#this picture has been rotting my brain lately this wasn’t meant to be so long

[lizhrs]

saw this picture and thought of escaped convict izuku on the run with raging psychopath/villian dynamight who decide to pay you a visit annnnd yeah (wc:2.6k)

It was supposed to be a nice evening all to yourself.

You were finally on break from the seemingly countless load of work and projects school has been throwing your way. You didn't think twice about taking time off from work and driving to your little cabin two towns out once the semester ended.

The first few days were fine. Everything you could've asked for. No call ins from work, deadlines from uni or hounding from your mother. It was just blissful peace.

But then a knock came at your door. You were reluctant to open it, especially since you're pretty sure no one knew you were here. Except for your mother but she lives thousands of miles away, she's never been the one to visit. It's always you who has to go to her. Your instincts tell you not to open it.

It's the beginning of a freaking horror movie for crying out loud.

Girl alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Check.

Girl has no contact with the outside world because of some absurd challenge of not checking social media for a solid two weeks. Check.

Girl has zero fighting abilities or survival instincts. Check.

Maybe the survival instincts part isn't all too correct because you stay put on your sofa, staring at the hardwood door from your position in the small cabin. Who could it be?

 You check the time, it's nine.

Maybe a person's car broke down nearby. But even then, you refuse to—another knock has you jumping. That's when you hear the whispers.

"I thought you said she'd be here, fucking nerd."

"She is." A calm voice responds.

You freeze. You know that voice. You haven't heard it in years but you definitely know it. You slowly stand up, walking to the door to get a clearer listening. "Did she leave? I swear to—"

"If you would stop talking, you would see all the lights are on. Clearly there's someone here."

A frustrated sigh then another series of pounding on the door. You can't help it, a small scream escapes your lips at the sudden noise. Then silence. They obviously heard you.

Yeah...definitely no survival instincts.

"Y/N?" A voice asks. It's definitely him. Definitely Izuku. But he sounds different. More hardened, confident...a stark contrast to the stuttering boy you were friends with five years ago. "It's me, Izuku. Open the door."

Open the door?

Why would you open the door to someone you haven't even spoken to in years? Someone who doesn't even give you a notice before rudely barging on your property. You can't stay silent any longer, obviously they know you're here but for some reason you can't bring yourself to speak.

"I just need a favor—"

"Fucking move." The other man mutters, you hear some shoving before an explosive sound causes you to take several steps back. What the fuck?

"You can't blow down her door!" Izuku groans in annoyance, shoving the man away.

"Why not? She won't let us in!"

"For obvious reasons you fucking imbecile!"

And you've definitely never heard Izuku curse before. "G-go away." You finally say. That man clearly has a quirk and judging from the sound of it, it could destroy you in a matter of seconds.

Another minute of whispering before Izuku is speaking up again.

"Why do you sound so scared?" He sounds like he's trying to put on a facade, trying to act nice and nonthreatening but the words roll off his tongue in a manner that only has you cringing. This is not the same Izuku you knew back then and you refuse to be one of those dumb girls who get stabbed in a horror movie because she was stupid enough to give some asshole the benefit of the—a pair of arms wrap around your waist, lifting you off the ground and eliciting a terrified scream from your lips.

What the fuck?!

You thrash around in the others person's grip but they're freakishly strong, holding you up with one arm as the other goes to open the door.

"No! Don't—let go of me you psycho!"

It opens and the blood drains from your body, mouth opening in fear as Izuku steps in. He sighs, running his fingers through his hair before shutting the door behind him.

"Told you there's a backdoor. Dumb bitches like this never lock the back door."

What?

"Excuse me?!"

Izuku smiles down at you...since when is he taller than you? He looks older, jawline sharper, eyes more hardened, that boyish smile and chubby cheeks of his that always calmed you down are gone. Instead replaced by this.

You gasp as you take in his clothes. They're...fucking prison jumpsuits covered in blood. He follows your gaze, laughing a bit at your horrified gaze. "Oh this? It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

Don't worry about it?

You scream as the man walks to the living room with you still in his grip, he throws you down on the couch and that's when you get a good look at him. He's big. Fucking massive with spikey blonde hair and a sneer that looks like it could rip you in half. He's also wearing a prison suit.

Tears quickly form in your eyes at the situation you're in. Prison suits, covered in blood and looking at you like you're a piece of meat. Yeah, you're definitely dying tonight. "W-what do you want?"

"Geez, five years of no contact and this is how she greets you?" The blonde laughs. "I thought you two were lovebirds." He plops down on the couch, picking up a magazine.

"Shut up, Katsuki." He sighs.

You two never dated. He was practically a little brother to you, always following you around like a lost puppy. But he doesn't look so desperate anymore. His eyes are chillingly dark all while his lips are forcing themselves into a smile that looks anything but kind. While the other one has almost a maniacal glint to his eyes. They're both creepy, terrifying you to your core as you slowly move your hand behind you. You left your phone somewhere around here, granted there's barely any data but you should at least try something.

Izuku moves closer, a movement that has you flinching away. "Stay back!" You screech.

Katsuki groans, rubbing his ears. "The mouth on her, goddamn."

"Look. Me and my...friend here are in a bit of a bind. We just need a place to stay for a little while and we'll be out of your hair."

You scoff, eyes trailing down to the crimson color on his hands. "What happened to you?" Or better yet, what the hell did he do to whatever poor guy got in his way?

He frowns. "I freed myself from a sticky situation. Why are you looking at me like that y/n?"

"Y-You're...in a prison jumpsuit with blood all over you and that's what you ask?"

"I did what I had to do." He sounds utterly convinced, that's what scares you the most. "Can we stay here?"

"Not like she can stay no." Katsuki cuts in, standing up and going to the kitchen to rummage through your fridge.

"H-how did you know I'd be here?" You ask, throat unbearably dry at this point.

"You always spoke about this cabin, how you would come here every semester break in the future." He sits right next to you, stretching a bit as he cracks his neck. "Fuck, I'm tired. We've spent the past few days in the damn woods."

He remembers something you told him nearly seven years ago? He’s always been disturbingly observant.

"We should've barged in here sooner. But no, you wanted to stake it out." Katsuki scoffs.

"You've been watching me?" Your chest tightens at that fact. You've been in this cabin alone for days with these two psychos watching your every move? Did they come in while you were sleeping? Taking a shower? You never lock the back door, a stupid, ridiculous habit you've been trying to break. But now it's too late it seems as you stare into Izuku's cold eyes.

"It was the only way to know no one else was coming. No one is coming, right?" He leans forward, slight suspicion etching on his features.

"Who cares if they do? I'll just blast the fuckers into bits."

You tense up at that, stomach twisting painfully. Izuku grabs your chin, you jump as his blood stained fingers grip you. "No one is coming right?"

"N-no." You whimper, shaking your head. "I'm the only one that comes here. Y-you know that."

"Well I've been gone for a while. You probably got a boyfriend, one of those meat heads losers you were always into. Do you? Are they coming here?" He quizzes, staring deep into your soul.

"No!" You yell, slapping his hands away. The longer they're on you, the more you feel like gagging. "I don't have a boyfriend."

His smile falters at that, jaw clenching and unclenching as he takes deep breaths, like he's trying to calm himself down for you removing yourself from his hold. Like you had no right. “That's a shame. I would've enjoyed meeting the man who you finally deemed good enough." He says after a few seconds.

"Why? So you could kill him in front of her?" Katsuki comes back, snorting as he sits on the couch. He's got a tub of ice cream in his hand. You didn't peg a hardened criminal as a haagen daz lover.

Izuku laughs, a sound that has you cringing on the inside. It sounds terrifyingly unstable. "You're making me seem like a sociopath, Kats."

Katsuki rolls his eyes. "Wouldn't want that."

You swallow the lump in your throat. "You guys would just be staying for a few days right? I won't—I won't tell anyone, I swear. You don't have to hurt me."

"Now...why would I want to hurt you y/n?" He murmurs, fingers traveling to play with the curls of your hair. "You've given us hospitality. That's all I could've asked for."

You try to force a smile but the pit in your stomach is exhausting you at this point. You feel like screaming, puking and running for the hills all at the same time. But you can't run...the nearest house is at least thirty minutes away and they would surely catch you before then.

"O-okay." You whimper. "You're not...you're not mad at me, are you?" You find yourself asking, trying to stay calm.

He freezes, letting go of your hair as he leans against the couch. "Mad?"

"For what happened." You lick your dry lips. He has to remember. You highly doubt he came all this way just for hospitality. They could've broken into any old house or car but instead they waited here for days, waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack you. Even though they should be out of the freaking country by now.

He stares at you for a while, his smile now replaced by a haunting look of indifference. Everything he does scares you. If he's not staring at you like you're a little kid throwing a tantrum, he's peering like he wonders what your insides look like.

"No...I'm not mad." He smiles again. "The past is the past."

"O-okay." You sigh, not believing him one bit.

"What happened?" Katsuki asks, looking genuinely interested.

"Shut up." Izuku simply responds and somehow the blonde doesn’t take offense to the tone, only rolling his eyes in response and going back to his ice cream.

Finally. Finally, you gain enough courage to reach your phone. Your fingers clench around the object behind you, praying they don't see the movements. "W-what did you guys do to get sent to prison?" The words flow out of your mouth, trying to buy time as you press the emergency button on your phone.

"We'll save that conversation for another time. But for now..." Izuku reaches behind you, ripping the phone out of your hands before you can even blink. You barley had it for a fucking second, how the hell did he know?

"W-what are—"

A slap to the face shuts you up immediately, it's not hard. It was practically a tap but something tells you that was just a warning, that if you pull something else, his retaliation will be less...merciful. "Open it."

“No."

Stupid.

"Open the phone, y/n." He says through clenched teeth, the calm facade he's been wearing all night slowly slipping off.

"No! You—what are you—" Hands grip the back of your hair, yanking your head back and evoking a painful scream. Fuck, he's strong. Katsuki stands behind you, menacing glare fixated on you as he sighs. "Just open the phone, doll."

You bite your tongue, slowly taking the phone from Izuku's welcoming hands and typing in your password.

"Was that so hard?" He asks, scrolling through your device.

Katsuki lets go of you, walking around the sofa so now he's standing behind Izuku. Both of them peering at your phone, like it's the most fascinating thing ever. "The emergency button didn't even work, service at this cabin has always been atrocious huh y/n?"

You refrain from telling him to fuck off.

"I'm just sending a little message to your mom—how is she by the way—that you'll be off the grid until you get back from break." He hums, tapping erratically. "You don't really have many friends it seems." He tilts his head to the side.

"I always thought you were destined to be that cliche slut of a cheerleader in high school, too dumb to know her left from her right but always so eager to please—oh." He pauses, scoffing a bit as he comes across something.

"W-what?" You ask, biting the inside of your cheek until it's throbbing.

"It appears you lied to us!" He laughs, the sound practically maniacal. The most emotion he's shown since he broke into your house. He holds the phone up, a crazed look in his eyes as he pouts.

"You do have a boyfriend."

Your eyes widen at the text messages he's showing you. If you had known your former friend and aspiring stalker would've broken into your cabin, you would've deleted those messages. But it's too late now as Izuku looks at the phone again with that stupid mischievous glint dancing around in his eyes.

"We—we've only been together a month, Izuku. I barely know the guy." You try to defend yourself, not sure why. Why does he still care so much after all these years?

It's a lie, you've been with him for over a year but you refuse to reveal that. Not with the terrifying expression on Izuku's face. "Why do you care? I-it's no—"

"Why wouldn't I care?" He scoffs. "After you trampled all over my heart?" He pushes the phone to Katsuki's chest to which the blonde happily takes it.

"After you made me feel like a fucking stain on some dirty sheets? After you broke and used me until there was nothing left to abuse?" He's getting closer, unbearably close. So much for bygones being bygones.

He grabs your chin again, it's much harder than last time and you're sure a bruise will be left. "I-I'm sorry." The tears are flowing down your cheeks now.

"It's okay." He nods, smiling at you. He leans in, placing a small peck on your cheek before backing away. "I forgive you, sweetheart. We all know you were never the brightest." The change in personality is almost as creepy as his gaze right now.

You try not to wipe the saliva on your cheek away, disgusted with the proximity. He's still so fucking delusional after all this time.

"Invite him over." It takes a second for you to realize he's not talking to you but to the deranged blonde next to him.

"W-what? No! Why—"

"Those who are sorry should be eager to prove it, y/n." He says like it's so obvious. "You can atone for your mistakes this way."

Atone? What is he, some type of God? Fucking psycho. "Leave him alone—"

"Invite him." He rolls his eyes. "I'm going to freshen up, can't wait to meet him y/n." He walks towards the stairs, humming a song all the way up.

"Don't worry." Katsuki says, catching your horrified expression. "This will be fun."

#this picture has been rotting my brain lately this wasn’t meant to be so long #literally only wanted like 500 words of this #I feel like it could’ve been better #katsuki x reader #deku x y/n #bakugou x you #bakugo x reader #bakugo x y/n #izuku x reader #izuku x y/n #izuku x you #mha fic #yandere #katsuki x y/n #katsuki x you #deku x you #deku x reader

[heavenhealy]

genre: smut w a side of angst, afab!reader, boyfriends best friend!au

word count: 4.3k

summary: it’s wrong, you both know it, but how are you supposed to resist the pull of his hands, the ticklish strands of his hair on your neck, the whispered promises to fuck you better than his best friend can?

warnings: infidelity, alcohol consumption, swearing, unprotected sex, fingering (f receiving), oral (m receiving), degradation and praise, allusions to pain kink, spit, matty is a tease, marking, coming inside, slight overstimulation, dom!matty x sub!reader, public play (teasing but no sex), hair pulling, lemme know if I missed anything 

a/n: hiiiii, this is my first matty fic but def not my first fic, so I hope y'all like it! I have been harboring so much brain rot for him lately so I just wanted to share it with a likeminded audience. I purposely left readers boyfriend unnamed bc I honestly couldn’t be bothered, considering hes not thatttt important, but y'all are free to think of him as anyone. That being said, please do not go below the cut if you are 1) under 18 or 2) uncomfortable with the content. This is your final warning :)

ps. I didn’t edit or proofread so there may be typos!

The greasy bowl of popcorn has long been empty, but only now as the credits roll are you able to slip out from the weight of your boyfriends’ dozing frame to return it to the kitchen. You dump the bowl in the sink where it clatters against the rest of your unwashed dishes and you sigh. The last thing you want to do right now is wash dishes, but you turn the tap to warm and squat down to find the drying rack under the sink. 

Footsteps creak the wooden floor behind you, accompanied by a wave of cigarette scented air. Matty. Goosebumps rise along the back of your neck as you rise. Your heart hammers at an alarming rate and you try your best to act exceedingly normal even as he approaches you. Just as you drip some dish soap into the filling sink, his hands settle on your hips. You can feel the warmth of his palms and the calloused fingertips through the thin fabric of the t-shirt you've probably had since your freshman year of college. The tap continues to run, gushing water loudly into the sink basin. Despite the steam rising from the hot water you shiver as he presses his lean body into your back. A traitorous hand sneaks up to clear your hair away from the nape of your neck and your mind whirs to remember the last time you had felt quite so electric. A dark, bouncy curl strays across your ear so quickly you almost think you’re imagining it. 

“Lame ass boyfriend you’ve got out there, love.” His voice is silky, tinged with a hint of sleepiness that somehow only makes him more attractive. You can picture the way his mouth curves into a self satisfied smile as you automatically nod. It feels bad to admit, but you truly had been bored by your boyfriend lately. The spark between you had died long ago but you were simply afraid to admit it. 

But Matty certainly wasn’t. “Not even a quarter past 10 and he’s already asleep.” His breath ghosts into your ear, a whisper meant just for you even though you knew no one would catch you. The thrill makes you needy, keening against his body as he reaches around to turn off the tap. A sudden, deafening silence rushes in, and the apartment is so still you’re afraid that time has actually stopped. 

“He had a long day,” you amend as Matty’s teeth catch the shell of your ear, tugging playfully.

“Jesus, love. I had a long day too, and I’d still stay up all night if you asked me to.” You blush and resist the urge to squeeze your thighs together at his words. “Such a pretty thing shouldn’t have to go to waste.” Your head lolls against his shoulder and he knows he has you. His aura intoxicates you and you can’t help but think of all the time he existed in your peripherals: first as the eccentric best friend of the guy you just started talking to, then your boyfriend’s best friend and roommate, and then after one night where your boyfriend was away, your dirtiest little secret. 

A well-worked hand cups your breast through your shirt. Your nipple pebbles immediately at his touch and he laughs the snarky little laugh you would usually roll your eyes at. He knows, you both know, he could reach underneath the shirt and easily have his way with you, pinning you against his frame as his cock hardens and tweaking your nipples until you’re wailing. 

You allow your brain to run away with the fantasy; your boyfriend waking up to the sounds of your pleasure, dazed and confused until he stumbles into the kitchen to see Matty licking between your thighs like a man starved. 

But Matty likes the game. He takes a sick pleasure in the cat and mouse, in teasing you while you could get caught. He loves the deep blush that overtakes your face when he sends you a risky text or makes a point to clench his jaw when you catch his eye. 

He loves that whenever the three of you hang out, you often excuse yourself to the bathroom and send him photo evidence of the mess of slick he caused in your underwear. 

He rolls his hips against you, sure to press his cock firmly into the flesh of your ass. The counter underneath your fingers is your saving grace as he builds a torturous rhythm, nipping and pulling at your ear in a way that has no right to be so sexy. Every time a piece of his hair brushes against your neck you feel as if you’ve gone insane; like someone has attached all of your neurons to a jumper cable. A heady moan escapes your mouth before you can stop it, and Matty rewards you with an indulgent groan of his own. The push of his hips is intoxicating, and the persistent arousal gathering in your lower stomach makes you dizzy. With your eyes closed and his mouth at your neck, it’s easy to pretend that this is simply your life; that Matty is the one you met first, the boyfriend you share a bed and a history with, and that this little kitchen tryst is a sexy story you’ll remember when you miss him and not under struck with guilt. 

“Y/N?” It’s far away, the call of your name, but it distinctly belongs to your boyfriend. Ice fills your veins and you still, overly aware of the tight grip Matty keeps on you even as you try to wiggle away from him and reply. As much as you hate to admit it, you’re happy he doesn’t relinquish you so easily. 

“Y-yeah?” You call back, hoping your boyfriend chalks the shake in your voice up to anything other than his best friend’s hips grinding slowly against you. The couch creaks tellingly as he gets up, and your throat closes up in fear. You can hear his slow descent toward the kitchen, his sleepy shuffle giving Matty ample time to play around with you, and he does just that. His hand drops from your breast and his hips still, but his mouth stays sinfully close to your ear. 

“Good night, love. Come find me if you need someone to fuck you better.” Before your mind can even fully wrap around his statement he disappears, presumably to his bedroom. The absence of his body leaves you cold and frustrated, but the presence of your boyfriend forces you to pretend you’re okay. 

He looks rumpled and sleepy when he finds you in the kitchen, frowning at the time on the stove and the sink full of bubbles. 

“C’mon, dishes can wait until the morning.” He gives you an easy smile, one that would have made you giddy to kiss him a few months ago. Now you just nod and skirt away from his approaching figure, acutely aware of the fact that you would smell just like Matty if he got too close. 

“Go-go lay down, I need to use the bathroom first!” The excuse sounds lame even to your own ears, but he doesn't seem to have the energy to argue as he slips down the hallway, leaving you to purge the evidence before crawling into bed.

----

The restaurant was way fancier than you were expecting it to be, and even though you had pulled on a mid-length sleek black dress with pearled straps you felt out of place. The open planned room was bustling with diners and servers; but most of the noise comes from the exposed kitchen. You can see the slew of chefs as they work and the clashing of pots and pans makes it almost impossible to hear your boyfriend. Or Matty.

He wasn’t supposed to come, to be honest. The night was meant to be a celebration for just you and your boyfriend, who had recently wrapped up a project for a huge client. It’d been a long time since the two of you went to a fancy restaurant, and you had honestly been excited to get dressed up and spend the night with him. When you showed up to his apartment, you were stunned to see Matty, sprawled across the couch in his infinite glory, wearing a fancy black suit. 

“W-what?” You stuttered at the way his eyes pierced you, his hand resting casually on his stomach. 

“’M coming with you guys. Can’t let my best mate go on a celebratory dinner without me paying for some drinks, can I?” He flashes you a dazzling smile that disarms you just enough you can’t find it in you to be upset. 

So now you’re a party of three at the bustling restaurant, and Matty has already ordered a fancy bottle of wine for the table. You hate to admit just how much of your attention he’s stolen already, sitting so close to you that you can feel the heat radiating off of his thigh onto your own. Despite the interesting calamity of the kitchen and the murmurs of slightly-shouted conversations, all you can focus on is the curve of Matty’s lips, the way his eyes shimmer in the low-light. Your boyfriend seems more than happy to idly enjoy the scenery, pointing out the chefs and their specific techniques to you despite your waning interest. The wine goes down easy, and you pour yourself a second glass as Matty starts another inane conversation about whatever dish is getting pumped out of the open kitchen. 

The fuzzy feeling from the alcohol is welcoming, enveloping you in a warmth that helps distract you from the press of Matty’s thigh against your own. You smile gratefully at the waiter who brings you a pasta dish and dig in, thankful for the distraction. You’re careful not to move an inch, so you know it’s Matty who’s pushing further into your side, and you’re sure that the night is going sideways when you feel his pinky finger trace along the top of your thigh. You swallow hard, trying your best not to shudder at his touch. His wastes no time in grasping the meat of your thigh under his palm, squeezing just enough that a spark of pain morphs to pleasure. 

“Matty.” You hope there’s venom in your voice as you warn him against his fingers creeping closer to the inside of your thigh. He just smiles in your peripheral before taking a bite of his own food, disguising the movement of his hand underneath the table skillfully. Arousal runs through you, and you feel your panties soak as a long finger skims across the material. Under anyone but Matty’s touch you would be embarrassed at how fast you became a wreck, but the easy pleasure of his fingers dancing over your clit sends you into happy bliss. 

Matty’s fingers slow and simply press against you, building an internal pleasure that burns into your stomach. You let out a heavy breath and drain your glass of wine in one gulp. Matty laughs, and your boyfriend raises an eyebrow at your behavior. “Maybe you should pour her some more? Don’ let it go to waste.” Matty nods toward the bottle inches from your boyfriends plate. You see him hesitate, but he relents and grasps it, leaning forward to pour you a new glass. There’s a moment of anxiety as his point of view shifts and Matty makes no attempt to move his hand away from your center. In fact, his fingers stir back to life as soon as your boyfriend leans slightly forward to pour you a new glass. Matty slips his fingers under your panties as soon as your boyfriend is back in his seat. His fingers slip against your bare pussy and you close your thighs around his hand. 

“T-thanks,” you stutter, avoiding picking up the glass as a tremor wracks you. Matty takes another casual bite of his pasta and puts on his best confused face. His eyebrows furrow as he fakes a concerned look over you. 

“You aren’t gonna have any? Thought you liked it?” A dexterous finger circles your clit mind numbingly slowly. You glare at him and take another drink. Now that you’re well on the way to being drunk, every single sensation is heightened. A dark pit of arousal is consuming you and the desire to sink your teeth into the flesh of his neck is overwhelming despite the company. Desire makes you bold as you bat your eyes at Matty, biting into the flesh of your lip. 

“I love it.” You cant your hips forward into his hand, sure to emphasize just how wet he had gotten you. It’s debauched, and guilt begins to creep up the back of your neck, but Matty growls under his breath and pushes a finger inside of your walls and it melts away. 

Your boyfriend is blissfully unaware of the mess between your legs all night. He asks no questions about the way your face flushes (easily excused by the wine), the way Matty only eats his courses with one hand (he’s always doing some new eccentric shit), or the way neither of you are able to carry on a conversation for more than a few seconds (the restaurant is quite loud). 

----

The weather is ridiculously hot, and of course it’s the one day of the year you decide to clean and rearrange your apartment. To be fair, you had begun the process of emptying out old clothes and housewares at the beginning of the week, and you had skillfully ignored moving your big pieces of furniture up until today. Your apartment is hot despite the fans you’ve pulled out of storage, and the heavy wooden bed frame you had insisted on buying will not budge. No matter how hard you pushed or pulled on the frame, it stays stubbornly in place. So you call your boyfriend. 

And he can’t come, called into work on account of a picky client who demanded someone fix his renderings today. But Matty is miraculously free; and he’s on his way as soon as you text him. 

And of course, he looks sinful. A plain white t-shirt with a scoop neck affords a wonderful view of his collarbones and sun kissed skin. The urge to pull his stupid smirk into a kiss overtakes you, so for once you listen to the yearning and pull him against you. Matty breathes a chuckle against your lips before indulging you. His tongue slips easily into your mouth and you relish in pressing against the hard planes of his body. His chest rumbles in appreciation when he takes a handful of your ass, fingers hooking down dangerously close to your pussy. You feel alight, floating inside of an undefinable cloud of pleasure as he consumes you. 

You relish in the way his chest heaves with exertion once you part. “Need help moving a bed?” He wipes at his bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “Sounds like a shitty chat up line to me.” 

A frustrated groan passes your lips, and you ignore the bait he’s clearly dangling in front of you in favor of soaking up air from a fan. Between the heat of the day and the fire of arousal in your stomach, it’s needed. 

“Very funny. Now can you please help me?” You don’t wait for his answer as you walk to your bedroom. His socked footsteps quickly follow your own, and in seconds you’re both standing at the foot of your bed. It’s oddly domestic, with the rumpled blankets gathered at the foot and the delicate floral sheets you  got on a discount. 

“Cute,” Matty comments as he plops himself fully onto the bed, legs sprawled wide and inviting. You try to ignore the bulge tenting his sweatpants and put on a brave face. 

“I need you to help me move it, not lay on it.” You whine, reluctantly shuffling within his reach. Matty catches you easily around the waist and it takes no time for you to collapse into his embrace. He nuzzles into your neck and it’s startling how nicely he fits around you. 

Never one to delay, Matty licks a line of heat down your neck and you lose the last bit of your control. “You smell so good.” The simple sentiment sends liquid heat to your pussy. A sharp nip to your neck makes you squirm and you know that you’ll have a hickey to conceal in the morning. 

His breath puffs against your neck, and you have the urge to turn and face him, tired of looking at the wall instead of his face. As your hips shift he groans, pressing his hips forward until you can feel the twitch of his cock against you. 

“Something you need?” You know the innocent game drives him crazy but you use it anyway and he stalls, assessing the situation with that astonishing wit. The sharp tug of your hair brings you into a place of happy submission. Matty wraps the tendrils between his fingers and makes sure you aren’t going anywhere before cocking your head until you’re stuck staring at him. The chocolate brown of his eyes is nearly eaten up by lust. This close, you can smell the intoxicating mix of his woody cologne and the beginnings of sweat.

“Please,” the word leaves you before you can even guess at what you’re asking for. Luckily Matty has learned to read your body like his favorite guitar. A delicate, fluttering kiss to your nose is just enough to disarm you as he uses the corded strength of his arms to guide you down his chest until you’re faced with the tantalizing push of his cock against his sweatpants. His fingers untangle from your hair but don’t leave, just allowing you the room to work. Something clicks in your mind and the only thing you care about is getting him off- feeling the familiar weight of his cock in your mouth, or the way his fingernails leave untraceable evidence of your tryst on your scalp.

You’re only half surprised to find he has no underwear on but it only makes your job easier. As soon as your tongue makes contact with his cock he’s moaning, guiding your hair into a ponytail at the back of your head and controlling your pace. Spit leaks from the corners of your lips as you finally engulf the head of his cock, but the mess only sends both of you further into oblivion. 

“Fuck, you’re so good at taking my cock.” His voice drips with arousal and you squirm, bucking your hips against the bed as you continue to swallow him down. Matty head no problem taking the lead, pushing you down until your throat spasms. Eyes fluttering, you try your best to make eye contact with Matty as you wiggle your tongue along the throbbing vein. 

“Pretty girl.” His Adam’s apple bobs, and the melodic noises that spill from his lips only spur you on. 

As his hips twitch and his grip loosens you take it upon yourself to change the pace on him, intent on making him cum. His head tips back into your pillows and his cock twitches violently, the delicious cue to the end goal you’re always going for. 

“C’mon, off now,” Matty tugs at the roots of your hair, erupting pleasure that makes you moan around him listlessly. “Fuck, seriously, baby, ‘m not coming in your mouth.” With surprising restraint he pulls your head away and angles his hips out of your reach. Empty, your eyes water as you pout. Spit decorates your chin and Matty’s eyes glaze over before he wipes it away with his thumb. 

“You dirty little thing. Asked you to stop and you kept on like you couldn’t even hear me.” A telltale current of amusement intertwines with the chastising, and curls of arousal have you nodding stupidly. 

“Cock drunk.” He tuts and shucks his shirt over his head. A shit eating grin splits his face as you remove your own, shucking off your bra shortly after without any preamble. Matty makes an appreciative noise at the sight of your tits and surges forward to push you down against the bed. 

He’s on them near immediately, indulging in the newly revealed flesh. His tongue laves over one nipple as he pulls at the other with deft fingers. Your back bends as his teeth scrape across the mounds of flesh. 

“D-don’t leave a mark,” the idea of your boyfriend seeing the marks he surely didn't leave sends your mind reeling, but Matty just laughs evilly. 

“You seriously think he’s gonna be seein’ these tits?” His gaze hardens at the edges and you’re momentarily stunned. You know he’s right, and you hate how much arousal gushes out of you because of it. “Cause who do you belong to?” He’s challenging you now- he knows that you’re on the same page about the truth of your relationship. 

“Y-you, Matty.” 

He rewards you with a blossoming hickey at the swell of your breast which he instantly soothes with the flat of his tongue. In a rush he works your shorts and underwear off of you, exposing the heat of your pussy to the room. Wetness sticks to your thighs and you’re desperate to have him inside you finally. Matty settles over your lower stomach, tracing his fingers delicately across the skin there as your hips jump wildly. 

“Matty, please just fuck me, I can’t wait-” your words trail into a heady moan as he swipes two fingers down your slit, collecting your wetness with a happy hum. Your mind blanks at the touch that almost fills the empty feeling in your stomach, but you know his cock is the only thing that will satisfy you. 

He curls the fingers across your clit until tears spring into your eyes, and then he sticks them in his mouth. The lewd sound makes you blush, and the sight of his eyes rolling back in satisfaction is one you want to bottle and keep forever. His eyebrows knit together at your taste, and you feel like you might combust. 

“Matty!” You grasp his forearm and use all your remaining strength to pull him back towards you. “Please, please just fuck me already. Seriously, wanna feel you.” You push your bare hips into his own and a dangerous glint lights his eyes.  “Oh, love.” You know he’s relenting when you feel him steady his hand on the base of his cock and slide the head over your clit slowly. “You know how many nights I’ve heard you fuck him?” You shake your head dumbly even though you and your boyfriend had certainly been the butt of jokes the morning after, back when the relationship was new and exciting for you both. Matty’s hips flex forward and he pushes into you slowly. The stretch is pure pleasure, and your nerves set on fire at the intrusion.

“All those times,” his voice shakes as he presses into you, a stray curl ghosting over your forehead. “...you never begged him as hard as you beg for me. Tha’s how I know you really want it. Want me.” Before you know it he’s filling you and huffing praise into your ear. Your whole body shifts as he sets his pace and your nails run over his shoulders, surely leaving reddened marks in their wake. 

“Yeah, wan’ you.” Pleasant fuzziness engulfs your body, the ebb and flow of his hips sending you to a plane of pleasure only Matty can take you to. Two deft fingers swirl around your clit harshly. Your bodies slick with sweat and glide together intoxicatingly, and if human limitations didn't exist, you would stay like this forever; your bodies existing in a perfect tandem. 

“So fuckin’ hot, sweetest little pussy I’ve ever had.” Matty’s rambling makes you dizzy as your orgasm approaches rapidly. You don’t even have to warn him that you’re on the edge for him to know, increasing the movement of his fingers until your vision is spotting with black. Your walls clench tightly around him as you finally come, clawing at the plane of his back and chanting his name.

Matty comes shortly after, the warmth of his release filling your deepest, darkest desire. It’s sickly satisfying to feel his cock twitch and empty inside of you, to hear the deep moans that spill from Matty’s kiss bitten lips as he fills you to the brim. 

Still connected, Matty collapses to the side of you, capturing you in a sweet lilting kiss that nearly makes you dizzier than the orgasm. Your tongue burns with a sentence you know you aren’t allowed to say. Matty’s face morphs as he sees you choke on the words, and he smooths down your mussed hair with a heavy hand. 

“Okay?” He asks, a gentle check-in. 

“Yeah,” your voice is hoarse so you clear your throat and try again. “Yeah, it's just that...we still have to move this stupid bed.” 

As if his brain was on a delay from the sexual exertion, it takes a few seconds before his award winning laugh wracks his body. The bed shudders under him, and you can't help but laugh along with him, dumbstruck with love. You swallow the words again and pat his cheek lovingly. 

“Right, Matthew. Let’s get going. Believe it or not, I didn’t text you just to get you into my bed.” He pouts cutely and sighs with dramatic flair as you untangle yourself from him. 

“If we move the bed, can we...?” His teeth shine as he smiles at you, and if you didn’t know any better, you would think the glimmer in his eyes reflects something like the words you refuse to say. 

#matty healy #matty healy smut #matty healy x reader #matty healy angst #matty healy oneshot #matty x reader #the 1975 #the 1975 x reader #matty healy fanfic

[procrastinatingnerd]

Hi everyone! So this was my first time taking part in the @osemanversebigbang but I had so much fun!! I can't wait to read everyone's entries! 💜

Title: Angel Rahimi And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Lunch Break

Characters: Angel, Juliet, Rowan, Jimmy, Lister, Bliss, two of Angel’s future uni friends (OCs).

Spoilers? Minor spoilers of important events in “I Was Born For This”.

Word Count: 3.6k

Ships: Bicci, one joke about Juliet/Rowan.

~Joan of Arc (Probably)

“I am so fucking tired”

“Right, time’s up, put your pens down.” The exam officer says from the front of the room. I scribble one last sentence before my hand gives out, and I all but throw my pen onto the desk, sighing as dramatically as I can. This week is a fucking nightmare. Exams and assignments are the piss. Fuck uni, I’m ready to drop out. Or drop dead. Either works, honestly.

As I leave the exam hall, I walk past some people from the students’ union. They’re handing out flyers for the Christmas ball next week. My housemates are all planning on going, but my friends and I planned our present swap for that night, so we’re going to spend it eating a fuck ton of snacks and watching the cheesiest Christmas films we can find. I can’t wait, I bought them each a bag of their favourite sweets from the American candy shop, it's going to be so much fun!

But that’s next week. Right now, all I want is to sit at a table that doesn’t have an exam paper on it, and eat something very greasy and very unhealthy. There’s a pizza place just on the edge of campus, run by some of the culinary arts students, and they make the best sauce ever. It’s pretty cheap too, which makes it a favourite for most people, especially at the end of a semester, when everyone’s bank accounts are running low.

I have about an hour until I need to be back in the exam hall, so I take full advantage of the outdoor seating and collapse into a chair after ordering. My pizza is brought out to me not long after, and I breathe in the smell. Nothing has smelt more gorgeous than the slices sitting in front of me. It’s a surprisingly warm day, for December at least, and for a moment, everything feels calm. I can hear a bird singing in a tree somewhere, other students are hanging around campus, most with their noses in their phones or in textbooks, and I actually let myself relax for a bit. I’ve done all the revision I can for this next exam, and I’m in desperate need of a break. I deserve this.

I pick up my first slice of pizza, and bring it up to my mouth. As I’m about to take a bite, however, my phone rings. I put the pizza down with a sigh and answer the phone without looking at who’s calling. Mum probably sensed I wasn’t doing any work, and is calling to check up on me.

“Hello?” I say tiredly.

“Angel, hi! Is this a good time??” I grin at the sound of Juliet’s voice.

“Hell yeah, it’s a perfect time! What’s up?”

“Wait, you don’t know why I’m calling?” Juliet says hesitantly. Shit. What have I forgotten now? I know it’s not her birthday. Wait, is it mine?? I swear exams rot your brain, have I actually forgotten my own birthday?

“No…?” I ask after internally monologuing for way too long.

“Oh my god, you don’t know??” Juliet screeches in my ear, “Angel go look at your phone, it’s urgent!”

Now very concerned, I put Juliet on speaker and, for the first time all morning, actually read the notifications filling my lock screen. I open the Twitter news one, and my mouth drops open in shock.

“Holy shit.”

On my screen is a news article with a headline that reads, “THE ARK’S JIMMY KAGA-RICCI AND LISTER BIRD’S SECRET RELATIONSHIP EXPOSED”, and just below it sits a large photo of Jimmy and Lister, standing outside a pub, kissing. I don’t believe it.

“Holy fu- Hold on a second. Mate, isn’t that the pub by Piero’s house?!” I say, bringing my phone as close to my face as I can, as if that’ll help me see better. There’s a loud shuffling noise on the other end of the line, and then I hear a gasp.

“Oh my god, you’re right!” Juliet says. “Rowan said they were going on holiday, but I thought he meant abroad or something.” I smile at that. Ever since our little jaunt to Kent last summer, Juliet and I have kept in touch with the boys. We even have a group chat now; us and them and even Bliss is in it. I’m so glad we stayed friends.

At first, Rowan was really quiet, and if he did speak he and Juliet would almost always end up arguing, but they’ve been getting along quite well lately. I’m not saying I ship it or anything, I’ve learnt my lesson there, but I have to say, fangirl-to enemies-to lovers would make a wicked fanfiction trope.

“Did you see any of this coming?” Juliet continues. “Surely Jimmy would have said something to you?”

“He said he was dating someone, but didn’t want to give details because they were taking things slow. Well, that and that celebrity phone hacking scandal freaked him right the fuck out, remember?” I say.

"That's

right, he stopped talking on the group chat for like two weeks, didn’t he?” Juliet giggles back. “Well, nevertheless, I’m happy for them. They’re cute together.”

“Yeah, they are.” I grin again. “Oh my god, poor Rowan though! I’d hate to live with a couple, especially a new one! It’d be nauseating.”

“Oh I know, right? And imagine what’ll happen when they have their first fight!” Juliet gasps again. I shudder at the thought.

“I’m muting the group chat when that happens.” I joke.

“Not a bad idea.” Juliet laughs back, then pauses. “Oh, Angel, I’m sorry I’ve got the get going, but do you want to skype later?”

“Yeah, no problem! I’ve got a revision session at 6, but I should be free by 9ish?”

“Sounds perfect! See you then!” Juliet says, and with that, she’s gone, and I’m back to sitting alone with my pizza.

Jimmy and Lister. Holy shit. I don’t think anyone in the fandom saw this coming. Everything has been about Jowan, since the fandom started growing it’s the only ship that ever existed. No one bothered writing fics about any other pairings. The only Jimmy/Lister fics I ever came across were platonic ones, and even they made sure to mention Jimmy’s boyfriend Rowan.

Oh god, I hope they’re okay. The fans got so crazy when Bliss and Rowan’s relationship was exposed. Jimmy/Lister is the final nail in the Jowan coffin. Jimmy must be having the panic attack of his life! I’ve got to-

My phone rings again.

I look down at the screen, and see Jimmy’s name. I take a deep breath, and answer.

“Jimmy, hi! How are-”

“Have you seen it??”

“Yes.”

“Oh god. This isn’t how we wanted to tell you guys.”

“You sure? Because getting caught by the national press worked so well for you last time.” I tease. Silence. Oops, probably not the best thing to remind him of right now.

“Jimmy, you still there?” I say carefully. There’s a slight rustle on his end, which means he probably just nodded. “Everything is going to be fine, I promise. The fans will move on. They already did with Jowan, right?”

“But what if something happens again? Something like-”

“It won’t. You guys have better security now, and you’re doing less public events. You’re going to be fine.” I hope and pray that I’m saying the right things. Jimmy and I have gotten close lately, but I’m nowhere near as good at helping him deal with his anxiety as Rowan and Lister are. There’s more silence, until finally, Jimmy speaks again.

“Okay. Yeah. Yeah I think you’re right. Thanks, Angel.”

“Course I’m right! If there’s one thing I know, it’s fandom drama.” Jimmy laughs, and I grin back. “And don’t forget, you’re not alone in this. This is happening to Lister too, and no doubt Rowan and Bliss will be there to help you. Just talk to them.”

“Thank you Angel, I’ll go do that now.”

“Perfect! Love you Jim, I’ll text you later.” I say, and the call ends.

He’ll be okay. He’s got too many people who love him not to be. I take another breath and put my phone down on the table. As soon as I do, however, it buzzes again, and I see Jimmy is trying to facetime me. Now very concerned, I answer it and hold the phone up so he can see my face properly.

“Jimmy, are you okay, what’s happened??” I ask anxiously, but he looks fine. He looks at me with a confused expression.

“Nothing, I’m just talking to the others, like you said.” He says. It’s only me and him on the call. I stare at him in silence for a moment.

“Jimmy, mate… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not any of them” I say slowly, and to my surprise, Jimmy laughs.

“Yeah I know, but I was kind of hoping to have you here, too, if that’s okay?” He says sheepishly. “It’s okay if you’re busy, it’s just that… I don’t know, you’re good with this stuff and you make me feel calm? Sorry, I know that’s a lot to just dump on you.” Jimmy doesn’t look at me directly, and I start to feel tears in my eyes.

“Well damn, Jim, I guess if you truly love me that much, I can stick around for a bit.” I laugh, and quickly glance at the time. “My lunch break is only halfway over, anyway, so I have plenty of time to hang out while you talk to the others.”

Jimmy seems to let out a breath, like he’d been holding it, and grins.

Just as I’m about to start talking again, I hear a ping, and Lister’s face appears on screen, followed by Rowan and Bliss.

“Hey Jimjam, you okay?” Rowan asks, looking as calm as ever. “Oh hey Angel.” He adds. I give him an awkward smile.

“Wait, Angel's here?” Bliss interrupts before Jimmy can answer. “Nice, how’s the week from hell going? Didn’t think we’d hear from you until you’d made it through.”

“Yeah it’s rough, but I’m getting there. This is a welcome distraction though.” I grin at her.

“So you’ve seen the pictures then. They look good, right?” Lister chimes in, before correcting himself. “I mean, it’s horrible they found us, fucking pricks, but you’ve got to admit we look good.”

“You can be so self-centred sometimes.” Bliss laughs.

“Come on Lister, this isn’t a joke.” Rowan chides him.

“Well, I guess he isn’t wrong..” Jimmy mumbles nervously and I see him smile a bit.

“See, Jimmy agrees with me!” Lister argues back at Rowan, who rolls his eyes.

“It’s still not something to laugh about.” Rowan says firmly. “Cecily’s already on damage control, cancelling some events, beefing up the security at others, and giving the tabloids hell. She’s also let your grandad know, Jimmy.”

“Wait, aren’t you guys all down there already?” I ask, confused.

“Nah we got back last night. That picture was taken when we went out for lunch the other day. Took their time printing it.” Lister says.

“Probably needed time to pad out their articles. Seriously, how can they write so many pages about two people dating?” Bliss adds.

“Probably whining about how Jowan is now well and truly dead.” Rowan rolls his eyes again. “Although I have to say, I’m pretty happy about that part.” I cringe slightly as he says that. I will never not regret being one of the Jowan fangirls.

“So Cecily’s already got a plan? That’s good, that’s a bit of a relief.” Jimmy speaks up, looking visibly more relaxed than he had sounded over the phone earlier.

“Yeah she’s got it sorted, so we can start planning our Christmas party!” Lister says, making the others groan.

“Lister what the hell makes you think we should be throwing a massive fucking party right now?!” Rowan says, his voice growing louder. Lister goes quiet, looking like he wants to shrink into his seat, before eventually speaking up again.

“Look, it doesn’t have to be anything big, I just mean… Angel, you’re gonna be in London with Juliet, right? Come over, drag Bliss with you, Jimmy can invite his grandad, Rowan you can bring Jade, and there you go, that’s our party!”

“That’s...actually a good idea.” Rowan says, surprised.

“Yeah, that sounds like fun!” Jimmy adds.

“I’m up for it, Angel, do you think Juliet will wanna come?” Bliss says.

“Hell yeah she would, let’s do it!” I reply with a massive smile on my face. Partying with Bliss and the boys sounds like the best way to spend my Christmas London trip. I’ll make sure to tell Juliet about it when I talk to her later. As I start planning all the food I’m going to bring over, and wondering what the boys’ flat will look like at Christmas, the conversation starts up again.

“You sure you’re doing alright, Jimmy? I can come back home if you need me to.” Rowan says, focusing things on the issue at hand again.

“No no, don’t worry, stay with your family. They’d kill me if I made you miss out on spending time with them.” Jimmy jokes. “I’ve got Lister here, and Cecily’s number if I need it. My head isn’t giving me too much grief right now, anyway.”

“Wait, Lister, you’re there with him?” Bliss asks.

“Yeah, check it out!” Lister says, before picking up his phone and moving. He takes us out of what I think was his room, through a hallway and comes out into a large living room, where we can see Jimmy on a sofa looking at his phone. “Say hi to the chat, Jim!”

Everyone laughs as Jimmy gives an awkward wave to Lister’s phone. Lister then hangs up and launches himself into view of Jimmy’s screen, and the two shuffle about until they’re practically sitting on top of each other, faces

squished together so the tiny phone camera captures them both. I hate how cute they look together.

“Alright, if you’re sure, Jimmy,” Rowan says, smiling for probably the first time this whole call.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Jimmy smiles back. “This whole situation is terrifying, and I’m more than ready to hide in my room and not see another mad fangirl for the rest of my life, but... if I did that we’d never get to hang out with Angel again.” He finishes, biting his lip as if unsure of whether or not the joke will hit.

“Uh..ouch!” I clap my hand on top of my heart dramatically and laugh, while the others join in. “I’ll have you know I’ve abandoned my fangirl ways. Mostly. Sort of. Okay, not completely but I’m not shipping real people anymore, so that’s something, right?!”

Lister is giving Jimmy a look of what I can only assume is pride for making a decent joke during a time of peak anxiety, Rowan has his head in his hands, probably contemplating his life choices now that Lister seems to be rubbing off on Jimmy, and Bliss still looks shocked that such a joke came out of Jimmy’s mouth, not Lister’s. When things calm down again, I check the time and speak up again.

“Well this has been fun Jim, but I’m afraid I have mad fangirl duties to be getting back to. Shrines to build, fanfiction to write, you know how it is.” I say sarcastically.

“Thanks again, Angel, for being here, and listening. And you’d better be right about that fandom drama.” Jimmy laughs again, although this time I see his smile falter a bit.

“Hey, look at me,” I say, moving as close to the screen as I can without squishing my face on it. “Things will settle down before you know it, in the meantime, we’re all here for you. You’re not alone in this.” Rowan and Bliss nod in agreement, and I see Lister hug Jimmy closer. Jimmy takes a breath and nods as well.

“Thanks Angel. And good luck with your exam. We’ll see you over the holidays.” He smiles.

“Yeah you got this Angel, go smash it!” Bliss chimes in, giving me a thumbs up and a grin. I say one last goodbye to them all, and hang up.

I look back down at my pizza, still uneaten. I need to stop letting myself get distracted during phone calls. I can eat and talk to my friends at the same time. I’m usually a master at it.

“Fereshteh!” I look up again. Either I’m going loony, or someone just said-

“FERESHTEH!” I turn around and see Mollie and Christina barrelling towards me, with the most excitement I’ve ever seen on a students’ face during exam season. They crash into my table and both start talking at once.

“Have you seen??”

“Did you know??”

“How long have they been together?!”

“Oh my god is this why you won’t tell us about what happened in Kent?!”

“Woah, easy on the interrogation! Seriously, you guys need to work on your interview skills.” I put my hands up in surrender and laugh. Mollie rolls her eyes at me.

“So? Did they tell you or what?” She asks again. I roll my eyes back at her.

“You know I don’t want to tell you guys anything about the boys. They trust me, and I’m not going to fuck that up because of some shit a tabloid prints.”

“How dare you appeal to our morality and ethics, we want gossip dammit!” Christina giggles, lightly banging her fist down on the table.

“Then stick to the Twitter pages.” I stick my tongue out at her. Mollie and Christina are two of my housemates, and are part of the Ark fandom. I never planned on telling them about Kent, but they figured out who I was thanks to the pictures of me and Jimmy on the train. I didn’t think you could tell it was me, but fangirls are like master detectives. They figured it out in less than a week. They haven’t told anyone though, they’re good mates.

“So how are you feeling about all of this? Whether you knew or not, having it out in the press like this is a lot to handle, especially after last time.” Mollie says, now in serious mode.

“It is a lot, definitely, but they’ll be fine. They’ve had this happen before and they know what to expect from the fans. I just wish I could be there for them.” I say, sitting back in my chair.

“I get

that, it must suck that you guys are so far apart now.” Christina chimes in.

“I mean it’s not like we ever lived close to each other before. The only reason we even crossed paths over the summer was because I was staying with a friend. But yeah, being away from them all is kind of hard sometimes.” I sigh dramatically, making Mollie and Christina grin.

“Are you going to visit them over Christmas?” Christina asks.

“I’m definitely going to visit my friend in London again, for a day or two, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the boys.” I quickly lie. “They cut back on public events but they’re still really busy most of the time. And this,” I gesture to my phone “definitely won’t help.”

“We’ll keep an eye on fandom updates for you, and try to shut any mentions of Jowan down,” Mollie says, reaching across the table and giving my hand a gentle squeeze. I squeeze hers back and give her a grateful smile. I mostly stopped interacting with the fandom after meeting the boys, reading fanfiction, and discussing theories with other fans just feels weird and creepy to do when the people you’re talking about are your friends. So it’s nice that I have Mollie and Christina looking out for them, and doing what I can’t. Christina has a pretty big following on Tumblr, and Mollie’s a Twitter ace, so I trust them to hold their ground with the fandom.

“Okay, you don’t have to give us any details, but genuinely, what do you think of Lister and Jimmy as a couple? Because I don’t think the fandom could handle a breakup.” Christina says after a while, making me laugh.

“Pfft, yeah I don’t think the boys could handle a breakup, either.” I smile. “But honestly? I think they’ll be good for each other. Lister is good at helping Jimmy relax and step out of his anxiety bubble, and Jimmy can help reign in Lister’s chaotic energy. Plus they’re freaking cute together, I mean just look at this picture!” I finish, gesturing dramatically to my phone again.

“They are so cute!” Mollie nods in agreement. “I’m actually shocked no one thought to ship them together before.”

“That’s the Jowan storm, for you,” Christina adds. “Can’t believe we ever shipped that.”

“So gross.” I shudder at the thought. Suddenly the alarm I’d set this morning went off, making us all jump.

“What’s that?” Mollie asks. I check the screen and practically leap out of my seat.

“Oh shit, my exam starts in 10 minutes!” I say, gathering my stuff up as quickly as I can. I say my goodbyes to Mollie and Christina and start running back across campus to the exam hall.

I make it just in time, much to the invigilator’s chagrin, check my bag in at the desk at the back of the hall, and collapse into my assigned seat. The exam starts, and it’s only when it does that my stomach reminds me that I never actually ate lunch. Shit.

I start to silently scold myself for being so stupid, when my mind starts drifting to the video chat with Jimmy and the others. He and Lister looked so comfortable with each other. Makes sense, they've known each other for so long. But even still, Jimmy looked so much happier once Lister sat down with him, and Lister himself practically seemed at home with Jimmy’s arms wrapped around him. I smile at my exam paper.

I’m so happy for them.

#osemanverse #i was born for this #iwbft #bicci #angel rahimi #jimmy kaga ricci #lister bird #juliet schwartz #bliss lai

[remsmoonlight]

— title : battle scars

— word count : 2.1 k words

— pairing : daryl dixon x reader

— summary : during a quick run, you fall into some trouble with some walkers though daryl’s love language is spoken with actions and not words.

— warnings : mentions witnessing death, near death experiencing, extremely minor cursing, mentions of blood and gore

           ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　requested     　/     requests are open    *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

okay so i requested this a while ago to someone else and they said they’d write it but i never found it  and i forgot who i asked so i might of missed it, but maybe a walker grabs readers hair or something so she looks for something to tie it up with and daryl gives her his bandana and she just decides to claim it or some cute shit like that??? it’s okay if you don’t wanna♥️♥️

Shap rays penetrate effortlessly through the barred windows, the tatty scraps of cloth providing little protection against the blinding morning sunshine. You pull your arm to cover your eyes, not quite ready to be released from the grips of your slumber.. the nights before a run have always been the most troublesome. Your mind running through every which way the day could turn out, pleading to your mind to focus on the positive outcomes that are always on the table of possibility. Both the positivity and negativity keeping you awake into the late hours.

The only consolation being when you were gifted the image of a blanket of stars over the dark sky, free from any light pollution that was known among many.

“ time to get your ass up, sleepy head. “

You don’t need to remove the arm that lays heavily draped across your head to know who’s familiar drawl that belongs to. Daryl Dixon. His voice in being a quite distinct quality about him. Though there’s more than that you think humorously as a smirk that lazily snakes its way onto your lips.

“ yeah, yeah. I’m up. “ you respond to him as you find yourself focusing on his form in the doorway, clutching the bed linen that serves as a makeshift door in his grip. Your mind wonders if you’ve ever seen him in a state of inactivity that held no tension .

Members of the group continue to filter into the main hall at a leisurely pace, sleep still clinging to their backs in a losing battle.

Sitting off to the side, your gaze settles to the lone male. Daryl nods from you to the space across from him, a bowl laid across from him.

“ thanks for saving me some breakfast. “ you speak, breaking the silence as you pick up the spoon and lifting a heap of oats onto it. Knowing you would need the energy, of course, the world ending brought a new meaning to breakfast being the most important meal of the day.

“ yeh, don’t need ya collapsin’ on me now. “

Amusement tugged at both corners of your mouth as you peer at him, even after all the time had passed, he still doesn’t want to show how much he cares for the people in the group. Even the newcomers from the Woobury group. Of course, you know.. you see what it means to him see everyone safe, to avoid losing yet another member of his new found family to the rotting fingers of death. The finality of death landing heavier blows on his already bruised heart over again is not something he wishes to fall victim to.

“ you know you’ll never get rid of me, I’ll haunt you from my grave! “ you say, joy lighting up your features as you chuckle, momentarily forgetting your breakfast.

A silence embeds itself comfortably between the two of you, something that becomes less and less awkward every time you find yourself in the vicinity of the man. Human contact and communication had to be quickly developed and it wasn’t long before you became comfortable chatting with everyone as if you had known them for years, but Daryl isn’t completely like those members in your group. He speaks with his actions and it took you long enough to realise that, which is why you found no awkwardness sneaking itself around your throat to force words to fall from your lips unwillingly.

“ so, where are we going first? “

“ ‘saw there was a sports store a few miles out a few days ago. they’ll have some’a those bike chains for those fences. “

Nodding in response, you understand it’s nothing more than a simple task. Though, nothing is truly simple now, even something so minor can cost you your life. The first few days you had spent up at the quarry were plagued with nightmares, every day when you saw the sun begin to dim roused a deep fear that bled into your heart, opening a deep pit in the bottom of your stomach, thinking about the rotting corpses and the frenzied deaths of those you loved. The night time cradled your worst moments, to have to close your eyes and to only be left alone with your thoughts would haunt you endlessly.

Shaking your head to yourself, you rid yourself of that dark energy clouding above you. You have dedicated a lot of time and drive to make progress, it’s not something you yearn to be thrown away as if it were nothing.

“ are we going to pick anything else up, or is it just those? “

“ nah, no use gettin’ ourselves killed. “ he responds, focusing on eating breakfast.

You nod your head swiftly, you certainly can’t argue with that logic! Knowing others have lost their lives or have been horribly injured attempting to go the extra mile.

“ well, I won’t be disagreeing with that plan. quick and simple. “

“ sounds like.. “

He lifts his line of sight to stare at you as his sentence trails off into silence, a passing moment crawling along almost uninterrupted before the realisation of what he meant erupted in your mind. He’s talking about you!

“ that’s so rude! “ you say with wide eyes, creasing up and shaking with laughter.

“ I ain’t wrong. “

Even Daryl begins to ease up and chuckle to himself, a small part of him had been cowering in the corner thinking that his words may have been too offensive, even for you. But seeing the sparkle in your eyes as you find amusement is enough to banish it permanently.

The two of you leave the confines of the prison, your arms are locked around his midsection as you are settled behind him on the motorcycle. The speed of it hit a steady pace, the scenery around you nothing more than passing blurs merging into a melting pot of Earth tones.

Slowing to a stop, the two of you get off the bike and make your way into the abandoned store, your eyes scan it in its entirety. Confidence fills you in the thought that it is older than you and definitely had seen better days. Dirt and grime lined the structure from the bottom, sliding up the walls to the top of it. Your brows burrow in repulsion, though surely it can’t be as bad as the prison. Or how it used to be..

“ stay back. “

You watch as he bangs a hand against the grungy window, hardly anything could be seen through the layer of dirt that had made its home there. A visual picture certainly would not be helping either of you this time.

It took around two minutes for a series of slams against the windows to startle you, your heartbeat begins to speed up slightly at the suddenness of the noise. Even when you’re expecting the arrival of walkers, they still manage to catch you off guard. The two of you nod to one another, you move to open the door for four walkers to pile out. Your attention is kept to the two who made a beeline for your body. You step backwards with your knife now in your hand, hoping to create distance between the two of them for you to be able to stab one of them.

One of them grabs your shoulders, immediately your hand goes to shove one of its away from yours. Momentarily it loses grip and trips into you, luckily your hand with the knife is faster than you realise and you feel the resistance its skull and brain give you but you’re stronger and ensure it hits the mark. The change is instantaneous, the walker descends quickly, taking you with it. All your strength and fight is dedicated to pushing the dead weight off of you, your arms make progress as it falls next to you with a thud.

Scrambling to the space next to you to retrieve the knife still sleeping snugly within its head, your breath is ragged from the physical exhaustion and stress of the situation. Your eyes are wide with fear and it takes more strength than you realise to pull it out with a sickly squelch, a darkened liquid coats the once shining blade. Though you have little time to study its form before you feel fingers clawing at your hair, the surprise causes you to drop the knife and your hands to move towards the decaying ones who have secured their grip.

Screams erupt from your lips as your fingers move upwards, pushing what you guess is the walker’s snapping mouth that feels so close. Close enough that you’re unable to distinguish if the breaths you feel close to your neck is from the walker or your imagination. Never before had you felt like a prey animal before, you’re too close to death for your liking, you’d seen people turn from being bitten and to be seconds away fills you with dread. Your fight becomes less and less by the passing second, your body is too tired to fight itself and the walker at the same time, incapacitation is becoming your reality.. warning to confront you one step at a time.

One moment all you can hear are snarls and a warm pain that shoots through the roots of your hair, the next it feels like time has stopped. The grip that was once securely locked is now absent, you don’t know where to look.. all you know is you don’t want to look behind you.

“ y’alright? “

Your sight moves upwards, squinting as you take in the face in front of you. It’s Daryl.

“ uh, I -- “ your voice breaks at the end as you reply, shock overwhelming your body. You drop your head towards the ground in disturbance, refusing to allow your emotions to spiral, you focus on a spot on the ground.

Daryl moves towards you, his gaze checking you over, though begins to search through your hair to make sure the walker has not scratched or punctured your skin with its filthy teeth. Seeing you in that state with the walker so close to dimming your light pushed him, pushed him to fight harder than he has with a few walkers. He knew he could have sent a bolt through its skull, but rage filled his entire being as it drove him. Sending him in its direction and sending a blade through it with his entire force.

“ hey, it didn’t get ya. y’hear me? it didn’t get ya. “ he says, bringing your attention back to him. Though whether it was confirmation more for his benefit or yours, he can’t tell.

“ I never even.. I knew, I.. “

“ y’ain’t got your battle scar yet. “

“ not with you around, luckily. “ you reply with a shake of your head, a soft tone is all you can muster in that minute.

Even in spite of yourself and how you feel, a light chuckle coming from you dusts the air gently as if it never occurred. Shaking your head with a smile that barely registers you push yourself onto your knees and make a move to stand. He’s there to help you up, a tender force clutches your upper arm that you almost fail to associate with him.

The both of you share the same thought unknowingly, that your entire being feels nothing but sensitivity. Shock from enduring the ordeal leaving your body made from nothing more than glass that could shatter at a moment’s notice.

“ hey.. “

A bandana is dangling in front of your vision, confused, you take it into your fingers. Your touch feels the rough material as you run your fingertips across it. Like a light bulb, understanding lights your features up with the power of a thousand suns. Your hair is gathered over to one side, collected to form something of a braid now rests over your shoulder.. with the bandana keeping it together.

“ thank you, Daryl. “ gratitude coats your words, you are extremely thankful for his intervention “ this is mine now though.. “ you inform him, a hand moving to finger the material that now has a new home in your hair.

“ yeah, y’wish. “

“ I meant what I said though, thank you. if you weren't here I’d be one of them. “ a sigh from your mouth releases, a shudder crawling its way through yourself. The shake being easily visible.

“ that ain’t ever gonna happen, I ain’t gonna let it. “

A dull smile pulls at the corners of your lips, a sadness coating your expression at his words. Moving towards him gradually, your arms slide around his midsection. Knowing that those promises can’t always be fulfilled, but that’s Daryl a thought crosses the centre of your mind. He always wants to save everyone. You barely register the light weight of two palms on your back, but a warm light grows in size within you at the realisation.

“ you can let this bandana be mine though.. my good luck charm when you’re not around. “

“ fine. “ Daryl gives in, a hint of laughter in his response as he speaks to you.

#daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon fic #the walking dead imagine #twd imagine #the walking dead fic #twd fic

[thelittleredrobinhood]

Happy Birthday to You

In honor of Batman Day I’ve decided so post my first fic (it was meant for Jason Todd's birthday but hey its only a month late). Also, a special thank you to @reese-haleth for helping me edit!

Fandom: Batman

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth

Length: 1,900 words

Summary: A song fic to Happy Birthday about four of the most important birthdays in Jason Todd's life.

Trigger Warnings: Homelessness, Major Character death (canonical). If you would like me to add any please let me know. 

12th

Jason runs faster than he had in his entire life, an angry cop close on his tail. Just as he’s about to be caught he notices a fire escape up ahead. Acting quickly, he pulls himself up, still clutching his prize, and climbs out of view. From his hidden perch, he watches as the officer looks around the alley below, then angrily goes on to continue his search elsewhere.

 “Just like taking candy from a baby,” Jason mutters to himself, still half out of breath.

 After another moment he leaves his spot and returns to the streets, making sure to avoid the local cruisers out looking for trouble. Eventually he reaches the part of town even the cops won’t go and he’s home free. Well he’s free, he doesn’t exactly have a home to go to, but that’s a problem for later.

 On the cracked steps of an old abandoned building he finally stops to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. A box filled with a half dozen doughnuts, minus the one the officer was eating when Jason stole the rest. Glazed, not his favorite; He always liked chocolate best, but he wasn’t in a position to complain. He smiles to himself as he holds up the first treat.

 “Welp, it’s no birthday cake but it will have to do,” he says to himself. “Happy birthday to me, 11 may have sucked but maybe 12 will be better,” the young boy finally smiles. “I guess it’s time to make my wish.”

 Just as he is about to, an odd shadow passes by. He quickly looks up, just in time to catch a fading glance of the Batman himself, running across the rooftops, his path lit only by the moon. Jason waits another moment, but no one follows behind the vigilante. Robin had been gone for a few months now, though no one knows what happened for sure. Some say he died, some say he quit, some say he ran off to California.

 “Psh, California, what an idiot. If I were Robin I’d never leave,” Jason mumbles as he finally tears his eyes from the sky and looks back down at the box in his lap.

 “Well, these doughnuts aren’t gonna eat themselves.”

 He blows out his imaginary candles and wolfs down his dinner.

 Happy Birthday to you

 15th

An alarm blares as the light shines through his window. Normally, Jason would ignore it and go back to sleep, since Alfred would wake him up later, but today was different. He bolts awake after just the first beep and begins getting ready. Still struggling with his pants, he throws open the door and runs downstairs, sliding a little on the hardwood floors at the bottom of the grand staircase, he catches himself just in time. Before becoming Robin, he definitely would have fallen on his butt. It looks like all his training really is paying off.

 Stopping himself before the doorway of the main dining room, he makes himself presentable and walks in as calmly as possible.

 “Morning B,” Jason says nonchalantly as he enters the room and takes a seat.

 Bruce is sitting peacefully at the head of the table with his usual cup of coffee and today's paper. He glances up at his ward with a knowing smile on his face.

 “Good morning, Jaylad. Sleep alright?”

 Just as Jason was about to respond his nose caught the scent of breakfast. He snapped his head to the kitchen door to see Alfred bringing in the world’s largest tray of pancakes. It’s a yearly tradition; Jason always gets his favorite foods on his birthday.

 Today is always his favorite out of the whole year, everything about it is awesome. Bruce always takes off work to celebrate with him, and later he would open presents. They would play video games and basketball and whatever else Jason could think of. Maybe Dick would even swing by for a bit! It's the best.

 Although every moment is great, Jason’s favorite part is the end. They will all gather in the dining room, but Jason will get to sit at the head of the table this time. Bruce will turn out the lights and Alfred will bring in a homemade birthday cake. They’ll sing to him and he’ll blow out real candles, like in the movies. He could picture it now.

 The only problem is, he can’t figure out just what to wish for. He has everything he could ever want. He finally has a place; he finally has a home. It takes him the whole day to figure out his wish, but when he finally found it, he knew.

 He wished to stay right here, for the rest of his life.

Happy Birthday to you

 18th

The night air was freezing on his skin, the absence of the sun leaving his world cold. Today used to be a day of celebration, now it only brought pain. In his heart he knows he did all he could, that he had given his son everything and more. But then why did he blame himself?

 Bruce follows the overgrown path to the small graveyard. He did not come here often, though that only makes the guilt stronger. He should try to fix that, but he never will.

 Today he swallows the pain and guilt and kneels to the ground, placing a lone rose before a small grave. Too small, just like the boy buried underneath it. He had never had the chance to grow much, as years of malnutrition kept him far shorter than his peers, but Bruce had never minded. It meant he got to carry him a little longer, before he grew too big. He wished he could carry him again, just one last time. 

 The tears came before he could stop them. The water flooding his cheeks as the memories flooded his mind. A small boy laughing, opening presents just a few years ago. He would have been 18 today, officially a man.

 Maybe it's better this way.

 The thought crawls through his brain, dredged up from the darkest corner of his mind.

He will get to stay Bruce's little boy forever, he will never leave him. He will stay the perfect child, untainted by the rebellion of youth and the pain of adulthood, but deep-down Bruce knew, he would watch all of that happily if it meant he got to see his son again. He would do anything to feel the pain of watching his child outgrow him. He would give everything to feel something other than this. Anything but this.

 He stands abruptly, he has to leave. He’s too close to breaking down, to losing it completely, and if he did that, he may never be able to put himself back together. That’s why he never comes here, it’s why he can’t. Too many people rely on him now.

 He takes a deep breath and one last look at the grave. He tries to say it, to form the words on his tongue, but they never come.

 He walks away.

 Happy Birthday dear Jason

 20th

Red Hood runs like he has been running his whole life, like he’ll never stop. He doesn’t bother to see if the cops are still chasing him, he doesn’t care, he just runs.

 He turns down an alley and spots an old fire escape and its instinct. He hops up and climbs until the street is far beneath him. He hears the cops down below, sees their lights flashing in the night sky. He remembers when he used to be scared of them, not anymore. Now they’re scared of him.

 They won’t follow him here, but it doesn’t matter, he keeps running. Truth be told, it's not them he’s running from today. Finally, he stops and takes a moment to catch his breath. He walks to the roof's edge to rest when he realizes where he is.

 The building had been condemned many years ago, now just a rotting shell and cracked front steps. When he was younger, he used to come to this place all the time. It was far enough from the worst part of town that he could handle himself, but just close enough that the cops wouldn’t come near. It was safe here.

 He takes a seat and rests on the edge of the roof, his legs hanging over the side, feet dangling far above the street below. There was a time in his life he used to dream of this view, staring up at the rooftops, wishing for a different life. He learned the hard way to be careful what you wish for.

 The rest of the memories hit him full force, everything he was avoiding smashing into him like a bomb. Images of a happy boy bursting behind his eyelids, eating pancakes and playing basketball. Fragments of a life he lost; one he can never have back. A life he would give anything to have back, especially today. No one even remembered what today is, it used to be his favorite day of the year.

 He loses track of time as he watches life go on below him, so much time has passed since he was last here, but some things never change. It’s quite when he first notices it, the flicker of a familiar shadow. He doesn’t move, doesn’t react, but lets him come.

 A quiet thump sounds behind him, he doesn’t even flinch.

 “What do you want B?” he asks without turning around.

 A moment later the footsteps come closer and a large figure sits down calmly beside him. They sit in silence for a moment, what a sight that must be. The Red Hood, a wanted murderer, and the dark knight himself. Though Hood had long since stopped worrying about things like that and if the people below noticed them, they didn’t care enough to show it.

 “Why are you here B?” Hood asks again.

 “Do you think I forgot?” Batman turns to his son and removes his mask, transforming instantly to Bruce Wayne. “We still celebrated, even when…” he can’t bring himself to finish that sentence. Red Hood turns to him in surprise, and after another moment removes his mask as well. Becoming just Jason Todd.

 “Why?” he asks.

 “You’re family,” Bruce says

 “Even after all these years? Even after everything I’ve done?”

 “When you were gone, I would have done just as much and more to bring you back, no matter how long it took. You’re my son,” Jason looks away to hide the tears forming in his eyes.

 “What now?” Jason says. His voice rough, quiet.

 “Whatever you want Jay-lad. It’s your birthday after all,” Bruce responds, his voice just as broken. “Alfred even made cake.”

“Yeah, alright. I could definitely go for some cake.” Jason smiles weakly. Bruce nods and replaces his cowl, gesturing for Jason as he leaps from the roof. Red Hood replaces his helmet and follows into the moonlight.

 Down below, two odd shadows cast the street in darkness as Batman and his Robin run across the rooftops once more.

 Happy Birthday to you

#batmanday #bruce wayne #jason todd #tw: major character death #tw: homelessness #angst #but with a happy ending #birthdays #my first fic

[assistant-archivist]

Unwelcome

Written statement of Garrett Jennison, October 16th, 2019

My mother has been dead for twelve years, so you can imagine my surprise when I came home to her cutting up what looked like freshly baked brownies in my kitchen. 

I live alone, so it was already strange enough to come home to… Anyone, really. My first thought of course was a burglar. Then the smell hit me. What kind if burglar bakes pastries in the middle of a robbery? I grabbed a shoehorn - not a very good weapon, I know, but it was the best thing I had immediately available - and proceeded to the kitchen.  

I swear I nearly had a heart attack when she-... When It spoke. 

“Hello dear,” My mother’s voice greeted me as I entered the room. Of course I knew that it wasn’t really her, but for just a moment, a childish hope filled me. My mother’s death had been very sudden. Brain aneurysm… While she was baking brownies, actually. It had hit me really hard, and I had never quite gotten over it. Maybe that’s why It decided to target me. 

My second thought was that I was hallucinating. I eliminated that, though, because it seemed very improbable. I had never experienced hallucinations of any kind before, and my mental health was doing quite well up until this whole… Ordeal. My next idea made me question my own sanity a little, though, I will admit. 

For just a second, I wondered if it was a ghost. Now - I’ve never been one to be… Superstitious. I’ve never been a believer in the Supernatural. Even as a child, I was never afraid of ghosts or monsters or demons… Well, until now, that is.

You know, hindsight being 20/20 and all, I should have just left. Maybe it would have decided I wasn’t worth It’s time and left me alone… 

But, too late to change that now. I’ve made my bed, now I have to lay in it. 

“Who are you?” I demanded. Little did I know, I should have been asking ‘What are you?’ It’s not a person, no matter how much it looks or sounds or acts like one. It’s not a person. 

A smile that I suppose was meant to look kind spread across Its face. It’s voice was bittersweet. “What, you don’t recognize your own mother?” A shiver ran down my spine and it felt like the room got twenty degrees colder. 

I would have loved to say of course I recognized her, I was happy to have her back, oh how I had missed her and how is she here now and all those pleasantries… But I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to really believe this thing wearing my mother’s face - Maybe literally, I don’t know. I still don’t know what that thing was. 

There was just something off about this thing. It’s smile, the way it spoke, I couldn’t place it at the time, but it just… It had an almost… Predatory aura. Like a wolf dressed up as a bunny rabbit. I still can’t say exactly what set off the alarm bells, just something about this thing made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It didn’t have too many teeth - they weren’t sharp either, it’s eyes looked normal… Nothing looked immediately wrong with it, but I could just… I could sense, as ridiculous as that sounds, that there was something wrong. 

I feel ridiculous writing that. I’ve never believed in that kind of shit, but here I am. Saying I fucking sensed something. I’ve always sort of looked down on people that talked about that sort of thing, that claimed they’d had paranormal experiences, y’know. I thought they were ridiculous, overly paranoid - Sorry, this isn’t what I came here to tell you about. 

I think it’s worth noting, the longer I stood in its presence, the fouler the brownies smelled. I looked at them once the thing was gone - Well, okay, I looked at them two days later. I couldn’t even bring myself to enter the kitchen for a little while. They were rotted, like an old fruit or something, and they smelled like death. I don’t know what that thing put in them, but I became infinitely more glad that I hadn’t eaten them. I threw out the whole pan, my apologies. Looking back, they might have been able to help prove my story. 

Anyways… I knew that something was… Out of place, with my supposed mother. I knew I had to get it out of my house, I just didn’t know how to do it. It turned out to be surprisingly easy, but for a moment, I wondered if I was going to die. I guess that’s what fear does to you, you get irrational, jump to conclusions, worst case scenarios and all that. I wasn’t sure what to do, at that moment I really just wanted to get out of this encounter alive. 

“You aren’t welcome here, leave my home please.” I said. I’m sure my voice was shaking and quiet. I already don’t like confrontation and confronting what I thought at the time must have been a demon was even more terrifying. I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. I vaguely remembered something about uh… Vampires, I believe? Something something can’t enter without permission something something, I was desperate, you know. I thought maybe that sort of rule was universal to such unpleasant creatures. If it hadn’t left at that moment I would still probably believe it was a demon. 

It’s already disquieting smile faded from Its face unnervingly slowly. It gave me what I think was supposed to be it’s best imitation of a uh, disappointed look. But really it just looked like the thing was glowering at me. The way it left was… Honestly a little bit comedic, looking back, but at the time I was too shaken to do anything but stare. Its eyes never left me as it… Walked? I think it walked, it might have floated… Either way, it stared right at me, scowling the entire way, as it moved out of my kitchen and then backwards out my front door. It strode - I think - down my front steps, and disappeared down the sidewalk. 

I was out of my kitchen in two strides and I slammed the door shut behind me. I wouldn’t go back in there for another two days, like I said, and by the time I had the guts to enter the room again the brownies were… Decayed, is the best word I can really use for it. They were disgusting, and the smell was putrid. Unfortunately I didn’t think to even take a picture before I threw out the dish. It had been my mother’s favorite one, the uh - The pan they were in. I was sad to see it go. Angry, too, that that thing had had the nerve to defile it with whatever wretched trash those brownies really were. 

I went a few days - Four I believe, to be exact - without any more encounters. Granted, I didn’t exactly give the thing many opportunities to get to me. I sped to work and back home each day, and I didn’t dare linger outside for more than the moment it took me to unlock me door and check the sidewalk. I even uh, I even barricaded my backdoor. I stuck a chair under the handle and a broom across the whole thing. I didn’t want to take any risks, and even if a couple piece of flimsy wood wouldn’t have stopped the thing had it decided to return, it gave me a little piece of mind. Enough to get to sleep at night, at least.

Next time I ran into the thing it was at my office. I’m an editor for Mint, by the way. I got in a little earlier than I normally do, there was practically no line at Tim Hortons so I didn’t have to wait. Getting in five minutes early may have been what saved me, to be honest. If that thing had caught me off guard, alone in my office… It may be just fear talking but, I don’t think I would have walked out of there alive. 

When I arrived, it was talking to the receptionist. The… That monster was still wearing my mother’s face. I’m glad I had never showed David - David Huxley, he’s the uh, the receptionist - a picture of my mother, else he surely would have asked questions. Well, he would have asked more questions.

The thing was leaning over the desk, tapping on idly on the surface of it with a couple fingers. It was smiling that alien smile at him, poor David looked about ready to bolt. As soon as I entered the room the thing’s head snapped up, looking at me over its shoulder. The way its neck bent was… Peculiar. It looked just a little too loose - I’m sorry, I really don’t know how else to describe it. 

David looked relieved that it’s attention was no longer on him, but he peered up at me with concern in his eyes. 

“Garrett!” It exclaimed in what I assume was meant to be a joyous tone. It sounded ecstatic, like it could barely contain its excitement, like it had been plotting and anticipating this meeting for a long time and it’s plans had finally come to fruition. “How are you darling?” For a brief moment, I honestly thought it’s voice had come out garbled or uh, distorted would probably be a better word. David appeared to have heard something off in it as well, he looked back at the thing standing at his desk. I remembered he used to carry pepper spray with him, paranoid about muggings and such - he tended to leave late and he didn’t want to be caught unawares. I wondered if he still had it, or… If it would even do any good against the thing. 

“I have a present for you!” I don’t think I have ever felt a dread like that in my life. “How about we go to your office for a little privacy?” It wasn’t a question, I knew that, it was absolutely a command. For a second, David looked as though he would jump up and physically prevent me from going anywhere with It if I’d tried. He’s become a good friend of mine since this, I’m lucky to have him. So far, he’s the only one that really believes me about all this. 

“No uh, I have to speak with David, please. Privately - It’s important, regarding my meeting with Ms. Paisley?” Ms. Paisley - Julie Paisley, a fellow editor - was away in Europe doing research for a piece about international stamps. I was hoping David would get the message that this was a dangerous and malicious being. 

He stood up and practically dragged me into a different room. The conversation was short, I won’t recall the entire thing here. All that was said really was a brief explanation that we needed to get that thing out and the formation of a haphazard scheme to do so. 

For context, our office is on the third floor of the building. The second floor is offices as well, but the first is just a shoddily put together food court. We ushered the thing down to the first floor with an excuse about ‘Ms.Paisley is on her way and we must be ready the moment she arrives.’ I suppose it’s lucky for us that this thing was monumentally stupid. It was certainly annoyed, insisted that it only needed a moment to speak with me, surely I could spare just a second, really it’s quite important - I thought it would lash out at the both of us as the elevator door closed, separating it from us. 

David was white as a sheet, I’m sure I was too. I honestly thought I was done with it, I didn’t think it would turn up again. Anyways, David and I locked ourselves in my office until the rest of our co-workers arrived. Neither of us saw it again for the rest of the day, fortunately. I suppose it got tired of waiting to catch me off guard and left. 

It was another few days until I saw it again, this time it didn’t speak to me though. I saw it standing in a park, staring at me from across the street. I was getting coffee on my lunch break - The sight of this thing panicked me so much that I nearly left before I got my order. 

I’ve seen it a few times since, each time it’s been watching me from a ways away, and each time it has that daunting smile - Sneer, really, it doesn’t so much smile anymore as it does sneer at me. I wish I knew why it picked me… 

It doesn’t appear that it has any intentions of leaving me alone, I fear for my safety - And for that of those around me, as well. I’m afraid it’s going to come for David or Ms. Paisley to try to get to me. I don’t want any of them to get hurt, I wish they weren’t involved at all. Both David and I have recently invested in a lot of salt - For the lines, across thresholds and all? I’ve even put salt lines on the windows in my office. My co-workers may think I’ve gone mad, but it’s a little bit reassuring, at least. God… I don’t even know if salt lines would stop this thing. 

I’ve come not just to tell you this story, but to ask for help. I need it to leave me alone, I need whatever this is to be gone. I know you don’t do things like that yourselves but I was hoping you could direct me to someone that does, or at least tell me what this thing is so I can take proper precautions against it. 

End of Statement.

Archivist Notes:

Similar statement logged several years ago - 1972, Statement of Helen Brady - former researcher suggested the Corpus Furem Vampiris. (More to be added on CFV later)

Account of mother’s death is accurate. David Huxley was contacted and interviewed - Fully corroborated the story of Mr. Jennison. Gave us an account of his experience with the supposed CFV: 

“The thing gave me the chills. I don’t know how else to describe it aside from unnerving. It’s expressions and the way it talked seemed off somehow, but I couldn’t quite place what was wrong with it. On top of that it didn’t actually tell me who it was, it just said it was here to see Garrett, not even Mr. Jennison, called him Garrett. Normally people at least tell me their relation to someone if they’ve come to the office to see them - Oh and it showed up at… 7:45 am? Which was strange. I wasn’t sure why anyone was looking for Garrett at work that early. Most people have the decency to wait till 9 or something at least. 

Anyways, while it was talking to me I just felt very uncomfortable. Something in me was telling me to just get out of there, come up with an excuse and get away from this weirdo. I didn’t want to just leave it there to intercept Garrett though. I guess I’m sort of… Superstitious, maybe. I’ve always kind of believed in you know, paranormal things. I just didn’t want to let it catch him alone, in case it really was something malicious, you know? I guess I made the right choice, heh. It was probably the scariest experience of my life, but I’m glad I stayed.”

Further investigation is required, supernatural control professionals to be consulted and referred to case.

#horror #fanfiction #fiction #short story #story #writing #the magnus archives #TMA #I swear to god Ill explain myself with the CFVs soon

[bbhyuckie]

Crossed Wires - 1

The Doyoung office fic nobody asked for.

Genre: Slowburn office romance.

Words: 5.5k

Warnings: Exposition.

When you were younger, you never really envisioned yourself working in an office. Like all the other kids, you wanted to be an astronaut, or a doctor, or an actor. You suppose, no one ever really dreamt of working in an office, but there you were. A twenty-something in a corporate building, working a solid nine-to-five.

As far as office work goes, you actually had it really, really good. You had applied to SM right out of highschool with very minimal background experience. Honestly, you hadn’t really expected anything from putting in your resume, but by the grace of god, you landed the summer secretary position. The job was easy enough to do and complex enough to keep you focused for an eight hour work day. When August rolled around and you were called back to your manager's office, you were sure that it was the end of the line for you; end of summer, end of job. But to your surprise, you were offered a job outside of the lobby and into the office blocks.

Which is how you ended up here: the marketing department. The sudden shift away from greeting guests at the front desk and setting up appointments for people on the way out was jarring. Work suddenly had weight to it. If it hadn’t been for the considerable upgrade in your check every month, you probably would have lost your mind. Marketing wasn’t necessarily hard . It was just a lot more than what you were used to. Micro to macro, so to speak. The job outline wasn’t single people anymore. You were connecting with hundreds of thousands of people behind the guise of company-community involvement, media planning, and advertisement. Luckily, you didn’t have to do it alone.

Your immediate team consisted of three charismatic young men that fit the forward thinking, strikingly attractive, deceptively smart and strategic outline your department demanded. It was hard to picture yourself fitting in with them most of the time, but from your first day forward they all welcomed you in like you had been there since the  dawn of time. It seemed the thoughts of not quite being up to par during brainstorming sessions, and feeling slightly out of place when someone walked in to your department passed with time.

The eldest in your team was named Chittaphon, but the other boys called him Ten because of [insert inside office joke that you weren’t there to learn here]. He was eccentric and stellar at his job. Since he worked there the longest, he helped you through your marketing training and made you nifty little cheat sheets with frequent call numbers and contact names. You got close with Ten first because of how closely you worked in your training period, and he was a gateway to the other two boys in your department. He was always either complimenting your work attire or praising your work ethic.

After finally being released from training, you got your own desk right next to the second oldest member of your department. Jaehyun was a great desk neighbor, all things considered. Sure, he had a stressfully cluttered desk and never put his phone on silent, but somehow he still got all of his work done and even managed to help you with yours. Jae was so handsome that it was hard not to fall head over heels for him. And maybe, you would have if it wasn’t for the fact that you had seen how he danced while he was heavily intoxicated at a department night out… It was an ugly sight. So instead, you settled for going to company dinners together and ultimately you became Jaehyun’s wingwoman.

The last member of your team was Mark, who seemed to be perpetually waiting for everyone else to catch up. He was a touch younger than you, but the two of you got along pretty well. That is, after the two of you started speaking. For how quirky and talkative he was with the other two boys, he seemed to keep his guard up around you for the first few months. Jae teased that it was because Mark had never had to talk to girls before and he didn’t know how, to which Ten scoffed and Mark slumped further down in to his chair. You and Mark finally hit it off when Jaehyun had called out sick. Without your trusty companion to ask for help, you decided to take the leap and roll your chair over to Mark’s desk. At first, he was surprised that you would even consider coming to him for help, considering Ten was in the same room as the two of you.

To say that Mark was nervous, was an astounding understatement. His hands were shaky and cautious as he reached for the stapler on the other side of the desk. However, after a few cheesy jokes on your behalf Mark was absolutely smitten with you in the most platonic sense of the word. Soon he was showing up to work with two coffees instead of one, and the middle drawer of his desk was filled with snacks just for you.

The days of learning simmered out into days of keeping your eyes open, and the longer you were there, the more second nature your position became. Nothing ever became particularly mundane, but with four of you in the office there was a lot of time to just… talk. About stupid things. Or funny things. Or kind of secret things-- like the fact that Ten was dating your department manager, and no one knew somehow. Or how Mark almost strangled the new secretary last week, because, who the fuck would hire Donghyuck oh my god . Or how Jaehyun needed you to be his fake girlfriend at the next wedding in his family. Again.

You had to pay your downtime to those in logistics. Realistically, if the logistics department didn’t exist, you probably would have quit a long time ago. Connecting with so many people called for a lot of… calls. That you didn’t necessarily want to, or know how to, make. If someone asked you who you respected, hands down you would have said your agent from logistics, Yuta.

Yuta was a great partner to work with. Typically he opened the phone calls with a warm greeting before filling you in on the latest plots of this new anime he had recently started. He then transitioned into how cute Manager Sicheng had been looking lately, and more often than not you had to remind him that the purpose of the call was to relay information. He was the person who had gotten you into watching cheesy anime and he was your go to gossip partner whenever Ten was busy with “lunch dates.”

He was the one who always had jokes to tell or advice to give, and although your departments were on opposite sides of the same floor, his friendship felt real and close. These were likely the reasons it absolutely broke your heart when Yuta informed you that a transfer hire would be taking over his spot as your go to logistics man.

“Yuta, you’ve told me a lot of stupid shit these past few months but thinking I’m going to just let a transfer hire take your place is by far the stupidest.”

“Calm down, sunshine, I won’t forget about you. I’ve just been having to juggle yours and Jaehyun’s sorry asses for the past few months. Trust me-- if I got to pick, I would take you over him in a heartbeat,” Yuta replied, clearly unbothered by the whole situation.

You huffed halfheartedly and slumped in your chair, “This sucks.”

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t cry about losing Yuta as your logistics man in the break room later on that afternoon. Mark eventually finds you with your legs huddled close to your chest as you let out quiet, pathetic sniffles. He handed you a box of tissues that had been placed on the counter, almost as if it had been left there for this exact purpose.

“I heard about the whole Yuta thing, and I kinda figured you’d be in here crying.” His voice is soft and comforting, but you’re also partially offended he assumed you would be crying in this situation.

“And how did you know that?” You quip back bitterly, and Mark chuckles at your childish antics.

“You cried for two hours when Yuta told you how Monsters Inc. ended.” Although it was meant as a lighthearted joke, a fresh wave of tears hits you and you’re crying even more now. Because god dammit now you had to think about how Boo lost Sulley on top of you losing Yuta.

Mark’s eyes are wide, like a deer in headlights. “Jaehyun! Call Yuta’s dumb ass, like, right now!”

After teasing Mark for freaking out, Jaehyun obediently dialed Yuta’s number and called him to the break room. Admittedly, crying about losing Yuta was a tad bit melodramatic. However, you felt a wave of dread wash over you at the mere thought of your friendship slowly dying off because you wouldn’t be talking half as much as you used to.

Nonetheless, your band of misfits had decided that the best way to deal with the situation at hand was to get shitfaced. After all, friends that make regrettable decisions while intoxicated together stay together, right?

For the duration of your appetizers, Yuta had been trying to get you to fess up about why you were crying about the situation. In his defense, Yuta couldn’t really understand why you had been so upset. The way he saw it, your friendship didn’t need office calls to last.

“I guess I’m just afraid that with the new transfer hire, we won’t talk anymore.” You finally confess, teary eyed. Yuta swears he tried to hold in his fit of giggles, but it was just too hard.

Laughing, he pulls you into a tight side hug and ruffles your hair with his hands. “You dumbass! You think I won’t be texting you every five minutes about what happened in my show? Working a nine to five job really has rotted your brain.”

His eyes are bright and cheery as he continues to comfort you, promising every so often that he’ll visit your apartment and watch anime with you to compensate for the lack of business calls.

Now that the mood had brightened considerably, you were able to pay attention to Mark, who was trying to prove his manliness by downing shot after shot while Jaehyun couldn’t stop teasing him for freaking out over tears. As you shifted your eyes over to them, your heart swelled with warmth. Your office friends had become like a second family to you. And you wouldn’t dare change it for the world. Resentment sank slowly into the pit of your stomach, however; not towards any of this newfound love for this gang of corporate slaves, but rather for the transfer that was seemingly trying to ruin all of it. The realization of this sudden blind hatred made you feel well and truly immature, more so than crying in the break room at work (which is a hard thing to top). You shrugged it off and ordered another round of drinks.

The next day came quickly and angrily. You blinked your eyes against the offending light that had woken you and groaned. This was a feeling you had grown to know well. A hangover.

You yanked your blanket back over your head. After blindly fumbling around for your phone on your bedside table, you managed to type in the number to your department managers office. You inhaled deeply and pressed the overly bright green button. The ringback was deafening, until finally--

“Advertising and Marketing, this is Johnny Seo,” his voice cut through the receiver like a knife. It was hard not to wince.

“Johnny,” you said, voice untested and rough, “It’s me. I can't come in today.”

You swore you heard him chuckle on the other end, knowingly. You couldn’t find the humor in this situation.

“Sure thing, want to use PTO? Or accept the consequences of a bad hangover?” he asked.

You rubbed the palm of your hand over your face, “Y’know, I’m gonna leave that up to your discretion.”

“Understood, I’ll see you nice and sober tomorrow morning.”

Begrudgingly, you slid out of bed and pressed your feet against the floor. The cool tile was grounding. You decided today was the day you would catch up on the anime Yuta had sent you, get your laundry done, and catch up on your sleep. With a newfound purpose, you trudged into the kitchen of your apartment and started a pot of coffee, before deciding, yeah, you did need to wash your hair.

Before you knew it, your impromptu day off was coming to a close. You were clean, caught up on laundry and anime, and more broke than that morning. Online shopping really was a trap. With a full wasted day under your belt, you fell back into bed and turned the lights off.

As you laid there, waiting to fall asleep, your mind wandered idly to what happened at work while you were away. You were almost positive Mark called out too. If anyone was more of a certified lightweight than you, it was him. Jaehyun probably had a wonderful day, you thought, with Yuta all to himself. You found yourself then wondering about this nameless company transfer. Would he be nice? Would he get your jokes? Would he have an annoying voice? Would he know how to do his job? Stress prickled in your chest and you took a deep breath to choke it down. You could deal with that tomorrow.

Feeling as refreshed as you possibly could after dealing with such a horrendous hangover, you pushed yourself to get ready for the day. Your heart was pounding at an alarming rate when you realized it was time for you to leave for work. You had even considered calling in again and telling Johnny that maybe you weren’t hungover, maybe it was alcohol poisoning or maybe you were on the brink of death.

But you knew Johnny would tear you to pieces if you called in with such a lame and poorly thought out excuse. So instead, you begrudgingly grabbed your work bag and headed out the front door.

On your way in to the office, you caught Mark at the front door. He was, unsurprisingly, harassing the secretary. Donghyuck looked positively pleased with himself as he swiveled on his rolly chair, an angry Mark saying something about eating the rest of the leftovers.

“Oh, Mark,” you said, throwing an arm around the boys shoulders. His tray of coffee for your department teetered dangerously in his hands. “Leave the poor boy alone, I wouldn’t want to have to call HR on you.”

Mark shot you a look as he steadied the coffee in his hand, opening his mouth to say something. He was cut off by Donghyuck.

“Thank you! I’m just here, trying to do my humble job, and I’m being brutalised by this man! ” Hyuck clasped a hand over his heart and puffed out his lower lip.

“By god Mark, stop making a scene, let’s go,” you faked chastised as you pulled him down the hall towards your offices.

“Har har,” Mark made a poor attempt at fake laughing and shoved a coffee in your direction, “Very funny. G’morning to you too.”

You bumped your head against his shoulder in apology as you walked side by side, “Sorry, Marky-baby,” you saw him flush at the name, “You know I’m just teasing.”

Mark visibly relaxed and his stern look softened, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“So how was yesterday?” You poked your straw into the top of your iced coffee.

“I was about to ask you the same, but I take it you called out, too.” You smiled up at him sheepishly. He knocked shoulders with you and you both giggled at your notably low alcohol tolerance.

“I was hoping to get some intel on my new guy,” you paused for a second and sighed, “I would like to reiterate the fact that this… sucks.”

“Oh, c’mon. It can’t be that bad.”

You tried not to bristle at the dismissal, “That’s awfully easy for you to say, not having to get used to someone other than Taeyong, and all.”

“That’s-- That’s not what I meant. Just give him a chance, I guess.” You rolled your eyes at his comment before shooting him a devious smirk.

“Maybe you should give Hyuck a chance.” You were answered with an elbow in the ribs.

You pushed the door to your department open and held it for Mark before you walked your opposite directions to your desks.  As you sat down next to Jaehyun, you rolled your chair suspiciously closer to the side of your desk furthest away from him. Jae immediately noticed and shot you a look somewhere between confused and wounded.

Ten piped up from behind you both, “Uh oh. Mommy and daddy are fighting again.”

“Who’s who?” Mark asked with a snicker.

“Are you actually upset with me over this?” Jae asked quietly, disregarding the other two.

You glanced over to him and immediately felt bad. “No,” you said apologetically, “I’m not mad. Really, Jae. This is just weird, and I don’t want to talk to the new guy.”

Jaehyun’s brow squished together in the middle, clearly confused. “But he’s so nice?”

“Oh yeah,” Ten swiveled around in his chair, “He came in and introduced himself yesterday, wanted to get to meet who he was gonna be running logistics for before he got locked upstairs.” Ten paused and smirked wickedly, “Probably not the best first impression.”

You groaned helplessly and melted into the leather of your chair. A wave of humility washed over you in thinking that, shit, he was probably nervous too. You had all of your friends around to support you and only one part of your daily routine was changing, but this guy was coming from out of the city and didn’t know anyone . Jae looked at you pitifully, which arguably made the whole situation worse.

“Don’t worry about it. He seemed genuinely nice, if not just a little quiet. I’m sure he understood.”

“Jae, stop,” you whined, “That definitely makes this worse!”

You looked around to see three sets of eyes on you with varying expressions. Ten looked unimpressed, Mark looked confused, and Jae maintained an unwavering look of pity.

“Alright, sweetheart,” Ten said slowly, “I’m going to need you to get this--” he gestured vaguely at your current state, “--figured out. It is far too early in the morning for a mental collapse. And while I would love to watch this unfold, we unfortunately do not get paid for that.”

Ten turned his chair back to his desk with an air of finality.

With a huff, you heaved yourself back up into a proper sitting position. You organized your papers that you had left on your desk from the prior work day and tapped them into line with each other. You smoothed them against the faux wood of your desk with a hand and took a breath to calm yourself. Jae’s hand found itself over top of yours. He caught your eye before he smiled reassuringly, and squeezed your hand before letting go.

You stalled for as long as you could with paperwork from the day you missed, but damn it, you were a touch too good at your job and finished everything you could do by yourself within the morning. You took lunch with Mark and watched vine compilations together in the break room. As your half hour of freedom drew to a close, you came to terms with the fact that you had to swallow your pride and call down to logistics.

You cozied back into your office chair and tucked your feet underneath you. There was no more procrastinating to be done. You fiddled with a ring on one of your fingers before finally biting the bullet and dialing in the extension to logistics.

The line rang three times, and with every buzz of the callback, you felt your stomach do a flip. Equal parts of you wanted the ringing to end and go on forever all at the same time.

“Logistics, this is Doyoung,” a clear voice broke through the line.

“I--,” you started before your brain could keep up, “Sorry, what was it again?” You smushed your palm against your forehead, because you idiot , you heard exactly what he said! “Can you spell that for me, I mean?”

“Uh-- Ah, yeah, it’s D-O-Y-O-U-N-G. From, uh. From logistics.”

“Right, Doyoung” you repeated, scribbling down his name on a sticky note before peeling it off the pad and pressing it onto the receiver of your phone. “I’m Y/N. From marketing. But I’m sure you already knew that.”

Doyoung mumbled a non committal noise on the other end of the line, “What can I do for you?”

You closed your eyes and breathed in through your nose, “I was wondering if I could get some documents faxed over from accounting, actually. Uh, stocks, to be specific. For our upcoming ad campaign, I need to see affiliate ownership growth between January of this year and now. Yuta has been keeping a file for the dates that we’ve been doing growth research on and--”

“Yeah, I’ve got the folder. I’ll send the forms down. Anything else?”

“Um,” you said, taken slightly aback by Doyoung cutting into you speaking, “No, that’s it I think. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The line went dead.

Slowly you put the phone back on the receiver. A series of emotions flashed through your head.  You took a moment to try and process exactly what went down but also if you didn’t swallow the lump that was beginning to form in your throat you were afraid you’d start crying again. You were a grown woman and knew how to keep your emotions under control, but the amount of frustration that washed over you was infuriating. You mentally kicked yourself for even trying to  be nice to this guy when he was going to treat you like an inconvenience. This was his job! He was, quite literally, paid to help you!

As you were finally getting your breathing back under control, a knock came from the glass door. You glanced over your shoulder to see one of the interns smiling at you. You pulled a smile on and waved at him. His smile only widened and he waved frantically, calling you out into the hall. You suppress the urge to complain solely because this was your favorite intern.

“Na Jaemin,” you smiled, closing the glass door to your department behind you.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite marketing expert,” the younger boy winked at you.

“Flattery,” you said as you pulled his glasses off the bridge of his nose to clean them. He had a bad habit of staring through smudge marks that didn’t seem to bother him, but drove you insane.

“Maybe,” he smiled, rubbing over where the feet of his glasses were previously sat on his nose, “But only because you deserve it.”

You smiled at that, and it wasn’t forced. You remembered why he was your favorite.

“What can I do for you, kid?” you slid his glasses back onto his face.

“More of what I--” he waved a manilla folder in front of you, “--can do for you.”

You laughed at that, because, “Please don’t ever do that again.”

He laughed with you before finally handing you the file. You both stood there for a moment before he asked, “So do you like the new guy you’re working with? I just picked these up from him and he seemed pretty nice, I think.”

Right. The new guy. Doyoung.

“Jesus, the other Jae told me he’s great too, but the only conversation I’ve had with him was short and decidedly unpleasant.”

Jaemin exhaled pointedly and looked at you with sympathy. “That sucks. I won’t bring him up then.”

“No, it’s okay. I just have to get over it.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Jaemin leaned forward like he was letting you in on a secret, “I have to deal with the rest of the interns.”

You found yourself smiling again, despite yourself. Somehow, this high school intern had a way of leaving you in a better mood than he found you. “God help you,” you chuckled.

You and Jaemin parted ways shortly thereafter. You slipped back into marketing and to your desk. You took a moment to get situated and take a sip of your then watery coffee. Eventually, you convinced yourself to open your files back up on your computer and get the numbers put together. You flipped the front of the manila folder over and were met first with a jumble of numbers on the right side of the folder. On the left side was something you weren’t expecting. A small note on nice paper, taped parallel with the top of the folder. The handwriting was reminiscent of a font, in neat, narrow letters.

Y/N,

Sorry for rushing off of the phone earlier.

Management called on the other line. I hope

you understand. If you need anything, feel more

than welcome to call me. You have my number

and I work the same hours that you do.

-DY

You read over the note a few times before it finally sank in what it was saying. A pang of guilt thumped you in the chest as you traced your fingertip over the note again. Maybe you were too quick to judge on him, you thought to yourself. You tried not to slump in your chair.

You tore your brain away from being an overly-sensitive, hyper-judgemental individual long enough to put a decent dent on your ownership trend report. The numbers were cleaner than you remember them being organized before, and the spreadsheets had rows in alternating colors that made it easier on the eyes. You noticed somewhere along your productivity streak that there were now tabs separating affiliate from corporate ownership, and there were certain forms that you hadn’t requested but had helped your report.

By the time five rolled around, you felt like you had gotten an unusually large amount of work done despite bitching and moaning the entire morning. Only as Mark tapped on your shoulder with his backpack slung over his back did you realise it was already time to go home. Your face flushed at the uncharacteristic loss of time; you were typically the one counting down the minutes until the day was over.

As you walked out of the office with Mark, you came to two conclusions: the first was that this was one of the most emotionally confusing days of your life, and the second was that Doyoung must have been a robot. Everything he did seemed so critically calculated and practiced. You didn’t want to say that he was better than Yuta, but after going through the revised file he sent you… he was definitely more efficient. Even as you waved goodbye to Mark in the parking garage, you were stuck on your new partner.

By the time you got home and collapsed onto the couch with a box of takeout, you were finally not thinking exclusively of Doyoung. You managed to watch a few episodes of yours and Yuta’s anime, take a shower, and fold an entire load of laundry before crawling up into bed. You pulled the duvet up to your chin. You clicked open your phone to find a clean screen and let out a breath of relief. Sometimes, silence after a long day like the one you had was welcome. You watched the drizzle of rain start to come down outside your window and pulled your blankets up tighter. As the chill of early fall crept into the glass of your window, your mind crept into sleep.

Over the next few weeks, you found that Doyoung was not, in fact, a robot. Shockingly, he was just really good at his job.

Calls with Doyoung became significantly less stressful as time went on, but it was nothing like what you and Yuta had before. Despite being considerably more productive and organized, the phone calls weren’t as memorable. Doyoung seemed to have a strictly business sort of take on things, but he was human.

His humanity came through subtly. It started with you sending Jaemin up to logistics with the completed ownership trend report in a new manilla folder. You decided, after a bit too much thought, that you would attach a note of your own for Doyoung. Peacemaking, your brain supplied.

doyoung,

thanks for the files! no hard feelings.

if you could organize everything like

you did with those documents, my life

would be considerably easier. thanks

a million!

-Y/N

You looked down at your note, on your cheap sticky note with your far from perfect handwriting and wondered if you should just send the file by itself. You shook your head and pressed the piece of paper on the folder before closing it with a decisive snap.

Later that day, you called up to logistics to check on the file you sent.

“Logistics, this is Doyoung,” you swore his voice could be on a recorded line from how similar to the previous day that sounded.

“Hey Doyoung, I just wanted to make sure you got the report I sent up earlier.”

“Oh--,” There was a muffled rustling sound, like he was sorting through papers, “Yeah. Yeah I did.”

“Okay! Just let me know if my numbers don’t check out or something, yeah?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line followed by a slight huff that loosely resembled a laugh, “Yeah, of course.”

After you thanked him and hung up the phone, you wondered if he thought your note was amusing or if the two events were completely isolated. The socialite portion of your personality hoped it was because of you, but the realistic portion of you recognized it could have been because of anything. Hell, it could have not been a laugh at all.

About five minutes later, your email pinged with a new message in the inbox. Your eyebrows knit together in confusion; most people didn’t email you directly unless you messaged them first. You pulled up the portal and saw one (1) new email from a Kim Doyoung. A tiny paperclip icon next to the email envelope told you that there was something attached to the message. You opened the attachment to find a spreadsheet with clean lines and alternating color blocks. The font was simplistic and streamline, and despite it just being a spreadsheet, it brought a smile to your face. This felt like the first step towards something manageable.

In the following days and documents, the two of you kept phone calls short, but often left notes in files that were dropped off to each other. Doyoungs’ were always short and concise, written with a painfully steady hand on paper that was too nice to justify writing a note on. Yours, on the other hand, were on various pieces of parchment you found in your department, handwriting fluctuating with how busy the office was. There was a consistency in the pattern the two of you had that you could almost appreciate; the two of you were hardly acquaintances, even farther from friends, but the routine gave you a new normal.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2

#text #doyound #nct #nct u #nct 127 #nct imagines #nct doyoung #doyoung fic #nct fic #kim doyoung #supporting cast: #mark lee #na jaemin #nakamoto yuta #jung jaehyun #nct ten #nct chittaphon #theres more #lee donghyuck #haechan #fic #imagines

[giantpredatorymollusk]

This is a story about farming. It is quite long. I think it may be worth reading anyway, but unfortunately I have no way to prove it. I’ve also tried my best but I still don’t know if it actually makes perfect sense in every way? But it did all actually happen; so it all kind of has to make at least a little bit of sense, even if doesn’t really seem like it.

The trouble all started in 1901, when my great great grandfather emigrated to the United States from the modern-day Czech Republic and later, in 1911, bought a 90-acre farm there. Many years later, most of that farm came to belong to my grandfather, and roughly 10 years back he retired from his job selling tires at the tire store and started making the 40 mile drive north to the farm to spend his summer days there and plant a garden (in the area that wasn’t already rented out to be planted with soybeans.) Not long after that, he had enough produce to start selling stuff at a nearby farmers’ market in an upscale town, physically not far from the farm, although psychogeographically immensely distant from that chunk of desolate, isolated, fairly representative rural Ohio.

I was dragged in in the summer of 2015, from the end of June to the beginning of July, mostly pounding stakes into the ground so that the roughly 1000-1500 tomato plants that my grandfather had planted that year (with occasional help from my grandmother and uncle) could be tied up between them and the fruit wouldn’t lay on the ground and rot easily. I hated it there (in fairness, I probably would’ve hated anything that involved leaving the house during that time in my life) and when my dad got me out of it (by hiring me to help him paint a house) I quickly divested myself of the money I’d received there to wash my hands of the place and resolved never to go back. My dad was never in favor of me going to the farm, knowing as he did that the work could be dangerous (operating old, large, and unreliable tractors and backhoe with minimal training or safety precautions; running large, dangerous power saws in creative ways without the proper guards, gear, or safety precautions, mostly to put points on stakes; operating saws in an unsafe manner while standing in the raised bucket of the old and unreliable backhoe in order to trim trees; etc) and probably also suspected that I personally (especially then) was fairly vulnerable to being psychologically manipulated into performing difficult tasks that I was unhappy doing over a long period of time while being underpaid under some circumstances. Hmm.

I returned to the farm for the entirety of the summer of 2016. After barely surviving/graduating my senior year of high school that year I had given up on life and settled pretty quickly back into the routine of the daily back-and-forth farm trips. It is true that I was getting paid; it was also true that I was being challenged and learning things, mostly the basics of planting vegetables, like which plants were cold-season crops and which were warm-season and how far apart to space the transplants, and how a PTO works on a tractor; and it’s certainly a fact that on a personal level, I was still completely taken in by my grandfather’s wit and farm wisdom and overpowering managerial confidence. I made myself completely subordinate to him, and blamed myself when his ideas for what we should be doing next were completely obvious to him but rather opaque to me; I remember it frequently happening that he would tell me what to do and I would reflexively go off to do it, and then realize I was unclear on what he meant and have to timidly re-approach him for further instructions. This kind of slowed down the learning process. Much later I would also realize how superficial his constant confidence could be, and how it was often less the natural attitude of someone who knew what they were doing and more a tool he used to impress people into doing things without thinking too much about any of the potential alternatives. Also, according to my admittedly fallible memories, I was getting paid $35 per day for what were generally between 7 and 8 hour days. I was, in fact, 18 years old that year and probably could have gotten a different job that for one thing paid a better hourly wage and for another left me less reliant on the caprices of my family; but this was neither a thing that happened nor a thing that was expected from me, least of all by me. My internal world hadn’t expanded as I’d grown older; my universe of possibilities was limited to the things that were already present in my somewhat simple life. This was probably symptomatic of some larger problem or problems with the functionality of my brain at that point in my life.

One can become trapped in many different ways. You can be trapped in a specific city, or a zip code, or in a geographic region sorely lacking in cities, or one which they are considered entirely strange and outlandish things; in a job, in a career, in a lifestyle, or in a set of lifestyles considered realistic given your high school grades, ability to connect with others, and standing in society and life; in a friend group, or in an identity, or in a lack thereof, or in any number of the various rules and regulations that govern how one is allowed to interact with the rest of the human race; in a comedy, a tragedy, a pastoral narrative, or in any combination of the above kinds of story that one no longer wishes to be part of. For all I know, thanks to the stereotypical farm benefits of character building, meaningful work experiencing, and nature connecting-with, working at the farm for that year may have actually been good for me; nevertheless, I wish that it had been my last full summer there. I had showed up, learned some stuff, earned a small amount of money, and, in retrospect experienced at least the majority of what this particular 90 acre area of the planet had had to offer. Alas.

2017! This year, we had a pretty consistent schedule that I can remember clearly to this day: we left at 9:30 AM, when my grandfather would pull into my driveway and blow his horn, and got back between 7 and 8 o’clock at night. Built into that schedule is a one hour commute each way (we both lived about 40 miles away from the farm, which was actually inhabited by my uncle, who was often around and occasionally helped with the work but frequently made fairly abrasive and critical comments (if often correct) comments about it (for example, about the fact that our work day started so late in the morning)) and a daily grocery store stop for drinks for the cooler. I was the driver (once my grandfather’s problems with what I suspect is undiagnosed narcolepsy had almost killed us a couple of times) which you would think give me control over the stereo, but I quickly learned that my grandfather had pretty specific taste in music (country from the 50s and 60s) and a temperament unsuited to most podcasts. Obviously, most of that time in the daily schedule was taken up by the work day (so generally either planting tomatoes (which gets a little less rewarding after about the 500th one, which that year only put us at about a quarter of the way through the tomato plants, not counting the hundreds of eggplant, cabbage, and zucchini plants or the miscellaneous corn, squash, and beans), pounding stakes and tying string for the tomatoes, or harvesting tomatoes) which lay at the end of the lonely highway on a lonely work site at which the same 2-4 people showed up every day. (It became four people once you counted my younger brother, who came up to the farm that year until the start of marching band season got him out of it, and who fortunately made it his main job to get everyone to pack up and leave promptly at the end of the day. Once he stopped showing up, and even though I persuaded my grandfather to move the schedule up an hour so that we could get home earlier, we never left as consistently as we did when he was there; I didn’t have the stamina to find my grandfather (who didn’t carry a phone or a watch) and tell him what time it was at the end of the day every single day so that he could start to think about leaving.) I was being paid $40 a day, with a $20 bonus for market days once they started, which with our theoretically 35-hour work week ends up being about $6.29 an hour? Huh. In addition to the extra $20, the market season was nice because picking stuff is less tiring and more rewarding than planting stuff, and because I got to see way more people every day in the form of our market customers, even if I was interacting with them mainly through the intermediary of my grandfather.

Another nice thing is that this is the first year I have a decent photo album for! I started experimenting with old 35mm film cameras in late June and by early July I had my first interchangeable-lens digital camera, which I relied upon to keep my brain alive for large parts of the summer. I have… a lot of pictures from this season.

Finally, at the end of the year, I ended up in college. Any criticisms of my grandfather that I might offer up here have to be tempered by the fact that he did in fact drive me to the local (relatively) cheap higher-education dispenser and basically registered me for me (technically, I applied but there’s a 100% acceptance rate.) This was something I desperately wanted to do but was unable to make happen by myself. I won’t say that my grandfather every really understood the problems I went through while experiencing formal education, but as perhaps the member of my family least comfortable himself with the concept and culture of higher education, he was the most willing to notice and accept that I needed help getting started with it.

However, I did do quite badly that semester (I started out enrolled in 4.5 classes and ended enrolled in 2, with a C average) and going to the farm to work 4 days a week still (after morning classes and also on Saturday) did not help that except in that it provided a convenient distraction from it; an opportunity for me to distract myself from my frustrations by wearing myself out.

Why did I come back to the farm for 2018? I wasn’t happy there in 2017, I have the journal entries to prove it. Reasons: it was the path of least resistance, it was something I was more already familiar with than any other job, and my grandfather remained a very difficult person for me to say no to. (Also, he asked me (and my brother) to commit in midwinter, when it still seemed non-threatening and pretty far away.) The schedule was pretty much the same as I described for last year except that for some reason we went up 6 days a week as often as 5 (weather permitting.) My brother went up with us for the same period of time as he had previously, but was even more ornery this year than he was the last, which was an accomplishment; this didn’t stop me from being grateful for his presence. Mostly, I recruited him to work on whatever I was working on during the day, whenever I had a specific project: like building a fence around the second patch, or digging drainage ditches on the lawn, or moving the rainwater collection tank trailer to water stuff before Grandpa could realize that something that he didn’t plan for us was happening. My uncle became extremely fond of complaining that we were getting less done working on the same thing together than we might have working on different things far apart; this may have been true, but I was unwilling to test the theory.

As I implied above, I had a lot more freedom this year to pick projects that I thought needed to be done instead of following instructions all day, as long as I could seem confident about it under scrutiny later. I responded in two ways: I started wearing earbuds and listened to music and occasionally podcasts for most of the day, which was great except that it ruined earbuds and made me feel slightly spacey like I wasn’t even physically there sometimes, given that it was the main input that was actually making it to my brain, and I gave myself three new jobs. The first was to pick, display, and sell produce at a roadside stand that I set up back home (ideally without attracting too much attention from my uncle, who was doing the same thing); the second was to start picking for and selling at a new weekday farmers’ market; and the third was to fix an old dump truck that had been sitting in the back barn for the better part of the decade with a broken brake line, with the help of my dad, who came up to the farm a few days to show me what to actually do. The stand was very successful but 20% went to my mom for stocking it during the day and another 20% went to my grandfather for owning the farm; the new farmers’ market only required me to pay off my grandfather but had too many vendors for the customer base and was generally very slow; and the truck project was a huge disaster that consumed countless hours and brain cells: one brake line burst after another, we ended up having to remove and replace the two brake cylinders in each of the back wheels (which necessitated jacking the 12.5 ton vehicle up and removing both rear wheels and axles), the wiring for the lights was fucked from a previous botched repair job by a person or persons unknown, the bed needed to be attacked with the farm’s one working boom truck to get it to even move, and even after it was going up and down smoothly the hydraulic pump was occasionally leaking fluid, which I was neither qualified for or willing to try to fix; then, during the first test drive with a potential buyer, the radiator apparently exploded, and he convinced my grandfather to sell it to him for $1000, which was split between him, me, and my dad and uncle for helping (more or less.) I eventually calculated that with those three extra projects in addition to my regular salary (up $5 a day but without the weekly bonus, resulting in a net raise of $5 a week) I nearly made minimum wage working there that summer. (Hey, if Quinn is going to read this, I should probably note that minimum wage in Ohio was $8.15 an hour, at least when I wrote this, it’s up to $8.55 an hour now.)

Also, after going on three years of the whole “pull into Mitch’s driveway and blow the horn for a while” routine, the horn on my grandfather’s F-150 finally gave out and he locked the keys in my car while climbing inside of it to use its. (He did admit to this but also told me that I should never have left the keys inside of a car with “automatic locks.”) I had a much better spring semester this year, but it still wasn’t made easier by my 28 hours a week at the farm (plus the commute) right up until October 25th, when I finally quit.

Performance review:

Another part of my feelings about the farm that I have to mention is that the whole time I was there, I was pretty well aware that it was not nearly as productive as it should have been. One large part of this was just flawed soil management practices; by the time I got there, my grandfather had been planting mostly the same plants in mostly exactly the same spots for nearly 10 years, which is absolutely not how any of that is ever supposed to work. He sent soil samples away for analysis, got back reports prescribing long lists of fertilizers to be applied in massive quantities to help production, and then went back to using what he was planning on putting down anyway (mostly starting fertilizer (which we dragged around in 5 gallon buckets for the entire planting season), calcium spray to try to prevent previous years’ blossom end rot epidemics, and some poorly labeled sacks of miscellaneous stuff that he had gotten at a farm auction and that had been taking up space in a barn for years.) My grandfather’s managerial attitude was that all ideas were suspect unless they occurred to him first, which meant it sometimes required some stamina to get certain things done; he would ride up on the lawn mower and stare at you suspiciously if he wasn’t sure of exactly what you were doing.

Like this.

(Of course, the farm was not really run with the purpose of maximizing production, anyway. My grandfather kept it going year after year initially because he was retired, and wanted something to take up his time, and because he wanted to turn himself into a farmer; later, he got the idea that he was going to turn me into one.)

The other main obstacle to growth was the fact that we were surrounded by 80 acres of soybean fields that were at a slightly higher elevation than our plants, which meant that 2 inches of rainfall was more than enough to flood the place. This is not actually a good thing for any plant’s growth (except for cucumbers, and I guess sometimes zucchini.) I ended up (with my brother) digging hundreds of feet of drainage ditches in 2018 to try to combat this. Like, with a shovel. We had a trencher, but its hydraulic pump leaked fluid like a sieve, which had prevented it from being used for years, kind of like that dump truck I mentioned fixing earlier. Other broken down equipment included two boom trucks (one of which was specifically designed just to lay railroad ties), two full-size tractors (an Oliver and a Farm-All), a handful of mechanical tractor attachments that lay scattered throughout the barn-adjacent grass, a smallish red Troy-Bilt riding lawn mower, and a 1963 Buick Riviera.

On a personal level, going to the farm every day felt like dying? It was long hours of difficult, tedious, low-paid work in a desolate and isolated location. It was sort of like a sensory deprivation chamber, but for thoughts and feelings instead of for senses. On one hand, I regret every single miserable second of it, and hope to never see the place again for as long as I somehow manage to live (sadly unlikely); on the other hand, I do think it made me more appreciative of the moments when I do feel like I’m alive in the world, even when they’re not exactly easy ones. I have more enthusiasm for certain types of fear now, like driving to a strange and distant city to see a band play by myself, actually talking to the host in the AirBNB there, and descending into a strange subway system without really knowing how I’m going to get anywhere I’m trying to go from there; or signing up for classes for next semester without knowing exactly what they’ll be like, and talking to the strange person sitting next to me, or even just emailing the professor to ask for an explanation of an assignment that I don’t understand. It reminds me that I’m not as trapped anymore.

This contradicts what I want to be true, which is that the farm was just a background event in my life, instead of something that defined it for all of those years. The things that I was doing in the background of this, the story about farming, were the things I now realize were actually important to me at the time: taking those pictures, going back to school, the music I was listening to while I was out in the field, pounding in tomato stakes… I was also re-learning the piano in the evenings when I still had the energy. Unfortunately, the farm did define that part of my life to a large extent because of the way it served as an obstacle to me pursuing those things. The thing is, I wasn’t really trapped there, in any real physical or consequential sense; the farm took over my life because I was unable to recognize and act on the fact that I did have access to real sources of happiness.

Also, I guess the whole time I was technically committing tax evasion?

Anyway, whenever I see one of those posts about how nice it would be just to leave society and go live on a farm or something, this is what I’m thinking of.

#yes. long. maybe save this for when you already know that you're going to be bored #if anyone actually makes it to the end please interact

[ankhlesbian]

FE Rarepair Week: Day 1

Prompt: Snow, for @ferarepair-week

Fandom: FE Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Pairing: Faye/Silque

AO3 Link: Here

Length: ~2k

Title: in a polaroid picture

A gust of wind howls by, biting at Faye’s uncovered skin. She shivers, wrapping her arms around herself. Her usual outfit has served her well so far during their journey across Rigel, but the days just keep getting colder and colder. Silque glances over at her, frowning.

“We should be able to procure warmer clothes next time we find a village. It’s the right season for it, after all.” Faye nods in agreement.

“It never got this cold in Zofia.” she says mournfully. “Do you think it’ll snow?” Ram Village never saw real snow. Even if a few sad flakes did start falling, they never stuck to the ground for longer than just a couple of minutes.

Silque tilts her head towards the sky, full of swirling wispy clouds, and hums thoughtfully. “It might.”

Faye watches her closely. She seems much more animated than usual, her eyes twinkling. She’s… excited?

“How long has it been since you saw snow?” She knows Silque has been to Rigel before, a long, long time ago. Silque hesitates.

“Years, I suppose. I don’t remember much from my time here. Most of my memories are from growing up on Novis Isle.”

“Do you miss it?” It’s perhaps a rude question, but the piercing cold and the somber grey sky above and the muted grass beneath their feet has Faye feeling oddly pensive. Silque’s lips quirk upwards, not quite a smile.

“Of course. But if I had gone back, I’d just be doing what I was doing before the war. After everything, I couldn’t go back to sitting around. There’s people who need healing, people who need guidance now that Mila has left us. Besides, I enjoy getting to see the world.”

Faye can understand that. Before deciding to join Silque, she had gone back to Ram Village to see her parents. It hadn’t changed at all, but it still seemed emptier. There wasn’t much there for her, not anymore.

“Ah yes, who wouldn’t want to enjoy this glorious view?” She says, instead of voicing any of that. She gestures out at the barren landscape around them. Silque elbows her, but she’s smiling, for real this time.

“Don’t be so crass! There’s all sorts of wonders out here.” And as if on cue, something cold and wet hits Faye’s cheek. She gasps, touching the spot instinctively.

Silque giggles, and then it turns to laughter as she sees Faye’s face. Her head is thrown back, blue hair all the more vibrant thanks to the shining white snowflakes falling down around her. It’s a positively radiant sight, and Faye finds herself laughing too. She raises her hands to the sky, trying to catch a snowflake. Her lingering homesickness dissipates, and she wonders how she ever thought she liked Alm. He never made her feel like this, like this moment alone was worth a lifetime of loneliness.

They goof off for the next few minutes, mission forgotten. It’s like being a child again. Of course, they eventually tire of throwing snowballs at each other, and reality sets in. It’s getting late, and the snow shows no sign of letting up. The wind is also picking up, blasting ice into their faces.

“I think it’s a blizzard.” Silque says, voice shaking despite her attempt to stay calm. Faye’s own teeth are chattering. She takes a moment to compose herself.

“It doesn’t look like it’s gonna stop. We need to find a cave or something.” she agrees, because they’ve both looked over their map, and they both know they’re too far from any towns to seek shelter there.

The terrain isn’t rocky enough for caves, but they do manage to find what appears to be an old shed. The windows have been shattered, and the wood looks like it’s rotting, but the roof is intact and it’s better than nothing. They stumble inside and slide to the ground, resting their weary legs.

Faye cups her hands around her mouth and breathes out, rubbing her hands together. Silque is doing something similar, and she also adjusts her headdress, tugging it down over her ears.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, the warmth comforting. Faye cranes her neck so she can peer out a window without having to move. All she can see is white. There’s a nice little pile of snow collecting underneath the windows.

Her body complains, but she forces herself to get up. Silque furrows her brow, opening her mouth to protest.

“I’m going to block off the windows,” she explains. There’s scattered wooden planks on the floor, and some tarps, and even some spare tools on old shelves. She doesn’t dare touch those, for fear of accidentally chopping off a finger, but she manages.

“Hopefully that’ll keep the chill out.” She settles back down beside Silque. The cold seems to slow down even time, for the moments trickle by slowly, until finally the sun is set, and it seems her efforts were in vain, because now her and Silque are both shivering nonstop. Silque’s cheeks are a rosy pink, which would look quite nice if the situation wasn’t so uncomfortable.

“Here,” Faye says quietly, taking off her cape. She wraps it around both of their shoulders before retying it. Silque’s practically sitting on top of her, but she doesn’t think either of them mind. She may even get feeling back in her fingers. Without thinking, she reaches out for Silque’s hands, grasping them tightly. Silque doesn’t complain, only readjusting her arms to a more comfortable position.

“I really wish I had decided to keep studying black magic with Kliff now.” Faye complains. Healing spells are useful, but none of those will create a nice, sizzling, cozy fire.

“It’d probably just sap your energy, anyways.” Silque offers. “It’s not like white magic. Maintenance is harder. Black magic is just meant to harm a foe, then fade. No longevity.” Faye turns her head to look at Silque, and finds her face embarrassingly close to hers. She quickly turns away.

“I didn’t think you knew much about it.” Faye knows her way around multiple weapons, thanks to Sir Mycen, and picked up white magic during the war, but as far as she knows, most priories don’t make a habit of teaching black magic.

“Well, it certainly isn’t standard. But there was a library in town, and only so much to do as a bored child in the Priory.”  The image of a young Silque carefully sneaking around the watchful eye of older clerics to read makes Faye smile.

“I bet you were a real troublemaker.” she teases.

“Not as much as you were.” Silque fires back. “Alm’s told me stories, you know. Something about you being banned from learning dark magic.” Faye had hoped she would just think it was a deliberate choice, and not a strict rule imposed by Sir Mycen.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Silque raises an eyebrow at her. Faye caves.

“I may have set one of Sir Mycen’s sheep on fire,” she admits. Silque starts to laugh, but she breaks off into a fit of coughing. Faye wraps an arm around her, awkward from their positions, to help stabilize her.

“I’m fine.” Silque says, only wheezing slightly. “Would you tell me another story, one from your childhood?” Faye nods, resisting the urge to bite at her lip.

The talking is a good distraction, but time keeps on ticking. Faye can feel the cold air sapping her energy, can feel it right down to the bone. Her stream of words trails off, despite her best attempts at wrangling her brain into order.

“Faye?” Silque is worried, her hair tickling Faye’s chin as she scrambles. Silque presses her fingers to Faye’s neck, and somehow, they feel even colder than her own skin.

“M’fine.” She mumbles, sluggishly swatting at Silque’s hand. She isn’t looking at her, but she swears she can feel Silque’s unhappy frown. Silque grips her hand, holding it close to her chest.

“You are wearing less layers than me.” Faye isn’t a chaste woman of the cloth, though. “We should keep talking. Let’s talk about- about Alm?” She wants to talk about something Faye’s interested in, she recognizes. But Silque hasn’t been present for her internal monologuing. Alm is old news. She thinks she only liked him because he would never like her back. A good reason to show interest in no other boys.

“That’s okay. How about you? Life on Novis Isle? You’re prettier than Alm, anyways.” That last bit just kind of slips out. Thankfully, Silque seems more concerned with the talking idea.

“Well, I didn’t spend a lot of time with Celica and her friends, but—”

Faye lets her voice wash over her. It’s soothing, and entirely counterproductive to staying awake. Silque’s head is nestled into Faye’s shoulder, and it’s so easy to just let her head fall on top of Silque’s. So easy to just shut her eyes and shut out the numbness she can feel. She focuses on Silque’s voice, low and sweet, until she can’t focus on anything any longer.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Faye jolts awake an indeterminate amount of time later. Miraculously, she doesn’t feel quite as cold anymore.

“Thank the Mother,” Silque breathes, from where she’s standing above Faye. She reaches out, gently grabbing Faye’s face with a hand, tilting her head to the side as she examines it with a critical eye. “I was afraid the cold had taken you.”

Faye pulls herself to her feet, stretching her arms upwards. “I wouldn’t let the weather take me out, not after surviving an entire war.” Silque doesn’t look convinced, but she does seem relieved that Faye’s in good spirit.

“You’ll probably have to tell me about your childhood again later, though.” she admits sheepishly. “I fell asleep before you got to the interesting stuff.”

Silque rolls her eyes. “It would be my pleasure.”

Outside, the sun is shining bright. It makes it hard to see, since there’s piles and piles of snow reflecting the light.

“It should start melting soon.” Silque says from beside her. “Then we can slog our way to a village.”

They stand in comfortable silence for a while, admiring the sight. The landscape is much more interesting when covered in snow. There aren’t any trees nearby, but Faye bets any evergreens look stunning right now. She glances at Silque out of the corner of her eye.

She remembers complimenting her, and she’s sure Silque remembers it too. Maybe she just thinks Faye was completely out of it. She could let it lie, let the two of them sweep it under a rug and move on. It would be a risk to bring it up again. But it was a risk to leave Ram Village with Alm wasn’t it? And a risk to leave a second time, to accompany Silque on this journey. Risks pay off.

“It’s certainly very pretty out,” Faye says abruptly. Silque is startled out of her own inner monologue, and looks over at Faye. “But not as pretty as you.”

“Faye—”

“I mean it. I’ve had a lot of time to think, lately. And I’ve realized that I like you. You’re caring, and good at healing, and you tell the best stories. And you were patient enough to put up with me, back during the war. I don’t want to lose you.”

Silque looks stunned. Is it that much of a shock? Anyone from the Deliverance could tell you that Silque was worthy of all sorts of praise. Her face goes red, and it takes her a few tries before she’s able to reply.

“Are you sure?”

Faye crosses her arms. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.” Silque rubs the back of her head, scuffs a foot across the ground awkwardly.

“Of course. I did not mean to imply anything untoward about your character. It was just… unexpected. I’m honored.”

“Just honored?” Faye can’t keep the disappointment from her voice, but she has to know. She isn’t going to sit through another bout of unrequited love.

“…More than honored.” Silque amends, finally looking up and meeting Faye’s eyes. “I’m a bit delighted. I think you’re wonderful, too, Faye.”

Despite the weather, Faye feels warm all over. She beams, and Silque’s face softens.

“That’s a good look on you.” she says, voice going quiet as she steps closer. She reaches a hand out and brushes her thumb over Faye’s lips.

“You always seemed miserable, back then. You deserve to be happy.” Faye takes her hand gently by the wrist and lowers it.

“I am happy.” Her volume lowers to match Silque’s, adding a level of intimacy to their conversation. Her eyes drop to Silque’s lips, dart back up to her eyes, then dart down again. They both lean in at the same time, and then their noses crunch together audibly, right before their lips touch.

They both recoil, clutching at their faces. And then they’re both laughing, just like yesterday, and Faye can’t help but think that she could live the rest of her life like this.

#ferarepairweek #rarepairweek #faye/silque #silque/faye #faye (fe) #silque (fe) #it writes

[mortallykeenwombat]

Dean stared at his phone screen reading the message he had received from Cas for the umpteenth time.

A year has:

12 months 52 weeks 365 days 8760 hours 525,600 minutes 3,153,600 seconds And it only takes 1 minute to send me a nude picture.

What the actual hell? Was this code for something? Was Cas in trouble? Or more likely his idiot brother had gotten a hold of his angel- er, the angel’s phone again and was back to sending text messages he thought was hilarious.

Dean stuffed the phone into his back pocket and stalked off to go find Sam, he would get to the bottom of this.

“Sammy!” Dean bellowed repeatedly as he walked around the bunker. Finally, Sam popped out of the archives room.

“What!? What is it, Dean?”

“Very funny Sam.”

“What is?”

“So you’re going to act like you don’t know what you did?”

Sam gave Dean a quick once over and looked both ways down the hall. Squinting he said slowly as if that would help Dean understand, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The text dammit!”

Sam shook his head, gave a half smile and chuckle, the type he did when he was confused or having trouble understanding something. Dean frowned, he knew his brother and he knew that look. Sam really didn’t know what he was talking about. He turned on his heels and made a hasty retreat calling over his shoulder for Sam to forget about it.

Dean had to figure this out and quickly because this was messing with his head. He should go look for Castiel but he couldn't face him just yet. On the one hand if it was code and he needed help he should find him, but on the other hand, if the text meant exactly what it said what was he playing at? Dean had a long time to become comfortable with his feelings for the angel. He decided a while back although he may not be gay and he clearly still enjoyed a woman’s company he must be Cas-sexual because that man just did it for him. One time Sam caught him giving Cas the look and for a week straight he lectured Dean on the normality of a person realizing they were bisexual in their late 30’s. Dean denied it vehemently. He was not in his late 30’s! Besides, no other man appealed to him, so he couldn’t be bisexual, hence the reason he coined the phrase Cas-sexual.

If Cas had meant the text exactly as it had been sent what would that mean? That Castiel was also interested and bisexual? Because he remembered the angel getting it on with that reaper chick and it definitely still stuck in his craw. Sighing Dean opened his door, remembering what happened next still hurt. He should never have put Cas out. How Cas ever forgave him for it was a miracle in itself.

Dean snagged his earbuds and laid across the bed. Maybe if he didn’t think about it the answer would come to him.

Castiel stood at the foot of Dean’s bed looking down on the human, his human. He knew Dean belonged to no one but he couldn’t help the possessiveness that came over him. Dean was the most beautiful human to ever have lived. His rugged good looks came second to the beauty of his heart and soul. He knew the human struggled with a bit of darkness but they all did. That was the balance of life for all creatures, they were all capable of both good and bad.  

Dean had his eyes closed, he was playing air drums and shaking his foot while enjoying the music. Castiel still didn’t quite understand how Dean got pleasure from his current actions but it was clear that he did. Cas watched Dean for several minutes more before snapping his fingers and turning the music off. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean bolted up, “Dammit Cas!”

Cas watched as Dean licked his lips and fought to control his heartbeat.

“What’s up?” Dean finally asked once he'd pulled himself together.

Cas looked Dean over slowly, pausing on key points of interest like his lips, hands and things better left unnamed. “Did you get my text?”

Dean hadn’t missed the way Cas had just given him the once over. Maybe this wasn’t really Cas. This new thought scared Dean; if this wasn’t Cas where the hell was his angel? Slowly as not to alarm Castiel, or whoever it was, Dean stood up stretching languidly. “Yeah, I got it, was it some sort of code?”

Castiel tipped his head to the side and looked at Dean frowning, “Code?”

Whoever this was really knew Cas and had all of his nuances down.

Dean made his way out of his room, he would lead the Cas imposter to the library and test him.

Cas frowned harder and followed Dean, “No, it’s not a code. I have been watching Netflix and-”

Dean stopped walking, holding up his hand he turned and faced Cas, “What? I thought we told you to lay off the Netflix? It’ll rot your brain.”

“You did, but Yahoo had suggested I watch chick flicks to learn-.”

The men had made it to the library and Sam was sitting at the table now looking up at them in interest.

“Chick flicks!?” The derision in Deans voice was unmistakable, “Chick flicks? We’re dudes, we don’t watch chick flicks. Why would Yahoo tell you to watch chick flicks?” While Cas was explaining that he had asked it a question and that was the website’s answer, he grabbed some holy water he had hidden between some books and splashed Cas in the face. Cas gave a look of extreme annoyance.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Dean, what’s going on?”

“That’s not Cas Sam!” Dean pulled out a silver blade next.

“Dean, it’s me.”

Sam looked between Dean and the angel. “Dean, why do you think it’s not Cas?”

Instead of allowing Dean to answer Cas answered, “Because I sent him a text that may have been out of character for myself.”

Sam looked at Dean, his brother was turning red, oh he had to hear the rest. “So uh, Cas, what did the text say?”

Both Dean and Cas started talking at the same time.

“Fine! It’s Cas, no need to go into detail. Just drop it.”

“I told him I wanted him to send me a nude picture.”

“Wait, what!?” Sam chuckled and looked at Dean to see if they were putting him on. If possible, Dean’s face was even redder than before.

“I don’t see what the big deal is, I put him back together molecule by molecule. I’ve already seen him nude.”

Sam stared at Cas flabbergasted, "Cas, put someone back together is vastly different than someone send you a nude picture of themselves."

Dean walked away heading to his room, he did not want to be present for this Sam/Cas learning hour. Why did they do this in front of Sam? He would never let Dean live this down. When Dean got to his room his heart nearly jumped out of his chest, Cas was standing just inside his room, “Cassss!”

“Sorry, Dean. But I wish to talk to you.”

“I’m not sure now is such a good time buddy.” Dean wasn’t sure if it was his imagination but out of his peripheral, it looked as if Cas had bristled at being called buddy.

“If not now then when? I must assist on now.”

“Cas, I mean it, not-” Dean was mounting his defense when Cas stepped into him, completely bursting his bubble of personal space.

“No Dean, now.” Castiel noticed Sam standing in the doorway gawking, raising his hand he slammed the door in his face. They didn’t need an audience, this obviously still bothered Dean.

Cas tipped Dean’s face up to meet his gaze. “Why did you insist I could not be me? Do you think I do not know my own mind?”

Dean refused to meet Cas’ gaze head on, it was too intense. Instead, he stared at a tiny freckle on the side of his nose.

“Look at me, Dean!” Cas bellowed. He immediately regretted yelling, seeing how it made Dean jump. “I’m sorry Dean, I’m just very frustrated. I know my mind and I know what I want.”

Dean stepped away from Cas, pacing the room. He ran an unsteady hand through his hair. “Nudes Cas?”

Cas smirked and looked away briefly, “I thought it would be a term you would be familiar with and understand what I wanted.”

Dean looked up at Cas, his eyes swam with uncertainty and fear, he thought he had finally accepted all of this but now that it may be staring him in the face he was so certain, “And what is that Cas?”

“You Dean.”

Dean was shaking his head no even before he registered the movement. “You don’t mean that; what you’ll be wanting-” Dean’s argument was suddenly cut off by the feel of Castiel’s mouth coming down on his.

Cas moaned the moment his lips touched Dean’s, gripping the front of his t-shirt he dragged the hunter closer, holding him against his body. Cas plundered Dean’s mouth as if the secret to happiness lay between his lips. And for Cas it very well did.

Dean was floored. He couldn't think let alone act, he let Castiel kiss him mindlessly. And when had Cas learned to kiss like that?

Begrudgingly Cas ended the kiss. Still holding Dean against him he looked into his eyes and asked, “Does that seem like I don’t know what I want?”

He couldn’t argue; Dean didn't have even one argument against what Cas had just said. He sure had kissed him like he knew what he wanted. And that kiss could be only the beginning. Dean’s knees felt weak at the thought, Cas’ tongue had explored his mouth wholly and gleefully. Expertly. He’d coaxed Dean’s own tongue to join his in the timeless dance and his mind swam with the endless possibilities.

“Dean?”

“Man, I have nothing.” Dean threw his hands out to the side in defeat. “I need to sit down Cas, to process this.”

“I’m sorry Dean," Cas released Dean, "I’d thought you were ready to explore our feelings for one another, that’s why I sent the text. I was trying to be playful and let you know I was ready to take our relationship to the next level as well. I know you’re a man and you have needs, needs I’m-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on cowboy. Relationship? Next level?”

Cas nodded, “And needs, I am willing-”

Dean held up his hand halting Cas’ words again. Nope, he was not hearing him correctly. In fact, he must be dreaming. He closed his eyes for a moment and reopened his right eye.

“You’re not dreaming Dean.”

“Okay, let’s talk about this. Talk to me Cas, what’s really going on?”

Cas took a deep breath, “I love you, Dean. Not just the ‘family don’t end in blood’ way, I’m talking romantically. And I know you feel the same way towards me. You’ve felt this way for a long time but it wasn’t until recently that I thought you’d come to accept this.” Cas gestured from Dean to himself.  

“Go on.”

Cas knew it was a good sign that Dean was asking him to keep talking instead of denying everything and yelling. “I wasn’t sure how to approach you about this, I knew you wouldn't want me asking Sam so I asked Yahoo instead. Someone named CckMastr suggested the text as an ice-breaker. They said it was a sure way to move your relationship to the next level.”

Dean groaned and lay back on the bed. Cas was taking relationship advice from someone on the web called Cock Master? The guy was an obvious troll.

“I didn’t see anything wrong with the message, as I said before, I’ve seen you nude before. And I know how you hate emotional conversations...like we’re having now.” Cas fidgeted from foot to foot, his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

“Cas, if- if you really felt like this, why didn’t you just come speak to me privately? You know, without douche face Sam hanging on to every word. You know he’s just gonna tease me about it later.”

“Sorry, that wasn’t my intention.”

“Alright, so can you give me a little time to think this all over?”

Cas was elated that Dean would even consider it after the tantrum he’d just thrown. “Yes.” Cas left and walked to his room, he wasn’t ready to face Sam and his many questions yet.

Not even an hour later Cas’ phone went off, notifying him to a text message. Fearing the worse he opened the message and nearly dropped the phone. Dean had sent him a picture. It wasn’t exactly nude but it definitely had the desired effect. In the photo Dean was lathered up with soap, the angle of the picture showed off his perfectly smug smile, his broad tanned and soapy chest. The rest of his body was visible in the picture but between the angle and the blur effect, Cas couldn’t get an eye full. Without even thinking Cas tossed his phone on the bed and vanished.

Dean heard the whisper of wings seconds before Cas had him pressed against the shower wall. The angel was still fully dressed but didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Does this mean you’ll try Dean?” Cas was harder than he’d ever experienced before; this must be what they meant when they said raging hard-on. He was so turned on it was uncomfortable.

Dean could tell Cas was fighting for control, his cock was pressed into his hip bone and his voice was pitched low and strained. Dean wanted to kiss Cas, to swallow that deep voice down. It was thrilling to know he effected Cas this way, an angel, his angel.

Dean barely had the word “Yeah” out his mouth before Cas came crashing down on him. Thrusting his tongue between his lips, licking tasting. He moaned into the kiss and wrapped a hand around the back of Cas' neck, holding him in place while he kissed him back just as greedily. As Cas shifted settling between his thighs he began pushing at the angel’s trench coat.

Cas snapped his fingers doing away with his clothing, Dean clawing at his clothes reminded him that he was still fully dressed and this whole process would go better if he too was nude. besides, he felt just as desperate to feel Dean’s skin against his own. Both men groaned at the contact. Cas rested his forehead against Dean’s shoulder trying to pull himself together. The feel of Dean beneath him; their bodies pressed tightly together and fitting in all the right places, it made Cas giddy with triumph. He knew he and Dean belonged together, he’d fought the legions of hell to get to him; if only they had both realized it sooner.

Groaning he turned Dean around, pressing himself against the hunter. He ached to be inside him. He kissed along the shell of Dean’s ear, his hands roaming, touching stroking.

“Cas!” Dean cried out when he felt the angel's warm hand close around him. He'd always liked when Cas put his foot down and got bossy, having him take control like this was hot. It was too much, and not enough all at the same time; better than he could’ve ever imagined. Cas was everywhere. His mouth was kissing, biting sucking all over him while one hand had a tight grip on his hip and the other stroked him. He quivered in Cas embrace. He would never have thought Cas would be such a skilled lover, yet here he was holding Dean on the edge.

Cas couldn’t take it anymore he pressed at Dean’s entrance, he knew this was the hunters first time, it was his first time as well in this exact experience. But he had prepped for this moment learning all that he could to make it good for him. “Dean,” his voice was low and strained, “Dean- I can lessen the pain... it hurts Dean...please?”

Dean was sure he followed Cas’ nonsensical mutterings. He knew this would hurt, but he trusted Cas. He nodded his head best he could with Cas pressed so tightly against him.

Cas sighed with Dean’s consent. He entwined the fingers together and held the one hand over their heads. Cas kissed Dean, pulling back on some of the intensity, taking his time to fully savor the taste and feel of Dean. With one quick thrust, he sheathed himself inside of his hunter. He swallowed Dean’s cry of pain down, continuing to kiss him through the pain, Cas' free hand pressed into the dimples over Dean's ass soothing the pain.

Dean could feel Cas shaking with the effort to keep from moving in him. He appreciated the effort to be as gentle as possible. But when Cas started moving Dean broke the kiss, throwing his head back on a low moan. Oh, this was- no words could describe what he was currently feeling. Cas was moving, brushing over the small bundle of nerves inside him. The sound of their wet bodies meeting over and over. Cas kissing his neck, whispering in Enochian. “Cas!”

Dean crying out his name repeatedly sent Cas into a tailspin, he gripped Dean’s hips harshly as he drove himself into him. “Deaaan.” Dean’s name came out low, sounding like a growl. Cas was close, but he didn’t want to come alone. He started stroking Dean again, “Come- come with me, Dean.”

The words whispered in his ear sent shivers through his body, he thrust into Cas’ hand, “Yes…”

Cas synchronized his thrust in time with his hand and within moments Dean was crying out, coming all over the wall in front of them. Cas captured Dean’s mouth again just as he was coming. As Cas screamed his release the lights flickered and then went out.

Cas leaned against Dean’s back, he couldn’t move yet. He placed kisses on Dean’s back as he recovered from the most exquisite rapture he’d ever experienced.

Dean wanted to hold Cas, but the angel had collapsed against him, breathing hard and placing kisses on his back. Dean liked it. “Cas, you alright?”

Still breathing heavy Cas responded, “I’m better than alright. Thank you, Dean.” Cas slowly slipped out of Dean, he could practically hear the other man wince. “Sorry.”

Dean turned around to face Cas, with the lights out Dean had to rely on the sense of touch to find the angel’s lips. He kissed him slowly, reverently and in awe. He couldn’t believe he’d just had sex with Castiel.

Cas helped Dean clean up and exit the shower. The lights hadn’t come back on yet and Dean had expressed some concern. He watched as Dean wrapping a towel around his waist.

Dean tried to make out Cas’ face, “I think you knocked out the lights. We best go see 'bout it before Sam comes looking for us." Cas snapped clothes back on his body and they exited the bathroom.

Sam sat on Dean’s bed with a flashlight. When the bathroom door opened he had expected Dean to come out but not both Dean and Cas. “Cas? What were you doing in the bathroom with Dean?”

Dean’s face turned bright red as Cas answered in his normal tone.

��I came to check on him when the lights went out.”

“Oh. Do you know what caused it?”

Dean moved past his brother. He knew his face was red and gave away the fact that Cas wasn’t completely being honest. Grabbing a pair of boxers and a t-shirt he proceeded to pull his clothes on. When he was done, he noticed Sam looking at him oddly? “What?”

“Nothing, just normally you make Cas leave out when you change or at least turn his back. You didn’t even say anything. Just odd is all.”

“Yeah well, The way I figure it there is no time for bitching, we need to figure out why the lights are out and get them back on.”

Sam stood up and went out the door that Dean held open.

Cas stood in front of Dean at the door, he placed a quick kiss on his hunter’s lips and then pushed him out the door before Sam became suspicious.

While Dean fiddled around with the breaker Cas held the flashlight so he could see what he was doing. But he found himself repeatedly getting distracted, he couldn’t help but appreciate the sight before him. It was a good thing that Sam went to go check something else out. He was trailing the light from the flashlight over the roundness of Dean's rear when simultaneously Dean yelled at him, and Sam walked in catching the action.

“Cas, I can’t see what I’m doing if you keep using the flashlight to stare at my ass.” There was no answer, Dean turned to look at Cas to find Sam standing next to the angel looking perplexed. “Uh hey, Sam.”

“What- what did I just walk into?”

Dean looked at Cas. He could see the angel was struggling with not saying the wrong thing, he didn't like keeping secrets and saw nothing wrong with what they did. Sighing Dean walked over to the other men. He placed a hand on Cas’ shoulder as he looked at Sam. “The lights went out because of Cas. We were having sex and when he came all the lights went out.”

Sam looked from Dean to Cas trying to gauge if Dean was joking. “Cas, is this true?”

Cas looked up at Dean, he was slightly confused. He didn’t think Dean would want this out, he didn’t say anything.

Dean saw Cas searching his face, looking for direction on how best to answer Sam. So instead of denying it as he was apt to do, Dean leaned over and kissed Cas gently on the lips, letting the hand on Cas’ shoulder come up to frame his face.

Sam gave a half smile as he watched his brother kiss Castiel. He’d known they had a much deeper bond almost from the moment they first met. And he’d watched year after year as they grew closer. They already acted like a couple most days without being one. And he knew they would go to hell and back for each other. They were perfect for each other. When Dean pulled back still staring into Cas’ eyes like he too was shocked with the development of their relationship, Sam clapped him on the back. “Congratulations man! But if this is what is going to happen everytime you two have sex I’m going to have to insist you two go to a hotel.”

Dean laughed. “I don’t know man, only way to determine if this is will be a normal occurrence is to try again.” Dean was laughing at the look on Sam’s face just as the lights came back on.

Cas stood up and took Dean’s hand, tossing the flashlight to Sam, “Come on Dean, we have much experimenting to do.”

Dean laughed again at Sam’s groan that followed behind them as they headed back to Dean’s room.

#destiel #writing #facebook prompt #supernatural #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Sam Winchester

[glittership]

Episode #67: "Instar" by Carrow Narby

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Episode 67 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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    Instar

by Carrow Narby

      They just broke ground this week on a new high rise. When they cracked into the earth it flooded the neighborhood with the stench of sulfur. There’s a layer of ancient rot beneath the pavement. Centuries worth of life, ground into filth.

Or so I imagine. I had to look up the source of the smell and some local news site attributed it to “organic materials” in the soil. I was worried that it might be a gas leak.

For the past few mornings the wind has pushed the awful smell in through the screen above my bed. As bad as it is, it isn’t worth shutting the window. Even as late summer beats on, I can’t sleep without the weight and softness of ten thousand blankets. Without the breeze my nest would become unbearably hot, so I tolerate the smell of brimstone and corruption. It’s sort of fitting, I think, given the maggoty turn that my life has taken.

  Full episode after the cut.

  Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 67 for March 8, 2019. This is your host Keffy, and I’m super excited to share this story with you. Our story today is “Instar” by Carrow Narby, which is part of the Summer 2018 issue of GlitterShip.

  Carrow Narby lives on the north shore of Massachusetts. Their writing has been featured in Bitch, The Toast, The Establishment, and PodCastle. Follow them on Twitter @LocalCreature.

      Instar

by Carrow Narby

      They just broke ground this week on a new high rise. When they cracked into the earth it flooded the neighborhood with the stench of sulfur. There’s a layer of ancient rot beneath the pavement. Centuries worth of life, ground into filth.

Or so I imagine. I had to look up the source of the smell and some local news site attributed it to “organic materials” in the soil. I was worried that it might be a gas leak.

For the past few mornings the wind has pushed the awful smell in through the screen above my bed. As bad as it is, it isn’t worth shutting the window. Even as late summer beats on, I can’t sleep without the weight and softness of ten thousand blankets. Without the breeze my nest would become unbearably hot, so I tolerate the smell of brimstone and corruption. It’s sort of fitting, I think, given the maggoty turn that my life has taken.

There are these long, wonderful moments, in between waking and rising, when I am both sentient and senseless. The light doesn’t resolve yet into images. Sensation doesn’t crystallize into meaning. Best of all, I can’t feel my body or apprehend its shape.

You see an awful lot about monsters these days. Just everywhere you look, endless breathless chatter about fucking monsters, turning into monsters, giving birth to monsters. Beautiful and interesting people who just happen to be monsters: some sad grackle-winged boy, a girl with coral antlers. Everyone always looks so slender and sharp. Perfect rows of needle teeth, perfect iridescent scales, perfect gold stiletto claws. It seems downright glamorous, like it would all be neon witches’ sabbaths and subterranean raves or something.

For me, monsterhood is mostly just strangers demanding to know what I am. There wasn’t any kind of initiation waiting for me. No coven or cabal. No prophecy or secret past was revealed. It was on my own and by creeping increments that I realized I had become a thing.

Kris is a friend of a friend. I saw her around a few parties and we fumbled into each other’s orbits. She called out my name from across the room once, amid the din of disparate conversations. It was so charming, that little gesture of being summoned. I let her ask me out, to sit with her in that park at the edge of the North End.

When we meet, she wants to go down Hanover to Mike’s but I point just across the street to a tiny storefront with a blue and yellow sign. “It’s way better,” I insist, and I feel strangely proud as she acquiesces.

The leading edge of autumn has brought a welcome break from the suffocating heat, but it also means that the sunlight has shifted. As Kris and I sit together, the late afternoon light lances down at us. It’s relentless, prying. I wonder if she can tell how much I’m trying to hide from it.

Despite my anxiety, we talk easily and idly. When she was little, Kris recalls, she heard somewhere about the dangers of zebra mussels. They’re an invasive species around the Great Lakes, she explains. Her mother must have read a sign to her or something, warning boaters to inspect and clean their hulls. Except that Kris was maybe four at the time, and she had no concept yet of what a mussel is. She heard “zebra muscles.” What she pictured, she tells me, was downright nightmarish. Not a muscular zebra or something, but a boat encrusted with disembodied, pulsing zebra flesh. She says that the image came from nowhere except the most literal understanding of what she had heard, and that it became horrible only afterward, in retrospect.

“I didn’t understand but I just accepted it,” she laughs.

I grin too, and I tell her “I love that.” And I love sitting here, with a friend of a friend that I met at a party. Normality is too distant even to long for, but here is something so conventional, so pleasantly dull. I wonder if there are people who feel like this all the time and I almost ask that out loud.

But all at once I realize that she’s looking at me, and I can’t bear it. She can see me in the slanted orange light. The rays reveal the translucency around my edges, the ugly pulse of slime beneath the membrane of my skin. I can feel the buttons of my jacket straining. I can’t eat the pastry that I’ve bought, not in front of her. She must realize that my clothes are holding me into a human shape. She’s imagining the strange organs that shudder and twitch beneath the seams.

I can’t force myself to say much more before we part ways. She knows. I’m sure that I won’t hear from her again.

I slump back toward Haymarket. I huddle stingless on a crowded E train. My spines are sparse and transient: often I neglect to shave, sometimes my keys poke out through a hole that they’ve worn in the pocket of my coat.

It is the fate of monsters, no matter what, to attract would-be monster-slayers. For me, this has never been as straightforward as a jeering mob or as romantic as a lone man with a glittering sword. This time it’s kids. A small group of ninth or tenth graders, maybe, standing on the other side of the train car. They gesture toward me and consult each other in stage whispers, wondering aloud what I could possibly be.

There’s this image, a fragment of a story. I don’t remember where I picked it up or what first made me think of it, but it’s there in my brain and it’s this: Once upon a time a baby was found in a beehive.

By chance, a passing witch heard a newborn’s squall. Amid a hovering cloud of bees, she cracked apart a hollow log. And there was an infant nestled in the rot, slick with honey, as pale as a grub.

I don’t know what happens after that or why any of it happened at all. It had started with sacrificing some of the other larvae to widen her cell. And things just took off from there, I suppose. Things took a turn, as they will do.

At home I start to undress as soon as I’ve closed the door. When I finally peel the tight undermost layer away from my torso, my body sags out, shapeless. I slump onto the bed and burrow down into the tangle of blankets. As I curl up tight, I tuck a bit of sheet between every segment and fold, so that I don’t have to feel the awful touch of myself.

I can’t say when or how my metamorphosis began. Day by day I watched my face bloat outward, swallowing up my eyes, my jaw. My skin became a pallid casing. It strains to hold in my shuddering mass, as if my body wants to burst and dissolve.

I have always been drawn to hollows and nests and to the dirt. Spaces in the dark where a thing might press itself flush against the walls, unseen and safe. As a child I would build a cairn of pillows around myself before falling asleep. I used to turn over the rocks that edged my mother’s garden, to watch the millipedes and woodlice scatter. Eager to recoil from the sight of a grub writhing helplessly against the light.

In my tiny apartment there is an alcove that, I think, was meant for a writing desk. But I wedged my bed into it, and closed it off with a heavy curtain.

I guess that it has all been a sort of instinctive preparation. Like the bees widening the larval infant’s cell. The thing is, it’s not just shiny little flying things that start their lives as fat, fumbling worms. It isn’t all butterflies and bluebottles. There are things in the world that wriggle freely as larvae and then pupate into sessile blobs. I think about all those mornings when I stretch out shapeless and insensible. I wonder if I’ll turn out to be more of a sea sponge than a sphinx moth.

Kris calls. She wants to see me again.

We meet at my place. I don’t know what to say about the evening in the park but she doesn’t ask about it. She calls me by my name again. She wants to know if I’m alright.

I tell her about that unshakable image of the bee-child. “What must it be like,” I sigh. To wonder why, out of a sea of sisters, you were the one to swell into something wingless and terrible.

“What must it be like,” she echoes. She’s sitting beside me, looking down at her hands. She smells like soap and trampled grass. I want to settle in closer to her—to kiss her, I realize—but she has seen me in that searching autumn light.

“You know,” I say.

She takes my hand. “Is that your bed?” she asks, nodding toward the alcove.

“Yes.”

“Can I show you something?”

I don’t know how to respond. She tugs me gently toward the bed and draws the curtain aside. The final cast-off rays of sunset are glancing in through the window. She turns and looks at me. Her cheek catches the light with a faint damson iridescence. She tilts her head and reveals a weird translucency about her neck and face. I can see the steady pulse of veins and pulpy glands beneath her skin.

Her tone isn’t mocking, just forthright, as she asks, “Did you really think that you were special?”

I guess that I did. I tell her: “I thought I was alone.”

She reaches out to draw me close. We sink down into my nest and curl up tight against each other. In her touch I can feel the hum of twenty thousand sisters, the promise of clover and of wings.

  END

    “Instar” was originally published in The Fem, and is © Copyright Carrow Narby, 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with “These are the Attributes by Which You Shall Know God” by R.B. Lemberg.

Episode #67: “Instar” by Carrow Narby was originally published on GlitterShip

#GlitterShip #lgbtq fiction #queer fiction #short stories #science fiction and fantasy #podcast

[cosmosogler]

guess whoooooo lost track of time!

i basically did none of the things i was hoping to do today. i got up kinda late since i had so much trouble sleeping last night, i spent too long in the shower, i can’t remember what i did all morning. i couldn’t leave the house since dad was gone... oh, i washed the blanket. and i made plans to get lunch with some relatives next monday. i feel like i’m forgetting something important i was going to do though. like, really important. 

i did pick up my meds in the afternoon when dad got back. i haven’t started taking them yet. i will start tonight at bedtime. 

the steroids don’t seem to be helping doge at all. dad said that might happen. she’d have a lot less time if that happened. he said he wasn’t gonna let her live like that. she didn’t leave dad’s room today. i gave her a bowl of water and my brother brought her food bowl to her when it was time to feed them. she wouldn’t go outside unless dad was around either.

i did coax her outside at about 7, after i had a small dinner that made me pretty ill. 

maybe the infection is why i’ve been feeling so much more discomfort and pain this last week. and generally been feeling junky and absentminded. it’s dumb. my old doctor tried treating my pain with antibiotics back in early january when it first started happening and that didn’t help then. now it’s three months later and i suddenly have an infection?? even though i just took a round of antibiotics for that exact strain? jesus.

oh, i got a confirmation email for an appointment with my old therapist. for an appointment i did not schedule, and was not on my schedule card. i was pretty annoyed, but i called and made sure to specify that i meant “all future appointments” when i had asked for a cancellation. 

that seemed to eat up my entire supply of resolve for the day. i did not call the school. school related things are so incredibly stressful right now and i haven’t dealt with ANY of them. and i know that’s bad, and i’m bad for not doing them, and it’s gotten me in trouble with school administration in the past... i don’t know why “need to do thing” + “anxiety about thing” seems to mean “inability to do thing” every time. it’s not a very useful manifestation of stress. usually like, a desire to do a thing and imminently needing to do the thing come together and result in the thing getting done. i guess that’s why it’s an anxiety disorder. 

i didn’t take wiley out for a walk, even though he asked twice. my ankles have really been hurting whenever i put on shoes. i forgot to put a bandage on my other ankle before i left for the pharmacy and had to limp awkwardly around the store to try to avoid the chafing. i bought myself a candy bar and in the less than 10 minute trip home it melted. i was kinda bummed.

after trying to walk and hurting my ankle though i didn’t really want to go out of the house. so wiley and eve suffered for it. i did sit outside with the three of them for like 25 minutes though. 

my favorite way to pet eve is to take her leathery ear between my fingers and thumb and just feel the thin velvety fur. she doesn’t seem to mind at all. when she does mind she just shakes her head and pulls her ear out of my hand. diogi’s a little harder to do that with because her ears are all scarred up from her hematomas. and she gets real ticklish. wiley thinks it’s a game and nips at my fingers.

i talked with oz for a long time today. i have felt too lethargic to really commit to playing games... voice chatting is easier for me than focusing on a game. i would say that i feel better playing games in person, but 

OH WOW A BOTTLE CAP!

i would say that i feel better playing games in person, but i still kinda refuse to play games with dad. and i’m not being very persistent about getting him to sit down and continue watching jojo. i think i don’t have a problem playing games with asher because they are in person, and they are short and low-commitment, and also i enjoy playing games with asher. those three things are like... what needs to happen for me to be able to focus. 

pokemon is the obvious exception, but i have trouble articulating why. i’ve always liked pokemon. it lets me feel assured that i could put it down at a moment’s notice and attend to other things if i wanted/needed to. i just... never put it down, or if i do, i don’t put it down for long. 

it’s not that i CAN’T stop playing. when i’m hanging with asher i don’t really even think about it that much. i was really super bummed in december and january when i wasn’t playing because i had misplaced my entire collection of competitive/gifted pokemon, but that wasn’t because i wasn’t playing. it was more because i didn’t have the choice to stop playing. it had been taken away from me. in high school i went for years without playing. i still often go weeks or months without touching it, especially toward the end of the game’s “season.” it’s just, i feel like i can always just pick it right back up whenever i feel like it. and right now i ain’t got nothin better to do.

it’s better to have a project than to not have a project, right?

i kind of want to stress the difference between having a hobby and having an obsession or addiction. like, i have a physical addiction to my antidpressants, biologically. if i don’t take them i have really unpleasant withdrawal. but i am always, always sadder to not be talking to my friends than i am to not be playing pokemon. no question.

maybe i need to reassure myself because mom’s accusations make me feel insecure about my attachment to my hobbies. she always said i was addicted to video games and they were rotting my brain or whatever. but she also said i was addicted to melatonin. which is a dietary supplement and a naturally occurring chemical in your body.

she’s good at ‘splaining to me. momsplaining.

i get “addicted” to things like tetris and sudoku puzzles way more easily than pokemon. with pokemon there are generally good places to stop, and it’s easy to build a routine and stop at the end of that routine. but with tetris it just goes on forever. and sudoku puzzles, i can’t stop doing them when i start. when i close my eyes i see numbers popping into squares. i was actually pretty annoyed with my family for getting me a huge “daily sudoku” puzzle book for christmas. i had a sort of post-it note-sized 500 puzzle pad for a while in high school. i spent hours tearing through it, neglecting to eat or drink or do much homework. they had to be solved.

with jigsaws, and with pokemon, i don’t feel as... anxious getting up and leaving it for a little bit, or coming back tomorrow. 

i think i burned myself out though. i don’t even like doing the single online sudoku puzzles any more. i just do the new set of picture logic puzzles that comes out every friday and that usually takes about a half hour to forty minutes.

that sure was a tangent! pokemon was actually the first thing that really encouraged me to learn how to read. it had a lot of unfamiliar words and concepts that i had to actually sit down and read to learn about. like i had to figure out what “hydro” meant. before that i had tried to pick up long books like ms. piggly wiggly and kind of brute force my way through reading new material. but for video games i had to read because i had to learn the rules and how it worked. it wasn’t just a story.

i mean, i was still super bad at it until, like, crystal version came out almost three years later. but after i spent two hours trying to figure out how to get past veridian city because i didn’t know that i had to get the thing from the shopkeeper and take it back to professor oak, i learned that i had to learn how to read new words if i wanted to play this whole game.

formative experiences!

so i guess i did do quite a few of the things i had wanted to do today. tomorrow i’m gonna get lunch with gramma and i will TRY to contact at least one school for any of the reasons i need to contact any school. that’s just vague enough to not be a real commitment!

i should be a little more active with asher about settling in and studying for the general gre. he has to take it before the end of may i think? because of various scheduled events happening in his life after that. i say that not because i want to fuss and meddle with his life, but also because i have tutored before and in the physics field it is a very useful skill to have. now is the time to start working on a battle plan.

ok, it is past 12:30 now. i should stop writing and go to bed... i will try to pick up a new tv show this weekend i think. i’m thinking... death note. or maybe motorcity... something not too long-running, and preferably complete. i don’t have the energy to keep up with new ongoing shows right now. and i am feeling satisfied with the amount of show/movie critiques i have seen for now.

a REAL project would be starting a book! whoof. or worse, trying to draw or write again!!! terrifying!!!!!!

[mariniacipher]

A NEW CHAPTER! From Meet me in the Woods

So yeah, i finally finished it, who would’ve thought?

The ao3 link is the source, because Tumblr is terrible

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Relationships: Bill Cipher & Dipper Pines, Bill Cipher & Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines &Mabel Pines, Pacifica Northwest & Mabel Pines, Pacifica Northwest/Mabel Pines, Bill Cipher & Original Female Character (Plus all the familial stuff)

Characters: Bill Cipher, Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Pacifica Northwest, Grunkle Stan/ Stanley “Stanford” Pines, The Author/ Original Stanford Pines, Tad Strange, Axolotl (Gravity Falls), Jheselbraum the Unswerving, Original Female Character, Minor Characters

Additional Tags: Billdip bromance, Sometime in the future, Triangle Bill Cipher, Human Bill Cipher, but that comes later, muuuuch later, Bill Cipher Redemption, aromantic asexual Bill Cipher, aro ace Bill Cipher, Bill has problems, PTSD Dipper Pines, Poor Dipper, Pansexual Mabel Pines, Older Pines Twins, They're 15, summer 2015, Gravity Falls Is Weird, Post-Gravity Falls, Bill Cipher's Backstory, Powerless Bill Cipher, Axolotl is a jerk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Past Abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Category: Gen, F/F

Summary.

11th June 2015: A normal day in Gravity Falls (as far as that is even possible) is turned upside down as Dipper finds the dream demon they had defeated three years ago in the woods, powerless and angry. From there on, things only continue to go downhill, as the twins find themselves helping the demon/trying to get him out of their realm as fast as possible, to get back to their normally paranormal summer in Gravity Falls. But of course it couldn't be that easy, we are talking about the Pines here, so why should it be?

Chapter 2:

 Bill examined Pine Tree- the human had aged a bit- but still seemed like the pathetic sack of bones he had encountered… Before. He couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since then. But he saw that the meat sack had written his own journal –which was amusing, really. How he thought he could achieve anything in his small human lifespan before his flesh bag would cease functioning and leave him to rot.

-Bill felt how the cells in his body worked, it was foreign and weird and entirely too… alive for him. (Alive meant mortal, mortals die) -

 But he wasn’t mortal, he  couldn’t   be.

 He distinctively recognized the path Pine Tree went, had gone it with Sixer’s feet several times as the Brainiac was still as ignorant as a frog in a slowly heating pot. It was slightly bigger now, and he could see traces of feet all over it, but just ten minutes away from the Shack the kid stopped to put him on the ground again.

 He looked up as the flesh bag (damn the frilly sack of ruffles, wherever he was), who seemed uncomfortable as he looked around himself.      What’s wrong Pines, is your measly human brain failing you?     he thought drily. Like the sack of bones knew real      thought     or knowledge. “Okay, so, I gotta smuggle you up to the attic, but I obviously can’t do that with the cage-“he saw how the kid took in a breath, as if to gather courage. This would be amusing-“so I have to unlock you and hide you in my sweater” he rushed out, the words almost incomprehensible, but Bill understood it anyway and glared up at the flesh sack. The sole audacity… “Kid, do you know who I am? Do you know of the  countless dimensions  I conquered and the   endless knowledge  I’ve collected?” he asked, his voice deepening and gaining even more of an echo. At least      something     was still how it was supposed to be.

 The boy gulped, before crossing the arms before his chest and glaring at the demon defiantly. “And now you’re a powerless corn chip and we have an agreement. So, you don’t have much choice in the matter, do you? And believe me, man, I don’t want to do this either” Dipper answered, ignoring the death glare he got. Or trying to, no one needed to know how sweaty his hands got and how dry his throat went.

 He took the set for picking locks from his bag that he and Mabel had both gotten to their birthdays last year from Stan (along with some more personalized gifts) and made quick work of the trap. Bill gave him another glare before standing up and gracefully walking out of the trap, annoying the brunet with just how      slow     the demon moved. It was already late and he wanted to catch Mabel before she went out with one of her friends (the creepy triangle was      not     sleeping in his room).

 But after entirely too much time, he could close the trap again and put away his set to face the triangle demon that stared up at him with a bored expression, raising an eyebrow at him as he fiddled with is jacket and opened it. This would be awkward.

 “Ohm, yeah, could you like, climb on my hand so we can get this over with?” he asked and, yup, this was awkward as all hell. He regretted everything that had led him to this moment. But still, Bill gave him an annoyed look but complied, seemingly thinking this was too stupid for him to even comment on. Well,       that     was a new low in Dipper’s life.

 The triangular demon was lifted off the ground, his little fingers biting into Dipper’s flesh (did Bill have freaking      claws    ?) but the teenager tried to ignore it and arranged Bill underneath his jacket, uncomfortably close to his chest, but even after some rummaging it couldn’t be helped, so he just tried to get over it. (He didn’t)

 ~

 As Coralline, called Cora by everyone but her father, saw Dipper enter the gift shop, she immediately knew something was up. The brunet, whose ass she might or might not have stared at, if opportunity arose, was obviously even more awkward than usual and looked around himself as if someone was going to attack him every minute, standing there, half hunched in over himself. Cora didn’t know him too well, but she would consider him a friend, so she waved a hand at him after selling some old lady some overpriced merchandise.

 The brunet lit up like a traffic light and came over to her. She tried not to cringe at his awkwardness. He might even get the phone numbers of some of the people he flirted with -he was cute enough- if he weren’t so      painfully     awkward.

 “Mabel is leading a tour, she should be back in like, five minutes. Should I tell her that you need her?” she asked, knowing the twins well enough by now to see when they wanted or needed to talk to each other. The brunet nodded gratefully and shot her a small smile, but it didn’t manage to cover his nervousness “Yeah, thanks, tell her I’m at the attic, okay?” he asked, she gave him a thumbs up and one of her bright smiles. “Can do, Dip” she grinned, before facing another customer as Dipper hurried out of the shop and up to his room.

 ~

 Dipper sacked against the door, his body melting into a puddle as he let himself relax. He quickly opened the zipper to his jacket and let the demon out, to sit him on his desk, doing a quick once-over to see if there was anything the demon could use against him. But everything was safe, he judged carefully. He went over to the window, still suspicious at its form, although it had clear glass now, instead of a      literal effigy    of Bill fucking Cipher. He looked out, but the tour Mabel led wasn’t there yet.

     Patience, Dipper    . He brushed some hair out of his face, while trying to plan how he would explain all of this to Mabel. Part of him knew that he would probably forget everything he’d think of as soon as she would walk through the door, but at least it would help him sort his thoughts.

 So Bill Cipher was back- that was a nightmare he really didn’t want to face- but he had no powers, which was a relief, because Dipper quite liked his life and would prefer it if he wouldn’t face a premature end by the hands of the triangular demon.

 Still, they had to find a way to get him out of their dimension, and to do so as quickly as possible if you asked him. He wondered if there was a spell to banish Bill from humanity in general, even dreams, but doubted it. Even if, Bill would have destroyed such a thing long ago, if he knew anything about the demon.

 He considered asking Bill why he was here to begin with, but doubted that the triangle would give him any answers and he should probably wait with the interrogation until Mabel was here, she was better at that stuff anyways. He remembered with a shudder what she had done to some kid that had bullied them. He had never wanted to know that you could use sprinkles and a candy cane like that.

 But point remained, she would probably get more out of the demon, if only because he seemed to have liked her better. The thought made him cringe, as well as the memory it awoke, of falling asleep and waking up with ink stained fingers, just having been used as the demon’s puppet      again    . He had played it down in front of Mabel, who had been enraged that the demon would compare      her     to the likes of      him    , but he hadn’t slept for the next two days, and when he did fall asleep it was fitful and filled with nightmares. Even after the unicorn barrier had been set in place his brain had tortured him any minute he fell asleep, with images of what Bill could and would do if he ever chose to. Even as Ford had told him of his backstory of Bill he hadn’t dared to tell him about the incident with the ‘      Guide to Mystery and Non-Stop Fun’     pages.

 He shook his head, that was long over, and the demon was powerless now, there was no need to worry, they just had to get him back to his dimension as fast as possible.

 ~

 As Mabel got to the clearing before the Mystery Shack she stopped and just before the door she turned to the customers, a big grin plastered on her face, akin to one of a shark. “Well, this was the Tour of Terrors, ladies,  gentlemen and friends, I hope you enjoyed it and come back again, I was your Ms. Mystery today!      Pictures are charged case to case, we offer no refunds for mental or physical injuries and if your wallet mysteriously disappears we have definitely nothing to do with it    ” she tacked on out of the corner of her mouth, her grin definitely seeming to be like a shark’s now. She really was Stanley Pines grandniece, and he had trained her well in the art of scamming people the last few years.

 Last summer she had gotten to lead some tours with him and he had been enthusiastic at her charm and charisma, as she scammed people out of their money, but this summer she could do her tours alone for the first time.

 “Now, please follow me to the gift shop, we’re you’ll be able to buy the unique Mystery Shack Merchandise, which you’ll get nowhere else, except in the Online Shop, which we invite you to try out.      Shipping isn’t free and you’re not insured in case someone sells your data to the government or other as, or more, shady organisations    ” She told them, as the people already scattered to buy some of the junk on the shelves. Although Mabel had influenced the inventory in the last few years, even having some products of her own making on the shelves, that she all designed herself and whose winnings she and Stan split fifty/fifty (After a very long argument, that had cost Mabel a glue gun and Stan a stapler and Dipper a ton  of nerves).

 She went to Cora- before she would be overrun with customers Mabel wanted to chat with her. The girl was only a year older than her and Dipper and had quickly gotten herself into Mabel’s group of friends, although they weren’t as close as she was with Candy, Grenda or Wendy, and sure as hell not Paz. She quickly banished the girl from her thoughts, before she would start staring at nothing with a dreamy expression.

 “Hey Mabes, tour went good?” Cora asked, in her hands was some manga she read, and Mabel was inclined to ask about it, before she saw the cover, and chose not to. She wasn’t one to read too many horror stories, she left that to Dipper. “Tour went good, I think about changing the route so we can also see the Question Quails, and maybe the Exclamation Parakeets too. I just have to convince Stan” she told the cashier, who nodded along.

 Cora had grown up here, so she was used to the town’s weirdness, even liked it. “Yeah, I could help you with that, if you want to slowly get them used to humans. My mum in Portland works at that Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area-thing, so she would probably know whatever you’ll need to have the tourists see them and all.”

 “Oh, and your bro came in here like, ten minutes ago? He looked really anxious, I think you should go to him, before he faints or something” she told the brunette who seemed to be alerted as soon as she heard the word ‘anxious’. Mabel knew that Dipper had made tons of progress, but maybe something had caused a relapse? Well, whatever it was, she wouldn’t leave her bro-bro to fight alone!

 “Kay, thanks Cora! Can you man the shop while I’m upstairs? Thanks!” she rushed out, before making her way to the attic and bursting inside Dipper’s room. But what she saw was      not     what she had expected. “Dipper? What happened, why is  he   back? Why is he even here, I thought he was a mind demon? And we killed him! - We killed you three years ago, what the heck are you doing here?” she shouted.

 Of course Dipper would be anxious if Bill was back, in fact, it was a surprise he hadn’t had a panic attack yet. She looked at her brother, asking with a look if he was okay. The brunet gave her a reassuring look back and nodded, before he began to speak. “I found him in the woods, he doesn’t have any powers, so I brought him here, so we could get rid of him before the Stans notice” he explained. “Yeesh kid, don’t be so happy about it” the triangle muttered from his place on the desk. He sat on top of some papers and books that were littered all over his room. Well, it wasn’t like her room looked much better, just much brighter.

 She glared at the twelve inch small triangle, before turning to Dipper. “And what should we do? Is there some sort of ritual to get him back to wherever he came from?” she asked. She may not be as scarred as Dipper from what happened, but she was still scared. The triangle had hurt her brother and Grunkle Ford and she didn’t want either of them to be hurt again by the demon. Bill, meanwhile, rolled his eyes. Stupid flesh bags.

 “I don’t know Mabel. I thought we could both ask what happened and then we can try to figure it out?” Dipper suggested. Mabel nodded. “Kay, bro-bro” she answered.

 Bill’s eye twitched. They      did    know that he was right there? Or was their brain capacity so ridiculously small that they already forgot?

 “Okay, Bill, why are you here again instead of rotting in hell or whatever else you’ve been doing the last three years?” Mabel asked and Dipper gave her a shocked look, but decided not to do anything. He’d let Mabel do her thing, he thought, while taking his notebook and jotting down everything he had until now. Bill glared up at Mabel, while memories tried to resurface, but he stopped them before they could even get close. “Well, I don’t know Shooting Star, how about you tell me first why I should even talk to you?” he asked icily, fixing her with a glare.

 Mabel showed herself unshaken, crossing her arms. “You could talk to me because it’s      nice    , you know?” she snapped. Dipper gave her a deadpan look and Bill rose his eyebrow.

 “Yeah, right”

 “Have you ever met me, kid?”

 Both said simultaneously and Mabel looked at both of them. Bill looked seemed for a moment and Dipper didn’t look much better. Mabel had to hold back a giggle at their expressions. “You could answer so you can get away from us as fast as possible” she suggested, choosing to ignore the silent mortification they both went through. The triangle schooled his expression to one of deadpan and bored, before answering.

 “And you don’t think I could get myself back to where I ‘rot in hell’ if I wanted?” he asked, giving her an unimpressed look. Mabel blinked surprised, before catching herself. “So you want to get our help to what? Get you back in the Mindscape?” she asked. Dipper looked at the triangle with suspicion. “Not in the Mindscape, Shooting Star, the Nightmare Realm” Bill corrected arrogantly.

 “But you probably won’t do that, so I’d suggest you let me do my thing and we see each other again in your nightmares. Deal?”

 “No! I won’t make a deal with you, you’re an evil triangle monster!” “Flattery won’t get you anywhere, kid” “That was not a compliment” Mabel growled, before she had an idea. “Wait, what about this: We’ll help you get back your powers and in return you won’t conquer the world, or this whole universe, like, ever. Deal?” Mabel asked, trying not to show how unsure she was.

 Bill gave her a mildly surprised look, but before he could answer Dipper interrupted them. “Mabel, we can’t make a deal, he’ll just somehow twist it so he comes out on top!”

 “Well, do you have another idea? Cause the way I see it, that’s the only way to make sure he won’t destroy the world as soon as he gets his powers back, or tries to, anyway” Mabel replied.

 “She’s right Pine Tree” Bill smirked. “One of you should make a      deal    if you want your sweet small world to stay the boring way it is” he sing-songed, as he looked at his fingers (those were definitely claws). “Except you      want     a second Weirdmageddon? Which I’d be      more than glad     to make happen, although you probably wouldn’t live long enough to see it unfold” Bill grinned, enjoying the opportunity to gain the upper hand again.

 “We sure as fuck don’t! Listen you freaky triangle, I’ll make a deal with you and then we’ll get you back to wherever you came from and you let this whole freaking universe alone!” Mabel exclaimed. Dipper gave her a concerned look, before resigning to her choice. She was already too convinced of her plan to stop her, the only thing he could do was help her not to make a giant mistake.

 “Can you even make deals like that?” he asked, to make sure that they even      could     do this, silently begging whatever entity watched over them that he couldn’t. “I can… with some… help” the demon gritted out. He was able to destroy supernovas with a snap of his fingers, could watch millions and trillions of places at the same time, but now he needed help to just make a      deal    . The Axolotl would pay for that, he’d make sure of it.

 “But you can?”

 “What did I just say? Are you      that     stupid, Pine Tree?” Bill snapped, before Mabel interrupted them again.

 “Hey, guys, I know we all hate each other, but we gotta get this over with before we kill each other. So, Bill: I offer you that I and Dipper restore your power to the best of our ability, without any serious harm befalling anyone, no matter whom, if you will never attempt to conquer, destroy or otherwise harm this universe ever again, in your whole existence and whatever comes after. You agree?” she asked. Bill looked at her, scanning the deal for any loopholes he could use, but there were surprisingly few. The girl had learned from Fez, no doubt.

 He looked at her outstretched hand, he didn’t want to give this realm up, he had sacrificed a trillion of years to get it, but he      needed     his powers back and one small universe wasn’t that big a cost. And he could always just take another version of this universe, could even kill the Pines family of that version. So, in the end, it seemed like a good enough deal, he had to begrudgingly admit.

 “Deal, Shooting Star.”

#gravity falls #gf #bill cipher #dipper pines #Mabel and Dipper #trans dipper #dipper and bill #mabel and bill #mabel and pacifica #mabcifica #in later chapters #no billdip #billdip bromance #tad strange #canon compliant #kill me #i hate everything #why am i like this #please read