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anya-anya002 · 5 months

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𝔓𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔲𝔪 (i) *full*

ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛᴏʀ! ᴀʟᴇx ᴛᴜʀɴᴇʀ x ꜰᴇᴍ ᴀᴘᴘʀᴇɴᴛɪᴄᴇ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚: you have a biology exam and you ask your friend’s father to help you study-

𝑰𝒏𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒅𝒆𝒔: age gap (21 f, 37 m), cheating, corruption kink (u gotta squint-), established relationship, mentor x apprentice relationship, medical kink/anatomical words….

(Guys…..I haven’t been to a med class in almost a year bear with me and Google-)

In the back of the funeral home was a small office; that’s where Mr. Turner authored the obituaries. Although small, it has a sort of coziness to it with its darkened navy walls stained with cigarette smoke. Then, to cover them were clippings from anatomical books he published. But now, it’s a dimly lit room with the familiar stench of cigarettes. You stood in the doorway with your bag in hand.

Your eyes were already focused on the person who occupied the room, Mr. Turner. His thick, brown tortoiseshell glasses perched on the tip of his nose as his fingers typed away on the laptop. A cigarette tight between his lips while his nostrils trickled out smoke like some kind of work fiend. But yet, he somehow looked peaceful. His shoulders slouched, and his hair ruffled. The blue light from the computer clashed against his face exposing smooth yet wrinkled skin. Yet, in all this time, he managed to keep his youth; you envy it.

“Mr. Turner,” you spoke. The air was thick with silence as the keys clacked. Then it stopped, his head turned to you, a blank expression worn as you stopped dead in your tracks. The lamps above the bookshelf cast ghastly shadows against his face, making his eyes glow.

“I, I was just wondering if you were being serious when you said you didn't mind helping me with my biology course last week.” you stammer.

“My anatomy test is in like three days, and I just can't wrap my head around everything,” you finished. Your words spewed out like vomit as you gripped the strap of your bag. While you were nearly panicking, Mr. Turner frowned. His arms stuck out tall while he stretched. Long, thick fingers interlocked as he let out a soft grunt and then returned to his position.

“Yea, I told Marie to let you know after she told me you're studying to be in mortuary science,” he said, a slight smile gracing his face. You nod, enter the room, and plop on the small, gray, squeaky couch. You looked at him, then at the brass clock that hung behind him, then back at him. Your nerves scorched at knowing that your friend told her father what you wanted to do.

“So, what’s the test on?” He asked. The cigarette ash fell onto the desk as he set it in the nearby ashtray. You paused, swallowing dryly before gripping the edge of the couch cushion you sat on.

“Uh...reproduction,” you said in a low voice. He hummed and looked at you again, his eyes a lot livelier.

“Hmm, do you have flashcards or no?” he asked, you shook your head ‘no.’ His index finger tapped the top of his knee rhythmically.

“Hand me your notebook,” Mr. Turner said, you scrambled and reached into your bag for it. You stood to hand it over, your legs rickety as you stood in front of him. His eyes peered up at you, scanning you up and down as he still tapped his finger against the desk. His gold band glimmered in the soft, yellow light as he clicked something off on his desktop. Flipping through your notebook for a moment lazily before speaking.

“Y/N?”

“Yea?” you perked up as he sat your notebook in his lap.

“Do you remember the barbeque your family threw that summer?” he asked, you sat down slow, still gazing at him while you nod. Both your eyes piercing into each other like needles before you blink. You were squirming in your skin as you nodded, vividly remembering the way his hands ran up your spine. Your cheeks heated up as you tugged on your top. Your ears rang from the silence, just the two of your gazing at each other.

“Yes,” you breathed to which Mr. Turner grinned. An almost crooked, hungry grin as he ran a finger through his hair. Bringing his chair out from his desk and sliding it right in front of you.

“How about we... study in a different way hmm?” he proposed. You nodded without a second thought, and the smirk on Alex’s face turned ghoulish. His dark eyes glowed within the small, dark room as you squirmed.

“Strip,” he commanded. You blinked, your whole body sweated as he stared you down. You slowly kicked your shoes off, each layer dropped onto the floor in soft thuds.

“Point to me where the vagina is,” he deadpanned. His warm honey, deep voice within the tiny room, like a bear growling within a cave. Once your jeans were gone, there was nothing left to remove. Your nakedness made you realize how warm it actually was in here. The beating in your chest turned into banging. You pressed your lips together tight, your hands shaky as you brought your arms to your chest.

“Y/N,” Mr. Turner said. You looked at him almost like your head was filled with cotton. His legs crossed to prop your notes against his slack-cladded knee. The lenses of his glasses now blocked by golden light as he waited.

“Yes, yes sir?” you asked. Your eyes wide like a deer in headlights. Anxiety began to bubble in your chest as he repeated himself.

“Point to me where the vagina is,” he said, even while repeating himself he just stayed purely monotone. As if you weren’t sat in front of him completely bare, he propped his head in his hand.

You scooted back on the couch, your body tense as you spread your legs, exposing your two puffy lips. Your eyebrows furrowed while your left hand reached down, past your stomach. Spreading your pussy lips with your middle and pointer finger.

“Do you need a mirror?” he asked, your eyes widened as Alex just watched you unfold. The idea of your cunt being seen back to you made a slither of shame appear in the pit of your stomach.

“It’s okay to need help, isn’t that why you’re here?” he cooed. You blinked, everything you thought about Mr. Turner may be wrong. You looked at him blankly, his fluffy shoulder-length hair was pulled back into a little half-up ponytail as he sat the book down onto the desk.

He leaned in close, the smell of bourbon and jasmine was faint while his eyes refused to stray from yours. Should you say something? Maybe you do need a mirror, you’d never know.

“Can you move your right hand for me?” he asked. The timbre voice rumbled through the room as he rested his hand on your ankle. Reaching down, the pad of your finger poked around. Cringing at the feeling of your finger poking at your urethra, almost like taking a big inhale of car exhaust.

But then that cringing vanished as you eased inside your hole. A soft gasp left you as your cunt began to stretch at the intrusion. Mr. Turner sat there unmoved, his eyes trained on your finger curiously.

“Is that where it is darling hmm?” He asked, a smirk bloomed on his face as arousal bubbled out of your little hole.

“Yes Mr. Turner,” you breathed. He hummed in approval then gently pulled your hand away, your finger removed from your cunt. His eyes went from yours down to between your legs. Your eyes clenched tight as he leaned closer. His breath ghosted against your legs, the follicles in your skin stood up as his closeness became ‘coke-headed’ close. His head hovered above your pelvis, his eyes looked down at the view.

“What a gorgeous thing Y/N/N,” Alex said. His thumb pulled the two thick lips apart to gaze upon the hole. His peer grew once more as he continued to gaze at your pussy.

“Tell me,” he began, his hands remove themselves from between your legs and ventured toward your inner thighs. They gripped the fat of your thighs tightly as he pecked your lips. Your eyes widened at the action,

“Now,” he said. His right hand and left leg untangled themselves, unzipping the golden zip of his dark green slacks. Fuck, the last time you saw him like this your own intoxication interrupted. But now there was no coitus interruptus, just you.

“I know you guys joke about the clitoris but….” Once he unzipped the slacks, the shade of this boxers were a deep maroon, but there wasn’t enough time to fully gaze once he pulled himself out.

Thick, that’s all literally all you could think, like any girl in a porno; will that thing even fucking fit in you?

“Which is more sensitive huh, the tip of my penis…or that adorable little clit of yours?” He asked, his cock ran across your slit, heat radiated off him. Fuck, he felt so warm, warmer than the room itself. Instead of static you felt fire licking up your sides.

“The clitoris?” You said, more like asked, maybe he didn’t catch the sudden inflection. Alex’s eyebrow raised, however…fuck he caught it.

“Are you sure dearest? Do you need an example?” He asked. Grabbing the base of his member and rubbed his tip against your vulva. That fire that licked up your sides, now seared them.

“Oh,” you shivered, his tip is flushed as he rubbed it against your clitoris. Mr. Turner groaned, eyes screwed shut while he see-sawed against your soaking slit. Deep-red tip moved in a circular motion as you whined, squirming against the couch as you gasp.

“Are you sure now?” He asked.

“T,the clitoris sir,”

“Hmm,”

His rubbing became faster, as if he was consumed by pleasure. Out of your control, moans continued to slip from your mouth as his thumb eased his tip inside. Gasps filled the room. Your eyes cracked open to see Mr.Turner, his glasses now perched atop his head as he clenched his eyes shut. His smooth, pale skin pasted in a thin sheen of sweat, his crow's feet now more prominent skin wrinkles like how one ruche cloth.

“Fuck-” he cursed, your hand that held your lips spread snaked to his. A fire blazed against your cheeks at the feeling of his hand against yours. Odd, such a trivial interaction sent your heart into overdrive and your scalp all prickly.

“Mr.Turn-”

“Alex,” he groaned out, his eyes opened while he reached down and gripped the fat of your thighs.

"Alex," you gasp. Your eyebrows furrowed as he gazed down at you, almost like he's never seen you before.

"Are we still studyin'?" you asked. Then you both went silent; your heavy breaths could be heard throughout the tiny office. This silence, however, was tensionless. Like a little break.

"No," he panted. His face leaned down to your ear. He hummed and slowly began to thrust inside. The feeling of his sheer girth nearly painful, your eyes screwed shut. Your hips felt wide almost like they weren’t supposed to bend like this.

The two of you panted as Mr. Turner’s hips rocked slowly. Watching your every move as his hips rolled against yours. Your legs burned slightly, making your face ball up as a hot tear rolled down your cheek.

“Alex!” You cried. Your hands gripped at his clothed shoulders. He ran his fingers up your spine all while tangling himself into him.

“Shh, shh, I know it hurts angel…you’re so tight though,” he cooed, to which you looked away flushed. Alex’s chuckles filled the room, still praising you sweetly as his hips pulled away from yours.

“Just breathe for me,” he continued, Mr. Turner’s lips pressed against the left side of your face. The rough hairs of his beard scratched against your skin. The pain slightly dulled as soft lips press all over your face. His little whispers and coos finally subdued once he felt your hips buck against his.

If you could take a picture of the sheer pleasure that appeared on Mr.Turner’s face. His lips curled into a large grin. His large hands ran over your breasts, his palms rough, calloused as he pawed and squeezed at your flesh.

“Al-“

“You’re gonna pass the exam-“ he blurted right before pounding into your cunt. You stare at him wide, the tip of his penis nudge against the swollen, spongey spot that made your entire body shudder and a loud moan to come from your lips.

The wallpaper appeared to be peeling or it may have been your head rocking up and down from Alex’s thrusts. His hair dangled down against his forehead as his cock plunged into your wet pussy, the squelches brought your hands up to shield your face. Embarrassed if you could still feel that with your nakedness on full display and your legs spread wide giving him a full view.

“H, How?” you finally squeaked, your eyes big as you gazed up at him. You would've been actually studying for said exam if it weren't for his cock that thrusted deep inside of you, nudging against your spot once more. He moved your hand away as you whine loudly, now able to fully look at him in the dim light.

“How can you fail the easiest exam in medicine?” he chided, his hips snapped against yours, a loud slapping sound filled your ears. His tip poked at the tight ring of your cervix. Your moans grew loud, echoing throughout the tiny, dark funeral home. The couch lurched with each deep thrust he made. His tip was kissing your cervix more as your pussy gush around him.

Alex moaned at the sight, his eyes glued between your legs before he spoke once more.

“I mean- we’re ‘reproducing’ right now,” he teased, you gazed up at him. If it were anyone else who said that, you'd get up and dip out, but it's not anyone. You shivered at the words clenching around him and hearing his moans in response.

“What’s that called Y/N?” Mr. Turner asked, eyeing you with curiosity. His hips still moved as you thought of anything to say yet the way his thick cock fucked into you deep dumped out all your words like a piggy bank. Easing against your spot as you moan.

“C’mon Y/N…what’s it called when you squeeze your cute little pussy around my cock?” He asked, a brow raised on his sweaty forehead as you shiver and clench around him again. Unable of an answer you blurt,

“Contraction?” You asked meekly to which he chuckled low. His laughter rumbled against your chest as you look up at him. Your big eyes couldn’t sway him however as he grabbed your leg and placed it on his hip, forming a pressure in your lower stomach akin to someone sticking a finger deep inside your belly button.

“Wanna try again?” He teased, the golden light tickled the sides of his face, shimmering through his locks of hair as he gazed down at you. However this time, you answered him,

“Vaginismus,” you said, still unsure. Your mind occupied on your friend’s dad’s cock thats stretching your walls.

Mr.Turner, or Alex tapped his chin, now actually serious. He gazes down at you. Scanning over your body as if you’re a text book or an anatomical diagram as the silence crept back in. Your chests heaving as he searched for an answer.

During that tense, confused silence you heard footsteps. As if not even the dead that rested here wanted you to finish upon hearing the loud, slow, clicking footsteps. Mr.Turner’s eyes widened as he paled—quickly, he scrambled. Pulling out of you, to your dismay. You began to whine softly, but he simply shushed you by pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

“Get dressed we’ll finish at some other time,” he whispered before getting up and adjusting himself. A scowl appeared on his face as he tucked himself back in his slacks and wandering out to investigate the noise.

Leaving you all to yourself in the empty room…

“Who’s here?” Mrs. Parks-Turner’s voice filled the quiet hall, to which you tensed. Your heart stilled, scrambling to get dressed once more.

“No one Vivi, just a video in my office…”

𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒅: @rentsturner @harrysbestiee

*if you’d like to be tagged just message me ‘tagged’*

#anya—anya #my fics #alex turner #alex turner x reader #alex turner x y/n #alex turner x you #funeral director! alex #mentor x mentee #arctic monkeys #full story #the bar🍸#mortuary au #Spotify #smut #𝔓𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔲𝔪🪦

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julek · 2 years

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mortician au meet-cute. (is it a meet-cute?). read the series on ao3!

Geralt is giving Renfri some nice neck scratches when Aiden comes in through the door, the little bell above it giving a nice little chime.

“Morning,” he says cheerfully, dropping a crisp newspaper on Geralt’s kitchen table and making a beeline for the old moka pot, stainless steel glinting in the grey morning light coming through the window. Geralt still wonders when it was, exactly, that Aiden became a permanent fixture in the Morhen house.

Probably around the time Lambert started messing around with spells, rites, and harmless, bloodless sacrifices.

Probably.

“Morning,” he answers, his voice still a bit rough with disuse. “Please, help yourself to some coffee,” he says, eyebrows raised, as Aiden begins pouring himself a second cup.

“Got anyone in today?” He wonders, nodding to the dark green door that leads to the mortuary downstairs. “The paper says there’s been a car crash.”

Geralt shakes his head. “No one in yet. But I’m sure they’ll start coming soon.”

Aiden nods sympathetically. This is why Geralt likes him, he’s reminded — anyone else would shudder at the dark yet accurate prediction, but he simply shrugs and begins snooping around Geralt’s kitchen, as he often does, lifting pot lids and making spoons clatter against the marble tabletop.

“Lambert is in The Room,” he says gently, mentally nudging Aiden out of his kitchen and into his brother’s embalming room, affectionately and ominously nicknamed The Room. “If you were looking for him.”

“Oh.” Aiden deposits his mug into the sink, frowning slightly at it, and then looks at Geralt in belated recognition. “Yes! That’s why I came in, in the first place, of course. Thank you for the coffee.”

Geralt shakes his head at his retreating figure. “No problem.” The newspaper is still sitting on his table, and he turns back to Renfri, who’s looking up at him with curiosity painted on her green eyes. “Looks like we’ll have some work to do today, hmm?”

His apron, a sensible black, stares back at him from where it’s hanging on its little hook. The tiny and slightly crooked Morhen Mortuary embroidery at the front — Nenneke’s gift for who knows which birthday — makes Geralt smile, and he’s still smiling as he walks the stairs down to his own room.

The car crash Aiden had noted had unfortunately taken the life of a young man, according to the paper and the EMTs who had driven the body to the funeral home. The man, they had explained, had been riding on his bike downtown when a truck appeared out of nowhere and made it impossible for him to avoid crashing into the left headlight.

It had been a painless death, they said. Geralt could only hope so, for the victim’s sake.

The light switch creaks slightly as he flips it on, the fluorescent bulbs flickering to life above him. Immediately, the strong scent of embalming fluid envelops him, and he breathes it in like one would a nice spring morning on a field. Nothing like a work-laden morning to bring his spirits up.

(Or sideways, he doesn’t know). (He’s been learning some interesting things with Lambert’s new hobby). (Half of those are lies, he knows, but still).

(It’s nice to pretend).

The body on the table looks… rough. Whatever remains from the man’s clothing is rumpled and dirty, the fabric tattered and covering his body in uneven patterns. There are bruises all over his right side — his legs, his abdomen, up his neck and littering his face like a child’s painting. His handsome features are obscured by the blood trickling down his forehead.

He couldn’t have survived the crash, Geralt knows, but he has to check for vital signs anyway. He has no pulse, nothing but cold skin where Geralt presses his gloved fingers, and later, his stethoscope. His limbs are stiff and locked in place, and he’s unresponsive as Geralt touches his face, his eyes — incredibly blue — clouded.

The perfect picture of death.

Sometimes Geralt wishes he believed in God. Any God, really — anything that could allow him to say a small prayer, to wish this person well in their path to… wherever they’re going, to honor their life and make it all mean something.

But he doesn’t, so, naturally, he starts a conversation with the dead man lying on his table.

“Hello,” he says politely, as he starts removing the man’s scraps of clothing from his skin. “My name is Geralt. I’m your mortician— well, I mean, I’m not your mortician. I’m… anyone’s. No one’s. It’s not like when you go to the doctor, you know— oh, yeah, that guy is my doctor. You can’t tell anyone about this experience, so I’m never referred to as anyone’s anything.” He tosses the man’s shirt aside. “But, you know, in case you do recall this to anyone, in the ol’ queue to the afterlife, you can call me your mortician. Or Geralt. Geralt’s fine.”

The man, unsurprisingly, says nothing.

“I’m sorry I don’t know your name,” Geralt continues. “You came in without any personal effects— well, you were wearing that tiny Hello Kitty backpack, but there was nothing inside that could tell us anything about you.” The man’s jeans need to go next, but they’re so disfigured Geralt grabs a fabric scissor from the counter. “You kind of look like your name was… hmm. Nothing too generic, I don’t think. Balthazar, maybe? Or Timothy. Valdo, perhaps? That’s a name you have the face for. The eyes, especially.”

He starts cutting the man’s jeans, pausing to chuckle at the fact that he momentarily gave the man jorts, and then continues until he can peel it all off.

“Your clothes are nice. I’m sorry they got ripped apart, though. And, well, sorry I’m ripping them apart now, too.” He starts untying the man’s shoelaces. “I hope you get some nice clothing wherever you’re going. Do you think you’ll need money in the afterlife?”

The man’s hand falls to the table in response.

Before, Geralt would’ve jumped at the movement, but now, seasoned as he has become, he knows it’s just a spasm. His heart hasn’t gotten the memo yet, though, hammering in his chest.

“Ah, love a good postmortem spasm,” he chuckles, sliding the shoe off the man’s foot. “Keeps me vigilant. Did you know people used to think these kinds of movements indicated the deceased person’s will to live? They used to say it was a sign of perseverance— how the strongest people kept fighting death until the end.”

He likes to think there’s some truth to it; that someone could have loved their life so much that they would hang on to it with every fiber of their being. That death could be defied by stubbornness.

He pulls out the man’s other shoe, and smiles at his socks: ice cream patterned, glittery bright pink.

“You seem like an interesting person,” he says, peeling the socks off, leaving the man in his — also brightly patterned — underwear. “Would have been nice to meet you.”

Geralt turns around and moves to the counter, making sure the hose is connected to the water tap, and arranging all his instruments to his liking. He can hear the music Lambert’s playing in The Room, some sort of old-timey rock he knows but can’t quite place, and he starts humming along in his low, gravelly tone.

“Mm, you got me so I can’t sleep at night, mmm…”

“The Kinks? Really?”

Geralt turns around, clutching the hose to his chest.

“I mean,” the man says, facing Geralt and laying on his side like a really stiff art subject, waiting to be immortalized in a canvas, “I would’ve expected a man of your complexion to listen to something… darker. Tougher? I don’t know.”

Geralt blinks.

He really should have checked the carbon monoxide detectors last night.

“So,” the man says. “What kind of a place is this, anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I do, quite often, wake up half-naked in places I can’t recognize, but this is a new level of kinky shit. What is this table?” He props himself up on his hands, with effort. “Why are my movements so… bad?” He frowns. “Why’s my tongue… wrong? What is going on?”

“You’re… alive,” Geralt says, eloquently.

The man’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, and he’s still so pale and mangled, it’s grotesque. Like a really bad makeup job for a school play. “Well, I mean, I know that? Because if this is heaven — and I’m definitely not complaining about the view — it’s quite… underwhelming?”

Almost automatically, Geralt surges forward and grabs the man’s head between his hands. “Don’t move like that,” he says, smoothing down the man’s skin. “The rigor mortis won’t go away for a few hours. You could get stuck like that.”

The man’s face falls. Well, tries to. “Rigor… mortis?”

Geralt drops the man’s head like it’s on fire. It should be on fire — the man’s skin should melt into bone and he should put on a funky leather jacket and ride his black motorcycle straight into hell and out of Geralt’s humble and sensible funeral home.

Upstairs, an old Dire Straits song starts playing. As if the world is supposed to just go on, while the very dead man that was laying on Geralt’s embalming table mere seconds ago is now making something akin to lively conversation with him.

He was dead. Geralt checked his pulse, looked into his very dead-looking pupils. He was about to inject fluid into his arteries, for goodness’ sake.

“So,” the man says, sitting up, and finally looking down at himself. He pokes at a purple bruise on his ribs. “Either this is all part of a very elaborate joke on one of my friends’ behalf, or you’re just a very good-looking psychopath who will now proceed to make me witness my own autopsy, or something.”

“I’m…” Suddenly, Geralt has no clue what to say. How does he break it to the man, that he was about to write down ‘John Doe’ on a nametag and tie it to his ankle, without sounding absolutely insane and/or possibly psychopathic? He feels a sudden urge to take off his apron, not feeling so fond of the embroidered information on it right now. “You were in an accident.”

The man gapes at him, his blue eyes bluer, somehow. “I… was? What happened?”

Geralt takes a tentative step forward. He was trained on how to deliver painful and sensitive information to the bereaved family; he was not, however, trained on how to deliver it to the deceased themselves.

“The EMTs said it was a truck. You were riding your bike.”

“Okay…” The man nods to himself, taking the information in. “Why am I not in a hospital, then? I mean— I don’t mean to assume, but this doesn’t really look like the conventional emergency room, or what have you.”

Geralt looks around the dark walls of the basement, cringing internally at the framed You look good — open-casket good sign Eskel got him for Christmas.

“You’re… This is…” Geralt leans back against the counter, steeling himself for whatever will happen next. “This is a mortuary. My name’s Geralt. I’m… I’m your mortician.”

The man’s eyes are so wide Geralt fears he’ll pop a vein. “A mortician…”

“You died,” Geralt says gently. “When you crashed into the truck. It was a painless death. Instant.”

“And now?”

Geralt grimaces. “And now… you’re alive. Allegedly.”

The man splutters. “Allegedly?!” He hops down from the table, and Geralt manages to catch him before his legs give out. “You mean to tell me I was dead and now, supposedly, I’m alive?”

This close to the man, Geralt can see small green dots in all that sea of blue fury. He shakes his head. “Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. This doesn’t happen.”

“You don’t say!” The man sits back up on the table. His bruises are slowly fading away, and his cheeks are bright red, whether from the blood flow or the indignation, Geralt doesn’t know. “So it’s not routine for a legally dead man to come back to life on your table? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says, sheepish. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, aside the whole hey Jask, remember everything you thought you knew about life and death? Well, scrape all that, because it’s bullshit thing? I’m just peachy,” he snaps, glowering at Geralt. “And cold.”

“Of course. Sorry,” Geralt apologizes. “I’ll go get you some clothes.”

“You do that,” the man says as Geralt walks to the door. “And do stop apologizing so much.”

His hand on the door, Geralt looks back at the man. “Sorry.”

“So, your name is Jaskier?”

They’re sitting at Geralt’s kitchen table now. After offering the man a pair of Lambert’s sweatpants and a t-shirt, and showing him the guest bathroom, he emerged a new person, his hair curling at the edges and his skin soft-looking.

“It is,” Jaskier says with a shy smile, pulling his knees up to his chest on his chair. Geralt feels an immense urge to wrap him in a hug. The closest thing is pushing a mug of coffee in his direction. “And you’re Geralt.”

“That’s me.”

“And I was dead,” Jaskier says, recounting the incidents. He’s calmed down now. “And now I’m alive.”

“Yeah.”

Geralt wishes he had something more eloquent to say.

“And this has never happened to you before? You’re certain?”

Geralt snorts. “I think I would have realized if any of the people I poked at with needles were alive.”

“Okay, okay,” Jaskier replies with a smile of his own. “Just checking.”

Now that Jaskier is officially alive, Geralt can allow himself to really look at him. He’s young — maybe in his late twenties — and there’s something about his eyes that just draws him in; something other than the way they’re blue the way the ocean is when it’s about to storm, no, it’s something about the way they move. About the way they look at things, about the way they look at Geralt. Piercing yet unobtrusive, harsh yet soft.

He should really stop watching so many romantic films.

His brown hair falls into tiny waves, shining in the mid-morning light pouring in through the windows. The hand that’s gripping the mug is dotted with freckles, his fingernails black and chipped. He’s swimming in Geralt’s shirt, an old one from his university days, and there’s something about his small smile that makes Geralt’s heart try to skip a beat.

They sip their coffee in comfortable silence. Geralt offers him an apple, and Jaskier takes it with grace.

“So, what now?” He asks between bites.

“What do you mean?” Geralt replies.

“Well,” Jaskier says, leaning forward on the table. “I can’t die. For now. I’ll sort out the specifics later. But— what comes next?”

Geralt doesn’t know. “Well, what do you want to do next?”

Jaskier considers it. “I think, after I finish eating this apple, and after I’ve washed my cup and thanked you for your hospitality — ha, hospitality,” he snorts, “I would very much like to ask you for your number.”

Geralt chokes on his coffee.

“Unless you’re already seeing someone, or you’re not into men,” Jaskier says immediately, “or just not into someone who came into your home as a dead man and came out walking of his own volition. Also because you kind of saw me in my rubber ducks underwear which I love but man I should really think about what I wear under my clothes because you know, my mother was right, you really never do know where your day will go— I would completely understand that. That would make you a very reasonable person, but it’s just that I’m very scared for my life— and my death, I guess, too, fuck— and I would like a friendly face around me. I can tell you I have not had any of those lately— but, just, you know, I understand if—”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says. “I would be honored to be a friendly face.”

Jaskier breathes out slowly. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” Geralt says, reaching for his hand.

Jaskier twines their fingers together, looking at him with a sweet smile on his lips. It belongs to one of Geralt’s movies, this moment.

But Jaskier breaks it almost immediately.

“Actually, you know, I’m glad you said yes, because you kind of owe me, anyway, because some memories are coming back to me now and I have the distinct recollection of you telling me I looked like my name was Valdo, and boy do I hate—”

tagged: @writingmysanity

#mywriting #mortuary au #geraskier fic #geralt x jaskier #temporary MCD #immortal jaskier #mortician geralt #pls enjoy geralt being a DORK <3 #blood mention #death mention

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yells-of-the-not-so-danged · 2 years

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(ninjago au) What if the Overlord wasn't trapped on the dark island but instead trapped in another layer of reality. They can interact with the world but in a very limited way and still needs a vessel to have full control. And what if a certain someone who's name starts with a G and ends with don is the target of their diabolical obsession and eventual possession. 👀👀👀

And-and what if the FSM sees whats happening and they're trying to find a way to kill the Overlord with out taking out their son as well. But right now the FSM and Overlord are locked in as the Balance Incarnate and the only way to destroy one is to destroy the other. Naturally the FSM doesn't want to die, they have kids to raise! Plus if they do go through with the plan then the Balance thing will be shifted onto Garm & Wu. But now the Overlord is gaining more and more control and we can't let them take full possession because 1) THAT'S MY SON and 2) all hell will break loose! So the FSM quickly crafts some heavily warded chains and lock Garm/Overlord in the basement (which is also heavily warded) until they can think of a better idea.

#this is a long way of saying I've been watching Mortuary Assistant playthroughs #ninjago au #overlord ninjago #ninjago overlord #the overlord #fsm ninjago #ninjago fsm #fsm #ninjago garmadon #garmadon ninjago #ninjago #ninjago masters of spinjitzu #lego ninjago #lord garmadon

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jetaloen · 6 months

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doodles of that volo depop scammer/mortuary/vampire rohan au

#pokemon #even tho its not a pkmn au 😶#volo #volo pokemon #rohan #oc #pokemon oc #my art #the au is that volo runs a scam depop shop which rohan gets scammed by but then he feels bad for volo and hires him as a custodian #for his mortuary bc hes a vampire (an assassin bug vampire) and uses the mortuary to dispose of the bodies #also volo is still immortal #im sure nothing uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh happens

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albertbreasker · 11 months

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One day when im not experiencing the horrors of chronic fatigue ill actually start writing my modern au vashwood fic and allow everyone the joy of reading about vash working at subway

#n.txt #its a whole thing even if its silly #sometimes you have to take whatever you can get when youre disabled to get your sense of agency back #<- is disabled not a clown #also wolfwood is a line cook #i originally had him as a mortuary assistant but that man would not go to any school #hes 100% a highschool dropout #hes absolutely garbage at his job but alks the best line cook ever #pls ask me about my aus

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morvantmortuary · 8 months

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morvant mortuary x the boy au -

the House

(prologue)

Even as you walked in to an empty house, alone, it still somehow felt like you were intruding.

If you felt a prickle down the back of your neck, or a sudden chill, you only attributed it to the stillness of the House compared to the summer breeze outside.

It was almost too still. Like the House had breath to hold.

Like - in an insane way - it was hoping you liked it as much as you were secretly wishing to.

You didn’t hear the front door close behind you — the damning click of the lock was oddly soft, given how heavy the dark wood looked.

As ominous as the House looked on the outside, it was huge on the inside. If it hadn’t been for the vaguely dusty (but miraculously not moth-eaten), thick, woven floor rugs, you felt like your footsteps would have echoed through the room.

For reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you were thankful they couldn’t.

You walked towards one of the floor to ceiling windows, hidden behind rich outer curtains — a deep wine-colored satin, of all things — with a once-cream cotton underneath, there to muffle the light (and afternoon heat) but not douse it entirely.

Curiously, they weren’t as dusty as you expected, especially not near the edges. You could imagine the people who lived here once, pulling them aside to sneak looks at the drive, at the clients coming up the path. It wouldn’t be to spy on any neighbors; the nearest residents were the ones buried in the cemetery at the edge of the property. The nearest living ones were back towards the edge of town, as if people were terrified of building their houses any closer to this one.

Well. At least it meant the services you held here would be uninterrupted by outside noise. You’d hoped the more cheerful Cajun wakes would add some lightness to the place, but even that seemed like a tall order in such a huge room.

You pulled the curtains wide apart at last, letting what little dwindling afternoon sun there was into the House for the first time in how many years.

What you assumed was the clientele parlor was a somber kind of beautiful, all antique furniture in dark wood clustered comfortingly around a massive fireplace - which surprised you, given how far south you were. But if the House was really as old as the listing said, it could’ve been built at a time where winters were still cold enough to be bitter down here. You imagined you wouldn’t need it, especially nowadays, with every summer the warmest on record. But maybe you could do something kind of Pinterest-y with it. Arrange a spray of flowers in place of flames, or a collection of glass orbs. Maybe even candles, just to be tongue-in-cheek.

Your gaze wandered higher towards the shadowy ceiling, up the once tasteful, now chipped off-white paint on the chimney - someone’s attempt to brighten architecture that couldn’t help but loom - and felt like it tripped over the dark wood frame hung over the dusty, similarly mute-painted mantle.

Instinctively, you stepped backwards when you realized that what was in the frame was looking right back at you.

It was a moderately sized portrait, a carefully arranged photograph in place of the oils of the old days. Not huge, but still dominating the space. You were kind of surprised it hadn’t caught your eye as soon as you’d walked in. You turned, looking over your shoulder at the front door and back again to chart the distance — and sure enough, yes, it was a straight line from the front door’s line of sight to this. Maybe it was the lighting? You searched the room, locating two subtle floor lamps next to the couch and the loveseat, but that wouldn’t have put the light in the right place for that.

You looked back to the portrait again, and this time noticed the two cobweb-covered, small-ish candelabras at either end of the mantle, the candles in them melted so low they might as well have not been there at all. Ah. Okay, so they weren’t going for anything subtle, here. You supposed, with the rest of the curtains open and the power actually on, it wouldn’t seem as recessed into shadow as it did now. With the candelabras lit, it would’ve commanded the room.

Four figures looked down on you from their honored place — you realized someone likely hung the portrait that high just so visitors could feel looked down on by the homeowners, and know instinctually where they stood.

Comforting, you thought derisively, given how many people would’ve come in here on the worst day of their lives. It spoke volumes towards the sensibilities of its subjects, that’s for damn sure.

And yet, if you squinted, you could still see the faintest outline around the frame where a larger one had hung there before, with another faint outline around that, like rings on a tree — and another faded blank spot just down and to the right, as if a matching portrait had been removed entirely. Clearly, this was a family used to having portraits of themselves front and center over the generations, even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t admit they maybe weren’t as grand as they used to be.

The people staring back at you were eerily lovely, in a distant, haughty way. There were two adults; the most commanding was a man in what looked like a very well-tailored suit, seated in the center of the frame in a chair of dark, glossy wood — clearly considering himself a patriarch. His hair was a deep casket-wood brown, carefully slicked back and styled meticulously, with the ghost of a smile around his thin lips. His eyes were piercing, brown almost to the point of looking weirdly burgundy, in the low light. The way he seemed to be leaning slightly forward in the ornate chair, as if peering at the viewer, made something churn in your stomach. You couldn’t explain it, but he just… unsettled you. You would’ve hated to meet him in person, even the curve of his mouth seemed subtly cruel.

The woman standing to his right was beautiful, but coldly perfect in a way that reminded you of marble. Her eyes were an intense shade of green, but dark, reminiscent of the floor of a sunless forest. Her hair, long and shining and black, hung around her pale shoulders, almost a premature widow’s veil. Her mouth, with lips like a doll’s, was set into a careful neutral line… but it still made you think that with the slightest twitch of a muscle, it could twist with raw emotion. Her white dress was immaculate and gorgeously wrapped around her slender frame, too sterile and perfect to seem… maternal.

Because there were children, here. Teenagers, really. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen (you weren’t sure, kids under college age but above elementary all kind of blended together for you nowadays). They stood together to the left of their father, for these were very much their parents, you realized. A boy and a girl, spookily similar to one another from their faces to their posture (perfect, practiced), but still an amalgam of the two adults: he had the shape of the woman’s eyes and a likeness in his mouth, but she had inherited their father’s stare to balance out the green eyes and distinctive nose of their mother.

The girl, a younger mirror of her mother in matching white, was giving the camera a venomous look that spoke inescapably of familiarity. You could almost hear the photographer saying something she didn’t like right as they took the photo. If her father unsettled you, she unsettled you still more: there was a rage you recognized in her even in this singular, still moment, something familiar about the indignity endured while growing up thinking you were a teenage girl. You could only imagine encountering her in person, and were silently thankful you never would — not as she was captured in this instant, at least.

The boy, in a similarly expensive suit that echoed the older man’s, simply stood on her other side, keeping her between himself and their father’s chair. His eyes - or what you could see of them, almost hiding behind a long-ish flop of sleek brown bangs (definitely a reflection of the time) and round glasses — were the same deep color as his father’s, bordering almost on red. But there was something… softer, to them. A sadness, rather than anger or malice. He kept his face as placid as his mother’s, and you almost wondered if it was something he practiced, with just how still he seemed compared to his sister.

Where her hands were clasped in front of her skirt, you saw his at his sides. The longer you looked, the more you could see that the skin of both their knuckles was bone white. Even standing there must have been a struggle for them, somehow.

Your gaze lingered on the four of them longer than you could quite explain. The photograph was so vivid, it felt like they were standing in the room with you, and looking away would almost be… rude.

Well, rude to the wife and husband, maybe. In the case of the girl, it was like averting your eyes from a big cat tensed to pounce.

And from the boy, like you were looking away from someone… trapped, almost. Unable to meet their eyes because you were just as unable to help.

A feeling - a feathery light something, just on the edge of substance - crept down the back of your neck.

Like there were eyes on you, as well.

Shivering, you whipped around to scan the vast room, but saw only older photographs on the walls staring back at you, or important-looking busts of stone (or well-crafted plaster imitation) gazing back from shelves full of large leather(-looking?) bound books and other living room conversation pieces.

There was no one looking back at you now.

Or at least, no one you could see.

You looked down at the blueprint scan again before pulling your well-creased print copy of the listing out of your pocket, scanning it quickly even though you must’ve read the damn thing a thousand times by now. You didn’t know why; it wasn’t like you didn’t have it saved in triplicate on your phone and your laptop. But it had become a weird sort of talisman for you: a reminder that serendipity was real. That opportunity could land right in your lap, if you were brave enough to seize it and keep it.

Your eyes combed the print, and sure enough, you’d been right. Nowhere in the ad copy did it mention the house came furnished. Yet as you looked around, everything was perfectly staged.

Some of that could be the real estate agency, sure. But these were… nice things. Like, really nice. “Antique” in the good way, worth something substantial. Way outside of the budget you had been planning after you’d finished the cost of renovations, that was for damn sure.

What had happened that these people just… left everything here, untouched?

Had they chosen to not take anything, unwilling to bring any memories of this place wherever they went?

Or had they been chased out?

And if so… by what?

“…Bright side,” you muttered, trying not to spook yourself. “Keep looking on the bright side.”

You finally turned your back on the portrait to take in the rest of the room. Whoever cared for the House before must have done so with great attention to detail — you knelt next to the couch, examining the way that the carved wooden legs had seemed to resist the dust and rot that had crept into the edges of the room, despite the work of hired cleaners. The whole set looked salvageable; it would be a huge Get if you were able to keep them for your own clientele. It looked much more professional than having to dumpster dive and source semi-matching pieces from flea markets and internet ads.

As you stood up and looked around the parlor, you tried to picture yourself having consultations grouped around the little coffee table. Maybe with a vase of lilies in the center? Unless lilies were too expected. But at least some kind of flower, something so maybe the House didn’t feel quite as gloomy as the occasion that it was built for. Perhaps changing the curtains to something lighter still…

Your planning was interrupted by scratching from a room over.

Turning to follow the sound, you found yourself squinting at the border of the afternoon sunlight, where the room fell back into shadow.

There was a set of dark double doors discretely set into the carved wood paneling on the other side of the room, just far enough back that you’d missed them coming in the front door. Your first thought, upon seeing them, was relief that they already seemed to be ADA-compliant for wheelchair users. One more thing off your To-Do list.

Your second thought was wondering just what could be behind them.

Standing there, you stalled briefly, wondering if you should call in Bev from the porch for backup. But she’d been hard enough to get to the House itself, and getting her inside seemed to be an impossible errand.

Whatever stray critter had made a nest in there, you’d have to face alone.

You swallowed, reaching into your bag for your maglite - the big-ass, heavy flashlight that had been a gift from your well-meaning but slightly paranoid folks upon moving out on your own. Along with being bright enough to be seen from space (or so it felt to you) with a strobe mode for getting attention during emergencies, it was also hefty, made of cold metal where it wasn’t thick, slip-proof ergonomic rubber.

Meaning if your uninvited visitor had some troubling foam around their mouth, it was a decent way to… forcibly re-negotiate your personal bubble, if need be.

Your free hand rested on the curved doorknob, and for a panicked second, you wondered if there was any chance a gator had found a way up through rotten floorboards. The swamp was a stone’s throw from here, after all, and those suckers could get goddamn huge. You could just see the news story now, the local color piece that would get passed around the Internet as a quaint oddity in the right circles: ‘Abandoned Louisiana Funeral Home Infested by 20-Foot Gator, One Person Chomped at Scene.’

“It’s a possum,” you said firmly to yourself. “It’s just going to be a little old possum with a cute little face, that can’t get rabies because they’re the only marsupial in North America. You’ll just be an adult and call animal control. It’ll be fine.”

Talking sense to yourself would have worked if whatever was on the other side didn’t start scrabbling even faster, as if frantic at the mere sound of your voice.

You let go of the doorknob immediately, backing away even though it sounded like it was coming from the far side of the room. Briefly, you debated just calling animal control now and letting them open the door for you. Just in case.

But that wouldn’t be a very good way to ingratiate yourself with a town as small as this — you couldn’t see yourself being considered a reliable funeral director if you were also the person who called emergency services for, like, some baby raccoons. Or rats. Or baby rats.

(…To your credit, this sounded bigger than either of those things, but still.)

No, you were just going to have to be brave about this.

“Okay,” you called softly, talking to god knew what. You weren’t expecting them to talk back, but it still seemed only fair to give them some sort of warning. “I’m coming in now.”

You turned the knob slowly, giving the both of you some precious extra seconds to brace yourselves…

Before finally flinging open the righthand door.

The room was pitch black, and you swiped your flashlight quickly around, looking for the source of the noise before it could lunge or shriek or skitter away —

But only silence and stillness awaited you.

You frowned and stepped cautiously further inside, your footfall clicking slightly on the hardwood floor. You’d heard something. You knew you had.

But the only thing you could see were rows and rows of chairs, their backs standing straight together like neat little tombstones. Your light bounced off each of them in turn as you scanned the room, trying to figure out exactly how big it was and what on earth it could be for.

The bier at the front and center of the room was the last thing illuminated, as if revealing itself to you, and you rolled your eyes at yourself. Of course there was a viewing room in the House. (Well, there was room to quibble on terminology. There’d been a push to call it a ‘slumber room’ for a while, but you felt more comfortable just calling it what it was. No one ever slept in one, unless they were real tired or real weird.)

But still, how could there not be one whatever it was called, if this home had been hosting wakes and services almost since it was built? The sheer number of people who must have had their last day above ground in this room, laid right there in serene repose in their casket —

Well, hmm. Maybe not the best mental path to meander down right now, even for you.

You turned your light around the room more casually now, trying to picture it with working electricity and full of people. It was pretty decently sized, with the same dark paneling as the wall outside, and two tall windows muffled by heavy curtains on either side of the dais. The light in here would be decent, even actually pretty, if it was facing the direction you thought it was—

A bulky shape in the corner made you jump again, and you squeaked even as it reflected back to you from a lacquered black surface.

“…Piano,” you managed, choking a little both from fear and from the dust stirring around you. “Just a goddamn piano.”

Not a small one by any means, also old and apparently well-cared for in its day - like everything else you’d seen in the House so far. You treaded carefully towards that side of the room, checking the floor and between chair legs as you passed each row to make sure there were no hidden visitors after all. The last thing you needed was to end up in the hospital the next town over for a rabies shot series before you’d even bought the place. You couldn’t imagine that would contribute much to your image as a professional, either.

Then again, you thought as you inspected the piano up close, maybe you were being a little hard on these Greymoon folks. Maybe they weren’t as judgmental as you had already secretly decided they were. It would take you a little while to get to know them, just as they would need to get to know you. And besides, you really were going to be new at this. Surely they would be reasonably cut you some slack, especially if the place you were buying already seemed to have… kind of a reputation, if various faces and Bev’s behavior were anything to go by?

You mulled this over, checking the wood for any signs of wear or age, then examined the seat to make sure no critters had burrowed into the cushion for a nest. Weirdly, not only did the piano look almost polished, the seat itself seemed relatively free of dust or wear.

“Gonna have to ask Bev for that cleaning crew’s number,” you muttered, impressed. If parts of this place still looked this good after nineteen years unused, you wondered what miracles they could manage with weekly cleanings of a functioning home. Not to mention, now you’d be able to hire someone for live music at your services, instead of having to pipe everything in over speakers —

The way your light reflected off the piano keys gave you pause.

You couldn’t put your finger on why, at first, staring at the way they seemed to glow at you from the dark. The wooden fallboard being up wouldn’t have surprised you if it didn’t also seem to be… weirdly shiny, almost. Definitely moreso than the rest of the furniture in the room. But how, when this place had been empty for so long?

Your brain processed it before you did, and noted it almost passively: There’s no dust on any of it.

You ignored this voice, leaning forward to look again. There had to be dust. Even if there was a cleaning crew in here every couple of weeks, there should still be some traces of dust simply from sitting in a House this fucking old. Things didn’t just sit and not gather dust, especially when there was no one in here on a daily basis.

When no one had lived here for decades.

But the keys continued to glint back at you, looking as though they’d been touched that very morning. As though you’d even interrupted someone playing when you’d arrived.

You rolled your eyes at how determined you seemed to be to scare yourself, turning to head to the next room that needed examined, until the face made you stop dead in your tracks.

It was a little face, sitting on the music shelf. It was attached to a man made of cloth - a doll, almost.

You stepped closer, both vaguely unnerved and intrigued.

The little guy made of cloth had a cheerful expression, a roughly embroidered smile with wide eyes behind thick black glasses. Brown hair slightly obscured the glasses and the eyes, and the body seemed to be clothed in scrap fabrics from a tailor’s floor - it looked like actual material from a suit had been filched to make the pants, vest, dress shirt, and tie.

He looked so strange in the context of things, it was almost tragi-comical: a blithely smiling little face left in a room that had borne witness to so much sadness. Was he an abandoned toy, left here by some grieving child? A homemade grave offering that had somehow fallen out of the casket during transport? How many goodbyes had the little eyes made of thread seen play out in front of him?

As much as the logical part of you was alarmed by the sight of it here so unexpectedly, your sentimental side couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him, all alone in this big dark room by himself.

You reached out a hand without realizing it, set to pick him up, until you forced yourself to stop.

What were you doing? This wasn’t yours. You hadn’t bought this place, you had no right to any of the things in it.

But he just looked so lonely, you countered to yourself. What was he going to do anyway, just sit here forever, being politely ignored by the cleaning crew? What about if someone else bought it? Would he be thrown away, left to smile forever in some trash heap?

But you didn’t know where he’d been all this time. What if he had little gnats or fleas living inside him by now?

Nothing a little cleaning and a TLC couldn’t fix, though; you’d rescued a fair amount of grody thrift store finds in your mortuary school days. With some scrubbing and some new stitches, he’d be adorable. Like a little funerary mascot, in a way.

“Fuck, can I please stop being weird for once,” you whispered to yourself, your hand falling limply to your side. You had a job to do, goddamn it. This place could be your one chance at establishing a real future for yourself without going into more debt; you didn’t have time to be making a pro/con list about some abandoned scrap doll.

But your fingers flexed as you stared at him, still hesitating.

“…Look,” you said at last, talking to a thing that definitely could not consciously process speech. “If I think this place will work out, I’ll come get you after I sign the paperwork, okay? I’ll give you a good wash and put you somewhere less depressing.”

You started to walk away, then paused again, feeling like you had in the parlor with the family portrait.

Like something was watching you intently.

“…If I don’t buy the place,” you added, under your breath and over your shoulder. “You can always just, like, fall into my bag or something.” You shrugged. “My shitty apartment has sunlight, at least.”

For a moment, you lingered like you actually expected the little thing to answer you.

When you realized this, you hid your face in your palm, embarrassed on your own behalf. “Oh, fuck me, I’m losing my shit and I haven’t even started work yet,” you mumbled.

Rolling your shoulders, you hastily stalked back towards the doorway, wondering if there was a small gas leak in a nearby room somewhere that was making you imagine these things. You’d have to make sure you the whole place inspected top to bottom before you opened, that was for damn sure.

You were so caught up in your own thoughts, you forgot you hadn’t actually identified the source of the scratching sounds.

—

Later, when forced to consider the exact circumstances that would lead you to your fate, you would be forced to admit to yourself that you had kind of skimmed this first inspection of the rest of the House.

In your defense, you were mostly concerned with the parts that could prevent your future funeral home from functioning if they weren’t restorable. There was no point sinking so much of your savings into something that would just end up being a bottomless, money-hungry pit due to repair costs.

So yeah, when you went up the stairs to check things out, your mind was already on the embalming room in the basement. But you weren’t super worried about what was up there, anyway. There was no way you were going to use all of these rooms for just yourself.

They were mostly bedrooms, but none really seemed to speak to any sort of unifying aesthetic. One room with a balcony that overlooked the back property was furnished all in white, from the plush rug, to the vanity chair, to the bedspread, to the heavy old-fashioned canopy curtains that shaded the bed in its own pool of darkness. For reasons inexplicable to you - maybe it was the hush of the footsteps, or the natural chill of no sunlight - it reminded you of a sick person’s room. Like someone would only be in here if they were never coming out. It smelled, oddly, like dried roses — it was so strong, you caught yourself looking around, wondering if a vase had been left in here to putrefy in years of summer heat.

What you found instead was a surprising gash in the wall to the left of the bed, perilously close to the full-length window doors. It was horizontally long, and oddly thin, like whatever had been flung wasn’t actually that large. Still. You ran your fingers curiously over the violent notch, finding the plaster had given way almost entirely.

Whatever had caused this, for being as dimensionally small as it was, would have to have been thrown into the wall with immense force.

In a rage, for instance, or out of soul-crushing frustration.

“…I can patch that,” you muttered, trying to ignore the return of the creeping feeling down your neck. You nodded, rubbing the hole with your thumb thoughtfully as though it could possibly buff out. “Cover over that no problem. Hell, maybe I’ll make it a, um…” You frowned, trying to figure out what else a funeral home could possibly need. “A grieving room.” Some people down in these parts were twitchy about crying in front of others. You had plenty of family members who were a great example of the phenomenon.

But it also just felt like a room that was fit for crying in, for reasons yet again inexplicable.

You tried not to leave the room too quickly, the feeling of intruding in someone’s space once again matting itself like moss over your skin.

You missed the figure in the mirror watching you go.

Another bedroom was an odd, contrasting companion to the first: this one was painted a soft, rosy pink, but you could barely tell under all the papers taped hastily onto the walls, as if someone was desperately trying to cover it up. The room was a mess, but there was too much dust everywhere for it to feel like someone had only recently stepped out.

There was so much dust, actually, it felt like it clung to the soles of your shoes, causing you to pick your feet up with a shudder. Hadn’t Bev sworn they paid a cleaning crew to come through here regularly? Were they only obligated to clean up the first floor? You had sworn the white room hadn’t been this bad…

You blazed a trail through the dust, trying to figure out what set this room apart. There were clothes strewn over every surface, it seemed like, at least a few decades old. Though they were oddly mostly white, with some smatterings of green and black, a part of you felt like you were looking at a wardrobe spread from one of those high school dramas that came on when you were little. You remembered watching them with older girls in your family who were supposed to be babysitting you after school or on weekends, learning a bit too much too quick about how badly sex ed was failing teenagers from the soapy plots and love triangles. You remembered thinking the girls always looked pretty, but by the time you were old enough to wear any of the clothes you saw onscreen, they were out of date — plus, you had your own presentation issues to work out at the time.

Again, you wondered what had happened to make the previous occupants leave everything behind. It was like whatever girl had lived here had walked out of the room and never walked back in again.

You also wondered if you were an awful person for speculating how well some of it would sell on Depop. Vintage was in again, after all.

Walking closer to the walls, your eyes scanned the strange pages carefully, trying to figure out just what the wide sheets of yellowed paper were…

And realized you were looking at an anatomical drawing of the parts of a cat, as laid out during a dissection.

Backing up a step, and not for the first time in this House, your eyes combed the rest of the drawings. To your fascination and mild nausea, all of them seemed to be the same painstakingly detailed diagrams of local fauna - chipmunks, squirrels, doves, lizards - all in the same careful hand with precise linework. You couldn’t help but admire them a little; your own such diagrams in mortuary school had always looked far more clumsy, even when you’d been oh-so-careful with your scalpel.

These must have all taken hours, based on how skillfully they were done. Multiplying them by just how many were on the walls, you wondered if the girl who lived here had been dissecting little animals endlessly, from dawn until well after dusk.

Her bedspread was also pink and frilly, delicate, though you noticed rough edges where she’d been trying to pull the frills off with a seam-ripper. On the shelves surrounding her bed in its little nook, there were tons of large, ominous looking books, ranging from ones you recognized like Gray’s Anatomy to and classic novels to embalming texts that were considered antique and niche even in your school’s library.

And yet, on the shelf above the bed itself, you still saw some well-loved plushies, and a doll with mussed hair that spoke of countless adventures.

…And also, one taxidermy mouse that appeared to be wearing sequins and nipple pasties like a burlesque performer.

Whoever she had been, the contrast between her and her bedroom spoke volumes, even now.

Your mind returned to the angry-looking girl in the portrait downstairs, and you couldn’t help but nod to yourself. “Makes sense,” you whispered.

It also explained why the cleaning crew didn’t seem to frequent here as much. If the diagrams had been a surprise to you, who worked with dead people, you imagined they were deeply uncomfortable to people who stayed solely within the realm of the living.

There was a bathroom that adjoined this room, small and simple in its white porcelain tile. It was immaculate, too, as if the aforementioned crew paid extra attention to this room to make up for avoiding the girl’s room next door. You were a little relieved to see there weren’t as many traces of the previous residents here — any grooming products seemed to have been carefully cleared away, as if in anticipation of a visitor. Maybe some things were a little too intimate to leave staged, you guessed. Especially if the House is already a source of gossip.

As you turned to go, you paused, noting what appeared to be a thin white ring of something grainy around the edges of the room. You’d only just missed disturbing it with your foot as you’d walked in. Maybe it was pest poison? Something to keep curious critters away? You’d lived places where people fended off scorpions with lavender, after all. You handwaved it — it wasn’t your problem yet.

When you tried to open the door to the next bedroom, though, you found it locked from the inside.

You blinked, puzzled. That was… weird, even for here. You couldn’t imagine what would need to be locked in here that hadn’t required a lock on the girl’s room. Even though the cleaners didn’t go in there, they still obviously could.

So what was different here?

You walked back into the bathroom again - careful to avoid stepping in the coarse border, whatever it was - and tried the door that connected there as well. Again, it was also locked from the inside.

Letting go of the doorknob abruptly, an irrational part of you wondered if you were disturbing whoever was in there.

For a moment, you actually listened for impatient footsteps marching towards you.

…And then you remembered where you were, and how long it had been since anyone lived here, and shook your head.

“Bev has keys,” you said dismissively, leaving the bathroom once again. This also wasn’t your problem yet, after all.

But you still stepped over the ring of whatever the white stuff was.

The last bedroom on the floor was unlocked, and still had stickers on the door. You counted bands you recognized from the mid-eighties to early nineties, including a vintage Selena one placed with apparent love at an eye level slightly higher than yours.

Walking in, you didn’t think anything about the paint, because every available inch of the walls was covered in photographs.

It gave you pause for a minute, overwhelming you slightly just as the anatomical diagrams had in the last room. They were in every format available back then, some of them obviously altered, some of them clearly fading with time in their untouched state.

You walked closer, picking out a few of the faces instantly - you recognized the boy and girl from the family portrait downstairs, looking much more lively here than they did there. Their mother, whenever she appeared, seemed to command a stiffness in the room - everyone was clearly posing when she was around, locked in place rather than living a genuine moment.Their father was also in a few of the photos, always sitting or leaning off to the side, as if he was above most of what was happening in the room.

When you first saw his double in a photo, you wondered if maybe it was some kind of weird exposure trick… until you realized there was indeed another man almost identical to him. It wasn’t hard to tell them apart after a few photos: his hair long and soft around his face rather than slicked back, and only ever seemed to go back in a ponytail on a rare occasion. His face was similarly softer, with deeper laugh lines. Where Vincent’s face seemed to perpetually scowl or sneer, the other man’s seemed like it was impossible for him to do so.

Especially when he was looking at a beautiful woman with long, warm brown hair, seemingly always dressed in dark blouses and dresses that gave you serious Stevie Nicks vibes, with eyes that were so deep and galaxy-holding black that you thought you’d fall into them. She could’ve been a model, or someone’s muse, but she held herself so much less stiffly than the first woman. Like she actually liked being alive.

The photographer seemed to have almost as many photos of these two as he did of the twins from downstairs, and they were almost always gazing at one another, or in the midst of laughter, or caught in a dance. When they were actually looking at the camera, you couldn’t help but notice the way latent pride set at the corners of their mouths, or in the way their eyes crinkled in a smile.

You were so busy following the photos along the wall, you about tripped over something draped in a sheet leaned up against an empty desk.

You caught yourself before you crashed down onto the rug (still less dusty than the one in the girl’s room), and looked around for a moment before you remembered you were supposed to be up here alone.

With a tired sigh, you grabbed the sheet, pulling it carefully off what turned out to be a matching frame to the one downstairs —

Where a second family stood around the same chair as the people in the parlor.

The beautiful woman with the dark eyes was the one seated, her chin coyly leaning in her palm as she smiled knowingly at the camera. Behind her, the man with long hair was wearing a mirror of the first brother’s suit, although it seemed less harshly tailored in the way it hung on him. One of his hands rested adoringly on her shoulder, while the other clapped the shoulder of a teenage boy you hadn’t seen yet.

He was slightly older than the twins downstairs, with his mother’s dark hair and eyes, and a softness to his features you recognized as his father’s. Rather than being dressed in a matching suit, he was in a dark purple dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up around his elbows. Around his neck was a medallion of some sort that you couldn’t quite make out, but was seemingly simple in its metalwork.

His hand was lovingly placed on his mother’s other shoulder, completing the connection between the three.

You stared, tilting your head slightly to the side as if that would help you understand better.

It was understandable why this portrait wasn’t hung next to the other one downstairs: compared to this family, the first family looked like they were all on strings pulled taut to the point of snapping.

Despite having never met them, you were willing to bet the first man wasn’t about to be shown up by his brother’s family looking like they actually loved each other. He seemed like the type.

But something else caught your eye, too — a fourth figure, looming just beyond the family in a background doorway.

You leaned closer, frowning. Why was this one so hard to make out, if the lighting was the same in both pictures? It looked almost… opaque, somehow. Like it had been entirely engulfed in its own shadow. Like the features had been blurred away in the exposure.

If it had any features to begin with, something in you pointed out.

You stepped back, not super sure where this thought had come from and not thrilled by it, either.

Looking away (for some lighter distraction), your eyes roamed over the other photos again. It was easier to pick people out, now, and you could even spot some photos where the photographer had let himself be captured—

Until you also spotted shadowy figures in photos you hadn’t noticed before.

Some were looming behind the teens, usually whenever the photographer was also in the photo.

Some were in photos that you had originally thought were still-life, revealing themselves usually in a space where you wouldn’t expect them.

When you started seeing photos of the viewing room, set up for different services, you turned back towards the door. Whatever else was in here, you’d seen enough.

You shut the door behind you as if to keep something contained there.

A final room seemed to take up most of the space of the floor, big and airy, with high windows for catching the light outside. It was huge, behind two sliding wood doors, but when you looked inside, you didn’t bother cataloguing everything you saw on different work benches and tables and such.

If anything, you were almost trying to convince yourself it was empty.

A quick run up the second set of stairs led you to some linen closets, another bathroom that seemed… fine, mostly, save for some weird feeling you couldn’t put your finger on, and an attic hatch at the end of the hallway you couldn’t be fucking bothered with right now.

When you found the master bedroom, you opened it long enough to look around and make sure it actually had been cleaned.

“Cool,” you said to no one, thankful for a seemingly ordinary staged bedroom with no defining oddities. “I’ll sleep here, I guess.”

And with that, you nearly slammed the door, running all the way back down to the safety of the first floor.

—

After a quick peek through the screen door to make sure Bev hadn’t drove off and left you (she hadn’t), you walked to the family room back off the parlor, separated by another set of doors.

This had also clearly been cleaned and staged, throw blankets neatly folded over the couch and loveseat, pillows puffed probably just this morning in the arm chair.

Peeking into the kitchen, you got a similarly pleasant, ordinary vibe. While you could see there was more counter space here than most - probably to hold any food the families had catered for their wakes and such - it still seemed almost entirely separate from the rest of the House, the sun pleasant in the windows that looked out over the—

Cemetery. The next door cemetery.

Okay, so it wasn’t completely separate from the House. But at least it was like, comfortable. Chill. You could imagine yourself unwinding in here after a long day with some food, reading a book in the fading sunlight with a glass of wine. The porch just outside looked pleasant too, provided it didn’t have any looming hornets’ nests you couldn’t see yet.

Turning to the back of the kitchen, you saw one door that led outside to the enlarged pavement for transport — handy, you figured, especially when you came home with groceries.

Aside from all the bodies that needed to come and go, of course.

Immediately adjacent to that was another door. The door you’d likely been thinking about this whole time, behind which was the room that would make or break your entire trek to this tiny town near the bayou.

Just wanting to get it over with at this point - if it wasn’t for you, you were ready to get out of here - you near-marched over to it, twisting the knob and opening it to pure darkness all in one fluid movement.

The downstairs chill was palpable. More than palpable — it set your skin off in goosebumps instantly, as if to spite another growing crescendo of cicadas outside.

You were an adult. You were an adult about to make a serious financial decision. You could brave a basement in a decidedly spooky House.

You had to do this, for the good of yourself, and future you, and any kind of good life you ever hoped to have.

Taking a deep breath and flicking your maglite back on, you descended before you could think too much more about it.

—

In an inversion that would have been unexpected for anyone who wasn’t you, the prep room felt the most familiar to you of anywhere in the House. Even in the dark.

But as your light moved over the gleaming surfaces, a weird peace settled over you. This was what you knew. This was what you were here for.

You fought to suppress the thrill that passed through you as the stainless steel flashed back from the depths of the room, refusing to believe it wasn’t a trick of the gloom until you were right next to the equipment yourself.

It was perfect. It was all perfect.

For being unused for nineteen years, it looked like someone could have walked in yesterday and had everything in the room singing. There was a miraculous lack of rust or grime anywhere your light brushed, and while the room was a tad musty, there was none of the disastrous miasma of rot and ruin that you’d anticipated. Hell, even the tile floor gleamed back at you from the dark, and your footsteps echoed without the muffling of dust. Even the embalming machine, admittedly a bit old-fashioned now, looked perfectly clear where it sat like it was ready for a fresh batch of fluid.

You really, really needed to get the number for the real estate agency’s cleaning crew, you thought to yourself, sweeping your light around further and finding nary a cobweb in any of the corners. This was unreal. It was like someone had scrubbed it down sparkling just the other day, mop and all.

For the first time in your self-guided tour, you felt yourself grinning from ear to ear.

You could afford and own your own funeral home. You wouldn’t go into crazy debt trying to rehabilitate the place, and you could move out on your own to start your own business. Hell, at the asking price, you could afford more than just the Frigid embalming machine you’d been wanting. You might even be able to redo the whole viewing room just for the sake of aesthetics.

For the first time in what must have been ages - if ever - laughter bounced off the cold steel as your joy bubbled over, allowing yourself a giddy hop in place at your sheer goddamn good luck. When had anything ever worked out this well for you?

You didn’t see or feel the eyes watching you from behind the crack of the office door.

If you had, you might have noticed how they seemed to gaze without blinking for ages, wide with a perplexed sort of shock.

Or that they seemed to glow red, even in the perfect pitch black of the room.

(It's a little later than I would have liked to have posted, and originally I was planning on having the Realtor's reaction as part of the chapter, but you know what? I'm trying to convince myself that not everything I post has to be over 10k, for whatever weird made-up rule I've set for myself, so this is an exercise in that.

If you've read this far, I hope you have someone who looks at you like a stranger in a basement looks at the Reader!!)

#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #morvant mortuary #southern slasher oc #slasher oc #necromancer oc #slasher oc x reader #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #non-binary reader #genderqueer reader #mortician reader #the boy au #monsterkisser fics #rora isn't in this yet but it's part of the twins' birthday celebration <3 #animal death mention tw #cat death mention tw #ask to tag

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