#so I can FINALLY fucking publish that alphabet I’ve been promising ALL FUCKING WEEK

[daincrediblegg]

Really think it’s super understated exactly how much of the cult end of things is really Bev Keane’s idea and fault- and this is not to divert blame from John at all like the real heartbreaker is his complacency in all this but more on that later. Essay under the cut because jesus there is too much to sum up.

Like???? It’s not like he fuckin died the first time he encountered the angel I mean he got bit yeah but he took a shot of the blood and boom he was fine! And young again to boot! So obviously the original plan is to just pop back to crockett slip some blood in the communion wine and boom!!! Millie gets young again and cured of dementia so he gets a second chance to really have a life with her and their daughter and everything is fine!!!!

… but then he reaches critical mass (which I expect is because he was ingesting more of it than everyone else at too quick a rate). Bev and her little group are the only people who know the truth and watch him die and come back. Immediately she is quoting and using scripture to describe the changes that his body is going through- I mean he's basically Jesus!!! the Penultimate Biblical Miracle coming back from the dead!!- and therefore he chalks it up to “a matter of faith” and doesn't see a doctor (AKA HIS OWN SMART AS FUCK DAUGHTER WHICH HONESTLY HE SHOULD!!!!!) And so he goes with it!!! Until once again the thing he became got out of hand- and though he didn’t directly himself kill Joe but are certainly to blame for just fucking sucking at his head wound instead of… y’know… HELPING the guy bleeding out on the floor of his own goddamn home.

So then he’s done this this monsterous thing- which again is more a fault of his inaction than direct action- and doesn’t even know what to think of it to a point he’s numb to it (I mean jesus I cannot believe he felt no real guilt at all- sitting in a corner barely fucking lucid in a blood coma for hours until your deacon comes to find you because you're late for mass doesn’t scream no guilt no remorse to me it screams fucking mental blackout) but AGAIN!!! Here she comes. Speaking the words of his faith and calling what he went through a miracle from God and showing him bible passages detailing EXACTLY THE SHIT THAT HE’S GOING THROUGH so well if it’s in the scripture maybe it’s ok maybe it’s part of god’s plan for him sure he’ll bite. But note that even though he doesn't feel remorse for this thing he did anymore because Bev told him it's in the bible so it's ok that he's still on a pretty strict Sturge Blood diet- probably more likely than not to avoid another Joe Collie incident- so funny little contradiction but he's too wrapped up in this idea of new morality thanks to Bev he doesn't get it (and that it's more than likely a move to protect herself from getting Ate).

Then there’s Riley. Riley who he has such a great affection for who he thinks doesn’t deserve to die because even though he’s done terrible things he deserves a chance at redemption too- because like his savior he finds kinship with pariahs and knows they deserve love just as much if not more than everyone else. So *he* brings him back (I mean he wasn’t taking communion seeing as he wasn’t in a “state of grace” and didn’t believe anymore- so it’s safe to assume he made the decision through the blood lust to save him), and he has “The Meeting” and half of it is parroting the shit that Bev revealed to HIM about this condition that they now both share because really they’ve been on the level with each other since the beginning- but there’s another half that’s desperately attempting to show him that it’s worth living- even though he’s done awful things and will now inevitably do it again because it’s now a compulsion that neither of them can control. But he doesn’t want to chain Riley to him he’s more compassionate knows better than that. He’s explained all he can and sends him out with hope!!! He’s feeling good about the new covenant and the shift of morality he’s facing and he has Riley as an apostle to help tell that good news.

But then the sunrise comes. And he can feel it when he dies. HE feels it. Like god might feel every death and he can barely handle the ONE death of his old altar boy- his friend. And he doesn’t have more than a few hours to mourn before IN COMES BEV!!!! Again!!! And guess what. She was unfortunately *right*. Not about Riley himself he was worthy and given a gift as a result but right that he shouldn’t have just set him out into the world so recklessly not 100% knowing what he might do- that he might “spit it out”. And then she says “who knows who he talked to”- and suddenly the dynamic shifts. Small town news spreads. What if he tells someone who tells someone who tells MILLIE? Or Sarah? And Bev says “lets ‘share the miracle’ and ‘make easter vigil a night of baptism’”. And you know what? He didn’t listen the last time. He’s an adult and can admit when he was wrong. So he goes with it. Because he was wrong and because he can’t have another fuck up with someone he loves (let alone the LOVE of his LIFE who he is DOING THIS FOR in the FIRST PLACE). So most of the plan he hands over the reigns to Bev. And it’s short sighted as fuck but you gotta remember this plan goes into effect literally THE DAY OF so it’s all haphazard and a rushed effort and he’s rushing and bev and sturge and wade are rushing to make sure 1) no one can leave the island and die like Riley 2) so they can still attempt to have a meeting about the whole vampirism thing I mean he managed to handle riley pretty well and he didn’t fuck up and kill somebody like HE did!!! He managed to teach him some level of control!!!! So surely he can handle this!!!

BUT IN HIS SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS!!!! In his complacency with Bev’s plan guess what!!!! All fucking hell breaks loose!!!! THE SHIT HITS THE FAN!!!! Of course it didn’t go to plan because it was simply too much all at once and he could barely process anything else that happened before it there just wasn’t time because he just doesn’t want anyone else to die so of course he went with it!!!! And he only starts to realize he fucked up when the chaos is so bad that Millie- *his* MILLIE fucking SHOOTS him!!

And what did Bev gain from the shit hitting the fan??? A platform. At last. A place of leadership where she gets to decide who lives and who dies and who’s a sinner and who a saint. She gets to play god to a flock of wolves and that shit is Dangerous. And it’s not until he sees it that he finally snaps out of it and realized he got this all wrong and that what she was doing was wrong and that what she was leading him on with was *wrong* and that moment of clarity brings him back to his roots long enough to reconcile with his former lover tell his daughter the truth he's been hiding for years and try to be a real father to her in his final hours and finally attempt to be the shepherd he used to be that he always *was* to the broken people that Bev would so easily cast aside because her idea of love from God is very different from his. And at least he knows that before the end and ends up seeking forgiveness from the one person who actually mattered that he needed reassurance and guidance and forgiveness from all along but couldn’t have had the whole goddamn time.

#yeah I’ve been thinking about this a normal ammount #midnight mass #father paul #john pruitt #bev keane #mildred gunning #riley flynn #joe collie #sarah gunning #sturge #meta #lmao I’ve been writing this for an hour it’s almost 6 am I need to sleep #there’s probably an essay in me about millie too but it’s too late bros I need to sleep #so I can FINALLY fucking publish that alphabet I’ve been promising ALL FUCKING WEEK #but this wouldn't leave my head it's such a fucking symbiotic relationship and not the haha fun venom kind #like don't get me started on how the precident for this is set because of the whole settlement rec center money laundering thing #like she's such a leech!!!! and he lets her do it to him even when he has his mind back!!!! THE TRAGEDY!!!!! #had to plug this out tho ok it's 6 am night night fuckos

[shiro-0197]

God no I'm sorry 😭😭😭 the way Tumblr eats all my drafts, and now your replies. (Someday I'm gonna eat Tumblr grrrr) that must've been so frustrating tho, I'm sorry love.

someday we could go to a country with Highlands together. It'll be super cold and nice. And the views would be really really pretty too!! WE COULD EVEN BE AMONGST THE CLOUDS >//< aww yes I hope you'll be able to try them soon in the future!! I died and had to stay in bed for an hour, (because my spice tolerance is nonexistent <3) but yeah I'm better now! Name is: "대박 ghost pepper noodles" the Korean word 대박 literally translates to "awesome" but— 😭😭

oh I see!! I hope school goes well, it's good that you're excused for a part of the day :D and aww I understand. Replying can be lengthy sometimes, so please please only do it when you're free and comfortable >:(( we're in no rush, after all :D

I was studying earlier too. and I texted my principal about the exams ( because apparently none of my teachers know anything about it, and I was so frustrated with everyone being so clueless ) she just replied with a : "hi Ariana, will let you know on Friday" like excuse me, ma'am. GRRRRR >:( STOP BEING CLUELESS.

awww that's okay!! I'm sure those prep slides were really pretty too :D aww that's sweet of you. some of my online friends sometimes sit in on my Leo events (if it's open to everyone) and it's pretty fun when they do (once, one of them had to talk for like, an activity and my club mates were like "SHE HAS AN ACCENT??". It was hilarious hehe) zoom is great for that reason, and only that. they're just ready-made slides tbh, I use canva :D

Shiro, love, you won't disappoint anyone, I promise you that. I'm sure your mom is more proud than you know, and from the way you talk about her, I can tell that she truly adores you. tho I also understand your worries. If you want to rant or anything, you know I'm here. And I'll just continuously reassure you of how amazing you are :)

that's my boy 🥺🥺 grr, you're so feisty, please imagine me holding a "you go, Shiro" sign everytime you tell someone to fuck themselves :D Laurent is indeed amazing. He's my favourite character for that exact reason >//< there's another character, from a book I read, just like that. His name was uhh, Kieran. And he knew so many different languages, and was just in general; super smart. I remember being so in love with him when I first read it (The title of the book is "genius")

HAHA. ikr. They're all hot, and most importantly; smart. nevermind, when I meet you someday we can cry over them together 😭🤚 pffft no offense, but being evil is hot sometimes 😾 (I mean, Kieran was evil. So's Moriarty :] and I am: a simp for them all)

aww bae that's okay 🥺🥺 your feelings are valid, and it's not wrong to express them whenever you feel like it. Grrr if I ever see your dad, he might be missing a limb >:( sorry, that was violent, but I get especially mad if anyone upsets someone i love )

exactly?? It's been a year?? Where's that blink meme where someone blinks and it's suddenly 2021. Oooh that sounds really nice!! Adding it on my list of things to try in March >.< Honey is really delicious. especially all those desserts which have a lot of them.

glad I made you laugh >////< grr my sense of humour is just so weird tho, so I'm glad you aren't freaked out by it.

KAJDKSJSKS SIR WAIT. There was an explanation for that u but I guess it got cut off in my notes 😾😾 IT WAS MEANT TO BE A Ü (smiley) but I was using my computer and I couldn't add the two dots above, so I typed "imagine the eyes" (but apparently that part got cut off and now it just looks like a random alphabet SKJSKSK IM SORRY 😭😭😭

I understand, the lack of opportunities can really get on one's nerves. But oh yes, Japan and Norway are beautiful countries. Apart from Japan, I've been really into Korea and Switzerland. The Alps 😻

grrr y'all have tough exteriors. But it's so rewarding when you finally get them down, tho I think, you guys have tons of other layers to yourselves. I guess that's just the charm, I find it endearing, because it just means there's a lot more than meets the eye :)

MY FRIEND MAKES FUN OF ME FOR LIKING PINK. HE TEASES ME MERCILESSLY SKSJSKSK (so I published a poem line in the school magazine to get back at him for it, because I'm petty like that)

that's so funny >.< There are two girls, and a girl and a guy, who share the exact same names in my class, and it's so funny because they're opposites of each other xD

he really is precious. The best leader, I would literally die for him, he's wonderful. yeah the book actually started out different, with them just being best friends. Best plot twist 😭😭 AWW

NOOO I'm sure it's cute, in it own way? :P tho that meme tho. LDJCJSBSKS. Don't worry, hehe, the character may be .... Unpleasant to look at?? , but you're not the least bit at all :)

how was your day btw? My day sucked ass and was literally the worst day in the history of uh, days. Yeah. sad. tomorrow will be better.

God, you're so adorable wtf. Marry me rn. AKDJSKSJS I didn't find it lame at all, (tho were you flustered? Because that was cute as hell xD) I love you too 🥺🥺

—☃️

It's okay, it's not your fault. We could storm the Tumblr building together or something..:3

Oh I really hope we can!!! I love cold weather. You can wear sweaters and hoodies and all that💞 and you have an excuse to cancel everything and cuddle up with a blanket or someone else😝

Im so glad you're better now!! Spice sickness or whatever is the worst😔 WBHDJWKX that's hilarious I hope I come across those soon! Let's see who wins😼

Yeah, about that, they started making us do after-class activities, which now leaves less time for the stuff I have to do .... which sucks . But I'm managing, I think, so it's cool xD yeah, I've always been kind of cautious about the timing, it's nice to have a little freedom now, thank you so much <3

Wow😭😭 our teachers usually have the dates set two weeks before the exams, we always recieve a message. Though I've been there, where the teacher have no clue, it's so annoying😭😭

Ohh, that's so cool! I hope I will be able to visit one someday. Though I dont think itll be too soon, but I'm looking forward to when I can😝 also that's funny, whenever I speak people go "he doesnt have an accent???" Even though I so obviously do. They just have no idea 😭

Okay..... that's the best words of encouragement I've ever received, I'm so touched- thank you🥺💘

Bwahah, that's gonna make my day every time 😭 Yeah, hes my favorite too!! He seems like a simple himbo at first, but the more we see of him the better he gets. (That sounds cool!!! I'm gonna check it out when I can!)

Thank you🥺 also, dont worry, I wouldn't mind that. I'd love that, actually, wanna go rip off guys arms together?

MZJXKGJJAKXKAKX IT'S ALRIGHT HAHAH, ITS REALLY FUNNY SO DONT WORRY😭😭

JSNFNMWMDMS IM GONNA MAKE FUN OF HIM FOR MAKING FUN OF YOU how could he . I will eat his eyeballs. Also I 100% agree with the poem and I'm glad you posted it. I hope some people thought about it.

Wow😭😭 its honestly so funny, because they're all so different and yet their names fit them so well either way.

Also, wow I feel so bad it's been almost a week since I responded😐 I'm really sorry. I've been writing snips of this message any time I could and yet it still took me days xD I'm getting free, though, so I'll try to respond faster now. I missed talking to you so much😭 thank you for your patience🤍🤍🤍

How've you been? I'm pretty good, tired but feeling good because I can finally respond😩 I hope your day went well. Love you!♡

#Ari💕 #ive been meaning to send you short messages but the internet said no💔😐

[forestwater87]

Gwenvid Week Day 5

Day 5: Community Appreciation / Favorite AU

To celebrate the amazing Gwenvid community, I took the really fascinating Ghoul AU that @color-theorist (or @color-theorist-art ) created, which has no explicit Gwenvid as of yet, and then somehow accidentally created several pages of momgwen with very little Gwenvid in it. Oops. And probably fucked up the lore. Double oops. Oh well, I hope y’all have fun anyway! :)

It wasn’t anything like Buffy, was the first thing Gwen realized about fighting monsters.

For one thing, it was a lot less fighting -- she wasn’t exactly built for dealing out pain -- and a lot more researching. And not in weathered tomes blanketed with a thick layer of dust with crinkled pages full of secrets. Sure, there was some of that, but ghouls in particular seemed to be a relatively new phenomenon, or were just so uninteresting to the ancients that they didn’t bother writing about them. Mostly it involved trawling internet forums and trying to arrange interviews with the leads who seemed the most promising. Which in itself required a great deal of convincing paranoid heroin addicts that she was neither a ghoul intent on devouring their flesh or a member of the government who would haul them off to Super Guantanamo. All that work, only to have her work dismissed by every publisher she’d recommended it to, and a pointed recommendation by the History Department chair that it would be best for her career at Sleepy Peak Community College if she found another subject to focus her studies on.

“‘It’s really all about the branding,’” she mimicked quietly, shifting her weight in a futile attempt to get comfortable. ”’Just call it “folklore.”’ That’s academically dis-fucking-honest, Mr. Bishop.” Gwen grabbed her bag from where it was dangling off the arm of a marble angel and hauled out a binder and a flashlight. “I’m the only professor under thirty who hasn’t gotten the fuck out of here after three months, Mr. Bishop. This shitty school wouldn’t even have a goddamn newspaper if it wasn’t for me, Mr. Bishop. Fuck, this is cold,” she muttered, glaring down at the polished granite with distaste before sliding down onto the grass, leaning back against the tombstone she’d just climbed off of. “I’m doing important work, here.”

Gwen opened the binder, eyeing the hand-drawn map of the Long Sleep Cemetery and tracing the scraggly line of bright red X’s that marked out fourteen ravaged graves, then flipping to a map of the entire city, which was covered in yellow dates around the church, hospital, and veterinary clinic. She glanced from these to the mausoleum she was staking out, like the ghoul would just appear there if she looked hard enough.

“Come on, asshole,” she said, flopping back against the tombstone and turning off the flashlight. “I know I did this right, so just show up where you’re supposed to.”

It was crazy, she knew all that. Knew her meticulous tracking of local robberies and vandalism looked from the outside like the scribblings of a madwoman fraying her last nerve. It was why she took so much care in repackaging every piece of evidence into a series of respectable, ponderous, academic -- boring, if she was being perfectly honest with herself -- books.

A series of respectable, academic, unpublished books.

Because this was all crazy. Believing in undead monsters that needed to consume the living (or recently-dead) was crazy. Objectively, she was probably rather crazy.

The thing was, she was right.

She just had to find a way to prove it.

“You’re not good at this, are you?”

Gwen jumped at the voice and whipped around, brandishing her flashlight in one hand and her binder in the other -- before she overbalanced and had to drop both, catching herself before she fell flat on her back in the dew-drenched grass. “Whaatherfucke --”

So. Not much like Buffy at all.

Her attacker was thin, stretched out and lanky like a very short Slenderman. As he stepped around the gravestone and moved towards her, his eyes reflected the light from a nearby streetlamp like a cat’s, gleaming out from underneath the dark hoodie that obscured most of his features.

Human eyes don’t glow like that.

She snatched up her flashlight and flicked it back on; she tried not to shine it in his face, but he flinched away from it anyway, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands into his sweatshirt pocket. The light revealed a narrow brown face that was sickly yellow underneath the eyes and nearly gray in the hollows of his cheekbones. “Kids aren’t supposed to be out after ten pm,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She took in the teenager’s slouchy grace, the way he walked as though every movement was both naturally easy and indescribably exhausting.

“No one’s supposed to be in the graveyard after it closes, but that didn’t stop you,” he replied, slumping against the marble angel and watching her with those unnerving catlike eyes.

She’d found her ghoul.

Gwen drew herself up, standing so she could look down at him. “I have permission,” she lied. “I’m conducting research on the series of grave-robbings in the last few wee --”

“My dad’s a cop with really shitty password protection. You don’t have permission for shit.” He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. “You’re one of those nuts who wants to hunt vampires.”

“Ghouls aren’t vampires,” she corrected before she could stop herself, the pedantic need to be right temporarily overpowering her common sense. “Blood is evidently not an essential component of their diet, and -- you know what, this is a stupid conversation and I’m not having it.” She settled back against her tombstone and turned her gaze to the mausoleum her ghoul was supposed to be raiding instead of making snide comments about her profession. “Go get your dead person snack.”

The kid jolted, and she watched his look of horror out of the corner of her eye. “How the fuck --” He shook his head, a shock of floppy black hair escaping the hoodie and falling over one of his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She pulled her binder back into her lap with a small grunt of effort. Christ, this thing was getting heavy. “Whoever’s been raiding the cemetery’s been really smart about it,” she said, refusing to look up at him. “Always hits it just as the attention is beginning to die down -- pardon the pun -- and always far enough from the others that the area is totally isolated. But they do it without making it look like a pattern.” She glanced up at him, a little gratified to see him leaning over her map curiously. So this was what validation felt like! “I’d been wondering how they knew when to sneak back in here, but . . . having a dad in the police force might do it, if the cop was dumb enough.” She turned to another section of her notes, an alphabetical list of everyone in the SPPD. “I knew I should’ve paid more attention to their families,” she mumbled, flipping through the officers. “Which of you is the idiot with an undead son?”

“Hey, fuck you!” he snapped, stepping away from the binder and back to the marble angel. “You can’t just go around calling people monsters because they’re wandering around a graveyard. Hell, that makes you sound just as much like one of those things as me.”

Gwen ticked off on her fingers without looking up from the police directory: “Alarmingly thin, glowing eyes, a bit of a nasty undead pallor -- bet people are constantly asking if you’re sick --”

“Again, fuck you.”

“-- and a tricky-but-predictable pattern of raiding cemeteries, morgues, and . . . have you been eating dead animals?” She glanced up at him then with a frown. “I didn’t know ghouls could do that.”

“They can’t,” he muttered, kicking at the grass, “but it was worth a shot.”

She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. This was her first legitimate monster sighting! She wasn’t crazy! “It’s all circumstantial, of course. You never really know if you’ve got a ghoul or just someone with, like, lupus. But the cat-eye thing was a big tip off. Also, you know, hanging out in the cemetery when no one in their right minds would go anywhere near the place.” He looked at her for a long moment, and she cringed. “Yes, fine, I heard it.”

“So you’re like an expert in useless information no one gives a shit about, huh?”

She thought about getting offended, but he was kind of right. At least, a boatload of publishers would agree with him. “Yeah . . .”

He looked back over at the mausoleum thoughtfully, and she couldn’t help but be curious. “Does it taste good when it’s been dead for a while?” she asked. She was sorely tempted to grab her pencil and notebook, but that might scare the kid off. “I’ve read it’s not supposed to be as . . .” Nutritious just felt gross, in this context, so she let the sentence trail off.

He shrugged. “A little bland, but I kinda like it better. Got this weird kind of . . . cheesy aftertaste? Not like I’ve had cheese since I was a kid, but like that really smelly stuff rich people put on everything.”

“That’s pretty disgusting.” She couldn’t quite keep the note of appreciation out of her voice. (She’d always been a sucker for gory movies.) “So what’s with the change?”

“What’re you talking about?”

That was in her other binder. Gwen rustled through her backpack until she found the right one and opened it up to a spread of newspaper clippings. “All the killings. Two this week, three in the last two months. I haven’t put a map together yet --” and god, she already felt tired thinking about it, “-- but they don’t seem to have any sort of pattern. I figure it can’t be you because, well, all my research suggests that if you were eating fresh kills you’d be a lot more . . .” She gestured vaguely at him. “Alive-looking.”

He bared his teeth, and if they were sharper-looking than normal she was almost positive that was just her imagination. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”

She didn’t, but that was beside the point. “So do you know who’s doing this?” she asked, scrambling to her knees and finally giving in to the urge to grab her pen. “Can you tell me? I interned as a police sketch artist, so even if you just describe them I bet I could --”

“You expect me to narc?”

“They’re killing people!”

“Eh, I --”

“Max?”

They were both blinded; squinting past the flashlight, Gwen could barely make out a male figure. The newcomer lowered the light, stepping forward. His eyebrows drew together as he took in the scene: a kid lounging on a tombstone, having a conversation with a woman kneeling in the damp grass surrounded by open books and binders. “What are you doing out here? You know it’s past curfew!”

The ghoul -- Max, it seemed -- rolled his eyes and sighed. “It’s not like you’re gonna arrest me. I just saw this weird lady sneaking into the graveyard and wanted to see what she was doing.”

As surreptitiously as she could, Gwen glanced down at the list of police officers in her lap, comparing the smiling photos to the grim-faced man shaking his head at Max. Officer David E. Greenwood. On the force for about ten years. According to some gossip she’d scribbled in the margin, he’d turned down the opportunity to become a detective a few years ago, holding onto his lower-paying desk job for the sake of his --

His son.

“Miss?” Greenwood waved the flashlight, dragging her attention back to the conversation. “I’m going to need to ask you to leave the --”

“Yeah, fine,” she grumbled, shoving her work back into her bag. “You know, I should get a special pass or something for doing research,” she said, more to herself than to the officer.

He cocked his head to the side, looking for all the world like a big puppy wearing a police badge. “Well, I’m afraid we can’t do anything like that, but I’d be very interested in learning what you’re researching!” He frowned. “Actually, you look familiar . . .”

“I used to be the department intern,” she said with a shrug. She was a little older than Greenwood, so it wasn’t like he’d have been working there to remember --

“Oh, Gwen! Yes, of course I’ve heard all about you!” He took a step forward, like he was about to wrap her up in a hug, before his smile dimmed a bit and he coughed lightly into his fist. “Mr. Campbell speaks very highly of you! He’s been saying he wishes more people would be willing to work for no money, but I’m sure he just meant that you did such a fantastic job! You work at the college now, right? You know, I’ve been meaning to take some classes but I just haven’t had the time --”

“Dad,” Max interrupted, “it’s cold as fuck. Can we just go?”

“Right! Sorry, Max.” He shot his son -- though they really looked nothing alike -- an apologetic grin before turning the smile toward her. “If you’ll just follow me, ma’am. Goodness, isn’t it lovely out here at night? Sometimes I wish . . .”

When they were outside, Max broke through Greenwood’s stream of pleasantries. “Hey, can I talk to her for a second before we go?” When they both shot him a confused, surprised look, he shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, hunching his shoulders defensively. “What? We were in the middle of a conversation.”

Greenwood hummed thoughtfully, glancing between the two of them. “Well, I suppose there’s no harm. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Gwen.” He shook her hand enthusiastically.

“You too, officer.”

“Please, call me David!” He winked, then strolled along the outer cemetery wall until he was well out of earshot, his hands clasped behind his back like a military at-ease. Max scuffed his shoe along the asphalt; Gwen had dealt with enough students to know not to push him, so she watched the clouds slide like molasses along the sky and waited.

“You know a lot about this stuff, huh? Like, it’s useless, but you still have a lot of research.” She nodded, watching curiosity wage war with misanthropy across his face. Finally he blurted out, “So can I read some of it sometime? I mean, it’s probably mostly bullshit, but . . .”

She’d given up on carrying copies of her books around with her, on the off chance that someone might be interested if it came up in conversation. “I’m usually on campus at noon,” she said. “Stop by my office. I’ve got a couple things you could borrow.” She fought to keep the eagerness out of her voice, but the thought of her self-bound books actually being read by someone was way too exciting.

Even if that someone was a moody undead kid with the most improbable home life she’d ever heard of.

He nodded, a little awkwardly, and started to walk away before she put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you gonna be all right without eating?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t the first time.”

Gwen hesitated. It could get so so fired, but . . . “Listen, I work some nights at the hospital morgue. Just like, processing bodies and stuff.”

“I thought you were a professor.”

She sighed. “Adjunct,” she admitted. “Only part time. Anyway, I can’t always . . . like obviously we’d have to be really careful, and there’s no real good way to . . . but if there’s actual murderous ghouls around you probably shouldn’t be so hungry they’ll kick your ass or something --”

“How did you make offering help come out so insulting?” Max sounded impressed. He glanced over his shoulder at David, then raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “We’ll work something out, yeah. Beats digging up coffins all night.”

David meandered back in their direction. “Would you like to be walked home, Miss Gwen? It’s not safe to be out alone at this time of night.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, sure.”

She knew how dangerous it was. Had written hundreds of pages on the subject, in fact.

But it was nice, for the first time in her life, to feel like she’d actually accomplished something useful.

“Dad wants you to come over for dinner again.”

Gwen jumped; Max had an infuriating tendency to just appear in doorways without a sound, usually when she was deep in concentration doing something else. She thought maybe he enjoyed scaring her. “I have class tonight,” she said, taking the book he held out, “but tell him thanks.”

Max slouched into the chair on the other side of her desk, watching her dig through her books for the next one in the series. Over the past few weeks he’d been going through her research, and while his habit of writing corrections or commentary in the margins -- with pen, no less! -- was unbelievably annoying, she was making more progress in two months than she had in years. “Second time this week,” he observed.

It took her a second to realize what he was saying. “Huh? Oh, yeah, I appreciate it. Seriously, make sure you thank him for me.” Dinners with Max and David were a little awkward, mostly because only David seemed to really want to be there, but it certainly beat microwave dinners in front of her computer.

“I think he likes you.”

She made a dismissive noise. “He likes everyone,” she said. In fact, she’d made it a personal goal to hear him say something unkind about somebody. It was unsuccessful so far, but she had faith. She handed him the next book, watching him turn it over in his hands appraisingly with something almost like nervousness. It was one thing to have someone read your life’s work -- it was quite another when the person reading your work was also literally the subject of it.

“So you’re gonna stop by after class, right?”

“I -- no?” Sure, sometimes Gwen did, if she’d forgotten to give Max something or if David’s texts had seemed especially plaintive; she got the sense that his life wasn’t as sunshine-and-rainbows as he tried to make it seem, and watching TV or sitting out on the porch after Max had disappeared into his room wasn’t much of a sacrifice. But it wasn’t a habit or anything. “Maybe I have shit to do.”

He snorted. “No you don’t.”

She didn’t, but she didn’t need to be reminded of the life she didn’t have by an obnoxious kid who literally had no life.

When she didn’t respond he stood up, tucking her book under his arm. “So I’ll tell Dad you’ll be by after class. And I’m gonna be at Neil’s tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“Ugh, don’t make me say it. It’s fucking gross.”

Gwen watched Max lope out of her office, wondering if he was aware that he’d just told her his father was lonely. And that it worried him.

“For fuck’s sake, just go out already!”

Her pen jerked a scraggly line across the paper, jagged and uneven like the sudden spike in her heart rate. “Why can’t you knock, you shitty excuse for a Halloween monster?” she growled, shoving her notebook aside and glaring up at him.

He set her book on her desk with surprising gentleness for someone who reportedly didn’t care about anything. “First, Dad is so goddamn annoying, and if I have to hear him talk about how ‘sweet that Miss Gwen is, don’t you think so, Max?’ one more time I’m gonna eat him. Second, it’d probably be easier to sneak me food if you were dating, since it’d be less weird for me to hang out with my stepmom.”

“I’m not going to ask David out so it’s easier for you to feed,” she said, bristling at “stepmom.”

“No, you’re gonna do it because you keep staring at him like a creep whenever you think he’s not looking. That’s third, by the way,” he continued, holding up three fingers. “The only thing more annoying than him being all moony and stupid is you being all moony and stupid.”

“That . . .” is not true was on the tip of her tongue, but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. The problem was, she’d gotten accustomed to spending more evenings a week at the Greenwoods’ house than her own, and had started to find it more comforting. Which didn’t mean that she was interested in David, of course, but she’d been . . . surprised, by him.

By his genuine interest in her, and his support of her research even though it clearly made him uneasy. (Which was fair; “hey I think those murders you’re investigating are undead monsters” was a pretty uncomfortable thing to talk about, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to listen.)

By how he remembered stupid little things, like her favorite foods, and how even when he was thoughtless and absent-minded it never seemed to piss her off the way it should.

By his horrible sense of humor and his worse taste in TV shows. By how his eyelashes were longer than hers, and framed his eyes so prettily. By the freckles she could only see when they were sitting thigh-to-thigh on the couch, or when he pulled her in for a goodnight hug. By --

Well, fuck.

“Everyone I know is a fucking idiot,” Max groaned, tugging her out of her heart-attack-inciting epiphany. He ran his hands through his hair -- glossy and sleek because he’d eaten last night; everything about him was glowing and lively compared to usual, making him look almost human -- and stood. “Don’t even bother getting me the next book. You can drop it off with Dad tonight.”

“But he didn’t invite me to dinn --” She cut herself off at the look of pure exasperation he gave her, one that implied he couldn’t even deign that with a response.

“Fucking idiots,” he muttered, slipping out of her office.

“Okay, I know I basically made this happen because you’re both too dumb to function, but I’m hating every second of this. I take it all back.”

David practically leapt out of Gwen’s chair, almost knocking her out of his lap and face-first into a concussion courtesy of the corner of her desk. “M-Max! What are you doing here?!”

She just sighed, adjusting her position so she wasn’t in danger of falling and brushing her hair out of her eyes. “He does this.”

“I’m a student, Dad. I belong here.” He held up the binder -- Gwen’s most recent book in the making -- with a sharp, sarcastic grin. He was looking a little gray and drawn, and she made a mental note to grab him some intestines or something that wouldn’t be missed at work that night. When he was looking sick like this, his inhumanness stood out in stark relief, like the crisp lines of his teeth that were too big and too pointy for his supposedly-human mouth.

“In high school! Why aren’t you in class?”

He shrugged. “Lunch break,” he said. Gwen and David exchanged a look, because neither of them knew if that was true. It’d been a while since either of them had been students, after all. Dropping the binder on Gwen’s desk, he retreated to the door like he was afraid to coming too close to them. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Um . . . lunch break,” David replied weakly, his face flushing.

Gwen picked up a stress ball and lightly tossed it at Max’s head. “Get out of here, you little shit.”

“I hate you both. See you at dinner,” he said casually, ducking out of the office and letting the door bang shut behind him.

David sighed, shaking his head. “Do you think he looks sick, Gwen? I’m worried he’s coming down with something.”

She winced. “Probably a 24-hour bug. Bet he’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said, ducking her face into the crook of his neck and kissing behind his ear. Sometimes she couldn’t fathom how someone who knew about ghouls could miss the fact that his own son was one.

But then again, David wasn’t an academic, and he certainly wasn’t trained in this kind of thing. And he had a tendency to ignore red flags when it came to people he cared about.

It was one of the things she loved most about him.

#campcamp #camp camp roosterteeth #gwenvidweek #gwenvidweek2018 #cc gwen #cc max #dadvid #momgwen #christ this is awful #and that ending is very half assed bc I got worn out #but uhhhh #sorry ct #you deserve better #but have this instead