here before the damage is done! And before Alice catches us and we get in trouble!” Doll said as she continued to pull her little cousin up

She yelped a bit as Uzi’s tail nipped her, it wasn’t painful, but it did get her attention. Sometimes their tails would nip or bite at people depending on the solver holder’s emotion, usually anger, and it seemed that Uzi was upset about not stealing a pie that their Aunt just took out of the oven.

“No! We’re so close to that pie! I’m not giving up that easily!” Uzi whispered a bit angrily as she crossed her arms.

“Wrap your tail around mine and it should lower me enough to get the pie.” Uzi instructed

Doll wraps their tails together as tightly and gently as she can. Once she was done, she continued to lower Uzi towards the pie once again. The younger reaches out her hands, just a few inches away from the pie and…!

“Yes! I got it!” Uzi cheered

“Pull me up! Hurry!”

Doll carefully pulls Uzi back up, ensuring that she doesn't drop either herself or the pie. Once they are back in the vents, Uzi and Doll eagerly dig into the pie using their bare hands, smearing the filling all over their faces. Lost in their enjoyment, they fail to notice the sound of footsteps entering the kitchen below them until they are startled by an angry shout.

“What the-?! Where in tarnation is my pie?!” The voice shouted angrily

It was Alice, and she didn't sound too happy about her pie going missing. The two gulped down the last remnants of the pie as they looked at each other in fear. They had heard from their moms that Alice was ruthless when it came to anyone who dared to mess with her food.

"See? I told you this was a bad idea! But do you ever listen? No!" Doll whispered angrily before Uzi placed a finger on her lips.

"Shh! Be quiet. If we can just crawl away from the kitchen quietly and exit the way we came, she won't know who did it," Uzi stated.

"But won't she find out anyway?"

"We'll blame it on the raptors. Besides, they always get into places they're not supposed to be—“

Before they could crawl away from the scene, Uzi was interrupted by a loud bang. She quickly turned around only to see that the pan was gone and Doll's hollowed optics.

"Doll! Why would you do that?!" Uzi whispered-shouted.

"I didn't mean to! I didn't realize it was near my foot!" Doll said frantically.

"Well, now we're both probably going to get in trouble because of you!"

"Me?! You're the one who came up with the plan to steal it!" Doll pointed out.

Meanwhile, the pie pan fell out of the vents and landed back on the counter, startling Alice. She looked at the empty pie pan before glancing up at the vent. She thought that one of the sentinels was behind this, but that wouldn't make sense. Not even her smallest raptor could fit into a hole that big, unless...

The cousins continued to argue about who started the pie heist, oblivious to Alice's gaze slowly shifting towards the vent. They abruptly halted when they caught sight of a bright orange glow in the corner of their eyes. Both froze in place as they turned to confront Alice, who stared back at them with hollowed eyes and a gaping mouth of shock.

That shock transformed into anger as she clenched her teeth, forming a toothy scowl.

"You little thieves!" Alice yelled.

The pair screamed and attempted to crawl away from the older woman's fury, but it proved futile as Alice seized Uzi by the foot and started dragging the rebel back towards her. The droneling yelped as she scratched against the metal, desperately trying to escape from Alice's grasp.

"Aah! Help! She's got me!" Uzi cried out, extending her hand towards Doll.

Doll complied and endeavored to free her little cousin, but Alice seemed to possess an unyielding grip as she only pulled Uzi closer.

"Pull harder, Doll! She's gonna get me!" Uzi pleaded.

"I'm trying, but she's too strong!" Doll shouted back, exerting more force.

"Oh no, you don't!" Alice interjected.

With one forceful tug, Uzi and Doll were pulled out of the vent, landing on the floor with an "oof!", fortunately, they were unharmed. Uzi and Doll both gazed up at Alice, who wore a stern expression on her face. They both get back on their feet before facing their Aunt.

"Alright, which one of you thieves thought it would be a brilliant idea to steal my pie? And don't even think about lyin’ to me!" Alice said firmly, placing her hands on her hips.

"Well, Aunt Alice, I know we're both going to face punishment for this, but I might as well tell the truth... it was Doll!" Uzi said, pointing an accusing finger at her.

Doll snapped her head towards Uzi, shocked and betrayed that her own cousin would throw her under the bus over a pie. How dare she!

"What?! You were the mastermind behind this whole scheme!" Doll retorted, also pointing her finger at Uzi.

"No way! Look, Alice, she's lying!"

"No, you're the liar!"

The worker sighed as she observed the two arguing once again. She knew Uzi was the one who came up with the clever plan to swipe her pie. Being Nori's child, she was always getting into mischief.

"Well, as you mentioned earlier, it doesn't matter who started it, you're both going to face consequences," Alice sighed, causing the two to cease their bickering.

"The real question is, who should I deal with first?" Alice asked, flashing a mischievous grin.

"Scatter! She can't get us if we run!" Uzi shouted as she unfurled her wings to dash out of the kitchen.

Doll did the same as she quickly teleported somewhere else before the Western drone could do anything to stop them.

So it was a game of hide and seek, huh?

"Alright, I'll give them a head start, but it'll all be in vain soon enough," Alice grinned.

-In the Office premises-

Uzi was currently hiding under one of the desks in the multiple abandoned offices. Finally catching her breathe, she peaked her head out to see any signs of Alice or the raptors.

Luckily, no sign of them.

Uzi huffed as she crawled to the very back of the desk, disappearing into the darkness. Exhausted from running and eating that pie, she sighed and slumped her body against the wall. As she turned her head to the side, she was startled to find two bright, red optics staring back at her. The dronelings yelped at each other in surprise before quickly quieting down, not wanting to alert the raptors or Alice.

"Doll! You nearly gave me a core attack!" Uzi exclaimed, gasping for breath.

"What are you doing here anyway? This is my spot, find your own!" Uzi pushed the older girl, causing Doll to look at her in shock.

"Are you crazy?! Alice could be out there!" Doll argued.

"A willing sacrifice to make."

"I am not going out there for your crimes, Uzi!"

"Who said they were mine? They're yours as well!" Uzi retorted.

"That's not—!"

Just then, a loud noise interrupted them. The girls fell silent, remembering the danger they were in.

"Maybe if we stay quiet long enough, Alice will move on," Uzi whispered.

They heard the sound again, this time closer, and huddled together under the desk. Alice was searching for them, and based on the sounds, she wasn't far away.

"Come on out, ya lil gremlins! I know you're hidin' somewhere!" The Western Drone shouted.

Uzi yelped as she heard her aunt's voice and looked over at Doll, who had the same expression of fear.

"What do we do?!" Uzi whispered, panicking.

"I don't know! You're the one with the plans most of the time!" Doll quickly replied.

As the two pondered the issue, they heard another thud from above. The dronelings glanced up, their attention drawn to the slow, heavy footsteps accompanied by soft chirps. Gradually, the footsteps approached the opening of the desk, revealing a fluffy, feathered head staring at them curiously.

Chirp?

Uzi and Doll's eyes hollowed at the sight. It was Charlie, one of Alice's loyal raptors. They weren't scared of her, but they were worried that the raptor would call for Alice and lead her to their hiding spot.

Charlie stuck her head further into the desk opening and started sniffing the two, catching the scent of the pie. Her chirps started to get louder.

"Shh! Charlie, no!" Uzi shushed, trying to get the mechanical dino out of their hiding spot.

"Go away!" Doll shushed.

Charlie looked at the duo with a tilted head. After a couple of seconds staring at each other, the raptor let out a long, loud roar, signaling to Alice that she had found something.

"Dang it, Charlie!" Uzi whispered angrily.

But that wasn't their concern for long as they suddenly heard rapid footsteps coming their way.

"Crap! We gotta go! Now!" Uzi said in a panic.

But before they could crawl out of their hiding spot to find a new one, Charlie grabbed the back of their shirts, like a mother cat carrying her kittens, making them hang there.

The two yelped from the sudden pull and started to struggle in the raptor's grip.

"Hey! Let us go, Charlie!" Uzi shouted.

"This isn't fair!" Doll retorted.

Their pleas fell on deaf ears as Charlie pulled them out from under the desk to victoriously show Alice her findings while wagging her tail.

"Atta girl, Charlie!" Alice praised, petting her head and earning a proud chirp from her.

She stepped back to look at Uzi and Doll, with her hands on her hips.

"So, this is where y'all disappeared to. Don't you trouble makers have anythin’ to say?"

Uzi and Doll exchanged guilty looks before their eyes shifted to the floor. "We're sorry, Alice. The pie looked so good, and we couldn't resist," Uzi said, sounding remorseful.

"You couldn't resist, I was trying to stop you," Doll interjected.

"Bite me! You're just as guilty!" Uzi retorted.

"Enough! I don't want to hear any more excuses!" Alice shouted, causing the dronelings to stop and look at her.

The Western drone stared at the two sternly before letting out a frustrated sigh and running her hand over her visor. "Look, you two need to learn that takin’ somethin’ without permission isn't right. You could have asked if you wanted a slice."

Uzi and Doll looked at the ground again in shame. "Now, I want you two to promise that you won't do this again. Okay?"

"We promise," they both said.

Alice nodded her head before snapping her fingers. Charlie walked over to the Western drone before dropping the kids into her hands. "Alright, Charlie, you can go. I'll handle it from here."

The eldest raptor obeyed as she trotted away from the trio. Alice looked down at Uzi and Doll only to see the pie's remains almost all over them. She was glad that she was used to this sort of ordeal with the raptors.

"Now let's get you cleaned up, alright? We don't want you to smother that stuff all over my couch," Alice said.

She took the two from the office area to the living quarters to clean them off. Once she kicked the bathroom door open, she placed them down and got a cloth to wipe any remains of the pie off of their cheeks and hands.

As Alice cleaned them, Uzi and Doll looked down at the floor. "Look, I'm not mad at you, but you need to understand that what you two did wasn't right," Alice explained. "If I were to take somethin’ away from you that you worked really hard on, how would you feel?"

"Sad," Uzi answered.

"We're sorry, Alice," Doll apologized.

Once the last smudge of the black filling was wiped away from their hands, Alice huffed before placing her hands on their heads and ruffling their hair affectionately, earning some giggles.

"I forgive you, just don't do it again, okay?" Alice smiled.

"Okay." they said, looking like they had perked up already.

Alice places the cloth in the sink, then lifts the girls up and carries them to the living room. Upon reaching the couch, she collapses onto it, sinking into its plush surface. They sit for quite a while until Uzi starts to move a bit in the older one's embrace.

"Uh, hey Alice? Do you forgive us, right?" Uzi asked.

"Yeah?"

"So, could you please let us go? You're squeezing too tight," Doll asked, also squirming in an attempt to escape Alice's grip.

"Sorry, but if I let you both go, you won't learn the valuable lesson about stealin’ things," Alice said.

"Wait, what?!" Doll exclaimed.

"But you said you forgive us!" Uzi protested.

"That I did. However, I need to make sure that lesson sticks in your little noggins," Alice grinned.

She quickly tightened her grip on the two, preventing any chance of escape.

"Do you want to know what I do to pie thieves like you?" Alice playfully asked.

Uzi and Doll shook their heads, smiling with anticipation and knowing what would happen next.

"I eat them!" Alice declared.

"Startin’ with you, little troublemaker, c'mere!"

With a playful roar, Alice swiftly lifted Uzi up bridal style while still holding Doll in her grip. Uzi squealed from the sudden action before attempting to squirm away, but to no avail.

"Alice, please don't do it!" Uzi pleaded, already giggling.

"What? I'm just goin’ to eat you up, that's all!" Alice smiled.

"But we don't want to be eaten!" Doll protested.

"Well, the pie didn't want to be eaten by you two, and here we are," Alice countered.

She lifts Uzi's shirt just enough to expose her belly. Alice lowers her head towards Uzi's midsection. The droneling thrashes and squirms, trying everything to get away, but to no avail. Alice has a strong grip, and there's no way of escaping from her.

"No! Wait, Alice! Wa-AEEIIIHEHEHEHEHEAHAHAHAHA!" screams Uzi.

She couldn't finish her sentence in time as Alice started to blow raspberries all over her belly. But even if she did, Alice wouldn't stop anyway. Uzi shrieked again as another raspberry was blown near the center of her belly.

"Prbbbt! Prbbbbt!"

"AHAHAHALIHIHICE! NOHOHOHO!!" Uzi screamed as she burst into laughter.

Of course, Alice wasn't listening as she continued to blow raspberries on Uzi's belly and occasionally playfully nibble on her stomach.

While Alice was occupied with the young rebel, Doll tried to sneak away again. Alice noticed Doll's escape attempt and stopped her attack on Uzi. She quickly wrapped her leg around Doll to prevent any further escape.

"And where do you think you're goin’?" Alice asked, grinning.

"Er-! Nowhere," Doll nervously giggled, filled with anticipation.

"Lyin’, are we?" Alice remarked.

Before Doll could respond, Alice playfully dipped her head down and blew raspberries on Doll's neck, causing Doll to squeak before bursting into laughter and kicking up a storm.

“EHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHA! STOHOHOHOP!”

Without hesitation, Alice quickly scooped up Doll in her arms to join her cousin as they both suffered the older worker's ticklish wrath.

"Nom nom nom! What delicious little thieves! I should eat them more often!" Alice exclaimed.

The duo screamed and squirmed, but to no avail. Alice showed no mercy on them. After a couple of minutes, Alice decided the girls had had enough and let them down. The dronelings went limp in their aunt's arms as they recovered from the playful tickling.

"Now then, what did we learn today?" Alice asked.

"Not to steal from others," replied the duo.

"Good," Alice smiled as she ruffled their hair again, earning tired giggles from them.

"Hey, just so you know, you rascals owe me a new pie," Alice added, smiling at Uzi and Doll's surprised and confused tired faces.

"Kiddin’, I'll make a new one, but you two better help me," she said.

"We will!" the two said tiredly.

Not even a minute later, the dronelings yawned, signaling Alice to reposition them in a more comfortable sleeping position.

"Aw, looks like it's nap time for you two," Alice said as she began to gently pat their backs.

It didn't take long for Doll to fall asleep, however Uzi resisted sleeping but eventually drifted off last. With their screens showing that their sleep mode was active, Alice finally relaxed and yawned herself.

"Or for all of us," Alice said as she got into a comfortable spot and drifted off to sleep mode while hugging the girls close.

Uzi and Doll learned a valuable lesson that day, and that was to never mess with Alice's desserts, or there would be some very tickly consequences!

Fin :)

Bonus Note: Happy Tickletober everybody! :D I apologize for this fic coming out late, school has me in a chokehold rn lol. But I’m managing to find some time to write and edit them, along with my friend, Sisterpaw! Go check out their blog if you have the time!

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1d10t1c-s1mp · 1 year

Text

"I understand"

Pairing: Eyeless Jack (EJ) x Y/N

Pronouns: She/Her

Type: Angst to fluff

TW: My AU on Jack

Romantic/Platonic: Romantic

Inspiration: Anonymous

Requests: Open

A/N I didn't know what to do for the ending but I tried lol !NOT PROOF READ!

Jack and Y/N have been dating for 2-3 weeks now. Y/N has finally decided to give in and spill her emotions out to her demon boyfriend. Jack sat there, not knowing what to say. He forgot what having human emotions and feelings felt like. Jack is more on the violent side rather than soft. He was an expert at showing no emotions and he often kept to himself. He gently reached out and softly put his hand on her thigh, being careful not to cut her with his claws/talons. Jack normally preferred not to be touched by anyone. At this moment, he though Y/N needed it. He walked closer to her and pulled her into a tight hug. She paused and hugged him. She buried her face in his shoulder. "I don't know how you're feeling, but I will try my best to help." He spoke in his normal, raspy voice. He leaded her to his bed and laid her on it. "Stay, I'll be back." He told her before leaving the room. Y/N stayed put. After a few minutes, Jack came back in with a bunch of snacks. "We're going to watch movies." He said while setting the snacks in front of them and laying down next to her. She looked over at him and sighed.

"Jack, honey, you can't see." She told him, thinking that he of all people should know that.

"I know that, I remember you saying you love watching movies, so that's what we are doing." He told her in a stern, soft tone. He wrapped on of his cold arms around her warm shoulders. Jack handed her the remote for her to pick a movie. She happily took the remote and put on the first movie that caught her eye. "I'm sorry that I'm not really a physical touch kind of person. I haven't been since, y'know." He said softly.

"It's fine." She assured him. "I'm sorry that I took a while to open up. I just don't like showing weakness or opening up to people. Trust issues I guess." She told him. Her eyes glued on the T.V. The tall demon nodded.

"Understandable. I'm the same." He whispered, his voice sounding tired. She took the hint and shut off the bright flat screen. "What are you doing?" He asked, confused. She didn't say anything. She just shifted and cuddled into him. He hummed, telling her he understood. He took his mask off and set it on his bedside table. "Night Y/N." He said while closing his eyes.

#crp #creepypasta au #creepypasta x reader #creepypasta #creepypasta fluff #eyeless jack x reader #eyeless jack

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rui-drawsbox · 1 year

Note

I’ve got so much work recently that the brain ain’t filled up yet but I have a couple ideas for the magical girl au :):):):) back on my usual bullshit lmao ✨✨✨

K so these mfers (Knights + Mika + Shu(eventually, give him time, a season two breakdown and a redemption arc) ) should go song karaoke together. They deserve it after all the horrors tbh. The little doll man should get to experience the epic highs and lows of awful greasy pizza at an establishment that isn’t a restaurant. Tsukasa, Izumi, and Shu should also be subjected to it tbh. Tsukasa might like it <3 Izumi and Shu however… malding, screaming and dying even.

Anyways it would be funny as hell if Shu also went to school with the knights. Cuz he’s the same age as Izumi and Leo anyways. Bruh, Arashi could just think that Shu is Mika’s crush 💀💀💀. On god that could make for some top tier comedic interactions. Mostly Arashi teasing Mika about his crush, and Mika frantically trying to assure her that it isn’t a crush cuz he wouldn’t be caught dead catching feelings for his boss. Meanwhile the idea that he could have a crush on his boss has been planted in the back of his mind and it’s only gonna keep growing. I feel like this would be funny for two reasons, one: hijinks, two: bigger emotional payoff when Mika does decide to leave him <<<333 break both of their hearts in one foul swoop.

also Leo being a menace to Shu. They should be in the same class. It would be funny.

Back on my fighting bullshit. I feel like Shu would never fight with his hands or with blades tbh. I feel like he would use a bunch of smaller dolls after losing Mika. Ones that he considers imperfect or something, idk man, something symbolic. + the dolls could almost look like they’re already falling apart and they deteriorate more and more as his mental state deteriorates (not as an in universe thing, just as a visual symbol for the audience to emphasize that Shu is breaking down lmao)

Also Shu and Mika should kiss. Arashi is the #1 wing woman tbh. I love her so much. She deserves to wear a pretty dress like in those super magical girl forms. Like madoka’s at the end of madoka magica when she does the thing, or any of the really powerful forms in precure.

also arashi should punch Shu in the face at one point. I’m thinking about him getting her sword away from her with dolls and being like “Hah! It seems as if you weren’t prepared for this eventuality girl! Kakakakaka! Now that I’ve disarmed you it’s impossible for you to defeat me! Now then, if you’ll excuse me I have more important matters to-” “AGHH!? You, you ignorant girl! You, you imbecile! Why I can’t believe you would-“ she raised her fist again so he finally shut the fuck up. He’s learning 🥰🥰🥰. Mika is probably upset about Shu getting punch tbh. Like he knows why Shu deserved it but he’s still a bit upset. He ain’t mad tho. Shu needed to have some sense beaten into him for once ✨✨✨.

I’m done for now ✨🥰✨🥰✨😎😎😎😎

I kind of want to write out a whole anime plot tbh. If I actually get around to finishing my current fic I might write an outline for this sometime tbh. If I get it done I’ll probably come drop it in your ask box unannounced. Or I’ll make a post and @you in it cuz that might be easier if it’s a whole ass outline.

I love ur ideas even though i forgot answer this ngl JSBDKS Drawings to compensate! It's the only i can do haha!

Anyways, this scene is definitely in the ending of the second season or an OVA about the 7 having daily adolescence adventures like they should had since the start lol

I feel like Leo would be an usual costumer in the karaoke, actually, this would be the group's hideout jsbfjs

Now, I love the idea of Mika staring too long to Shu in the corridors of the school and then Arashi notices and starts teasing him

Mika: no way i could possibly like my boss! He's just so cool and composed and smart and-

Shu, in his classroom:

And yes i think Shu and Mika should kiss, but i also think that Arashi and Mika should kiss, so my offer is:

Arashi: this is my boyfriend, Mika. And this Mika's boyfriend, Shu.

Basically, shumika=second chance trope, aramika=friends to lovers trope. And i love it

You know that i was thinking exactly the same about Shu's powers? He could never fight someone by himself, he would break before a finger lands on him jabfjsj

So yeah, i belive that he would have a dolls/mannequin army. In the first episodes he only uses Mika because he's the strongest, but when he loses him he would starts using unfinished dolls to fight, and with the pasta of episodes there would be more and more dolls but with a worse quality! Like Mika>Metal dolls>Wood dolls>Ceramic/industrial mannequins?. They would start being extremely fragile, like his mental stability😊!

You know Santa Clous from Chainsaw Man? Yeah i see Shu with a similar power but less OP ofc. Like he can control the movements/minds(?) of his artificial dolls but not people, Mika is the exception! Because Mika considered himself like Shu's doll! Once he starts making choices by himself he couldnt be controlled anymore!

Back to Arashi, im 100% sure that her powerup/god form has longer hair, following the more hair=more power formula. I also want to give the nerf or smth that have so much power she has to lose a lot of her humanity sense! She would become this "Justice God" or smth without emotions and the rest of her friends would have to fight/convince her back into normal!

Now. Yes. Arashi should punch people. Arashi should beat the shit out of people. Arashi should beat the shit out of Shu. I didn't gave her armor gloves for nothing.

Yes. Queen. Be scary. Be intimidating. Be your enemy's worst nightmare.

And you want to write the plot while i want to anímate the fucking fight scenes oUT OF MY HEAD I SWEAR IT WOULD LOOK SO COOL IF I KNEW HOW TO ANIMATE UGHH

I would love to read whatever you write about this au too! I'll read every ask you drop here even if i take forever to answer haha;;

#rui draw smth #ensemble stars #enstars #ensemble stars fanart #arashi narukami #mika kagehira #shu itsuki #(omg magical girl arashi)#leo tsukinaga #izumi sena #ritsu sakuma #tsukasa suou #if smth doesnt makes sense. it's 6:30AM i just came back from the carnavals in my city haha.#enstars magical knights au

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dilatorywriting · 1 year

Note

(same anon)

Yeah I agree!

I think the one tweak I'd put forward is that for The Worst Possible Situation TM, it'd have to be someone that was riddled with bad self esteem issues and was far too caught up in them to give emotional support to someone else.

There was a post that was floating around tumblr like 10+ years ago (totally aging myself here lol) in response to a popular quote from some celebrity about love, that I think is applicable. As verbatim as I can remember, it went something like this: OG Quote -> "How can you love somebody else if you don't love yourself" Response Quote -> "I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like."

And then under that some discussion about how you can't always fight your demons on your own, and sometimes you need someone as support etc.

My long-winded point: a Leona s/o who also has self worth issues would be okay, so long as they had the drive and willpower to stomp on all of their own issues in order to be able to offer emotional support when it came down to it (+ with an understading of how Leona & his coping mechanisms work, etc). An s/o who wouldn't be able to do that, and who would be relying on Leona to do that, would be in a bad place I agree.

All of this just makes me really happy that I wrote CottageWitch!MC as just... someone who could tolerate all this bullshit and blink it off. Because hot damn what a mess that would make

But yes totally agree. It would all be really heavily dependent on how well they compliment each other, which, tbf, is like how all positive relationships function. But like, these Problem Children need Extra Care.

#Asks #Leona Kingscholar

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astupidweeb69 · 2 years

Text

Unrequited (Yandere! Ticci Toby x Reader) Part 6

Next Chapters: Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Links to Previous Chapters: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5

Author’s Note: This chapter has some heavy topics in it, especially towards the beginning about abuse. I’ve alluded to the reader in this story having a past that’s important to the plot, so I wanted to show that a little bit and where their whole paranoia and anger stems from.

Hopefully, this came out okay. Cross-posted on my Ao3 account which I update quicker.

Warnings: Swearing. Referenced child abuse (there is an actual scene in this but the reader is 18). Abusive relationships in general. Canon-typical violence. (5,241 words). This chapter is so long lol.

****************************

“If someone’s going to get violent with you, you have to be willing to get more fucking violent.”

This was the kind of advice you had been given growing up.

An overall theme of being able to stoop lower than anybody. To have no line you wouldn’t cross to ensure victory. Even if that meant getting your hands dirty. Rigging the game.

And if you ever found yourself in a fair fight, you’ve already done something wrong.

It was your dad who put these thoughts into your head, and for a good portion of your childhood, you thought nothing of it. Like any kid, you believed your upbringing was normal.

Thankfully, this didn’t last.

You knew better now.

When you’re young, you’re naïve, and you look at the world with rose-colored glasses. Unable to see all the obvious red flags in front of you. But you were clever enough to figure out that most of the time, your dad was full of shit. Projecting his own personality onto everyone else, assuming everyone around him had the same cutthroat attitude he did.

Though you had come to this realization, it didn’t make unlearning all his fucked-up lessons that were spoon-fed to you since you were a baby easy.

His manipulation of your mind could range from more extreme notions to subtle ideas you still caught yourself believing today if you weren’t careful enough.

He was smart.

There’s a certain depiction of an abuser that TV and movies love to use. A stupid man in a dirty wife-beater who’s always angry. So blatantly vile in their actions, no redeemable qualities to be seen. Almost non-human. Those types of toxic people are out there, but it’s rarer. Most of the time, abusers are more insidious.

There was a reason it took you so long to leave after all.

Some days you wanted nothing more than to spend time with him, ask for his advice, his opinions. A longing to have him parent you. And he could do that. He could fit that role when it suited him and make you feel loved. There were times that you had even been in trouble, over something that was your fault, and you would be so scared to tell him. But when you finally did, he’d be totally understanding, and you’d question why you were so hesitant in the first place.

However, this never lasted. Abuse is a cycle, you never forgot that. There are four stages to look for. The tension, the incident, the reconciliation, and the calm. And these periods don’t always have to last the same amount of time. For you, sometimes the calm would last half a year. Sometimes only a day. Because another thing to keep in mind is that an abuser is a person too. They have emotions. So, in periods of their lives when they are more stressed, they become more volatile. You despised the fact that this concept was never told to you growing up. Because everything your father did to you was so inconsistent, it took you too long to recognize that what you were going through wasn’t normal.

That your feelings of betrayal, sadness, and fear were valid.

And at the age of 18, you were ready to put a stop to it.

Anne was your biggest supporter. Her house had become a second home to you growing up, her family having some awareness of your situation.

But Anne knew everything. All the details.

The two of you made plans to leave your hometown together. Being the rich kid that she was, her parents were sending her to college at a place where they owned their second home. You’d stay there while she stayed on campus. But you needed time before making any decisions to join higher education.

You didn’t know what you wanted.

You didn’t know who the fuck you were.

You just knew you couldn’t follow the strict plans your dad had for you in life.

And you wanted to feel safe.

That’s why you found yourself frantically packing up the rest of your things from your father’s house. Anne was waiting for you at her home with a U-Haul truck ready to go, all you needed was to get to her before your dad came home from work.

He couldn’t find out about this.

Not until you were long gone.

But life had a funny way of screwing you over. Always dealing you a bad hand.

Before you made it out the door with your last suitcase, the always anxiety-inducing sound of your dad’s car tires pulling up the driveway made you stop.

He had come home early.

“(Y/N)? What’s going on?”

He came through the door leading to the garage, tossing his keys on the table next to it. The look on his face a mixture of confusion and concern.

You knew that wouldn’t last long.

There you were, halfway down the stairs from your bedroom with a suitcase in hand. No matter what you said there was no mistaking your intentions. You weren’t the first to leave him, after all.

As expected, his face turned cold. Seeing how you only stared back at him with wide eyes from being caught red-handed. You didn’t say a word.

“Answer me. What are you doing?” He walked swiftly towards the bottom of the stairs. Blocking your only escape.

It angered you.

A reaction you without a doubt learned from him.

A dumb response, but it was the one you chose to have at this moment. This was the final time you’d have to confront him.

No matter how much he hurt you, you’d fight back.

“You know exactly what I’m doing.”

Your heart beat fast. Just because you’ve challenged him plenty of times before, never made it any less terrifying.

Your dad’s face twisted in anger. You could see the rage start to build. And in a second, you were going to feel it too.

“That’s it? That’s all I get? After everything I’ve done for you. All the sacrifices I’ve made. The money I spent. I care about you. And now you just fucking run out on me just like your delinquent brother!”

The steps creaked as he approached you.

You backed up, all the way to the top of the stairs

Almost face to face now, he sighed, forming a tired smile. “Listen, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Let’s just take a seat in the living room and we can talk.”

You knew what this was.

An apology soon turned into another long-winded explanation about how he feels bad. That being a single dad is just so hard sometimes. That every parent makes mistakes trying to do right by their kids. You’ve heard it all before. And you were done listening.

“Fuck you.”

It rolled off the tongue easily when directed at him. You made your bed, and now you were going to sleep in it.

The first fist was expected.

It made contact with your right shoulder, but you hardly reacted.

All you could focus on was the look in his eye. The utter hate. Every time you two got into an altercation like this it always put you in a state of shock at first. That your father, the one who was supposed to love and support you could suddenly treat you like this. A disgusting betrayal that broke all trust. He wasn’t the same person now, and you, the one in front of him, were no longer his child. Only a reminder that he was failing. Something to punch into submission.

Your reflexes kicked in.

Years of practice had made you pick up a few moves on your own. From the corner of your eye, you saw his leg swing back, ready to kick your shins and knock you down.

You caught it in both arms before he had the chance. It wasn’t graceful and it stung a bit, but you knew what you were doing.

And you knew when you used his own leg to push him back, that all that awaited him now was the fall down those stairs.

A smile stretched on your lips as you watched.

Even though you’d never admit it, you felt some weird sense of accomplishment and strength whenever you were able to hurt him back.

He tumbled down hard, clumsily landing at the bottom with his limbs splayed out. At some point, he must’ve tried to use his arm to break his fall, because now he was cradling it, broken.

You ran down the stairs, skipping a couple of steps while holding your suitcase, making a break for the door.

You could hear your dad screaming at you the whole time, your brain not even processing his words. His pleads.

Just basking in the sunshine as you finally left for good.

************************************

It didn’t matter how old you were now. How much you’ve grown; how much you’ve moved on. Stuff like what happened with Toby can still bring you back to that place.

And suddenly, you’re a kid again.

When he left that night, you practically jumped into Anne’s arms. She knew something was up, probably having seen the person responsible storm out of your house.

You were never a touchy person, so initiating a hug made it clear you were beyond upset.

It was an unspoken agreement that Anne would stay with you until you settled down. Especially after you told her the last thing he said to you.

“You’ll be seeing me again soon, (Y/N)”

A promise.

A threat.

Most likely both.

On the one hand, it made you terrified, and on the other it made you want to kill him. That some person could have the audacity to treat you this way after you had let them into your home. Shared something with them that you were fond of. You even made him dinner for Christ’s sake.

And then he texted you.

Anne and you had been curled up on the couch together. You refused to go to sleep, afraid he might show up again, instead watching a lighthearted comedy to take your mind off everything.

Originally you wanted to text him back, ‘Eat shit and die.’ But your friend convinced you that probably wouldn’t help the situation.

You had to hand the phone over to Anne so she could write a more eloquent response than the many insults you had planned.

Toby didn’t say anything back. A part of you was hoping that it meant he’d taken the hint that things were going nowhere between the two of you. That this would be the end of it.

It made you relieved enough to finally get some rest for the night.

Now, it was morning.

Anne had made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. A tradition you guys had whenever you’d stay at her parents’ house when you were kids to get away from your father. The gesture was nice but still reminded you of those dark days all the same.

She stared at you, sipping coffee from her mug, as you lazily picked at the fluffy disks with a fork. “I need to tell you something.”

Your tired eyes slowly drifted up. “What?”

Anne looked at you with pity. “I have a four-hour-long exam this afternoon, so I have to leave you for a little bit. I tried emailing my professor to put it off for a day, but he said no. Engineering teachers can be such dicks.”

Her words made you feel pathetic. Like a helpless victim. Someone who would never escape all the fucked-up things their past did to them. This was why it was so hard for you to tell your other friends about your family. Once you told people, it was like that was all they could see. Using it like some overzealous psychology student to explain everything you did in the present.

But you knew Anne had your best interest in mind.

You forced a weak smile. “I’ll be fine on my own for a couple hours. I don’t need you to babysit me all the time, you know.” At times like these, you felt like you had to lighten the mood. Crack a joke. Not bum the other person out so much that they get fed up and leave. And Anne had done nothing but help this entire time. The guilt was killing you.

Of course, your friend saw right through your façade.

“No, you’re not fine.” She sighed. Not giving you the chance to disagree, she continued. “Listen, before you got up, I called my mom and told her what happened. While I’m gone, she said she’ll come over for some ‘girl time’. She’s bringing over homemade empanadas so you can’t say no.”

You raised a brow, “Girl time?”

“Her words, not mine.” Anne chuckled.

Even though you didn’t want to inconvenience anybody, it was hard to refuse her mom’s cooking. “I guess I’ll allow it.” You smirked. As if you had much of a choice in the matter.

“Good. I’m going to get some last-minute studying done.”

She got up from her chair putting her plates in the sink.

*****************************

Anne had left you alone once again. Fortunately, this time you didn’t have any plans to have dinner and a movie with a crazy man.

You hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was closing in on almost 3 pm. But you wanted to save room for the promised empanadas, mouth watering at the mere thought of them.

The house was unusually cold that afternoon, and it was a struggle to find something to do while you waited. Although you had slept last night, it wasn’t nearly enough, so you found yourself in a mental fog. Constantly trying to fight back yawns, not wanting to take a nap in case Anne’s mother showed up while you were passed out.

Finally, the doorbell rang.

Excitement overwhelmed you, and without thinking, you made a mad dash to the front entrance to let the visitor in. Grabbing the handle, you hastily opened the door with a huge smile.

A familiar stench overpowered your senses.

Sandalwood and lavender

Your breath hitched.

“(Y-Y/N)”

No.

Oh fuck no.

It wasn’t Anne’s mom.

“SHIT!”

Eyes wide with fear, you tried to slam the door shut.

A dirty boot suddenly wedged itself in between the frame, forcing it to stay open.

Forcing you to face the last person on earth you wanted to see.

Toby.

He stood as tall as ever in front of you. A dull green hoodie with stripes and a blue hood. Gripping a large bouquet of roses in his hand so hard you could see the thorns had started cutting him.

“I’m nuh-not here to hurt you, (Y/N).” He sounded timid. Like a shy young boy trying to speak to their crush for the first time. A stark contrast to how he’d been the night before.

You could feel your knees starting to tremble. Your hand still gripped the side of the door, trying to force it to close with the full weight of your body, even with the man’s shoe still preventing it.

“I juh-just wanted to a-puh-logize to you formally.” His eyebrows furrowed, watching you start to kick his foot out of the way. “Quit it. I only want to tuh-talk.”

He was starting to get annoyed. You could tell. And from everything you’ve experienced with him before you knew it would only get worse.

“Leave me alone.” You huffed out, slamming your entire frame repeatedly now on the wood of the door.

It started to budge a bit, inches away from closing.

Toby growled, shoving his arm into the small crack. Slithering his entire body halfway through the entrance, reaching out his arm to grab you. His face was crushed by the doorframe, but you could still see the expression of frustration and rage. Something you were all too familiar with.

“Just let.” His body moved forward.

“Me.” He was almost inside.

“IN.”

The door swung open violently on its hinges, knocking you back in the process.

Falling on your ass, you scrambled to get up and get the fuck away from him.

Large hands gripped both your shoulders, spinning you around before you had the chance.

His eyes were wide looking down at you. “I’m suh-sorry I had to do that. Are you okay?” He was smiling.

This man was completely unhinged.

Toby started rubbing your arms, gliding up and down. An act typically made to calm a person down. But that wasn’t his intent. The man’s face was fully red, almost drooling. He just liked using any excuse to put his disgusting mitts on you.

You jerked out of his hold, contorting your face into the most menacing look you could muster. “Don’t. Fucking. Touch me.”

Ignoring you, he cocked his head to the side, glancing down at the flowers he had brought that were now on the floor. The petals had been crushed and scattered around during the scuffle. He started twitching aggressively.

“Now look what you did. I wuh-went through all that trouble.” Toby muttered, barely audible.

Snapping his eyes back to you, he grinned again, emotions quickly switching gears. “No wuh-worries though. I wasn’t even sure if you liked thuh-those kinds of flowers. I can get you a different kind.”

Was he serious? Did he forget what the hell he just did? Breaking into your home, knocking you down, then acting like the two of you were a couple. What was he going to do next? Start picking out china patterns?

You started to shake. You couldn’t tell if it was from anger or fear.

Fists clenching, your nails dug hard into your skin to the point you drew blood.

“Get out.”

He looked at you confused.

“Get out.”

Your voice was beginning to rise.

“Get. OUT.”

Toby didn’t move, watching your outburst in disbelief.

“GET OUT!”

Silence.

He blinked and took a deep breath. Lifting his head, he stared past you, a distant look in his gaze. He seemed lost in thought before opening his mouth to speak.

“No.”

It was like he was answering a simple question. Making a firm decision and telling you matter-of-factly. It didn’t sound like a threat. But you knew it was.

You backed away.

Like a predator realizing its prey was about to escape its claws, Toby changed his stance. Getting ready to attack.

“Wuh-where are you going?” His eyes narrowed, piercing into every fiber of your being. “I only wuh-want –“

You ran.

There wasn’t a clear path to go. The only exit from the house was through Toby, and he could easily grab you if you tried going on either side of him.

The only way left was behind you.

Upstairs.

You cursed inwardly, hastily climbing the steps. This was one of the things you always hated in horror movies. When the protagonist cornered themselves on the second floor.

Maybe you could jump out a window?

Adrenaline fueling your thoughts, you quickly looked around at the top of the stairs trying to decide the best place to go. Behind you, Toby’s heavy footsteps pounded on the floor trying to catch up. Growling a string of expletives from his lips.

Although tempted to run to your bedroom, instead you settled for the guest room. It was closer and had a balcony. You never stayed in there because the large glass door leading to the outside made you feel unsafe. Like anybody could scale up the side of the house, break-in, and slit your throat while you slept.

How ironic that it’s now become the best possible way to escape danger.

Slamming the door behind, you locked it and rushed over to the exit. With only a slight turn to the metal handle, the glass double doors burst open, a rush of wind blowing the curtains haphazardly around you.

There was a storm brewing outside. Heavy gray clouds cast a shadow that gave the illusion of nighttime. God, could this be any more cliché?

You bent slightly over the railing, looking down at the two-story drop. It made your head spin. Your mind subconsciously trying to get you to back away and retreat. Your feet were firmly planted on the ground, and every time you tried to will it forward you found yourself hesitating.

Toby was slamming on the bedroom door, you thought that locking it would buy you more time, but you could already hear wood splintering. He didn’t look strong enough to break down a door so quickly given his sickly complexion. But being proven wrong was a regular occurrence today.

A new plan hatched in your brain, remembering something you’d almost forgotten about. The closet.

With the doors to the balcony opened, if you hid now, it might trick the psycho trying to get you that you’ve already left.

And in case that plan failed, this closet in particular held all the things you wanted to forget about.

You opened the storage space discretely, closing it behind you as your hands tried to feel out your old hunting bag. A gift from your father. Containing all the little weapons and survival guides he’d attempted to force on you since you were a child. You undid the zipper, fishing around for something that could help you defend yourself.

The first thing you recognized was a tiny pair of brass knuckles. Far too small for you now. Your dad had welded them from an old belt buckle of his, specifically to fit a child’s hand. Obviously, you never used them. The next item was a serrated hunting knife. Something to gut fish with, not that you ever liked doing that, but it could probably gut crazy guys trying to kill you too, right? You tucked it away in your pants. Using knives meant close combat. Too risky. But you’d keep it on your person just in case. Finally, your hand touched a cool metal rod. It was folded up into itself. A retractable military-grade police baton stick. Another one of his strange “gifts”. When you’d asked him where he got it all he said was “the internet”. Whatever that means.

This was the only time in your life you’ve been thankful for getting these things instead of regular toys for your birthday. Hopefully, you could figure out how to use them.

The door finally gave way, you could hear Toby stumble inside the room swearing. You clutched the metal weapon against your chest.

You were afraid. You hated that. Hated that you could feel this way inside your own home. That an intruder had come onto your territory to threaten your safety. The life you’ve painstakingly had to rebuild.

Through gritted teeth, you tried to channel these fears into anger. A mechanism to give yourself courage.

You needed to be alert, and you focused on listening to every movement Toby made outside your hiding place. Pretending that you were the predator now. Listening for the perfect time to strike.

His footsteps immediately went to the balcony. The sound of feet shuffling on the tile outside, he was probably trying to see if he could catch a glimpse of your retreating form.

You heard him step back inside calmly, no longer seeming to be in much of a hurry.

“Hmmm, I wuh-wonder where (Y/N) went!” He purred playfully.

Your stomach dropped.

Oh fuck.

Did he actually figure out you were still here or was he just trying to trick you?

Either way, you were staying put.

“Muh-maybe… UNDER THIS PILLOW?” You heard the covers and cushions of the bed being swiped off the mattress.

Toby snapped his fingers, fake disappointment in his voice, “Damn!”.

He was mocking you. Treating this like some kind of game. What a thoroughly fucked up guy.

“Or muh-maybe…”

For a second you thought he was making his way to your hiding spot, but he walked right past it.

“IN THIS DRAWER?”

You heard various small items being scattered around the ground, as Toby flung one of the drawers to an old vanity table on the floor. It landed right in front of where you were, the only thing separating you from it being the door of the closet. You almost yelped from surprise.

It wouldn’t be long before he found you. Whether he thought you were in this room or not, it was obvious he was going to check every nook and cranny anyway.

But who said you had to sit there and wait?

Toby was moving back to the bed now. Probably to start checking actual hiding spots, you realized. The typical ones. Under the bed. In the closet. The only possible places you could be.

Lucky for you his first choice was wrong.

It was a gamble, with the odds stacked high against you, but you slowly creaked the door to the closet open and peeked.

There he was, in all his manic glory, looking down at the bed. Facing away from you.

“Or maybe…”

It was a whisper this time, but you still caught it. He must’ve really thought you were under there for some reason.

Toby knelt down, expecting to find you huddled up in fear.

Now was your chance.

You exploded out of the closet. Flicking your arm, you heard the click of the baton as it grew to its full length.

Toby whipped his head around, caught off guard. He staggered trying to stand back up and face the attack.

There was a look of shock in his eye that you relished when you struck down across his face.

“Take that you fuck!” You sneered down at him, feeling the rush of successfully turning the tables.

He fell back on his side, clutching his face with both hands while groaning in pain.

You smirked.

But then he stopped.

Slowly, he moved his fingers, showing you wild eyes full of hysterical joy, a stream of blood trickling down from his temple. He giggled like a schoolgirl.

Your eyes widened.

What the fuck?

A hit like that would take anybody down. Batons were no joke. At the very least it should’ve taken him more time to recover.

“I don’t FEEL puh-pain.”

You didn’t even get a chance to process his words before you felt a large hand grab your ankle. He pulled harshly, making you lose your balance.

Your arm shot out attempting to catch yourself, the baton slipping out of your hand and rolling towards the open window.

Toby’s grip tightened its hold on your leg while you tried to crawl towards it. With your other foot, you kicked his face while trying to peel his fingers off.

You finally managed to land a good blow between his eyes, and being temporarily blinded, his grasp loosened. You used the opportunity to jerk your ankle away.

Standing up, you ran to the weapon, picking it up and spinning around.

Toby faced you, now at his full height too. He tilted his head to the side, eyes lidded while smiling brightly. Like he was having the time of his life.

You took a couple of warning swings, glaring at him. “Stay back jackass! I will KILL you if I have to!” You weren’t entirely sure if you could kill somebody, but the rage you felt at this moment made you tempted to try.

He licked his lips, face turning flush yet again.

“Oh, I duh-don’t doubt it, (Y/N).”

Holy shit this guy was gross.

Toby steadily approached your smaller form, a devious look in his eyes, arms outstretched getting ready to strike.

You slowly retreated onto the balcony.

The wind raged fiercely, the sheer white curtains whipping past your head.

It was hard to breathe.

The intenseness of each step he took.

Like he already had you by the throat.

Your back hit the railing, the only thing stopping you from tumbling off the edge.

Completely unbothered, Toby moved the white fabric that fluttered around to the side. He was so close now you could hear him breathing.

You raised your weapon over your head, hands shaking, and swung forward.

He caught your arm.

Fuck.

With his free hand, he quickly grabbed the baton and tossed it on the ground behind him.

Now you just stared up at him, like a deer caught in the headlights, watching him raise your arm up high.

He was grinning so wide now it looked like it must’ve hurt. But you had learned the hard way that it didn’t. Nothing did.

He forced you on your tip toes. You thought for sure he was going to completely lift you off the floor and throw you over the ledge.

But he didn’t.

In a state of complete confusion, you were daintily twirled around, and in one swift motion he dipped you. Putting his face so close his lips brushed against yours.

“Isn’t this nuh-nice?” He murmured.

Was this all some kind of fucking dance to him?

Regaining your composure, the initial shock finally dying down, you pushed him away. Now the positions switched, you in the doorway to the bedroom, him leaning on the balcony’s railing. His arms were crossed, flashing you a sinister smile. Looking so proud of himself for some ungodly reason.

That smug look.

Your blood boiled.

On instinct you reeled back your fist, punching him, nose letting out a sickening crunch at the force, while his head flew to the side.

He blinked for a second before turning to you, his face contorted with wrath. The madness and bloodlust inside him revealing themselves again.

His leg lifted off the ground, ready to make impact with your body.

But you’ve done this before.

Too many times.

In both arms, the muscle memory triggered, the ungraceful movement catching his leg.

There was a pause where neither one of you moved. Toby looked down at where you held his shin near your waist, perplexed and starting to lose his balance.

With a grin, you pushed him back with as much force as you could. His arms flailing, and his body about to fall over the railing.

You had won.

Or so you thought.

In a last-ditch effort, he grabbed the curtains, almost tearing them in the process. Oh, how you wished that they had.

Pulling himself back up, he stared at you with widened eyes. Surprised that you actually managed to do something like that. It wasn’t anything that would make him think you were secretly an expert fighter. But it was enough to show you clearly have more experience than you let on.

Another one of his crazed smiles stretched across his face.

“You’re good, (Y/N)”

He paused, letting his words sink in. You tried to back up a bit, not liking the look in his eyes.

“But yuh-you know what? I’m better.”

He tackled you to the ground making you scream. Immediately pinning down both your arms, you thrashed trying anything to get him off.

You could hear him laughing under his breath watching you fail.

His arm reached out to grab something off to the side.

The baton.

“Wait! Please don’t!” You pleaded, trying to make your voice sound as pathetic as possible. The only hope now being that he’d take pity on you.

With the weapon raised above his head, his expression softened with a love-sick gaze.

For a second, you thought he was letting you go.

You were wrong.