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whereisten · 3 years

Text

Heal

A Kun fic that’s part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: Doctor Qian Kun is a young and successful doctor who works miracles. And you are no exception when you become his patient.

Pairing: Doctor! Kun x female reader

Genre: romance, angst, fantasy, horror

Word Count: 5.6k

Warnings: blood, manipulation

(A/N: Thank you guys so much for your support with our Halloween fics! Hope you enjoy the adventures of y/n and Doctor Kun!)

___

You were no stranger to visits to the Neo Hospital in your hometown. When you were a baby, you basically lived at the hospital. You were prone to colds and fevers. You always experienced body aches and fatigue. You were born with a chronic autoimmune disorder that left many doctors baffled. They were only able to provide you with medications to alleviate your pains temporarily. You were confined to stay at home, to be homeschooled by your parents, and make friends online. Your childhood was far from normal.

You were a college junior now and you’ve been strictly online. If it wasn’t for the Internet, you probably would’ve lost your mind by now.

You had contact with the outside world but not physical contact. It’s what you longed for the most.

You resented your family. Your older and younger siblings could go out whenever they pleased. How did they get so lucky? Why were you the only sibling that got the short end of the stick?

Everyone in your family always interacted with you carefully, using hand sanitizer and always washing their hands prior to helping you with something. They treated you like a fine, porcelain doll that had to be preserved. It was irritating on your best days and unbearable on your worst. You felt like an abomination sometimes.

However, throughout the years, you would rebel. You would run away from home when your parents eyes wandered for a moment. The farthest you’d get before getting caught was the park. You were lucky that you didn’t develop any harsh symptoms from those times you ran away. However, you would be punished for taking such risks. You’d get your phone and internet privileges taken away for a month every time.

Last week, you succeeded in your most ambitious escape yet: you made it to Target to buy the new Ariana Grande CD. You thought that the one trip to Target couldn’t hurt you. By no means was it crowded and no one got into your space.

Well, you were wrong to think that you’d be fine.

Now you came down with a fever and you’d been placed on bed rest at your all-too familiar Room 1196 on the eleventh floor of the hospital.

You resented your body. A lot of people could recover from a fever and carry on with their day-to-day lives but you? Not so much.

Your parents made a whole spectacle of getting you to be seen by the best doctors but these doctors couldn’t help you the way you’d hoped.

However, this time, you awoke the next morning after your intake and felt...nothing.

Like you never had a fever in the first place.

You spent the morning checking your social media. Your crush/online classmate Sicheng was on a weekend hiking trip with his friends. He was with a bunch of beautiful, healthy people in North Carolina. You were even more bummed to be in the hospital now.

You wondered what life would be like if you didn’t have your condition. Where could you have gone? Who would you be now?

You’ve always wanted to go to the beach by yourself. To the supermarket. Hell, across the street. You wanted to go somewhere. Anywhere. Without anyone coddling you and watching your every move.

You wished for freedom from the body you were born with. To find a new one, somehow.

Because you had no hope for your current body to change.

“Y/n? Can I come in?” A male voice was heard from the door.

“Sure.” You sat upright on the bed.

The person at the door entered and he was the prettiest healthcare provider you’d ever laid your eyes on. He had warm, brown eyes and a radiant smile. His dark blue hair was wavy.

Suddenly, you regretted not brushing your hair that morning.

He donned a lab coat with the hospital’s name on it. His name tag was in a lanyard: Dr. Qian Kun, MD, DOM, PharmD.

He looked very young...And to have all of those titles? Your head was spinning.

He frowned as he saw how confused you looked. “Are you alright?”

You nodded. “I am.”

He sat on the chair beside your bed. “It’s nice to meet you, y/n. I’m Dr. Qian Kun but you can call me Kun.”

You blinked a few times. “Are you really a doctor?”

He laughed, confused. “What?”

“You don’t seem that much older than me…”

He sighed. “I get that a lot. I’m twenty-four. I graduated early from university...Earned my titles...Now here I am.”

“That’s amazing. You are probably the youngest doctor ever.”

Kun shook his head. “Afraid not. Bala Ambati became a doctor at seventeen.”

You shook your head. “Still...You have three doctorates. That means triple the sleep deprivation. Hats off to you.”

Kun chuckled as he looked at your information in his clipboard. “Your vitals have improved a lot since yesterday.”

You looked down at your hands. “Yeah...That’s impossible…”

Kun shook his head, noting how down you looked. “It is possible, y/n.”

You met his gaze. “How?”

He smiled. “Are you familiar with oriental medicine?”

He sure was charming, you thought. You reminded yourself to answer his question. “No, I’m not.”

Kun got up from his seat. “Well, there are many different practices that a doctor of oriental medicine can utilize, like acupuncture, meditation, and herbal therapy...To restore harmony to the human body. I specialize in herbal therapy.”

“I see…”

“I have created an herbal mixture that has worked efficiently to get my patients back up on their feet.”

Incredulous still, you managed to say, “That’s great, Doctor.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“I mean, Kun.”

Kun resumed, “And I‘ve provided you with the herbal mixture and from the looks of it, the results have quickly taken effect.”

You were speechless. “That’s…”

“I know it’s hard to believe, y/n. But sometimes doctors fail to find other alternatives to help their patients. Which is why I’m glad I’m your primary physician now.”

“Wait, what about Doctor Morris?” Doctor Morris had been your primary physician since you were five years old.

“She’s retired. I’ve been taking on a couple of her patients now.”

“I see…”

Kun looked out your room’s window and smiled to himself. “You don’t trust me.”

“Don’t take it personally. I don’t trust any medical professional. No one has been able to understand my condition yet so…”

Kun replied, “You’ve been let down too many times.”

“Exactly. Doctors just can’t figure me out.”

He turned to you and grinned. “Allow me to prove you wrong, then.”

___

At the recommendation of Doctor Kun, you were assigned to stay in the hospital for the next few weeks to see how the herbal mixture would affect your body if you took it for a longer period of time.

Every passing day, you felt more alive. It was weird to say this but you felt more alive at the hospital than you did before. You were beginning to suspect that Kun’s herbal mixture was actually working.

The herbal mixture was made of feverfew among other medicinal herbs. It had certainly done the trick to reduce your fever overnight. You wondered just what this mixture was made of.

You just finished your online linguistics lecture and closed your laptop. You found Kun waiting at the door. “You free?”

You nodded. “Yes.”

He sat down next to you and pulled some of your favorite candy out of his pocket.

He put the candy bar in your hand. His fingers lightly touched your palm. Your face warmed up at his proximity. “Happy Halloween, y/n.”

Your eyes nearly bugged out. How did he know you loved Twix? You took the candy bar into your hand and almost cried.

“Y/n?” He asked, worried.

You wiped a tear away. “Sorry...It’s just that this time of the year is hard because...I want to celebrate it. Go out and trick or treat...I know that time has gone for me but I hate that I missed out, you know…”

“Y/n…”

You sniffled and took a bite of the chocolate bar. “My parents never wanted me to feel like I was missing out so they would bring the holiday home to me. I was never in need of M&Ms, Skittles, Twix, or Sour Patch Kids…They even helped me make the best Halloween costumes. We would watch a bunch of horror movies all month long...But I wanted to be a kid. I wanted to go out with my friends and go door to door…”

Kun’s heart went out to you. He hated seeing you so down and so deprived of a life that everyone should have. “Y/n, you will be able to do all of the things you want to do in life.”

You looked at Kun and he had a determined look on his face. “How can you be so sure?”

“I’ve worked with people with conditions like yours...They thought they would be attached to the hospital forever one way or another. But with my methods, I was able to help them turn their life around. And now they’re living normally and fully.”

You sighed. “I’m happy to hear that...I just don’t think I’ll be one of them.”

Kun placed his hand over yours. “Trust me, y/n. I won’t let you down.”

You met his eyes, then, and you smiled. “Thanks, Kun. I’ve gotta hand it to you. You’re my favorite doctor.”

He beamed. “Is that so?”

You nodded. “Yeah...None of the other doctors ever gave me so much as a lollipop Even though that seems to be the norm on TV…”

Kun chuckled. “There’s more where that came from, y/n.”

___

It has been a month since you’ve entered the hospital. The medical bills were covered by an anonymous benefactor. Your family didn’t have to worry about the financial strain of your hospital stay.

Your family came to visit you and they were stunned at how radiant you looked. They were surprised at how much more ALIVE you looked when they expected you to be weak and miserable because you were at the hospital. Something about you was different.

“Doctor Kun is a miracle worker, isn’t he?” Your dad asked.

“I heard he’s a sight for sore eyes, too...Don’t you think so, y/n?” Your older sister Sydney teased.

You mom shook her head and helped fluff your pillows. “How are you, sweetheart?”

You smiled. “I’m better, actually. I think Kun’s methods are working.”

“Oh, are you two on a first name basis?” Your sister joked.

You rolled your eyes. “He told me to call him Kun. If you saw him, you’d feel weird calling him Doctor, actually.”

“He’s quite young, y/n. He graduated from a top university in Beijing at age 10. Then, he went to medical school right after. He’s been a practicing doctor for a couple of years now. He’s unbelievable,” you dad said.

Kun entered the room, then. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I’m Doctor Qian Kun. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Your mom was in love with him. Your dad was in shock at how young he was. Your sister wanted his number. You broke their stunned silence. “Kun, these are my parents Donna and Andrew. And this is my sister, Sydney.”

Kun greeted them. “I’m glad you are all here so I can tell you the good news.”

Everyone was shocked at the phrase “good news”. What good news could he possibly have to share?

Kun continued, “Y/n, your vitals are working at optimum level and we want to see how well you can fare by discharging you.”

You asked, “What?”

Kun smiled. “You can start having a normal life...In which you can attend in-person classes, go to the supermarket, take up a sport…”

You weren’t sure about the last thing he offered but everything else he suggested made you jump out of your bed. “Serious?”

Kun’s smile grew. “Yes.”

Your parents gave each other looks.

Your dad started. “Doctor, are you sure about this...y/n has lived all of her life in our home. The only outside world she’s ever known is our backyard and this hospital.”

Kun nodded. “I am sure. I’ve worked with several patients with similar cases as y/n’s and I would like to put the effect of the herbal mixture to the test. If there is any risk, she will immediately be brought back to the hospital and I will up the dosage for the herbs.”

After a few more minutes of discussion, your parents reluctantly agreed to take you home. To alleviate their concerns, you promised to consult with Kun once a week so he could monitor your progress.

You would be going home tomorrow and you had been given the green light to live a normal life. Outside. Go to classes. See your friends. Go to the beach. Buy fruits at the grocery store.

You packed up your belongings and Kun visited you one last time before you left. “Hey.”

You smiled brightly at him. “Hi!”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better than I ever have, honestly. And I have you to thank for that. Look, I’m not sure if this will work out in the end but the fact that I can take the chance and go out there...Thank you.”

Kun ruffled your hair. “I’m here for you, y/n.”

You did admit to yourself that you’d had a little crush on Dr. Kun but who were you kidding? He was so out of your league. You’d had a friend in him and you would always be thankful to him. “I have something for you.”

Kun’s eyes widened. “For me?”

“I wasn’t sure it’d get to my house in time but my mom got the package today. I told her to bring it today when everyone visited so…”

You pulled out a small gift bag with Kun’s present inside.

Kun smiled. “You didn’t have to get me anything.” “You’ve done a lot for me, Kun. I may have my doubts but I don’t doubt your intentions. And they're nothing but good. You’ve been doing so much for me. You’re setting me free...In a way.”

You handed the bag to Kun. He pulled out a little wrapped box from inside. He looked at you as he mocked suspicion.

He removed the wrapping to find a pair of AirPods. He gaped. “Y/n…”

You smiled. “For whenever you need to escape the noise…”

Kun had told you that sometimes he would get overwhelmed with his duties at the hospital and you’d asked him what gave him comfort. He told you it was music. So you figured something as light and portable as AirPods could help Kun calm down whenever he needed it throughout the day.

He smiled brightly at you and surprised you by wrapping his arms around you. “Y/n, thank you...You shouldn’t have…”

You froze. Kun’s toned body was against yours and you could feel the racing of his heart. Your heart probably beat twice as fast. You felt yourself get warmer and warmer. You pulled away from him, his hands on your arms.

He blushed. “Sorry…”

You cleared your throat. “Don’t worry about it…”

Your dad returned to the hospital room. “Y/n, you ready?”

Perfect timing, dad, you thought.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

___

It may have been the second semester of your junior year but you felt as nervous as an incoming college freshman as you entered Neo University’s grounds for the first time. You were meeting some of your friends for the first time ever.

It was one thing to see them on the screen but your heart accelerated thinking of what it would be like to see them in the flesh.

You’ve been doing well so far with the herbs Kun had sent you home with. You were able to go grocery shopping with your mom. She was still considering whether or not you could go to the beach yet. You hoped that your progress would continue so she would say yes.

You felt healthier than ever. You could breathe well through your nose. You felt no body aches. You were ready to cartwheel across the quadrangle.

First, you had to learn how to cartwheel, though.

“Y/n!!!!!” Jungeun called out to you.

Your blonde best friend ran up to you and jumped you from behind. “Ah!”

“Jungeun!” You gasped.

She laughed. “You said I could touch you so I wasn’t about to hold back.”

You hugged each other tightly.

“Y/n, it’s so good to see you!”

You and Jungeun have been friends since middle school so you were already a sobbing mess on your first day.

“Stop crying, y/n or else I’m gonna…” She started crying, too.

“Enough with the tears, already,” Dejun added.

You and Jungeun hugged Dejun to bother him, then.

He laughed. “Y/n, welcome to Neo U.”

“Thanks,” you said, smiling.

You three went to your seminar together and you were just so in awe of being in a classroom, you had trouble focusing on the lecture. You were even more distracted when you saw that Sicheng was in the same class.

He recognized you and waved. You were yelling so loudly on the inside.

Before this semester, you had the occasional online class that you shared. You saw Sicheng for the first time a year ago and your crush on him grew from there. He was one of the most popular guys on campus, according to Jungeun. You had a group project with him last semester and he was so...Perfect.

He was intelligent and down-to-earth. His smile was so sweet and his eyes pierced into your soul. He was talking poetry. It felt like you were seeing your favorite celebrity in person.

When class ended, you went to lunch with your friends and Sicheng joined you.

“How are you, y/n?” He asked.

“I’m great. Never been better,” you replied.

He smiled. “I’m glad. If you ever need anything, please let me know. You have my number.”

You nodded. “Of course. Same here. If you ever need anything. I’m here for you, too.”

Sicheng chuckled. “Great.”

When you finished lunch, Jungeun couldn’t stop poking fun at you. Sicheng left early for a club meeting. “I’m surprised he didn’t ask you out, then!”

You rolled your eyes. “Ask who out?”

Dejun added. “Me, of course.”

Jungeun continued. “The ‘you have my number’ couldn’t have been more obvious. He wants you in his dorm yesterday.”

You frowned. “And what would we do? Fix his bed?”

Jungeun and Dejun laughed. Jungeun added, “The opposite, y/n.”

Your face heated up then. “Oh.”

Since you have basically spent most of your life either at home or at the hospital, you never even considered the possibility of a love life. You tried to convince yourself that dating sims would’ve been enough.

“Don’t worry, y/n...You and Sicheng can take it slow...He’s no incubus who is trying to take your soul,” Dejun offered.

“True,” you said.

That was if Sicheng saw you that way in the first place.

___

A few weeks had passed. You’d been seeing Kun regularly to check in and everything had gone as expected. You were fine. You weren’t exhibiting any flare-ups. So long as you kept taking the prescribed herbs, you would be fine.

“How is everything, y/n?” He asked.

“Pretty good, actually. School is still school, even if it’s in person. But I got to go to a skating rink for the first time.”

He laughed. “How was it?”

“I am terrible.” You showed your legs. “It explains these bruises.”

Kun shook his head and chuckled. “I’m glad you’re getting out more, y/n. Try and take it one step at a time.”

“Oh, geez. I wish you said that sooner. I already joined a blood cult and I’m getting married next week.”

Kun rolled his eyes as he finished taking notes from your consultation.

“How is everything with you, doc?”

Kun’s eyes widened. “Me?”

“Surely, you’re not always at the hospital.”

Kun sighed. “Well, y/n...it just so happens that I’ve taken residence up on the top floor. The whole floor is my apartment. Don’t really get to spend much time there because I’m almost always on call.”

Your jaw dropped. “What? Kun, that’s abuse. You shouldn’t be working so many hours. It’s against the-“

Kun couldn’t help his smile appearing.

“You sneaky bastard,” you said.

You both laughed, then.

Sometimes you forgot Kun was a successful doctor. Sometimes he felt like your infinitely smarter senior at college.

He was a million worlds away from yours.

Kun answered, “Well, I’m doing fine, y/n. I meet up with friends once in a while and go white-water rafting.”

“That sounds like fun!”

Kun shook his head. “It’s challenging but exciting. I get a rush every time I go.”

You thought out loud. “I’d love to try it sometime…”

Kun pat you in the back. “When you are at one hundred perfect, I’ll give you the green light. Sounds good?”

You nod.

___

You’d wrapped up your midterm and you were ready to head home and take a nap. You walked through the student quad.

“Y/n!” Sicheng called out to you.

You turned around and found Sicheng running towards you.

You smiled, already warm in the face. “Hi.”

“I was wondering if you were free right now…”

“Really? Me?”

He smiled, confused at your question. “Yeah, you. Want to go to the movies with me?”

You nodded. “Absolutely.”

Sicheng drove you guys to the movies. He bought the tickets and the snacks. He let you pick the movie. You picked The Blair Witch Project. It came out over twenty years ago but the theater was doing a limited time screening of it.

You and Sicheng couldn’t shut up throughout the whole movie as you whispered to each and made each other laugh. You’d almost gotten kicked out of the theater.

You left the theater together and he asked you to dinner. You said yes. You were starting to think that this was a date.

“Y/n, this is a date, right?” He asked you at dinner.

You stopped eating your chicken parmigiana and looked at him with big eyes. “I think...Is it?”

Sicheng sighed. “I wanted it to be…”

You laughed. “Oh, thank God. I thought it was all in my head for a second. Maybe you were this nice to all of your friends.”

He pointed out, “I am not this nice to my friends, I can promise you that.”

Sicheng drove you home and kissed you goodnight before you entered your house. You felt like you were floating on a cloud now.

___

Two days later, there was a campus alert that Sicheng had gone missing. His face was all over the news. The last time he was heard from was when he told his best friend Jaehyun that he was going to ask you out to the movies. The last time he was seen was when he took you home.

Sicheng’s car was found a mile away from the dorms. The key was still in the ignition and his wallet and phone were left behind.

You were brought into the police station for questioning and you told them everything that happened the night Sicheng disappeared.

You were worried. What could have happened to him? Would he be alright? Would he be able to come back home? You missed him so much.

You took an evening stroll around your neighborhood to try and calm down. You reached the park where there was no other soul in sight.

Suddenly, you felt a tingly sensation in the back of your neck. You felt that someone was following you.

You began to walk faster. Suddenly, you were pinned to the ground and everything turned black.

___

You woke up in Room 1196, then. Wait...It wasn’t 1196...It was a different room in Neo Hospital. The room was dark and you could only hear the sound of your breathing. It grew more hysterical with each second.

You felt a burning sensation in your neck. You cried out in pain. You cried out, “Help me, please.”

“Y/n…” You recognized Kun’s voice.

You nearly yelled out in pain but restrained yourself. “What...happened?”

“An animal attack,” he started.

You frowned. “What?”

Kun sighed. “It was good that I was there to help you in time, y/n…”

“What?”

Kun moved your hair out of your face. “I was in the neighborhood when I saw the beast attack your neck.”

“A beast?” You frowned.

“Sicheng, was it?”

Your eyes widened. “How do you-“

“You can’t hide anything from me, y/n...You know that’s not how our relationship works.”

“What are you talking about? Ahhhhh.” The pain was getting to be too much for you.

“Can you put two and two together, y/n? Sicheng bit you.”

You shook your head furiously. “No, he wouldn’t-“

Kun snapped his fingers and Sicheng entered the hospital room. His bright expression nowhere to be found. His eyes were a bright red and his lips had traces of blood on them.

“Sicheng?!” You asked.

Sicheng smiled, showing fangs in his teeth. “Hi, y/n…”

“Oh, my God!” You started.

Kun grew annoyed. “Alright, that’s enough pleasantries for my taste. Go.”

Sicheng walked away at his command.

You began, “What the-“

Kun smiled brightly at you then. This time, his straight white teeth displayed his own fangs. “Y/n...Sicheng has put you in a bit of a bind, hasn’t he?”

You tried backing away from Kun and getting off of the bed but it was almost as if the pain kept you from moving.

Kun ran the back of his hand down your cheek. “When a newborn vampire bites you, the bite is lethal...You could die anywhere between minutes and hours...It depends on the bitten, really…”

You flinched at his touch. “What...did you do to me?”

Kun inched closer to you and you winced. He lathered up the blood that leaked from your neck down to your collarbone.

“What had to be done, y/n. From the moment I first saw you, I knew that I had to have you.”

You cried out in pain. “Somebody help me, please! Sicheng, please!”

Kun, annoyed over you mentioning Sicheng, shut the door to the hospital room. “It’s useless, y/n. Sicheng wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t infiltrated what is mine. Now Sicheng must endure the consequences and be at my mercy. I turned him so now he looks to me for instructions. Until I release him...Perhaps in the next millennium...”

You sobbed. “Kun, please make this pain stop! I can’t take it!”

He cooed. “I know, baby. I want to help you. Just say the word and I’ll make the pain go away.”

The pain dominated your senses so you couldn’t process how exactly he would make it go away. “Okay! Just do it!”

Kun got up onto the bed and straddled you. He leaned down towards your neck and bit into you.

You cried out again but this time the excruciating pain turned into a euphoria so glorious, you never wanted it to end. You wrapped your arms around Kun as he continued to drink your blood.

___

It was morning when you had woken up. You were in Room 1196 now. You shot up from your bed and found Kun seated right beside you.

“Good morning, darling,” he started.

You glared at him. “Bite me. Oh, wait, you already did.”

He smiled. “I see your energy is up. That’s good to see.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m going home…”

Suddenly, you stopped right at the door and your throat started to burn. Your senses heightened and you could sense that one of the nurses was walking right past your room’s door. You wondered what she would taste like if you caught her by surprise right then and there and…

What the holy hell were you thinking?

Kun sighed. “Don’t kill Joyce. She’s the most competent nurse on the staff.”

You ran into your bathroom door and looked at yourself in the mirror.

But you couldn’t.

You put a hand over your mouth and sobbed. “Kun!!!!!”

Kun joined you in the bathroom. “Ah, yes. You won’t be able to gain access to your reflection for another twenty years.”

“Twenty years...What is going on?”

“But what else, y/n? I turned you. To save your life.”

“Turned me into what, Kun?! Say it!”

Kun smiled. “Darling, you already know. Just admit it to yourself.”

You cried. “No…”

“You’ve always wanted a new body. A new life, y/n. And I’ve given it to you. I’ve made you the most powerful creature on this damned planet: a vampire.”

You fell to the ground. You could feel your fangs against your tongue.“Kun! Why did you do this to me? What did I ever do to you?”

Kun sat with you on the ground. “Because I love you, y/n. I never want to be apart from you again.”

You spat in his face. “You made me into a monster.”

Kun, unbothered, wiped your spit away with the sleeve of his coat. “I did not. I made you the best version of yourself you can be. Time for you has become infinite. Your body is immune to all illnesses now. You can see clearly. Your metabolism is in top shape. You are a goddess now.”

You shook your head. “Kun, take it back.”

He chuckled. “You’ve seen enough movies to know that that’s not how it works, y/n...You are mine now. Forever. Just like Sicheng. Just like a lot of the staff in this hospital.”

You shook your head rapidly. “Like hell I’m yours.”

“Y/n, I have been very generous up until this point. Using my blood to help you overcome your chronic condition. Funding your hospital bills...The least you can do is submit to me....”

It was hard to process all of the truths he just delivered. “Your blood?”

He laughed. “You mean you couldn’t taste my blood in the herbal mixture?”

You were about to throw up.

He chuckled darkly. “Admit it, y/n. You loved it.”

“Fuck you, Kun!”

He smiled. “We’ll get to that…”

You sneered. “You are despicable.”

His smile faded. “And you are testing my patience…” He snapped his fingers at you. “On your knees…”

You stayed on the floor with your arms crossed across your chest.

He frowned as he snapped again. “On your knees, y/n.”

“I don’t think so,” you said.

Kun looked taken aback. “What? How?”

You got up from the ground and looked at him. “I will never submit to you for as long as I live..” If vampires were even considered living.

You ran quickly out of the hospital room, realizing you had superhuman speed now. You were able to leave the historial without facing any temptation to bite someone.

But your thirst had to be satisfied somehow and you had to find a way to quench it without hurting anyone.

___

[2 years later]

You’d skipped town not long after you turned. You sent letters to your family without a return address so as not to risk their safety.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m so sorry I ran away. I had no choice. If I didn’t leave, you all would’ve been in danger. One day, I hope to explain it all to you but in the meantime, live your lives fully and love each other. Don’t take anything for granted. I love you so much and will see you again.

Love,

y/n

You had become an infamous blood bag bandit as you moved across the country, running away from Kun. He would occasionally try and track you. Or he would send his henchman like Sicheng to do it for him.

You were lucky so far. You had never attacked a human being and sustained yourself on some blood bags you were able to nab from donating trucks.

The reason why you didn’t submit yourself to Kun that day was indeed because of his blood. Consumption of his blood made you immune to his influence. He couldn’t have you like he had wanted all along.

Kun had been obsessed with you from the very beginning. When you were discharged from the hospital the time you met him, he continuously stalked you. At college, at the grocery store, at your home...It would explain why he was able to send Sicheng to attack you.

He always knew where you were back then.

Kun commanded Sicheng to bite you then and put you at risk of dying. Kun’s plan was to save you, make you his vampire queen, and control you.

It was a shame he failed to see that his creation of medicinal herbs was the one thing that would lead to his plan’s failure.

You were immune to his commands and you weren’t going to stick around and see how else he would try and “win you over”.

According to your research, in all public records, Kun was now twenty-six. A blatant lie since he couldn’t age. So you wondered how long he would remain in your hometown. You kept a careful eye on your family every now and then. You’ve made some contacts to track your family occasionally, as well.

Kun had stooped low and you prayed he wouldn’t stoop even lower to get you.

You worked hard every day to work on your rapidly growing vampiric abilities. You couldn’t stick around anywhere for too long without arousing suspicion.

Now you weren’t confined to one space anymore.

You were confined to running.

You hoped to one day bring it this madness to an end and take Kun down. Save Sicheng and Kun’s other minions.

And for you to truly be free.

[Fin]

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vostokovasmelina · 3 years

Text

— 𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝟑𝐂. (𝐬.𝐰.)

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐢 | 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢 | 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

characters: fem!reader; sam wilson; archibald the tabby cat; sarah wilson

word count: 3.1k+

warning: mentions and descriptions of alcohol, death, grief, trauma, therapy, depression – i call this post-snap realism

series summary: after the blip, sam wilson gets home to an unpleasant surprise - his key doesn’t fit the lock anymore and his apartment is now inhabited by a stranger and a grumpy feline. however, the unusual encounter is only the beginning of their post-blip lives and the reader soon learns that what life takes away, it can give back in the most particular ways.

a/n: the ending is a dark unedited mess, so proceed with caution

Taking a cautious sip of your hot beverage, you watched this absolute gatecrasher of a man trying to make up his mind about whatever he was so confused about – Sam kept looking all around your apartment as if searching for something he had left there, his slightly lost and disoriented expression sending a sudden wave of guilt rushing over you. Now that you thought about it, it really must have sucked absolute cheese for him to come home hoping he could finally have that huge cup of strong black coffee he had been anticipating ever since having defeated that enormous purple bastard from Outer Space, only to find that his coffee machine was long gone and now this random lady with a philodendron problem and a judgmental cat were inhabiting the place with absolutely no room left for him whatsoever. It did sound tragic when you put it that way.

However, it really wasn’t your fault that you had needed to find a brand new residence approximately five years before. He really should have checked in with someone to make sure he still had somewhere to go home to. You were quite clearly the real victim here. And Lord only knew how poor Archie was going to process all the excitement of the day.

For a few seconds, you contemplated whether or not to put your thoughts into words, and eventually decided against it for the time being. The man had just helped save the world a few days before, after all, and out of what? Good conscience? Personally not for you, but you could appreciate it in others. And it would have been a real shame to die right when your fan-favourite succulents and killer new posting schedule had been attracting more Instagram followers than ever before. Thanks to the savior complex flaming inside of the gentleman standing before you though, the regular civilian had luckily escaped such terrible hardships. And special thanks to approximately a thousand and one other superheroes. Oh, and to an African country filled with similarly public-spirited people.

For a few awkwardly long seconds neither of you said a word. Sam kept looking around and you watched him look around, slowly lowering your mug onto the table and tilting your head slightly to the left. Weird how Sarah had never mentioned the brother believed to be dead for the last five years was this handsome. It is unfair, really. Some people are just naturally gorgeous no matter the shitty kitchen lighting, that tiny confused frown that had been sitting on their face for the last half hour, or those shiny black bugs for eyes tearing up ever so slightly to snitch on a long repressed yawn.

“Now that the drama is over and the Avengers as such are non-existent – have you considered a career in modeling yet?”

Sam snapped his head towards you with such force and speed that for a moment you were afraid you’d have to spend the rest of the afternoon sewing it back on his neck. You grabbed your mug still pretty much filled to the brim with tea and raised it back up to your mouth to hide your lingering half-smile behind a faded portrait of baby Archie on the ivory porcelain.

“Just saying, I would buy anything for this face on the package alone,” you continued with the confidence of a woman who hasn’t got a single drop of shame left in her body. But it was fine ‘cos you didn’t actually mean it, right? It was all just a joke, an attempt at lightening the mood and snapping him out of his puzzled melancholy. And that tiny flutter of your heart upon hearing Sam’s perfect little chuckle was but a momentary malfunction of the organ. The incident was purely physiological. No contribution from any emotional factors. It was simply an innocent coincidence that these two, completely unrelated things had co-occured.

So when your gazes met, you didn’t tear yours away in embarrassment – you stood your ground, completely unaffected and unbothered, ignoring the increasingly hot sensation in your cheeks when you saw Sam raise a cheeky eyebrow at you. Before even more damage could have been done, however, you decided to cut the party short.

“Oh, no. Don’t get your hopes up, Birdman. I simply couldn’t keep watching you in your deeply disturbed state.”

Very, very smooth. Cleared of all suspicion. Good job.

“Wow. Okay. That was cruel,” Sam scoffed and gave emphasis to his words by bringing up his right palm dramatically to his chest, right above his now most definitely broken heart. The overall effect got ruined by an annoyingly goofy grin in the end and before you even realised, you had already reached out for your massive mug again to drown your own erupting smile in the hot liquid.

In the silence that followed, however, you saw Sam’s smile fall ever so slightly, as if exhaustion or worry were holding onto the corners of his lips, physically tugging them down, and you shifted slightly uncomfortably in your seat. It was time you had stopped messing around with the poor guy.

“Look, I know this is weird but I’m sure we can find a solution. Just call Sarah so she can stop worrying now,” you suggested, finishing your tea and pushing the now empty mug to the middle of the table before leaning back in your seat.

“Ugh, yeah,” Sam started slowly, squatting down to get his mobile and the charger out of his massive sports bag. “Can I plug this in somewhere?”

You blinked at him a couple of times while he waited patiently for your answer. You could only imagine the number of missed calls and unread texts waiting for Sam on his phone, but you decided you didn’t know him enough to give him a lecture on behalf of his sister. So you just gave him a tired nod and gestured lazily towards your battered kitchen counter, Sam following your direction with his gaze.

“Above the microwave. Oh, and the socket farthest to the left–”

“–doesn’t work. I remember.” Sam flashed another exhausted but friendly smirk at you above his shoulder, and you allowed yourself to return the gesture to his back once he wasn’t watching.

“Right, sorry. Forgot I was the intruder here,” you joked, delighted to earn another one of those irritatingly lively chuckles of this man’s.

You seriously needed to get your shit together.

“Okay, while your phone is doing its thing, let’s call Sarah from mine, I guess” you continued, jumping up from your chair the moment Sam returned to the table and you headed towards your worn little couch where you scratched Archie gently behind his right ear. “Where have you put my phone, you dirty old man?” You cooed, smiling softly while sliding your hands under the cheap cushions and booping your irritated cat’s tiny nose when your fingers finally touched the cold metal you had been looking for.

Once seated again, you caught Sam staring at Archie, his eyes slightly narrowed in what appeared to be deep concentration. You furrowed your eyebrows and tilted your head, waiting for your uninvited guest to notice you.

“I don’t think your cat likes me too much,” he finally said, slowly tearing his gaze away from the pet feline’s and looking into your slightly more welcoming human eyes instead.

You chuckled dryly, turning around to see Archie in all his glory on the couch. He simply gave you an unbothered look before completely losing interest in the two of you, and he hopped of the couch, slowly making his way towards your bedroom where you knew he would bundle up under your bed on the cosy carpet. He had apparently decided it was time for his beauty sleep.

“Yeah, he’s like that with everyone. Nothing personal,” you assured Sam, who offered a tired half-smile in return. You cleared your throat gently, eyes fixed on your phone’s screen and fingers already searching for Sarah’s number. Once you had found it, you handed it to Sam whose only job left was to press the call button. You raised your eyebrows at him expectantly and he let out a sigh while reaching out for your mobile.

* * *

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk to Sarah. Quite the opposite, actually. But he was embarrassed. Sam knew full well how furious his sister was going to be. And honestly, rightfully so. He couldn’t argue with that. After all, she did say there had been something she wanted to talk to him about. And Sam did hang up on her without a passable excuse. And he did let his phone die on his way back home to Louisiana.

Yeah, he most probably wasn't going to be nominated for this year's Brother of the Year award.

Their last call had happened two days before. Two days is a long time without any news from a brother who had just returned after having been believed to be dead for the past five years. And if you had been to ask him, Sam wouldn’t have been able to tell you what had gotten into him either but ever since the Blip, something had not been exactly right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was going on, so he hadn’t brought it up to anyone, but his brain felt slow and foggy as if it hadn't had time to catch up yet.

Sometimes, Sam worried that the molecules in his brain had been mixed up and hadn't been put back into their original places in the process of the whole turning-into-dust-and-back-into-human-form-again thing.

It was a silly thought, yes, but with everything going on in the world, would it really be that hard to believe?

"Hey hon! What's up?" Sam's thought process was cut off by the endearing voice of his sister, and though he was aware all this affection was not directed towards him – given that he had called Sarah on your phone – his heart did swell upon hearing her again.

And then he said hi and it all went south from there.

Sarah was obviously pissed.

She asked Sam if he had any idea how many texts and missed calls she had left him, and no, he had no clue but if he had to guess, the number would have been way high up in the double digits.

Then she started going off on Sam, using different kinds of actually very creative euphemisms – which was a problem because Sam got so distracted by his sister's choice of words that her short, well-thought out rant had very little effect on him, but at least he had enough self-respect left to get his sister off speaker at this point.

"Look, Sarah, I know I messed up but I'm fine! I swear," he started, cutting his sister short while subconsciously picking at the skin around the nail on his index finger with his thumb. "What if I stop by Andy's and tell him to give me their best apple pie?" Sam added, hoping this promise would serve as an ice-breaker. Sarah did love her desserts. A lot. And Andy always gave a discount to the Wilson family, too.

When he heard his sister's tired sigh, Sam's heart gave a hopeful flutter, but he was rudely dragged back onto the ground on his way to cloud nine the very next second.

"I'm doing the shopping at the moment. Just got here and it's gonna take long," Sarah replied, annoyance poking through all her words. Then, the tension that had been dominating the pair's call suddenly seemed to evaporate as Sam sensed a weak shadow of a smile in her following sentence. "But that apple pie does sound good."

Sam couldn't help the grin that creeped its way onto his face and he didn't even care about Sarah's semi-serious threat, saying how they were nowhere near finished yet. He muttered out a quick sorry again, promised Sarah to give her regards to you and finished the call with a charming 'I love you' to which his sister replied with a snarky 'I bet' before hanging up with a promise that she would call again when she got home.

Sam let out a relieved chuckle before handing you back your phone and taking the final sip of his slightly lukewarm coffee, watching your bright red-nailed fingers tap away on the device, and he swallowed harder and probably louder than he had meant to. You just happened to put your phone down the very next second, so he tried to cover up the gulp by clearing his throat and shifting his gaze from your nails to your eyes.

Beautiful eyes.

Well shit.

"So, I guess you're staying," you started hesitantly, raising your eyebrows at Sam in a slightly impatient manner, which snapped him out of his blissful thoughts and thrust him back into reality.

Was he staying? He certainly had nowhere to go now that he was practically homeless and his sister was unable to welcome him in her own home for the next two hours, at least. But then again, you were a complete stranger whose afternoon he had just disrupted, and it didn't matter how weird it felt seeing you be so at home in his apartment because it wasn't his anymore. It was yours and you had all the right to kick Sam out and he had absolutely zero right to argue.

But, thankfully, he didn't have to.

"Which is fine, by the way. I did promise you an explanation, after all." Sam couldn't quite ignore the hint of dread behind your words and he was ready to object, to leave you alone and spend the rest of his afternoon doing God-knows-what, but then you offered him another cup of coffee followed by a tiny but honest smile, and Sam just couldn't bring himself to say no.

* * *

Sam Wilson was ridiculously easy to open up to.

It made you want to commit a crime.

His gaze was so intensely warm that after a while, you were looking at everything in your apartment but him just to avoid accidentally trauma dumping on him, especially when you got to the part about group therapy.

Because you had met Sarah at a group therapy session approximately four and a half years before.

It had been clear from the very first minute that neither of you had actually wanted to be there and that both of you had been forced into this situation. Sarah had been dragged to group by an overly enthusiastic co-worker of hers whose crush on the counselor had been probably more intense than the trauma she had suffered – she had lost a dog and her neighbor to the right whom she had always talked shit about behind his back. She was a nice enough woman, but considering that people had lost actual family in the Snap, her presence had always been mostly aggravating, to say the least.

In your case, it had been your grandmother who had bullied you into going to one of the sessions because 'she had the same rotten mentality when Miss Taylor told her to go but then she found it life-changing'. At this point, you had become so indifferent to everything in the world that you hadn't needed much convincing to go. You had told yourself it would be one session anyway after which you would have told Grandma Ethel that 'therapy was simply not for you' and could have been back to your usual Thursday evening routine consisting of a cheap bottle of red wine and depressing reruns of trashy British reality shows from the late 2000s.

The actual sessions had never worked for you. They might have if you had actually spoken up at any of them but you had never become quite ready to talk about your loss in front of a dozen other people, most of whom you had already known. But then you had met Sarah and something about her had made you feel secure, secure enough to talk about them for the first time, so you had started hanging out at a café not too far from the community center and it had become the best thing in your life.

"And the rest is history," you finished, getting up from your chair to put both yours and Sam's mug in the sink and watered your nearby plants while at it.

"I'm really glad Sarah had someone by her side," Sam commented and you could hear a hint of guilt in his words but you decided to ignore it. You simply nodded and muttered out a weak 'yeah', saying you were just as happy to have found a friend like Sarah.

Then Sam said something that made all the muscles in your body tense up and you froze completely for the next couple of seconds.

"And have you seen your family yet? Now that they've come back?"

It was an innocent question. He doesn't know the whole story. So calm down.

You slowly put down the glass you had used earlier to water your plants and tried with every particle in your body to put on the best toothpaste commercial-worthy smile you could force out of yourself before turning back towards Sam and answering his absolutely understandable question.

"Yeah!" No. "They're doing well, actually!" They're fucking dead.

Sam's genuinely happy smile was way too much to handle and if it hadn't been for a call from Sarah, you would have broken down in tears right in front of him the very next moment.

So instead of all that, you decided to turn right back around, pour yourself a huge glass of cold tapwater and down it in one breath while Sam finished his brief conversation with his sister. The stinging pain in your chest that followed was enough to distract your thoughts until he was finally at the door, saying goodbye and thanking your for the coffee and saying sorry for intruding and taking absolutely way too fucking long to finally leave.

"Hey, um... I could give you my number? If you ever need anything or..."

He can't be serious.

"Sure! You can, ugh, put it in my phone," you replied, your hands shaking dangerously as you reached into your back pocket for your mobile and handed it to Sam, who knew better than to comment on it.

Once finished, he returned your phone with one of those irritatingly joyful smiles of his and with a final 'see you around' Sam Wilson was off and you proudly patted yourself on the back for successfully holding it together until you finally reached your couch.

* * *

mini-series taglist – let me know if you want to be added

@softieyn

@mahvericks

@amirahiddleston

@fireghost-x

@samuelthomaswillson

@itsnottilly

@loveyhoneydovey

@songofcosplay

@titaniumstark

@falcons-wings

@claudiaatje

@srodulvroux

@annathesillyfriend

@lokiandbuckylove

mcu taglist – join here

@babymango-writes

@softieyn

@spencereidisabicon

@whutisthus

@katethecrazy

@swanimagines

@amirahiddleston

@remusflirts

@musicallisto

@skinny-bitch-juice

@teti-menchon0604

@anon-2837282

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@lxncelot

@amortensie

@claudiaatje

@gimmelovepls

@raven-emxralds

@whovianayesha

@the-jess-life

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson headcanon #the falcon #the falcon x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #tfatws imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #mcu mini series #mcu reader insert #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel reader insert #sarah wilson

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twinkleallnight · 3 years

Text

A Twisted Tale

Chapter 1

Book: The Royal Romance AU

Word count: 1787

Characters: Liam, Leo, Riley.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to pixelberry.

Rating: Mature

Warning: None.

A/N: An AU of The Royal Romance paving its way through mixed emotions of wants, needs and desires, of revenge and regrets, of trust, faith and hope.

A joint venture brought to you with love by @annekebbphotography and @twinkleallnight .

Liam’s POV

It is one of those days again. I have to attend a UN function and I am not looking forward to it. There’s more than one reason, one is that none of my friends have joined me for this function, and the other reason is that the girl I am pinning for doesn’t want anything to do with me. How in the world will I win her over? I have tried everything, but I am almost sure she sees me as my father.

I look myself over in the floor length mirror, I look the same as always, the regal king. Did I want to be king? No, but when my father died unexpectedly and my brother took off, I had no choice but to take over. That is when things changed for me and now, I am fighting an inner battle with myself.

After a short drive, I walk into the hotel where the UN function was being held. Like always everything is posh and regal. What I wouldn’t give for something to be a little different. I scan the room and my eyes land on a petite brunette. She has a pink floor length dress on, it hugs her curves perfectly. My feet follow their own path as they walk over to her. She isn’t like everyone else, she’s open and her smile is divine.

I freeze as my heart stops when she laughs. Why am I feeling like this when I am in love with someone else? Maybe it’s just because I am feeling lonely.

She turns around and locks eyes with me and I swear I feel my heart skip a beat. She’s got the most dazzling blue eyes, but it doesn’t compare to the eyes that haunt my dreams. What I wouldn’t give to be with my love right now.

“Hi, I’m Riley Brooks.” She holds her hand out to me to shake. I take her small hand in mine and smile at her.

“Liam Rys.”

Her eyes go wide and she drops in a curtsy. Her cheeks have a faint pink tint to them.

“No formalities please. It’s just us.” I give her a reassuring smile.

“It’s nice to meet you.” She says relieved.

There was something about her that made me want to get to know her better, not romantically, but as friends. She makes me feel at ease.

A song comes up and I give her a wicked grin as she shakes her head from side to side. “Would you like to dance?” I hold my hand out to her as everyone else watches us.

“I would love to dance.” She says through gritted teeth and takes my hand. I lead her to the dance floor and pull her closer to me.

We move together perfectly, she leans in. “I am so going to get you for this.” She whispers, and for some reason that statement excites me.

“Do your worst.” I twirl her out and pull her back to me. She laughs as we move around the dance floor perfectly.

After the song ends, we walk off the dance floor and towards the bar.

“You are not what I expected. When they told me that a king was going to be here, I thought he was going to be old and uptight. I am happy it’s you though.” She glances at me to see my expression. All I could do was smile at her.

We order our drinks and take a seat at one of the tables. We talk about everything and anything.

I learned that she has a political degree and has applied for a PA position in Europe. I also learn that it is just her, no family and that she hopes to find that special someone one day. She is the fresh air that I need in my life.

I look at my watch and see that It’s almost time for me to meet Leo, but I don’t want to say goodbye to Riley just yet.

“What would you say if I offered you an PA position at the palace?” I ask without hesitation. I need a personal assistant and with what I see and heard, she will be perfect for the position.

“Are you being serious right now?” She basically jumps up and down in her seat.

“Yes… I want you to be my personal assistant. You will have to come back to Cordonia with me tomorrow.” I raise my brow and wait for her to explode with excitement.

“I would love to. Where should I meet you and what time?” Her eyes sparkle with excitement and I can’t help but get lost in them.

“Meet me at the airport at 8am. The flight leaves at 8:30. Please don’t be late.” I look at my watch again and know that I have to leave right now.

“I will be there.” She smiles as I get up.

“I have to go. I will see you tomorrow.” I lean down and kiss her cheek. It doesn’t feel the same as when I kiss HER. The one that has had my heart for so many years. I need to speak to Leo, he would be able to help me get my mind right.

I give Riley one more wave before I walk out of the room heading to where I have to meet Leo.

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

I walk into a dimly lit bar and see my elder brother sitting at the bar. He looks happy and relaxed.

“Sorry, I’m late…” I apologise.

Leo smirks at me. “Your majesty!” He curtsies teasing me.

“Always the funny one. How have you been brother?”

I take a seat next to him as he pushes a glass of whiskey over to me. I need this so badly. I have two pairs of eyes haunting me right now.

“ Never felt better.” Maybe he is trying to express his new found freedom after abdication.

“Are you alright little brother? You seem delusional.”

I have as I take a sip of whiskey letting it burn my throat as it goes down.

He continues prodding. “Are the kingly affairs burdening you or the extra affection for the king from the fairer sex exhausting you?”

“I…. I’m confused….” Leo raises his brow at me motioning for me to continue talking. “I’m in love with someone but she hates me or should I say our family. Or that’s what I gathered. And then tonight I met a girl with the most dazzling blue eyes and the sweetest personality. But she’s just not Her….” Leo nods in understanding.

“Green versus blue or green versus brown.. maybe we Rhys men are always in a dilemma to choose.”

I know he is comparing my situation with his own. Referring to Madeleine’s green and Kate’s brown.

“It’s not for me choosing. I know who I want, she just doesn’t want me. To make it worse I am taking the girl I met, back to Cordonia with me.

“Woah! You mean you have your baklava in the freezer back at home and you are buying cronuts to take home?”

I spit the whiskey I had just taken a sip of, out and cough. “What…. No not at all. She will be my new assistant.”

Leo sits there unaffected just smiling at my state. “The assistant, like the billionaire’s assistant from the romantic books?” He nudges.

“Nooo, it will strictly be professional….” I get half a smile as I take a small sip again. “And maybe a bit to make someone jealous.” I know I am all confident with Leo,but let’s face it I will never do anything more than just attend functions with her.

“All work and no play makes the king a dull boy”. Leo tries to push in his playboy streak.

“I will have you known that I am not dull at all. I have my fun.” I say a matter of a fact.

Leo’s eyes widen to take in the new image of his younger brother displayed in front of him.

“Close your mouth big brother, you will catch a fly.” It’s my turn to tease.

Leo’s open mouth turns into a wide grin. “I will make sure to follow ‘The Trend’ to read about your adventures. Make the Rhys blood proud, baby brother!” He raises his glass in a toast. “So what advice are you looking for Li?”

I consider him for a moment. What did I want from him?

“How do I make Her fall in love with me? How do I make her see I am more than just a Rhys.”

“You have been drooling over that girl since you grew balls. Had it been me, by now I would have given her the magic of my physical therapy. That always works for me.”

I wince at the imagination of my brother in action. Before Leo can give more varied ideas I raise my hand. “ I think that’s enough food for thought.”

Leo shrugs, “ As you wish. I would still say, be bold and try taking some risk. What fun life is without a bit of adrenaline rush?”

I nod and ask for the bill.

On that note, I bid Leo farewell and get back to my hotel to prepare for the journey back home.

********

I wake up with a heavy headache the next morning. Why can’t I get the two ladies out of my head. It is like they are playing ping pong in my mind. ‘I need to get back home. I need to make Her see that I care about her. I need her to see that I am not like my father.’ I get ready with that thought.

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

I have been waiting for Riley at the tarmac. She messaged that she was running late. I think of calling Her in the meantime. I heard the phone ringing and it dragged me into her thoughts.

She must be sitting at her tea table at this hour. Her slender manicured fingers playing at the rim of the cup making circles. Her pink lips touching the porcelain softly, sipping the hot beverage. The skin on her throat would be moving slowly, warming up as she would swallow her drink. I have imagined my fingers over her silk smooth neck, many times. Her sharp voice pulls me back from my day dream. “Hello” At the same time when Riley calls, “Hey Liam. Sorry I got late.”

I signal Riley to hold on for a minute.

“Good evening to you, Olivia .”

Olivia snaps, “You are with someone? And calling me?” She abruptly hangs up with that.

My head is hung low. Riley looks at me questioning.

All I can utter is, “Bad timing!”

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Tags : @ao719 @anjanettexcordonia @bebepac @charlotteg234 @choicesficwriterscreations @cordonia-gothqueen @drakewalker04 @eadanga @gkittylove99 @glaimtruelovealways @krsnlove @hopefulmoonobject @hopelessromanticmonie @iam-the-kind-and-thoughtful @idontknowwhysblog @jessiembruno @jovialyouthmusic @jaxsmutsuo @kat-tia801 @kingliam2019 @khoicesbyk @shewillreadyou @lisha1valecha @lovablegranny @mrswalkers-blog @mom2000aggie @neotericthemis @no-one-u-know @ntoraplayschoices @princessleac1 @ritachacha @secretaryunpaid @sirbeepsalot @speedyoperarascalparty @shanzay44 @texaskitten30 @txemrn @queenrileyrose @sanchita012 @sfb123 @sweatyrysconnoisseur @theroyalheirshadowhunter @aestheticartsx @yourmajesty09 @fluffy-marshmallow-heart @drakewalkerfantasy @els31 @rainbowsinthestorm @darley1101 @the-soot-sprite @ladyangel70 @rafasgirl23415 @anotherbeingsworld @callmeellabella @msjr0119 @walker7519 @ofpixelsandscribbles @cocomaxley @lodberg @jared2612 @gnatbrain @cmestrella @queenjilian @iaminlovewithtrr @marshmallowsaremyfavorite

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keelywolfe · 3 years

Text

FIC: Knick Knack Paddy Whack (BAON)

Summary: As far as Stretch is concerned, there's only one solution when you're addicted to thrift stores. Selling all the crap you bought so you can buy more!

Notes: Stepping outside of the main storyline for a moment, we'll get back to the aftermath we're all expecting in a moment. 😁

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationships, Domestic Fluff

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

Stretch was a bonafide thrift-a-holic, he honestly was, and he knew it. It was an important thing to know about yourself, really, because certain problems arose from bad case of oooh-shiny-itis.

Sure, one ceramic zombie hand thrusting up from the dresser to hold his rings and change was an awesome thing to behold, but an entire collection of zombie hands was a tough sell to the person you were living with, especially if that person was Edge. Not that he’d managed to find a collection of zombie hands and if he had, that thrift store would have been on the weekly check list, for sure. But the same premise applied to ‘zombie hand plus an entire horde of other bizarre ceramics surrounding it’.

Stretch wasn’t bitter about the limitations when it came to his collection, nah, he got it. There were certain things you couldn’t ask for from the person you love, and a house filled up with weird tchotchkes that looked like they belonged to the grandmother of the chainsaw massacre family was a step too far. Plus, asking Edge for more space would be unfair. He’d either agree because he didn’t want to tell Stretch no, or he’d say no and feel bad about it. Nah, the set of porcelain dragons playing instruments in a rock band he’d found wasn’t that important, not if it gave Edge a case of the guilts.

Problem was, Stretch really couldn’t resist sometimes. How was he supposed to turn away a wedding painting of Yoda and Kermit the frog? Or a coffee mug with a penguin orgy on it? He couldn’t, that’s how, but his allotted space was filling up in the house proper and soon he’d started to amass quite the collection in his lab, too. It was when the overflow expanded enough to start infringing on his erlenmeyer flasks that he decided he needed a new strategy. Science waited for no one and definitely not anything with the word ‘taxidermy’ included.

That’s when Stretch came up with the plan. Okay, it wasn’t a plan, exactly, more like a flash in the pants of brief inspiration, but hell, he’d been flying by on those his entire life, why stop now?

One of the places he frequented was an antique mall, which was a fancy way of saying one rung on the ladder above actual thrift store, except they rented stalls for people to sell their stuff, so maybe it was more like a glorified garage sale. People carted in their junk for other people to buy and the cashier up front handled all the transactions. Minimal time, minimal effort, that was exactly what he and his kitsch needed, so Stretch went ahead and rented a stall of his own.

The not-exactly-a-plan worked out pretty well. He could buy something at the thrift shop and proudly display it for a while around the house, and then when it came time to replace it with a new find, he’d add it to his stall and whatever money came from it, he donated to the local kid’s charity that the Antique Mall supported. That meant he got in his kicks and joy without looking like a prequel to a Hoarders episode and Edge only had to deal with the octopus tentacle ashtray for a few weeks.

Seriously, it was a win-win all the way around.

A few things did take up permanent residence, of course; he couldn’t give up his zombie hand. But so long as it wasn’t a clown, (clowns were disposed of by Edge immediately and with great prejudice), he was allowed things like his nested Matryoshka dolls of Nicolas Cages for a time.

About once a week he went down to add new things to his stall, mostly during the weekday hours when the buses were on the empty side and he could take up an extra seat with his box of additions. It wasn’t exactly a secret, Andy came along a few times to help, but he never really mentioned it to Edge. Not until today when Stretch realized he’d let things go a little too long and he had some extra boxes to haul down.

Better to take care of it while he was thinking about it, otherwise it tended to turn into an endless cycle of ‘oh, I should do that today’ and him forgetting, but aside from the extra lugging required, it was also Saturday and the bus would be loaded. Hitching a ride would be required, plus a little extra muscle, and his husband was his favorite source for both.

He found Edge in the kitchen, sitting at their temporary table with his laptop and yeah, it was Saturday, time to drag him away from whatever bullshit work he was doing. Stretch put on his best wheedling face and asked, “babe? can you give me a lift today?”

“Of course.” Edge didn’t look up, what a total waste of Stretch’s beguiling charms. His gloved fingertips were soft against the keyboard as he finished whatever he was typing before glancing up at Stretch, and maybe his schmoozing wasn’t entirely wasted; the way Edge closed the lid on his laptop spoke of a guilty conscious for working on his day off. “Where are we going?”

“downtown,” Stretch tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. “i need to hit up my junk and disorderly shop.”

That got him a pause, “Your what?”

“heh, you’ll see.” Stretch curled a finger at Edge in a ‘come hither’ motion that his husband didn’t follow, only watched suspiciously. “c’mon, i need you to help me carry some stuff.”

“This ride is starting to sound less like transport and more like a chore.” But Edge followed him to the basement for the boxes, and, surprise surprise, his willingness to help went up a few notches from wary to eager when he figured out what Stretch was doing. Eh, couldn’t blame him. At the top of the pile was a plush frog with the top hat that played ‘hello my baby’ whenever you pushed on its foot, something Red did every single time he walked past it, plus anytime he’d felt like shortcutting in for a quick press. Time to let it damage the sanity of another family.

The boxes were tossed into the trunk of Edge’s car, frog and all, and soon they were on the road, heading downtown. Truth be told, Stretch wasn’t sure what Edge would make of the place. He tolerated thrift stores well enough, but the antique mall was a different kind of beast. An entire building of obscure collections cluttered together into eclectic displays that others were trying to barter and sell.

There were stalls filled with milk crates of old records, shelves and shelves of antique glassware and dishes. Some stalls had vintage clothing, feathery boas mixed in with disco pants and ruffled aprons. Old instruments, rusty farm equipment, strange kitchen gadgets that looked more dangerous than useful, this place had everything and then some.

Plus, the mall had a certain sort of smell, a musty, dusty scent verging on decay that settled into the sinuses and hung around for a while. Stretch thought it was the smell of a life well-lived and he kinda liked it; after years of thrifting, he associated it with finding treasures, but who knew if Edge felt the same. His tastes in smells (heh) ran more to clean and green, not old-timey funk. Could be it reminded him of shower mildew.

Whatever his opinion of the odors, Edge kept it to himself. He helped with the box carrying and checked out Stretch’s stall curiously but didn’t say much. Probably recognized the stuff on the shelves as having once been on a table or Stretch’s nightstand, until the glee wore off and it ended up gathering dust in the basement. He wandered off at some point, heading into the depths of the mall, and left Stretch to restock his meagre wares.

It took longer than he’d expected. Since he’d opened up his stall, not everything Stretch found thrifting found its way into the house proper anymore. Some of it he bought as a straight-to-video option and he was getting pretty good at finding interesting doodads at the thrifty places that might sell better here, location, location, location, that was the ticket.

Stretch always priced his junk reasonably, usually not much more than he’d paid for it. Wasn’t like he needed the money, and besides, Stretch knew himself pretty damn well, therapy did that to a guy. At the end of the day, he knew what this was really about; all an elaborate scheme to satisfy the inner packrat in his soul that struggled sometimes with giving things away.

Bartering had been built in him before he could say the word; in the Underground, he’d gotten damn good at getting deals for what he could scrounge at the dump. This was the same thing, really, just with slightly different stakes. Dinner wasn’t riding on his latest stash of dvds anymore, always a plus, and these days he could simply look at the empty shelves, content in the knowledge that his Smeagol cardboard cutout had found a new home.

Hey, therapy wasn’t the only way to work out a few kinks in your internal lines.

When the last box was emptied, Stretch wandered up to the front desk to give the lady who ran the front register his new inventory list. That was when he heard it.

There was an old piano up front with a sign on it that said, ‘Do not ‘play’ if you cannot play’. Most of the time it sat silently but someone up there was giving it a good try today. The notes were slower, with obvious hesitations as the player searched for the correct keys, but the song was one Stretch knew. Gently melancholy, a match to the cautious playing.

His curiosity piqued, Stretch wandered over to watch and he wasn’t entirely surprised to see Edge sitting on the piano bench, his attention on his hands as he slowly played. It was a tough choice between watching him play and simply listening to the song and Stretch found himself trying to do both. The uncertain skill in hands he knew so well as they coaxed the music free.

When the last note faded, a faint smattering of applause came from the different stalls around them. Stretch waited for it to end before sitting on the bench next to Edge.

Quietly, Stretch said, “i didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” Edge said. He smoothed a hand over the keys, not pressing down, simply touching them. “Not really. I can’t read music, but I know a song or two by rote. A friend of mine pushed me to memorize them.”

Welp, Stretch didn’t have to ask what friend, now did he. An old friend back in another world, and people weren’t replaceable even if they wore the same face. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to; Stretch understood in a way only a few people could, and he settled a hand on Edge’s leg, squeezing his knee gently.

“that was really good,” Stretch offered, “you have a good memory, babe.”

“Some of my memories are better than others,” Edge said. The words were more contemplative than sorrowful, and he didn’t look at Stretch, only touched the back of his hand briefly with his gloved fingertips. “You tend to feature in the best ones, love.”

He reached for the keys again and started to play. The song was more confident this time, bright and cheery, with only the occasional missed note. A handful of other people drifted over, some pausing to watch and some moving on, going about their day with a song to carry them along.

Stretch only tapped his toes and listened as Edge played, more than willing to let him go on until he was ready to stop. If Edge wanted to take a brief dive into the past, then the antique mall was a place for it, where memories and times past mingled with the present.

Besides, a new memory to take home was better than any knickknack.

-fin

Note: The first song Edge was playing was 'Clair de Lune' by Debussy and the second was 'The Entertainer' by Scott Joplin. In case you were wondering. 😁

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #by any other name

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cake-writes · 4 years

Text

Comfort

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Story Warnings: angst, trauma, mentions of blood and gore, 18+

Word Count: 886

Summary: Bucky helps you remember what it’s like to feel again.

You’re broken.

Worn out. Beat up. Crafted like porcelain – and now, you’ve shattered to pieces.

You’ve seen blood spatter and brain matter; watched friends die just as often as enemies. Your black dress has become so well-worn at funerals that it’s ripped at the seams, and you’ve been forced to buy another.

And another.

Another agent. Another funeral. Another dress.

And you’ve been forced to learn over the years not to care.

Working with SHIELD comes with risks to your life, to your sanity: calculated risks that you accepted when you started, but now you’ve seen too much. Experienced too much. Been through too much to handle it anymore.

You’re numb.

When the nightmares start, field work turns to desk duty. Desk duty turns to isolation.

A hurried ‘hello’ here, an awkward smile there. They treat you like glass because you’ve already shattered once. No one wants to risk a second time. No one wants to be the cause of a second time.

Work. Therapy. Home. Back to your quarters where you’re even more alone. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over until you feel new cracks start to form, until you’re teetering on the edge of nothingness—

Until he finally returns from Wakanda, and you finally feel something again.

“What are you doing here?” you hiss, all bark and no bite. It’s the dead of night as Bucky steps into your apartment with a certain practiced finesse; he’s been here before. “It’s three in the morning, Bucky.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says with a roguish grin that makes your heart flutter.

Maybe you’re not so numb after all.

“Nice vacation?” you ask, pulling a glass out of the kitchen cabinet for him.

“Would have been better if you were there,” he tells you, and you pause in getting him some water to shoot him a look.

Don’t go there.

Don’t do that.

Don’t get too close.

It’s a reprimand. The light over your stove is the only thing illuminating the room, just enough to show what you mean and Bucky averts his eyes.

“How have you been?” he tries again.

“Oh, you know,” you muse, filling the glass from the tap, “the usual.”

Don’t go there.

Then you offer it to him with a half-forced smile, and it’s in that moment that you realize he knows. You can see it in his eyes, soft blue and full of concern. He can see right through you – see through your stupid little façade like it’s child’s play.

For him, it is.

That’s why he’s here.

The glass is taken from you and set down on the counter, forgotten, discarded in favour of taking your hand in his. You follow his line of sight and watch as his flesh thumb massages the back of your hand – slow, hesitant, like it’ll ease whatever he’s about to say.

“I heard you’re stuck on desk duty.”

The ball drops, and you shove his hand away.

“Don’t,” you bite out. “It has nothing to do with you.”

But some part of you wants it to.

“You can’t keep it bottled up, sweetheart,” he coaxes, and the way he’s looking at you makes you want to cry. Sympathetic – not afraid you’ll shatter to pieces. “Talk to me.”

Don’t get too close.

“No,” you snap, eyes fixed on his in a heated glare. “Now get out.”

When you hastily point to the door, the tightness in your chest only worsens at the thought of him leaving. When did it even start?

It hurts. It hurts.

Don’t go.

The tension in the air is palpable, but you know that’s only because it’s radiating off of you in waves. You’re the source. You’re the cause.

Your fault. Always your fault.

And when he’s gone, that’ll be your fault, too.

But of course he sees right through you. Slowly, he brings your hand down from showing him the exit – and that’s when you realize that he’s suddenly so much warmer than before.

“You’re shaking,” he speaks softly.

What?

That’s when you feel it. The chill in your arms, your legs, your feet. The anxiety creeping up the back of your neck. Cold sweats. Short breaths.

Fear.

His temperature hasn’t changed at all. Just yours.

You look away out of shame, perhaps, or maybe it’s embarrassment. You’re afraid to be vulnerable.

“It’s okay,” Bucky tells you, and you can’t help but believe him. “It’s okay. Come here.”

A gentle tug, and you’re in his arms – enveloped by the one person you’ve been missing for god knows how long. You were friends, once, or at least the semblance of that. Close, but not too close. Honest, but only just, and only for a short time when neither of you could sleep.

A means to an end.

A shiver wracks your body when you breathe in the smell of him: sunlight and earth. Comfort wrapped in fresh linen.

“Bucky—”

It comes out as a choked sob.

Don’t go there.

Your fingers embed themselves in the fabric of his shirt to pull yourself closer.

Don’t do that.

“It’s okay,” he soothes. “Stop punishing yourself. It’s okay to cry.”

That’s all it takes for the dam to break, and you finally let yourself fall – but he’s there to catch you.

For a moment, you get too close. And that’s okay.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes #this is very clearly a coping mechanism lmao #don't @ me

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hopelessly-me · 3 years

Note

Winterhawk in a haunted house

Hehehehe. Okay so- I didn't know what flavor of haunted house you wanted- like paranormal or jump scare. But I went with paranormal. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Winterhawk, rated T. Mostly silly and goofy but probably contains a swear word or twelve. 1868 words.

“Spooky spooky spooky,” Clint muttered as he climbed the stairs inside the old Victorian house, using his flashlight to check the floor below them, half expecting someone to be standing there ominously. Just the thought of it raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Clint,” Bucky said, half annoyed from the sounds of it. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Yeah, I used to not believe in aliens too,” Clint said as Bucky reached the top floor and looked either way before turning right. “And then I met gods and had an alien try to makeout with me, and then Venom did makeout with me.”

“Not sure those things correlate, doll,” Bucky said gently as he opened a door and peeked into a room. “Oh hey look, it’s you,” Bucky said brightly before he flashed a light into the room, illuminating a few dozen dolls. “You’re my doll, and these are some dead person’s dolls.” Clint glowered at Bucky, not amused. “Come on. Six hours and we can go.”

“I really don’t see why I have to be punished for you losing a bet with Sam,” Clint grumbled, leaving that room and hoping that was the only room with those porcelain abominations in it.

“Yeah, I thought that was implied in the whole ‘til death do us part’ part of our marriage contract,” Bucky replied, closing the door after Clint. “I have to deal with your stupid shit, so you are stuck doing my stupid shit. Forever.”

“Charming. Romantic even. Ten out of ten recommend,” Clint rambled on.

Everything about this house screams demon in the basement. The furniture was old and covered in fabric which was under inches of dust. The shades on the lamps were at least from the fifties, cobwebs in the shades and gleaming off the metallic bases, shimmering in the dim light. The floorboards creaked under even the slightest amount of pressure.

It was spooky and Clint hated spooky. It was right up there with magic, might even be tied for first place. He could handle fake haunted houses- he had done them when he was in the circus, learned how to pickpocket that way even. But places that were rumored to be haunted? Yeah- that’s where Clint threw in the towel.

“Spooky spooky spooky,” Clint whispered as he followed behind Bucky as they toured the house, Bucky holding a camcorder like the old man he was. But was Clint going to comment on it? No. Because that old man was the only thing between him and whatever creature from hell lived in the basement. If push came to shove, Clint was fairly certain he would sacrifice Bucky and take off running. That might result in a divorce but… Clint had been divorced before, right? He could handle being divorced.

“Clint.”

“Leave me alone,” Clint sang as he peered into a bathroom. Back in the day, Clint had a feeling this bathroom was glorious- the tub alone was so deep he was pretty sure he could properly soak in it. Now- it was lackluster at best. Clint closed the door and caught a glimpse of Bucky as he went to go back downstairs.

“Why do you believe in ghosts anyway?” Bucky asked as they walked into the kitchen. The kitchen from hell. The murder room. It looked like a murder room.

“Agnes from the circus,” Clint answered.

“She was a con.”

“Oh, she was definitely a con when it came to reading people, but she wasn’t a con when it came to a lot of other things,” Clint answered. “She’s the one who taught me not to whistle in the woods, and to leave weird things found in the woods alone.” Bucky reached to pick something up and Clint slapped his hand. “No.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Bucky said, turning around, camera coming closer to Clint. “Tell everyone how much fun you are having, sunshine.”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “I would rather drink bleach than stay in here overnight.”

“Clint.”

“I mean, yay, look at me, having so much fun,” Clint said in a monotone voice. Bucky rolled his eyes. “Just so we are clear, if Mothman climbs out of the basement, I am shoving you down the stairs and running for it.”

“You know what? If Mothman comes out from that basement, you don’t even have to push me,” Bucky said with far too much confidence for Clint’s taste. “I will gladly stand between you and a Lunar moth.” Bucky turned around and walked. “How about this? Why don’t we talk about something else to get your mind off of whatever Agnes traumatized you with.”

“Yeah, sure- let’s make that attempt,” Clint said.

“Since I am forced to do this as punishment… why don’t we gossip about the others?” Bucky asked. “Like… did you know Sam actually owns more Avengers merch than he admits to?”

“... he what?” Clint asked.

“Yep. I raided his apartment one day when he was gone because I was going to set up a prank and I looked in his closet. He has a Captain America teddy bear,” Bucky said.

“You’re lying.”

“Swear on my mother’s grave,” Bucky said. “He has Cap bear, and a Iron Man figurine.”

For what it was worth, Bucky was very good at distracting Clint from their situation. Clint was into the gossip, whether it was Bucky telling him things or Clint sharing what he knew, careful to skirt over anything about Natasha because he didn’t have a death wish. And when they weren’t gossiping, they were talking about needing to go for a grocery run and needing to buy new pet beds because Lucky had decided the beds were stuffed animals. Which then turned into needing to send Lucky to Kate and America’s for a bit so they could take a vacation. Clint wanted a beach vacation- any excuse to lay under the sun was his favorite thing. Bucky wanted to go tour historical sites, which Clint knew he would cave to because he liked seeing the wonder in Bucky’s eyes when he toured sites he had only heard about or seen on television. Scratch that- he was a sucker for anything that Bucky did. Since when did he become a sap?

They finally settled down and were sitting in the living room, both of them wordlessly agreeing that sitting on the furniture wasn’t an option so they cuddled up in a corner. Bucky had set up a lantern so they could see what was around them, and they used their sleeping bags under their legs to prop them up better. Clint reached over and held Bucky’s hand and fiddled with his wedding ring, smiling as it gleamed. Bucky took care of that ring like he did his arm. He was constantly cleaning it, checking to make sure it was perfect. Clint was currently on replacement ring number three- which averaged to one ring per year so he was taking that as a win.

The conversation fell and Clint snuggled up, resting his head against Bucky’s shoulder. He was exhausted, unable to sleep the night before. Clint went to close his eyes, maybe take a nap, and that’s when he heard it- a creak on the floor above them. He tightened his hold on Bucky’s hand and looked up.

“Its an old house,” Bucky reminded Clint. “And it’s windy out. Creaks are going to happen.”

Clint nodded and settled in again. Bucky was right- houses settled and creaks, and the wind was howling outside occasionally. But then the creak happened again before he heard what sounded like a boot step, followed by another step, and another. And they had toured that house, twice, top to bottom, minus the basement because Clint outright refused, and there was nowhere anyone could have hidden that they wouldn’t have seen. They were trained, for goodness sake- if there was a place to hide, they would have checked it.

The creaking ended at the top of the stairs and Clint and Bucky both leaned over to peer up the stairs. “Someone probably snuck in here and is trying to mess with us. Probably Natasha.”

“Probably my sleep paralysis demon catching up to me,” Clint muttered.

Bucky turned his head to look at Clint. “I understood that reference and I worry about you.” Bucky got up. “I’m going to go check.”

“You’re kidding me, right? I know you have watched horror movies. That never ends well,” Clint insisted.

“I love you but you need to start taking therapy seriously,” Bucky said, grabbing his flashlight and heading towards the stairs.

“As if you are one to talk. How many knives you got on you?” Clint retorted. “Not that you can stab a ghost to death.” Bucky waved him off and stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up, slowly moving his flashlight to get a better image. Clint half-assed crawled over a few places to take a peek for himself.

“Well, I don’t get to stab a ghost because there is no such thing as-” Bucky began to say before there was a noise from the kitchen. Bucky frowned and turned his flashlight. “... definitely Natasha. She uses windows.”

“Hey! Hey! You can’t just leave me here,” Clint said, scrambling to get us. “Again. Horror movies. Respect the horror movies.” Bucky just waved him off and disappeared into the kitchen. “... dammit.” Clint snatched his flashlight on his way to the kitchen to follow Bucky. “Listen, I know you think it’s dumb but I really think- Buck?”

Bucky was staring at the floor, his head tilted to the side. Clint walked over to him and looked at a knife that was on the floor. Clint’s eyes traveled from the knife over the cabinets, every single one of them open.

“You alright?” Clint asked.

“It… just came flying out,” Bucky said. He reached out and waved his hand around before he picked up the knife, using his flashlight to inspect it. “But there’s no string attached.” Clint leaned over Bucky and looked at the knife as well, frowning.

“Spooky.”

A noise caught their attention and they both looked over at the basement door. It sounded like someone coming up the stairs, heavy footsteps and creaking boards. Clint slowly started to stand up, ready to run at a moment’s notice.

But just as quickly as all the noises came, everything seemed to stop. Clint hadn’t realized he was gripping onto the back of Bucky’s shirt, slowly letting it go and smoothing it out. Bucky was starting to lose his tension, his muscles starting to relax it seemed.

“So… that was weird,” Bucky commented. “Should we go-”

“You will have to drag my corpse to that basement if you want me to go with you,” Clint said. “I want to go find a corner, I want to take my hearing aids out, and I want to sleep. Or try to sleep.”

Bucky turned and smiled, reaching a hand up to hold Clint’s face. “I promise that if I see Mothman or… whatever… I will wake you up and let you have the headstart.”

Clint smiled a little and leaned down and kissed him. “My hero,” he murmured against Bucky’s lips.

#winterhawk #spooky season prompts #a wild prompt appeared #thanks for the fun prompt!

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counterpunches · 3 years

Text

End (Beginning Movement)

Fandom: The Haunting of Bly Manor Pairing: Dani Clayton/Jaime Taylor Rating: T Wordcount: 4,137 Note: all the thanks to the incredible @foomatic for being a fantastic beta and even better friend. so much so that she actual recorded herself reading the story to help ID and fix all the tenses to make it coherent and then just straight up turned it into a podfic set to the show's musical score. Its way cooler than I ever thought it'd be, so feel free to please check it out here

Summary: If standing silently and bearing witness was all Jamie could do, she gladly took the weight of it if it meant one less thing for Dani to carry. Jamie coiled it tight back into herself and created her own waiting, lurking beast. Jamie was quiet with her rage for a while, until she was shaking with it. Until it threatened to explode out of her skin like a bomb and she wouldn’t ever - ever - let Dani come close to the shrapnel. Instead she was the steady rock that Dani needed and imploded later, somewhere else, somewhere safe. She just wanted to fucking break something. Couldn’t get her hands on the Lady, couldn’t pull her out of Dani, so she had to find the next best thing.

Also on AO3

It was easy, Jamie thought, as her head pounded and temple throbbed.

Well, not so much now, at this moment, with a hangover thundering out a pulse on the timpani of her skull as she clung to the toilet like a lover in the night. Every joint and muscle aches, a combination of sleeping half slumped over in the bathroom, age, and the consequences of booze. She leans back with a groan, back twinging, shoulders popping, and as nausea roils, takes a few deep breaths to settle her stomach. Evidently spending the rest of last night praying to the porcelain god didn’t buy her any grace today.

But in general, it was easier, spending the night chasing the bottom of a pint glass, in a way nothing else was these days. Christ, even breathing was hard. Been hard since the day her lungs fought for surface despite her best intentions. Been burning with it, since, taking in air in a world that Dani Clayton no longer existed in.

The water refused to take her, so she’d found another way to drown.

So yeah. It was easy, sliding into bad habits like an forgotten favorite jacket. A glass of wine became a bottle. What was one or two nights to forget against a million more? A bottle quickly became too slow. Why waste time, Jamie thought, chasing one cup after another? Best to jump straight to the hard stuff, then.

Jamie never beat around the bush before, seemed no point in starting now, her bluntness having been softened over the years by Dani’s love. The very edges of her ebbed into the waters of an ocean that was no longer there. Jamie was parched. She was so thirsty. So she drank.

Wrong kind of love can fuck you up. Right one can, too.

Just as bad, really.

Worse, if you’re lucky.

Love and possession may be opposites, but Jamie had given her heart away a long time ago and she didn’t know how to keep it beating when it was no longer hers. Everything she was had already been given over to Dani. Given eagerly. Freely. Like all things best loved are. And that’s the thing about a freed thing, isn’t it? Doesn't come back just because you want it to. Just because you miss it.

This part of her - it isn’t peaceful, Dani had said. And Jamie had understood.

Understood in blood and bone, in the way something so small and insignificant can snap. Remembers how rage can end with kneeling in a rain-soaked alleyway, groaning from an ass kicking she probably deserved, probably was searching for, blood trickling down from a split eyebrow. Remembered how she grimaced, the twinge in her ribs matching the bitter taste of metal in her mouth, but it’d hurt and there was a sick measure of comfort in that; making part of the world match the brokenness inside her.

So yeah. She knew rage. Recognized it. Hated that something so ugly and angry and raw resided inside of Dani, something that couldn’t possibly exist naturally - there wasn’t an atom of that kind of violence in Dani’s body. She wouldn’t give into the wrath, Jamie knew even then, in the cradle of knowing her. Dani would never. And the unfairness of her having to suffer through the struggle of it anyway made the part of Jamie that resonated in recognition with Viola burn.

It’s you. It’s me. It’s us, the rage said, taunting her through the fissures of Dani’s struggle.

It was all she could do to hold it in that day, her teeth cracking under the weight of it, in the horrible quiet of the room as Dani confessed. As she gave voice to the terrible truth that now resided in her. She’s waiting, Dani had whispered. If standing silently and bearing witness was all Jamie could do, she gladly took the weight of it if it meant one less thing for Dani to carry. Jamie coiled it tight back into herself and created her own waiting, lurking beast.

And Jamie knew from past experience that the only way to control the beast was to let it out of captivity from time to time. To let the monster run wild and exhaust itself so she could wrestle it back into the cage.

The rage festered. Jamie felt it rumbling deep in her chest.

So when Dani finally left the room with a shaky determination (“Better find out what those kids are getting up to,"), Jamie knew she had to let it breathe.

No one would remember where the dent in the wall came from. It was chalked up as an accident, caused by one of the many pieces of furniture having knocked into things on its way out to the moving truck. Jamie had to hold in the scream that broiled inside and searched for a safer place for it to land.

She still had to walk by that fucking lake to get to the greenhouse.

Under cover of the potted sanctum, Jamie let loose the beast. Anger clawed, scratching out her throat. The greenhouse was excellent at absorbing sound, plants and leaves shaking with the echoes of her cries, and if Jamie’s voice seemed a little hoarse, it was easy enough to blame it on something else. Easy enough, to explain away her split knuckles on mis-gauging the distance while bringing one of the heavier boxes outside. Or scraping it against some gravel. Or anything other than slamming her fist into the wall again and again and again.

It was new though, needing to find ways to hide it from Dani. Never had to hide it from anyone before. She used to display her beast proudly, a mark of pride that said ‘don’t fuck with us.’ Didn’t have to hide her beast in prison, either. Everyone had one of their own; it was why they’d all ended up there in the first place. More than a few learned how to deal with it in therapy. Jamie tamed hers in the jungle of a garden.

Not a single part of her looked in the rear view mirror as they drove away. Would never have stopped the truck if it could’ve kept Dani safe. So she did what little she could do. All the fear, the terror that already threatened to split Dani further in two, the new shell of a person Dani had to live with, Jamie took it from her. Buried it deep within herself, felt it so that Dani wouldn’t have to. Drew out the poison from Dani’s soil and into her own roots.

And then, in her most private moments - few and far between, really, for there was nothing unshared between them - Jamie let out the venom, the resentment, the fury, that she collected. Outrage that the world dared spin, indifferent to the unfairness of it all.

She just wanted to fucking break something. Couldn’t get her hands on the Lady, couldn’t pull her out of Dani, so she had to find the next best thing.

Viola was quiet in her rage. Jamie wasn’t with hers. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She was, for a while, at least.

That first year was full of small moments: the way Dani’s shoulders would never fully relax, tension rarely leaving her body, even in sleep. How she kept looking over her shoulder at rest stops and gas stations, as if the Lady were a drifter, following them on the highways, across states, through the unfolding ribbon of their adventure. Jamie found she could cover up those incidents with the smug satisfaction of having bested the unavoidable for another day. Another week. Another month.

Her demon was dormant for a good long while, in the solace of Dani’s love. Dormant like Viola’s fucking ghost, it turned out. Things were so good for so long, it almost seemed to purr, content in it’s hibernation.

Jamie’s beast woke with a sudden and curious start, after that night in the kitchen after Paris. Started to sniff, hungry for any little scrap. Found too many for comfort - the way Dani started to wake up earlier, as if perhaps she hadn’t slept at all; how it would take her just a moment longer to turn off the water; the times Jamie had to repeat Dani’s name until she jerked, as if suddenly finding herself transported somewhere new - it began pacing in its cage, hungry now, banging on the bars.

Jamie was quiet with her rage for a while, until she was shaking with it. Until it threatened to explode out of her skin like a bomb and she wouldn’t ever - ever - let Dani come close to the shrapnel. Instead she was the steady rock that Dani needed and imploded later, somewhere else, somewhere safe.

She could see how close to the edge Dani was, on some days. How it seemed even the barest breeze would blow her from herself entirely, leaving an empty, unblinking husk behind. It was all Jamie could do to steer her back from the cliff each time.

Jamie had to coax Dani back to the world, breathe life into her lips some mornings as she stared into the ceiling, eyes open and blank; her very own Sleeping Beauty. Each time it felt like a kiss goodbye. Stay with me. Please. Come back to me. A miracle, when she did, even if Dani slipped further and further away each time like a boat on the horizon. Jamie would stroke her face with trembling hands, afraid even the gentlest touch would cause the delicate thing to disintegrate beneath the pads of her fingers.

Dani always came first. Even as Jamie’s own creature grew stronger and louder, she held it in. Found controlled environments to let it run wild.

There was something oddly comforting about the alleyway. There’s a familiar landscape all back alleys share - brick, concrete, dumpster, a car or two, usually a fair amount of scattered garbage, and the near ubiquitous empty, overturned storage crates used by the weary for smoke breaks or breakdowns of all shapes and sizes - an alley was an alley was an alley.

The only thing that marked it as theirs was a few hanging ferns on the corner of the doorway. Something to signal the threshold, announce the life bursting and growing just inside. Something growing in the barren landscape of a back alley. Something to remind a younger Jamie of what could lie on the other side, if she stood long enough to reach up for it.

So she destroyed things in the alleyway. When the cruelty of the matter absolutely broke her - when Jamie had to sew the fraying pieces of Dani back together because Viola was slowly pulling the seams of her apart; when she desperately scooped handfuls of Dani even as she was slipping through her fingers like sand - Jamie would break something else.

Jamie took her rage, and smashed it against the brick or asphalt in a shower of pottery in the alleyway. Pots, planters, saucers, she grabbed damaged items from the shop and broke them even further, until her chest heaved and panted from the effort of it in the shards under her feet. When the alley wasn’t a possibility and her screams of frustration and the clatter of smashing ceramic would would threaten to draw Dani out from the thinning fragility of their life together, Jamie would punch bags of soil in the storage room until the they burst, earth pouring to the floor, and leaving her standing in a shallow grave of her own making.

Nothing to hide, once Dani is gone.

Easier to get lost in the anger, and Jamie let it consume her like an uncontrolled blaze until nothing but ash remained. Fitting, she thought, for the daughter of a coal miner. It came to claim her, pulling her into itself, not to grow, not to nourish, but to press her into something that burned. And oh, she burned.

It would scare her, she thought, that she hadn’t changed. In all this time, in all these years, underneath the layers of soil and earth, below the roots, the same creature lurked in the dirt of Jamie’s own jungle. A monster that threatened to take her too. That she wished would. A demon of wrath and anger. Of pain and suffering and the shit end of the stick every time.

Despite the years, despite the love and relative calm that settled over her life - since gardening, since Dani - she was still the same enraged, lost, thing. Every living thing comes from every dying thing and it’s natural and she knows that but what she didn’t understand is how to keep living when the core of you is already dead; how was it possible for these two things to co-exist at once. The impossibility of the thing. The decaying mortality. This unholy living. Feels unnatural.

Jamie couldn’t breathe. She couldn't, she couldn’t-

And there, there it was. Specks of dried toothpaste on the mirror. It shouldn’t have been the thing to undo her. After all, it could’ve been hers or Dani’s. But it could have been. Dani’s. Such a casual, mundane thing - a flick of the wrist, rinsing off the toothbrush, spitting into the drain - leaving behind a stain. A mark. Something to be thoughtlessly wiped off and cleaned later, leaving no sign it had once been there. No indication someone had been there at all. No impression of a life built together, their hips casually leaning against one another while flossing, or the yelp of surprise at the shock of cold water after flushing the toilet while the other is in the shower. The apology that came after, sliding through the shower curtain to make it up to them, a tongue sliding into the folds of their ear, hands slipping down to the folds of thighs, into slicks of wet and warm. The absolute mess on the floor afterwards of errant water sloshing out the tub.

The tub.

The floor.

The water that had taken them both. The water that refused to take Jamie.

Not the water, she corrected. Dani. Dani, who refused to take Jamie along on one last adventure. Do you want company? She had asked, all those years ago. Can I walk by your side? Will you take me with you?

And there it was - her beast - clawing up her spine, smashing with a roar into the mocking mirror pane. Again she roared, again she cried, until a dozen fractured shards were all that was left of the toothpaste, left of Jamie’s broken heart, all that was left of Dani. Again and again she struck the mirror until the pain from her bleeding knuckles pulled her out of it and she sank, depleted, sobbing on the floor.

So she drank.

And got into more than a few fights while she was at it. Needed a better opponent than flower pots and dirt, though - she’d already destroyed a decent part of the shop. She needed something to twist her fists into, something that would punch back, something that would make her hurt.

When she drove home, she’d try to ignore the voice in her head that sounded so much like Dani (“You could kill somebody, Jamie. Jesus!”) she almost veered off the road looking at the passenger’s side.

Left the fucking mirror in the bathroom where it was, a broken and half empty self-portrait. Tossed the glass in the bin and swept it away where the edges of a life that no longer existed wouldn’t cut her. Pleased there was nothing to look at getting ready in the mornings, nothing to catch her eye stepping out of the shower, nothing to reflect. Nothing to look at. Nothing at all.

And so it stayed as the weeks wore on. The medicine cabinet pulled open for badly needed aspirin after a particularly rough night or tougher morning, band-aids for the cuts on her knuckles, no mirror on the outside to mock the bruises on her cheek or the split eyebrow from what might have been a night of bad choices but were the only ones that seem to make sense anymore.

The only thing that helped ease the ever-throbbing, dull ache from every corner of her heart was to press the hurt. A walking bruise, Jamie desperately sought solace to cauterize the bleeding wound of loss.

The less Jamie had to look herself in the eye for it, the better.

Which left her here: waking up on the bathroom floor, slouched over the toilet, curls of hair plastered on her cheek from a substance she can only assume to be last night’s dried vomit.

Left here, on the bathroom floor, as empty and hollow as Dani had been in what turned out to be her final few days.

Left here, left behind.

If Jamie squints, she can almost see the glimmer of Dani, twinkling like fairy lights on the tile.

But the longer Jamie sits there, legs growing numb from her cramped position, the sparkle doesn’t go away. Matter of fact, it starts to get annoying. She swats at it, trying to suffer her grief and hangover in peace.

She pulls her hand back with a hiss. The light has an edge to it. It bites.

A piece of the shattered mirror. Must’ve been there for weeks now, having fallen behind the toilet, forgotten. Jamie holds it carefully, staring at the broken reflection of her face for a long time. Stares until it stares back. Until the beast, she realizes finally, the one who has stalked her her whole life, has quietly slinked away. She listens for it - the telltale heat of it simmering just under her skin. But she doesn’t feel anything.

The unfairness of it all remains. But there’s something else in the emptiness, she realizes.

Dani.

There’s a chance - far fucking fetched, she knows - but a chance that maybe, just maybe, the emptiness will stare back. And it will look like someone she loved. Loves, she corrects. Loving Dani will always be in the present. Jamie, crumpled on the floor, bleeding from an aching heart, will always be surrounded by the ghost of Dani. Haunted by a life built and shared and grown. A life taken. Cut short. A leafling, snipped from the vine at the most beautiful stage of maturation. Haunted, sure. But not alone. Something to be said for the chance that Dani will appear.

Jamie will be haunted by Dani for the rest of her days regardless, she knows, phantom or no. Might as well wait, Jamie thinks wryly, got a lot to tell her off for.

She spent more than a few years living with ghosts, anyway. Only difference is, this time she’ll be aware of it. Besides, no one else she’d rather be haunted by. It was Dani forever. Said as much herself that day in the shop. I’ve got a problem, Poppins. Dani would always be it for her. And some problems can’t be fixed. Can only sit and learn to live with them like old friends.

So Jamie scrapes herself off the floor. She shuffles to the kitchen to grab the broom and sweeps the broken pieces of the last few broken months into the bin, cautious of the edges this time.

She gets dressed. Puts away the bottles. Collects the half-eaten take out containers and napkins that litter the apartment. Takes out the trash. Waters the plants. Prunes the dead leaves. Repots herself and let her roots overcome the shock of replanting, remembering the work of living.

Drives to the hardware store and buys a replacement panel for the bathroom. Mounts it in the frame, reverently touching the mirror’s edges. Because if there’s a chance, even a single chance - weeks, months, years from now - that Jamie’s personal ghost will come back to haunt her, she doesn’t want to miss a second of it. Doesn’t want to risk being too drunk, face down in a toilet somewhere, too angry to remember seeing Dani’s face. Doesn’t want Dani seeing that.

Doesn’t want it all to be for nothing, hiding her secret beast for all those years. Having worked so hard to make sure Dani never saw that part of her, the one who went wild and feral, hissing and clawing at the world and it’s indifference. Never wanted to let her beast get close to Dani, close enough to scratch. Not Dani, who struggled so hard to keep tame her own demons.

She’d be a rather shit wife if she started now. Just because Dani was gone doesn’t mean Dani wouldn’t see.

Doesn’t mean it’s easy though, either. It’s hard. Hardest fucking thing she’s ever done, since pulling herself out of that lake when all she had wanted to do was drown in it. That wasn’t difficult, that was instinct. This will be a choice. Every day, for the rest of her life, will be a choice. One she has to make again and again.

Jamie longingly traces the pair of earrings lazily forgotten, left out on top of the dresser, in a bygone act of normalcy to be left now in memoriam, and pulls out one of Dani’s favorite shirts from the drawer, that awful slinky pink one that snagged on every last thorn and branch in the shop. Pretty in love with you, it turns out. Inhaled. Breathed in every last atom of Dani until her lungs were trembling with her. She slid the shirt on like armor and prayed the delicate fabric would be strong enough to help withstand the weight of the world ahead.

She took a few steps to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and did battle with the first night of the rest of her life. Let the sink fill, stared at the water, and took a deep breath.

It took years for Dani to see the Lady. They were grateful for it then - relieved, actually, that they managed to get so much time. But now, all Jamie wants is for the haunting to come quickly. Do you want company?

For a long time, all Jamie Taylor wanted to do was forget. Forget Lancashire, forget the taunts, the sound of banging, of Louise’s girlish flirting, Mikey’s crying. Forget the whirl of sirens, the creak of a door opening in the dead of night, a weight dipping on the bed next to her. Forget London, forget prison, forget her, forget all of it. Forget Bly, forget the Lady, forget Viola was ever a dark spot to stain the bright garden of their life. She drank thirstily, fought desperately, all to forget the pain, forget that Dani was gone, was never coming back, and that she doesn’t remember how to be Jamie without Dani by her side.

Except now, she realized, on the off-chance Dani’s face would stare back in the mirror or from beneath the water, she wanted to see every last line, every curve of her face. If that meant suffering the empty, aching, endless days to do so, then so be it.

It’s you. It’s me. It’s us, she’d screamed to the Lady, to the hatred inside both of them, the fury that stormed stronger than death.

But after the flames expunge and the coals cool, Jamie remembers now, there’s more than just rage in the quiet parts. There’s patience. Love. Kindness. That things grow with just a little bit of water. A little, instead of all at once.

Water can give life, not just take it away.

It was easy to forget that small truth when the waves crashed and swept her below, unable to gain footing before another came crashing down and pulled her under. She did it once, on her own, in her youth and loneliness. She can learn how to do it again; to exist in stillness and quiet without Dani. A little, instead of all at once.

She lets loving Dani warm instead of burn. Like a comforting hearth beckoning the weary home.

She ran her fingers along the cool porcelain of the sink, reverently, as if it were Dani’s skin she was touching; Dani’s face she was caressing; Dani, she was loving.

Jamie takes a deep, shuddering breath, and looks up. Squares her shoulders, baring all of herself to the mirror, forces herself to look.

She’ll wait forever if she has to.

But first, just one night.

Beautiful things worth loving and tending to can bloom at night; under the blanket of darkness, there’s still life. And if she keeps pouring all her love and effort into it, maybe one day it’ll all make sense. She can see where it goes.

#damie #thobm #The Haunting of Bly Manor #dani x jamie #dani clayton x jamie taylor #my fanfic #april's the best everyone go thank her for hammering this into sense

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #359

“i’m only a crack in this castle of glass / hardly anything there for you to see”

Do you look better with your hair down or up? It's too short to go up. Has you mom ever directly told you that she favoured your other sibling(s) over you? Yeesh, no. Have you ever read The Outsiders? Seen the movie? Read the book, seen the movie. Adore both. What’s your favourite drink from Jamba Juice? I don't think we have those here. Can you stand eating the crusts of a slice of sandwich bread? I don't mind the crust at all. Do you do your homework at home or in class? Prior to college, I did my work right after getting home to get it out of the way. In college, I did it in-between classes or when waiting for Mom to finish class. Do you feel uncomfortable sharing drinks with other people? Yes, I never do it. Do you get jealous if your boyfriend hugs another girl? I'm single, but hypothetically, I wouldn't... It's just a hug. At least for me, it's just a friendly gesture. Is there something that happened in your past you hate talking about? A few things, yes. Is it hard for you to be “just friends” with the opposite sex? Nah. If you had to choose, what color is your favorite? Baby pink. How many times have you dated the person you’re with now? I’m single. Has anyone suspected you of being a different sexuality? Yes. Do you like chocolate or vanilla cake more? Chocolate. Does it bother you to have blood drawn or not so much? Nah. What color is your toothbrush? It's a white electric one. Do you normally fall asleep fast or slow? Ridiculously slow. Have you ever had a severe allergic reaction? No. What do you want to be for Halloween this year? I'd love to dress up as like a Ms. Oogie Boogie and take some cool pictures, but I highly doubt it'll actually happen. What color are your glasses, if applicable? Black. Do you still look in the toy aisle, or do you pass it by? I walk past it. What are your summer fashion essentials? I don't have fashion essentials for any season. Do you have your own website? For my photography, yeah. Do you think you would be a good salesperson? Ha, no. I worked in retail before and I fucking sucked. Do you like candy corn? NO. Just colored wax, ugh. Do you like to wear skirts? I don't wear anything that shows my legs. Were you happy as a kid? Yeah. That, talkative, and hyper. Favorite store to browse but not really buy anything? Haha, I LOVE going on MorphMarket now and again to browse the ball pythons especially, but boy if I had the cash and space would I buy like fifty of them at once. I don't really know about a store I like browsing but not buying from. Skittles or Sour Patch Kids? Both are great, but I guess Sour Patch Kids. BUT, if you throw SOUR Skittles in there... then it's a war lol. If tattoos were free, how many would you have? A HELL OF A LOT. I wanna be just about totally painted. Do you wear a retainer at night? Not anymore. I had one, but I stopped using it. Are you afraid of dolls, puppets, or clowns? I'm not a doll person, particularly porcelain ones. When you’re in your room, do you keep the door locked? No. It's not even closed. Do you think your face is mostly symmetrical? Actually no, and I'm self-conscious about it. Stupidest thing you have ever said out loud? OH Christ, I'm not retrospecting on this. What’s your least favourite ice-cream flavour? That I've actually tried, strawberry. It's disgusting. What was the last good news you heard? I got approved for TMS therapy! Who was the last person to comment on your Facebook status? My friend Lyndsey. How did you meet him/her? World of Warcraft. She's actually my guild master, and she is the sweetest damn person. Have you ever learned any self-defense? If not, would you be interested in learning? I haven't, but yeah, I'd like to. When was the last time you took a nap? How long was it? Yesterday. For some reason, I actually slept a LONG time, like at least three, but probably close to four, hours. I mean I was tired, but I didn't feel THAT tired. Do you like Gushers? YAAAAAAAAAAS What would you do if you could do anything without failing? Actually get a degree for SOMETHING. What is your native language? English. Do you have a younger brother or sister? A younger sister. If so do/did they really get on your nerves? No. We were very close as kids, but we've drifted apart. Now, she absolutely doesn't get on my nerves. I'm so proud of her. Name something that happened to you that was completely unexpected. Uhhh I dunno. Do you judge people that have multiple piercings? Lol wtf? No. Do you watch the Olympics? No. What did you have for breakfast this morning? I had Kix cereal. Do you like orange juice? Yes. So long as it doesn't have pulp in it. Do you think it’s cruel to keep an animal in a cage while you’re away? It depends on the size of the cage as well as how long you're away. Do you have a pet gecko? No, but I'd love a fat-tailed gecko. Are you scared of reptiles? Not at all, I adore them. Is your car messy? I don't have my own car. Mom's kinda is, though. It needs a wash badly, but because of her bumper literally being zip-tied on, she doesn't trust going into a car wash. And neither of us are about to do it manually, lol. Have you ever seen the show 16 and Pregnant? No, fuck that show. Do you buy expensive clothes? No. Does death scare you? Not really. What are your current goals? Conquer my social anxiety, get a job, lose weight, do something to strengthen my legs... Those are the four biggies. Do you clap or cheer when at a concert? I did both at the one I've been to. Do you drink coffee? What brand? No. Do you use a comb or brush? A comb. When you were younger, did you ever do that exclamation point that looked like an upside down triangle and had a really big dot? No. I loved the cutesy girl handwriting though, haha. I just could never do it. You’re locked in a room with the person you last dated, any problems? Well yeah, we're locked in a room lmao. What kind of relationship do you have with the last person you kissed? It's perfectly fine, we're best friends. Have you ever gotten burnt by a cigarette? No. Do you get mad when people smoke around you? Yes. Honestly, have you ever eaten raw cookie dough? Yeah, more than once. When was the last time you were on a city bus? Never. Do you have a garden? Does it have flowers, vegetables, or both? No. Where do you want to raise your kids? Who said I even want kids? Have you ever been to Cracker Barrel? Yessssss, good shit. Have you ever seen a ghost? I think I have. Have you ever burned an ant with a magnifying glass? No. Have you ever been to craigslist.com? Yes. Have you ever used Nair? Yes, on my legs. It works, I just have stupidly hairy legs that need so much to get it all. How many tabs do you have open and what are they? Two YouTube tabs and then Tumblr. What browser do you prefer to use? Chrome. What room are you in right now? My bedroom. Are you excited for anything this month? 1.) I get my tattoo on the 19th, and 2.) I start TMS next Wednesday. What language course did you take in school, if any? I barely survived one semester of Latin, then I did all four available German courses. What language would you most like to learn? I'd love to improve my German. What would you like to get a degree in? Photography. What book are you reading, what genre is it and do you like it so far? Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night. It's young adult fantasy, I think. Did you ever sometimes flip through your text books even when you didn’t need to? Yeah, mainly to just look at pictures because I was that bored in class, haha. What types of magazines do you read? None. Would you prefer to read a book, watch a movie or TV show, or play a video game? Play a video game. What’s your current relationship like with the person you lost your virginity to and do you wish it was different? We don't have any relationship anymore. I don't regret losing it to him, if that's what you're asking. If you mean our relationship stance, it'd be nice to still be in touch with him, but I know it wouldn't be healthy for me. Have you ever felt responsible for someone’s death? Pets, yes. No humans. What was the last book you recommended to someone? Idk. What’s the most difficult thing you and your current or last significant other have gone through? Distance was very hard. What’s your best memory with your ex? I'm going to assume this refers to "the ex." In which case, we were "play arguing," and I came storming into the kitchen after him to make a point, and I slid mid-sentence, and he caught me. We just held each other laughing our asses off. It's the simple things, man. Who was the last person that asked to hang out with you and what’s the story of how you met that person? Summer. My little sister and her were in pre-k together and became friends, but I gradually became closer to her than Nicole did when we were teens. Has anyone ever asked you out and you turned them down? Yes. Is there something you generally always ask for help with? Yeah. Like recently I've been having apples and peanut butter a lot, and I ask my mom to cut the apple because I'm terrified of knives. Do you feel comfortable telling people how much you weigh? NOPE. Have you looked at any old photos of yourself lately? No. In a relationship, have you ever been on and off with your partner? No. Do you consider cooking to be an art? Yes. Are you a fast or slow reader? I'd say I read at a moderate pace. Does it take a lot to gross you out? It depends on what it is, but I am actually more squeamish than I used to be.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''castle of glass'' by linkin park

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lady-divine-writes · 4 years

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All the Beautiful Pieces (Rated NC17) Chapter 10

Blaine Anderson is spending the summer after graduation flipping houses with his brother for Cooper’s total home renovation show. The show features the worst houses Cooper can buy, with Blaine playing the role of lackey so that Cooper can torture him in front of his viewers. The last house Blaine has to renovate is an original Victorian House in San Diego, CA, which is in terrible condition. But this house turns out to be more than just another job. It was once owned by a famous Vaudeville ventriloquist by the name of Andrew Smythe. It houses a very interesting collection of items - among them, two life-sized puppets. Blaine isn’t sure exactly why, but he’s drawn to them - especially to the one with the beautiful blue eyes. He convinces Cooper to give him the puppets, and Blaine starts to restore them. In the course of the restoration, Blaine finds out that neither puppet is simply a run-of-the-mill puppet, and Andrew Smythe was hiding a secret that will be the key to saving two lives.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Chapter 10 (7470 words)

A/N: Warning for a few dated homophobic slurs. I am determined to take the time during this quarantine to complete this re-write and finish the story. I hope that you join me on this little adventure. :)

Driving with Kurt turns into a major distraction for Blaine as the blue-eyed puppet stares up at the sky through the open window and sighs every five seconds.

“Oh, Blaine” - Kurt closes his eyes against the wind as the minivan breezes down the highway - “it’s nothing like I remember it.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Blaine asks, sneaking a peek at the puppet pulling his head in from the open window.

Kurt presses the button to close it, shutting it half way, then presses it again, lowering it an inch. He has developed a fascination with the buttons and switches that control things in the van – the door locks, the window switch, the seat adjuster. It had been adorable to watch Kurt spend the first five minutes of their trip swaying back and forth and up and down as he adjusted and re-adjusted his seat over and over.

“Both,” Kurt concludes after a pause. “I mean, I’m all for progress, and highways and tall buildings are a part of human civilization moving forward, but I don’t know …” He gazes out at the edge of the highway, where store after store and building after building blurs by. “There’s just something to be said about driving slowly down a dirt road and hearing the gravel underneath the tires, the birds flying overhead, seeing houses surrounded by green grass, cows grazing, and a chicken coop in the front yard, white picket fences, laundry hanging from a line …” Kurt sighs again, probably his hundredth sigh in the last half hour. But it’s peaceful, and Blaine knows he’ll never get tired of it. “I think I’m just an old-fashioned, silly romantic. The world has changed so much since I last saw it. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time playing catch up.”

Blaine wants to reassure Kurt that playing catch up in this new time period will be easy, but he bites his lip to stop himself. It won’t be easy for Kurt. Blaine knows it. And patronizing Kurt won’t change that. He comes up with something instead that he hopes will mean more to Kurt, give him something more substantial to hold on to.

“However long it takes,” he says, “I’ll be here to help you.”

Kurt’s glass eyes reflect the sunlight and blue sky overhead, making them look like they’re swimming with unshed tears. “Really?”

Blaine smiles. “I promise.”

As they turn onto Harbor Drive, Blaine’s eyes shift periodically to Kurt’s face, trying to gauge his reaction to returning to the house where he had been trapped for so long. But as they approach the old Victorian, Kurt settles back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

Blaine doesn’t ask. He understands.

Kurt isn’t ready to see it.

Gary’s U-Haul is parked by the curb out front. Standing beside it are Gary and two other men he brought with him to help. The first guy, Ted, Blaine knows. He’s a few years older than Blaine and studying occupational therapy at San Diego State University. Ted met Gary years ago when Ted was on the search for a porcelain doll for his mother for her birthday. It turned out that authenticating vintage dolls was a hidden hobby of Ted’s, and the day he walked into Gary’s shop, he rescued Gary from spending a fortune on dolls that turned out to be incredibly well-made counterfeits.

The other gentleman – an older man – Blaine doesn’t recognize. He’s standing off on his own reading a hefty, leather-bound book, while Gary and Ted talk over their game plan for the rest of the toys in the house. This man couldn’t be any more different from Gary and Ted if he tried. Where the other two men are wearing polo shirts and jeans, this older man is wearing a three-piece suit. He’s trim and tall, with generous flecks of silver interspersed in his stark black hair. Narrow reading glasses sit perched at the tip of his long, thin nose. His lips move as he reads, ignoring the other two men and their constant jabber.

From the looks of things, only Gary and his crew have arrived so far, which means everyone else would be showing up later on, while Blaine is inside the house and Kurt outside. Blaine hadn’t anticipated that. Usually everyone on the renovation team gets to a project house early. He doesn’t want anyone bothering Kurt when they arrive.

Blaine leans over to Kurt’s seat. “Okay, I’m going to be a couple of hours, but I’ll be in and out, so I’ll check in on you to make sure you’re alright.”

Kurt doesn’t open his eyes but he smiles, turning his face in the direction of Blaine’s voice. “Oh, Blaine, you are a gentleman. But don’t worry too much about me. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Blaine looks at Kurt’s face, serene and sparkling in the daylight. He’s staring, he knows it, but he can’t help it. Kurt is such an attractive puppet. He has such a kind and honest face. There are many compliments Blaine could give to Kurt in that regard that, unfortunately, wouldn’t be compliments at all. Blaine could say that Kurt is beautiful, which he is, but that might be more a comment on the masterful way he was made, and therefore a compliment to Andrew’s workmanship. Blaine would rather cut out his tongue than compliment that monster. Blaine could say that Kurt is handsome, as he was in all of those black and white photographs Blaine saw, but that would be a compliment to the person he was.

A person who doesn’t entirely exist anymore.

Whoever Kurt is, whatever he is, whatever miracle brought him to be, Blaine adores him - shamelessly so.

Of all the crazy, outlandish, off-the-wall things that could happen to Blaine, he has a thing for a puppet.

Go figure.

“Blaine?” Kurt whispers, his smile growing wider. “Are you planning on leaving anytime soon, or are you going to stare at me all day?”

Blaine’s cheeks go from tan to scarlet in award-winning time.

“I was … I was just wondering … uh …” He clears his throat “… if you’re going to be okay sitting here, or if you need a book to read or something.”

Blaine clamps his jaw shut when he remembers the only things he has in the van to read are the journals in the trunk.

“I’m fine,” Kurt assures him, “except …”

Uh-oh … he does want to read. Shit!

“Except …” Blaine repeats anxiously.

“If you can maybe find me some paper and a pencil? I would like to sketch.”

“Sketch?” Blaine mentally breathes a sigh of relief.

“Yes. I design clothes.” Kurt sounds contrite, like he’s apologizing for this thing that he enjoys, and Blaine longs to ask him who might have given him the impression that designing clothes was a bad thing. Kurt’s mother doesn’t sound like the type to discourage her son from a hobby like sewing, and Andrew, for all his faults, included a sewing machine in Kurt’s room, so it couldn’t have been him.

“Of course,” Blaine says, opening his door. “I’m sure I can dig some up. Give me a moment.”

“Mm-hmm.” Kurt hums as he reaches for the button to recline the seat. “Take your time.”

Blaine hops out and shuts the door behind him. Cheers and applause go up from Gary and Ted, who wave his way, hooting and hollering like the over-excited fools they are. Blaine smiles and waves back, heading for his trunk.

“I’ll open up the house in a second,” he calls out, knowing that Gary is drooling to get his hands on the rest of those toys. Blaine admires Gary really. He’s living his dream - he owns his own business, makes enough to support himself in an expensive city like San Diego, and most importantly, he enjoys what he does.

If Blaine can achieve half of that, he’ll consider himself fortunate.

Blaine knows he has a notebook somewhere in the trunk, but with all of the things he’s packed and unpacked in the last few days, he doesn’t know where it ended up. He rustles through the usual automotive junk – first aid kit, jumper cables, a bottle of Armor All. He comes across a roll of paper towels and a half used bottle of Windex that he doesn’t remember ever seeing , but there it is, and it reminds him of the posters hanging in the kitchen – the ones with dust caked on so thick Blaine couldn’t see through it. He pulls them out, keeping a hold of them while he keeps looking. Underneath the backseat he finds his notebook, with a pencil shoved inside the spiral rings. He grabs it along with the three journals, hiding them strategically between his body and the cleaning supplies. He closes the trunk and walks over to Kurt’s window.

“Here you go,” he says, laying the notebook on the lap of the resting puppet.

“Thank you, Blaine,” Kurt says with eyes still closed. “Now go. I’ll be fine. I promise.” And he blows Blaine a kiss.

Blaine feels it land against his cheek as if it were a real, palpable thing.

“Alright, Kurt,” Blaine says, noticing how Kurt’s smile grows when he says his name.

Blaine heads to the house, gesturing to the other men with one wide wave. All three men look at Blaine’s van as they pass. Though none of them are close enough to peek inside and see Kurt stretched out in the front seat with his eyes shut, they must have caught a glimpse of him because he’s the first thing Gary mentions as Blaine starts unlocking the house.

“So, you’re driving around with them, Blaine?” he asks, sounding disturbed but amused by Blaine’s choice of company. “Is this a legitimate obsession, or just an attempt to defraud your way into the carpool lane?”

Blaine decides not to argue with Gary, knowing he’s mainly teasing him.

“You know, Gary,” Blaine says, sticking a key into the front door, “as an adult man who plays with dolls, I would think that you, of all people, might understand.”

“Wait,” Ted says. “You guys aren’t kidding, are you? You brought the puppet with you, Blaine!?”

Blaine turns and shoots Gary an accusing glance as the door swings open and he leads the trio inside.

“You told him?”

“I’m sorry, Blaine,” Gary says, not sounding sorry at all. “It just … came up.”

“What in the world were you guys talking about that the subject of my puppets came up in conversation?” Blaine props the door open, then starts pulling the drapes.

“Cheeseburgers,” both men answer in unison, leaving Blaine to shake his head.

“You took one of the puppets?” the older man sneers, speaking for the first time.

“Blaine” - Gary steps in before a potential argument breaks out - “this is Alex Norton. He specializes in Vaudeville culture, and he’s very interested in the puppets.”

“I purchased two of the puppets,” Blaine clarifies to the man staring him down through the wafer thin lenses of his spectacles, “from my brother, who owns the house and everything in it.”

“So, you purchased them without knowing what they’re worth?” The man’s nostrils flare with contained anger.

“I paid quite a bit for them,” Blaine says in his defense, swallowing a comment about the loss of his paycheck. “I’m pretty sure my brother got what they’re worth.”

“Like I said,” Gary interrupts, “he didn’t buy any of the franchised puppets, just two handmade puppets that were trashed in the basement.”

“Made by the original owner of the house, yes?” Alex over-enunciates each word, unnecessarily in Blaine’s opinion. “Andrew Smythe?”

Blaine bristles at the name. “What difference does that make?”

“That makes the puppets of historical significance.” Alex straightens, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Therefore, I will need to see the puppets.” Alex stares at Blaine, waiting to be lead out to his van, Blaine assumes.

“No,” Blaine says.

“No?” Alex repeats contemptuously, his glasses beginning to slide their way back down his nose.

“No.” Blaine stands firm. “You are free to see any puppet in the house, but those two are my personal property. They’re not available for you to see.”

“They are the only existing examples of Andrew Smythe’s attempts to make human-sized puppets,” Alex argues, leaning in in an attempt to intimidate him.

“Too bad,” Blaine says. “You can’t see them.”

Alex stares at Blaine and Blaine stares back, the air between them electric, waiting for a spark to set it off.

“Okay, guys,” Ted intercedes, hoping to diffuse the tension, “we have a lot of work to do. If Blaine doesn’t want to show off his puppets, he doesn’t have to.”

Alex’s upper lip curls, baring his teeth. He knows he’s lost, but his eyes darken nonetheless.

“Fine,” he says, the word a growl inside his locked jaw. He stands up straight, fixes his glasses on his nose again, and walks off as if he knows where he’s going.

Blaine watches him carefully, concerned with how comfortable he seems in the house.

“I apologize about that,” Gary says. “He’s … really passionate about his work.”

“Apparently,” Blaine says, thankful that Kurt is safe in the minivan outside, and that even Sebastian is securely locked up in the beach house.

“Come on.” Gary claps Blaine on the back as he eyes the man heading for the hallway. “Let’s get to work so I can get these glorious tin toys back to my shop.”

Blaine peeks out the window to make sure Kurt can’t be seen, then heads off down the hallway himself. He holds his head high as he passes Alex on the way to the dining room, barely giving the man any berth as he hustles by. Alex grumbles something beneath his breath, but Blaine doesn’t pay enough attention to pick up the remark. He heads straight for the posters hanging on the dining room walls and begins spraying the glass with Windex. He puts his books and supplies on the table and waits as the blue liquid cuts through years of grease and grime, spreading through the muck like fingernails scraping it off. He sprays each poster frame a few more times before he starts tearing paper towels from the roll and wiping, cleaning the glass completely before he steps back and takes a good look at them.

He was right in assuming they were theater posters – twenty in all, each one hung in order showing the rise and fall of “The Great” (a superlative he adds in his head with a sarcastic snarl) Andrew Smythe. The poster on the far left starts with Andrew’s act listed at the bottom in the tiniest type conceivable. As time progresses, Andrew’s listing on the bill rises. His act becomes ‘Andrew and Sons’, written in larger and larger typeface until bam! There he is - his face big as life. And even though his act is still titled ‘Andrew and Sons’, the picture on the poster is of him alone with a puppet sitting on his lap – Sammy, more than likely. A couple more posters have his face on them, but then a new face takes its place and his act, now listed as ‘The Great Andrew Smythe’, shrinks back down the list of names until it’s barely legible.

“Ah. The demise of The Great Andrew Smythe,” a nasally voice echoes through the room. “Tragic.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, “if you believe Andrew Smythe was great.”

Alex tilts his head and stares at Blaine aghast.

“He was one of the greatest performers of his time.”

“Maybe, but he was a crap father.”

Alex jerks back, scrunching his nose as if he’d smelled something offensive when Blaine opened his mouth. “How could you possibly know that?”

Blaine shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes flicking subconsciously to the journals on the table. “I’ve been doing research.”

“Well, did your research tell you that being a good parent wasn’t a pre-requisite for being an excellent performer? Nobody in particular cared how he treated his children.”

Alex makes this statement with such an absence of emotion that it feels like a slap in the face.

“To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care less about Andrew Smythe or his precious act.”

“And yet you apparently spent a considerable amount of money to purchase two of his rarest puppets, which are now so important to you that you won’t let anyone see them.”

“That’s my business,” Blaine says, wanting a quick end to this so he can find a quiet spot and start reading the journals.

“And what about these posters?” Alex asks, pointing to the walls. “Are they to become victims of your indiscernible personal collecting habits, too?”

“No. They’re being donated to the San Diego Historical Society for their exhibit on Vaudeville,” Blaine says with a sardonic twist to his lips. “I hear it’s excellent. Very informative. You should go check it out.” Now would be nice, he thinks. He picks the journals up off the table. Alex watches him, zeroing in on the books in Blaine’s hands as if he recognizes them.

“What are those?” he asks, reaching out a hand like he’s planning to grab them away, but Blaine pulls them towards his chest.

“Homework,” Blaine answers sharply as he brushes past, heading down the hallway and back toward the living room. He decides to plant himself next to the living room window and wait for the other members of the team to arrive. With Alex in the house, Blaine needs to keep an eye on Kurt. He can’t see Kurt from the window because the puppet is lying back in his seat, but Blaine’s not taking the chance of Alex slipping out unseen and harassing him.

He leans his head against the glass and looks at the journals, trying to decide where he wants to start first. Figuring that going in order will be less confusing in the long run, he opens the journal dated 1924.

March 5 -

Dear Margaret –

Our little nine-year-old is quite the recluse. He also has one hell of a left hook, and because of that we are no longer with the Henderson and Co. traveling show. That’s alright, though. I always thought they were stealing from the till, anyhow. So what if it took their little bastard Billy getting a black eye for us to leave that roadside freak show? I know that traveling can be hard on Sebastian, but I think it’s just because he misses you that he acts out this way. He needs a friend. Hopefully we can glom on to another traveling show that has kids down the line. Who knows what will come our way? I love you and miss you always.

July 6 –

Dear Margaret –

I think I might have found the solution to the problem with our Sebastian … and his name is Kurt Hummel. We just finished a show in Columbus, and on our way through Lima, we found him. Well, Sebastian found him. He’s not much more than a slip of a boy, with the thickest head of brown hair you’ve ever seen, but he’s clean and polite and has a voice like an angel. If I didn’t know better, I would say that Sebby was quite taken with him. He was probably just blown away by this kid’s talent like I was. But there’s something different about this boy. He’s special – not only his voice, but the way he behaves, as if performing isn’t something he does, it’s something he is. I’m hoping that his father will let the boy come with us. I introduced myself, told him my piece, but the man became suspicious as all get out. I could just let the matter be, but I really think having Kurt in our act would be a God send. Wish us luck, Margaret.

July 30 –

Dear Margaret -

By golly, it worked. My sweet new acquisition has tamed your unruly son. The two rug-rats are thick as thieves. It’s almost like having you back here with us, Maggy. He cooks, he cleans, he sings all the time. From morning to evening, he fills the house with music. I feel bad for his papa though - losing a wife and now a son - but I promised the man I’d raise his son proper. Maybe with his talent in the mix we’ll finally make it to Europe like we always planned. Can’t you just picture it, Maggy? Headlining in Paris?

“Hey, Blaine,” Gary calls, his arms wrapped around a box filled with carefully wrapped metal toys, “aren’t you supposed to be filming us or something?”

Blaine doesn’t look up from the journal when he reaches a hand into the pocket of his pants and pulls out his webcam. He switches it on and points it in Gary’s general direction. Gary chuckles.

“You know, Cooper’s going to be pissed,” Gary says, adjusting the box in his arms and heading for the door.

“Yeah, well …” Blaine lets the comment die off as he closes the first journal and opens the second one.

March 14 –

Dear Margaret -

Boy, that Kurt is sharp as a pin. Every day he spends with us, I learn something new. Here he’s been with us for almost a year and I didn’t know he spoke French. Says his mom taught him when he was little. She must have been one hell of a woman, just like you, Maggy.

August 21 -

Dear Margaret -

I was a little worried taking Kurt on that he’d be sort of … delicate. You’d understand if you saw him. But he’s no nancy, I’ll tell you that. Kurt and Seb got themselves into one heck of a tussle the other day – the two of them against four older boys, all of them a foot taller, and boy oh boy, did Kurt lick ‘em good. Of course, I told them that I wouldn’t stand by fighting, not while we’re trying to make a respectable name for ourselves in the higher paying houses in town. And I disciplined them. I didn’t lay a hand on Kurt. It don’t feel right giving a hiding to another man’s son and besides, I’m pretty sure it was Sebastian’s mouth that got them into all that trouble, so he got a few extra lashings with the belt to teach him. But you would have been so proud to see that boy handle himself.

Blaine winces as he reads. He knows that Kurt, Sebastian, and Andrew lived during another era, in almost a completely different world. The twenties erupted in the middle of a turbulent time in American history, but that’s no excuse for the way Andrew treated his son – or the fact that he replaced him.

Blaine switches to the last journal – 1928. He does the math – if Sebastian was 10 in 1924, he’d be around 14 in 1928.

February 22 –

Dear Margaret -

Those two boys are inseparable. They go everywhere together, and they’re so similar, they could pass for brothers. So I call the act ‘Andrew and Sons’ now. It’s worked out well for us so far. The burlesque houses hire us for their matinees. It’s good to have a family act to offset the bawdier performances. With our name on the billboards, it keeps the Fuzz off their backs and we get a higher percentage of the pot.

Blaine skims through a few entries, stopping off and on when real life intervenes. He’s interrupted first by a phone call from the storage company, rescheduling again for the following day, and then by Alex when he boldly tries to read over Blaine’s shoulder. Gary swoops in and rescues Blaine by telling the dreadful man that he and Ted are ready to pack up the puppets and they need his help with the values. Alex gives Blaine a stern glare before he hobbles off after Gary and Ted.

Blaine turns to the back of the book, trying to find an entry that he saw earlier and thought looked promising.

October 15 –

Dear Margaret –

I wish you were here. It was the darndest thing. I went out to the shed behind the house and saw Sebastian kissing Kurt. It wasn’t brotherly nor friendly neither. It was a real, honest-to-God kiss. I’m not surprised with Kurt. I kind of suspected that his tastes tilted that way, so that doesn’t bother me. He’s a smart boy, and if that makes him happy, then so be it, but not Sebastian. I’m not raising a cake-eater. But it’s an easy fix. I’ll whore it out of him. I know you wouldn’t approve, Maggy, but there’s nothing else I can do. He turns fifteen come January. I’ll plan for then. In the meantime, I’ll have to find a way to keep them apart.

Blaine closes the journal. He’s had enough. He blinks his eyes, spots and shapes dancing in front of him as he recovers from Andrew Smythe’s wretched penmanship. He looks out the window in time to see Kurt raise his seat. From this distance, Kurt doesn’t look like a puppet. With his head titled, his eyes shut, a small smile curling his mouth, he looks like a human boy.

Blaine sees a car from another pawn shop pull up out front, and he runs to meet them with his webcam switched on. After Cooper’s demeaning phone call, Blaine isn’t too concerned with getting all the shots he claims that he needs, so he plans on only taking enough to keep his brother off his back. He ushers the men into the house and directs them down to the basement, filming as they look over the large tools and equipment, deciding what they can realistically sell. It takes a while to interview these new guys since they’re so focused with the job of rifling through the power tools, plugging each one in to see which ones work or not. As soon as Blaine gets the bare minimum of shots that he needs, he races back up the stairs, taking a brief shot of Alex discussing what looks like the last of the puppets with Gary and Ted, and then heads for Kurt sitting in the van.

“Hey,” Blaine says, trying to sound nonchalant while panting uncontrollably, “I came out here to make sure you weren’t getting too hot or anything.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt the sun on my face?” Kurt sighs. “Or the wind?”

“I can only imagine.” Blaine cocks his head. “Do you feel it now?”

“Not really,” Kurt says, the smile on his lips taking a wry quality. “But I can remember them better when I’m outside than when I was locked up in the dark.”

Kurt’s comment tugs at Blaine’s heart. Tears prick his eyes at the thought of this beautiful boy locked up, shattered to pieces on that cold, damp floor, and he has to look away. He glances down and sees the notebook he gave Kurt open in his lap, the pencil stuck back in the spiral spine, two sheets of paper covered in drawings. Kurt didn’t sketch clothes like he’d said, but the living room and dining room of the house, drawn the way they might have looked when Andrew bought the place. Blaine stares in awe at the intricate details of the embossed wallpaper, the grain in the wood floor, the furniture, down to the tiny touches – portraits on the walls, statuettes on the mantel, books in the bookcase, and the tools by the fireplace, arranged so purposefully that Blaine can tell which one gets the most use by how it leans slightly while the others stand perfectly straight. Even the light streaming in through spaces in the drawn curtains gives hints to what time of day it is.

“Kurt … your drawings … are they of this house?”

“Sort of.” Kurt closes the book, keeping his eyes staunchly shut, and hands it to Blaine. “It’s a combination of the house we lived in with Sebastian’s dad and this one the few times I saw it.”

“They’re amazing,” Blaine says, thumbing through the pages. Kurt has sketched each upstairs bedroom, a bathroom, and also (Blaine discovers) a few outfits. They’re an older fashion, a match to the time period Kurt lived in.

“Thank you,” Kurt says.

“I’m close to wrapping things up in there,” Blaine mentions, setting the notebook back on Kurt’s lap. “We’ve probably got around another hour or so. Did you think about where you might want to go after this? The movies, maybe?”

Kurt raises one eyelid and peeks at Blaine.

“Do you think there’s some place we can go and see the sky?”

Blaine nods.

“I think I know the perfect place.”

***

“I’ve missed the beach so much,” Kurt says, sitting cross-legged on the retaining wall. His eyes travel up and down the shoreline, watching the white caps of the tide curl into the sand.

“Me, too,” Blaine agrees, his own gaze following Kurt’s.

Kurt turns and looks at Blaine. “But, don’t you live here?”

“No.” Blaine coughs, the confession he should have made before tickling the back of his throat. “Actually, I’m from Westerville, but I live in Lima.”

Kurt gasps, throwing both hands over his mouth. “You’re kidding!”

“Nope.” Blaine takes out his cell phone and opens his photo gallery. “Here. Take a look.” He scoots closer to Kurt so that he can better see the pictures on the screen. “These are a few of my friends from high school.”

“Where do you go?”

“McKinley.”

“Hmmm … must be new,” Kurt says, watching Blaine swipe the screen and change the photo.

“This is the Auglaize River last winter. The Glee Club went skating there over break.”

“That’s quite a handsome young man you’ve got your arms around,” Kurt remarks dryly, eyes darting away from the image of a tall blond grabbing Blaine from behind. Blaine smiles at the jealousy plain in Kurt’s voice.

“That’s my best friend Sam. He’s just a friend,” Blaine explains.

“You look close,” Kurt says, noticeably unconvinced.

“We are,” Blaine admits with a smile that slowly takes over his entire face.

“Quite.”

Blaine switches the photo, bypassing a few others with Sam in them. He wants to tease Kurt with the knowledge that he garnered from those journals, how Andrew had hoped Kurt could settle Sebastian down, how the two boys were so fond of each other, but it seems like a cruel memory to bring up. Kurt might not remember it that way and besides, thinking about that closeness starts to plant a seed of jealousy in Blaine’s mind.

Especially that kiss.

Blaine shows Kurt a few, more generic, pictures – the farmer’s market where the Secret Society of Superheroes Club held a food drive last Thanksgiving, the Lima Mall, The Lima Bean coffee shop where Blaine goes pretty much every day after school. Kurt looks at these photos like he’s absorbing the images into his brain, imprinting them there.

“It looks so different now,” he says. “I don’t think I’d recognize it if I went back there.”

“Do you want to go back there?” Blaine asks, closing the photo gallery and pocketing his phone.

Kurt looks at the ocean, sadly shaking his head. “No. There’s nothing there for me now.” He wraps his arms around his torso, runs his hands up his exposed skin.

“Do you want to leave?” Blaine assumes Kurt has caught a chill, forgetting for a moment that Kurt can’t feel the cold.

“Not yet. You know, back when I …” He stops. He stares off at the distance, then he shakes his head. “Do you think it’s more fitting to say when I was alive? Or should I say when I was human? I mean, if I’m speaking of the past, what do I say? How do I address it?”

“That’s a good question.” Blaine wraps his arms around his bent knees and squeezes. He’s definitely catching a chill, but he has no intention of mentioning it. “I would say that you’re alive. And I like to think of you as human. Maybe you don’t need to make the distinction.”

Kurt looks at his hands, turning them over front to back, examining them beneath the moonlight. As well made as they are, as much time was put into them, they don’t look like human hands. They glisten unnaturally, and his knobby knuckles reveal the fact that his digits separate, each piece held together by wire, every time he bends them.

He may be alive, if this is what alive is, but he’s far from human.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” he asks, looking at Blaine with his hands splayed in front of him. “I’m a puppet. I’m made of porcelain. I can’t have a normal life like you. I know you said you would help me, but how? What can I do?” Kurt drops his hands in his lap, helpless, and Blaine sighs. He feels just as helpless. He doesn’t know exactly how Kurt feels, but Blaine is human and still, most of the time, he has no clue what he’s doing. He can’t fix this, not completely, not right now. He doesn’t even know where to start. So he puts an arm around Kurt’s shoulders and holds him close, and together they watch the waves chase each other down the beach.

***

Blaine and Kurt return to the beach house late. They’re not covered in sand, so Blaine doesn’t rush to shower right away. He takes Kurt to his bedroom and sits him down on the bed.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “I had a thought. Hang out here for a second. I’ll be right back.”

Kurt nods, watching Blaine disappear out the door. He crosses the living room and heads for the opposite end of the house. These rooms Blaine doesn’t go to usually with the exception of the kitchen. Where his room and his brother’s room are situated side-by-side on one end of the house, the master bedroom and his parent’s library mirror them on the other.

It’s the master bedroom that Blaine ducks into.

When Blaine was younger, his mother used to sew a lot. It was a hobby that inspired him, but that she kind of grew out of the more “adult” she became. He can’t remember exactly when that happened, it just kind of did. She kept a basket of sewing supplies in the bottom of the closet, along with a few old fashion magazines, so Blaine always had hopes of her picking it up again.

To date, she hasn’t.

On their last visit here, his father, who is tall and thin like Kurt, left clothes hanging in the closet. He had planned to pick them up on their next summer trip, but there never was another one. Blaine looks them over, frowning at how out-of-style they are, but he hopes that Kurt can do something with them. Blaine pulls the clothes off the hangers, grabs the basket of supplies and a handful of magazines, and races back through the house, ignoring Sebastian with each pass.

“Here we go.” Blaine slides into the bedroom on his sock-covered feet and drops the supplies onto his bed. Kurt sees them and goes from sullen to ecstatic.

“Oh, Blaine.” He picks through the clothes and the magazines, smiling so brightly that Blaine thinks Kurt might burst into song. “Did you bring all of this in here for me?”

“Yeah. Well, I thought these clothes might fit you better.” He opens the basket of sewing supplies. “And if they don’t, you could alter them, maybe? And …”

Blaine stops when Kurt kisses him on the cheek. It’s brief, innocent, but it makes Blaine’s entire body tingle.

“It’s wonderful,” Kurt whispers. “Thank you.”

“Yeah? Oh. I’m glad you like them.” He stands and backs up toward the bathroom door while Kurt continues to sift through the items on the bed. “I’m just going to take a quick rinse, and then …”

“Are you going to work on Sebastian?” Kurt’s expression seems genuinely hopeful, but Blaine still has trouble interpreting that wary tone in Kurt’s voice.

“Do you really want me to?” Blaine asks.

Kurt pauses a second.

It’s a second in which Blaine thinks Kurt might say no.

“Yes,” Kurt says in the same unsure tone. “Yes, I do.”

***

Blaine’s shower is basically a dip beneath cold water to get his head straight before he jumps back out and joins Kurt for what could turn out to be a long, exhaustive night of repairing Sebastian. He has only been at it for fifteen minutes, but already he wants to throw in the towel. Sitting in a chair from the dining room that he pulled up in front of the loveseat, Blaine struggles to get Sebastian’s arm seated correctly. Whereas Kurt’s body felt magnetic, his broken limbs pulling together, longing to return to their body, Sebastian’s body feels like he’s repelling these pieces away. Maybe Sebastian doesn’t want to be put back together, Blaine muses.

Or maybe he doesn’t want help from Blaine.

If Blaine had the money to send him to a professional repair person, he would. At least it would get Sebastian out of the house for a few days. The longer he sits on the love seat staring blankly into space, the more unnerving it feels having him around.

Blaine wrestles with the piece, eventually fitting the arm in its socket. He threads the wires through, twisting them together and tying them, but they snap before he can finish. The sharp end recoils and hits Blaine on the arm, leaving a long scratch. Sebastian’s arm falls off his body and onto the love seat.

“Dammit,” Blaine screams, dropping Sebastian to look at his smarting wound, which sends the loose arm tumbling to the floor.

Kurt puts down his sewing and runs over to examine Blaine’s injured arm.

“Is it bleeding?” he asks, looking on with concern.

“I don’t think so,” Blaine hisses, “but it hurts like hell.” Blaine reaches for a box of tissues on the table while Kurt bends over to retrieve Sebastian’s arm.

“Blaine!” Kurt exclaims, getting on his hands and knees. “You didn’t tell me you had a cat!”

“I … I don’t.” Blaine leans to the right and peeks over Kurt’s shoulder. “Oh, is it a tabby cat?” he asks, remembering the fugitive cat that scared the living daylights out of him. “Apparently he’s found a way in here.”

“No!” Kurt gasps, pulling a furry body out from underneath the love seat. Blaine eyes the unmoving animal and groans low in his throat.

Great. The cat broke in again just in time to die in my dining room.

But what Kurt has in his hands isn’t the dead body of a tabby cat. It’s the puppet of a tabby cat - the same tabby cat Blaine had seen in the house before. It has the same inquisitive green eyes, the same ripple pattern to the fur.

“Abigail,” Kurt murmurs, gently stroking the animal’s coat.

“Abigail?” Blaine slides off his chair to kneel on the floor beside him.

“Yes.” Kurt smiles affectionately at the realistic-looking feline puppet with the silky fur and the sparkling green eyes. “Sebastian made her. His dad was teaching us to make puppets, and Abigail was Sebastian’s.”

“But why would Abigail be here?” Blaine asks. “I didn’t bring her here.”

“Abigail was the first,” Kurt says, petting the cat as if he expected it to spring to life any second.

“The first … what?”

“The first puppet that Sebastian’s dad tried the spell on,” Kurt explains, each word forming as if the memory comes to him in the instant that he speaks.

“A spell?”

Kurt’s eyes grow wide as he starts to remember.

“Sebastian’s dad bartered for a spell from the Calhoun family. A favor for a favor. It was supposed to capture any lingering soul and put it into the vessel of your choice.”

“But, why start with the cat?” Blaine asks. It sounds far too fantastic to be real.

But then again …

“Abigail wasn’t just any cat.” Kurt holds the animal up to his nose and stares into its eyes, trying to coax the creature to come alive for them. “She was Sebastian’s cat. His best friend back before I joined their group. She was a stray. Andrew didn’t really let Sebastian keep her. She followed them around because Sebastian fed her, and they couldn’t get rid of her. After she died, Sebastian said he always kind of felt her around. He swore he would see her dart out from behind corners, or feel her curl up next to him while he slept. She was always hiding under things and scurrying beneath toys and such, looking for mice …”

Blaine’s mind conjures up the sounds of scurrying he heard in the Victorian house when he first entered it, wondering if they might have been made by Abigail hunting around the piles of trash.

“He got the spell to bring us back, but he tried it out on Abigail first.”

“So, he was able to bring her back because she stayed behind? So that means that you stayed behind?”

Kurt puts Abigail down beside Sebastian on the love seat, moving the cat close to his friend’s body so that they can finally be together again.

“I couldn’t leave him,” Kurt says, giving the cat puppet one last pat on the head. “He was like a father to me. And he felt so guilty … I had to make sure that he was going to be okay.”

“And Sebastian?” Blaine bites his tongue. The answer is obvious, but Blaine doesn’t want to let on that he harbors secret knowledge of the motives of Andrew – or Sebastian - Smythe. After what Blaine read in those journals, he knows that Sebastian didn’t stick around for his father. No way. There’s only one person he would have stayed around for.

“He stayed around for me.” When Kurt turns and looks at Blaine, it’s with the ghost of tears in his eyes – tears that don’t exist but are as real as any others, brought on by emotion that Kurt can feel but can’t fully express. “That’s why you have to promise me you’ll put him back together.” Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s torso. “You have to fix him. Please? For me?”

“I will,” Blaine says, holding Kurt just as tightly in his arms. “I promised I will, and I will.” With his cheek resting in Kurt’s hair, he looks Sebastian over. He should fix Sebastian – at least give the poor guy another arm or a leg. He did promise Kurt. Sebastian’s puppet is made of wood and the pieces are not as extensively damaged as Kurt’s were, but fixing Sebastian feels like the last thing he should do.

He has a feeling that if Sebastian wakes up, he has the power to take Kurt away from him for good.

***

There must be rats somewhere beneath the floor. Or possums. Or maybe Abigail is up and roaming about the house, chasing dust bunnies or pouncing on her shadow. Either way, in his sleep, Blaine can hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of something moving across the wood floor.

Or maybe it’s a gnawing. He can’t tell in his half-asleep state.

His mind swims with dreams of Kurt: Kurt sitting on the sand at the beach, staring off into the water; Kurt dancing beneath the moonlight, arms outstretched to the sky; Kurt lying beside him where they fell asleep together on the living room floor, their fingers intertwined.

Kurt’s blue eyes, his smooth skin, his pink lips.

Blaine feels a tickle on his cheek, bothering him awake. He opens his eyes with a smile, expecting to see a tuft of orange fur, or maybe blue eyes staring at him from an already awake Kurt.

He hopes it’s eyes – stunning blue glass eyes.

Blaine’s eyes open slowly, holding on to as much dream as he can, even though he’s eager to spend another day with Kurt.

He focuses through slits. It’s eyes that he sees alright, but this time they’re not blue.

They’re green.

And they don’t belong to Abigail.

Blaine’s eyes snap open, realization propelling him awake.

Sebastian is lying out on the floor in front of him, nose pressed against his, wooden mouth split into a startling grin.

“Well hey there, tiger,” Sebastian says. “Don’t I get a kiss hello?”

#klaine #klaine fanfiction #klaine fic

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deskpond87 · 3 years

Text

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morganbritton132 · 4 years

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You don't have to write this, but consider an AU where Abigail lives and ends up staying with the Freds.

When your father kills your mother, and your father kills girls that look like you, and when your father tries to kill you and the guy that shoots your father dead also kills you, and when Hannibal Lecter tries to kill everybody but especially tries to kill you, people will tell you how lucky you are.

You’re lucky to be alive. You’re lucky to still be able to talk and that Alana Bloom isn’t pressing charges. You’re lucky that you’re not dead, or jailed, or disfigured in a way that makes you ugly. You poor little thing.

They tell you this.

They press their cough drop sticky lips together and smile hospital brittle lies, pushing sighs out of their fat faces as they redress her bandages, you’re so lucky, Abigail.

Somebody in the equations that is her life is most definitely a cannibal and honestly, she doesn’t remember if it was the father, the cop, the therapist, herself, or all four, but she’s lucky. She’s alive. She’s lucky.

Her hospital room was guarded by FBI agents and her wrists were in restraints, and she was so lucky that there was a psychiatrist on duty that could visit her room every day for a week. It was what the nurses said. It was what Kade Prurnell said when she told her that the FBI was not planning on pressing any charges against her.

She’s lucky.

It was all anybody said. Nothing else. Nothing at all.

Most people didn’t look her in the eyes and the nurses weren’t quiet enough when they pull straws to see who has to come into her room, and even the psychiatrist that is no Hannibal Lecter stares at the floor when he talks to her.

Everybody treats her like a funeral.

Abigail is her own haunting, she should not be surprised when she attracts a ghost.

There is a ghost in her doorway, step, step, stepping into the room with red soles and needle-point high heels. There is an inferno under a big hat, a spiraling blaze, but this ghost is sharp corners and red lips. This ghost is pale skin, not scorched, not burnt. And this ghost smiles.

“I knew he didn’t kill you.”

Three days in a row, the ghost of a dead woman talks to her, a ghost of a dead girl. She tlls her of Jack Crawford and his dying wife, of Alana Bloom and how she dragged her broken bones behind the iron gate of the Verger Estate. She told her of Will Graham, who did not visit dead girls anymore, and how he carried his guts to the edge of the sea and set sail to settle a score.

She is a ghost, a brighter fiery version of the Freddie Lounds that had once upon a time ago offered Abigail a platform to tell a story. There’s still a haunting of that offer left.

“The chips have already fallen,” Freddie tells her. “The only thing that you got to do now is decide if you want to leave them where they lay or if you’re going to pick them up and cash them in.”

“You have a story that people want to hear,” She tells her. She has a story that Freddie wants to exploit is what she meant. “Do you know how power that is?”

Abigail knows power in the dying light of Nicholas Boyle’s eyes. She knows power in pressed suits and a kitchen knife. She knows power in the words written all over the home she grew up in, and she knows Freddie Lounds.

She did not plan on staying with Freddie, but that is where she ended up. She has no money, no parents. Hannibal is not here anymore, and Will is gone.

Freddie is a lending hand when there was none, and Abigail knows how to make the best of a bad situation. So, she nods.

And she decides, I’ll make the best of it.

She decides, I’ll make them come back for me.

She decides, I am going to kill Freddie Lounds.

She is going to do what Hannibal and Will couldn’t, what they didn’t do even though they wanted to. She is going to make something so beautiful and so big from Freddie’s tiny bones so that they – so that they’d have no choice but to come back and witness her.

So, Abigail follows Freddie inside of her small, overcrowded apartment. She follows her into the closet-sized guest room that Freddie offers her. She follows her into Target and TJ Maxx, into Home Goods and thrift shops, and watchs wordlessly as Freddie buys stuff to decorate her room. And she thinks, I’m going to kill you.

She watches Freddie hang up curtains and string together lights. She watches her order takeout and watch tv, write articles and argue with the big men who pound on her door and demand retractions. She watches her meticulously put together every edition, every outfight, and talk to Abigail like she is flesh and blood, and alive even though she isn’t. Even though Abigail is going to kill Freddie, you’re not even going to see it coming.

Freddie doesn’t push for the story that she was promised, but she prods. She pokes around and jiggles the handles just to see if she can get inside, and then she backs off. She tells jokes that aren’t funny and makes comments that are only funny because they’re mean, and she suggests selling t-shirts that say, I was held captive by a cannibal for over a year and all I lost was my ears.

Freddie photocopies the death threat nailed on the door and says, “I don’t blame you. I’ve wanted to push Alana out a window for years.”

Abigail doesn’t really talk anymore.

She just watches and she listens, and she thinks about snapping Freddie’s neck every chance she gets. She smiles and huffs wordless sounds at crass comments, and she shrugs her shoulders to the suggestion that they get Chinese food. She eats it in her room with the door closed between them.

She does that a lot, closes the door.

She keeps Freddie on the other side and sharps wood torn from the baseboards into daggers, and she wonders how much ink it takes to fill a human body. She makes promises to herself, to them, that they’ll be proud of her, that they’ll come back and say they missed her.

Abigail keeps scissors under her pillow and Freddie keeps secrets.

There are three toothbrushes in the bathroom and concealer that’s too dark to be either of theirs. There is a new passcode on her computer and a lock on Freddie’s bedroom door.

The first time Abigail meets Frederick Chilton, he’s not wearing shoes.

Abigail doesn’t really have a frame of reference for Chilton.

She’s only knows what Hannibal has told her about him, but he is smaller than even that. He is nasally and prideful in how he talks, but it’s a thin veneer. He is a shell of a man that he wanted to be, and he is cracking.

Frederick seems startled by her presences in the kitchen even though it was morning. His voice breaks, slurring at the ends, and he blushes through the pound of makeup on his face, “Oh, hello.”

She blinks at him.

She looks between Freddie in her bathroom and Frederick without his shoes, and she speaks for the first time in a very long time, “You don’t look like a man who had his face blown off.”

Originally, she thinks that Freddie is helping Chilton write a book and that is why he keeps existing in the same place as her, but she was wrong about that.

Frederick Chilton is afraid of his own house. He make lame excuses to justify his reason to be there and chides Freddie when he doesn’t think that Abigail could hear him about her having that – that girl in here.

One day, Abigail skips therapy and sneak back into her room through the fire escape. She lay in her bed and stares at the ceiling until she hears Freddie tell someone to stop worrying, “She’s at therapy for the next hour and a half, babe.”

Abigail presses the side of her head against the door and she listens to Frederick huff, and the uncorking of a wine bottle, and how two people laugh when they were in love, “The romans used to kill flamingos just to eat their tongues.”

“Does that pick-up line work on all the ladies?” Freddie asks and laughs. And Frederick laughs. And Abigail decides, I’ll kill them both.

Her chance comes at midnight.

It’s not her intention but the chips were on the floor, Abigail is just doing what Freddie told her to. She is picking them up. She is cashing in, big.

She carries a sharpened piece of wood in her hand so tight that it cut into the palm of her hand and she is going to – she was is to do something drastic, something big.

All she wants is to turn the tv off, but her hand is bleeding and she’s going to commit a murder, because she has to, or Hannibal won’t come back for her.

Frederick is asleep on the couch, his hands tucked under his armpits and his feet on the table. His head is tilted back, and he is snoring. It’d be so easy to slit his throat, but…

But she hesitates.

He’s so small and fragile, so frail and defenseless, and she could end him now. All she needs to do is strike. Strike. Strike, goddamn it.

She drops the piece of wood.

She lets it thump soft against the carpet and she gets close. She presses one knee into the couch cushions next to him, and towers over him, and when she tucks her hair behind her ear, it falls into her face.

Frederick is asleep.

Abigail presses the tip of her fingers to Frederick’s bottom lip and she pushes pass it into a mouth that’s only half there. She touches cold porcelain teeth, brushes her fingertips against the twisted angry scar on the inside of his cheek, and she pulls.

She curls her fingers in, digs them beneath the prosthetic, and she pulls it out, slowly.

Frederick’s eyes open frightened and wide, and he does not move. He stares at her like a man who has faced death twice and did not deserve it, jaw stretching as she pulls the prosthetic from his mouth.

His face sags. His whole face just – melts, and she does not feel good, or powerful, or brave. She felt – she felt so fucking hollow.

She stares at him.

She just stares and her eyes burn, and she askes him in a voice that was shattered from unused, and knives, and people leaving her when they said they wouldn’t, “Do you feel lucky like this?”

“None of us are lucky,” Freddie said, a ghost to a dead girl and a melted man. “But we survived. That’s good enough.”

#in my head the whole time writing this #'did abigail ever meet frederick'#somebodyhelpthenotdeadfreds

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