#monster. Josh feeling like he lost the last person he had in his corner feels like the most realistic thing to... push him over the

[twoidiotwriters1]

Starcrossed Losers II (Josh Wheeler xReader)

A/N: Loving this thing already, seriously hoping to keep the constant of posting two chapters every week lmao

Words: 2,766

Warnings: Swearing ig

Previous Chapter // Next chapter

Of course. Of course, it was this guy.

Eli fucking Cardashyan, or as I liked to call him, the goblin under the bridge that always copied my answers on every test since we were thirteen. Just like Josh, Angelica and Wesley, I knew Eli from a while back. He wasn’t exactly popular but everyone knew him as the school’s “wanna-be”, I thought he would be dead by now, I’m glad to see I was wrong.

But I can’t believe he’s got the mall for himself. Even worse, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. The mall was neutral territory, everyone could go and hang out with their friends, so the most logical thing is to say everyone had the same right over it. And is Eli Cardashyan the one who gets to have it all for himself? I call bullshit. This kind of situation is what leads me to believe that there is really no god.

“This is who we’ve been scared of?” Angelica complains, “A light breeze could kick his ass!”

“I thought it was gonna be Hoyles,” Wesley adds in a mix of disbelief and disappointment, “this is... Who is this again?”

“It’s Eli,” sighs Josh, he walks towards the bike and examines it, then lets out a childish laugh, “it’s fine, He’s a knock-off Baron Triumph”

And yes, obviously he was. Eli could be an idiot sometimes but he wasn’t a murderer. He went off on his (honestly weird as hell) speech until Josh cut him off.

“Who else is with you? Where is Sam Dean?” Eli scoffs.

“Do I look like her publicist?”

“Sam’s not here?” 

“I’m sorry, it’s just me and my girlf, Mavis” He answers with a smirk.

Josh and I share a look, I shrug and mouth a ‘sorry’, Josh shakes his head, telling me not to worry about it.

“You have the entire mall? You?” asks Angelica.

“Right?! How did that even happen?” I ask in frustration. Wesley mumbles a ‘chill, girl’ that I decide to ignore.

Eli went on and on, and to be honest I think I only understood like fifty percent of what he was saying, part because I wasn’t listening, and part ‘cause the boy has a wild vocabulary. Josh and I looked at each other in annoyance and I knew he was feeling as done as me with the conversation. When I was starting to think this day couldn’t get any crazier, the real Baron Triumph made his entrance.

We all hurl up at the doors and Eli pulls out a set of keys from his pocket, desperately trying to open them.

“Faster, he’s almost here!” says Josh.

“Get your own mall, this one’s mine” Eli grumbles.

“Are you twelve?” I reply, “We’re on the same side here!”

“We’re finna get eaten out here...”

“Not helping, Wesley.” 

“Got it!” Says Eli. The other boys pull him aside and practically rip the chains from the handles, “Hey!”

Josh pushes me inside hurriedly before entering himself. The others soon following after. I hear the door slamming shut and I look over my shoulder to see Eli running behind us; we’re all safe.

We reach one of the halls and Josh stops in awe, it takes me an extra second to stop completely cause I’m still wearing my skates, but when I do I’m just as amazed as him. Behind me, I hear Angelica talk.

“There’s power and air conditioning...”

“Everything is so... clean”

“Still smells like cinnabon”

“Am I still alive?” I look over at Josh, “You sure I didn’t die when you hit me this afternoon?”

“I didn’t hit you that hard,” He replies, still looking around like it was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

“Solar panels on the roof!” Eli sings, “This is an island of paradise in an ocean of poop.”

“What a fancy allegory,” I snicker.

I’ll allow myself to remember, I don’t do it as often as I’d like...

-Flashback time-

What? You thought I wasn’t going to do this? C’mon, I’m a lonely child. All I have are my memories of the good ol’ times, so you’ll be forced to relive them with me. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. (I do, but I don’t wanna brag about it).

“We should go to my place, there’s nothing to do here...”

“Maya, for the last time,” I look at the girl standing next to me, “we told Alex we would meet here.”

“I know,” She whines, “but Hoyles is here and that guy gives me the creeps. I heard he tried to have sex with Ashley Miller while she was completely wasted”

“Sounds like Hoyles,” I nod in agreement, “but we can’t scatter everytime we run into them. We’re not little kids anymore, he can’t hurt us”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” She points to the opposite corner, Hoyles and his gang are terrorizing a freshman and the people around does nothing but move away.

“Can you belive that?” I start to walk towards them but Maya grabs my arm tightly, “What?”

“Don’t be stupid,” She rolls her eyes, “don’t even try to stop them, seriously, they won’t stop and you’ll get harassed.”

“It’s a freshman!” I insist, “Hoyles is like three times his size! You can’t expect me to do nothing”

“Listen,” my friend raises an eyebrow, “Y/N, those guys are crazy, please...”

I look back at the boys and realize they’re no longer there, I turn to her in defeat.

“I just really hate bullies, okay?”

“Let’s face it, we don’t have the ability to stop them all.”

“To stop what?” 

I quickly turn around and see the person I’ve been waiting for: Alex, my best friend since childhood. My mood switches instantly and I shrugg it off, already starting to forget.

“Just the usual dumbassery,” I reply with a chuckle.

“Hey loser,” Maya adds, “you’re late.”

“Yeah, I know” Alex nods awkwardly, “lost track of time again, sorry.”

“What was it this time?” I ask, “youtube or the comic?”

“Youtube,” He smirks, “vine is honestly a national treasure.”

“Sure,” I snort, “too bad is dead now.”

“Those who are great live the shortest lives,” He replies with his ‘wise old man’ voice.

“So,” Maya hops between us and puts her arms around our shoulders, “you want to look around?”

“I wanna go see the skates,” Alex adds, basically vibrating, “they have a new model and I wanna try them on.”

“The skates place, then,” My friend nods and pulls us with her.

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

A loud bang brings me back to the present and I remember why were we hiding here in the first place.

“This way, quick!” Eli tells us before he starts running. I move fast since I’m the only one with wheels on her feet. And soon most of them are behind me. Eli presses a button on the keychain he has, and the metal curtain lifts up enough for us to get in. “Go under, we’ll be safe in here...”

As soon as Josh, Angelica and I get in, the curtain comes back down.

“What the hell?” asks Josh.

“I’m not sharing my kingdom with you, sheep. No one busts into Eli’s mall. And don’t even try to escape.”

“We weren’t trying to escape, you brainless leprechaun!” This is unbelievable, I swear, I just want out of this day, “We’re running away from the monster that's on your side! You won’t make it on your own against Triumph, he’ll find a way to get in and eat you”

“Every door is locked or booby-trapped.” A laugh distracts us from the discussion and I see Wesley next to Eli... on the other side.

“Booby,” He chuckles. He’s been smoking, so you can’t expect him to behave.

Eli groans. Josh steps closer and smirks.

“Wesley Fists lead the state in sacks last season. Take him out, Samurai.”

“To fight someone so obviously inferior would be dishonorable.” He raises a brow. Eli shows us both of his middle fingers.

“Great,” I throw my backpack on the floor and walk away from the curtain, “this is only getting better and better...” 

“One punch, Wesley, come on,” Josh insists, “one punch.”

I let out a sharp breath and sit on the bench a few feet away from them to take off my skates. As useful as they are, I’m starting to feel sore and they’re not the most comfortable thing to wear after a few hours of running. While I’m doing so, another memory comes to mind and I’m unable to stop it.

Where was I? Oh, right...

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

“I think these are more you’re style,” I grab the bright, lime-green pair from the right shelf and hand them to Alex, he laughs and examines them for a moment like he’s actually considering the idea.

“I mean, they wouldn’t match any of my outfits but they’d totally be catching everyone’s eye.”

“Isn’t that the point, though?”

“Obviously,” He shakes his head pretending to be offended by the question, “though I think I’ll have to pass this time. I already made my choice.”

He shows me a pair of white-colored ones.

“Dude, are you serious?” I grab the skates and raise them to his eye level, “These are the most boring pair of skates ever”

“Now they are,” Alex moves my hand slightly so he can see my face, “but I bet that you can turn them into a masterpiece”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Please, Y/N don’t play dumb, you know I love your drawings”

I blush at his reply. Sure, I like drawing but I’m no Van Gogh at it. The best thing I ever drew was probably a worm.

“You’re telling me you’d spend your money on the newest model of skates just to ruin them with your best friend’s nonexistent skills?”

“To me, their value would go up by a thousand if they had your drawings in them.”

“Jesus, get a room!” Maya exclaims beside us, she’s sitting on a small chair, trying random pairs of skates out of pure boredom.

“Shut up!” We both respond quickly. 

He looks at me and I’m pretty sure he’s blushin but I can’t really look at his face cause I’m too embarrassed to do so.

Oh, right. I forgot to mention that I had a crush on my best friend, didn’t I? No, I wasn’t avoiding this topic. I thought it wasn’t important anymore. And it isn’t! I promise it isn’t. Alex is gone, and with him so are my feelings.

Yes, you can laugh all you want cause I was one of those basic idiots who fell in love with their best friend just cause he treats me like any decent human being should. Can you blame me, though? Compared to Hoyles and his team of dickheads, Alex was a fucking teddy bear. 

And the worst part? I’m pretty sure he liked me back. 

We never made a move.

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

A loud scream makes me drop my broken skates and I run back to were Angelica and Josh are.

“What the fuck...” I whisper, clinging to the curtain.

“What the fuck is here with us?” Angelica is the first to ask what Josh and I were wondering as well.

“Ooh, a ghoulie witch,” Eli steps closer, lowering his voice, “once upon a time, she was a normal girl who liked hanging out at the mall. But now she’s got mad powers, and she will fuck your shit up. She is unkillable and she is hangry.”

“There is no such thing as witches.”

“Well, a few months ago there weren’t mutant squirrels or ghoulies either.” Adds Angelica.

“That’s right. And when the witch eats your intestines like spaghetti, you’ll think: I never should’ve dissed king Eli...” He walks backwards and leaves us here with fuck knows what.

“I swear every time he opens his mouth I feel like I’m having a stroke,” Now that I don’t have my skates on, I realize Josh’s taller than me. I barely reach the tip of his nose.

“Don’t worry, I’ll convince him to let you out.” Wesley says, “I’mma go full Gandhi on his ass. Hunger strike.”

“Easy there, we don’t want to traumatize him for life” I reply dryly.

Angelica and Josh step back from the curtain and I follow them. We sit on the bench and I look at my skates, cursing under my breath. Josh notices and gently nudges my side with his arm.

“Sorry about that. We can find a new pair somewhere around here if you want.”

“I hope so,” I kick them and they slide miserably on the floor, the wheels almost fully worn out, “I really liked them.”

“You used to skate a lot? Before the nuke,” He asks in curiosity.

“Not at all. I didn’t even know how to use them,” I laugh lightly, “my best friend used to, though. He promised he would teach me one day but... things didn’t go as planned.”

“Is he..?” He leaves the question open but I understand perfectly what he’s trying to say.

“Fuck, no,” I feel a shiver going down my spine just by thinking about it, “we wanted different things, that’s all. He had a plan and I had another. Alex wanted to leave town and travel around the country now that we’re free to do whatever we please. I just wanted to find my sister.”

“And where is she?”

“She turned into a ghoulie, so I... I took care of it.”

“Shit,” He whispers, passing a hand through his hair and looking a little pale, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Again, I’m not gonna talk about this stuff with someone I just met.

“Did I ever meet your friend?” Maybe Josh can tell I don’t want to keep going with the hard topics, and I appreciate his effort to respect that.

“Dunno,” I shrug, softly massaging my feet, “He’s Alex Murphy. Bit taller than me, cool guy...”

“Oh, him,” He nods, then adds, “I have no clue of who that is.”

I laugh louder this time, giving him a gentle push.

“Dumbass,” I shake my head, “anyway, after Alex and I went our separate ways I decided to learn on my own and I think I did pretty well, they’re quieter than cars and definitely easier to control than skateboards.”

“Oh, so you’re still not over that?” He raises a brow, a smirk growing on his face.

“Well, I’m not the one running over innocent people on the street.”

“It was an accident! I wasn’t watching where I was going. I was too busy trying not to get killed by the jocks”

“You sure? Cause so far all I’ve seen you do is nothing but the opposite. If I may give my humble opinion, it's not something very smart considering you’re alone.”

“I was doing well until today,” He sighs.

“I believe you, Wheeler,” I eye him up, “you're not like I'd pictured.”

“Really?” He smiles, “What did you imagine?”

“Kinda like those boys who pretend to be all grown up,” I reply, scrunching up my nose, “the ones that can’t be caught having fun or they’d lose their cool, like some sort of bitter old man in the body of a seventeen-year-old boy...”

“Okay, okay! I get it,” Josh laughs, raising his hands in defeat, “jeez, thanks for the compliments”

“I am complimenting you!” I exclaim, “I’m saying I was wrong and you’re not what I thought you were”

“You did think I was, though”

“Well, at least I had an opinion on you,” I scoff, “I’m sure you didn’t even think of that after we did our school project, I probably just stopped existing in your world or something...”

“Of course not,” It was his time to act offended, “every time I saw you on the hall after our project I made sure to wave at you, remember?”

“How kind of you”

“What can I say? I’m a real-life gentleman.”

I laugh again and pull my shoes out of my bag to put them on.

“Is that the reason why Sam Dean fell head over heels for you?”

The effect was immediate. Josh’s shoulders tense and his smile disappears, he clears his throat and looks anywhere but me.

“Uhm, I don’t really know if she...”

“It’s alright,” I add promptly, “sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad”

“I’m not sad,” He shakes his head, “it’s just that I keep thinking... maybe things could’ve been different if I had said something sooner, you know?”

Trust me, Josh. I know.

Taglist.

@letsbloodmagic 

#twoidiots writing #josh wheeler #josh wheeler xreader #wesley fists #eli cardashyan #angelica green #daybreak #netflix #Starcrossed fic #daybreak fanfic

[huntertales]

Preview: Waving The White Flag. (Sacrifice S08E23)

Episode Summary: With Crowley poised to undo all the good they've ever done as hunters; Sam, Dean and the reader find themselves cornered. But with Kevin's help, the Winchesters and the reader bound into one last play against the king of hell. However everything comes with a cost. What must the three sacrifice to seal the gates of hell for good? Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 2,931.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

Fifteen minutes until midnight.

You stared at the clock on your phone while you sat in the bunker’s library where you had been almost all night, trying to figure out the lost list of people you saved over the years. Wondering who might be next on the chopping block. There were so many people you met over the years, so many lives you saved from death. It’d be impossible to track every single one of them down and warn them for the danger they might be in. You had no idea of knowing who Crowley was going to target next. He could pick someone you saved from six years ago, he might want to choose someone you helped out on a case five months ago. There were an endless possibilities for how this was going to go down and who could be on the chopping block next. But you had a feeling there was a method to all of Crowley’s madness. 

You put yourself in the demon’s shoes to try and get into his frame of mind to figure out what he was doing. It might have been a brilliant idea to tediously compile a list of people you and the boys had saved over the past eight years and go after them. Any monster could pick a name out of a hat and pick them off one by one. It took a true mastermind to hit the hero where it hurts the most. Crowley was targeting people that meant something to you, or had an impact on your personal life. That way it hurt just a little more for you when you couldn’t stop their death in time. Or your first true victory of saving someone's life ended with failure almost a decade later.

Tommy Collins was someone you met when you took your second real case you and the boys worked on together that had some real stakes involved with a life on the line. It was also your first real taste of what kind of danger you would be putting yourself into if you decided you wanted to become a hunter. While it was terrifying, the hunt concluded with a happy ending for you and the Collins siblings after they were reunited. Thanks to you and the boys Tommy and his family were given a chance to live a peaceful life. At least for the past eight years. Until a certain demon decided to sniff him out and kill him. 

You didn't get the chance to meet Jenny Klien, but you had a feeling she was a nice girl who deserved a better outcome than the one she was given. And as for Sarah...Crowley did that just to spite all of you. She was someone Crowley knew he would be able to get under your skin, not only for the short connection shared with a certain someone, but for the life she was able to create for herself. She was everything you wanted your life to turn out, and now she was dead. 

While Crowley had set a pattern with going after people he saved, you had made a few friends along the way that were still alive. You made a few phone calls around to make sure they were okay. Charlie Bradbury was occupied with a video game she claimed hadn't been able to tear herself away from. She told you everything was okay on her end. No hex bag around the place she was crashing at. Josh was fine as well, working a lot lately. You told him to keep an eye out for any kind of strange activity after briefing him on the game Crowley was playing with you and the boys. Garth was first call you thought to make after he was still keeping an eye on someone who was most likely on Crowley's kill list. The hunter kept reassuring you Kevin was perfectly safe, even putting the kid on to let you know he was still breathing. 

When you got back to the bunker after losing Sarah and getting the call from Crowley, you were devastated at how it turned out. Because for a moment you thought things weren't going to turn out exactly like how you had been fighting for. Six months of Kevin translating the tablet and three of them completing two of the trials would have been for nothing if you did what Crowley wanted. You were doing this to put away the monster who killed three innocent people who thought they escaped from this lifestyle for good. They were given a few years of normalcy before it was all taken away, because of the people who saved them ended up being the reason why they were killed. 

You were used to people dying because of you, and at the hands of a demon no less. Crowley thought the routine was predictable. The same formula was recycled over and over again for the past eight years. He wanted to change things up, broaden his horizon of his pool of victims he could choose from. A hunter doesn't have much family. What they lacked in loved ones they made up for in people they saved. And you saved a lot of people...people who were in danger.

You had a twelve hour window from when Crowley promised you he was going to kill someone. The ritual to cure a demon only took eight hours. All you needed to do was get your hands on a black eyed freak, pump him full of purified blood while chanting some Latin and finish it off with a bloody high five to complete the final trial. You would be able to solve both problems without having someone fall victim after time ran out. While it sounded so easy, you knew there was no way you could execute the plan. The king of hell promised you his goons were strictly off limits from you. And you had no time, no clue, how to track down a knight of hell you managed to let get away. You were back at square one with no way out of this. 

It seemed like you and the boys were backed into a corner with no way out but to surrender. You thought that was how all of this was going to end. Throwing in the towel for the sake of doing the right thing. But that wasn't your style. You wanted to go down fighting. Dean was on your side with this. However not everyone had the confidence in yourselves like you did. Sam was always the one who tried to boost morale when things looked bleak and hopeless. But even he knew how screwed you were. He was thinking about the big picture. Not only for the sake of the people but those who weren't on the best of terms with the king of hell.

“What happens when Crowley gets bored of picking off people we saved?” Sam raised an important question that had been burning in the back of his mind since last night. "He made it quite clear he wants to see Y/N dead." 

“He didn’t exactly say that.” You jumped into the argument to defend yourself from the younger Winchester’s prediction. You looked up from the phone screen to see Sam was staring at you with a frustrated glare at how you were taking this. You rolled your eyes and placed the phone back down to the table. "If Crowley wanted me dead he would've done it already. But it's too predictable. And besides, I don't stay dead. He would rather pick off people and keep all the demons locked up because he knows that would piss us off. It's his end game." 

“Besides, there’s gotta be some kind of loophole around this.” Dean said, pulling the conversation back to where it needed to be. “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Crowley said he wasn’t going to let a demon anywhere near us. Maybe we can have someone summon a crossroads demon. Trap that one and presto—Crowley and all those black eyed sons of bitches go away forever. I’m sure business is going on as usual.”

“Who, Dean? Crowley knows everyone we’ve ever saved. Pretty sure he knows all the hunters we’ve worked with, too.” Sam busted his brother’s idea before he could elaborate more. Dean gave the man an annoyed look from how he was treating every single one of his ideas. It was at least something to think about. Sam thought it was stupid to put someone else’s life on the line, which was exactly what all of you were trying to stop. “I mean, how are we gonna do that? Find someone down on their luck and somehow persuade them to summon a deal and sell their soul?”

"Hey, that's not a bad idea. It might be stupid enough to work." Dean said. His brother shot down the idea with his infamous bitch face you knew too well. Sam was getting to the end of his rope, and it was only a matter of time until he gave up for good. "What the hell do you want us to do, Sam? I'm not backing down from that bastard. We came too far to give up. There's gotta be a way out of this." 

The conversation on how to save the day fell into silence when none of you agreed on what the right thing to do was. Sam really didn't want to back down and thrown in the towel after months of hard work you and Kevin put into this. But it felt like there was no other choice. The younger man began to slowly pace around the room as he glanced down at his watch to see the time was ticking down to the next deadline. If none of you thought of something in the next minutes the body count would go up to five. Crowley hadn’t given you the courtesy call about the last person he picked off. He wanted the three of you to sit and wonder who was going to be next, just to make you feel even more trapped. So many directions you could be pulled into, and no way of knowing who could be next.

Your eyes jumped away from a spot in the library you had been staring at after getting lost in your own thoughts when you heard your phone vibrate, the noise echoing and moving slightly around from sitting on the table. You still had several minutes until someone was scheduled to die. Unless Crowley was getting impatient following his own rules and wanted to move things along faster. 

"What is it?" Sam asked you. "Is it Crowley?"

“No. It’s just a notification from a pregnancy app I downloaded a while back. Wanted to remind me that I’m officially six months pregnant today. Whoopie freaking doo.” You muttered the last part to yourself in an unenthusiastic tone of voice, tossing your phone back down to the table. “You think after six months of dealing with this tablet business it’d be over by now.”...That you would’ve had everything planned out. 

Six months of dealing with runaway prophets and the king of hell stealing your tablet. Angels coming back from purgatory and being toyed with by their own kind to get a hold of an angel tablet. All these months of dealing with this business, you had tried to keep a strategy going. You wanted to be one step ahead of the enemy with the future in mind. You had that all set out. Until someone threw a wrench in your plan. A thought that didn’t hit you before and screwed it all up. For some reason all of this sounded familiar to you. Having a plan set out, trying to execute it...only for a thought to make you realize that it wasn’t going to be easy as you thought it was going to be. You needed to think quick on your feet so you can achieve everything you ever wanted. No matter the price you had to pay. 

"There's no way out of this. Crowley knows that. He's got us right under his thumb, exactly where he wants us." You spoke up all of a sudden, the realization hitting you. You felt your lips stretching into a smile, wondering why you didn't of going this route sooner. "We're desperate. I mean, there's no way out of this unless we do what he wants."

"Yeah. And?" Sam wondered why you were repeating information that was made pretty clear since last night. It was the argument all of you had just a few minutes ago after trying to solve the problem at hand. "Where are you going with this, Y/N?"

"Sammy, what is it that we do best?" You asked him. He thought about your question for a moment, wondering what kind of answer you were fishing for. He shrugged his shoulders, admitting a sign of defeat. "Making deals with demons. So let's do it." 

"Crowley said all demons were off limits to us." Dean said. You tilted your head to the side slightly and gave him a look, knowing that wasn't the point you were trying to make. "You want to take the deal with Crowley? That's exactly what the prick wants. He wants us to cave."

"Exactly. Crowley wants us vulnerable because that's how he can make us do whatever he wants. So let's keep it going. Long enough to turn the tables and corner him." You went on, telling them about the only play you had left against the demon. "Dean, was there anything more portable in the dungeon? Like, I don't know, handcuffs? Something marked with the same symbols on the chains?" 

"I think so." Dean recalled. "What is that big brain of yours coming up with, Nancy Drew?"

"I'm thinking....let's make a deal with the king of hell." You told the boys. "But on  our terms." 

"He'll never cave unless we do what he wants. And if he finds out it's a trap, we have no way of knowing how he'll react." Sam said. You knew he was trying to be helpful, but he wasn't looking at it from the angle you were. "It's too risky." 

"Crowley might be the king of hell, but he's still a businessman at the end of the day. He can't resist making a deal. Besides, he dealt with a desperate pregnant woman before. He'll think this is history repeating itself all over again. And it is...but I've got other negotiations." You said. Both of the brothers thought about your plan for a second or two, wondering what might go wrong if Crowley caught on to what you were doing. "Boys, we've had a demon at our disposal the entire time. It's just a matter of getting Crowley to fall for the bait. What do we have to lose?"

You had a lot to lose if you didn’t follow through with this plan exactly the right way. One little slip up and Crowley would surely figure out what you were trying to do. But with time running out quicker than you thought, you and the boys had no other choice. This was your last chance at doing the right thing. You grabbed your phone from the table and punched in the three digit number to reach the king of hell. The phone rang a few times before you were greeted by the demon in that annoying accent of his.

“You have less than one minute before a very dear, attractive, and slightly tipsy friend of yours snuffs it.” The demon greeted you with an update on his activities for the evening. 

“Call it off, Crowley.” Dean ordered to the demon who was on speaker, slamming his hands down onto the table to prove he wasn't playing around. Crowley curiously wondered why he would be doing such a thing. Dean was still apprehensive about this plan when his gaze fell over to you, as if he was wondering if you still wanted to go through with this. You slowly nodded your head. "Because it's over, you son of a bitch. We want a deal." 

“Thirty seconds.” Crowley warned all of you. 

"We stop the trials, you stop the killing." Dean reiterated the demon's negotiations he set for all of you. 

“I want the demon tablet—the whole demon tablet.” The demon told you another part of his deal that you knew, making it quite clear before all of you tried to do anything stupid. 

“Fine, but then the angel tablet comes to us.” The older Winchester decided it was only fair to ask for something else in return. Crowley was taken aback by the hunter’s greediness, wondering on what grounds all of you thought you deserved such a thing. “On the grounds that you’re a douchebag and no douchebag should have that much power. Deal or not?”

“First, I need to hear two little words,” Crowley wasn’t going to let this be easy. You bit the inside of your cheek when you heard his final negotiations if you wanted this to work. “I surrender.” 

The boys exchanged an uneasy look at the final terms of agreement. It wasn't in your style to sink so low and beg for mercy. But what other choice did you have other than to cooperate? You quickly reached for the phone before the next person could bite the dust. You made the words clear as day, showing Crowley you were waving the white flag. "I surrender." 

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[takaraphoenix]

Season 4 Finale Fix-It Fic: Who Tells Your Story

Quentin blinked, feeling very disoriented. What had happened...? There was something vague, in the back of his mind. Screams and something... He looked around wondrously. He didn't know where he was, but he had the feeling that this wasn't where he had last been.

"Quentin Coldwater. Welcome to the underworld."

Ah. That was it. That was the thing that kept escaping him. He had died. Everett had interrupted them in the mirror world, he had been too startled to destroy the monster in time and then things exploded. Had he done it? Had he saved his friends?

"Your friends are alright", assured the man with the very pleasant voice.

Quentin tilted his head and looked at him. "Who... are you?"

"I'm Hades. King of the underworld."

"Oh", nodded Quentin, frowning a bit.

He was still very disoriented and his thoughts were swirling too fast for him to even grasp them. Hades gently guided him to sit down. Odd. Well, wasn't that just his life? Odd.

"You died killing the monster for good", stated Hades and leaned back in his own seat, hands crossed on his lap. "You have a choice now."

"Choice?", echoed Quentin.

His tongue felt heavy with all of the questions on his mind. What with his friends? Were they alright? Truly alright? Magic. The library still kept magic limited. What about Fillory? And his mother. He was dead. She had just lost his father, even if they had been divorced. And Eliot. Eliot.

"You died a hero's death", explained Hades, offering Quentin a card – a ticket. "You earned the privilege to move on to Elysium. An honor reserved to truly good people."

"So I... did something brave? I didn't just... finally find a way to kill myself?"

The look Hades offered him was not quite amused. "You earned this, your death was a hero's death. However, I have a choice to offer you. You slayed the monster that killed my wife, so I personally owe you a debt of gratitude. Elysium will still be there when you die at an old age. What I am offering you is something I only very rarely hand out. A get out of the underworld free card."

Quentin blinked and turned his ticket around once, to find it changed into a white card, with the small symbol of Pluto in one corner and elegant writing reading get out of the underworld free. Very... direct. But in his current state, Quentin kind of appreciated that.

"You are a hero, Quentin Coldwater", stated Hades slowly. "And I think that your destiny has not yet been fulfilled. There are many things left for you to do. People are waiting for you."

Quentin frowned at that. "Really?"

He hadn't truly felt like that lately. He felt like since the quest for the seven keys, he had grown apart from the others. Eliot had been... possessed. He hadn't seen actual Eliot since the castle at the end of the world. Everyone else had been so busy with their own drama and their own quests and Quentin had kind of been stuck babysitting the monster. Which had hurt. Because it had Eliot's face and... everything that had happened between him and Eliot and everything that hadn't happened between him and Eliot and he was just so confused.

A large part of him had wished for Margo, wished to sit down together and talk. Or even to go with her and try to help, but Margo had been in Fillory and with Fen and Josh, working on ways to bring back Eliot, without him.

Penny 23 was still very much a stranger to Quentin and he seemed too engrossed in some kind of love-triangle or something with Kady and Julia. Kady, well, Quentin had never been close to.

Julia had been there, but not... Well, she had enough on her own mind, huh? She had no time to sit there and listen to Quentin telling her about the conflicting feelings he had for Eliot and for this situation with the monster, or to talk about how incredibly betrayed he had felt by Alice, or how much the death of his father affected him.

And Alice, Alice was still so complicated. For the most part, he had kept his distance to her. Though they had managed to rekindle their friendship, to a certain capacity, it was still... awkward.

Who was there? Who really... needed him? He had barely gotten anything important to do this time.

He had been who brought them all together, he had been the one with the knowledge about Fillory, he had been a king of Fillory for a while. He had held them together during their quest for the seven keys and somehow, he had thought that after that, things could be different.

Part of him had thought that after that, him and Eliot could live in Fillory, together as kings – they were still kings, weren't they, even if Margo was High King, had been High King? There had always been four rulers in Fillory. The life they had shared together just weighed too heavy on him, the memories of decades spend with Eliot. They had raised a child – his child – together. And being hit by this life, this... happiness... he thought maybe he could have it now too. Maybe, after this monster was slayed, he could actually have this... living out his life with someone who made him happy, with someone who supported him even when he wasn't happy.

But Eliot had rejected him and then Eliot had been possessed and now Quentin was... dead. But Eliot had said – well he had been rather out of it and only temporarily in control – he had talked about peaches though? He had talked like he wanted that too, wanted to try. And now they couldn't even try because Quentin was dead.

Strange. For so many years, he had contemplated what it would be like to be dead. Had wished to be dead too. And now that he actually was dead, he found himself oddly... hung up on life.

"Can I give you a piece of advise?", asked Hades.

Right. Quentin wasn't alone. He was in the underworld, with the king of the underworld. Unreal.

"...Yes, I'd appreciate that", nodded Quentin slowly.

"I just lost my wife. The love of my life", stated Hades. "And when a god dies, there is no afterlife. I will never see her again. If you think you have even the faintest chance to find love in life, you should choose life, because death will always be there to wait for you."

Death will always be there to wait for you. Huh. That was probably right. He would, if he went back to life now, die again and be here again and he could still move on then.

"There are just... so many things, so many questions I still have", admitted Quentin. "Julia, she lost her magic and her godhood – she is my best friend, my oldest friend, I can't leave her like that. And Alice, she probably feels guilty about my death. Margo. And... And... Eliot."

"So you have made your choice then", stated Hades with an amused looking smile.

/break\

Quentin smiled, though it was a reluctant expression as he sat next to Julia, his legs drawn up. She had cried, when he had approached her. Then she had hugged him. And then cried some more. After she was done crying, she had shown him the card-trick – had shown him that she apparently still had her magic somehow. So here he was... maybe useless after all.

"I just thought, I had to come back to help you deal with losing your magic", whispered Quentin.

"Guess I'm like a... magical cockroach, huh? Can't be killed, not even my magic can", replied Julia and tilted her head. "I suppose I'm back on my quest to regain my godhood then."

"Need help with that?", asked Quentin, resting his chin on his knees.

The smile on Julia's lips was warm and the look in her eyes was understanding – like she understood more than Quentin, which was probably true. "I think you should... you should follow your own path for a change, Q. You were so helpful for everyone, keeping everyone together, putting everything else before yourself. I think it's time for you to be selfish, Q. You were so excited to find Fillory and I know, I know it disappointed you – but maybe it's up to you to make it what it should be, what you wanted it to be. You're still a king of Fillory, aren't you?"

"I... don't know", hummed Quentin thoughtfully. "Maybe? I was barely at the castle during our reign anyway and then we were overthrown by Tick and Margo got elected High King, but now she's banished too... honestly, I have no idea what my place in Fillory even would be."

"Then maybe you should go and find out", suggested Julia, nudging him gently. "After your... After we said goodbye to you, we parted ways. Margo and Eliot went to Fillory, you know. To find out if Margo could get unbanished and I think Eliot is just looking for some... distance."

Quentin hummed at that and turned to look away, stare up at the moon. "He's been through a lot. Being possessed by the monster. Does he... remember what the monster did?"

"No. He was inside a mind-palace, he says", replied Julia and shook her head. "It was traumatic, but for the most part he was... safe in there, safe from the monster. That's what I overheard at least. Him and me, we were never close, so he didn't tell me much. But he... I think what truly hit him, even more than the possession, was losing you. He was so devastated, Q."

"Mh", grunted Quentin, pressing his lips flat together.

Maybe. Eliot had seemed so excited, like he wanted something – anything. Him.

/break\

He found Margo and Eliot in their cottage. Somehow, it was surreal for Quentin to be here now. He hadn't really been here in a while. He... still hadn't graduated. All he had wanted was to study at Brakebills but somehow, classes and a degree had just... slipped away from him.

"I just can't believe he's gone, Bambi."

"I know", whispered Margo back, holding onto Eliot.

Quentin just stood there for a moment. He still felt rather disconnected from his new body – thank you, Hades – but also if he was being honest with his emotions. Too much had happened. There was so much to feel and he just... didn't even know where to begin to feel.

"I couldn't even actually tell him anything", sobbed Eliot into Margo's arms.

Feeling too much like he was eavesdropping, Quentin stepped into the room, making enough noise to draw their attention. "Uh... Hello? Or, what do you say in this situation...? I'm... back?"

"Q... Quentin?"

Both Margo and Eliot looked up at him, shock written all over their features as they took him in like he was a ghost. Which, admittedly, he was to them. They knew he had died. He had died.

"Turns out Hades wasn't a big fan of the monster, what with him killing Hades' wife and all, so he expressed his gratitude by... giving me a second chance?", offered Quentin in explanation.

"Don't play with me", warned Eliot, voice shaky as he pointed a finger at Quentin. "If you're just a-a hallucination, or some... magic trick, or something, I am in no state for that."

"I'm me. The real me. I'm... back. For good. Or, well, until the next time I die. Which, hopefully, will be quite some in the future", replied Quentin, lifting both hands up. "I'm real, Eliot. I'm not a hallucination or anything. I'm back. And hey – it's not like I'm the first of us to survive dying."

He cracked the smallest grin, less out of humor and more out of a strange sense of giddiness. Eliot was right there. The real, actual Eliot. Eliot, in the flesh, with his mind. The past months with monster – with this evil creature posing as Eliot. But this one was the real one. Quentin could see it in his eyes, in the way he carried himself, could hear it in his voice.

"Eliot", whispered Quentin, voice soft. "I'm here. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

They walked toward each other slowly, on shaking legs. Eliot's hand was shaking as it reached out for Quentin's face, carefully cupping his cheek. Tears were still running down Eliot's cheeks as he touched Quentin. And then, the next moment, he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Quentin, hugging him like he never wanted to let go again.

"You didn't give up on me", whispered Eliot into Quentin's neck. "Bambi told me. They wanted to give up on me but you kept pushing and believing and... I wouldn't be here without you. And when I woke up, I thought... but you weren't there and you died. You died like that and I never could tell you—thank you, for not giving up on me, for fighting for me."

All Quentin could do was nod and pull Eliot closer to him. And in that moment, he was glad to be alive. Feeling Eliot against him, his warmth, his everything, after all those months of trying to get Eliot back. He couldn't imagine being anywhere but here. How could he have chosen to move on when there was so much left unsaid and undone? There was so much more he had to do.

"I... heard you guys want to go back to Fillory?", asked Quentin, voice muffled by Eliot's shoulder as he was still being hugged like he would dissolve if Eliot let go. "Got room for one more?"

"Of course, Q", offered Margo gently, standing next to them and looking torn.

She wasn't big on emotions and she felt like intruding on this moment – but this was Q. She knew she had been very focused on Fillory and on bringing Eliot back, but out of everyone on this fucking quest, after Eliot, Quentin had mattered the most to her. The three of them, they had been through a lot and it had brought them all closer. Beyond the high-as-a-kite threesome. Quentin turned toward her with what was the most watery smile she had ever seen before he pulled her into the hug with them and regardless of how strong she was and how much she could contain her emotions, in that moment she didn't want to. Q was alive.

"Let's go to Fillory together and fuck that bitch up", laughed Margo, feeling drunk on relief.

/break\

Quentin had gone and talked to Alice too before they left, before they packed up. Yes, they could go back to getting their degree – but somehow, they had moved past that. And out of everyone from their group, the three of them had been the most drawn toward Fillory. Quentin knew that was where his path lead. What Julia had said to him was true. Fillory was meant to be something different, he had dreamed of something different – so it was up to him to make it something different. They had gone to rule this country multiple times at this point, but as soon as they were in power, some quest had thrown them off and they had never actually managed to do anything.

This was it though. This was the end of the line. The Beast had thrown them into a chain-reaction, he was followed by Reynard, then they had killed a god and had to fix magic, the quest of the seven keys, the monster at the end of the world – but this was it. Ending that one had not pushed over the next pillar to fall. They had done it, they had finally finished their quest.

They could now actually change Fillory. Make it better. Make it the place Quentin always had dreamed of living at. He turned a little to look at Eliot and Quentin next to him and grinned.

"What? What's with that look, Q?", asked Eliot confused.

"We make quite the Golden Trio", chuckled Quentin.

"I'm clearly the badass sidekick. So that must make Eliot the love-interest", stated Margo.

It made Eliot stumble and Margo snort in amusement. She rolled her eyes and made a show of walking ahead, giving Eliot and Quentin some space. They had not quite yet... talked. They had talked and packed and left together, but not quite talked about what... mattered.

"I was a coward", stated Eliot, decidedly looking ahead and not at Quentin. "When you... When we... The life we had. It was too much, when I started remembering it. You know me, I'm a party boy. I rarely do serious relationships and the last I had ended in a bloody murder after my boyfriend got possessed. And that life – that life we had – it was so... domestic and... normal. It was... scary. Because it was more than I ever thought I'd have. You and me and our... son. And when you asked me to give us a try, it felt like you were asking me to give you all of that and I knew I couldn't."

"I didn't...", started Quentin with a frown. "I didn't mean to ask for all of that. I asked for you."

"I know. I know that now. But back then? It was too much and too scary and I was a coward, afraid of my own feelings. But then... everything happened. While the monster... I thought a lot about myself, I reevaluated my life-choices, the worst of me, the best of me. And I thought of what I wanted and I want... you. I want you, Q. That's all I want. Just... you. Whatever that entails. And when I came out of it all, all I wanted was to... run to you and to tell you, but you were dead. And suddenly, I realized just how much I want you. How much I... love you."

Quentin's eyes widened as he turned to look at Eliot. Eliot had finally given up on avoiding him and was staring him dead in the eyes. He looked genuine – serious. When they had first gotten together, in the other timeline, it had just... happened, on its own. This? This was Eliot, consciously taking the first step toward Quentin, admitting what he wanted. Now, it was on Quentin to take the next. He took that literally, stepping up to Eliot and reaching up to pull Eliot into a tentative, soft kiss.

"Fucking finally", groaned Margo in the background.

/break\

They were a strange, royal family. High King Fen, her husband Eliot, his husband Quentin. On the other side, High King Fen's wife Margo and her husband Josh. Fillory and its strange marital laws had made that possible. And while in his position as the husband of the husband of the High King (and oh, the irony of that, considering Fen had simply been a girl promised to a king at the beginning of her story), Quentin didn't have a proper ruling role. He still aided as an adviser. And, in a way, everything was as it ought to be. Between Eliot, Quentin, Margo and Josh, there were four children of Earth ruling Fillory, at the side of their High King. They did it, they managed to actually help the people of Fillory, make Fillory a better place – even though it took them years to fix.

And along the way, Quentin had found his own calling. The author of his childhood had disappointed him, but sent him on a quest. So Quentin wanted to do better, be better. He spent a lot of his time at the castle writing. Writing the books of their story. The Beast in the Book, The Goddess in Green, The Creature in the Castle. A best-selling trilogy on Earth, to tell their story, and very popular among Fillorians too. He spent a lot of time on the ship – the flying ship that had made him so happy and euphoric when he had first entered it. Just flying through and exploring all of Fillory with his husband, writing down their adventures. And if they were needed, the others would simply send them a bunny and Eliot and Quentin would return to the palace.

But mainly, they were living on the fly, wherever they wanted to be, exploring, enjoying life. Being happy together and with what they had made of their life. That was their story.

Read this here on FFNet & here on AO3!

#Queliot #The Magicians #Margo Hanson #Eliot Waugh #Quentin Coldwater #Julia Wicker #Fanfiction #Fix-It Fic #Hurt/Comfort #HAPPY ENDING #HAPPY FOR THEM ALL #BEYOND THE SHIP #BECAUSE Q GENERALLY DESERVED BETTER

[winmance]

Big brother knows best                               

Dean parked the car in front of the motel, opening the door with one hand while grabbing the beer next to him with the other. He hopes it's enough to get him drunk to the point where he can’t remember who he is or where he is. Maybe then he'll watch the porn he bought a few towns away, or maybe simply channel surf until he finds something decent on tv to watch. He’s not sure yet, but either way, tonight’s gonna be a, boring night.

Reaching back inside the car, Dean picks up a small grocery bag and stares at it for a moment.  Shaking his head, he slams the car door a little too hard and heads inside.

“Heya Sammy” He says, throwing the grocery bag on Sam’s bed “Got you something for tonight”

He turns toward the fridge, trying to hide the smirk on his face. To be fair, he did buy the contents of the bag for Sam, but he knows for a fact that his brother’s gonna be embarrassed as fuck and well, he’s only human after all.

But when he takes a look at Sam, his smile dies. Instead of a dark blush on Sam’s cheeks and an embarrassed look on his pretty face, Sam’s expression is as closed as ever, no emotion.

“You ok?” Dean frowns, ready for the worst. There are only a few things that would make Sam this sad and angry.

One is if he got a bad grade, which Dean knows didn’t happen because otherwise, he would already have heard about it.

Another is if their dad had called and told them that they were leaving. But that doesn’t make any sense either because Dad said he wouldn’t be back for at least another two weeks.

And finally, if someone had been mean to him.

“Did someone hurt you?”

“No” Sam says, without lifting his head from his book

“What’s up with the bitch face then? You don’t like my gift?”

“I won’t need it. You can take it back”

“Well, I rather you take it” He says, dropping on his own bed next to Sam, “I know what happens on Valentine day”

“Nothing will happen”

“Yeah, of course. I’m sure your boyfriend, who can’t seem to be able to put his hands away from your ass more than a few seconds, doesn’t have anything remotely sexual planned tonight” He laughs, ignoring the way his stomach flipped. “Take the lube and condoms, already. You might need them”

“I won’t”

“Well, your boyfriend-“

“I don’t have one anymore” Sam snaps, his voice breaking at the end of his sentence

Dean’s heart missed a beat, and he pushed himself up right away, moving toward Sam.

“What happened?”

“Josh dumped me” Sam whispers, still not meeting Dean’s eyes

“When?”

“During lunch. He said he realized that we weren’t mean to be, whatever the fuck it means”

“That little fucker” Dean says, clenching his jaw.

He can’t think of one single reason of why someone would dump Sam, much less on Valentine’s day. Couldn’t he have done it before? So Sam wouldn’t spend the rest of his life thinking of it as the day his heart got broken?

Or he could've done it after. So they could spend one good day together before ending things? No, Dean pushed that idea from his mind quickly.  If he'd have done it after, they might have had sex and then it would have forever been the day Sam lost his virginity only to have the bastard who took it, break his heart the next day.

“Yeah” Sam simply answers quietly

Dean's mood softens as he sees Sam’s face. He looks so small, so young, the fifteen year old teenager completely disappearing. He looks the way he did when Dad left them at Bobby’s house one day before his fifth birthday, even though he promised Sam he would be there to celebrate it with him. Dean can remember all too well the vivid pain he felt, seeing his brother so hurt.

He got up from his bed and sat next to Sam, pulling him into his arms.

Sam breaks down.  Hot tears running down his face, he clung to Dean as if he were holding on to life itself.

“I’m here Sammy, it’s gonna be alright” Dean whispered, rocking him slowly.

“What is wrong with me, Dean?” Sam sobs, “What do I keep doing wrong?”

“Nothing, Sam, nothing. You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re perfect”

“No, I’m not! No one wants to stay with me. Not Josh, not dad, not even you. I keep- I keep pushing everyone away, and I don’t know- I don’t know why. Why am I like that? What's wrong with me?” His voice breaks as he whispers again, even lower this time, “What's wrong with me?”

Dean doesn’t answer, knowing too well that whatever he'd say right now would go over Sam’s head. He doesn’t trust his voice to speak out loud  anyway. How can Sam think that? How can Sam think that something is wrong with him, when he’s nothing but perfect. From his weird little toes to the one white hair that keeps growing on his head. What did Dean do so wrong that Sam thinks he doesn’t want to stay with him?

He holds Sam until he falls asleep, too tired from crying to keep his eyes open.

There goes his boring night.

Sam opens his eyes slowly, his mind a little dizzy as he tries to remember what happened earlier. He remembers falling asleep against Dean, so he starts looking for him right away.

The room is completely empty, not that Sam is surprised. Why would Dean stay? It’s Valentine’s day, and even his own boyfriend didn’t want to be with him, why would Dean want to?

If he’s being honest, he doesn’t give two fucks about Josh. Sure, Josh was cool, he was a pretty good kisser, and Sam won’t deny that there was a physical attraction. But he couldn’t talk to Josh, he couldn’t tell him about monsters, about his dad, and Josh didn’t really get any of his jokes, he didn’t understand him without him having to say anything. Josh wasn’t Dean.

But he still doesn’t understand why Josh left him. He didn’t do anything wrong, not that he can think of. He wasn’t always begging for attention, even through he was dying for it, and he let Josh do whatever he wanted. He wasn’t a little prude, and they both experimented a little together – as much as they could with clothes on. They never fought, not once, and Sam was pretty sure everything was doing fine.

Of course it wasn’t. Because nothing ever goes fine with Sam, every last bit of happiness he experiences, goes away before he can ever start to embrace it.

He pushed himself out of the bed and walked toward the bathroom, dragging his body. Is this how it will always be? Him completely alone in a dark room, abandoned by every single person he ever loved? That’s not the life he wants. Not even close.

He hears the sound of keys in the door, followed by foot steps that he recognizes as Dean’s right away.

“Dean?” He frowns, sticking his head out of the bathroom, “What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, I, uh” Dean stutters, scratching his head with embarrassment, much to Sam surprise, “I thought maybe you could come with me”

“I can’t go to bar, I’m fifteen, remember?”

“I know that dickhead, I didn’t say anything about a bar!” Dean sighs in frustration, “Can you please come with me?”

“Where?”

“Just come!”

Sam rolls his eyes, ignoring his brother's frustration. He knows better than to argue, he can tell the difference between frustrated Dean and angry Dean.

He’s about to come out of the room when Dean’s throws a red sweatshirt at him, almost making him bang his head.

“Sorry” Dean says with a grimace, “But you’ll need that”

“Jeez Dean, relax a little”

He sighs, walking toward the car and sliding inside without waiting for Dean. There’s a couple in the doorway next to their room, so lost in their kiss that they don’t even notice Dean when he almost bumps into them, and Sam mentally curses himself for agreeing to go out.

He doesn’t know where they are going, but he knows that he’ll be reminded all night that everybody's got a boyfriend except him. What kind of douchbag gets dumped on Valentine’s Day? God, what he would give to make this day end already. He just wants to curl up in his bed and never goes out again.

“You good?” Dean asks, a concerned look on his face

“Yeah, just… Not sure I want to go out” He says, sliding down in the car seat.

“It’s gonna be fun, I promise” Dean winks at him before turning his head toward the backseat, “There’s something for you here”

Sam frowns but turns around, grabbing the plastic bag while Dean starts driving. He notices it's the same grocery bag from earlier, and catches a glimpse of the lube and condoms now laying on the floor of the car in the back.  He swears, if this is another sex toy like the one a month ago, he’s gonna smack Dean in his stupid head with it.

“Chocolates?” He frowns, holding the heart shaped box in his hands. "Why did you buy me chocolates? Is there laxative in them? Because that wasn’t funny, and Dad said it was dangerous”

“Ok, first of all, I’m not dumb, I looked it up before giving you the laxative. I couldn’t have known you’re body was so weak”

“You’re weak”

“Whatever” Dean continues, “There is no laxative in them. It’s just… A present.”

“For what?”

“For… You know”

“I don’t”

“Don’t make me say it”

“Well, I don’t- Oh” He says, realization hitting him. Valentine’s Day. Dean got him a present for Valentine’s Day. He feels his cheeks suddenly starting to burn, and he quickly turns his head, not wanting Dean to see him. “Thanks, Dean”

“It’s not weird, right?” Dean quickly asks

“No, I mean, Valentine’s day is about love, it doesn’t have to be romantic”

“Yeah, exactly”

“There’s a kid at school that spends Valentine's Day with his parents. They go to restaurant, theater, and even get each other presents”

“That’s… A little weird. Weirder than us”

“Exactly” Sam reassures him, looking at the heart shaped box in his hands, a smile on his face. Dean took the time to go back to the store just to buy it for him, and was even careful enough to get the one with only dark chocolate in it.

He looked at Dean from the corner of his eye, and he isn’t surprised to catch his brother doing the same, even though he quickly turns his stare back to the road.

Sometimes, he thinks Dean knows. That he somehow found out about Sam’s secret, and that it’s the reason why he acted so distant sometimes. But then if he had, he wouldn’t have gotten him a heart shaped box of chocolates, and he wouldn’t be taking him out for Valentine’s Day.

Dean’s turns the music louder when his favorite song comes on, and he starts singing before telling Sam to join him.

“Come on Sammy, let it out!”

Sam shakes his head with a laugh before opening his mouth, letting the words go, melting with Dean’s own voice. It’s an incredible feeling, to be in the car with Dean singing out loud, and not caring about who's listening or watching.

He'd spent so long hating this car; cursing it for always driving them  from town to town, cursing it whenever he would see it waiting in the parking lot of his school, kicking it discreetly for being Dean’s favorite, for having the honor of being called “baby”, for taking so much time from Dean, so much precious time.

But he doesn’t hate it anymore. Not since he realized that every time it drove them to a new town, it allowed them to stay together. That every time he saw it waiting outside, it meant that Dad and Dean were alright. That every single second Dean spent working on it was to make sure it was safe for both of them. That every time Dean cleaned it was so they could go and buy their favorite ice cream before laying on top of the car, the space between them so small that their fingers touched.

He used to hate this car, but now he’s singing out loud with Dean, huge smiles on both of their faces as they get to the best part of the song, and he never felt closer to home.

“Here we go” Dean says, parking the car

“Is this…”

A funfair” Dean says, a huge smile on his face

“Fuck, I can’t believe you did this!” He throws his arms around Dean’s neck before his brother can even react, “Thank you!”

“Easy tiger” Dean laughs, his whole body vibrating with it, “Glad you like it”

“Like it? I've wanted to go for years! But dad always said they were too dangerous and useless”

“Yeah well, dad’s not here and I thought you deserved a little something” Dean gave him a smile, before ruffing his hair, opening his door, “Come on, we need to started now if we want to do everything!”

Sam got out of the car and ran next to Dean, letting his brother’s arm lay casually over his shoulders as he hurries him to walk.

They start with the haunted house, because according to Dean, it was the least interesting one. Surely, when you hunt monsters for a living, the fake monsters doesn’t look as scary as they should.

“There’s gonna be a huge spider right here” Dean announces as they walk in the house

“You’re killing all the fun” Sam complains, even though he’s been laughing for the last fifteen minutes already

“Oh, so it’s my fault if they can't think of anything better than plastic spiders?”

“No, but it’s-“ Sam cuts off his sentence with a scream, and Dean pushes Sam behind him out of instinct, ready to defend his brother.

In front of them was the most terrifying clown Sam's ever seen, with a skin so white that it makes his bloody eyes even scarier.

“It’s a dummy, Sam” Dean says once he checks the thing, “Nothing but a stuffed dummy”

“I’m scared” Sam admits, his heart pounding harder the more he looks at it.

“Ok, ok” Dean reassures him before holding his hand, “We just need to get through this one, and then that’s it. Can you do that?”

“Don’t let go, ok?”

“Never”

They start walking again, Sam holding Dean’s hand as tight as possible, passing just a few inches away from the dummy, who’s head turns as they do so.

“Almost done” Dean reassures him, pulling him to make him go faster, “Here we go”

Sam eyes don’t leave the terrifying figure, not until they're completely out of the house, and even then he doesn’t let go of Dean’s hand.

“I hate clowns” He complains, “Hate them so much”

“I know. I didn’t think there would be any”

“Couldn’t predict that one, could you?” Sam rags on him, his sense of humor coming back.

“Or maybe I just enjoy watching you suffer. Who knows?”

Sam rolls his eyes before shoving Dean, which earns him a shove out of the way. Luckily, he’s still holding Dean’s hand, keeping him from falling.

“Come on, let’s do the house of mirrors." Dean says, dragging him along.

Much to Sam’s disappointment, neither Dean nor him runs into a mirror, nor did they get lost in the labyrinth, but the fact that Dean still hasn’t let go of his hand through the whole thing makes up for the lack of fun.

“Wanna eat something before doing La Grande Roue” Dean says in a surprisingly decent French accent, a proud smile on his face

“Oh you speak French now?���

“Of course, mon amour” Dean says, sliding his arm around Sam’s waist to drag him closer to him and try to kiss him

Sam bursts into laughter as he tries to avoid Dean kissing him, which ends up with him almost falling on the ground. Luckily, Dean’s arm is there to catch him.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re still a toddler. If I let go of you for more than five seconds, boom, you’re on the ground”

“My body is really tall, ok?”

“Looks kind of small to me” Dean says with a grin

“I’ll be taller than you before you can ever realize it”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes to high if I was you” He laughs, ordering their food at the same time, “But that’s cool. Being small is cute”

“Better than being an ass. Which you are”

“Really funny”

Sam laughs, biting in his corndog and making sure to chew on it as loud as possible to annoy Dean. He doesn’t have time to react before Dean’s teeth are deep in his corndog, taking as much of it as he can.

“Hey! That’s mine!” He complains

“What is yours is mine, little bro” He ignores the way Sam rolls his eyes, dragging him toward another attraction. “Alright, which one do you want?”

It’s during times like this that Sam thanks whatever God is out there for having given him Dean as his big brother. If it had been anyone else, his or her brother would have blown off his or her post-break up pain like it was nothing, or simply ignored it. But not Dean. No, Dean bought him chocolates, took him to a funfair, and now, he’s asking Sam to choose which teddy bear he wants him to win for him.

He knows that Dean would have rather be out with some no name girl, kissing her and celebrating Valentine’s Day like he always does. But he chose to be with Sam instead, still choosing Sam’s happiness over his.

“Earth to Sam” Dean says, passing his hand in front of Sam’s face

“Sorry” He looks at all the teddy bears in front of them, and the numbers you have to shoot in order to win one. “I want the biggest”

“Of course you do”

Dean sighs, but Sam knows for sure that he’s more than happy to be able to show off his shooting skills.

He takes the gun, aims it, turns his head to wink at Sam, and purposely misses the first target.

“Really?” Sam says, “You’re supposed to impress me during our date. Otherwise I won’t put out”

Dean laughs, deep and loud, his head falling back as he does so, and not for the first time, Sam has to fight the urge to throw himself at him and kiss him.

“Alright baby boy, watch out”

With his two last shots, he hits the target right in the middle, under the really impressed stare of the showman.

“We'll take the biggest one” He says with an innocent smile.

The man gives it to them, a suspicious look on his face, but they’re gone before he can ask or do anything.

“What’s up with him?” Sam asks once they’re a few steps away

Dean puts one of his arm around his shoulder, a satisfied smile on his face.

“His gun has a bent site. Saw it the moment I picked it up”

“How did you win then?”

“I’m the best, ain’t I?”

“Kind of” Sam says, not letting his admiration show.

They walked toward the Great Wheel and got into one of the cars, sitting next to each other while making sure to leave some room for Sam’s teddy bear.

The wheel starts rolling, slowly lifting them from the ground until they can see the whole city, hundreds of lights illuminating it. The air is cold enough to give Sam a reason to slide into Dean’s arms, searching for a source of warmth.

“Thank you” He says after a while, “For tonight. It’s… It’s really nice. You didn’t have to”

“Of course I did. I rather be with you than with anyone else, you know that, right?”

“Yeah” He lies, not wanting to contradict Dean. He knows that isn’t true, that if a girl had showed up tonight and flirted with him, there’s a good chance that he would have gone with her.

He can’t count the number of times where it's happened, can’t say how many time he got left alone because someone was more interesting or more funny than him. He’s more of a burden to his brother than anything else, even though Dean tries to deny it.

“I wish I was in your head, sometimes” Dean says, “Just so I could tell you how stupid you are for believing any of the things you’re telling yourself”

“Not telling myself anything”

“Yes you are. I can see it. And I can tell you that none of them are true” He pulls Sam closer to his chest, until his head is completely resting on it, and Sam takes a big breath, enjoying his brother’s scent. “The fact that Josh is an asshole has nothing to do with you. I know plenty of men who would throw themselves at your feet”

“That’s not true”

“Yes, it is” Dean hurries to say, “I know you can’t see it, but you’re… You’re perfect, Sammy. You’re funny, you’re smart, you’re interesting, you’re hot as fuck. If you weren’t my brother, I would do you immediately”

“Ew, Dean” Sam laughs, trying to cover how the blush that is spreading on his face. Does Dean really mean it? Or is he only saying it to be nice?

“What? We would be a cute couple”

“You’re into boys now?”

“I would make an exception for you. Always making an exception for you”

Sam doesn’t answer, choosing instead to lay still on Dean’s chest, listening to the way Dean’s heart beat, rocking him slowly.

Sometimes, he wonders if Dean is feeling the same way. If maybe this dark thing isn’t only on him, but on both of them, something that they create together without even being aware of it.

But he doesn’t want Dean to feel like he feels. Doesn’t want him to feel trapped, to feel alone and sick, so fucking sick, to feel like he doesn’t belong anywhere, like he doesn’t deserve anything good. He doesn’t want him to feel like he’ll never be happy, not completely, because a part of his soul is missing.

“Come on, it’s time to go” Dean says, taking Sam out of his thoughts.

A little dizzy, Sam gets up and follows Dean, letting his body fall a little against him. They’ve been here for a few hours now, but all the emotions are exhausting and he really wants to lay down for a while.

“I was thinking we go back to the motel, and watch a movie? I bought something that you should like”

“Yeah, it’s-“ Sam cuts himself when he recognizes Josh in front of them.

Josh, with three of his friends and their girlfriends, a girl holding his hand while he kisses her lips shyly.

It’s like a stab in the heart.

Is this why Josh left him? For a girl? What does she have that Sam doesn’t? Is this new? Or has Josh been playing with him since the beginning?

They never went out together at school, because Josh said he rather them be discreet, choosing to only tell it to his closest friends. So much for discretion.

“What?” Dean says when he notices the weird look on Sam’s face

“Nothing. Let’s go home”

“I can see that something is wrong” Dean turns around, and much to Sam's dismay, he spots Josh right away, “Tell me I’m dreaming”

“It’s ok De”

“Ok? No, it’s not fucking ok! This fucker broke up with you this morning, and he’s already out with a girl!”

“Yeah well, nothing I can do about it” Sam says, pushing his hands in his pocket as best as he can without dropping his giant teddy bear. He’s feeling so humiliated. So stupid. How could he not see that Josh was into someone else? He can’t even imagine how much Josh and his friends must have laughed, hearing Sam planning their Valentine’s date while they all knew it wasn’t gonna happen.

“Does he know me?”

“What?”

“Me. I’ve seen him plenty of times, but he never saw me, did he?”

“No?” Sam says, confused

“Good”

That’s the last thing Dean says before cupping Sam’s face with his hands and pushing his lips against his. He’s too taken to do anything at first, simply stand here while Dean’s lips are moving against his.

What is happening? Why is Dean doing that? Did he die earlier and is now living in heaven?

He stops thinking completely when he feels Dean’s tongue pressing against his lips, asking for entrance. He opens his mouth slowly, letting his brother slide inside, and slowly, he finally closes his eyes, savoring the moment.

Dean’s hands move from his head to his waist, one of his legs going between his, Sam’s hardening dick resting on it, and it would have been awkward if it wasn’t for the fact that Sam can feel Dean’s own boner against him.

“Shit” He whispers, rubbing his cock against Dean as best as he can while deepening the kiss.

“Sam?” Someone calls behind him

They painfully stop kissing, their bodies screaming at them to get back together, and Sam turns around to face Josh, his new girlfriend, and some of his friends.

He can see the hurt on Josh’s face, the realization that he wasn’t that special to Sam, after all, and Sam isn’t ashamed to say that his dick twists at this sign.

“Hey Miranda” He says with a fake smile, “How are you?”

“Good, I, uh” She turns her attention toward Dean, her most beautiful smile on display, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I've seen you at our school. Are you new?”

“Oh sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself” Dean says, pushing one of his hands inside Sam’s back pocket giving his ass a firm squeeze, “I’m Dean, Sam’s boyfriend. I’m a Sophomore in college so that’s probably why you've never seen me”

“College?” Miranda repeats, her eyes shinning with admiration and a hint of jealousy. How could she not be jealous? Sam is dating a hot, sexy, perfect college student, while she’s out with Josh, who still has his mom preparing his lunch every morning.

“Yeah” Dean laughs, “Well, sorry to cut this short but Sammy and I have… Things, to do. Have a great night”

“You too, Dean” She replies, giggling a little as she does so, “See you Monday Sam!”

There’s no doubt in Sam’s mind that he’ll have to submit himself to an interrogation Monday, but he doesn’t care, not when he can feel Dean’s fingers rubbing his ass gently, sending waves of shivering through his whole body.

“So college, huh?” He asks as they start walking to the car

“Yeah, I’m actually majoring in biology”

“Really? Is there a chance you would give me a… private class? I really need help”

“Ah well, I can’t say no, can I? But there will be a price, you know”

Sam laughs softly as Dean pushes him against the car, his legs spreading to give him some room. Dean’s face is only a few inches away from his, his breath hitting his skin every time Dean’s chest raises, making Sam shiver in pleasure and want.

“Wouldn’t expect it any other way”

This time, it’s Dean’s turn to laugh before pressing his lips to Sam’s again. But he doesn’t have to wait before Sam opens his mouth, ready to welcome him.

There are a lot of things he needs to ask, to know, but right now, all he can think about is knowing if the lube and condoms from earlier are still in the car.

Beta by @debivc78

#Wincest #Weecest #Sam/Dean #Gay Sam #Valentines day #Fluff

[horrorhouse]

A Response to Josh Gad

On August 28, 2019, actor Josh Gad decided to post a lengthy Twitter thread regarding our political climate. I decided I wanted to post it in its entirety as one long letter instead of just posting each individual tweet and then give my response point by point. So here we go.

I don’t want to be the guy always shouting at the top of his lungs about the same thing. Life is too short. So this (I’m hoping) will be the last time I try to put into words how I feel about the current political situation we are in and reach out to those of you content with where things are right now in our country. So here we go. I know some of you wanted and hoped to throw the whole system out and see what happened if we disrupted political norms and elected a “guy who says it like it is” and in a weird way, I guess I even understand that impulse. But this is where we are now objectively: Donald Trump has never been fit for office and it appears that he is mentally unhinged. We can talk around it. We can play word games. We can debate what that means. But by all appearances he is truly a “madman.” I know it sounds funny and entertaining to hear the absurdity of the President of the United States threaten to nuke a thunderstorm to send it away or get angry at a country for not selling him another country but it’s not funny. It’s actually debilitatingly [sic] sad. Because our lives aren’t a reality show, even if he thinks he’s living in one. We have all lost the plot. We are chasing him down a rabbit hole of insanity and avoiding real issues like gun violence, immigration, health care, poverty and most importantly the very real threat of climate change, something this man doesn’t even believe exists because apparently he knows more as a realtor than the entire scientific community. We aren’t on the precipice of catastrophe or at the doorstep of doom...we are sadly past it. We need leadership to help us formulate how we adapt, grow & tackle environmental changes unlike any humanity has seen in the last few thousand years. But we don’t have that. Instead we have a man more interested in who likes him & who doesn’t than in anybody’s welfare currently reading this thread. I know some people out there believe he must be supported because he represents the religious and moral values you and your family share. But, the truth is, I know nobody really believes that because each and every single version of religious texts I’ve come across say that lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, and deceiving are not moral attributes worthy of lauding. He’s the definition of a fraud. You know it. I know it. Hell, even Fox News knows it. For them, it’s just another inconvenient truth. This isn’t about moral leadership. If you can sleep at night telling yourself that this President is a morally righteous, mentally sound, truthful man, I envy you. I wish I could fool my brain into believing a single syllable of that sentence. I’d have much fewer gray hairs. But I’m not living with my head in the sand. I can, sadly, see what a child should be able to see...we are all in danger as long as this demagogue is in the Oval Office. He is a monster. A racist white Nationalist, who doesn’t even bother using dog whistles, but is singing out loud for all to hear. Our allies are now our enemies. Our enemies are now inside our gates making a mockery of our system while our President cheers them on. 2020 isn’t an election year. It’s the single most historically important moment for our country in the modern era. We have already failed this test once. If we fail again...there is no do-over. History will bury us in its annals and assail us like those fools whose mistakes we repeated because we were too greedy, stubborn or polarized to do the right thing. After all, this is no longer about political differences. This isn’t a football game where we’re all on different teams. This is one union. One country under God that has been through hell and back but carried a torch of greatness on its shores promising something better than anywhere else in the world...opportunity. “The American Dream.” For far too many that dream has become a waking nightmare. Let’s wake ourselves up. Let’s come together. Before it’s too late. Register. Fight. Educate. Learn. Read. Resist. And most importantly. VOTE. Vote like your life depends on it...because this time it does.

Josh, I hope that you have the chance to read my response and consider what I have to say. Part of the problem with the condition of our country is the divisions created when people aren’t willing to listen to and respect each other’s differing viewpoints. First of all, you say that you don’t want to be the guy screaming about the same thing at the top of your lungs and life is short, yet you say you’d have much fewer gray hairs if you could go to sleep at night believe the President is a morally righteous, mentally sound, truthful man. If life is so short, why are you keeping yourself up at night over your own personal beliefs? It’s self-sabotage, and maybe you should consider seeing a doctor for the benefit of your mental health and also a cardiologist so you don’t have a coronary. I voted for President Trump, and it wasn’t to throw a wrench in the system and shake up “political norms”. I weighed my options. I didn’t vote for him in the primaries. But between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I chose who I felt at the time was the lesser of two evils. Voters had no real yard stick with which to measure Trump’s political accomplishments or failures. We had one for Hillary, and clearly the American people didn’t want her in office. She has a history of racism going all the way back to her time as First Lady of Arkansas. There’s video of Hillary on the campaign trail from March 2016 at a coffee shop in Minnesota when she snapped at a young female person of color for questioning her on whether she planned to address the diversity of elected officials. Not to mention the emails that leaked days before the election no doubt had an affect on voters. Her history with her husband’s victims didn’t help her, either. The President isn’t avoiding issues like gun violence, immigration, health care, poverty -- you just don’t agree with what he has done on those issues. He’s addressing the issues and looking for bipartisan solutions. For one thing, he instituted a ban on bump stocks. He pressured Mexico to crack down on migrants passing through their country to get into the United States (the majority of whom were entering the country illegally -- you can hate the law all you want but until it changes, it’s the law that exists and should be enforced), his administration has expanded access to prescription drugs and the slowdown in prescription drug price growth during his time in office has saved over $26 billion. With regard to poverty, President Trump created 4.7 million jobs in his first two years and lowered the unemployment rate to its lowest in recorded history, particularly for African-Americans and Hispanics. I’d love to hear what your solutions are for these issues.  As for climate change, President Trump said climate change is a complex issue and added “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know” the cause. There are several theories that have been explored by scientists and numerous solutions presented, both small- and large-scale. Some aspects of earth’s core temperature changes have nothing to do with man - they’re do to natural environmental effects. So how do you intend to completely eradicate global warming? I know the President isn’t perfect. I know he’s not a paragon of moral virtue. But in my opinion, he’s still a better leader than Hillary Clinton would have been. At this point, you sound like someone standing on a street corner holding a sign that says THE END IS NIGH. If anyone’s mental state should be considered and questioned, perhaps it’s your own. Just from reading your tweets, it comes off that you’re some foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic.

#Josh Gad #politics #Donald Trump #President Trump #fearmonger #celebrity #Hollywood #Liberal #rant #response #wtf

[skunts-own-truth]

Let’s Talk Guy Haley’s “Dark Imperium.”

Damn, feels like a long time since I’ve finished a book. Last one I gave my all to was Josh’s “Soul Wars.” I did try my hand at the Witcher novels, but book one didn’t really feel like the end of a book- SO, yes, let’s shift over to Dark Imperium:

Chapters 1-3 are a beautiful work of art. I’ve personally read these chapters around eight times now, out loud, fully acting it out with friends and family, on audio and to myself. If you are not aware, these three chapters make up the death of Roboute Guilliman at the hands of the daemonic traitor Fulgrim. My recommendation is to read this with your eyes. The audiobook is actually pretty swell, but it misses a beat with how Fulgrim is read. I honestly can’t say much more to you about this, just, please. Read this. It is a condensed look at the Imperium, the Galaxy as a whole, the nature of conflict in an uncaring universe, and the life and death of a son who has lost everything. It is Gods and Monsters at its finest, and is a world apart from anything else in this pretty good book.

Now, on to everything else:

I will not be reviewing this novel, no. That’s not my intent, so know now I enjoyed it. I can tell you I found myself a little bored from time to time, especially with scenes that were clear set up for the sequel novel “Plague War,” but, but despite that this book is very much worth a read. No, review is not my intent. I want to talk about characters and events as shown in this novel.

Guilliman, Lord Regent of Terra, Commander, the living Primarch, and to some: a true Demi-god and Living Saint. I loved him. I truly, truly loved Guilliman. He stole the show, entirely so, even in his own book. If Guilliman was on screen, you were damn near mystified. THIS, this is how a primarch is written. It feels completely different from the stoic man I knew from the Heresy.

He’s grown so much, and lost so much of himself. He’s tired, old, so very sad, and so very angry. You see Guilliman make some very bold moves in this book: outright making a new organization to undo the damage against history the Inquisition has done. Outright oppose the Codex Astartes, drag the Sisters of Silence and Custodes into the light of day, gives his active support a madman who would play Emperor with his biocraft, curses everyone and everything around him for not doing more. Guilliman has awoke to his worst nightmare: true ignorance, true stagnation, and a terrible regime that spits in the face of everything human he had once believed in.

You can feel it. His rage is barely contained, it’s right at the surface even as he’s a clever, kind politician to some, and a father to others. He’s so over it all, yet, he can’t let it stand like this. His Imperium, humanity’s destiny, done in by his father’s lies and his brother’s treachery. He will not back away, he will rise up against ignorance, and take the mantle of Regent and Lord- but in doing so, I see him damn himself.

Guilliman is no fool. He’s not Magnus, not by a long shot. Yet, a lot of his decisions throughout the book seem to lack an awareness for how truly terrible things have gotten. He uses his autocratic power to go over the heads of 10,000 years worth of stagnation, and you see it infuriate. You watch people yell, protest, and look on in horror as a man they once prayed to as a saint breaks their rules and traditions without thought: some of which people believed he even came up with. This is, I admit, only a small part of the book... but it was important. It was a view of an Imperium who may, eventually, ignore the near god-like presence of a Primarch and say “No.” when that day comes, I don’t think Guilliman will be ready for it.

Before I move on, let me just say I love that Guilliman spent a hundred damn years trying to make Cato learn what a joke is. He tried so hard, and got so far, my friends.

Cawl will be my next subject, and damn... Haley, if you ever read this, my dude, I beg you and the Black Library to let you do a Cawl novel series. Look, everyone, after reading this and Wolfsbane, I am smitten. Cawl has changed dramatically between novels, oh sure, but he’s still Cawl. Haley has made a remarkable character here, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time Guilliman was talking with the Cawl Inferior.

Something that drove me wild in that scene was Cawl overtly making two things clear: 1. He wants to be made Fabricator General, and 2. He wants to use both the traitor legion geneseeds AND the two lost Legion geneseeds to swell the ranks of Primaris. He makes a damn good argument for the seeds, I’ll say, but the Primarch says a firm “NO.” Oh well, I love the mental image of loyal Emperor’s Children meeting their ancient, twisted kinsmen.

Out of everyone, though, you know what perspective hit me the hardest? The single view I was most interested in was Calgar’s, which... I wasn’t expecting. He shows up near the end of the book, and two or three chapters are centered around him, his relationship to the Primarch and his relationship to his realm. Those chapters are... golly, I don’t want to spoil much, but... I would never have expected this reaction from him.

Haley did something phenomenal with this book. He brought a Primarch into 40k and didn’t make it some huge, gritty civil war in the Imperium. He didn’t make the Imperium roll over and perfectly accept Guilliman’s rule, no. He made it feel alive, natural even.

It was beyond interesting reading about such an uncertain time, in a future that was set in stone only a few years before. 40k and Guy have truly breathed life into not only reading about Primarchs, but reading about the Imperium, about Chaos, and even war. I was engrossed, and I could barely put the book down at times because I needed to see what new things and new concepts were just around the corner!

Guilliman has a damn crisis of faith about his father, for God’s sake! That’s something I never expected, not once, and that’s just it: we could have always picture what would happen if Guilliman or the Emperor woke up. I’ve talked about this sorta thing endlessly with friends, and never would I have guessed it would be written so... well, WELL.

Guilliman is a man of logic and reason thrown into an illogical, ignorant future. That is his hell, my friends, and I highly recommend watching this man attempt to fix hell itself.

I fear I can’t say more without giving out any big spoilers, so I urge you to check it out. If you like Nurgle, there is some CHOICE Nurgle scenes in this book. Ku’gath, Mortarion, and Typhus all show up for a bit, and their conversation together is a must-read if you feel anything about the Death Guard. Spoiler: Typhus calls Mort a “Trophy,” and burns his ass with some of the harshest disses I have ever read in Warhammer.

Damn, Guy... you wrote a book. I’m glad I already have the second one, ‘cus I am not in the mood to wait for more of this. Let’s get reading!

#warhammer #40k #warhammer 40k #wh40k #Dark Imperium

[ofrosetrees]

wassup i’m iris i’m 21 and i still never learned how to write an intro without a vine reference. i bring you my super softy joshua, although he might not appear like that at first. onions have layers and all that. (if you read that in shrek’s voice i love you already) anyways i’ll keep this short, please like this if you wanna plot and i’ll come at you when i have time!

name: joshua leo parrish faceclaim: finn cole age: 20 birthday: 30th of january, 1999 gender & pronouns: cismale, he/him godly parent: iris

pinterest  

- death tw, car crash tw

joshua parrish had a pretty normal life for the first twelve years of it. he lived with his dad, his stepmom, who his dad started dating when he was two years old, and his little sister who was born when he was eight. he was loved, and he loved his family in return. sure there were some weird incidents, which only seemed to get worse as he got older but he never really worried too much about it. or about anything, he was a happy, optimistic kid with a bunch of friends at school and good grades and a talent for both drawing and mischief.

this picket fence life (or fire escape life, since he grew up in an apartment in new york) quickly changed when he was twelve, when one of those ‘weird incidents’ caused a car accident. he was driving home from a beach day with his family, down a dark and empty road, because of course nothing good ever happens in these kinds of places. someone - josh now assumes it was a monster of some sort but he never got a good look at it - jumped in front of their car. they hit the figure, swerved off the road and slammed into a tree. his parents died on impact, josh and his sister were unconscious but eventually josh woke up, called the emergency services and they got rescued. however, josh was never really the same.

he and his sister moved in with their grandparents, his stepmom’s parents. joshua tried to conform to his new life but it never actually worked. his grades started dropping, he skipped classes, fell in with the wrong crowd, ran away from home, the list is endless. it’s safe to say he lost himself for a while. eventually his grandparents kicked him out, since they didn’t want him around his sister like this. he was supposed to go into the foster system, but never did. at this point he was thirteen and he lived on the streets of new york for a while, hanging around with this bad crowd of his; a bunch of other streets kids or kids that just hung out more in shady nooks and corners than at home. he assumes they kind of saved his life, since he wasn’t really attacked by any monsters around this time. one of the kids he hung out with turned out to be a satyr, sent to bring him to the safety of camp halfblood. when a monster finally did attack them, he was quickly swept off to camp, too quick for him to realise what exactly was happening until he was at camp, and then the truth of his parentage was quite a shock. he tried to walk away again, but returned after the first encounter with a monster outside of the camp borders almost killed him.

at camp he kept to himself. observing, training, drawing his little heart out. the first few months were hard and he was not a nice person to be around. the only time he showed his softer side was around the pegasi and the few little kids around camp. when joshua came to camp he hadn’t been claimed yet, but he was claimed as soon as he stepped foot inside camp basically. the satyr that had been keeping an eye on him had him down as a hermes kid, since he’d never really shown any powers. he turned out to belong in the iris cabin however, and his powers started to show up soon enough: generating rainbows, energy blasts, rainbow fire manipulation, and he’s also particularly good with animals - mainly pegasi.

he came to camp after the two wars had taken place, and he hasn’t been on any quests. that isn’t to say his life as a demi god has been easy. he still battles with a lot of mental scarring from the events that lead up to him coming to camp. he really had to take some time to settle down, feel safe and to start showing his more soft side instead of the cold boy that he had become. right now he’s kind of a mix. what has really helped is working the the youngest campers, the little kids. they remind him of his sister, who he misses a lot. last summer he finally went to visit her, after a difficult process of getting in contact with his family again. he’s still very much figuring out who he is, and what he has to offer as a halfblood. fighting has never really been his strong suit. he’s definitely not bad at it, but he really doesn’t like to fight unless it’s necessary.

headcanons:

- his zodiac is an aquarius, also known as the idealists of the zodiac with describes him pretty well. behind his aloof demeanor is a soft boy, a dreamer who wants to make the world a better place and have some fun along the way. - he’s actually pretty happy with his godly parent. from what he knows about her she seems like someone he’d get along with. he doesn’t really crave more contact though. he had two parents already, those are his real parents and nothing can ever replace them. - this boy? emo as fuck. but only on the inside. he’s a stylish hipster babe who loves his flannels and doc martens. not that much black in his closet. he loves colour, obviously.

#&& –– golden child; lion boy; tell me what it’s like to burn // ANATOMY ❜ #fleece.intros

[unkindnessofone]

Underwater

Penelope could not reason with herself why she was so carefree and cool about everything except for sex. She had friends back home and in Paris who felt like it was he least intimate thing you could do with a person, who engaged sexually with people they just met as if it was an extension of a handshake, but the idea of having someone inside her or devour her body with their hands terrified her. She could take on monster waves and cities where she didn't speak the language, but she could do not just have sex with someone. In fact, even when her friends joked about it in conversation, she felt a squirmy sensation swim around in her stomach. She and Jules had been seeing one another for a while, but he hadn't even seen her in her underwear and bra yet. He was free with his body, nudity his prefer way to be, but Penny felt anxious at the idea of exposing herself like that. She knew that Jules was a few years older and had collection of people he had been sexual with, but that only added to her nerves and stress. Jules wasn't aggressive with her, in fact she was the one who tugged on his hair when they made out in alleyways or on her futon. Still, as much as her body ached and she felt a feverish wetness between her legs, Penelope never let herself go there. If it was about losing her virginity, she could have given it to Connor Irwin years ago or Ben from Wax 'n' Wake, or her friend Josh who thought she was a sun goddess on Earth. Penelope didn't know why sex was on a pedestal for her. It just was. Her Aunt Skye reasoned that it was because she saw her father sexualized her entire life and it made her uncomfortable before she was able to even understand it. Laying with her head on his shoulder, Penelope had her eyes closed as Jules found comfort playing effortlessly with her locks of long hair. They were laying on her futon that was down in bed form. She had stopped studying and he had put down his acoustic guitar. Their lives were full of chaos and noise as she spent most of her time in a kitchen and he prospered on stage behind a set of drums. It was rare that they laid down together and just took time to listen to one another breathe. Slowly, Penny's eyes fluttered open and she looked up to Jules jawline. She noticed then that his eyes were shut too. She had lost herself in the feeling of his fingers in her hair and knuckles against her arm. It led her to imagine his hands elsewhere, so she cleared her throat and asked through the silence, "Jules?"

"Oui?" He mumbled back, drifting off slightly. "Would you want to take a bath?" After taking a deep breath, Penelope asked. She watched as his eyes peeled open and blinked a few times at the speckled ceiling. “With me?” Jules took a moment to translate her question in his mind and then smiled before slowly nodding. "Yes." He told her and bent his head down to kiss the top of her head. "I'd like that." He confirmed and waited for her to pick herself up off the futon so that he could follow her lead into her washroom. Penelope leaned over the cream colored tub and ran the tap, hand underneath to monitor the temperature of the water. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jules removing his prosthetic leg underneath the pair of navy joggers he had been lounging in all day. Penelope always liked when he wore them because they were comfortable and athletic, but also because they hugged his firm butt and he looked particularly good to her in the dark blue tone. Jules was sitting up against her window sill, sun setting outside, and shimming out of the pants. It occured to her that she had never seen his leg without some kind of prosthetic before whether it was anatomical leg or the metal one. She had never see Jules with just a single full leg and she realized just how vulnerable it made him. Suddenly the fact that he was peeling off his underwear didn't feel like a big deal at all and his dangling member barely registered as she felt honored to see him exactly the way he was. Penelope reached into her mirror medicine cabinet, ignoring how pink her cheeks were in the reflection, and took a vanilla bath bomb from it. It was one she had made. She dropped it into the bath and watched as Jules hovered over the tub to watch it explode, intrigued like a small child.  Penelope was still fully clothed and her nerves were feeling like bubbles inside of her. Jules was carefully gripping the tub's curved edge and helping himself into the water, but Penny was hugging her arms over her chest and pressing her spine into the sink behind her. Jules smiled with the warmth of melted butter at her once he had sunk down comfortably into the hot water. He reached forward and shut off the tap then stared at her, waiting to see if she would come closer or relax. "What are you thinking?" He asked her, sensing she was having a private conversation with herself internally. "I don't know." Penny shrugged and told him plainly. "What are you thinking?" She didn't know what it was about him that made her feel this way. She had been born running free and never giving any mind to worries, but with Jules, she wanted everything to go well. She didn't want to be careless. She wanted things to be perfect. Penelope felt like she screwed up her first dream life with her surfing accident. She didn't want to do that again in Paris. As she took in a deep breath, Penelope wondered if this was how Daphne always felt. Regardless, Penny hated it. "I'm thinking I really like you, Penelope." He told her smoothly, no hiccup in his honesty. "I'm thinking you look very nervous and I wish I knew how to make you feel..." His English was not as rich as he wanted it to be and he stopped to think of the right word. "Comfortable?" She guessed while combing her hair over one shoulder. "Safe." He corrected her and showed her a shut smile. Jules pulled one arm out from under the scented water and offered her a wet hand, inviting her to join him as she had asked him to bathe with her minutes ago. "I do." Reaching down, she began to unbutton he denim blouse she had on from the bottom to the top revealing her chest to Jules first. He watched her, taking in her freckled stomach and ignoring that it was being deeply sucked in due to self-consciousness. "I feel good." Penelope said and hoped by saying it that it would become true. She peeled off her black tights along with a lacy thong and then took the two steps over to the bath. Jules gave her his hand and helped her in, his hands meeting in front of her small breasts once she was laying against him. All he could think about was how nice her bare skin felt against his. "I've never had a bath with someone before," She began to admit it, checking that her hair was over one shoulder still and not all over the place as it usually was if it wasn't tied into buns or braids. "Well, my brother's when they were babies or my dad when I was little, but this is very different." Jules just chuckled as he held her tighter, "I'd hope so." He peeked over her head at her naked body in the water. She was an unreal beauty to him and he hoped that he expressed that to her enough even if mostly in French or in the way he walked her home from work or asked her about class via text. As he pushed his shoulders into the tub's wall, Jules could see the long scar along Penelope's skull. She had mentioned that had various concussions from an active life since childhood and that she used to surf, but never went into detail. Usually the evidence of injury was hidden beneath her Rapunzel-esq hair. "I've never seen your scar before." He told her before taking a hand off her stomach and running his thumb gently over it. "Did it hurt?" "I don't actually remember the accident." The last thing she actually remembered was making eye contact with Connor on land and then the taste of saltwater overwhelming her mouth. "It hurt when healing. I used to get these paralyzing migraines." It wasn't really due to the scar so much as from the trauma of the accident. The biggest adjustment was having to sit still. Everyone always said that Penny was born with ants in her pants. She could never sit still. Even in her mother's stomach, she wiggled and kept Cagney up all through her third trimester. She ran wild like a thoroughbred back and forth in every backyard and hotel hallway. Suddenly, she had to lay still in dark rooms with her eyes shut just to be able to function. Penelope tried to go to the beach, support her friends who surfed, enjoy sandy bonfires, but quickly it became too painful to be there anymore. It hurt that she couldn't enjoy the waves anymore. Even the sand between her toes reminded her of what she couldn't do anymore. Sincerely, searching for calm comfort, Penny adjusted herself between Jules's knees and pushed her head into his chest. Her own hand stopped protecting her bare pussy and they roamed up his hairy leg, the other massaging where his knee would have been if not for his own brush with death. "Does this hurt?" Losing half of a limb felt so much worse to Penelope than anything she had been through. She always imagined that there were parts of life that were so different for Jules, even the way he stepped into the bath she drew. Still, he never let it slow him down. He saw the world with fireworks around it like Penny often did. He dove head first it seemed into everything he did. Failure didn't occur to him like it did to others, most with both legs. "Not at all." He squished his face up and told her as if they were talking about the weather and not his missing body part. "Did it ever?" She tilted her head so that she could properly look up at him, denim blue eyes searching for connection. "Being hit by a car did, yeah." He had been fourteen and walking home after the bus stop dropped him off when a sedan backed up and trapped his scrawny leg there. It was just blind pain that he could remember, an ache with teeth that didn’t let up.  His throat was linen at the hospital after from screaming, but Jules couldn’t recall the noises he made. "I don't know if the therapy and healing did." He swallowed hard and tried to remember for a moment. It felt like a lifetime ago. He didn't remember a time where he wasn't a one legged man, but in his dreams, he always saw himself with two for reasons beyond him. "The whole thing was so hard on ma mère that that's what I remember hurting." Jules said, not knowing he was bringing Penny closer to him with the truth. "She was so sad about it for a long time. She would look at me and looked...sad.” Nodding, Penny felt like she could relate slightly. Her dad called constantly for updates, her mom barely slept once she was home. She remembered her dad stopped coming to doctors appointments because it was too hard on his heart. Sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night with violent headaches and saw that he had fallen asleep in a chair that he pulled up to the side of her bed. They would apologize all the time as if they had anything to do with what had happened to her. Interrupting her unkind memories, Jules clutched her hand in the water and squeezed before leaving his fingers between hers. "Soon, you'll have all kinds of nicks and burns on you from the kitchen." Grinning, he teased and held their joined hands to her chest. "I have one already." She lifted up her free hand and showed him the inside of her wrist. "Burned it taking out dinner rolls." Penny gazed at it and said as if it was a proud brag. "Such a badass." Jules teased along with her, wincing jokingly at her wiggly burn. He bright her hand up with his vacant hand and kissed the mark gently, his lips as wet as the water they were soaking in. As soon as he peeled his mouth away, Penny slid up and kissed him feverishly. She sat on her knees facing him, half emerged in the bath, and kissed him like her recovery depended on it, like she was starved and he was a six course meal. Their right hand stayed together as Jules wiggled his left from the water and used it to draw up her spine and slowly massage the back of her neck. It was a stepping stone, an attempt, and quite possibly the most intimate thing Penelope had ever done. She felt more naked talking about their respective accidents than she did with her naked body resting into his and feeling his erection grow against her hip and his heartbeat into hers. Maybe, she didn’t feel ready to have sex yet, but she did feel like she was falling in love for the first time and it was as delicious as it was terrifying.

[the-voice-of-hell]

The Septagram

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-   Previous   -    First   -

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***

Jennifer Smith’s band of evacuees had grown overnight to about a thousand people.  As near as she and Rosemarie could tell, Jen was the only person among them who seemed blessed with the power to fight demons, and whatever one would call her super bicycling tricks.  It was a problem.  If they were attacked, there was no way she could keep a thousand people safe by herself.  At least several people had handguns.  Hopefully those would help even the odds.

They had run into some demon bands in the night, but the eerie things didn’t attack, didn’t really explain themselves either.  Would they be allowed to leave, just like that?  It would take an absurdly long time to hike out of the state, so they were combing neighborhoods for cars that had been left with keys inside.  It wasn’t very fruitful.

They had a rolling base camp in the form of a small group of SUVs parked on Renton Avenue South near Rainier Beach.  Someone had bungied a mattress to the roof and Rosie, Jen, and a couple of anarchist boys (Radical Huang and Colin Guts) were chilling on top, waiting for the last car scavengers to get back.  Colin had a big revolver in his lap and Rosie was smoking a massive blunt with Huang.

Jen said, “How do you like this sun?”

Rosie said, “I knoow.  It’s so hot it feels like, the Goddess is holding me in her lap.”

Huang received the blunt.  “That’s so beautiful,” then busted out choking.

Colin said, “We should all smoke some.  Enhance our senses in case we need ‘em like that.”  He patted the handle of the revolver.

“Um,” Jen said, “I think sinsie just enhances your, like, spirit sight.  And the spirits are in the physical realm now, so it might not be very helpful.”

“Oh, good point, ma’am.  Women are so wise.”

“Heehee.”  She didn’t think any of these boys were exactly beautiful, but it was hard not to feel charmed by low key, non-creepy admiration.

A PTA mom -looking woman got their attention from the curb.  “Excuse me?  Excuse me!”

Rosie said, “Don’t harsh, mama.”

“Pardon me?!”

Jennifer hopped down.  “Whatcha need, ma’am?”

“Mm, my Josh isn’t back yet, and I can’t watch Oscar alone.  He has the hyperactivity, and it’s just so...” She choked up.

“Know which block he was on?”

Jennifer was off like a shot, leaping from the curb to the street just to add some small amount of interest along the way.  She didn’t see the guy anywhere, so she turned around and started to head back, scoping the same lawns in case she missed some detail.  Then she found him.

There was a weird lawn statue she’d noticed the first time, but didn’t process mentally.  Now it was clear.  No artist in their right mind would sculpt a scared fortyish dad with cargo shorts and an Apple watch.  Something had turned him to stone.

She let her bike roll to the grass and approached him on foot, face going through emotions, all something between sorrow and fear.  “What the hell what the hell what the hell, Josh?  Why’d you hafta..?  Oh no, oh no...”

Then she got a grip.  Whatever did this was still around somewhere.  She froze, then backed away slowly, turning as she went, taking in the panorama of the little strip of houses.  What was here?

At first pass she saw nothing.  Then she heard something from a roof and looked up at it in fright.  It was a rooster with an iguana-like tail and scaly gargoyle wings, a weird green vapor rising from its beak.

“It’s a cocka...disk.  A basketrix?  A coskalips!”

It crowed like a pretty standard rooster, but the sound chilled her - even on the hot day.  It flapped its wings and she almost jumped out of her skin.

“OH FUCK!”  She backpedaled until she whacked her head on a telephone pole, scraping it on old rusty staples.  “Ugh!”

The coskalips leapt and flapped and came down toward her.  It was making a freaky sound now like a cat getting ready to barf, and she knew then that the barf would be the thing to petrify her.

Jennifer pedaled her legs backward, this time springing up onto the telephone pole, running up the thing as far as her momentum took her.  The coskalips flapped up short and barfed a stream of green slime at her.

She was already above it, and the crud splashed on the pole and ground below her.  But if she let gravity take her back down, she’d land in it.  She sprang away with mighty legs, no thought yet to how she was going to land.  Midair she found herself trading looks with the monster in slow motion.

So that’s what an annoyed coskalips looks like.  Jen flipped and turned in the air, landing on her feet.  The monster mirrored her move, latching its claws on the pole, running up, flipping and reversing.

She bolted for the house - more things in there to hide behind than in the open space, and leapt through a living room window, head first, shielded by her bare arms.  The plate glass wasn’t kind, but didn’t nick any arteries.

There was a guy there.  Big.  Samoan?  He looked pallid, unwashed, and scared - like he’d been too freaked out to leave the house for the last several days.  In fairness to his cowardly ways, things had been getting freakier every day.

“What are you doing in here?!  Now it’s… Oh no!”  He ran into a room and beckoned for her to follow him.  He was well over six feet tall and not small, so he cut an amusing figure under the low ceilings and door frames.

Then the coskalips crowed, so close.  It must have been perched on the window frame.  The big man disappeared around the corner, hoping not to be seen.  Jennifer was already out of sight - though just barely - on the far side of one thin couch.

The monster started making its barfy noise.  Was it going to spew over the edge of the couch?  Did it know where she was, or was it firing at random?  She inhaled and coiled her body like a spring.  She would wait for it to blast before deciding what to do, and try to do it faster than the speed of spew.

Blarggh!  The vomit stream shot over the back of the couch, but was splashy enough she’d almost surely get hit.  She sprang into motion, running for the hall, hoping to lure it away from the man.

She was a streak of light, a being of untold power, operating at peak performance.  But a few ounces of the sick splashed across the back of one of her calves, and she felt her body turning to stone in a flash.

The strange woman flew into John’s hiding place by momentum, already turned to stone by the time she hit the ground.  His eyes bugged out and he screamed against his will.  Utter terror consumed him.  He fell on the toilet, scrambled around the floor next to the statuary hipster, before hope and power drained from his body leaving him still there.

He wasn’t hyperventilating, at least, but he felt doomed, more than he had when hiding from the demon parade, more than anything.  He couldn’t see her eyes through the opaque mineral her glasses had become.  He just saw her unnaturally carved lips, curved in a low U of surprise.

Then he heard the clicking of the monster’s talons on his flimsy wood floor.  Click click.  The slip of its reptilian tail.  An agitated flap of its wings.  A cock-like crow.  He jumped to his feet from pure adrenaline, head shaking from side to side.

“Oh no oh no.”

The thing heard him and its claws slipped as it set itself toward the bathroom door.  John wanted it gone.  He didn’t want to see it.  He didn’t know what to do, could hardly think, but he acted.

He body slammed the wall so hard a large chunk ripped free and crashed down over the monster.  He felt a movement beneath the wall and pushed himself up to slam back down.

“BuGAWK!”  It spewed its last breath.  He scurried away quickly as the fluids began flowing from under the wall, green turning to gray as green mist flowed from its surface, diffusing into the apartment’s stale air.

John scrambled to get further away, in case breathing that stuff might hurt him.  But he still didn’t dare go outside.  He just backed into the farthest corner of the kitchen.

The woman came out of his bathroom, whipping her head back and forth, trying to figure out where the beast lurked.  She looked at the floor.  Everywhere its spew had fallen was turning from stone back into dead wood.  Then she noticed her tennis shoes were doing the same - reverting from stone into rubber.  She jumped in place and bared all of her teeth in a grimace.

“Yee-ee-eee…  Heya… Is anyone here?”

John was too afraid to answer.

“Josh?”  She walked out the front door, leaving John alone with his fears.

But they were mixed now with another feeling.  He was an athlete - a boxer - but he was half starved, dehydrated, sleep deprived, filthy.  How did he knock down the wall like that?  He stood up, now only trembling from exhaustion instead of terror.  He remembered what he’d been feeling the most in his time alone - a fear of dying alone - and he finally got up the courage to run to the door.

“DON’T LEAVE ME!”

The lady was standing with some kind of soccer dad, and they both looked at him in surprise.  Then she broke into a slow, big smile.  “We wouldn’t dream of it, big guy.  But you should take a shower.  We’ll wait.”

The dad said, “I really need to...”

“I’ll wait.”

She did.

John choked down some stale bread with water, gathered some clothes, and took his shower.  Fortunately the wall he’d destroyed didn’t contain any crucial pipes.  Then he dried and dressed, unable to stop thinking about whether the lady’s group had food.

The knocked-out section of wall went all the way to the door, so he was walking out the hole no matter what.  It felt weird.  The lady was relaxing in a chair and hopped up to greet him.  The chair had been pointed in the direction of the bathroom.  Had she seen him naked?  He made an awkward face and accepted her handshake.

“I’m Jennifer Smith.  I’m helping a bunch of people get together so we can leave the state.  I’m kind of a …  Whatever.  Who are you?”

“John Stephens.  I think my family assumed I was going out with a different group and when I was trying to find them I got lost in the shuffle.  Just came home because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Family, like, wife and kids?”

“Mom, Dad, Grandmom, my sisters.”

Jen figured he was closer to thirty than twenty, so he was living with family for a longer than usual time.  A perhaps less fortunate fellow millennial.  “...Cool.  Nice to know they got out OK at least, right?”

“Yeah.  Thank you.  So…?”

“Let’s go!  I’ll be on a bicycle.  Hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t…  Oh no!”

Jen was confused, but then she paused to hear what John was hearing.  A crowd was coming from the distance, and fast.  It had to be the big wave of demons coming back to Seattle.

“They’re back, Jennifer!”

“We have to get to the others!”

“I can’t!”

“Then I’ll be right back.”

“Oh no oh no… Don’t go!”  He was fumbling with his hands, wanting to grab her by the wrist, but knowing that wasn’t right.

“Oh John.  We have to.”

Then they arrived.  A man with a bird head and marching band jacket slapped his hands on the window frame, heedless of the broken glass, and looked in at them with beady eyes.  His beak was long and ended with a spatula-like disc.

John shook his head in revulsion and staggered behind Jen.

She said, “What do you want?”

“Nothin’,” the demon said with flapping beak, “This joint is all beat up.  Pass!”  He ran off but was replaced by another random-looking demon, and another.  They all kept poking their heads in the window, then moving on.

John and Jen could see through the broken glass.  A loose stampede of the things were running down the street, checking out houses.  Some got into squabbles on lawns, wrestling like children.

“John, I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to go.  My people are gonna be scared sick.”

“No.”

“Look, they’re not here to hurt us.  We don’t have the mark, but they don’t care.  They’re here for something else.  Let’s go!”

He shook his head but let himself get dragged outside by the hand.  She picked up her bike with her free hand, but didn’t let go of him, even though it was awkward.  She walked him down to Renton Avenue, against the flow of the horde.  The things occasionally made eye contact as they passed, smiling or laughing, or expressions unreadable on animal or unnatural faces.

They reached the caravan.  Everyone was huddled together in fear.  People with guns pointed them at the passing demons to discourage them, but didn’t pull triggers.

Then Jen noticed that one of the people on the roof mattress was dead - Colin had a sousaphone around his neck, which was bent.  Huang held him across his lap like a Pietà.

“Oh no!  I’m so sorry everybody!”

There were a few scornful faces, but more of sympathy.

Annmarie called out from the roof, “What the hell now, Jen?  What do we do?”

Jen let John join the crowd and hopped onto the mattress of sorrow.

“We still don’t have enough cars, but we have to go.”

“Look at this!”

“I know!”  Her lips trembled.

Radical Huang said, “I figured it out, too late.  When you attack one, it kills you.  You can kill it, but it kills you.  That’s what happened to Waxy and now it happened to Colin too.”  He broke down into tears.

Jen straightened herself out, wiped her eyes and put her glasses back on.

“EVERYBODY LISTEN.”

A thing with an alligator head and horse legs paused in its path to look at her inquisitively.

“Not you, bitch!  Jesus.”

It kept going.

“WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF THIS CROWD, TRY TO KEEP GOING.  THEY SEEM LIKE THEY’RE GOING FOR HOMES, SO LET’S HEAD TO AIRPORT WAY IN GEORGETOWN.  I’LL LEAD.”

She bounced down from the roof and picked up her bike.

Time for the exodus.

***

The murder clubbers had guns.  It seems their affection for hacking people up with blades had been their downfall.  They had left the guns in their rooms.  Iphigenia had blocked one bullet that night, probably wouldn’t be able to do the same to a burst from an AR-15.

They didn’t have a lot of bullets left, and the guys could only hold so much weight, so they pared it down to what they could use.  Infante in particular was loaded for bear and was half hoping to run into an army so he could empty some of that weight into bodies.  They offered Iphigenia a gun but she declined.

Infante decided to turn on the radio for a while, see if anything came up.  Surprisingly, it did.  There was still some kind of police activity in the area.  Park asked to do the honors and contacted them.  They were told to come to a meetup at MLK and Oregon Street in Seattle.  They had also been able to charge cellphones at the haunted house and there was enough service to use map apps.  It was only about five miles, so they picked up bicycles again.  Jelly Sue didn’t know how to ride, but felt surprisingly at ease on Ippy’s handlebars.

The world was an endless flat expanse of strip malls, gas stations, and corporate parks.  A few landscaped trees peppered the scene, increasing in number as one looked up to the hills in the distance.  Everyone needed a shower and new clothes, but were otherwise in decent enough spirits.  Then they had to go up an agonizingly long gentle incline long enough to sour that mood and bring them to bickering about whether or not to look for a car again.

During one such moment, Park rolled them to a stop.  Ippy groaned and offloaded Jelly onto the road again.

Infante said, “What’s going on, boss?”

“I thought those were flowers.  They’re not.”

“Huh?”

He was pointing to a yard full of huge lavendar-colored flowers on long, thick stocks, spiky or pointy in every way, down to the shapes of the leaves.

“They’re thistles, so what?” Ippy said.

“Thistles don’t grow that big.  I’ve seen them before.”

Infante shrugged.  “So maybe they’re evil and they get big when there are demons around.  Who cares?”

Park rubbed his temples.  “It’s not just that.  I’ve seen pigeons flying in straight lines, all going back toward Renton.  I imagine the IKEA.  We saw a lot on the roof back there.”

“Maybe they’re evil too?”

Ippy rolled her eyes and started loading Jelly Sue back onto her handlebars.

“I think this hill ends in just another mile.  Come on, sir.”

Park grumbled and they started grinding again, low gear all the way.

It looked like multiple trees had been knocked down by weather, but were bent across the road with a little too much curve.  The closer they got, the more obvious it was that something had gone wrong here.  The leaves were too large, the trunks strangely shaped, great spikes grew out at random intervals.

And there was a sweetness in the air, overpowering and warm.  They could hear the buzz of insects drawn to it, see them gathering at great black orbs… No, those were blackberries the size of garbage cans, some even larger.

Park said, “See what I mean?  It’s trouble.”

Infante said, “Jesus protect us.”

Ippy said, “At least it smells better than we do.”

They powered up the hill, ducking and drifting in their paths to avoid the spikes, some as tall as people.  The vines grew more dense as they went, making the path slow going.  Then they started to hear sounds louder than the bike chains, increasing by the minute, shaking the stillest leaves.

Park and Infante looked jumpy.  Ippy was just waiting for them to figure it out.

“They’re coming back,” Park said.  “We oughtta hide!  Yeah, I-”

It was too late.

Thousands of monsters in band and army uniforms came sweeping over the road, plowing past vines, moving too fast to be believed, like something from a dream.  They seemed to be ignoring the people, but Infante still drew a bead on one, then another, tracking them with a pistol as they went.

“Don’t shoot them!,” Park said.  “They have the death shield.”

“What does that mean?!”

“The thing we saw in Hilltop!  You shoot one, you die!”

“Bullshit!  I killed one, remember?  She killed a lot!”

“They don’t all have it, but you don’t know which ones do.”

Ippy wondered what that all meant.  Jelly didn’t say anything or even look at them, maintaining perfect balance.

“How can you know that?”

Ippy spoke up, “He has the light.  He can see things, know things.”

“You’re psychic, like on some Elise Rainier shit?”

“I don’t get that reference.  Damn it!”

The things stampeded all around them like the gallimimus swarm in Jurassic Park, but more cheeky.  They laughed and joked and sometimes looked straight at the people as they passed.

Infante came very close to pulling the trigger… Then they were gone.  Only a few remained, trailing behind.

The travellers were quiet until Infante spoke up.  “Why are there so god damned many of them?”

“They have legions, six hundred and sixty six,” Park said.

Ippy smirked.  “How many are in a legion?”

“I’m gonna need more bullets.”

***

On Airport Way, Jennifer’s people were given pause.  There were bodies in the road.  Demon bodies, with no correlating people.  A hole in Radical Huang’s theory?  The children and weakest walkers were all packed into the few cars they had, which rolled at a snail’s pace so walkers could keep up.  Jen tried to block the view of the bodies when she could.  Where there was only one on the road, she just parked her bike in front of it until people got past.  But then there were more.

It looked like they’d gone to war with some high speed assassins.  Anti-goat ninjas.  Jennifer was worried it might just be something like the coskalips - a monster that was only out for itself.  Not on the same page as the demon horde, and willing to eat a human as quick as a demon.  He kept her eyes peeled.

They heard cracks and booms of distant gunfire from ahead, and she saw a tiny flash in the road far away.  A gunfight.  She looked at the cars, at the scared people in and around them.

“Hey I should check that out for us.  OK?”

Annmarie walked over and handed her Colin’s revolver.  “In case Huang is wrong.”

“Sure.  Sure thing.”

She zipped off, glad to be able to make speed for a change, but with a growing sense of alarm for what lay ahead.

Jennifer spotted some demon soldiers down the street.  Goat boys, no angel in charge of their squad.  They were hiding behind a facade of a ruined antique brick building, some loading rifles, some taking random shots into a storefront across the street.

Old fashioned muskets?  Maybe I should dump on them with this revolver while they fumble with gunpowder thingies, haha.  Fuckin’ pilgrims.  Elmer Fudds.  She was joking to herself, but she didn’t know if she’d be able to shoot one of them dead.  From experience she did know she could kick their heads off, but it was risky.  And what were they shooting at?

She bunny hopped onto the side of a building and jumped down from her bike, holding it up against the wall with one hand.  Then she set it down gently and spied on the situation.

Something shot out of the storefront, back at the shooters.  She couldn’t see them anymore from her angle, but she did see the object bounce back where it came from, disappearing into their enemy’s side.  On the bounce-back it moved slow enough for her to identify it - a baseball.

Baseball monster?  If it is, you’re a bicycle monster.  She knew it was another human and smiled.  She hustled to the back fence of the lot she was in, climbed it to the top, and used that to jump to a rooftop.  She hustled along the building, then peeked over the edge at the demons.  No mercy for goat boys.  One had been killed by the baseball and the others were raiding his gunpowder and bullets.

They were four left - half of them actually goat ladies, all of them oblivious to her.  She aimed the gun very carefully, with all the time in the world.  CRACK!  She rolled away from the edge.  They bleated and cursed.  She had a bad feeling the bullet didn’t kill her target.

She heard a coarse scrambling noise from the wall below.  Could they climb open bricks?  One popped up on the roof and unslung her musket.  The thing had a bayonet.  Jen didn’t have anything but the gun.

CRACK!  She actually missed, with the target ten feet in front of her face.  The goat lady’s military coat was open at the chest, revealing tits that were tongue-lolling goat heads.  One looked like it had already been shot dead.  Her face was weirdly human, and pissed off.

“Eh… Hoo… Embarrassing,” Jen said, waggling the gun at her side.

“You’re going to die.”

A goat boy leapt up beside her, his head just a goat leg springing out of a torso where the neck should have been, with a column of six eyes lining the front of the thigh.  His serpentine human-headed tail was raised between his legs like a phallus and it spoke in a smurf-like tiny voice.  “You’re gonna die!”

They both charged at her with bayonets raised.  She went into a low dive between them, but they stabbed down at her.  Then she switched up and sprang into the air.

Tonk.  She kicked the goat lady’s head askew.  She would have aimed for the goat boy first, but that thigh neck looked mighty sturdy.  She landed on the roof top and rolled behind him.

He spun around with surprising speed and slashed at her with the bayonet.  It missed by an inch.  Instead of getting to her feet, she found herself scooting retreat on her back.  He raised the bayonet again and brought it down, terribly fast.

She caught it between her sneakers, held him in place.  They were locked, staring at each other.  His vertical eyes blinked in sequence.  She heard more gunshots below.

Las bases están llenas y es la parte alta de la novena. Has probado su suerte con estas rolas... ¿Que puedes hacer ahora?

Sergio Hurtado knew he’d gone too far.  Humanity was gone and had been replaced by chupacabras.  Well, diablos.  He knew that much.  But in trying to single-handedly kill them all, he’d pushed his luck too far.  They had guns now.

Then they began to fire more slowly.  Had he finally killed enough of them?  He didn’t even know how he was doing it.  One night he had the best game of his life, the next day the news was all about murderers and evacuation.

Deberías haberte quedado en Venezuela.

And now he was a murderer too.

Es tiempo de robar una base.  He ran around the inside of the building, up a wall to a high window, flipped out of it and hung for a moment by one hand.  “¡Huy!”  He had pictured himself swinging around to land on the roof top, but despite his new strength and speed, gymnastics hadn’t magically joined his skill set.

He tossed his bat onto the roof, climbed up, and ran - keeping his head low.  How to misdirect them?  He thought about how he wanted the ball to bounce.  Off the far wall there, back toward this side near there, then back at them with enough force to…

Sergio lofted the ball with just the right spin, whipped the bat in the air at just the right angle and spin of its own, and the ball shot out with laser accuracy.  As it was bouncing, he dropped from the roof to the ground, slowing his fall on protruding brick, rolled and came up in a run.

The ball was on its way back to the goats.  He leapt through a broken window, sliding neatly between the sharp remaining pane, rolling across the nasty gravel silently, and got to his feet.  The goats knew he was there, but weren’t as fast.

One had her gun loaded, the other didn’t.  He threw his bat at the ready one, embedding it in her face.  The other lashed at him with its bayonet and he base-slid under its blade, springing over the other’s corpse and drawing out his bat.

He turned to face the last goat boy.  Rolling in the polluted gravel had left shining bits of glass and coarse dirt embedded in one of his arms.  Red began to well up.  “‘Eyy, devil.  Do you want a duel?”  He rolled the bat in his hands and held it like a sword.

“Bleea-ah-ah-ah!”  He looked almost like a normal man, but the sound from his mouth was pure goat.  He raised his bayonet and assumed a fighting stance.

Something fell on the ground behind Sergio and he leaped in surprise.  The goat man was also distracted, and El Pelotero charged.  They both lashed out.  They both missed.  But Sergio had ended up standing behind the goat, and stabbed his bat backward, caving in the base of its skull.

He turned to face whatever had fallen from the roof.  A very Seattle-ish woman stood over the body of another goat man.  She had chubby arms and legs half exposed by her roughed up attire, but beneath the chub muscle bulged as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.  Her chestnut burnished pale skin had too many scratches and bruises to count.  But she beamed a big smile, googly blue eyes behind thick-framed glasses, looking like la nerd más simpatica.

His eyes softened and single tears escaped them.  “Hello.  I thought I was the only one here.”

“No way!  And we’re glad to see you too.  C’mon!”

They left behind the bodies, leaping out of the window and strolling away.

***

What is The Septagram?  One of the headlines read.  About the least interesting question to ask, Maddy thought.  “What the hell now?,” would be more apt.  Besides, aerial footage of Seattle made it pretty clear there were seven citadels with that glowing pink beneath.  Seven points.  Were there seven archdemons, like that Bymaan?  One in each castle?

She put her phone back on to charge and immediately it was vibrating.  No.  The room was vibrating.  Something big was coming.  Then the sounds of thousands of feet running by, and hands slapping at the windows.

She screamed like a movie queen, a scream to shake the earth.  People started stirring all across the house.

Then a voice from outside said, “Sorry!  It’s occupied, man.”

Another said, “Really?”

Another, “Is there somebody in there?”

“I’m gonna knock.”

TONK TONK TONK.

Jason was already up with a bowling ball in his hand.  He stomped toward the front door.  Maddy hopped up to follow him.

“Don’t Daddy!”

He just gave her a serious look and opened the door a crack.

A voice from outside, “Hey, sorry to bother you.  I’ll just...”

“HEY!  What are you talkin’ about?,” he said.  “What the hell is going on out here?”

“The Queen said we could take any houses that are not occupied.  What can I say?  I like a craftsman-style bungalow.”

“Well take it next door!”

“I am!”

“You too, or it’s NINEPINS!”  Jason shook the bowling ball.  There were fewer taps at the front of the building, then none.  He closed the door and locked it.

Maddy took the bowling ball off his hand and set it on a chair.  “Daddy, what is going on?”

“It’s unconstitutional, I tell ya!  The Third Amendment!  READ A BOOK!,” he yelled toward the front door.  Nobody responded.

Kevin and Gran were in the living room now.

Gran said, “Keep it down, will you?  Show some respect in my house!”

“Mom, I mean you no disrespect.  You’re being disrespected by these demons!  Yeah they tell you to take this mark for ‘protection’,” he used finger quotes, “Now they come around asking if they can take over your home, while all their little buddies move into every open building on the street.”

Kevin said, “Is that what’s happening?”

“Yeah!  First they scare everyone half to death, send ‘em evacuating from the state.  Then they move right in.  Buncha demons for neighbors.  That’s disrespect.”

“Jason!”

“What’s more I’ll have them know-”  There was another tap at the door and he yelled that direction, “THOSE HOUSES HAVE OWNERS, YA PRICKS!”

Kevin said, “Actually most of them are empty still.”

Gran said, “JASON!  You keep your VOICE DOWN!”  She almost knocked herself over and Kevin held her up.

“Daddy!”

“SORRY Mom, I’m sorry!  Jesus.”  He stomped off and picked up the bowling ball.  “I’ll be outside until this thing settles down.”

Maddy chased him to the door, but he closed it behind him.  She wasn’t brave enough yet to go out and sit with him, but she was working up to it, pressed against the door, forehead wrinkled in concern.

Kevin started to say something and she couldn’t stand listening to defeatist nonsense, so she whipped out the door and closed it behind her.

Jason looked up at Maddy and she wanted to look back, but the first time she saw a demon run by, then another, then another, she jumped in place, flattened to the wall.

“You should go inside, Baby.”

“N-no… OK, I’m OK...”  She calmed herself enough to go sit by him.  “I just haven’t seen them yet.  Not like this.  Not in broad daylight.”

“They have no shame.  Look at this one over here?  A rabbit head and pig feet.  And these ones, no pants on.  Flyin’ in the breeze!  PUT ON SOME CLOTHES!”

Maddy put a calming hand on his arm.  “Alright, Dad.  We need to do something now.  This is too much!  The Queen is trying to play nice now, but we can’t be at her mercy.  What is she changes up?”

“My thoughts exactly.  Good girl.  But Kev and Mom are so… obstinate.  What should we do?”

“Duct tape them and put ‘em in a trunk if we have to!”

“Really, Honey?”

“Yeah!  The roads are still open right now, but for how much longer?  They could already be locking us down.  Our own government might be doing that right now.”

“When you’re right, you’re right.  And we still don’t have those guns...  I’m sure they can’t hear us.  Let’s make a plan here...”  They conspired.

***

NEXT

-

#The Septagram