#[every fucking year both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are the goddamn worst days of my life and they come RIGHT before July 13th aka my

[godblooded]

when you wake up and your aunt reminds you it is father’s day weekend and can you go to the cemetery.

[cardigan-ns]

Wandering Star (2)

Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Reader

Summary: Ben’s dead and there’s no reason to stay. Diego gives you an ultimatum. Live with him or rot away in the commission. But after being with him things take a turn for the worst.

Synopsis: HERE

Note: This is definitely a long part.

Part 1 <- here Part 3 <- here

You’ve not left your room for weeks, not for food, not for the free day, not even to give your weekly calls to your parents. Ben’s death struck you like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Handling death was in your veins but not now, not after the 4 years you’ve spend close to him, helping him, shading the rest of the family with him.

Seventeen now, you and Diego snuck around, got more and more close together, secretly without his father’s notice. Not being able to keep your distance after your kiss that night. Only one of the hargreeves suspected it though (that you knew of), Ben, he’d heard you and Diego through the wall, he hated being next door to Diego. He always banged the wall yelling for you to “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” causing you to place a silencing hand over Diego’s mouth. But knowing your connection it just made the both of you more frustrated and passionate. It was thrilling, just how hungry his eyes got when he saw you. The power in each of your veins manifesting more and more out of sorts every day, making it lustful too. But that craze died down when Ben left, both of you too stunned with grief to even think about anything of the intimate kind.

A knock struck your door, “Go away!” You barely got the words out as you sat on your floor, back against your bed, crying. The door opened slowly anyways, despise your call to leave. “My dad wants you downstairs.” Luther spoke, mopey, still in pyjamas, nobody was talking this well. You failed as a team. You cried again, looking at number one, “Goddamn Luther can’t you just fuck off!” You screamed, your grief turning into malice. Luther walked into your room, crossing his arms, “Get. up.” He spoke through gritted teeth, making you laugh, standing up, punching him in the gut, winding him. “Aw.” He groaned as you gripped both of his shoulders, shoving him out of the room. “I told you to fuck off!” Luther stumbled and whacked his back off the wall across from the hall, his eyes pained, he didn’t expect you to be that cruel, he was only the messenger, he ran to his room, slamming his door.

You looked at the dent the wall made with the strength of Luther’s impact. You walked out of your room and touched it, noticing just how unhinged you’d become, you felt despair now, wanting to run to Luther and apologise but you knew he wasn’t in the mood to look at you right now. You decided to see whatever Reginald wanted, wanting to get it over and done with. You reached his office to see your parents sitting there, you crossed your arms immediately fixing your posture and attitude when you saw them, you weren’t meant to be going home for another 2 weeks.

“Ah, Y/N, took your time.” Your mother spoke up, her curly auburn hair moving with her head as she turned to see you. You were still in your pyjamas too, expecting to be scolded by Reginald for lack of decorum, but he only sighed and tapped his pen on his desk advising you to sit down. You took a seat between your parents, facing the billionaire. “Now, I know you’ve taken it upon yourself to go on strike from your role.” You looked at your lap, ashamed for letting him down, he was disappointed, greatly, making your heart beat slow drastically. “But, Number 6’s death is merely just a mistake to add to your list.” Reginald confinued. But your father saw just how miserable you’ve become, zero wit, zero spark, zero ambition. You were overtaken by such dread, he just frowned, rubbing your back, causing you to look up at him, your eyes glossy. “I’m so sorry, dad.” He shook his head, kissing the top of yours. “Angel, it’s okay, we’re taking you home, that’s what this is about.” He whispered to you. Your mother glared at him, making him revoke the affection altogether, she was colder than a blizzard. Never allowing your father to treat you like his daughter.

But you finally acknowledged what your father had said after his presence left you. You looked around the room at the three adults. “No. I’m not due to go home for another 2 weeks. I’m not ready.” You protested, looking at your mother as if asking how she could do this to you, you stood up now, wanting nothing more than to run into Diego’s room and make him hide you, he was still asleep though, your mind letting you see what he was doing anytime you needed to pick up on it, you’ve learned to control the visions, but sometimes your control slipped up.

Your mother harshly grasped your arm, making you wince from the pain, you looked at her sadly. You wish she’d just be kind to you ONCE. “We are not done, how dare you treat us with such disrespect after we’ve travelled all the way here.” Your father rolled his eyes at your mother’s guilt trip over you, and you just huffed and spoke to her face. “Yeah, because a 0.1 second briefcase jump is worthy of my consideration.” You yanked your arm away with force and stormed out of the office, leaving your father silently proud of you, Reginald appalled and your mother playing the victim with a sad look on her face.

You ran upstairs banging on Diego’s door. You haven’t spoke that much after the funeral but you needed him right now. He didn’t answer and you took it upon yourself to burst in teary eyed and shook him up. “Diego…” your veins glowed and he was disorientated. “Huh?” His voice deep and growly from sleep and he gazed at you, seeing you cry. He immediately stood up, his hands holding both your arms making you face him fully. “What’s happened?” He was was gaining more and more protective of you by the day. But by his touch on you he saw what your mom had done and that your parents were downstairs. He was about to put a shirt on and walk you the door, seeing you cry made him so fucking mad.

“No. They aren’t taking you away from m-me.” He stuttered on his last word, your eyes softened and you kissed him, his brows that were furrowed instantly softened as he continued to have his lips on yours, he walked you towards his closet, grabbing a button up shirt, you grabbed it and let him slip his arms into it, still while kissing you buttoned it up for him. “God, they’re definitely not taking you away from me!” He panted as he grabbed your hand and you both ran downstairs. Diego flung one of his knives, the ones he hid in his pyjama pants, down the hall, it halting as it pinned your father’s suit blazer to the wall. Your parents just got into the hallway, your father got annoyed, “How in the hell.” He shook his head and your mother’s glare was golden, the look of disapproval only filled you and Diego with more drive, putting your hostility to your parents and not to each-other. “She not gonna be your weapon. She’s staying home, where she belongs.” Diego defended you, referencing the academy as your home, you just examined his beautiful face, just how you had one another wrapped around your fingers. Your father yanked his arm, from the knives hold, now having a rip all down his tailored navy suit, you stifled a laugh.

“Child, I don’t know what’s possessed you to think you can talk to her parents like that, but you must stop this at once!” Reginald’s stern voice echoed through the office, the door slightly ajar so he heard all the commotion. Diego just smirked, this was fun, he walked up to your father and briskly took the knife from the mahogany wall. He whispered threateningly, “She’s staying here.” Your father looked at you to see how you were taking this boys aggression towards him, but you were on his side. “Mom, dad. I’m staying here for my 2 weeks and that’s final.” Your mother was not happy with you in the slightest and walked to you strutting, grabbing your ear and forcing you to look at her. “You’re not the girl I raised. So rotten, it’s disgusting.” She was unbelievably cruel and bitter causing Diego to stare at her with distain, but he remained by your father, knowing you could handle yourself.

You just just pushed your mother, making her mind ripple, in your control, you just demanded her as her eyes glowed white, “You’re going to agree with me.” She shook her head, growing used to you trying to change her punishments all the time. “ONE MORE DAY! AND WE WILL BE BACK YOU BRAT!” She screamed as you stood back, not expecting her to get so loud, but at least she was letting you stay until tomorrow. Compromise. “Fine. Bye mother.” You smiled eagerly, “father.” You nodded to him as he was opening the front door, your mother’s vein popping out of her forehead as she was furious. Once they left, Diego walked over to you, fixing your hair a little, “Let’s get you packed then.” His hand moved to your shoulder tracing his thumb along the fabric of your pyjamas. You sighed, both of you walking to your room. It wasn’t the best thing in the world but atleast he could prepare today to say goodbye tomorrow.

As you both tiptoed down the bedroom corridor, as to not wake anyone, Luther fell back to sleep after your outburst. Diego peered out the window, halting you by putting his hand over your frame, to stop you taking another step. He walked to the window and tapped it with his blade, looking over his shoulder to you. “We should runaway.” You looked at him, disagreeably. “Yeah, to just have to police pick us up after making it out 20 minutes.” You huffed a laugh, Diego’s seriousness didn’t falter, wanting you to see his vision. “We could get out. Allison’s already moved out. Klaus hasn’t been home for days. Viktor is house hunting too. Runaway with me.” His eyes desperate for you to notice his sincerity, his want to keep you safe and free. Free from Reginald, free from your parents, the commission, yeah he told your parents this was your home, but he knew deep within his soul that your home is with him. But here we go again, your lack of agreement interfering your good time, it was always so short lived, being on the same page. “I’m going back to my parents tomorrow. You know better than anyone here that they can and will find me.” You protested with a valid excuse and he couldn’t handle that.

He walked into your room, grabbing the bag you came here with originally and threw some of your clothes in it before you pushed him away from that task. “What the hell are you doing?” Your frustration rising, as was his, he couldn’t take your rejection. “I’m packing for you, seeing as I mean nothing to you. As always.” His voice along with his demeanour was stern. He always knew just how to make you heated. “You know that’s not true, you asshole!” You pushed his chest again, making him hit your desk, he placed a hand behind his back, to the table steadying himself. You definitely woke viktor and Luther up by doing this. “Then why’re you running back to them like a scared little girl. You don’t need them.” He argued and he would continue to argue until you believed he was right. “Because it’s who I am.” You believed your only quality was to be an assassin. Diego saw you as so much more than that. Sometimes less than that, but all in all, he wasn’t just going to let you run right back to your hellscape.

“I’m not watching you walk out there, getting yourself killed.” He continued to pack your clothes, hypocritically his actions betraying his words, he tried fitting as much stuff in as he could, even packing your elephant stuffed animal, one that you slept with every night. Seeing Diego stuff Achilles into your bag meant that this was actually happening. The poor elephant had a dried blood stain on his right ear, after an altercation with the butler of a cruise in Italy when you were six. You killed the guy for laundering money on it, you and your parents undercover as a tourist family. No matter how many times you tried putting him through the wash, the blood never got out. Just like how the blood on your hands would never rinse from your memory, Diego was right, you needed to be set free, with him.

“Fine.” You sat on your bed, letting out a deep breath, you were overworked. Diego just gave you a look as he knelt before you placing both his hands either side of your knees. “It’s all going to be okay. I’ll get a place for us, okay?” His lips turned down as he looked at you with careful consideration. You nodded, your morning already giving you twenty different plot points.

You and Diego waited until everyone was asleep before your escape, no goodbyes, just a letter under Luther’s door, mostly you apologising for winding him. Reginald always told you that he required at least a 2 week notice if you were to move out, but after Ben died he just gave up on all of you altogether. So it wasn’t him you really had to worry about, but you took precaution anyways. You and Diego had packed all in all 5 bags, 2 each and then one with spare things that both held sentimental value to you, like the stitch Grace made Diego with his name on it and a domino mask. And a cassette Allison made you for your birthday, you made her one too, it was your gift to each-other.

Diego helped you out the 3 story window, luckily the drain pipe was there to slide down. Once you got to the concrete ground, the alleyway exit seemed too good to be true. Diego threw the bags down, you caught them, setting them on the ground, so nothing would smash, he then made his grand exit from the window, you smile up looking at him. Your future of freedom already clear in your mind, naive to how being in constant proximity to him would affect each-other.

Once he was by your side, he grabbed your hand with his gloved one, his knives on the holster over his chest, he smiled to you, squeezing your palm as you both ran down the streets of a midnight New York. You both made a pit stop at griddys donuts, the owner Agnes confused that two teens came in so late, ordering sugary treats and two sprites. But she gave you them anyway, noticing your bags. “Where are you guys headed?” The pink dressed woman asked as she set the plates down, you smiled and handed her a twenty, “We’re finally getting our own place.” Saying that aloud made Diego stare at you, his heart bursting at the seams at how lucky he was to have you be the one he fell for.

“I wish you two young lovers the greatest luck.” She nodded with approval as she walked to the back office to get your change for the twenty. Diego watched her leave then moved closer, to talk to you from across the table. “I saw a boxing gym across the way. Maybe we could sneak in there?” You looked out the window to see what he was talking about, your eyes brightened, “Yes.” You bit into your chocolate sprinkled donut.

After finishing your midnight feast, you and Diego walked across the street and ran to the back entrance to Al’s boxing gym. He took out a wire from his backpack and picked the lock, you were apprehensive, you couldn’t sense anyone around but you knew this place still had life, it wasn’t abandoned. Diego jimmied it open and you both entered and felt the cold chill emerging from the concrete gym. He walked around, punching the bag and lifting the weights as he went. You, on the other hand, immediately went to the office, a practical thing to do, most things you touched giving you the same vision of a man called Al. He was in his late 50s. He ran this place up from nothing and was organising monthly big fights, you seemed intrigued, Diego noticed you flicking through a file of old boxing poster dates. “What’s that?” He snatched it from you, smiling at you as you looked offended. “Boxing fights.” You told him as he’d already clocked it by looking at them. “I could do that.” He wanted to see your reaction, which you hesitated. “I mean we just broke into this guys place, are you sure we should hang around long enough for you to fight for the guy?” You weren’t wanting to feel the wrath of Al. Diego just dry laughed causing you to frown, “I need to make us money somehow…” you still weren’t convinced at his plea.

“Trust me, I’ve got this sorted.” He set the files down, “Look what I found.” He held your hand and walked you down a hallway, a boiler room, you suddenly got a gut feeling but you weren’t yet sure what it meant, whether it was good or bad, they both felt the same. “There’s a makeshift bed in there, we could both squeeze onto it.” You were extremely exhausted, yawning at the mention of collapsing onto a bed. You looked at the only person you trusted with your life, nodding. “Okay.” He stood a little behind you, his hand rubbing your shoulder as he kissed it. “Okay.” He copied your response. His kiss on any part of your body sent electricity through your veins.

You turned around, your eyes pouring into his. His faint smile made your heart palpate, he was magnificent. You undid his holster and he looked down at your hands unravelling it. “Let’s make ourselves at home.” You whispered handing him his bundle of knives hugged in leather. He pulled you in for a quick kiss, your wrists glowed, then dimmed, the glow rarely stuck around that long, the longest it’s ever lingered was in the first 2 years, you’re both now so used to one another.

You spend the night in eachothers arms, two stowaways, making a life from absolutely nothing.

You were lying there, half asleep, half conscious, hearing voices in groups. People in the main area of the gym laughing and singing along to music. “Yeah, a couple of troubled trespassers.” Suddenly a deep voice spoke to another as you heard footsteps approach your room. “In here?” A feminine voice spoke up, and the man’s voice agreed, suddenly the dimly lit room was now exposed by the bright light of a torch, blinding you and Diego’s closed eyes, he shot up and put one hand over his eyes and one hand on your arm, making sure you were within his safety.

“Y/N Bardot, get up right now!” You opened your eyes to see your mother dressed as a police officer, not even trying to be a worried mother. Fuck her. Diego scoffed keeping you by him as you sat up. “Jesus Christ you couldn’t stay away could you?” Diego spoke irritated, you just elbowed him in the side causing him to wince. “Officer, I’m afraid I do not tolerate rude pigs!” You spat out, respecting the character your mother tried so desperately to play. This caused Al to get a good look at you and Diego. He called the cops expecting you two to be a couple of homeless addicts, not expecting you to be some teens in need of asylum. His face rested in ponder.

Eliza just grabbed Diego off the bed and shoved him beside Al, making him look at the older man and give him a dirty look, knowing it had to be him who called your mom, not knowing how the commission had hacks to the emergency numbers. “Jesus fucking Christ, Eliza, just stop!” Diego hated your parents, especially your mom, hated how she talked to you, referred to you as anything but the kid she birthed, how could a mother be so cruel to her baby. Your mother then grabbed you by the hand as you protested with great restraint. “Is she not a copper?” Al asked Diego and Diego just rolled his eyes. “No, you idiot, look at her.” You just accepted defeat, your mother was holding a briefcase, you finally noticed it. “No.” You sighed. “Mom, no, please?” She just gave you a somber look as if you were the biggest disappointment of her life. After all she didn’t want you, she made that clear, you were merely a rank to keep her at the top of the commission. “No, darling, why do you have to make everything so difficult. Don’t you want to see your family?” Diego wanted to kill her, he felt as though he could, one simple stab and she’d be a goner, but that’s one thing you’d never forgive him for, and he wasn’t wanting to make you hate him.

“We had this all figured out.” Diego muttered, causing your mom to scoff and walk over to him, pushing her finger to his chest, causing him to narrow his eyes. “You think breaking and entering into this man’s gym is having it all figured out.” Then your mother looked over to you. “Jesus Y/N, you actually associate yourself with a bafoon such as this?” This made Al mad, he pushed Diego behind him. “Lady, I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.” The gut feeling you had from last night was all too clear now, good AND bad. Diego would have respite in here while you had to go back to home sweet home with the devil herself. Diego looked at Al confused that and adult was defending him like this. “Fine then. Y/N, honey.” Your mother gripped your hand again, and Diego tried to grab hold of you but she got you out of that room as quick as possible, pressing the button on the suitcase and off to the commission headquarters you went.

Diego shed a tear, trying to be stoic. Al looked at the boy, then looked around the room. “You can stay. But on one condition, mop the floors at night for me?” Diego didn’t give a fuck what Al wanted him to do with the gym he just wanted you back. “Whatever.” He sat on the bed, Al noticed your bags still here. “And if your girlfriend comes back, she can convince you to box for me, you’ve got potential, kid.” Diego’s eyes lightened, Al saw his potential, without him having to beg for him to look. “I’ll leave you be though, I’ll take you out to dinner tonight, just scrounge up some breakfast yourself.” He was supportive, something Diego subconsciously admired, he wasn’t asking much of him either which was a breath of fresh air, and he knew nobody was gonna come looking for him, he was alone. For once he was actually alone.

You took in the familiar halls, the familiar intercom rules that played on a loop, the familiar colleagues, you were just agitated, ready to kill your own mother. “Just take me to dad.” You spoke to her distastefully, only wanting your father right now, at least he had sympathy in his body, something you’ve now grown to appreciate after five and Ben were gone. And your mother lived and breathed.

You walked down the halls to your mother and fathers joint office, the tainted windowed door read ‘Bardot inquiries’. Your mother opened it and let you walk in, your father was stood by the window drinking a cup of coffee, he had two more in a holder on his desk, for each of his girls. “Sweetheart, you made it, without any wounds I hope?” You ran into his arms and he hugged you back, looking at your mother worriedly, and she rolled her eyes and sat at her desk, working the typewriter. Peter tried to let go but your hold on him only tightened, he was protesting but he was just concerned for your wellbeing, when you were at the academy yesterday you didn’t look so sharp, and especially not now.

“What’s the problem?” He finally made you let go, you walked across the desk and grabbed a coffee, one pump vanilla in your latte for sweetness. Just how you liked it. “Her.” You spoke bitterly glaring, at your mom. She just shook her head smiling angrily as she kept her eyes on the type writer. Your father gave you a look, ushering you not to push the situation, you sat on one of the chairs beside the door, taking a sip of your caffeinated beverage. “Where’d you go? You weren’t at the academy.” Jesus, news travelled fast. Your mother spoke up now, happy to call you out on your scandalous behaviour. “She was with that boy. In a run down boiler room. Like the horrid girls we raised her not to be.” Your lip quivered trying not to cry at how cruel she was, your dad just put his hands on his hips, looking between the two arguing ladies. “Sweetheart, maybe you should take a little walk, come to terms with what you want.” He looked at you, you raised a brow, how’s a walk going to help you any?

“Of course, kicking my feet about an agency hellbent on gore, will serve me in the right direction.” You stood up, leaving their office. Once you were gone your father handed your mother her coffee and he tutted, “She’s really vulgar.” Your mother just gave him an ‘I told you so’ look.

You dragged your feet along the shiny tiled floors and looked into each room you walked by, until you saw Hazel, he looked pretty beaten up from one of his missions, he sat in the common room, you went in taking a seat beside him. “Hey kiddo, I haven’t seen you in quite some time.” He spoke chuffed. You didn’t even look at him. You just stared at the little television that played the welcome video repeatedly until someone kicked it in, mostly you, there’s around 20 new televisions brought in weekly, due to workplace violence. “It’s been 3 months, Hazel, it’s always 3 months.” You threw your head back on the couch, slouching. “That’s still quite some time.” His brows raised a little showing that there was truth behind his words. You finally looked at him, his emotions calm and assuring, as he never usually let you see any bad temper from him, he was always the nicest employee here, and herb. Dot too. But you had a soft spot for hazel.

“Do ever feel like you’re living a lie?” Your blunt question sparked a little pain in his gut, he hated thinking too much about his career decision. “In what way, sport?” You reached over and broke the antenna off the TV, not wanting to see that animated briefcase anymore, his cartoon smile filled you with unbelievable rage. “I’m with the commission, correcting the timeline, a child soldier. Then I’m with Reginald Hargreeves, fighting crime, a-maturely. I can fight better but whenever I’m there something stops me, like the child I am doesn’t want me to be violent.” Hazel’s heart broke when he heard your side to your life, everyone else always had to convince him you were okay with what you do, even though he had doubts on the morality of it. “So, you’re saying that your lie is thinking you should stay here?” Hearing him ask that made you realise you were in a deeper mental hell than you thought. “No. The lie I’m living is thinking I could ever be normal. Have a white picket fence life, no power, no briefcase, being content with just me.” Your mother taking you from Diego made you question the ethics of it. You and him weren’t just 2 normal runaway kids, young love over living with your individual parents. Your lives weren’t built that way, meaning it just wouldn’t work. You loved him, a little too much, but you were always going to run, that was just in your nature, never tied to a place, hell, you were swapping personalities every 3 months. You were breaking at the seams.

Hazel unbuttoned his blazer, getting comfortable to help sit and divulge your life crisis at 17. “You don’t need to have that figured out yet. You can be happy and then take your life in a completely different route.” He sighed seeing your eyes so dim. “Think of this, when you’re 30 where will you be?” You didn’t know. How could you, I mean, you could just kill the guard by the infinite switchboard and break in and look, but the future was always changing with every decision you made, who’s to say what it will truly be. “I don’t know.” This made Hazel smile softly. “Exactly, you don’t know, so don’t think that being normal isn’t in the cards for you. It’s your life at the end of the day, don’t believe what you’re conditioned to believe.” He’s been having doubts about being here too. You could feel it from him. That eased your consciousness a tonne. Without thinking, you hugged the man, he was truly a friend, whether you were colleagues or not, he was like an older brother, and with a pat of your back, you finally realised why your father told you to go on a walk.

You quickly walked back to your parent’s office, stopping yourself before going in, almost fearful at what they’ll say. You breathed out and opened the door. It was just your father, he gave you a little smile as he packed some files into his non-time travelling briefcase, he was taking these home to theorize on his big pin board, he did that with all his cases, it never faltered, and sometimes you’d stay up late nights with him to help him solve cases. “You coming home tonight or are you still protesting your right to freedom?” He spoke sarcastically, the brunette man clicking his case closed. “I actually wanted to talk to you about that, where’s mom?” He gave you a confused look, “She always has an early day on Wednesdays, you know this.” You had actually forgotten what day it was after being so grief stricken by Ben, and running away, you didn’t have time to look at the newspapers or listen to the radio. “Okay, whatever, she doesn’t matter.” He gave a dry chuckle and sat down on the desk, letting you pace and ramble.

“You were right, well, mom was. She didn’t raise me to be a horrid girl who runs away without alerting you.” Your father nodded along, no idea where this was going. “But I interpret it differently, I’m not made to kill. I’ve been conditioned to believe I am because that’s the family I was born into. But I am not a violent person.” You were just a kid, a lost one at most. Your father crossed his arms now, tugging on his loose tie from working so hard all day. “I don’t want to be your soldier anymore.” That was the most honest and truthful you’ve ever been to him about your needs and wants. He seemed guilty at you calling yourself his soldier and he had to admit, you weren’t wrong. “I love Diego, dad. And I know mom hates his guts but we have a real connection and I’m not going to let you hide me away from him. He’s made me see that this life isn’t who I am.” You continued to pace every-so-often stopping glance at him hoping he was keeping up. Your father was a bright man, there was no doubt he felt your frustration and resentment. He stood now, placing one hand on his side, scratching the back of his neck, with the other. “Angel, I want you to follow your dreams, but you don’t know what you want, you’re a child.” He was the one person who you wanted to understand you, and that hurt deeply.

“Dad?” Your eyes saddened and he immediately wanted to take it back. “All I’m saying is, he’s one boy, there’s millions of them. And he’s only going to break your heart. This is your true home.” You sat down in defeat, your hands covering your face, “Please just listen to me.” You whined like a little kid, after all that’s how you mentally felt, you never got to be one. “Can’t you hear what I’m saying? Diego’s my family. Not you, not mom, I was dumped on you. I chose to love him. There’s a difference than being forced to.” Your father could live in all the denial he wants but he cannot escape the fact that he failed you, he was more of an operative than a dad. Your mother heavy hitting boss than a nurturing mother.

Your father walked towards the other side of the room, unlocking his metal cabinet, he’s never actually let you see inside it before. You were amazed he was finally unlocking it in your presence. “I can’t force you to do anything. You’re almost an adult. So, take this.” A briefcase, your own briefcase. “I bought it when you were born, for you to take when you started disagreeing with me about your future, like you are now.” He was understanding you, finally seeing you as the person you were and not what he expected you to be.

“You mean it? I can have it?” You now stood by him, seeing the entire contents of the cabinet. A passport, a commission suit tailored to your size, an elephant mask, similar to the bear and bunny Hazel and Cha Cha have. Yours was purple. “It’s like Achilles.” Your father placed an assuring hand on your shoulder as you stood by him. “But you don’t need these.” He closed the cabinet, just keeping the passport out for you. “Go see the world, without having to kill someone, for the holiday. The briefcase is for you and Diego to go wherever.” He made you face him now, “and to visit me, if you’ll remember after your amazing sights.” He seemed wounded with grief that his little girl has grown up. You rested your head on him. Somber and bittersweet, he was finally letting you go.

“What about mom?” That was the real worry. He just kissed the top of your head, like he always did, “I’ll calm the wolf.” He assured you and that made you smile through tears. Not actually admitting to yourself that this was it. The commission life was no more, you could be with Diego. “I love you, Angel.” Your dad ruffled your hair, causing you to give an annoyed look, but secretly you loved happy moments as this. “I love you too, dad.” You left his office feeling better than you did entering. And all you had to do was log the date into the briefcase “September 28th 2006”.

It’s been 12 hours since you left, your mother picking you up at 7am it now being 7pm. Diego was mopping the floor of the gym, Al closed up early because he wanted to take Diego to get some food for dinner. He had the radio on and was listening in to an article about the legacy of WHAM, when the doors opened. You arrived, the mop has never hit the floor faster and Diego immediately pulled you into a tight embrace. “Holy shit!” He smiled chuffed that you chose to come back and be with him. He’d even decorated the boiler room with both your things, making sure to gently set the cassette player on your own personal stand.

“Alright alright, ease the applause.” You taunted him and he set you back down on the ground. You found your way back, and he was so unbelievably grateful. He then got irritated, “Is this a goodbye? I feel like you just got sent here to tell me you’re gonna vanish off the face of the earth. No way your mom is lenient enough to let you stay.” His paranoia making you laugh, you sat on a balance beam and he was still apprehensive. “Diego, I’m all yours. I stood my ground and the bastards let me go.” Hearing you say you were all his filled a swell of pride in his ego, he crossed his arms with a little smile tugging at his lips. “All mine then?” He was delighted, but it wouldn’t be long before you were at each-other throats again about how he was mopping wrong and forgot to even add soap.

Note: this was so long and part 3 will also be backstory but they’ll be older. I just really want to add a certain plot, you’ll thank me for it.

Tags:

@ravenn-darkholme @shadowbriar @total-lunareclipse4 @vesper4seance @yanibobonni @st4w3

[inimoo]

𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄

bro ok someone asked me to write a fic with romantic charlie and mike and i was like fuck yeah bc one, i had literally nothing to write and i needed inspo, two, their dynamic romantically would be so fucking interesting and fun lmao so yeah ☠

WORD COUNT -> 6 423

In the 19 years of life that Michael had experienced, there had only been 5 people that he had trusted with his entire being: Mama, Evan, Elizabeth, Uncle Henry, and Charlie. He had tattooed these names into his brain, a constant reminder that they were the only people that he could give his life to. William Afton was not one of these people.

Still, he let himself trust his father. Not that he hadn’t needed to convince himself to follow his father’s orders - he had spent hours in the shadows of his actively deteriorating apartment staring at the letter in his hands, at the familiar grandiose signature at the bottom written in royal purple ink, at the words written in impossibly neat and practised hand-writing, the way even through letters while Michael was cities away from him, he emanated superiority.

It was indisputably his father - the one he hadn’t seen in almost a year. The one that disappeared weeks before his 18th birthday, the one that was legally a missing person. 

Save your sister. 

Michael, trudging his emptied body down the streets that he had grown up in, clutching onto his stomach watching as the fresh blood leaked down onto his shaking hands, even as the fact that his own dad had sent him to his death, knew that he did not save his sister - if she was ever really meant to be saved by Michael in the first place. Still, as his mind strays further away from the fucking mess that he is, all he can think of is how disappointed his father would be for failing to rescue her. 

He did not love his son. Evan was a very distinct middle ground. He adored his daughter.

Michael remembers the day Elizabeth went missing in small parts - he remembers the date (July 23rd 1981, also known as her goddamn birthday), he remembers the terrified look on his father’s face as he banged his body against the door with Circus Baby, he remembers the confusion and fear that seized his body when he yelled at him to get in the car with Evan, he remembers the newspaper and missing posters, he remembers his father getting drunk out of his mind, silent tears falling down his face in the car, he remembers him looking at his remaining children not like people, but as possessions that only he could break.

He remembers Uncle Henry and he remembers Charlie. And he remembers how much they loved him.

Charlie, he thinks, and he would cry if he could, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. 

Michael hadn’t seen her since they both left Hurricane for college - her in a nearby city studying biomedical science, him in Santa Ana studying engineering. He knew that she came home every weekend to visit her dad. He knew that she’d be in her home waiting for her dad to come home from his late shifts at his job.

Hefeels his feet taking him down a familiar path, one that he had raced down with Sammy and Charlie by his side until he was 9 (after that it was only he and Charlie), one that he had walked down with his mother and Evan before Elizabeth was born, before his father was just William Afton and not his dad, before everything turned to shit. Before he was left alone.

The rain batters against his body, what misses thundering against the ground around him. It’s so cold - everything is so cold. The blood streaks he was leaving on the beige sidewalk were sickening and horrifically gruesome, and if he were in a better state of mind he would be worrying about what the neighbours would think when they woke up, if the rain would wash all of it away. Hurricane had faced too many tragedies for such a small town. Before Freddies, the worst thing that happened in the place was a cat stuck in a tree, or a small scale robbery. Not missing children, not dead bodies found in back alleys, not grieving families wondering where their kids had gone.

Before he knows where he’s going, he stops in front of a house obviously grander than the ones that surrounded it, partially secluded in the small forest that it was built in. The richest families of Hurricane, the most powerful - the Aftons and the Emilys - were the only ones that could afford houses like these.

Charlie’s house feels more like a home than his did. 

His legs feel like lead as he forces them in front of the other, his sense of touch leaving the ends of his limbs slowly - the only thing inside of him was blood and a heart that refused to stop beating. Maybe his father was right in that sense, he thinks idly, remembering something he had used to tell him. ‘ Aftons live forever.’ At the time, it was just one of the many somewhat creepy things his father said. Now, it seemed like a prophecy he had uttered to a child that didn’t know any better. A curse - maybe that was what you call it. The Afton curse - everyone lives, and yet nobody survives.

His eyes, once blue, now a frightening shade of violet, drift upwards at the windows of the house. The curtains are closed but the lights inside outline the familiar figure of a girl - his girl. 

Charlie. 

When the two of them were younger and in school, everyone always called her Charlie Emily. Last name perpetually included - the same way people would say the president’s name. ‘What’s up Charlie Emily!’ ‘That’s what Charlie Emily answered.’ ‘Yo, what do you think Charlie Emily got on the quiz?’ Her family was tied to her identity for, seemingly, the rest of her life.

Michael knew that it drove her crazy, but that she didn’t want to cause people any trouble by asking them to drop the Emily part after so long, so he just called her Charlie (everyone took it as the highest honour to be able to call the Charlie Emily her first name) and she found it delightful.

Now, he stares at her from outside her house feeling like a damn stalker watching her in the rain. Michael can distantly hear the sound of soft music coming from inside the house playing on the old radio that his mother got Uncle Henry for Christmas in 1978. The fact that he could immediately recognize it was, in his context, rather annoying. His father used to play it.

Charlie adored his father for most of her life - he treated her as an adult, and at the same time he had an uncharacteristic protectiveness over her as her godfather. Michael didn’t understand it at all (thought it seemed as though he would never understand the way his mind worked). Charlie found it amusing as well as flattering to have him speak to her like she was older than she actually was. To treat her like an apprentice. A legacy.

William taught her her to play the piano, and chess, and even how to fucking drive. Henry taught Michael all of these things (a guitar instead of a piano) when he found out that his father had not done so already. Michael inherited Henry’s knack for everything to do with cars. Charlie inherited William’s love for prehistoric music - playing songs that Michael was more or less sick of hearing after hearing them for his entire life. 

This one, he recognizes: The Things We Did Last Summer. And, he remembers, right before the two had parted ways for college, Charlie had forced him to dance with her to it in the middle of her room, away from her father’s sight. It felt like a secret - perhaps a bit more intimate than the ones they’d shared before. He was utterly dreadful, but Charlie seemed to have retained the things his mother had taught her before she died. Her movements were graceful, controlled, and yet beautiful. Just like Mamá’s.

Her smile that summer night was absolutely ravishing. 

With a sudden surge of energy at the memory, Michael moves his body as steady as possible, moving shaky legs up the wet porch, rain drenching his vest shirt, his hair, his entire body. He probably looks like shit, but really, he just wants to see her before he dies. He doesn’t question whether or not he will.

Then, he knocks at the door, ignoring the pain that flared up his right arm.

The things we did last summer, 

He hears the quick, excited sounding footsteps that approach, and he wonders if she thinks it’s her dad.

I’ll remember all winter long.

When the door handle turns, Michael considers running away, sparing her the sorry sight of her best friend. ‘You’re my favourite person.’ she used to tell him. But in the split second in which he contemplated this thought, the door had opened.

Charlie looks at him, and - god, her eyes are so green - her eyebrows narrow for a moment in confusion, and then just as quick, they light up as she beams up at him. “Mike!”

He goes to say something, panic seizing his chest, but his throat is completely dry, only ending up in an awkward pause in which they simply stare at each other. She was wearing a pink shirt with matching plaid woollen bottoms. Michael can not talk to pretty people.

Charlie opens her mouth questioningly, but then she stops, her eyes flickering down at the blood on his right hand. “Mike?”

This time, he finds it in himself to use his words, though he only manages to say two. “Hi, Charlie.”

The midway and the fun, the radio plays from the living room.

And then, he falls into her arms.

When he wakes up, it’s still night. He glances at the clock above the couch he’s lying on: 3:45 AM. Michael’s head falls backwards onto the old couch hilariously, pathetically. “You’re awake.” a voice says from the arch between the living room and kitchen. It takes all of the energy in his body to turn towards the sound. Charlie’s leaning against the wall, her arms crossed across her chest, eyebrows furrowed in worry. She looked as though she had been crying for a while, judging by her flushed face and watery eyes.

“Charlie,” Michael manages to choke out, purely out of desire to speak to her once again.

He watches her face take on a multitude of emotions, before settling on complete and utter concern and a hint of fear. She walks towards him slowly. The radio was playing a different song this time. Again, he recognizes it almost instantly: Misty. This time because his mother played it on his 10th birthday and it had been stuck inside of his head for the rest of his life. 

Charlie is beside him now, crouching beside him, arm on the cushions of the couch, careful not to touch him. He doesn’t know if he should be hurt from this. “Are you hungry?” she asks gently.

They both look down at his stomach at the same time, or the lack thereof. He sends her a hopeless look. “I’d say yes if I was sure it wouldn’t just fall through my body.”

Walk my way, and a thousand violins start to play,

Her voice is quiet, gazing at him with her eyebrows pitched upwards. “Yeah…” And then, without much warning at all, she begins to cry, tears overflowing down her face

Or it might just be the sound of your hello. 

Michael immediately balances his weight onto his left elbow, his eyes widening in panic as he wipes her face off with his thumb. This is when he notices the slightly sickly colour his skin was. Not the warm golden colour it had been just the week before. He stares at him for a split second in surprise, but quickly brushes it off as her tears turn into hiccups of pure agony. Charlie wasn’t really a crybaby by any means, but she was extraordinarily empathetic specifically towards Michael.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, moving her brown hair behind her ear, “Don’t cry Charlie. Don’t cry.”

“W-What happened to you?” she asks, bloodshot eyes, eyes trained at the gaping wound in his body. He assumes that joking about it was not the wisest idea. 

“Nothing really.” Michael says weakly, much more focused on the fact that she was crying for him than the fact that he was actively losing half of his blood supply.

She sends him a look, rather similar to the ones she used to give him in high school. “Mike, your fucking organs are missing.” Charlie says hoarsely, her mouth twisted into a frown.

He waves it off, “Happens to the best of us.”

“Mike.” His name comes out more as a sob than she might’ve intended, but she just shakes her head sadly. “Please tell me. Who was it? What was it?”

Michael looks at her awkwardly, his mouth forming soundless words. “Uh, possessed murder robot thing.”

She stares at him, her lips quivering.

“Sorry.” he says.

If he was not an empty corpse of a human, she might’ve slapped him in the face for being such a dumbass. Instead, her mouth presses together, gazing at the obvious bloody hole in his body, she looked as if her mind was moving a mile a second. He remembers that she was technically halfway to becoming a surgeon. Although she was planning to perform on children, her expression conveyed that she really did not give a shit.

Charlie rises from her position crouched over the couch and moves over to one of the wooden cabinets in the kitchen, grabbing a few plastic boxes with a multitude of fancy looking things inside and returning to him. She doesn’t say anything - doesn’t even look him  in the eye. He imagines if she does, she would just start to cry again and it would just generally be a bit of a pain to proceed with a makeshift surgery while also sobbing uncontrollably.

Charlie unbuttons his dress shirt soundlessly, fully revealing the horrific wound that the scooper had left. The lack of almost all of his organs, the fractured bones, the exposed muscle. Her face darkens immediately, and she whispers something under her breath. “You need surgery Mike, I don’t even know how you’re alive.”

“It - It was at Dad’s old job,” he stutters out, “You know the one. Circus Baby? The sister location?”

She nods silently, and then her eyes widen ever so slightly. “Remnant.” she concludes suddenly, fixing Michael with an intense faze, “There’s - The remnant experiments were conducted at the sister location. Last year, remember?”

He pauses for a moment, contemplating what she had just said, and then, because he was much too alike with his dad than he’d like to admit, he  chuckles dryly. “Of all the things in this damned world,” he breathes, “I’m being kept alive by fucking remnant.”

Michael and Charlie are all too familiar with it - the experiments his dad included them in, the information he told them as if they were his fucking assistants in the whole shitshow. It was perpetually, painfully stuck in their minds, a constant reminder of all his father put them through. Before he went missing that is.

Charlie’s brows scrunch together - she was very expressive - and she lets out a breath. “I need to clean your wound.”

“Charlie,” Michael says flatly, “In case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t really much left for me right now.”

Her green eyes flare up with anger as she hears his words, and she smacks him on the shoulder. “Don’t say that.” she warns, her voice steely, “Don’t fucking say that to me.”

“It’s not like I can stop it - ”

“If you fucking leave me again,” she interrupts, her eyes tearing up yet another time,  nearly maniacal, “I’ll - I’ll - “ a sob breaks her words. Michael stares at her in confusion. 

Charlie stands up rather quickly, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but in front of a dying version of her best friend. 

“What are you talking about?” he asks, and if he wasn’t sure that she would physically wrestle him back onto the couch if he even attempted to get up, he would’ve done so immediately. 

She looks at him for a moment in a mix of disbelief of how utterly thick he was and concern over at what point he was a thick bastard. Then she scoffs at what seemed to be the world, wiping her eyes and crossing her arms as she gazes at him. “You’re a fucking idiot, aren’t you Mike?”

He blinks, frowning, “I think it’s rather rude to call a dying man an idiot.” Michael says.

“Yeah, you’re dying and you’re an idiot.” Charlie tells him, pulling a nearby chair from the dining table over back to him and sighing as she sat down on it, grabbing a saline solution from one of her boxes and lifting his shirt up again. “These statements can exist at the same time, you absolute moron.”

“I’m feeling quite attacked right now.” Michael announces, though there's a slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

She notices it immediately and rolls her eyes, “Leave it to Michael Afton to tell me jokes while half his motherfucking organs are missing.”

“You’re acting like it’s my fault.”

She meets his eyes. “Why the fuck were you in an abandoned restaurant? How did you manage to lose your organs? Why are you laughing about it?”

He doesn’t answer any of these questions, ignoring her completely and watching as she sprayed the solution onto the wound, wondering if she was just in denial about his inevitable, ever approaching death. 

She leans back and gazes at him, a strand of hair falling from her ponytail. Her hair had grown out, he thinks absently. It reached right below her rib cage now, a clear distinction from how short it was when they were 17. The contrast between the last time they had seen each other versus now was a little surprising. Still, she looked fucking beautiful.

“Take your shirt off, Mike.” Charlie says quite literally out of nowhere making him flush a bright shade of red as his eyes snap towards her incredulously.

“Pardon?” Michael had only ever used his manners when he was irrevocably taken aback.

She blinks in confusion, then her eyes widen like saucers as she looks away, completely flustered. “Oh my god, not like that.” 

“Charlie,” he says a bit breathless, but the opportunity was so clear, so he had to take it, “Are you asking me to undress?”

“Fuck off Mike.” she hisses, burying her head in her hands. “I should just leave you here. If you die I’ll be free of your horrible sex jokes.”

He barks out a laugh, his lungs practically exploding with the force applied. “No, no, I’ll do it.”

“Please shut up.” 

“Okay, wow, didn’t know you were into that. You want me to call you mommy too?”

“ Mike.” she rolls her eyes, though her cheeks were a furious shade of red, “I’m not having sex with a motherfucker missing half his organs.” Charlie looks at him curiously for a moment, then asks, “Do you even have a dick? Or did that get stolen by your fucking murder robot friend too?

He sends her a flat expression. “Yes I still have my - ” he looks down suddenly, then looks back up with the same face, “I do still have my dick. Thank you for your concern.”

She snickers, undoing the last of the buttons of his dress shirt, “Yeah, yeah, I’m so happy for you.”

Charlie helps him sit up properly, and he thinks that if he’s not careful his lungs (or maybe it’s just one lung, he doesn’t know) might fall out of him if he so much as stood vertically. But they don’t and with Charlie’s assistance, he removes his dress shirt, then the tank top underneath (but that was very much reduced to a mess of fabric by the scooper.) He imagined that Charlie would at the very least grimace at the state he was in, but her face was perfectly neutral, not a hint of emotion other than concern shown on her soft features.

Then, once he was shirtless and there was nothing blocking her from proceeding with whatever the hell she felt she had to do to attempt at keeping him alive, he was laid back onto the couch. 

She looks at him for a moment, then at his chest, then at his stomach. “I’m going to clean the - the wound - and then I’m going to bring you - ”

“Not to the hospital.” he says quickly in a rather hopeless voice, interrupting her, “Please, no hospitals.”

“Mike,” Charlie says in a stern tone, similar to the one she used to use when they had both worked at the old pizzeria, “In case you didn’t notice, you need a digestive system to survive.” 

“I don’t need anything to survive right now.” Michael tells her, a pleading look in his eyes. He hates hospitals for a number of reasons. One: death. Two: Evan. Three: Mamá. Two of the Aftons had passed in the hospital and watching his little brother die, his head wrapped in bandages, a coma enveloping his consciousness, was enough to keep him far far away from the place. “If I have remnant then the only thing I need is a functioning body.”“You’ll deteriorate.”

Charlie says softly, “Your body needs nutrients, you will quite literally start to eat your own muscles.”

They stare at each other for a moment in the low light that the old yellow lamp cast onto them, nothing but the radio from beside them and the pounding of the rain outside reaching their ears. Charlie meets his eyes, and he can see the exact moment she loses the hope that she had for him for good, the shine in her eyes flickering away.

Her eyes train on the saline in her hands blankly, as if she did not exist at all. Her voice is impossibly quiet, but he still manages to hear the words that escape her lips. “I’m not going to let you die on me Mike. I’ll save you, okay? And then I’m going to fucking kill your dad.”

His heart hammers against his chest wildly, he feels as though it might just jump out (and that would be kind of bad because he really does need as many organs as he could get). Michael does not know if he should be flattered or terrified because honestly, he had enough vengeful murderers in his life and he didn’t need another one. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Look at what he did to you!” Charlie snaps, gesturing at the entirety of his body, “He ruined your life!” “Have some faith Charlie- ”

“ Screw faith! I’m a doctor, we can’t have faith! We have facts and science. That fucking - ” she stops, at loss for words to convey just how fucking livid she was. “You don’t deserve this.”

He doesn’t answer that.

Charlie looks at him, “You don’t deserve him.” She repeats earnestly. “You know that.”

When he doesn’t respond again, she more or less grabs  him by the head, her face rather close to his and asks, “Mike, you don’t think you deserve this, do you?”

Michael realizes, a bit slowly in hindsight, that tears were streaking down his face silently. His eyes sting with the feeling of them flowing outwards. Charlie’s face practically crumples.

“Mike,” she says once, and then crushes him into a warm embrace. If she could hold him tighter without maybe accidentally killing him, she would’ve. He can hear her heartbeat, and then his, beating against his chest. When he was a lot younger, when Elizabeth was just a baby, his father used to put Michael’s hand to his chest and ask him what he felt. He would say his heartbeat. Then William would smile (it always made him impossibly happy when he saw his father smile because of him) and say that it meant that he was alive. And the fact that he was alive and his heart was beating was one of the few things that mattered. 

“He sent me there,” Michael says softly, “knowing that I was going to die.”

“You’re not dead Mike,” Charlie whispers into his hair, squeezing him once, “You’re not dead, you’re not dead, you’re alive, you’re still here.” She kisses him on the side of his head, then she pulls away and does the same on his temple, his right cheek, and then his other. “You’re with me, and you’re not gonna fucking leave me again, you’re mi - ” Charlie stops, as if the next words that would’ve left her mouth were blasphemy. She settles on burying her head in the crook of his neck and holding him again. 

“Love,” Michael says in a hoarse voice, “If you don’t mind, I still kind of need to close my stomach.”

She pulls away immediately, smiling at him bashfully. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’ll numb the area. Lie back down - I’ll fix it.”

“I still have no organs.”

“I’d rather I actually try to stop you from hitting the dust than just let you die because science goes against your existence as anything but a dead man.”

He smiles lazily, “You’re so nice Charlie.”

She snickers slightly, patting down his skin after numbing it, and pulling out her stitches. “Glad to be of service.”

Watching her work on his body, humming under her breath to the tune of whatever song that came from the radio, her eyes sharp and diligent with every move her hand made, the control and a little bit of hopelessness that he saw in her expression, Michael Afton thinks that he’s never seen a girl so beautiful. 

“You’re really pretty.” Michael tells her as she’s finishing up the last of the stitches. He doesn’t know whether it’s the fact that his mind had become muddled with the music that played from the radio (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) or the scent of medicine and rain that enveloped his sense of smell, but he does find it in himself to tell her this.

She isn’t phased in the slightest, only sparing a small smile. “Flatterer.”

“Is that all?” he pouts from his position on the couch, “I’m so hurt.”

Charlie snorts, “If you didn’t know, I am strictly prohibited from flirting with my patients.” she winks, “Call it a moral code if you’d like.”

“Ah yes, Charlie Emily is under her strict moral code inside her house as she performs on her oldest friend with nobody around.”

She lets out a light laugh. “Stop distracting me Mike, I’m not finished.”

“It’s been like 20 minutes,” he whines and he’s rather aware that he sounds like Elizabeth (and she was like, 6, so this might not be the best thing). “Don’t be such a baby,” Charlie tells him with a slight roll of her eyes. 

“You’re three weeks older than me.” Michael reminds her flatly.

“And yet I could be your wise old wizard mentor in terms of maturity” 

He sticks his tongue out. “This is what I get for calling you pretty,” She sighs, and with a final flick of her hand, she finishes the very last stitch and leans back in her chair. Charlie sends an obviously tired look at him. “Do you want me to call you pretty too?” she asks.

Michael laughs. “It would be nice, yeah.” 

She does a little laugh, where a small breath leaves her nose as she smiles at him. Charlie leans forward, resting her chin on her hand and meets him with a fond gaze. “You’re also rather pretty Mikey.”

He beams, “Thank you very much my love.”

Her cheeks have a slight dusting of pink on them at the last nickname. “You’re very welcome pretty boy.”

He groans, letting his head fall backwards, “Don’t call me that.”

“It’s cute!” she insists, standing up from her chair and bringing the boxes back into the kitchen. “And I’m not lying.”

“I thought you said you don’t flirt with patients,” Michael questions, shifting ever so slightly so that he was sitting mostly up, his back against the back of the red couch. 

Charlie returns, pulling the hair tie off of her long, light brown hair, a bowl of frozen cherries in her left hand. “Hm, I’ll guess I’ll make an exception for you.”

“I am ever so honoured.” he says dramatically, a playful grin on his face.

Charlie sits down beside him, passing him a cherry. He gives her a questioning look, she just shrugs. “Maybe you can still taste it.” is all she says.

Michael Afton can, in fact, still taste cherries and this revelation is met with a mini celebration from the two young adults. Not teenagers. Michael throwing up a thumbs up and Charlie shooting her arms into the air with a small cheer. When he looks at the smile that graces her lips, he does think that she’s the most amazing woman ever. Then they decide that he really shouldn’t swallow it, considering the fact that he did not have a digestive system.

He leans closer, “Alright Dr. Emily, hit me with your worst breach of your flirting rules.”

She snorts, but does move a little closer to his face. “I think you’re just trying to get me to flirt with you.”

“Would you blame me?”

“Yeah.” she answers immediately, sticking her tongue out at him.

He lets out a sharp laugh, “I haven’t seen you since last summer,” Michael says, “I missed you.”

Charlie falters for a moment, blinking twice, then her gaze flickers around his face as if taking in his existence in front of her. She recovers quickly enough,

“Did you miss me or the things we did?”

Michael rolls his eyes, falling backwards. “God knows I’m absolutely horrid at dancing - I don’t even know why you asked me. It’s obviously you - do you know how humbling it is to dance with someone trained by my mother?”

“Did your mom not also try to teach you?”

He sends her a look. “Yeah, she tried. Unfortunately, I inherited my father’s lack of skill. Along with many other things.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing.” Charlie says, laughing.

“Well it’s the excuse I’m giving because I think it’s even worse if I’m just like on my own accord.”

She snorts, “Alright then, I’ll take your word for it.”

He pauses, then grins at her, “Shall we resume the undressing part of tonight then?” 

Charlie throws his shirt at his face, rolling her eyes as he dissolved into laughter. “Fuck you Mike. Your stomach would collapse.”

Michael shoves his arms through the sleeves but leaves the buttons undone (he is truly atrocious at handling those dastardly creations) He’s about to say something else when the radio begins to play a different song. One that they were all too familiar with.

“It’s Been A Long, Long Time.” Michael says, and then he smiles at Charlie. “Didn’t take your emo songs out of this?”

She smacks his knee in retaliation, “If you didn’t know, I’m the only one in this house that listens to this when I’m in an emo phase. It’s actually rather normal to listen to these casually.”

Kiss me once, then kiss me twice,

“Then kiss me once again,” Charlie sings, as Michael attempted at getting up (he failed) and as she laughed at his failure. 

From the couch, he continues the song. “It’s been a long, long time.” 

“You sound wonderful.” Charlie says in between the lines.

“And you’re a wonderful liar.” he tells her, grinning.

She stands up, pulling him up and steadying him on his shaky feet. “Haven’t felt like this before since can’t remember when,” she croons, beaming up at him.

“It’s been a long, long time.” Michael pauses, thenasks her, “Am I just going to be getting the boring parts of this song?”

She laughs, turning up the volume to the radio and returning to his arms, placing hers on his shoulders and tilting her head. “Would you like a dance?” she inquires in a mock low voice, trying to sound like a British gentleman (it was horrendous, Michael thinks, she had probably awoken the ghosts of the royal family).

“For old times sake,” he says, but they both know that that was a lie, and it was probably the last time they’d get to hold each other like this.

They dance, it’s entirely amazing, and it's exactly like last summer. Charlie looking wonderful, her steps graceful and precise. Michael looking like an idiot, stumbling every other beat.

“How have you been my love?” he asks quietly, spinning her around. 

Charlie nods her head, “Well, finals have absolutely destroyed my soul, so I’ve been better.”

Michael barks out a sharp laugh, “Sorry about that.”

“I’m doing better than you though.” Charlie says, “Your organs are missing.”

If they were to become world-class comedians around this, the fact wouldn’t be so morbid, they think. And so this is the thought process they proceed with. Michael grins, wiggling his eyebrows, “Don’t worry, I’m getting used to it. I’m simply one of a kind.”

“Which is why you’re my favourite.” she tells him, arms wrapping around his neck. They stay in the same spot, swaying slightly. Her eyebrows move upwards, and then she dreamily smiles. “I do love you Mike.” Charlie says softly.

“I love you too.” She stills, then she pulls his head closer so as it were bent in her direction. “You still don’t know what I was trying to do,” she starts, looking into his eyes, “last summer, do you?”

“Trying  not to notice how I stepped on your feet every other second?” he asks, a light chuckle escaping her as he gazes down at her. It’s warm - the sun of her world is brilliantly fond of her very existence.

She doesn’t really know if she wants to throttle him or herself, but she thinks that accidentally killing someone wouldn’t be too good for her career so she just laughs morbidly. “I think I’ll just accept my defeat.” “You confuse me every time we see each other.” “And yet you know me so well.” 

They both look at each other and then dissolve into giggles like they were damn teenagers (and to be fair, they still felt like that), clutching onto each other as the chorus picked up again and Michael spins her around, and again, and again, and she’s laughing so hard that she falls into his arms as he dips her low. “Have you been dancing with girls at your fancy little college?” Charlie asks, a grin on her lips as she looks up at it. She looks absolutely dazzling.

He snickers, “You expect a lot from me, don’t you?”

“There’s no way no one has asked you to a dance.” Charlie says as they both rise and begin to sway again, but they’re significantly closer than before.

“Oh I was asked,” he acknowledges, “I just have trauma from the last time a pretty girl asked me to dance. I don’t know if you know her - she was gorgeous.” She beams, clearly amused, “You’re a moron.”

“Uh huh.”

Charlie’s smile subsides but there’s something so incredible in the way in which she looks up at him like he was the sun and she was the Earth. A constant dance, fate tied to each other. “British bastard.”

His face falls into one of complete annoyance. “I hate you so much.” “Nah,” she giggles, leaning closer, “You love me.” “It’s a sickness,” Michael tells her, “I’m working on a cure.” And then he twirls her around her again and for some reason, Charlie seems to have the time of her life when he does this, and so he does it again and again until she’s in a dizzy daze in her living room, arms wrapping around his neck as she falls into his embrace. Her eyes meet his, a radiant smile on her face, “I can’t ever get tired of you, you fucking Brit.”

“Ah, guess we’re stuck together then.” Michael chuckles. “My amazing best friend.” “If we’re stuck together we might as well get married.” He looks at her, an amused look on his face. “Charlie, I’m dying. You’re not supposed to marry a dying man.” She waves him off, but there’s a sadness behind her eyes that he recognizes. “Excuses. Come on then, kiss your bride.” He has quite literally no idea if she is joking or not. “That’s a safety hazard.” Michael decides to tell her.

She sends him a deadpanned look, her eyebrows forming a perfectly straight line, “Mike, I am well aware that you don’t care about safety hazards.” He lets out a raucous laughter. “You want to get married in the middle of your dad’s living room, half my organs missing, in your pyjamas, to a zombie man.” “You make it sound a lot worse than it is.” Charlie says, and then she smiles like what was happening was a dream. Or that might be the after effects of Michael spinning her into a human turntable. “Are you not going to kiss me? The last night you’re alive?”

Michael is aware that there is a very large possibility that she is joking, but as he looks into her soft eyes (they really are a beautiful colour - an earthy green, it has the same calming energy that Henry’s does), and then they flicker to her lips for a split second. “Charlie, I’m going to die. I don’t deserve you.”

Charlie seems to take that as a sign that he’s the thickest man she has ever had both the pleasure and immense misfortune of meeting, and so she slides her hands over to his face, gazing at him intensely as her eyebrows furrow and with a sudden determined expression crossing her face she cups cheek softly. “You’re an idiot and fucking Brit.” she says for the umpteenth time tonight, really solidifying this fact to be honest. “I truly have no idea why I tried to get you to stay with me last summer by dancing, seeing as you're the an actual moron." Charlie sighs, then she smiles dreamily as his face flushes a hundred different colours of red. "I really can't believe you're the boy I fell in love with."

When she kisses him, Michael is sure that he’s never met someone so brilliant.

[rose2jam]

Why It Was Practically Inevitable That Severus Snape Would Join A Cult, an essay by Rose Jam

So, let’s talk about Cults. Disclaimer: This is just information I’ve gathered over the years from my personal fascination with religious cults.  I’m in no way an expert or a psychologist or whatever.  This is just my personal understanding from the research I’ve done.

A cult is started when a wildly charismatic Leader feels like they have a purpose, a higher calling, or a mission to be fulfilled (or they could also just be an egomaniac). Maybe they really do feel like what makes them special comes directly from a higher power, be that God, or the Heir of Slytherin, but either way, this person has a pathological need to be worshiped, and they need followers in order to do that.  

So, how does one obtain Followers easily? By finding the misunderstood misfits of society, and promising them something.  The people who feel like no one else understands them, or their ideologies.  But this Leader?  This Leader GETS IT, MAN! The Leader understands them perfectly, vindicates them, and makes them promises along the way.  Like, if they stick with the Leader, then not only will they finally be understood, but they themselves will also be revered.  That they will rise above all of the others who have put them down for so long, and will come out on top as a superior being.  

Any of this sounding familiar?

Charles Manson preyed on young people in the middle of the hippie movement, mostly women, who were feeling lost, lonely, and in need of guidance, or in terms of the men he recruited, seeking power over others.  Not all of these people were poor or helpless; some of them came from middle class, or even rich homes and families.  Yes, some of them came from broken homes, but all of them felt “broken” themselves, in some way. So Manson used their desires to have a family to draw them in.  He then used LSD and other drugs to keep them under his control, and he created a manipulative environment where the members of his “family” felt they could never leave him, and if they didn’t follow his commands, something horrible would happen to them.  I’m not going to go into full detail on the Manson Family Murders, but if you’re personally interested, check out the Podcast “Cults” on Spotify.

So back to basics, this Leader draws in Followers with flowery promises of community, power, family, or whatever.  But once the Leader has that following, the terror will begin.  Cult Leaders are usually master manipulators, and have completely brainwashed their followers into believing the “us vs them” mentality, that the outside world is evil, that the outside world will only harm them, that the outside world would never understand what they’re doing on the inside.  And that the Leader is the only one who knows the truth, so they better stick with him.  Or maybe the Leader has gaslit his followers so completely, that they become dependent on him for everything, to the point where they don’t know how they would possibly function without the Leader.  Or, the Leader has created an environment that’s so hostile, that Followers are too afraid of what might happen to them if they tried to leave, or didn’t do what the Leader commanded.  Typically, it’s a combination of all of the above.  Destructive cults will either hurt others outside of their circle (The Manson Family, Sect of Nacozari), harm themselves (Heaven’s Gate, The Ant Hill Kids), or both (The People’s Temple, Aum Sinrikyo).  

Now that I’ve laid this foundation, I’m going to tell you why it was practically inevitable that Severus Snape would join a cult.

Snape’s childhood ultimately laid the foundation for the mental state he would be in when he decided to join the Death Eaters.  He grew up in an abusive household, where his father, the muggle, had his magical wife so thoroughly whipped, that she couldn’t (or chose not to) use magic to defend herself, or her son (1).  Eileen had obviously told Severus about magic, about Hogwarts, about what a wonderful place it was, and what a wonderful gift magic could be.  Severus also watched as Tobias beat the magic out of her.  (I know it’s debated whether Tobias actually physically abused his family, but he certainly verbally/mentally/emotionally abused them, so the term “beat” could be used figuratively as well).  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that Severus developed an extreme hatred of muggles with “burn the witch” mentalities from a very young age because of this.

Enter Lily, perhaps the only other magical person in his life besides his mother up to this point. He sees her using magic out in the open, perhaps recklessly, for fun, and he sees an opportunity to make a friend (and, admittedly, to be smarter than someone about something for a while). He was so eager to tell her all about magic, because getting to learn magic, and go to Hogwarts, has possibly been the only thing keeping him going in his young life.  And now he’s made a friend, a real friend who doesn’t think he’s weird because he’s magical.  Unlike Petunia, yet another muggle who makes fun of him for being weird (2). And Lily actually seems to like him back.  For a kid who probably hasn’t received a lot of affection in his life, this is monumental.  This friendship is everything.  Why wouldn’t he love her?

So the time finally comes to go to Hogwarts.  Severus gets to escape his abusive household, and finally has an opportunity to embrace magic for the first time in his life.  But almost immediately, he’s met with a hic-up.  Specifically, James Potter and Sirius Black.  So Severus is no longer facing abuse exclusively from muggles who think he’s weird, but now he’s also getting it from other magical people who think he’s weird (3).  And this started on the fucking TRAIN before he even GOT to Hogwarts. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t sour a kids dream right off the fucking bat.  And then, when he finally gets there, he’s separated from his only friend, by being sorted into different houses (4).  What a way for a life-long dream to be thoroughly dashed in less than 24 hours.

Let’s look at Snape’s Hogwarts experience.  He’s a good student, and he pours himself into learning as much magic as possible, and at being the best he can possibly be, probably motivated by a desire to be better than what his Father thinks possible.  During this time, he is regularly bullied and abused by the Marauders. Sometime before his 5th year, the Incident at the Shrieking Shack took place.  It definitely sucks to have been so thoroughly fucking duped, and put into a life-threatening situation involving a goddamn werewolf (5).  But perhaps even worse than that, the salt in the wound, was that no one fucking did anything about it (6).  He saw Sirius and James and Remus get out of that situation without facing any sort of proper punishment (as in, they all still stayed at the school as opposed to being expelled like they DEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE BEEN (At least Sirius should have been)). Dumbledore was looking out for the Marauders, but no one was looking out for Severus.  On top of that, Severus isn’t allowed to TELL anyone about it, not even Lily.  So, he goes through what was possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, and he can’t even tell anyone that it happened.

So, what sort of support system does Severus have during all this?  He has Lily, sure (who literally told him he should be GRATEFUL to James, one of his abusers).  But, what he really has, is Slytherin House (7). I’ll say it plainly: Severus was sorted into a house that was already full of existing cult members.  McGonagall says in Sorcerer’s Stone that “Your house will be like your family” (she at least says it in the movies, I’m too lazy to get up and reference my books rn lol).  So, Severus’ family, his support system, for 10 months out of every year, is a house that is already full to the brim with pureblood elitists with prejudiced ideals, who would absolutely vindicate Severus in his dislike for muggles.  As a kid first getting sorted into the house, it’s obviously not unreasonable to become friends with the people you’re literally living with.  His dorm mates became his family.  So, when his dorm mates started to become Death Eaters… This is headcanon, I fully admit, but like, fuck, Severus didn’t have a lot of friends, and was probably already drifting apart from Lily.  Do you really think he was going to tell the people he had to live with every single day, not to mention the only people that had been supporting him for years, to go fuck themselves for using Dark Magic?  Especially when he was probably feeling like he was on the verge of thinking that their rhetoric made some sense?

On to Snape’s Worst Memory (8).  At this point, he’s spent 5 years in Slytherin House, with fellow students who casually throw around the M word.  He gets attacked by James and Sirius, he’s practically defenseless, and then the girl who he’d considered his closest friend for so long… has to force herself not to smile when he’s thrown upside down and exposed to everyone on the grounds.  Sure, she was trying to defend him at first, but she also fucking nearly smiled at his humiliation, his pain, his abuse.  So he hurls the one word that he knows is going to cut the deepest, that will hopefully hurt her as badly as she has hurt him. And it works.

Severus had been beaten down his entire life.  By Muggles and Magic Folk alike.  And finally, he’s betrayed by Lily, his last lifeline to the light.  He betrayed her as well, of course.  But he did try to show remorse.  And she doesn’t forgive him (9), which was her prerogative, of course.  

So.  Who does he have left?

I’ve placed little (numbers) throughout my writing here.  Each of those numbers denote the specific events that led Severus to becoming an angry young man, who hates muggles, hates (some) magic folk, and resulted in him feeling weak, helpless, and desperate.  For what?  For power, for a family, for a community.  For a world where he is no longer the weird one.  For a world where he’s respected, strong.  For the world he thought he was going to be a part of, when he arrived at Hogwarts in his first year.

And it just so happens that this is the exact world that Voldemort is (allegedly) trying to create.

Severus Snape was angry, and vulnerable, and as such, he was practically the poster child for the type of person who would be susceptible to falling for a cult.  Maybe he was recruited by his friends in Slytherin House.  Maybe he was recruited directly.  Either way, charismatic Tom Riddle came along, understood how he felt, where he was coming from, told him he deserved better, and offered him all of the things he never had in his life.  And being at rock bottom, being the lowest of the low, to Severus it must have seemed like a miracle of an opportunity, or perhaps, like the only chance he had left.

Now, let me be extremely clear; everything I’ve written is not trying to EXCUSE Severus Snape for his actions.  There is always a point where personal responsibility must come into play.  Except for children born into cults or victims of kidnapping, nearly every person who has ever joined a cult has made the personal decision to join it. I’m just trying to express how unbelievably easy it is, for a Cult Leader to find people with damaged lives and low self-worth, to suck them in with promises of a fulfilling life and grandeur, and for those people to be easily swept up and brainwashed into believing that what they are doing is right.  (Or that what they are doing is required, because the alternative is more horrifying.)  

The type of people who joined the Death Eaters are the same type of people who joined Heaven’s Gate, or The People’s Temple, or yes, The Manson Family.  Now, I’m just going to say, from my own personal point of view, I do not vilify anyone who’s ever joined a destructive cult.  On the contrary, I feel sorry for them.  Because most people who join a cult, don’t necessarily do it signing up for the… end result of what happened to them.  Some of them totally do, like Heaven’s Gate. Most of them knew that the end result was going to be the “evacuation of their earthly vessel”.  But the people who joined the Manson Family, for instance, did not initially join it KNOWING how it was going to end.  They were part of the family long before Manson even came up with Helter Skelter, and by the time the Tate-LaBianca Murders took place, they were already too far gone to go against it.

I highly recommend anyone who’s interested in a humanizing view of former cult members, to read the essay “Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship” by John Waters. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leslie-van-houten-a-frien_b_246953

Or, at the very least, listen to this 7 minute NPR interview with John Waters about the essay https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111585116

It’s the story of how notorious film maker John Waters, became friends with former Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten, and about how she broke away from the cult after her conviction, how she’s spent the last 51 years of her life recovering from the psychotic influence of a maniac who’d promised her the world, and how even though she was convicted to life WITH a possibility of parole, it’s never been granted to her, despite the fact that she has done literally everything possible to try and atone for her crimes.

Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart.  I’m pretty much the only person I know who feels sorry for Leslie Van Houten and other cult members who were brainwashed, abused, and manipulated into doing a lot of the horrible things they’ve done.  But there are people in the world, who have committed FAR more heinous crimes than the Manson Family murders, and who are far less repentant than Leslie, but because those crimes weren’t as notorious, they get to walk free.

Addendum: When I first posted this, I had a few people point out to me that they had always associated Voldemort and the Death Eaters with Hitler and Nazi Germany.  This is a perfectly fair point, but one that I personally don’t jive with, and the reason is simply the numbers.   There were literally millions of people in the Nazi party during WW2.   Death Eaters don’t even reach triple digits, as far as I’m aware.  As I hinted at in this essay, I consider Voldemort and the Death Eaters to be MUCH closer to Charles Manson and the Manson Family.  The Manson Family 100% had Nazi ideology, of course. "Helter Skelter” was Charles Manson’s prediction that there was going to be a massive race war; one that the Whites were going to lose, and that he and his Pure White family would emerge from it in order to rule over the remaining Blacks.  Kinda... sounds like a Death Eater thing, huh?

Sorry.  Back to Snape.  There is a lot we don’t know about Severus’ actual time as a Death Eater. I think it can be reasonably assumed he’s never actually killed anyone before Dumbledore (In Prince’s Tale, Severus questions if his soul would be safe from killing Dumbledore, and Dumbledore implies that his soul would not be damaged by helping an old man avoid pain and humiliation.  This leads me to believe that Severus never committed any soul-damaging murders before this).  Beyond being a sneaky spy and delivering the prophecy to Voldemort, his time as a Death Eater is all up for conjecture.  

Severus does make one important deviation from the typical cult member mold, however.  In the end, he manages to break away from the cult.  The scales fall from his eyes.  In a figurative sense, the LSD has worn off.  What made him sober up, was the threat to his last lifeline to the light. The one good fucking thing he’d ever had in his miserable life.  He was brought back by genuine love.  Ya know, the ENTIRE MESSAGE OF THE HP SERIES. And not only did he leave the cult, but he then spent the rest of his life actively attempting to destroy it, and atone for the mistakes he’s made, in an effort to bring back the world he’d been excited for, as an 11-year-old kid, so full of hope.

[necros-writing-stuff]

You opened this can of worms. Now lay in it.

But I’m all seriousness if you have time can you do the wedding ask but with Kylar, Whitney, and great Hawk (I just think I’d be funny to try and explain a wedding to a harpy)

Aight here we go, part two electric boogaloo

NSFW below

Great Hawk

So, so confused. Does not get it, these strange landstrider ways of signing things.

Of getting permission from people to love.

Perfectly happy stealing you ring after ring until they find a perfect one though. If you want pretty jewellery, the harpy is more than happy to provide.

Its gonna be impossible to get the harpy into a dress or tux. Impossible to get them into town and find a venue or do anything normal.

And getting an official out in the moors? You better be paying good money.

But say you do do all that, manage to escort some poor priest or whatever to the tower, Great Hawk may get a little territorial. 

Once you calm them down, they’ll allow the person inside. If it will make you happy, they suppose. 

“Don’t worry about a witness,” the officiate says, obviously uncomfortable and wanting away from the situation.

If you dress up, Great Hawk will smother you in compliments, their mate looks amazing! So excellently preened!

The officiate goes through the words as quickly as they can, jumping when, instead of saying vows, the harpy screeches a song that declares their love for you.

You sign the presented papers, helping the harpy put their mark down, too. and the officiate runs off so they don’t have to risk their sanity any longer.

Buying a radio so the two of you can have a dance, sing along. Maybe even buying a small cake and feeding it to them, delighting in how they react to the sweet taste.

Great Hawk could fly you anywhere you wanted for a honeymoon. But what about the nest? Maybe you should wait till winter, then you two can find a nice spot somewhere warm.

Excited to mate that night, stripping your clothes and laying you down so they can breed you full of chicks. Tries to keep your clothes pristine for you.

Very thorough in their treatment of you, caresses your body and praising your everything.

You’re not entirely sure Great Hawk gets what happened. You’re still happy though, and so are they, knowing that you’re bound by their ways and yours.

Kylar

Oh this fucker planned.

Years and years in advance.

I’m talking slide shows, binders, cut-out collages of outfits and themes.

Proposes to you. The ring is goddamn expensive, and its perfect because of course it is.

The proposal was more of a formality, a definite put the plan into motion moment, you’ve always been bound to marry.

Lets you check the plans over, any changes you need to make are okay. Its your big day, too.

So happy to tour venues, to try catering, to find outfits. Everyone can see how excited Kylar is, how proud they are that they get to marry you.

Tells. Fucking. Everyone.

Old lady on the bus? Told. Local butcher? An earful. Don’t bring them to any poetry events, they’ll claim the mic to tell the whole room.

Really wants a Halloween themed wedding. Wants the two of you dressed like Gomez and Morticia, or Victor and Emily, or Jack and Sally.

If you let them do that, they’ll cry from joy and start practicing make-up every day so its perfect.

Don’t worry about price, they’ve got that covered.

The day comes and Kylar can’t wait to see you. Does not obey the traditional don’t see each other thing, will drag you off to touch you.

Most of the people from school are banned. Especially Whitney. May allow Robin, if you’ve assured them that you’re just friends.

Kylar’s family is there, they’re an interesting bunch. Rich, some a bit condescending. If this is your first time meeting his parents (unlikely) then I agree with the headcanon that one of them is probably just like Kylar - and gushes over you. Their little baby is getting a spouse all of their own.

Done in a church, even if its been dressed up in spiders webs and other stuff like that (if you let Kylar theme it).

Every guest is in costume, too.

If the PC is given away, then again you could use Bailey. They’ll smile and wave, knowing they can socialise and use it to their advantage. But I would find it funny if Doren does it, briefly telling you they were worried about Kylar in school, but you look so happy now! That's wonderful!

Kylar cries. Almost sobbing. Their mother/father stand beside them with tissues.

Records the wedding.

Personal vows. Its a poem, of course. Its not like the racy ones in English. Its heartfelt, beautiful, been drafted over and over again till it looked wrong and then right again,

One of you is getting dipped in the kiss. Be careful not to drop each other.

Honeymoon in Japan!

Going to the official stores of games you like, cat cafes, Kylar spending so long in the arcade.

Of course marathon sex. They’re not letting you go. You’ll be finding it hard to walk, room service being the only thing keeping you going.

Already said ‘I love you’ a thousand times during sex, now says it a million.

Time to start planning for babies, they’ll point out. They also have slideshows for that.

Whitney

You know how people get really drunk and do it impulsively? Yeah.

It would be on a trip out to some foreign country, you’re their slut so of course you get to come with. Doesn’t admit to having saved up for so long to take you away somewhere, just the two of you.

Parties hard throughout the vacation, taking advantage of the hot climate to dress in as little as possible, and wants to fuck you anywhere they can.

Until you wake up one night to find a signed marriage certificate with your names on it and a whole lot of missing memories.

Finds a camera, flicks though it to find out the two of you got married the night before. You’re dressed up in the worst outfits they’ve ever seen, but you’re smiling so wide, the kiss looks so full of love.

Oh look you took photos of the consummation, too.

Divorces are expensive, you know. Besides, not like you’re leaving them anytime soon. Its convenient to stay married.

Years down the line you could convince Whitney to do a proper ceremony. A recital, just so you can have one you remember.

They give in, and let you plan. But dear God are they nervous.

Terrified to tell their family. Doesn’t really want them there, scared they’ll say something to you. But if you insist.

Jokes about inviting Leighton for a brief second before deciding against. Bastard would show up and ruin everything, knowing them.

Almost runs off. Even if you’re already married, if its just a little ceremony with close people, Whitney feels vulnerable. Their friends will be there, will they think they’re weak?

But they suck it up and go to the recital.

Tries not to cry when they see you. Fails. Quickly wipes their face before anyone can see. Everyone already saw.

Whispers their vows to you. So quiet everyone leans in, but you hear them perfectly. They mean it when they say they love you, and you can only tell further when you go to place the ring on their finger to find a black band a writing around where the ring goes.

Its your name. Tattooed in a band, around their finger.

Okay now you’re both crying.

The after party is one hell of a show. Even if the venue, the food, the DJ aren't expensive, Whitney and their friends make it so that it isn't dull.

The best man’s speech is embarrassing for both of you, whether its your best friend (Robin, probably) or Whitney’s recounting something like you two stabbing at each other with protractors in Maths.

At one point you hear Whitney’s friends congratulate them. Telling them its okay they cried, they’re all happy for them.

The honeymoon? The place you got married in the first place. And you’re going to recreate the photos from the night, too.

Whipped cream and strawberries. Whitney covers you in it, licks it off and is eager to try other food-related kinks with you.

Whitney is very happy they didn’t run.

[hikarimiyanaga]

Loving You (Wanda Maximoff/Reader)

Summary : The worst that could ever happen just happened to you.

You were a beta. Being an omega could’ve been better but no, God decided to fuck you up.

In a world, where Alphas and Omegas are considered the best, being a beta meant that you were just going to be an average person. Always in the middle.

People don’t look the same at you. You had potential. At the top of your classes, taking all of the AP Classes. Now, you doubt that even Colleges would consider you.

Ever since, Asami Sato has proven that even Omegas can change the world, people have been considering them as equal to Alphas… but never Betas. When has a Beta ever change the world?

So you shut up and hide from the world as you try to graduate and maybe get a job in your Family’s Company, R Firm.

But a chance encounter with a gorgeous Omega will change everything up.

-

Warnings : Omegaverse. Beta!Reader x Omega!Wanda Maximoff.

-

New series! After a month. College does seem to hate me that much.

You sigh as you trudge the halls of your high school. It was lunch break and almost everyone is in the cafeteria, obviously not you, though. You’ve been reading inside the library when Miss Danvers kicked you out, saying that she needs her lunch break too. You sigh and sit in front of your locker. You open up your book and begin reading.

Reading is one of the only things you could enjoy these days… you still remember the day you got your evaluation test.

-

You tremble as you stare at your test result. You were a beta. Tears spring up in your eyes but you quickly wipe them away. You could hear some people cry and some sniffle. You guess they were betas too.

“Y/LN?” You stop and turn to Janine Rivera, she was one of the juniors. A popular Omega who is in your AP English Class.

“Yes?”

“Do you want to-?” You stop and gulp. Janine cuts off herself and gets your test result. You don’t fight her because it’s better to just rip the band-aid off. She scoffs and shoves the result back to you. “Megan!” Another girl looks at Janine. “Cross off Y/LN! She’s a Beta!” She shouts and everyone quiets down. You take a deep breath and walk off. The murmurs then start. You feel tears again in your eyes and you wipe them away again.

You walk home because inside your school felt so suffocating. People were going home anyway to tell their families their evaluation result. As you stood in front of your house, you feel your stomach cave in. You’re afraid to face your parents. Your Alpha Mother would surely get angry. Even your Omega ma would look at you with disappointment. Your two Alpha sisters would get disgusted. Just imagining their reactions make you cry.

“Y/N?” Your sister, Alsie, gets out of her car and you cry even more. She quickly kneels besides you. “What’s wrong!?” You refuse to answer so she guides you inside. “Ma!?” Your Omega Mother, Dahlia rushes downstairs and gets to you.

“Y/N!? Are you okay?”

“M-ma.” You stutter and cry even more. Your other sister, Valerie, gets downstairs too and fusses over you. You faint and they panic even more.

When you came to your sense, you’re in the living room with your Alpha Mother, Zale, is hovering over you. She sighs in relief and shouts that you’re okay. She was about to leave and you bite your lip as you grab her arm.

“Mom.” You say weakly and Dahlia gives you a glass of water. You sit up and gulp it down in one go.

“What’s wrong, little one?” Zale asks gently and you try not to cry again. God, their gentle affections and kindness, will it go away once you tell them what you really are? That you’re just a Beta and not like them? Will they throw you out? Disown you? You take a deep breath and you look at them.

“I-I” You tremble and put the glass on the coffee table. “I’m a Beta.” You look down and clench your fists, waiting for their reply.

“Oh, Jesus, it was just her evaluation result.” You look up and see as your all of your family collectively sigh in relief.

“Damn it, Y/N, don’t scare us like that.”

“My little sister is a goddamn drama queen, who freaking guessed?” Zale slaps Valerie softly on her arm.

“Why were you so afraid, anak?”

“I thought you guys would get angry and disown me.” You sniffle and Dahlia quickly hushes you and hugs you.

“Y/N, little one, that doesn’t matter to us.”

“Dude, that’s like the least of our concerns.”

“Oh? What matters most then, Val?” Valerie glares at Alsie and look away. “Your potential mate, that girl call-“ Valerie screeches and attacks Alsie who dodges quickly. You laugh at their antics and everyone looks relieved at you. They hug you and you hug them back. Grateful that they accepted you.

-

You were just humming to a song that’s been stuck inside your head when someone calls out.

“Excuse me?” You look up and gulp. The girl looked stunning and words seem to be stuck in your mouth. It felt like everything around you was moving slowly.

“Y-yes?” God, human interaction was not a daily occurrence for you, people tended to avoid you like the plague in School and the house is quieter now that both Zale and Alsie are off to college. Both of your moms never push you to talk about anything and simply bonds with you through food and TV.

“Can you tell me where I would find this classroom?” She pushes the schedule onto you and you hum. You knew the school halls like the back of your hand, it was easier to navigate that way. You felt your heart beat faster as you give it back.

“Yeah. You should take a left there and it should be the fourth room on the right.” You point it out and she nods. She smiles at you and you feel your heart skip a beat.

“Thanks, stranger.” You nod.

“Wanda!” Someone calls out and you both turn to the newcomer. “You know where the classroom is?”

Yeah. Come on.” They both turn to leave and you stare after them. Wanda looks back and waves at you. You simply put your hand up in a lame attempt to reciprocate.

“Fuck.” You whisper softly and put your hand to your chest. You will yourself to calm down before resuming to read your book.

-

You yawn as you step inside the cafeteria. It’s been a week since you gave Wanda directions… a week since and you’ve been avoiding her. Every time she would wave her hand at you, you’ll turn to the other direction. Anytime she tries to call you, you would run the other way. It was hard since she’s practically a dog just begging for your attention… this is why you really prefer cats.

You get a tray and get your usual lunch. You’re not in the library since Miss Danvers apparently quitted and even though students usually man the counter, you’ve decided to eat like a normal person this day.

“Hey!” Wanda calls out and you felt your stomach drop. She was with the Avengers. They were the most popular group in school, even more than Seniors despite being Sophomores like you.

Tony and Vision Stark are smart, and people are saying that they’re going to take the world in a few years. With Stark Industries, they might as well do that.

Natasha Romanoff is the heir to the Romanoff Airlines, and she has been basically to everywhere and knows many languages.

Angel Garcia is one of the only people who seem to take every AP classes like you. She’s a smart Omega that you have no doubt will take the world in a storm. Some says she’s a power Omega to Natasha.

Pepper Potts is already showing signs of a great businesswoman and is already interning at Stark Industries. She’s the soulmate of Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers is another example of a power Omega, with his buff body and being the captain and quarterback of the football team.

James ‘Bucky’ Barnes is an Alpha who is also the ace of the Basketball team. He’s the Alpha of Steve Rogers.

Thor Odinson is an Alpha who can make girls wet their panties without doing anything but existing. He’s the heir to Mjolnir Constructions.

Sam Wilson is an Alpha who loves flying more than anything else, he’s father is a pilot at Romanoff Airlines.

You gulp and turn away from her. Walking to a smaller table with no one. You turn to look and see Wanda’s disappointed face. You sigh as you eat and take your phone out. You read fanfics as you eat your lunch.

It’s not like the Betas at the school have not invited you to eat with them but you preferred to be alone, talking to no one and be in your own world.

-

Wanda sighs and turns back to their table.

“Something wrong, младшая сестра?” Pietro asks and Wanda huffs. She gets her tray and was about to go to you when Sam grabs her arm.

“I wouldn’t go to Y/LN. She’s a Beta.” She stops at that and pulls away from him.

“So what? Is that a sin?” Natasha scoffs at Wanda.

“It means she’s a trying hard nobody.” Wanda glares at her and Natasha smiles.

“She’s still in most of the AP classes though.” Angel says and Tony scoffs.

“Only because her mom and sisters threatened to sue if they didn’t let her.”

“Jesus, what a spoiled brat.” Wanda’s eye twitches at that and she drags Pietro away from them.

“THOSE are you new friends?”

“Yeah? They’re the coolest people, Wands, trust me.”

“Coolest? They’re judging someone based on their second gender.”

“It’s the truth, though.” Wanda crosses her arms and Pietro shrugs. “Betas are just average people, Wands, don’t put too much faith in them.” Wanda huffs and looks at you but you were already gone.

-

You stretch your body before going back into your research. You’re inside the library after school and you’ve already texted your moms about being late.

“Is this seat taken?” You look up and see Wanda with a book of her own. You shake your head. “Do you mind?” You shake your head again and she sits down besides you. You were so focused on doing you research that you haven’t noticed that Wanda has been staring at you. You only notice that she hasn’t opened her book yet. You look to her and meet her eyes.

“Um?” You blush and Wanda looks away as she opens her book. “Is that The Flower Girl Wore Celery?” Wanda nods and you squeal lightly. “They have this? Where’d you find it?”

“In the literature section? There’s a whole lot of Children’s books there.” You sigh.

“Maybe after I finish this dreadful thing.”

“I’m Wanda by the way.” She holds out her hand and you take it while blushing.

“Right. I’m Y/N.” Wanda smiles at you and you gulp.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N.” You nod and try to focus on the research. You finally finish after an hour and you stretch your body.

“Finally done.” You say and Wanda hums. She’s already finished the Children���s book and was now reading a novel.

“Here.” She gives you the book and you smile at her.

“Thanks.” You begin reading the book.

Your phone rings just as you finish the book, you quickly answer it and it was your Mom.

“Y/N? Are you still finishing your research?”

“No. I’m already done, just going to return all the books that I’ve borrowed.”

“Okay. Your Ma is already cooking dinner.”

“Alright. I’ll finish up and go home.”

“See you later, little one.”

“Yeah. Bye, mom.” You hang up and sigh.

“You okay?” Wanda asks and you hum.

“Just a little sore.” You gather all of your things and put them into your bag.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yep. Ma’s cooking and my mom’s going to get angry if I’m not home by the time she finishes.”

“Let me help you.”

“You sure? Some of these reference books are heavy.”

“Yep.” She picks up the books that you left behind and follows you. You begin returning the books while Wanda hovers behind you. “You’ve been avoiding me.” You drop the last book in your hand and it drops on your foot. You whimper quietly and pick it up. You immediately sit and Wanda looks down you. “You okay?”

“F-fine.” You stutter and stand. You take all the remaining books from her and return them. After you return the last one you notice Wanda and blush. You look down. “Sorry.”

“For what, exactly?” She gets into your vision and you sigh.

“For avoiding you? Getting involved with me won’t do you any good.” You pick up your bag and leave the library with her.

“Why not?” You sigh.

“Because I’m a Beta. And you’re an Omega.”

“So what?” You look at her, not believing her words…

“I’m a Beta, Wanda, you’re an Omega, you should hang out with another Omega or an Alpha, not a Beta like me.” You get something from your bag and present it to her. It was a bookmark, a simple one with just words on them. “My apologies and try to read all the books written on it. They’re all pretty good.” Pietro calls out to Wanda and you both turn to him. “I have to go.” You leave her behind and Wanda sighs. She smiles as she reads the bookmark’s contents.

-

A/N: I don't know how to cut off chapters now that I have no guide. Help.

Anyhows, thank you for reading and do tell me if you would like to be on the taglist for this series or future works!

I'm going to try to post chapters at least once a week or if life happens then once biweekly.

[80s4life]

Not What I Had Planned Pt.2

Word Count: 1,244

Status: Requested!

Ask: “Hi, I was wondering if you could do a part 2 from Kiefer Sutherland’s request? If your not too busy” + “Umm how about it’s first time changing his daughter diaper and he’s a little nervous about changing her?”

A/N: This was a request on my Wattpad account that I brought over here lol

Fandom: Stand By Me 1986

Relationship: Ace Merrill x GN!Reader (x baby girl)

Summary: Having a child is an all new adventure to every parent, especially when with your first child. There’s a first feeding, first word, first walk, run, bruise, cut, cry, kiss.... and even your first diaper. Follow Ace and Y/N through their highlights in the world of parenting!

Warnings: langauge, fluff, humor if I do say so myself

Masterlist Stand By Me Masterlist Part One

{Gif is not mine, credits to @mistress-gif​}

To say that parenting was easy would’ve easily given away a person who has no clue about kids in general. Unless they are some saint or angel, then any kid could be a goddamn monster. The only defense, they don’t act like this on purpose, it’s just in their nature. And, in order for them to be raised properly, certain points or changes in their lives must be tackled in different forms of parenting.

For instance, when the child is only an infant or toddler, crying, pain, and attention-cravings are just the few things that are typical. Infants are delicate, unable to properly explain or do anything themselves, crying and attention being essential. As toddlers, they start to learn things on their own, cry and attention still to be expected, as they now reach their clumsiness period, consistent falling, stumbling, and tripping now.

To say Ace was prepared for this was a full-proof lie, him not knowing or being understanding for shit. He didn’t know how to be a father, especially when the father figure he’s usual supposed to take notes and go by, was a complete ass that could’ve cared less of who he had fathered and unsupported.

Y/N, however, was the opposite of Ace. Having supportive, loving, close-knit bonds. That’s what had drawn Ace into their little circle, being complete opposites, yet undeniably attracted to one another. Y/N’s father was the father Ace never had, playing football, watching sports, talking politics, hell even cooking barbecue on a damn grill; was just a few of the things observed and learned.

Y/N’s mother also played an amazing role, prying her way into Ace’s life just as her child had. Delicate, kind and caring. Y/N’s mother taught Ace sympathy, more control on his emotions, how to love and be loved by family, and of course, their child, Y/N.

All of these things, that may tend to be simple knowledge, was introduced to Ace as if it were a whole new world, and, when the pair had introduced their new addition, he applied everything he could. He was as caring as he could manage, which although he thought otherwise, was the kindest he had ever been to any human being in the world (besides Y/N and their family of course).

Ace carried a camera always, worked some extra hours during the night just for extra cash in the future, carried his baby girl everywhere, and despite his hard feelings for his family, he had created the beautiful name of Christina Poppy Merrill. Since their first kid was a daughter, Christina came in the honor of his brother Chris Merrill, and her middle name had come from his father’s nickname, ‘Pop.’ 

Y/N, being their ever supporting self, quickly hopped on the bandwagon, loving the name completely, not completely caring as long as their baby carried their Ace’s last name, just as they always dreamed of in the future. Marriage was something Y/N nearly craved, but never brought it up to Ace, him still knowing secretly but haunted by yet another touchy topic on its own level.

They understood though, knowing now that that topic would have to wait, their new addition coming first. 

For a while, Chrissy had slept in their bed during the nights, while Y/N and Ace built the very room she would soon reside in for the many years to come. Y/N painted the walls pink and blue hues, mixing in some places to make them a slight purple, like a sunset. Ace busied himself by building a handmade bed, “Something sturdy so she doesn’t fall through the fucking floor,” is what he claimed, stealing giggles in answer to his ever-questionable train of thought.

Music blasting, people working, and a baby playing in the center of the room. Bliss. Everything Y/N wanted, especially when their beloved boyfriend made sure he checked on the baby girl every so often, sometimes taking a break to even play cars with her. They fell for Ace long ago, but moments like these strike right to the heart, knowing damn well that they somehow can fall even harder for him.

Even the dumb, giggly moments. 

Y/N had changed Chrissy for a while, eventually getting somewhat annoyed as they would get up throughout the night just to change the baby in question, Ace claiming innocence and, “I don’t know how to... baby.” 

Y/N didn’t even bother to question what the fuck he was trying to say, sleep creeping into his being, but not long enough as Y/N yanks his ass out of bed, pulling his hand along with theirs.

Entering the room, Y/N goes to the changing station and Ace grabs Chistina, giving a resting bitch face to Y/N for waking him up. They ignore him however, quite tired of his excuses and deciding to teach the man exactly what to do, so that he didn’t have any excuses to give.

Pointing things out every now and then, Ace takes the advice, doing what was instructed...hardly. He almost gagged as he took the spoiled diaper off his baby girl, the shit coating some of her back. Y/N had laughed at that, finding some satisfaction at the fact of him probably having the worst diaper yet as his first.

He does manage to clean her up though, Y/N had to admit, doing quite well for a man so out of his comfort zone. He was the ‘bad boy’ for Christ’s sake. It was towards the end though, when Ace fucked up royally. Going to grab the baby powder and lightly dab some on the baby’s diaper, but dumping a mountain of the stuff instead.

The couple stare for a moment, Christina even silencing questionably, looking at the mess of baby powder both coating Chrissy and Ace. Y/N, trying not to be the immature one in this situation, takes steps back, but loses it the second they get a good look at Ace’s face, shocked and confused as hell.

He turns towards them accusingly, but soon gives into the humorous situation too, chasing Y/N as he goes to coat them in baby powder as well. They squeal, racing around the house until Ace wraps his arms around their waist, dumping some of the powder on their head. 

Within seconds, they are a laughing mess, running back towards Chrissy, almost forgetting she was still sitting on the changing station. Y/N shows Ace how to change the baby properly now, doing the rest of the cleanup and changing themselves as Ace watches adoringly.

Placing the baby in the crib, Ace rids himself of his shirt, clad in his underwear only now, and continues down the hall back to the shared couple’s bedroom. Y/N follows closely behind, admiring his muscular back, as they really couldn’t help it in their case. 

The couple lays back down, content smiles on their features. Ace’s arms reach towards Y/N’s form, bringing their back against his chest, right arm cradling their head and the left delicately draped across their waist, his head placed in the crook of their neck. 

The utter comfort and love in the embrace quickly reassures Y/N, their joints finally loosening from the long day and events of the night. And, just as sleep comes to overtake them, they could just hear Ace below a whisper, “One day I’ll get ya’ your ring, and one day, you’ll steal my last name, just as you’ve stolen my heart.” 

[deactivated-almonds]

Trapper’s Moon

Summary

November 25th, 2015 It's barely been a month since the fire. The acting Sheriff of North Kill, Travis Hackett, has only just finished sweeping up the ashes left behind in the wake of his family's horrific mistake. The investigation is over, the kids are in the clear, and the Hackett's are resilient folk. He tells himself they'll all be stronger for this, in the end. Travis reckons it couldn't get much worse, when a family emergency calls him home to Hackett House. The full moon can really bring out the worst in people.      

Travis Hackett pov \ Blood and Gore \ Body Horror \ Family Bonding \ 10k+  

Read it here on my AO3 - part of a larger work, Witness to the Dawn  

Hank Williams had devoted his entire life to serving and protecting the people of North Kill, New York, and acted as their Sheriff for over thirty years. He had never married and had quite intentionally avoided siring any children of his own. Although, if you asked around, a surprisingly large number of people would tell you they viewed him as a father figure, or a mentor at the very least. He possessed a paternal gravity that pulled the troubled and broken into his orbit, where he dished out sage wisdom, second chances, and tough love in equal measure. He had always been able to bring out the good in people, no matter how deeply it was buried within them. Not a soul in North Kill grew up without receiving at least one of his infamous speeches, and they typically walked away better for it. He was loved in life, and sorely missed in death.

And yet somehow, Travis Hackett was the only one willing to settle his estate. In the month since Hank’s tragic death, the former deputy and now acting Sheriff of North Kill had been the only one who volunteered to make funeral arrangements and carry out the stipulations of his predecessor’s final will and testament. Travis had cleaned up his house and sold it, making sure every last dime was donated to Hank’s preferred children’s charity organization. He had found a good home for his two big drooly hunting dogs, Scoot and Bill. He had even turned in a proposition to build a memorial for Hank, though it would have to pass through the mayor’s office first and Lord knows how long that would take.

He had done all of this on his own on top of taking over the duties of Sheriff, and not a single person in the village endeavored to help him. He was sure if he had asked, maybe someone might have, but he was a staunch believer that there were certain things one shouldn’t have to ask for. Or…maybe he took all that responsibility upon himself because of the guilt. His family had fucked up in a major way. And by extension, so had he. 

Everything had happened so fast, Travis felt like he had a chronic case of whiplash. He wasn’t there when the fire started, but he was there to clean up the mess, both in the role of a police officer, and as a concerned uncle. He would never forget trapsing through those woods, air heavy with smoke, heat still radiating off smoldering trailers. The lingering smell of burnt flesh. Hank’s body, unrecognizable but for the charred star on his chest. Still nothing compared to the unholy shitstorm that occurred at Hackett House that next day.  

He had quickly discovered his own niece and nephew had been responsible for the fire, in an attempt to “save” a caged little boy from the Harum Scarum show. In the process, Caleb had accidentally set fire to the entire goddamn campsite, engulfing dozens of people in flames. The little boy in question, Silas, ended up running off anyway, but not before assaulting Caleb first. Thankfully he had healed from the bite in no time. Travis could still clearly remember the ensuing argument, his mother switching rapidly between tearfully begging him not to arrest the kids and violently threatening him for evening considering it. Nothing he wasn’t used to, of course, but what he could not handle was the way his niece and nephew fell to pieces, cowering in their father’s arms.

Kaylee apologized over and over again through racking sobs, and Caleb refused to speak or move for days, practically catatonic. He couldn’t bear to see them like that. He loved them like his own, he had to protect them, no matter the cost. Family is the most important thing, after all. And so, he gave in to his family’s demands, like he always did. He had seen to it that any trace of the Hackett children was either misplaced or never found at all, and the cause of the fire remained a mystery. He blamed it on a lit cigarette carelessly tossed into a bale of hay. A tragic accident, and nothing more.

His career as Sheriff started with a lie, and he hated himself for it. He would give or do anything to make it better and, to that end, had been working himself to the bone over the past month. It wasn’t a sustainable pace, but it was no less than he felt he deserved. With Hank properly put to rest, and all his major affairs settled, Travis had more time to focus on the little things. He hadn’t even transitioned into Hank’s old office yet, and initially couldn’t stomach packing his belongings into boxes. Hank’s office had been more well-furnished than his own home; he had practically lived in the station.

As Travis removed certain framed photos from the walls and sorted through decades of clutter from the desk drawers, he couldn’t help but reminisce. He had a lot of fond memories of that office, good laughs and even better gossip shared over morning coffee. And some not so fond ones as well, which were the most impactful of all, in hindsight.

In his youth, Travis had sat across from ol’ Hank many, many times. The new Sheriff had a rap sheet, long since expunged, of adolescent drunk and disorderlies under his belt. And petty assaults. Travis remembered sitting opposite Hank, face black and blue from a particularly nasty back-alley fight, idly picking at his scabbed knuckles. Doing anything to avoid Hank’s disappointed gaze.

“You could do so much better,” he remembered Hank saying.      

Travis had snorted in response; a skinny, arrogant punk with no respect for anyone or anything. “You should see the other guys,” he had laughed, halfheartedly.

Hank scowled and shook his head disapprovingly, “You know that’s not what I mean, Travis.” He leaned heavily over his desk, face searching for Travis’s gaze, making sure the boy looked him in the eyes. “You have so much potential and you are pissing it all away, and that’s a fuckin’ shame Travis.”

“Potential?” Travis had asked mockingly, looking up to meet the older man’s eyes. “I have the potential to kick someone’s ass when they talk shit about my family, that’s my potential.”

Hank’s calm, resolute expression did not falter. “What I mean is, you’re better than this Travis. I don’t know what kind of backwards shit your Ma and Pa have drilled into your head, but you are so much better than bar fights and shit stomping nonsense. You’re smart, Travis, smartest person in the room most of the time. I know you feel so strongly about what’s right and what’s wrong, and you can’t stand it when other people shit all over that. I know it’s exhausting. And I know, you feel like no one listens to you. And I know it makes you madder than hell-”

“You don’t know a fuckin’ thing about me,” Travis nearly yelled, venom oozing through his words.

Hank, God bless him for the patience of a saint, remained unphased. “Travis, I know you better than you know yourself,” he continued softly. “You have been in this office more times than I can count on both hands. I’ve been called to your house nearly as often, too. I have watched you grow up into a fine young man. I know…” he paused, considering his next words carefully. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you, son.”  

Travis involuntarily winced at this and looked away, mouth screwed into a tight frown, pressure starting to build behind his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do,” Hank said with a simple nod. “You know what I mean. I like your folks, Travis, I do, and I won’t talk ill of them. I know you don’t like that. But that place is no good for you. You deserve better-”

“I ain’t better than anybody else,” Travis interrupted with a phrase he had heard many, many times, and damned himself for the tremble in his voice. He had swallowed hard and pinched the bridge of his nose swiftly, hoping to covertly catch his welling tears before they became obvious.    

Hank sighed and leaned back in his creaky chair, sensing the conversation was going nowhere fast. “Travis,” he said, shifting the tone of the conversation to something more inquisitive. “Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?”

Travis recalled being completely thrown off by this question and chuckled to himself about where it had led. Hank thought he would benefit from the structure and discipline a career in the law entailed. That having something entirely his own would help him to gain a bit of independence from his family. The former was true, while the latter, in retrospect, was not. At least not entirely. He had moved out of Hackett House after receiving his first couple paychecks and settled into a nice little place of his own on the edge of town. Hank had sponsored his education at the police academy, along with a semester of pre-law at NYU. It was more than Travis felt he had the right to ask for, but Travis hadn’t technically asked and Hank was just like that in the first place. Generous. Selfless. Things Travis had always hoped to be, though he more often than not found himself falling short of that high bar. You can take the man out of the Hackett’s, but you can’t take the Hackett’s out of the man.  

The only wall hanging Travis decided to keep on display was one he initially found a little embarrassing. It was a framed photo of him and Hank from the day of his academy graduation ceremony. Arms slung around each other’s shoulders, shaking hands. Hank was absolutely beaming, and so was Travis. His parents had been there too, of course, but nobody was or ever had been as proud of him as Hank was in that moment. Travis gently swiped the dust off the glass with the side of his hand and repositioned the photo in its original home on the wall directly behind the desk, taking extra care to make sure it hung straight.

He considered the photo for a moment longer, the familiar pang of grief beginning to swell in his chest. It wasn’t fair that bad things always seemed to happen to good people. It just didn’t make sense. He cleared his throat, and stamped the feeling down, back into whatever dark hole it had crawled out of. Just in time as well, as he heard a small, timid knock on the closed office door. “Come in, Darcy,” he commanded, quickly pretending to straighten papers on the desk. He wasn’t one to get caught being sentimental.

The office secretary, Darcy, opened his door just a crack and peaked her head into the dimly lit room. “Uh offi- er, Sheriff Hackett,” she corrected herself, “your brother is on line one. Says he needs to talk to you right away. Couldn’t reach you on your cell, sir.”

Travis pulled his phone out of his back pocket, and sure enough, no bars. The reception in North Kill seemed to drop in and out at the worst of times. He sucked his teeth, “Shit. Okay, I’ll be right out Darcy. Thank you,” he said to her, not bothering to look up from his useless device until he noticed her lingering in the doorway.  

“It seemed…urgent,” she added with a wince.

Travis rolled his eyes and sighed, following Darcy out into the main lobby of the station. His brother made no effort to hide the fact he felt entitled to Travis’s sweet time, and in truth the two were still a bit sour with each other over the fire incident. Some very harsh names had been exchanged that first night, “shitty father” and “fascist pig” surprisingly being the worst out of all the many peppered motherfucker’s and asshole’s. “Chris,” he answered the phone curtly, “What’s up?”

“T, I need you to come to the house,” Chris responded quickly, voice soaked with obvious stress that immediately put Travis on high alert.

“Why what is it, what’s wrong?” His younger brother was not one to panic.

“It’s Caleb. I think he’s really sick man. I’m back and forth on taking him to the hospital, I don’t wanna leave Kaylee alone,” Chris explained.

“Sick how? Aren’t Ma and Dad home?” He asked, and noticed Darcy was still standing right next to him, anxiously biting her nails. He raised his brows at her, a silent plea for some privacy, and she seemed to take the hint, quickly scuttling behind her desk.

“Well, yeah. But…y’know,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “I’d prefer to have a responsible adult around. C’mon man, please. It’s gonna be dark soon and Kaylee’s freakin’ out. I just- I could just use a little help.” He sounded so defeated. Kaylee had been especially…sensitive, after the fire. And who could blame her, it had barely been a month.  

Travis held the phone to his chest and pursed his lips as he considered his options for a moment. It was late afternoon, on a Wednesday, and he was supposed to be on duty at least until nine, when he’d switch off with the officer on call for the night. Then again, his family needed him, although it didn’t seem like a huge emergency if he was being quite honest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Darcy wave for his attention, and silently mouth the words “just go”, followed by some indecipherable gesturing. He brought the phone back up to his ear, “Okay. Okay, I’m on my way. Hang tight.” He didn’t wait for a response before hanging up. As per usual, he could not resist the pull of his family.  

He donned his jacket, a standard issue black number with faux fur trim, left the station in Darcy’s reasonably capable hands, and took off in his patrol car. He appraised the other officer on duty, deputy McGillan, of the situation via radio, and made short work of the long and winding drive to Hackett House. He decided to take a shortcut; an old and poorly maintained dirt road originally used for logging. People tended not to use it, as it only really led to Hackett’s Quarry, and Travis found he could easily get away with really pushing the pedal to the metal there.

The sun was just beginning to set over the trees as he pulled his vehicle in front of the ramshackle old house. The air had grown crisp since he left the station, and he could just barely begin to see the fog of his own breath in the cool November air. He wasted no time entering the gigantic house, boots thudding heavily as he traversed the front porch. He tested the front door handle and found it was unlocked. He allowed himself inside and immediately caught sight of both Chris and Kaylee across the foyer, sitting together on the bottom step of the grand staircase.  

“Uncle Travis!” Kaylee shouted, jumping up and rushing toward him before he even had a chance to shut the door behind him. She flung her arms around his chest in a tight embrace, burying her face in his shirt. Her breaths came up shaky, like she had just been crying.

“Woah,” he laughed nervously, placing a gentle arm around her shoulders. “Hey kiddo, you okay?” He asked Kaylee but looked to his brother for the actual answer.

Chris slowly rose from his seat on the stairs and huffed a sigh of relief. “We’re alright,” he said solemnly, “just a little shaken up. Caleb’s running a pretty bad fever.” The two men both glanced upstairs, toward Caleb’s bedroom, then back down at each other. “Thanks for comin’ man-”

He began to say more, but was interrupted by Constance, shuffling in her own quick, distinct way through the drawing room and into the foyer. “Travis, close that door behind you! You’re letting all the heat out. Kaylee-girl, come with me hon, come help your Gammy fix supper.” She beckoned toward Kaylee, who finally released Travis from her nearly crushing embrace.

Travis smiled at his mother, tight lipped and entirely fake. “Nice to see you too, Ma.” She ignored him and ushered Kaylee toward the kitchen. He closed the door, as instructed, and turned to his brother again. “Where’s Dad and Bobby?”  

“Wrapping up at the scrapyard, I think,” he said dismissively. Chris looked uncharacteristically worried, the lines on his aging face deeply furrowed.

Travis put his hands on his hips, “So, what’s going on here? You said Caleb’s running a fever. How high?”

“101,” Chris said sheepishly. “It’s not good, but not terrible either. Y’know they say it’s best to let a fever run its course. Sometimes. If it’s not too high.”

Travis was starting to get a little annoyed. What was the point of him leaving work to rush out here if Chris wasn’t even taking Caleb to the hospital? Travis didn’t know much about medicine, but maybe he could convince Chris to leave. If not for Caleb's sake, then to at least make it worth the drive. “You don’t think this had anything to do with the fire, do you? When that kid bit him? Can’t be sanitary,” he suggested.

Chris thought for a moment. “No? I- I don’t know,” his tone was quickly becoming frustrated. “I mean he healed quick and he’s been healthy as a horse since then. Distant, sure, but physically okay. And then just a couple hours ago he did this total 360, he got real pale all the sudden, and he’s burning up. Says his stomach hurts, he’s really hungry but I’m not sure I should let him eat…,” he trailed off.

“180,” Travis corrected.  

Chris narrowed his eyes at his older brother, confused. “What?”

“A 360 is a full turn around, 180 is when something is the opposite of what it was,” Travis explained.  

Chris just stared at him blankly, face unable to mask the visible, bubbling anger slowly rising to the surface. “Y’know if you’re gonna be an asshole you can just go.”  

“I’m not trying to be an asshole. You called me here to help and now nothing’s happening, Chris. Got me all worried for nothing.”

“Nothing’s happening?” Chris started to raise his voice, “Don’t you think enough has happened lately? I would fucking love for things to just stop happening around here for five fucking minutes!”  

Travis didn’t much like his younger brother’s tone. He stepped forward toward Chris, closing the gap between them. “So would I, because I’m real fuckin’ busy lately cleaning up the mess you left me.”

“What, me specifically?” Chris looked incredulous. “Why don’t you get off your high fucking horse Travis and-” BAM!

Whatever foul sentiment Chris was about to spit at Travis was cut short by a loud thud from upstairs that caused both men to jump nearly out of their shoes. The force of it shook the entire house, causing the light fixtures to flicker as a wispy cloud of dust floated down from the ceiling. The two men stopped their bickering and looked up toward Caleb’s room, listening. “Caleb?” Chris called. “You alright buddy?” No response.

“Caleb?” he called again, to no avail. The moment Chris had placed his foot upon the first step, the pair heard a subtle, soft creaking of floorboards, and the younger Hackett brother paused his ascent to listen once more. What he heard next, however, was any parent’s worst nightmare: a sudden, ear-splitting wail of pain that was unmistakably Caleb’s voice, his little boy’s voice, followed by a wet, squelching sound that could only be described as a massive splat. Like someone throwing a sopping wet towel against a wall. Or heavy rain, blown sideways against the house by an angry wind.

“Caleb!” Chris screamed for his son as he bolted up the stairs, nearly tripping on his way to Caleb’s room. Even within those few seconds, the thumping and banging continued, and grew even louder, rattling the entire second floor. Travis began to follow his brother, but spied Constance and Kaylee rushing toward the foyer, no doubt coming to investigate the noise.

“Woah woah woah, stay right there,” he shouted, extending his left hand to stop to stop them, the other instinctively flying to the handle of his service weapon, releasing the single snap that held it in place. They both came to a screeching halt and the trio all looked up just in time to see Chris bursting into Caleb’s room, practically kicking in the door.

They all observed what felt like an eternal millisecond of silence before Chris let out a horrendous scream. It was a sound Travis had never heard before; it made his blood run cold. He was on the stairs in an instant, skipping steps two and three at a time, not daring to peel his eyes away from Caleb’s doorway, the deafening screaming still ringing from its dark maw. And something else, some other, primal sound. A low, gurgling growl, resonating several frequencies below the rest of the chaos.

“Chris!” Travis called his brother’s name as he reached the top of the stairs, and was promptly answered by the musical crash of broken glass. His own momentum had propelled him forward, and he crashed painfully into the doorframe, barely catching himself from tumbling into the room, one hand still gripping his holstered sidearm. Bright, white moonlight filtered in through Caleb’s broken bedroom window, now little more than a massive, jagged hole. Its wooden frame was busted into splinters, and shards of glass littered the ground, sparkling in the moonlight.

He found Chris slumped against the right wall, grimacing and groaning in pain but thankfully alive. He held his right shoulder with a white-knuckled death grip, absolutely oozing crimson red blood from a large, gaping wound. Travis quickly scanned the room and saw no sign of Caleb. He rushed to his brother, and knelt down beside him, “Jesus Christ, Chris, what the fuck happened here?” He lightly touched Chris’s shoulder but quickly pulled away when his brother inhaled sharply and stomped one foot against the hardwood floor.

“Fuck! Don’t touch it, don’t touch it,” Chris begged. “Jesus fucking Christ.”  

“What the in the MOTHERFUCKIN’ HELL is goin’ on up there?” Travis heard his mother shriek and turned to see her and Kaylee both poking their heads out from upon the staircase.

“Do not come up here Ma,” Travis shouted back at her, “Take Kaylee downstairs. Now!” He ordered. Normally, his mother would argue, would yell at him for raising his voice at her. His tone must have been convincing enough for her to actually listen to him for once, she obeyed his order without complaint, the tops of their heads quickly disappearing from his field of view.

Travis looked around the room once more, finally able to take a moment to really assess the situation. The walls were splattered with blood, running down in thick syrupy rivulets. Some sick and twisted mockery of a Jackson Pollock painting. Chunks of what looked disturbingly like skin, clinging to the wallpaper. “This can’t all be yours Chris. Tell me this isn’t all yours,” he said, looking at his brother wide-eyed.

Chris had been hyperventilating but was now making a concerted, labored effort to control his breathing. Desperately trying to regain some modicum of composure. “No,” he said after a moment. “Not all of it. It was like this when I got up here. And that-” he paused, and swallowed hard. “Something…attacked me. Tried to bite a fucking chunk outta me.”

“Something? What- who? Was it Caleb? Where is Caleb, Chris?”

“I don’t know!” Chris snapped at him. “I have no fucking clue what’s going on right now!” He shifted onto one leg, rising to his feet with great effort, despite his brother’s protestations. “Either my son is missing, or-or he’s…,” he paused, and gave Travis a look that was nothing short of piteous.

Both brothers slowly turned their heads in unison, looking out toward the obliterated bedroom window and the night sky beyond. “No,” Travis said in disbelief. “No fucking way.”  

Chris turned abruptly on his heels, rushing back down the staircase, followed quickly by Travis, who was a ball of nerves and confusion. “Wait, Chris!” he called after his brother, close on his heels. “Where the fuck are you going? We need to get you to a hospital.” Chris rounded the bottom of the stairs and stomped down the central hallway, a man on a mission. He threw open one of the many closets and linen cupboards that lined the long expanse and pulled out exactly what Travis had predicted: their father’s hunting shotgun. One of many. He slung the long, heavy weapon over his left shoulder by its strap, grunting out loud from the pain that accompanied the simple movement. “Chris,” Travis addressed is brother, trying to remain as calm as possible. “I need you to listen to me-”

“No,” Chris interrupted, “I need you to listen to me.” Finally able to see his brother’s face, Travis’s heart sank lower than he had ever thought possible. A clear stream of tears flowed down Chris’s cheeks, cutting straight paths through the still fresh blood smeared across his face and neck. “My son-” he began, choking back an emerging sob. He pointed one trembling finger toward the front door, “My son is out there. Alone. He’s obviously very fucking sick, and I need to find him. What I need you to do,” he said, now pointing at the center of Travis’s chest, “Is stay here, and protect the girls. I need you to do that.”

Travis stared at his brother, mouth agape. “Chris,” he protested, “You can’t go out there alone. You’re hurt, and you don’t know if that thing was Caleb, or something else-”

“Just try to get a hold of Dad and Bobby on the radio, okay? They need to know what’s happening here,” he pushed past Travis, marching in a straight line toward the front door.  

“Daddy?” Kaylee’s small, shaky voice called out from the drawing room. The brothers both turned to see Constance and Kaylee, lingering in the doorway. Kaylee had obviously been crying, her face red and puffy, wet tears trickling down her cheeks. Chris took the first step toward her, and father and daughter met each other halfway. Kaylee tried and failed to speak in between sobs that shook her entire body.

Chris grimaced through what was likely a very painful hug before bending down to look into his daughter’s frightened face. “Hey sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m okay.” He wiped away her falling tears with the pad of his thumb. “It’s okay baby. Caleb’s gonna be okay too, you hear? I promise you. I have to go look for him right now, but I’ll be back. I’m gonna bring him back to us.” He tried his best to look reassuring, and genuine. “Your uncle Travis is gonna stay here with you and Gammy, he’s gonna keep you guys safe while I’m gone. He would never let anything bad happen to you,” he looked at Travis as he said this, and Travis confirmed with a solemn nod. Chris gave his daughter one last, swift peck on her forehead. “You get Dad and Bobby on that radio Travis,” he reminded his brother as he walked backwards toward the front door. “I’ll be back.”  

Chris slammed the door behind him, leaving Travis, Constance, and a crying Kaylee behind in stunned silence. It didn’t last long though, as Constance gave Travis a harsh shove, shaking him out of his incredulous stupor. “What the fuck happened up there, Travis? Why won’t nobody answer me? Where the fuck is my grandson?”

Travis ignored her barrage of questions. “It’s a long story, Ma,” he answered simply. He couldn’t begin to explain what happened because he just couldn’t understand it himself. “Kaylee,” he addressed his terrified niece, “why don’t you go take a seat in the other room, okay?”

“Why did Dad have a shotgun? Is Caleb gonna be alright?” she asked, vigorously wiping the tears from her face, making no move to leave the foyer. “We need to go help him!”    

“It’s gonna be fine, now go sit down,” he commanded, trying to bring a gentle authority to his voice. She didn’t seem to like that but turned and trudged into the drawing room all the same. “Ma,” he turned to Constance, “You go to the hall, grab Dad’s other shotgun. The short one!” She gave him an affirmative nod and disappeared down the hallway.

Travis began to fiddle with the P25 radio perpetually hooked to his belt, and finally found the family’s typical frequency they used to communicate in their cellular dead zone of a property. “Dad, Bobby, come in. It’s Travis, over,” he all but yelled into the walkie attached to his shirt, pacing back and forth across the foyer, still riding an adrenaline high.  

“Travis?” He heard Bobby’s familiar voice over the walkie. “I didn’t know you were comin’ home tonight! I guess Mom’s making that chicken parm you like…” Bobby prattled on, blissfully unaware of the dire nature of their current situation.

“Bobby, you and Dad need to hightail it to the house, we need you here. We have a- a uh…a situation. Over.”  

“Uh oh,” he heard Bobby say sheepishly, “Is it about the fire? Oh shit, is it the cops? Over.”

Travis pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand, brows knitting together in consternation. “No, Bobby, I am the cops. Look, there’s no time to explain…” He saw Constance emerge from the long dark hallway, loading shells into the smaller shotgun that still looked almost comically large in her frail grasp.  

She reached out and yanked Travis’s walkie from his hand, “Bobby you and your father need to get your fuckin’ asses back here right this instant, no questions asked do you hear me boy?” She screamed at her youngest at breakneck pace with all the authority of a drill sergeant. “Over,” she added politely, shoving the receiver back into Travis’s grip before turning to join Kaylee in the drawing room.

“Okay,” Bobby whined, “Jeez…over.”  

Travis allowed himself a sigh of relief and grazed one hand over his head and through his black hair, smoothing it away from his sweating face.  

“Kaylee?” He heard Constance call from somewhere deeper within the house. “Kaylee!” He rushed toward his mother’s voice, finding her in the dining room, practically spinning around in circles, frantic. “Travis, I can’t find Kaylee. She’s not here!”

Fuck. “Did you look everywhere?”  

“Yes I fucking looked everywhere, I’m not goddamn blind!” She screamed at him, and he took an immediate, involuntary step back. Just then, looking past his mother and into the kitchen, Travis saw through the picture window the distant white gleam of a flashlight appear and quickly disappear into the trees bordering the property. “Fuck!” he yelled, pushing past Constance and into the kitchen. “She went out the side door.”

He made a move to open the screen door that connected the kitchen to the eastern side of the house, but paused when Constance clutched his arm, pulling him back. “I’m comin’ with you,” she insisted.

He turned back to face his mother, wide-eyed. He knew she would only slow him down, more likely to hurt herself than actually be of any help. He gingerly placed his hands on either of her shoulders and spoke as calmly as he possibly could, gently pleading with her. “No, I need you to stay here to catch Dad and Bobby when they come. We can’t have everybody running around in the woods at once-”

“You’re just gonna leave me here?” She interrupted, face absolutely aghast.

He gave her a stern look. “You tellin’ me Constance Hackett can’t take care of herself?” He knew well by now that playing into her ego could get her to do almost anything.

She stared at him a moment, eyes searching her son’s expression for anything resembling insincerity, or mockery. Evidently finding no trace of either, she inhaled a deep and calming breath, lifted her chin high and proud, and cocked her shotgun. “I’ll hold down the fort. You go get my grandbabies back,” she ordered.

Travis couldn’t help but spare her a small, appreciative smile. “Yes ma’am,” he said with a nod. He wasted no time with further goodbyes, bursting through the door and running full tilt into the woods where he had seen the flashlight beam disappear into the foliage.  

He decided it was finally time to draw his sidearm, and held it pointed low in his right hand, a small flashlight in the other dimly revealing the path ahead about ten feet at a time. The trek across the lawn had been bright enough, the full moon illuminating the overgrown grass in silvery shades of blue. In the trees and the underbrush, however, the thinning canopy of fall leaves seemed to obscure almost all of the moon’s radiant glow. He moved as swiftly as caution would allow, eyes scanning ahead for any signs of light or movement.  

“Kaylee!” he called out after his niece, perhaps a little too loudly. That…thing, was still out here somewhere. Travis hadn’t seen it himself, and didn’t know what it looked like, or if it could have possibly been his nephew. Whatever it was, it’s bite certainly wasn’t human. Just the thought of the deep, distinct ring of teeth marks that encircled Chris’s bleeding shoulder sent a shiver down his spine. It looked too much like the shark bites Travis had only seen on TV; nothing any human mouth could possibly inflict. “Kaylee,” he called again, this time more of a whisper than a shout.

He made himself jump with every twig snapped underfoot and gritted his teeth at the way the leaves crunched as he tread across the forest floor. He could hear his own heartbeat hammering in his ears. He had lost sight of the house, its yellow porch lights quickly diminishing behind him as he trekked deeper and deeper into the woods. He felt, in that moment, incredibly stupid. Inept. Useless.

He had rushed into the woods with no game plan and no real way of tracking Kaylee and had realized it far too late to turn back. All he could do was stumble around in the cold dark and pray he caught some sight or sound of her. Or Chris, for that matter. Fuck. He had promised Chris he’d look after the girls, keep them safe. Now Kaylee was running around in the fucking woods, unarmed, and their mother was stuck in the house all by herself with a shotgun that would probably dislocate her shoulder if she fired it. He cursed himself for a damned fool, always acting before thinking. He cursed this whole situation. Hadn’t his family been through enough? Hadn’t he been through enough?  

A sudden rustling in the brush ahead had snapped him out of his little pity party. He stopped abruptly and crouched low, double checking that the safety on his pistol was turned off. “Kaylee?” He called softly, shining his light over where he had heard the noise. Whatever had rustled the brush suddenly took off like a bullet, away from Travis, and he leapt into a full tilt run after it. It was too far ahead to tell what it was, but he couldn’t take the chance not pursuing if it might be Kaylee.

He ran as fast as his old legs could carry him, ignoring the sting of bare branches whipping his face, and narrowly avoiding tripping over the tree roots and large stones that littered his path. In all his years of police work, he never had to run like this. It was as invigorating as it was terrifying. “Kaylee!” he yelled once more, breathless. The thing he pursued, whatever it was, suddenly stopped, and Travis almost stumbled from the sudden loss of momentum. He held his pistol in front of him, and lightly rested his finger on the trigger. “Kaylee?” he whispered, almost inaudibly.

The brush before him rustled gently, and he fought the near overwhelming urge to squeeze the trigger as two gleaming yellow eyes materialized in the beam of his flashlight. “Jesus Christ,” he swore through gritted teeth, as the round form of a wild hog waddled out of the bushes. He lowered his weapon and released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. The small, adolescent sow blinked at him stupidly. He angrily stomped his foot in her direction, sending her scampering back into the dark underbrush. “Fuck. Stupid asshole,” he cursed, smacking his forehead with the butt of his flashlight. He grumbled to himself as he surveyed his surroundings, unsure of where exactly his false query had led him, “Goddamn hogs…wild fuckin’ goose chase-”

“-it’s okay…”

Travis whipped around, hearing a small voice somewhere, not too distant. He stood as still as possible, careful to not make a single sound, and listened intently.

“It’s just me. It’s gonna be okay. I’m here…”  

His eyes followed the voice to his left, where he could just barely spy the glow of moonlight, illuminating a break in the trees. Something within him, some inner voice of instinct, screamed for him to not speak a word. To make as little noise as humanly possible.  

“…let’s go home…” he heard a girl’s voice say, as he crept quietly toward the clearing. He lowered his flashlight to the ground, hoping its light would not give away his position.

As he broke through the tree line, he was grateful his approach seemed to go unnoticed. He discovered the source of the voice, which he now knew was unmistakably Kaylee Hackett. She was crouching down in the grass on both knees, back facing toward him. One hand braced against her bent legs, while the other extended out toward the shadow of a great twisting oak tree. Beckoning to something. To someone. “Caleb,” she said, voice trembling, “take my hand. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Please.”  

Travis squinted into the darkness, barely able to decipher the shape of a humanoid figure, curled into a tight ball. It’s knees were drawn into its chest, and bare arms wrapped tightly around them. The figure rocked itself back and forth gently, and while it made no noise, Travis thought he could just barely see the glint of a single eye, peaking over its hunched shoulder. She had called it Caleb. He had to know whether or not this shadow was his nephew. Being unable to suffer the silent tension one moment longer, he slowly raised his flashlight toward the thing under the oak tree. “Caleb?” he called.

Kaylee gasped loudly, almost a scream, and turned her head to look back at her uncle. So much happened in the following seconds, following the moment Kaylee broke eye contact with the thing she called Caleb. In the glow of Travis’s flashlight, and in reaction to Kaylee’s startled outburst, the figure beneath the oak tree uncurled its folded limbs. Long, sinewy arms spread wide like wings, revealing the dark, hairless form that had been hidden beneath them. Thin to the point of emaciation, all harsh angles and jutting bone beneath its tight skin and torn rags of clothing, caked copper red with coagulating blood. It released a deafening snarl, and its impossibly wide mouth unhinged like a snake, revealing rows of jagged, gleaming white teeth. It rocked back onto its heels, and in an only an instant, sprang toward Kaylee; hand still outstretched, staring at her uncle.  

It tackled her, knocking her off her knees and onto her back with a hollow thud, her outstretched hand already enclosed within its gaping maw. Kaylee screamed. Travis knew he had screamed, too, though all he could hear was the wet, meaty smack of the creature burying its teeth into his niece’s flesh. Maybe action was better than thought after all. Travis raised his weapon and didn’t hesitate as he pulled the trigger.

The first bullet hit the creature’s shoulder and caused it to drop Kaylee’s arm from its mouth. It whined like a kicked dog upon impact and turned to roar at the Sheriff. Travis marched toward it, stride unbroken by the bone rattling thunder of its growl, acting on pure instinct and adrenaline. He was able to get within just a few feet of it before delivering his next bullet, shooting it right in the throat. Its hot blood sprayed from it like a fountain, raining down on the Sheriff in a foul-smelling deluge of red. The creature toppled backward, off of Kaylee, its gangly limbs flailing violently. The Sheriff took aim, ready to unload his entire clip into the abomination, when he felt Kaylee grab his ankle. “Don’t!” she screamed at him, choking on her own blood and tears. “It’s Caleb!”

He stared at her in shock. How could she still think this thing was her brother? The Sheriff looked up only to find the retreating form of the creature, taking its opportunity to escape into the woods. He wanted nothing more than to blindly empty his gun into the trees, to do anything to put that monster down, but Kaylee was more important.  

Travis fell to his knees beside his niece and brushed the hair out of her eyes, matted and wet with blood. She nursed her mangled left arm close to her chest as Travis helped lift her into a seated position. Kaylee burst into loud, trembling sobs and buried her face against his shoulder. “Shhh,” he said, rubbing small circles on her back, “Shhh, it’s okay now. It’s gone. Kaylee, look at me honey.” He held her face in both hands, looking her over to assess the extend of the damage. “We’re gonna get you to a hospital, okay? I need to take a look at that arm first.”

She wept into his hands. “I can’t. I can’t,” she began to hyperventilate, and withdrew her bloody arm further away from him.

“Okay. That’s okay,” he reassured softly. He knew they were running out of time, sitting out there in the open. That beast was able to just run off after being shot through the throat. He was afraid to find out what it took to actually kill it. He was very afraid indeed, but he couldn’t let Kaylee see it on his face. He pressed his forehead to hers and looked into her eyes. “Let’s just breathe, okay? It’s gonna be okay Kaylee.” He allowed his eyes to flutter closed, “Deep breath in. Do it with me now.” He didn’t look, but he could hear Kaylee take in a shaky breath through her nostrils. “And sloooowly exhale,” he said, and followed it with a whooshing sound from his mouth.  

He repeated this process with her several times and could gradually hear her breathing begin to steady. When he felt she had sufficiently calmed down, he opened his eyes again and smiled at her. “That’s a good girl,” he praised her. “Will you let me look at that arm now?” She sniffled and nodded her head in response.  

There was no denying her arm was in a pretty bad state. He could tell it was broken just from looking at it, the way her forearm bowed slightly in the middle. The swelling of her wrist. The bite itself didn’t nearly resemble the clean impression of teeth Chris had the displeasure of receiving. Ribbons of jagged flesh crisscrossed each other from the base of her pinky finger all the way down to her elbow, looking disturbingly similar the lattice work of an uncooked cherry pie. A blue-black bruise was already beginning to settle into her skin, traveling past her elbow and onto her bicep. She looked away while he inspected her arm, shivering all the while. Travis knew he couldn’t do a damn thing to help her at that moment. He had nothing to wash it with and nothing to treat the pain. He secretly prayed whatever shock she was experiencing right then would last until they reached the hospital, residual adrenaline hopefully mitigating the sensation of pain.  

He ripped off his black tie, gently wrapped it around her wrist, and tied it behind her neck, underneath the hood of her yellow sweatshirt, trying his best to keep her elbow at a consistent 90-degree angle. She choked back sobs through the pain, but toughed it out, nonetheless. She was a stubborn little fighter, Travis had to give her that. He shrugged out of his puffy officer’s jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It practically swallowed her tiny form. Her shivering was more likely from shock than from cold, but he hoped the warm jacket would at least help her feel just a little bit safer. “Can you stand?” he finally asked her, after he felt he had done all he could do.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I think so.” He took her good hand in his own, and the pair helped each other to their feet.  

“Okay,” he continued, ready to lay out the game plan. “We’re gonna have to walk now, either to the road or to the house. I’m gonna get you to the hospital either way,” he told her.

She glanced around their position in the clearing. “Which way?”  

In truth, he had no idea. He had completely lost his bearings after his red herring with the wild hog. When he was a kid, he used to know his family’s woods like the back of his hand. But it had been a long time since he was a kid, and admittedly, everything looked different in the dark. The moon was high in the sky, and he had never paid enough attention to astronomy for the stars to tell him anything of value. He quickly ruled out the direction the creature had retreated in and was left with three equally vague options. “This way,” he said, pointing to the general area from which he had arrived.  

“What about Dad?” Kaylee asked, concern etched across her young face. “And Caleb?”

Travis sighed. “If I know your father - and I do, better than anyone - he’s probably back at the house already, with Caleb. Or, they could be halfway to the hospital by now.” He began to walk, ushering Kaylee to follow beside him, where he could see her.  

“But,” Kaylee protested, “that was Caleb. Just now.”

“Kaylee, I don’t know what that thing was, but it was not your brother. It attacked you-”

“I know my own brother!” she snapped back at him. He gave her a sideways glance from the corner of his eye and she remorsefully lowered her defiant stare. “He was just…scared. That’s all.”

Travis decided to drop the issue; there was no sense in getting her any more worked up than she already was. The pair trudged through the woods in steady silence, the sound of dead leaves crunching underfoot their only accompaniment. Travis preferred the silence because it meant he could listen for any sign of that monster returning. He kept his weapon drawn by his side, and his eyes peeled.  

“Uncle Travis?” Kaylee broke the silence after some time, though she maintained her steady pace by her uncle’s side.

“Yeah? You okay?” Travis asked. Stupid question, he thought to himself.  

She ignored it. “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

The question made Travis stop dead in his tracks, his niece mirroring the motion and turning to look down at his feet. “Kaylee…no. Why would you ask that?” He stared down at her, confused, and concerned.

Her face instantly scrunched in on itself, lip quivering and eyes welling with tears. “Is this all because of what we did?” She put her good hand over her face, covering her eyes from his view.

“Woah, hey,” his body moved of its own accord, dropping down into a low crouch in front of her. “This is not your fault Kaylee. This isn’t anybody’s fault,” he tried to reassure her.

She still wouldn’t look at him. “Then why is this happening to us?”

Travis was at a loss for words as he stared up at his niece, and his heart broke for her. So much pain and suffering in fourteen short years, and not an ounce of it deserved. He remembered holding her as a baby, fresh and new, and hoping that things would be better for her than they had been for him. He had made a silent promise to both his brother’s children that he would do all he could to make the world a better place for them. That’d he’d keep them safe and do everything in his power to give them a happy life. He seemed to be making a lot of promises he couldn’t keep, as of late.

“Kaylee Anne Hackett,” he addressed her after a long pause of consideration. “You, young lady, are the kindest, most gentle soul I have ever had the pleasure of knowing in all my years on this earth. And you know, that’s more than a few now.” He faked a little laugh as his voice began to tremble, joking at his own expense. “You have such a good heart Kaylee, and I know you never meant to hurt anyone. You were just doing what your heart told you was right. How could that ever make you a bad person?” She began to hiccup tiny sobs, knowing he was referring to the fire, and he felt like his heart was going to crack in two. “I know you, Kaylee Hackett. I’ve been with you all your life, for every bit of good and bad that’s ever come your way. And I can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, you don’t have a single bad bone in your body. You’re golden, kid. I love you, with all my heart, and I am always gonna be on your side, no matter what.”

Kaylee began to properly weep at this and launched toward Travis, throwing her good arm around his neck, squeezing him tight. He reciprocated her hug, trying to hold her to him as close as possible, being mindful of her injury. He was grateful that she hadn’t seen his face as he allowed his own sparse tears to fall, buried in the faux fur collar of her borrowed jacket. “I love you too,” she sobbed into his neck.

This time, he didn’t try to calm her down. He let her cry, let her get it all out. Everything she had bottled up inside herself the past month welled up and burst to the surface, like a geyser. Emotion is a force of nature, after all.  After her breathing had calmed down naturally, and the sniffling had stopped, Travis gently patted her on the back. “Okay kiddo,” he said, breaking the long hug. “We gotta get a move on. Get that arm looked at.”

Kaylee managed a small chuckle, and hurriedly wiped the tears from her face. “Yeah, and you kinda reek, if I’m bein’ honest.” Travis actually laughed at that, and had to admit she was right. His face was still caked in the creature’s blood, now dry and flaky. It smelled…salty? Or sulfurous. And musty, like a wet dog. “My arm doesn’t actually hurt so bad,” she continued, finally making eye contact with her uncle.

Travis’s face quickly dropped. Deep purple rings surrounded Kaylee’s eyes, and he could tell it wasn’t from crying. The veins in her face had taken on a dark blue hue, to the point of being almost black. Her short brown fringe clung to her forehead, which sparkled with a fine sheen of sweat. “Jesus, Kaylee,” Travis said, bringing the back of his hand to rest against her forehead, “Are you feeling okay? You’re burning up.”

Kaylee just looked at him, puzzled. “I feel alright. Kinda hungry,” she said, considering her condition. “Do I not look okay?” Anxiety crept into her voice.

Travis, not wanting to cause her to panic, decided to keep her appearance to himself. “Just a little red is all. Probably from crying.” He stood up sharply, taking Kaylee’s good hand into his own. “C’mon, we gotta go.”

Kaylee didn’t protest and the two managed to emerge out of the woods about fifteen minutes later, seeming to have successfully avoided any further encounters with the monster. They had arrived in quite an unexpected location. Whatever path Travis had blindly led them on had spit them out at Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp, right at the edge of the cabins. “Shit,” Travis cursed. “We’re further from the house than I thought.”

“At least we know where we are now,” Kaylee mused. Travis glanced at her face again; she was looking worse every minute. She may have said she felt alright, but Travis was unconvinced she could handle the long walk back to the house, even if they had a road to follow. He was no expert, but there was clearly some kind of infection setting in. Something from that creature, working its way through her blood. As they trekked through the camp, he searched frantically for any mode of transportation.

He spied the side-by-sides parked in their small carport but knew they couldn’t hold enough diesel to get them into town. He almost didn’t want to go back to the house, afraid his mother’s inevitable fussing over Kaylee would cost them too much time. An idea suddenly clicked in his mind, and he swiftly redirected Kaylee toward the lodge. She looked up at him with befuddled, bloodshot eyes. “We can take the van,” he said, trying the mask the growing panic in his voice. “I know your dad keeps the keys in his office. We'll take the logging road. It’ll get us to the hospital in no time.”  

“I really don’t feel so bad, Uncle Travis,” Kaylee tried to reassure him. “It hardly hurts at all now.” Even in Travis’s limited experience, he knew that was a very, very bad sign. He quickened his pace, holding her hand closely by his side, almost afraid to let her go.

As they approached the lodge, Travis sighed in relief at the sight of the large white minivan, shining like an ivory chariot in the dappled moonlight. Chris used it to shuttle counselors to and from the main parking lot a few minutes down the road, and Travis was grateful it had stayed put since the camp closed for the season. He jogged up to the van, Kaylee in tow, and gave the driver’s side door an experimental tug. Locked, as he had suspected. Of course, nothing could just be easy for him.

“Kaylee,” he said, turning toward his niece, bracing her shoulders with either hand. “I’m gonna go inside the lodge. I have to get the keys from your dad’s office. I need you stay with the van, okay? I’ll be right back.” He didn’t like the idea of splitting up, but she just looked so sickly, he was worried dragging her through the lodge would be too much.

She simply nodded her head in the affirmative, and he took that as his cue to make a mad dash for the big green building. As he stomped up the front staircase, he heard her holler out behind him, “Check the mug on his desk! Sometimes he puts the keys in there!”  

He didn’t bother to try the main door, already knowing it would be locked tight. Instead, he went straight for the second window to the right, sliding it open with ease. It had never locked properly, and he was perhaps the only person who knew that little fact, having been the one to sabotage the lock in the first place. He used to sneak into the lodge when he was a kid, both as a camper and later, a counselor, to steal cigarettes from his parents' stash. Among other things. He slipped in through the open window with far less finesse than in his younger years, and significantly more noise.  

His boots thumped loudly across the wood floor as he ran to Chris’s office. He could navigate the building blindfolded in the dark, although tonight, he didn’t have to. Moonlight streamed in through the venetian blinds of the building’s large windows, casting disorienting stripes of black and white across Travis’s path, like some funhouse illusion. This place had always been so much creepier at night, even without man-eating creatures to worry about.  

Travis burst into Chris’s office, making an uninterrupted beeline to his brother’s cluttered desk, where to his dismay, he found quite a large number of empty mugs littering its surface. He rolled his eyes and almost laughed in disbelief at his predicament, never having imagined his brother’s slovenly habits could mean life or death someday. He grabbed at each one, inspecting its contents, knocking over precarious stacks of paper to the floor in the process. He’d apologize later, provided they all survived this night. Finally, he found what he was looking for, and plucked the jangling keys out of an orange mug that read “I’m a Monster Without My Coffee!”  

He ran back through the lodge at full speed, able to actually exit through the front door this time. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, able to see Kaylee by the van from his high vantage point. “Got ‘em!” He yelled to her as he shuffled down the stairs.  

“That was quick,” she said, maybe a little to cheery, but he was grateful for it. The whole experience felt like ages to him, and he was becoming increasingly anxious to get on the road. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched. Hunted.

He loaded Kaylee into the back seat, encouraging her to lay down if she needed to and accepting no protestations as he took his place behind the wheel. The engine purred to life and he could’ve almost cheered with joy, he was so relieved. He peeled out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell, kicking up a cloud of dry, dusty dirt behind them. Travis drove past Hackett House as quickly as possible, not wanting to create any opportunities to delay their trip to the hospital. He spied Bobby’s truck in the front lot, parked next to his own cruiser. Chris’s old blue Bronco was still there, too, and he hoped Kaylee didn’t notice it.  

“How you holdin’ up back there kid?” he asked, in an effort to distract her.

In the rearview mirror, he could just barely see her face, chin folded down into her chest. She held his jacket slightly open with her good hand and was looking at something inside it. “I’m fine,” she snapped at him, quickly clutching the jacket tightly over her injured arm. “Sorry,” she said after a long pause. “I’m just…” she trailed off.

“It’s okay,” Travis said softly, glancing back and forth between the road and his niece. “This is almost over, Kaylee. It’s gonna be okay.” He smiled warmly at her, though she likely couldn’t see it.

They finally hit the logging road and Travis laid his foot on the gas pedal, heavy as lead. He breathed deeply, reassuring himself mentally that it would all be over soon. He’d get Kaylee to the hospital first, then he’d figure out what happened to Caleb and Chris. One thing at a time. It was all going to be okay. He repeated it like a mantra in his head. It was almost over.  

“Uncle Travis…” Kaylee piped up after a few minutes of silence. He looked once again into the rearview mirror at his niece, slightly alarmed by her tone of voice. Soft and strained, and just a little bit deeper than normal. His gaze was met by a pair of glowing, yellow eyes. “I don’t feel so good-”

Travis’s vision went red. His eardrums practically burst from the sound of an excruciatingly loud, wet pop. It was abrupt and jarring, and he would have thought it was a gunshot, if not for the hot spray of crimson blood that splattered across the windshield. And everything else. His ears rang, his heart thundered against his ribcage, he lost sight of the road. Something growled behind him in the backseat.

In an instant of blind panic, he cut the wheel too harshly, careening the van off the road and directly into the trunk of a large pine tree. His head collided with the steering wheel upon impact, and for a moment, everything went white. He couldn’t see. Could barely hear. It felt like his head was underwater. The loud ringing in his ears overpowered a distant, muffled banging sound that echoed painfully through his skull. His vision came back swiftly in bursts of light, flickers of a red dashboard, the pale white of his own fists, still clenched around the wheel. He tasted copper. The ringing gradually subsided, giving way to the low rumble of an animal growl. Very, very close.

Travis came to full consciousness in an instant, suddenly too aware of the danger he was in. In one desperate motion, he grabbed his door handle and shoved, tumbling sideways out of the vehicle directly onto the compact dirt of the logging road. Fireworks burst once more across his eyes and he cried out in agony. He rolled onto his back, either too weak or too shaken to stand, and pushed himself backward away from the violently shaking vehicle.  

By the time he reached the middle of the road, the shaking abruptly stopped. Travis froze, staring in wide-eyed horror as something emerged from the gaping driver’s side door. One long, bony hand reached out, curling slowly around the door frame. The sound of its long, sharp talons dragging across the metal made his teeth hurt, a thousand times worse than nails on a chalkboard. Two yellow eyes slowly emerged from the dark cab, it’s interior light casting a dim scarlet glow through the thick film of blood that now covered it. The creature emerged into the moonlight, supporting its weight on long, spindly arms. The light of the full moon glinted off its pearly canines as it bared its teeth at Travis, and emitted a low, clicking snarl.  

Travis couldn’t move, didn’t even think to move, as it slowly crept toward him on all fours. He could do nothing but tremble in the small eternity it took for the creature to reach him. It clambered over his prone, outstretched body, and came within mere inches of his face. Its yellow eyes bored into his own, and he could feel its hot breath fanning across his skin, moving with him as he tried to lean back further on his elbows.  

Travis jumped as the creature suddenly inhaled sharply, and deeply. It shifted even closer to his face, and sniffed him rapidly, like a bloodhound tracking a scent. It paused, just as suddenly as it had started, pulled away from him slowly, a let out a sharp snort through its disturbingly human nose. It crouched low, all four limbs coiling in on themselves, and sprang clean over Travis’s head. He heard it land somewhere behind him with a hard thud and take off into the woods, the sound of snapping twigs and crunching leaves growing increasingly distant.

Travis remained where he was, in the middle of the road, blinking in disbelief. He slowly exhaled a long, shaky breath and collapsed fully onto his back. His head hit the road hard, and he couldn’t tell which stars in the clear night sky were already there, and which were fabricated by his fear-addled mind. He closed his eyes and allowed the black mercy of unconsciousness to take him wholly. 

Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving kudos/comments on my AO3  

Read Witness to the Dawn - an ongoing, Hackett-focused fic beginning a year before the events of The Quarry! 

[stusbunker]

A Gentlemen’s Agreement Epilogue

A Supernatural Denny AU Fan-fiction Series

Featuring: Dean Winchester/ Benny Lafitte

Other characters: Pamela, Jesse, Caesar, Crowley, Balthazar, Meg, Jo, Lee, Lisa, Sam (mentioned), Drea OFC, Robbie and SJ OMCs, Deanna OFC

Word count: 2340

A/N: Enjoy! xoxo Stu

Brunch

    The sun was bright, but the air was crisp. The remnants of the early snowstorm had left soggy lawns and damp sidewalks. Benny pulled up to the restaurant and parked on the curb, smiling over at Dean. He waited patiently. 

    “You sure this is a good idea?” Dean squinted in the midday light.

    “Been dying to meet ya. Figured it’s only fair, I met your folks, you can meet my people too,” Benny said simply. “But I’m not gonna force ya.”

    “I just, I’m not used to being out in public. In numbers,” Dean sputtered.

    Benny raised a single eyebrow at him. “Well, I guess this is your best shot to try it out, dontcha think?”

    “What if they don’t like me? I don’t want you to have to choose between me and your friends,” Dean explained the root of the problem.

    “I like you, they will too. Just relax, be your charming self and if you don’t know what to say, you can just keep eating.” Benny put his hand on Dean’s thigh, squeezing just so.

    Dean growled out a sigh. “Fine. But you’re paying.”

    Like that could make an uncomfortable situation worth it. Benny smirked at Dean’s logic, waiting for his face to soften from grouchy to amiable. Once Dean relaxed, Benny kissed him, just long enough to keep him flustered and climbed out of the truck.

     They approached a large round table midway along the heated patio, where four people were already seated.

A raven haired woman waved them over. “My good Benjamin, did you bring a straight boy to brunch, just for me?!”

“Pammy!” Benny leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Hate to disappoint ya darlin', but ain't nothing straight about this'n."

 “Hey, now! Can’t a guy speak for himself?!” Dean snipped defensively as he sat in the spot beside Benny.

Everyone laughed. Pamela raised her eyebrow in question.

Dean licked his lips and put on the smolder, “Sorry sweetheart, but I’m taken.”

“Wait, this--- THIS is your sassy mechanic?!” Crowley leaned forward, extending his hand, his English brogue gruff and pandering. “Nice to finally meet you, handsome.”

       Dean gave Benny the side eye and all Benny could do was shrug coyly. Dean shook the man’s hand, trying not to show his discomfort from his lingering glances. Benny made the rest of the introductions, Jesse and Cesar were also a couple, but had been married for a few years. They seemed to be waiting on someone before they ordered. The group sipped their cocktails with a fresh pitcher of Bloody Mary in the center of the kitsch tablecloth.

Benny poured Dean a generous portion of the red drink and slipped seamlessly into the conversation. Dean sucked the palmeto out of an olive and listened casually, not too sure where he fit in this part of Benny’s life.

Twenty minutes later a rail of a guy swaggered in, with oversized aviators and a black linen suit. 

“Oh, thank Christ for booze,” he huffed, grabbing Dean’s glass without even acknowledging Dean was there. The blonde chugged the entire drink, before breaking for air. “I just had the worst hook up of my life, no, well, the year at least. He took me to his mother’s house. She tried to make me breakfast. I was simply mortified. I just left. What could I even do at that point, honestly?!”

Now that his audience had his attention back, the man gawked at Dean. He even pulled down his sunglasses for a better look. “Now who the fuck is this? Is it show and tell?! Because I am not prepared in the least.” 

He casually patted at his hair and eyed Dean from top to toe. Benny chuckled, but Pamela was the one to make the introduction.

“Balthazar, our regular hangover diva. Meet Dean, Benny’s boy toy,” she deadpanned, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Oh you can’t be serious,” Balthazar lamented, looking from Pam to Benny to Crowley and finally at Dean. “Fuck you southerners and your goddamn accents--- always gets the hotter ones,” he muttered defensively as he threw himself against the armrest of the chair, crossing his legs.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Cesar ended the dramatics concisely. “Maybe somebody should find our waitress?”

Dean looked at Benny confused. “We’re always here for a while, she doesn’t bother us until we’re actually ready to order. Tend to annoy her otherwise.”

Crowley volunteered as he needed to head to the men’s room anyhow. Five minutes later he arrived with an obviously surly waitress.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Meg’s smokey voice broke through Balthazar's latest story. She centered herself between Cesar and Crowley’s seat and cocked her hip, tongue firmly in cheek as she waited for Dean to take her bait.

“Heya, Meg,” Dean sighed. The inevitable caught up with him after all, they just had to run into someone he knew.

“Oh, this has got to be good, now, pray tell, how do you two know each other?” Crowley probed.

“Oh me and this schmuck? We go way back.” Meg smiled without teeth.

“Is that so?” Benny tested the waters.

“Not like that,” Dean grumbled. “Meg, here, took my little brother Sammy out for a few spins, back in the day. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, well, what can I say? It was high school.” Meg let her indifference coat her entire being until curiosity sparked to life in her eyes. “So what are you doing with this crowd, or did they bring you in just to add a new level of torture to my Sunday shifts?”

“Well---.” Dean swallowed, looked at Benny for clarification and got mild amusement instead. “I think you’re stuck with me now.”

“Joy,” Meg bristled before taking their orders, knowing most of the table’s usuals before they even opened their mouths.

News

    Benny rushed into the customer entrance of the shop, the wet October air had kept the service doors closed for the past week. He leaned against the counter, decorated in local business cards and charity fliers, anxiously waiting for someone to talk to. His chest was so tight he worried he’d pass out from excitement. He just needed to see him was all, once he saw Dean it would be easier.

    Lee sauntered in from the service bay, they both had drawn the short straw it seemed.

    “Hey, mind getting Dean for me? It’s important,” Benny asked, unable to keep the burning smile from his face.

    Lee eyed him curiously but nodded and headed back the way he came. He didn’t shout, not really. “Dean-o, your boyfriend’s looking for ya.”

    Dean unfurled himself from the engine he had been tinkering with all morning and glared at Lee.

    “Husband, whatever, seems urgent,” Lee acquiesced. Dean nodded and wiped his hands off on the closest rag. Dean pulled his wedding band out from his undershirt out of habit more than anything. He couldn’t wear it on his hands at work, but he didn’t want to lose it so Benny made him a braided leather necklace once they got back from their honeymoon.

    Dean ignored formality and walked straight into the waiting room. Once he saw the look on Benny’s face he knew what was happening.

    “It’s go time?” He asked, shock and exhilaration sparking his instinct to move.

    “It’s go time, cher. Lisa called me on the way to the hospital. Sam’s driving her from the office. Her water broke about 9:30,” Benny explained, the nervousness slipping into his cadence.

    “Alright, I’m gonna clean up, you want me to drive?” Dean asked, gauging the unsteadiness in his usually stalwart husband.

    “That’s probably best, yeah,” Benny agreed. 

Dean leaned in and kissed him firmly, resting his forehead against Benny’s temple before pulling away.“Hey, we got this, alright? That kid is gonna be so spoiled having you for a daddy, you know that?”

“Look who’s talking, gonna have you wrapped around their finger before they can even crawl,” Benny teased back, inhaling with contentment.

Dean headed back to warn his coworkers that he had a baby on the way and to clean up enough to be allowed into a hospital. Jo followed Dean out into the lobby. Quickly, she hugged Benny before demanding regular updates to the group chat.

“Alright, get out of here, we’ve got you covered for the rest of the week. Let me know and I will put in paternity leave as soon as everyone’s home, okay?” Jo got all professional about things as Dean left.

“Oh, right, shit. Well, I guess I’ll let you know when you can come over and---,” Dean started before Benny pulled him by his elbow.

“We should be goin’” Benny urged. Dean looked at Jo one last time and nodded.

This was it.

   Dean held Benny’s hand the whole way to the hospital, their grip tightening every so often, grounding them both. Because Lisa was a friend and the surrogacy was looser than most circumstances, both Benny and Dean were allowed in the delivery room. They were the best cheerleaders a birth mom could have ever asked for. Seven hours later, one chubby baby girl entered the world screaming to high heaven and splitting her fathers’ hearts open for an entirely new level of love and devotion.

    Mary Andrea Lafitte-Winchester, or Drea for short, was a happy and healthy little girl. And an overprotective big sister to her twin brothers, Samuel Joel and Robert Fergus, who came along four years later.

Sunset

    They’re old men now. Dean is five years retired, while Benny works the register for their sons on the weekends. Both of their hands aren’t what they used to be. But they keep busy. Drea is bringing the kids round tomorrow, it’s the start of summer break and Dean’s been dying to teach her kids to fish.  

    Dean went grey after he turned fifty, but it hasn’t changed since, in color at least. Benny’s beard is as white as Santa Claus and he hides what little hair he has left under a cap. They’re both a little rounder, a little lower to the ground, but they got that way together and neither of them notice it on one another anyhow.

       Every year they visit Jesse and Cesar in Arizona for New Year's. Though they fly more than make the drive these days.

        They still take turns cooking the meals and the movie nights from their early days resurfaced into movie afternoons when their kids moved out. Dean can’t hear for shit anymore and, naturally, Benny makes fun of him for it. But Dean’ll put in his hearing aids if company is over.

 It’s early evening in the beginning of June and the bugs are orchestrating quite the soundtrack to their time on the porch. Dean pours his whiskey. Benny’s already sipping his sweet tea, his medications don’t let him drink much anymore. Jo’ll come by on Sunday, along with SJ and his wife and Robbie. Sam and Jess usually make it to every other dinner or so.

    “Hey there, handsome. Mind if I join you?” Dean teases, once a flirt always a flirt.

    “Not at all, cher. It’s a helluva view,” Benny glances at his husband, watches Dean take in the peaches and pinks kissing the slopes of the fields. They sit like that for an hour, until the dark is too thick to see through. Groaning and creaking they stand in turn. Dean keeps his hand on the small of Benny’s back as they head inside for the night, steadying them both.

    They moved their bedroom to the ground floor after Dean’s heart attack, a lot less worry about making it upstairs that way. After being married forty years, Dean still makes jokes about it being Benny’s place. But it’s always been his home. He kisses Benny goodnight, makes it a little saucy because he can. He’s the first to close his eyes.

    In the morning Benny makes waffles and tofu bacon. Dean pretends he can’t taste the difference, fooling no one. They make out while the sink fills for the dishes, too few to run the machine. Benny gets handsy first and Dean tries to squirm into the upperhand. They’re interrupted by a car pulling in the drive.

    “Busted,” Benny whispers.

    “You’re the one who wanted kids,” Dean grumbles against Benny’s neck, an old, unfounded retort.

    “Yeah, but the grandkids---,” Benny starts.

    “Were made to be spoiled,” Dean finishes and kisses Benny once more. Drea’s yelling at her kids to slow down before her dads even make it outside to greet them. Her eyes, blue as her daddy’s are tired. They don’t envy her the school aged years. Dean bends down as baby Deanna, who’s nearly four, comes crashing into his arms. He pulls her up and holds her tight, reminds him of her mama and he can’t help but get a little weepy over the passing years. 

    “It’s so good to see you, baby girl.” Benny pulls his daughter into a hug before helping with their bags. The older kids don’t come inside until it’s time to eat, climbing through the barn and splashing in the creek until they’re soaked. But Deanna sticks with her Grandpa on a simple stroll, while Pappy and Mama catch up.

    Dean still has the jacket he bought from Benny, though the pants are long gone. He’ll leave it to Robbie when the time comes, when his son finds himself a stud that’s worth settling down for. If that’s what he chooses. 

    For now, Dean lets his granddaughter pick up every rock and stick she finds and examines it to the nth degree. He explains what he can about each one. She’s very curious. He even lets her wipe her chubby little hands on his pants’ leg when she needs to. They get back to the house just in time to start dinner, but before they go inside Dean takes a mental picture of his husband on the porch, their daughter beside him and his granddaughter running past him.

   It is a helluva view after all. 

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[obxsummer]

Our Secret // John B. Routledge

word count: 2.6k

pairing: john b routledge x maybank!reader

warnings: lots of cursing, descriptive physical child abuse, mentions of sex, angry!JJ, angst

summary: you thought you were doing so well hiding your relationship from your brother. after an amazing day with your boyfriend, you come to realize that jj’s not as oblivious as you predicted which ends in the worst argument you’ve ever witnessed.

request: hiiiii a request where you’re seeing john b in secret because you’re jj’s sister and then jj finds out?

masterlist

ask me anything

--

“I swear to God if you leave a hickey, JJ’s going to murder your ass.”

John B laughed, his lips pressed against your neck as he hovered over you, one hand holding him up as the other rested on your cheek. “I’m not that dumb. Plus, he can’t murder someone if he doesn’t know who to murder.”

This isn’t the typical post-sex conversation most couples had but for you and John B, it was normal. The past five months had involved a lot of lying, skipping plans, faking sicknesses, and a lot of concealer to keep your relationship hidden from prying eyes. There were two main reasons everything was secret: one, no Pogue on Pogue macking and two, your brother would literally punt John B into another country. 

It wasn’t that JJ was against you dating anyone, but he definitely wouldn’t appreciate the fact that at the end of the day you were crawling under the sheets with his best friend. You couldn’t help it though. Being with John B was literally intoxicating and you found yourself needing more every single moment you were with him.

There had been many close calls, but somehow, you had managed to keep your secret thus far and you weren’t planning on spilling anytime soon. Although it sucked to keep your hands to yourself when you were with your other friends and your brother, it was worth it when the two of you spent time alone.

“John B? You here?” 

John B’s hand was over your mouth before you could even scream in surprise. He held a finger to his lips in a sign to be quiet as he pushed off of you. You quickly got up, pulling a shirt over your head as you snuck into the bathroom.

While your boyfriend left the room to confront your brother, you took a moment to adjust your appearance in the mirror. You rolled your eyes, spotting an already darkening mark on the dip of your collarbones where John B had definitely ignored your warnings, not that you minded, it just took a little additional effort to cover up.

Sighing, you leaned against the wall as you listened to the muffled conversation going on through the wall. After a few brief minutes, there was a knock on the door before it opened, revealing John B’s exhausted figure.

“He’s gone,” He mumbled as he walked towards you. “Sorry about that.”

You laughed, wrapping your arms around his neck before kissing him softly. “It’s my brother, my problem. I probably should be going anyway. He’ll get suspicious here soon.”

“Yet you’ll end up back on my couch around midnight,” He mumbled against your lips, hands rubbing your back. “I wish I could do more for you guys.”

“Letting us crash here is more than enough,” You responded, “It means I get to see you even longer.”

John B hugged you tighter to his chest and rested his chin on your head. He hated knowing that you and JJ feared going home. Even before the two of you were dating, he couldn’t stand the fact that you could possibly end up with a black eye or a bruised rib. Your dad always blamed harming JJ on the fact that he looked like your mom, but at the end of the day, you were her splitting image. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if it was actually her again or just you hiding in the shadows.

It freaked JJ out. Knowing that you weren’t safe from the hands of your own dad was hard, but for your brother, he couldn’t stand it. There were countless times JJ would walk through the front door so you could sneak in the window, or he would take the blame for a broken dish with the idea that your dad would react even worse if he knew it was you. You were overwhelmed with guilt knowing that your brother put himself on the front of the battle every single time to keep you safe. You hated knowing JJ was bruised and bleeding because of you.

“Be safe, okay? I’ll be here if you need me.”

Once you had all of your stuff and clothes were returned, the walk back to your house was one filled with anxiety and nerves. You knew JJ was home from the bike outside and you managed to sneak in without a peep, your dad crashed on the couch completely asleep. You exhaled and tiptoed to your room without another word.

“Where the hell have you been?” JJ hissed as he stood in the doorway of his room. “I’ve been looking for you.”

You rolled your eyes. “I told you I was going to the beach for a walk, chill. And what exactly do you want?”

“Did the horny seagulls give you a hickey?” His finger pressed against the dark spot on your neck. You rolled your eyes and shoved his hand away. He wasn’t actually looking for you, he just wanted to give you shit. 

“Fuck off, JJ,” You mumbled before going into your room and shutting the door without another word. You weren’t in the mood to deal with him, nor were you up to covering your tracks. You flopped on the bed with a groan, still sleepy from your day with John B. You closed your eyes and allowed sleep to take over.

--

Waking up was a whole new adventure. Voices were shouting, glass broke somewhere along the lines and it had you on your feet in seconds. Throwing open your door, you walked straight into someone’s back causing you to stumble slightly.

“What’s going on?” You mumbled, still half asleep. You had run into JJ, who turned to glare at you with an anger you haven’t seen before. You stood next to him so you could get a clear view of the scene.

“What’s going on is your brother is screaming like a maniac for no goddamn reason!” Your dad shouted, pointing at JJ who was already sporting a black eye. He had clearly been woken up from his nap early and one of you would pay for it with more than a bruised eye.

Your brother ignored your dad, however, and instead was still attempting to murder you with his eyes. “Wanna explain this?” The dark blue piece of fabric dangling in his hand sent a chill through you as you recognized John B’s bandana in between his fingers.

“It’s John B’s? So what?” You tried to play it off but deep down, you knew you were screwed. “We’re with him all the time, JJ. That’s not abnormal.”

“No, but it is abnormal that I’m finding his clothing in your room, hickeys on your neck, and you’re both coincidentally ‘busy’ at the same time on most days. So what the hell is it, Y/N?” JJ was yelling now and you were becoming increasingly terrified. Your brother never got angry with you, not like this. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Great, now I’m letting a whore live in this fuck up of a house!” Your dad reentered the conversation to give his two cents. “I fucking knew I shouldn’t have let your mother talk me into keeping you. You’ve turned into nothing but a worthless piece of shit who just takes up space and wastes money!”

His hand clamped around the collar of your t-shirt as he shoved you against the wall, his saliva landing on your cheeks as he continued to scream. A large hand tightened around your throat, cutting off your airway as he held you off the ground. “You’re a slut, you hear me? Fucking your brother’s best friend like the piece of trash you are.” 

“Dad!” JJ’s voice echoed in your ears as you struggled in the harsh grip, your vision spotty as you tried to kick your way to freedom. Your brother was pulling against your dad’s shoulder to get him to let go, a panicked look in his eyes at the image before him.

“Stop,” You gasped as you shoved your hand out, barely hitting your father’s chin as you attempted to get any air. “Please.”

Your weak body collided with the floor where you choked for oxygen. The battle wasn’t over until multiple harsh kicks were landed on your ribs and back. You cried out and curled into a ball. The world slowly became still as you managed to get to your feet before darting out the door without another look. Knowing running wouldn’t help your already damaged situation, you threw your leg over the seat of JJ’s bike, thankful that he left the keys in the ignition before speeding away towards the only place you could find help.

John B was swaying in the hammock when you pulled up in a frenzy, leaving barely enough time to kill the engine before you were scrambling towards him. “Y/N?” He was pushing himself out of the hammock to meet you halfway when you crashed into him, heavy sobs leaving your chest as you held on to him tightly. 

“I’m sorry! I tried to stop it a-and-” 

“Shhh,” John B held your head against his chest as he rubbed your back in an attempt to calm you down. “You’re okay, baby. I’m right here. Calm down.”

You weren’t sure how long you stood there, but it was enough time for your breathing to slow and JJ to get his ass over to the chateau. His heart broke as he watched you stand there and cry in his best friend’s arms. JJ never wanted to hurt you, and he never wanted to set you in a situation where your father could hurt you, yet that’s exactly what he did. He felt awful and seeing the already forming bruises around your throat made him want to throw up.

“Little?” The nickname left JJ’s lips unconsciously. He had called you that for years ever since someone said you looked like the smaller version of him as a kid. He never let you live it down, always calling you “little” or “mini-me”. JJ was so grateful to have you in his life but he hated that it took until now for him to realize how much he needed you.

At the sound of your brother’s voice, you hugged your boyfriend even tighter causing John B to look at the new presence. Seeing your brother, he frowned yet didn’t shift to remove you from his arms. Whatever happened upset you severely and if this was how JJ found out about the two of you, then this was how JJ was going to find out.

John B’s fingers tapped the side of your thigh, a signal between the two of you that was unspoken but simply understood. You jumped from the ground into his suspecting arms as he carried you like a koala back to the hammock before settling in. It took some adjusting before you both were comfortable with him laying on his back and you resting on his chest. His lips pressed against your forehead as he continued to rub your back in a calming manner.

JJ stood in shock as he watched the interaction between you. Never would he imagine this, but watching you and John B was like watching a cheesy rom-com. It looked so right, and it was this moment when JJ realized how badly he fucked up in reacting out of anger.

“Hey,” John B mumbled as he watched JJ lose his control on his emotions on the steps of the chateau. “Pretty girl, you gotta let me see what happened.” The bruises on your skin didn’t go unnoticed to him but he wanted to wait a bit before talking to you about it. With a shaky breath you sat back on the hammock and let John B pull your t-shirt over your head to reveal your bruised stomach and chest. Some spots were red where skin was torn and your neck clearly revealed the outline of a hand.

“Fuck,” JJ cursed at himself as he ran a hand through his messy blond hair, tears of his own falling from his eyes as he realized what just happened. At the sight of your injuries, he lost it. He swore to protect you, to keep you out of his father’s cruel hands if it was the last thing he did and he failed. He failed because he was so pissed over you having a relationship and not telling him. “Little, I’m so sorry.”

You forced yourself to look over at your older brother before carefully stepping down from the hammock. John B followed you, handing back your t-shirt as you walked over to JJ and wrapped him in a hug. “It’s not your fault.”

“But it is!” JJ argued as he let you hold onto him. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up in front of him, that’s so fucked up, Y/N! I stood there, a-and I just let him because I was so pissed that you were fucking John B behind my back. Fuck! I’m so stupid!”

You shook your head, tears falling again as your brother finally broke in your arms and hugged you back, the two of you crying together. “I should’ve told you,” You mumbled into his shoulder. “It’s not just fucking around, J. I promise. He makes me really, really happy, and I should’ve just told you from the start.”

“We both should have,” John B interrupted as he stood a few feet away and observed the scene. “I’m sorry, JJ. I promise you this isn’t just some hook-up thing. I really love her, man.”

You smiled slightly at his words. The two of you had yet to say I love you to each other, as cheesy as that was, but standing here in the moment, you knew you loved John B. You loved him more than anything, enough that you were willing to risk your relationship with your brother because of it.

“It’s okay, man,” JJ sniffled as he pulled away from the hug, instead adjusting to hold you to his chest so he could have the small bit of comfort knowing you were okay. “It’s not worth an argument over. I’m really happy for you, trust me. Just wish this could’ve been in different circumstances.

“And I’m so sorry for letting that happen, Little. I never ever want to see you in that position again, and I’m sorry I let it happen in the first place like. Fuck!” JJ pulled at his hair in frustration. “I’m such a fucked up brother!”

“You are not!” You defended as you stepped away from him. “JJ, there’s been so many times where you take the damage instead of me, even if I deserve it. You can’t blame yourself for our shitty dad. It’s not your fault, it never will be your fault.”

John B shook his head. “You never deserve it. Neither of you do. Just stay here, yeah? You don’t have to go back.”

JJ wrapped an arm around your shoulders and kissed the side of your head. “I’m sorry.”

You shoved him away and gave him a light punch to the arm. “Would you stop apologizing? It’s nobody’s fault. Look, let’s just go inside and chill, okay?”

“Fine, but if I find out that there’s more hickeys on your neck tomorrow, I will bust someone’s ass, you hear me, John B?”

“JJ! Shut up!”

[ninak803]

Elitist Nightmares

Chapter two is here! I hope y'all enjoy it! I have to say I love Regulus.

@whataboutmyfries thank you sooo much for beta reading it & listening to me when I am screaming my thoughts at you again!

& thanks to @lumosinlove for creating our cute boys!

Chapter 2

Remus

It was calm outside, everyone still asleep except for him and Leo. The sun was rising and Remus parked the rental car in a good distance from the Black's mansion, but not too far so he can still watch who’s leaving and arriving.

He had picked up the car last night from a rental agency at the airport. He’d given them his fake I.D., no one needed to know who he really was, and it was much safer that way. He tried to be as unremarkable as possible: He wore blue jeans, a black sweater, no hat and no watch. He was polite but not too polite; he was forgotten right after the conversation. The only thing he persisted on was that his car was white.

White cars are the most common around, so he would be even more unrecognizable like that.

No one would pay attention to a random bloke driving a random white car. And that was his goal. No attention.

“And now?” Leo asked him.

Remus took a sip from his tea, trying to get rid of his tiredness with the caffeine.

“Now we wait for something to happen, for Sirius to appear. And then we’ll see.”

They sat in silence for a good while. 

The street came to life slowly. The first people showing up, taking their dogs for a walk and buying breakfast at the close bakery. Some were already outside for a run.

Remus had never understood the urge of going for a run, let alone early in the morning. He did go for a run once in a while, to keep himself fit and healthy, but he wasn’t addicted to it like some people were. He did it because it was essential for his job to be in shape, not because he actually enjoyed it.

The Black’s mansion got busy shortly after.

“Okay, now just watch who’s leaving the house. Write it down: Who left the house when, who’s arriving when. Give a short description of what they look like, so we recognize them again. Write it down or memorize it.”

At 7:37am Orion and Walburga Black left their house. They sat down in the shiny, black car that was parked in the parking lot. The driver sitting inside was already waiting for at least 30 minutes.

They left, probably for some state business.

It took another hour until their target finally left the house: Sirius Black.

Remus sat up straighter, his eyes not leaving Sirius. He wore dark jeans and a white button down, no tie. His hair was longer now than the last time he’d seen him. It reached just past his shoulders. His face didn’t show any kind of emotion, it was set in stone.

He was followed by another guy in a suit with dark and messy hair, probably his bodyguard. They headed for a car.

Remus stretched his back a bit.

“Here we go.” he said and turned the engine on.

Finn

“Can you believe this? We’re going to eliminate a Black! A Black!” Logan said excitedly as they entered their flat.

Finn felt Logan's hands on his shoulder, then he was shaken gently.

“Regulus Black, Fish! Dumbledore trusts in our abilities so much that he gives us this job!”

Finn laughed. He looked into Logan’s perfect green eyes. His heartbeat quickened because of the touch and the proximity. He could kiss him,if he just moved a little more forward, but instead he took a deep breath and stepped away a little bit from his best friend.

“Okay, yeah Lo, I’m just as excited as you are about this, but calm down okay?” Finn said but couldn’t quite suppress his grin.

It was a big deal. No, not big. It was huge.

They had other jobs before, of course, but they’ve been smaller, not so important for all of them. Observing Umbridge, trying to find out what she was up to next, for example. Sure, it was important, but it didn’t have the same impact on the country as eliminating a black did.

“Who do you think has the older brother?” Logan asked and sat down on the couch in their living room.

There was a short silence, then:

“Lupin.” they said at once, not one ounce of uncertainty in their voices.

Finn sat down next to him.

“Okay, I’m going to make us coffee & then we’ll have a lot of work to do before we can actually start this.” he said, leaning back and looking at Logan’s profile.

He had a crush on him since… well, forever. Finn couldn’t quite remember a time he wasn’t longing for him. They lived together for two years now. It had made sense then: They were working a lot together, being a perfect team. They did spend every minute together, so why not save some money and share a flat? Finn hadn’t thought about the fact that this meant no Logan-free space anywhere, which wasn’t exactly helping him, considering the fact that he was in love with a boy he couldn’t have.

“Ouais. Okay.”

Finn got up and went into the kitchen to make coffee. He poured some milk into his cup and an incredibly unhealthy amount of sugar into Logan’s. How could he drink this stuff? It’s a crime to still call that coffee.

He went back into the living room, placed the cups on the table and sat down on the floor across from Logan, who’s still sitting on the couch.

“Thanks.” he said and reached for his cup, took a sip of his coffee and then they started working.

“I think this actually sounds like a good plan. He isn’t that close to his brother, is he?” Finn asked.

He stared at the paperwork in front of him. He was still sitting on the floor. They were working for a couple of hours now, collecting everything they knew, comparing it with what Dumbledore had given them and writing down everything they still needed to know and what they planned on doing. 

Finn looked up as he didn’t get any answer from Logan, only to see that he’d fallen asleep on the couch. Finn had to smile at that sight, so the sugar and caffeine high finally had worn off.

He stood up, took the light blanket from the couch and covered Logan with it.

“Good night, Lo.” he whispered and brushed his hand gently through Logan’s brown curls.

Sirius

This day never ended, at least that’s what it felt like for Sirius. The business meetings lasted forever and there wasn’t any free time between the last meeting and the dinner.

All Sirius did now was rush home, change into something his mother might approve more than his choice of clothing this morning and say goodbye to James.

“Take care. Don’t do anything stupid.” James pleaded.

Sirius snorted.

“Yeah. Because I do stupid things on purpose.”

“You do. Sometimes.”

James hugged him quickly.

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. See you.”

“Tell Lily and little Harry I said Hi.” Sirius called after James.

---

Sirius hated dinners like this. Actually, he hated every activity that included his family, but those business dinners were the worst. They talked endlessly over state issues, how to regulate this better, how to get the most out of that. Sirius really wasn’t interested in it, but he had to have an opinion on every topic as the heir and of course his opinion had to be the same as his parents’. If he had another opinion, his parents would make him change his mind, so he was better off lying; he told them what they wanted to hear, despite the fact it was against everything he believed in.

“Have you ever thought about giving them something back? Like a tax return? Or lowering the taxes in general?” Sirius said against better knowledge.

That simple statement earned him furious glances from his parents, confused looking guests and a kick in the shin from his brother.

He threw an angry look at Regulus, before looking back at his parents.

“You must be kidding, my dear son. Who would ever think of something like that?” his mother said sweetly, but Sirius didn’t miss the threat directed at him.

“Of course I am joking, mother. Of course I am.” he laughed in the most charming way, but he suddenly felt really sick inside.

---

An hour later he was back in his room. He tried to undo his tie with shaking hands and after several attempts it finally was off and he threw it in the corner of his room. 

Why? Why was he the goddamn heir? He couldn’t do this! He wasn’t like them. He didn’t want to be like them!

Sirius moved his hand through his hair several times, a gesture he got used to doing when he was nervous and tense, which he was more often than not around his family.

There was a sharp knock on his door and Sirius froze mid-movement.

Oh no. This had to be his mother or his father, maybe both.

“Just a sec.” he said, his voice a little shaky.

He hated it, he couldn’t even control his damn voice, then how was he supposed to control a whole fucking country.

After he took several deep breaths, Sirius went to the door and opened it, preparing to brace himself against the angry faces of his parents, but it was Regulus he found outside his room. With a plate full of food.

“You ate almost nothing at dinner, thought you might be hungry.” he said and walked past Sirius, who let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He closed the door behind him and followed Regulus to his bed. The both boys sat down and Sirius started eating. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

“Thanks, Reggie.”

[angeldarkness95]

Open Wounds

Summary: You and Loki are friends, but one night while drunk both of you open yourselves up to each other about things that nobody else knows about you... Until tonight.

Warning: flying cusswords and talks of abandonment.

This is my first piece on here so please be gentle and enjoy 🙂

m/n: mother’s name

It was 5 years to the day that Loki lost Frigga, the most important woman in his life. Loki often wanted to be left alone all the time, but especially on the anniversary of her death. You’re invited to the Stark tower because Tony knew you could help Loki; he seemed more aggressive and shouty than usual and everybody else was just getting fed up and annoyed; all their attempts for him to snap out of the funk bit the dust and just made him more pissed off and bitter. 

You arrived at the tower with the fixings for bloody Mary’s (including some Asgardian mead, courtesy of Thor)  and your homemade crab Rangoon's you knew Loki loved very much. You called up Tony so he could let you into the building. “you know Y/n you’re here so often maybe I should make you your own badge so you can come in any time you need without me having to buzz you in” “That would be nice, thank you” You smile to him as the door opens.

“Loki still in his room?” Tony just nods, but before you leave up the stairs to his room he gently grabs your arm and you look up at him. “please be careful y/n, I’m still finding it hard to trust him and I don’t want you to get hurt” you smile again gently “I’ll be okay, I promise” he nods, but still has a worried expression on his face.

You approach Loki’s door, you take a deep breath and knock 

“Go away you mewling quim” he spits out, shamelessly turning you on a bit.

“It’s me, y/n, I come with offerings”

He opens the door, eyes bloodshot with a look of pissed off-ness and agony

“What do you want?” he spits out

“I know you want to be left alone, but I wanted to be here for you tonight” 

his expression softened up a little while keeping his guard up. He opens the door more and beckons you in to close the door. He was reading what looked like an old book about vampires, you set everything down on a table in his room.

“What sort of offerings did you bring y/n”

“I brought freshly made crab Rangoon's and the stuff to make bloody Mary’s” 

“mmm two of my favorite Midgard things” he hummed in approval, but still seeming pissed off

You started making the drinks while Loki was eating. 

“So, how’s your week been?” You ask while sitting down next to him, you look at him, undivided attention while trying to get a read on how he’s feeling.

“Fine” he practically growled at you. You nod and things stay quiet for a while. You decide to turn on some funky music to get into a better mood, maybe even dance with him

“Y/n what are you doing”

“I wanna dance, what does it look like?” You grind on him a bit, he forces a smile, but tries to hide it and turns the music off

“y/n maybe a bit later ok?” You nod sad but understandingly

*5 drinks later*

things get quiet again and he seems to have gone back to his silent thoughts

“Listen, Lo if you ever need someone to talk to I’m always here, and..” before you could say any more he lost it.

*he bangs a fist on the table* 

“HERE IT FUCKING COMES, YOU ONLY WANTED TO BUTTER ME UP SO I’D SPILL MY GUTS, MAYBE EVEN MY HEART OUT TO YOUR PATHETIC ASS... I’M PERFECTLY FINE YOU DAMN QUIM! ACTUALLY, YOU WANNA KNOW THE TRUTH? FIIIIIINE! I HAD THE SHITTIEST UPBRINGING I’VE EVER KNOWN, THE ONLY ONE WHO TRULY UNDERSTOOD ME WAS FRIGGA AND SHE’S DEAD BECAUSE OF ME! I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO GO TO HER FUNERAL, I WAS HARSH AND VILE, MY LAST WORDS TO HER HAUNT ME STILL TO THIS DAY! I SAID THINGS THAT I’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO TAKE BACK, I WAS THE WORST SON SHE, OR ANYBODY COULD ASK FOR! AND ANOTHER THING, ODIN WAS RIGHT FOR KEEPING MY IDENTITY HIDDEN OF WHAT I TRULY AM, BECAUSE I AM A FUCKING MONSTER!”

He was so mad his Jotun form temporarily came out for a moment, the sudden outburst shakes you to your core, the usually soft man yelled at you, you knew he would often yell at other people, but never you, until tonight. You’re shaken and your eyes want to tear up because you know that pain all too well.

You stand up to look the man before you, shaking, scared but understanding, your heart breaks after hearing Loki’s last words he had yelled out. You tried to bring your hand to his face, but he dodged the gesture.

“Loki, you are not the only one with a fucked up upbringing”

“Y/n is that supposed to make me feel better?!” he seethed

“No, it’s the goddamn truth” you said, trying to fight back tears and flashbacks as hard as possible, but to no avail. “at least you had a mother that gave a flying fuck about you! I don’t even have that!”

He takes a sharp inhale “then lets see who had a more fucked up upbringing, shall we?” still fuming mad, just more quiet than his yelling a few minutes ago. At this point the drinks starting to wear off for him.

“My birth was a mistake, my own mother didn’t want me, she didn’t even want my dad to know she was in labor so she could lie to him and say that I died or just to be able to leave me to be someone else’s problem, luckily my grandmother, my dad’s mother was notified as soon as m/n was at the hospital in labor, about to give birth to their only child. My dad couldn’t initially be there for my birth because he was about fifty or more miles away, he hauled ass to the point where he got a speeding ticket but was able to be there sometime after.

“Oh boo hoo you you were a mistake, big whoop”

“that’s not even close to the whole story Loki, sit your ass down” you roll your eyes to him. 

“My dad talks m/n into keeping me, despite how she feels towards me, everything is fine for a while, until around the age of three to five years old she decided she’d had enough of me and/ or my father and she snapped. It was late at night, she turned to me and my dad and essentially said she couldn’t do “this” anymore, even I'm not too sure what she meant, but she asked me a question you should never have to ask a child. She asked me if I wanted to stay with my dad or go with her, I chose to stay with my dad and she walked out the front door right in front of us, just left like I didn’t mean a goddamn thing to her.” You could tell Loki was about to interject but you put a finger up to his lips.

“I’m almost done, I promise” you pleaded to him, sorrow coating his expressions.

“years later me, m/n and my dad started working things out, m/n actually wanted to be apart of my life, things were looking up, things were actually ok...” you looked up to pause and see Loki’s expression, for a moment there was hope on his face, but sadly it was gone as quick as it came. “until I turned 9, for some reason m/n stopped wanting to see me, wouldn’t even talk to me or my dad, everybody was puzzled, until the winter came. I had gotten a letter from m/n” you take a shaky breath as you recall what the letter said.

“y/n this will be the last time you ever hear from me. I’m letting you go, you were and continue to be the biggest mistake of my life, I should never have had you, much less taken you home the night you were born, I wish you died so I wouldn’t have had the burden of being your mother. 

“that part always hurt the worst, after my grandma telling me that I did actually almost die the night I was brought into this world." "P.s. leave me the hell alone, I do not wish to be found, especially not by you." "I ripped that letter to shreds, but I still remember every word, every thought and emotion that raced in my head and in my heart, from that day forward I knew I would never be loved, because if my own mother couldn’t even love me, then how could I expect anybody to love me?”

You closed your eyes at the buildup of tears and every emotion that still haunted you from that damned letter, you start to fall when you feel strong hands catch you, you look up to see those gorgeous light blue oceanic eyes that were Loki’s. All the rage that was originally in his eyes had been replaced by sorrow. 

“y/n I had no idea anybody could go through this amount of pain, much less a Midgardian for Odin’s sake! No offense but I thought you Midgardians were so weak but my gods I have no idea how you’ve survived for so long”

“No offense taken” you force a soft smile.

Loki gave you a strong hug, you were probably hugging for a while but it only felt like a minute, you were holding onto each other for as long as either of you needed the other person. a few more minutes and he finally breaks the hug. He proceeded to write, no, scribble something down on a piece of paper “what’re you doing?” You asked with curiousness. 

“I’m giving you my number, any time you need to talk I’m here for you, ok?” He said as he was tearing up. “I don’t care what hour, any time you need me don’t hesitate to call” 

“I will” you say while giving him a sheepish smile as you start heading out of his room.

“Stay for the night?”

You stop in your tracks

“p- pardon?”

He laughs and takes your hands so you're facing him

“Pease, stay the night with me?”

[milky-maid-library]

CHAPTER 1: Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

Summary: 19 year old Elizabeth Hillard is met with the truth that she is actually a late blooming Omega.

Please read the trigger warnings and tags!: description of medical vagina examination, abandonment and verbal scolding/abusive tones. non-consensual treatment. non-consensual drugging.

Notes: A gift to @cursedcursingviking

“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim” means “be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”

April 15th 2023, 13:00pm, Saint Heiler, Jersey, United Kingdom.

“Holy shit, holy shit, no, no, no!” she was sobbing. Stick in hand, a horse shoe and a smiley face soaked in her urine on the tip. Five other tests were on the floor around her feet, all positive; all Omega.

She couldn’t believe this, her whole life said “Alpha, Alpha, you are an Alpha.”

Her parents were both Alphas!

She was meant to be an Alpha!

The possibility of being an Omega for her is less than six percent. The last Omega in her family was her great-grandmother on her mother’s side or some distant shit like that. Her aunts and uncles were all betas and Alphas.

Her family have always told her that “to be an Omega is to be a waste of time.”

Omegas were submissive, obedient, they were at home looking after pups or in the hospital at the nursery or at daycares looking after loud, slobbering toddlers.

Her family were strongly built, they were made of soldiers, police officers, construction developers, political leaders and company CEO’s. Not pathetic, whiney housewives.

Currently she was seeing her whole world swirling down the toilet as she flushed it.  She wanted to stay in school and study to be a high paid vet! Now she’ll be sent to a correctional centre or foreign country with extra distant family and forced to knit and paint until finally sold off to a partner or a birthing centre for science.

She sobbed harder before finally vomiting over the toilet bowel induced by the overwhelming stress.

Laying her cheek on the seat she glanced at her watch and cringed. Her mother would be home any minute! Picking up each test, she considered snapping them in half and clogging the toilet up with them yet what was the use? When scent was in the picture evolution was the final bitch.

Looking at the many smiley faces she felt like they were mocking her, laughing at her. Normally she would get angry, but now…instead she was sad. Tears sprung in her eyes again as she cradled them to her chest. Stumbling out of the bathroom she clamped up the stairs to her bedroom. She shut the door instead of slamming it. Gentle, considerate. Dropping the tests onto the side table, she fell into her bed and crawled under her covers.

“W-worst day ever.” She cried over and over, muffled by the softness of her pillows she inhaled in.

April 15th 2023, 16:30pm, Saint Heiler, Jersey, United Kingdom.

“Beth! Come down here please!” Her mother called from the kitchen.

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed open, she was wrapped in a tumble of her sheets and blankets. Her mother must’ve just come just gotten home, she was always so busy with her corporate work, she hadn’t seen her dad in two weeks since his overtime in the city bank.

She could hear her call again, firmer this time around.

She groaned and dragged herself up from her bed and down the stairs. Her stomach growled, hungry. She wondered what her mother was planning to cook or if they were just going to have pizza.

Stepping into the Kitchen her mother was kicking off her leather shoes and ripping her suit jacket over the counter.

“What did I say about boys?” She snapped over her shoulder. Drinking down a Painkiller. Great, she was already in a bad mood. She forgot her mother only got her cornrows re-braided yesterday, her head must’ve been violently sore. Elizabeth tried warning her to not go into work, call in a sick day, but no one would attempt to change Mrs. Hillard’s mind once it was made, like most mums.

But boys? Now that Elizabeth didn’t understand the sudden burst of tone. She felt her body loosen and turn icy, her skin covered in goosebumps. She mother was furiously popping an second pill before her when Elizabeth shivered, “D-don’t bring boys over.”

She sneered, her canines flashing; her large brown eyes identical to her daughters, glared her down.

Stepping around her to the cupboards, she whipped out an air freshener and dosed the room in a scent of lavender…only to be clouded by hormonal pheromones.

She felt the air grow painfully heavy as her mother hissed and sprayed the can out, before furiously slamming onto the counter and slamming the cupboards shut.

“Then why the fuck do I smell an omega?!” her sharp nail pointed to the ceiling and she began yelling as though there was someone upstairs she was calling to, “You tell that bloody boy to get out before I haul his goddamn omega ass out onto the fucking sidewalk!”

Omega…She thinks I brought an omega over…She smells…me…omega…I’m an omega…no…no…

“M-mum…I don’t have a b-boy over,” Elizabeth stepped from side to side.

Her mother pinched the bridge her nose and sighed, “Well Beth…I didn’t know you were into girls,” gently reaching out, and peeled back her daughter’s silk cap lovingly releasing her coily hair, “…but she needs to leave.” Her mothers fingers touched her cheek, boiling. It was then that colour started to fade from her face.

“Mum, please-” Before the poor teen could explain that she was the scent, Mrs Hillard marched her way up stairs and slammed open the door to her room where a giant wave of humid Omega scent flew out.

No…no! Mum! Stop! No!

Her voice was silent, her lips shut in a worried grimace.

As Elizabeth ran up the stairs, she heard her mother scream.

April 15th 2023, 17:45pm, Saint Heiler, Jersey, United Kingdom.

The hospital was…cold…the air-conditioning pelting down on her neck made her snuggle deeper into her sweater. Her mother was trembling just as hard as she was. She was shaken up herself, Elizabeth couldn’t tell if her mother was experiencing fear, rage even …disappointment. She hadn’t let Elizabeth touch her ever since she found all the positive Omega tests. When she tried to hold her hand, her mother growled at her.

Elizabeth though craved touch, she needed support, she needed her mum, she needed affection.

The waiting room was almost empty, the only other people was an Omega man with his pup in a sling while his Alpha wife continued to protectively touch their baby’s forehead. Elizabeth stared at the baby though… pups…where are my pups?...

“Elizabeth Hillard?” an English accent cut through the train of thought on the baby. In the doorway to the hall, the tall doctor was looking between her and the couple. When she stood up, with her mother hot on her tail, he smiled and led them to his office.

Awkwardly Elizabeth sat down onto waiting chair next to the doctors desk. Taking a deep breath she could smell the scent of Alpha and hand sanitiser. The overwhelming senses made her feel slightly nauseas.

Her mother sat beside her with a mournful sigh, she lifted her hand out to the doctor to shake it, “Julia, Mrs Hillard, Beth’s mother.”

He smiled, “Hello Mrs Hillard, I’m Doctor Cavill.” After the two Alphas acquainted themselves he finally sat in his wheeley chair and regarded Elizabeth.

“What can I help you with today Miss Hillard?” he smiled. Beth noticed how he looked so clean, and was built like a brickhouse, he smelt like an Alpha. The rooms light glinted on his medical wrist band proclaiming him as his blood type and confirming his own scent. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were kind, made of two colours, blue and his left eye had a tip of brown…it was merely something she saw...his smile was warm like a freshly baked cookie. Oh god…she was aroused.

Beth didn’t realise she wasn’t answering his question when he stared at her and her mother finally answered.

“She smells like an Omega.”

The Doctor then turned his attention away and pursed his lips and lifted a single brow at Mrs. Hillard, “Is something wrong with that?”

Her mother scoffed and rose her voice to a humiliating state. Elizabeth’s heart was beating fast, her cheeks were heating up and she tried sinking further into the seat. Her nose dug into the woollen shoulder of her sweater.

“Her father and I are both pure blooded Alphas! How can this happen!? The last omega we had was my great-grandmother and that’s it!”

Doctor Cavill sighed calmly taking off his glasses and setting them on his desk he then folded his arms and stood from his desk, “I see, well then Mrs Hillard, please step outside to the waiting room. I will need to conduct a blood and vaginal test.”

Her mother obviously huffed and grumbled about ‘how unprofessional’ and ‘surely I can stay’. Even now Elizabeth wanted her to leave with her hostile attitude. Luckily there was no way a female Alpha would argue with a male Alpha. When the door shut though it felt strange. All the heavy tension in the room lifted off of Elizabeth’s chest. She felt instantly calmer and made it easier to breathe.

The doctor sat back into his desk chair and crossed a leg over another casually.

“So…” he smiled, “How do you feel Miss Hillard?”

She gulped slightly and shakily answered, “Everything is smelling sweeter than normal,” she hated the scent of hand sanitiser but now it was something she wanted to shove up her nose. If it blocked out every other scent from the dust on the walls to the chocolate in the vending machine outside to the scent of the alpha right in front of her…she’d drink it all down.

“No,” he chuckled pushing back from his desk and started rummaging through his desk for medical items, “I mean, are you okay? Are you stressed or scared, or are you alright? I can always get a cup of water for you. But we need to take your blood first.”

She shook her head and tucked her neck deeper down into her sweater. Her fingers felt the scratchiness of the wool. She nodded and slipped the material off over her head and folded it neatly onto the chair her mother sat.

“I’m terrified,” Elizabeth confessed, her voice choked up, “I don’t want to be an Omega, I hope this is just a stupid puberty flux…maybe it’s a flip!”

It wasn’t uncommon for this situation to happen. Hormones can sometimes Flip and shows signs for the two other blood types, sometimes blood has become contaminated due to high iron levels or too much sugar intake. Diabetes were always Flipping the board. There were a million things that could cause a Flip in the hormonal pool.

“There’s nothing wrong with being an Omega you know,” her doctor commented sternly, holding up a needle, changing the needle point while Elizabeth choked.

She felt unusually insulted, “Everything is wrong with being an Omega, I won’t get the job I want and I won’t be allowed to come to parties with my friends, I’ll be stuck home with a…a…a fucking baby. Or sent to a breeding farm! I heard about the science experiments conducted on pregnant Omegas in the camps.”

The doctor turn abruptly at her and narrowed his eyes at her, he seemed offended. What does he need to be offended about, he’s an Alpha!

But his frown became a smirk, “You’re aware they are safetly committed with the Omegas consent,” He patted the medical chair in the centre of the room, “But whatever case, what do you want to do Career wise?” he asked while she crawled up atop of the tall chair and let him pull up her sleeve and wipe the alcohol on her arm.

“I want to be a vet,” She winced as the needle broke through her skin. She looked away from the bubbling blood being sucked up through the tube.

As he pulled away and capped the needle tip he asked, “Ever thought about midwifery?”

“I don’t like babies,” she snorted, “They’re so uncomfortable to be around. And I don’t want to listen to a screaming woman in labour.”

She noticed the movement in his shoulders as they slumped, he nodded and she felt like she was failing an unspoken test. She felt a rising anxiety, she growled to herself, it’s just a hormonal Flip.

“Fair enough,” her doctor said off handily, he sealed up her blood in a plastic bag and started to write her details. The pen cap lazily hung from his lips. He looked like he smoked…he didn’t smell like it though, maybe it was the way he stood. His scent was so easy to smell and feel…the omega yearned to know if he could smell her. And to her tragic uncontrol, her underwear were rubbing rough against her sensitive areas, the fumes dragged out this needing slick that was sickening.

Being omega is disgusting, this is what they do all the time? Gross! GET ME SOME ALPHA HORMONES NOW. She knew this had to be wrong, all the time she had been surrounded by alphas and she had been strong and confident like an alpha, maybe a little strategic like a beta. She was sure though she was alpha rather than beta and there was no possible way for her to present as a dormant omega for this long!

“How old are you Miss Hillard?”

“I’m eighteen,” she informed him of her birthday and he nodded, writing it down in the corner of the bag.

She was officially pissed off, crossing her arms she felt her eyes watering. “I want to be an Alpha or even a Beta,” she whimpered, “I can’t be an Omega, no way.”

The whimper…Shit! Stop whimpering you baby! Stop proving this point! Could you be anymore Omega!?

The doctor placed the test bag on his desk before gifting her a soft tissue “Have you taken a home determine test?” his hands settled onto his knees as he crouched down before her.

She broke out into a light sob and nodded, “ugh huh, I took six different ones…all positive for Omega.”

The doctor smiled sadly and handed her the box of tissues he had on his desk.  A nurse came knocking barely after she had started. It made her feel puny when she couldn’t stop herself from crying. She felt helpless, why couldn’t they just get her some alpha hormones already?

“Please take this to the test room,” he asked the nurse, handling a plastic bag with her needle inside.

Doctor Cavill let Beth cry as long as she wanted and reminded her that it wasn’t a hundred percent if she was an Omega yet.

The doctor rubbed her back and cleared his throat. From a draw below her feet he pulled out a green plastic cape, “Miss Hillard would you like to step into the bathroom there and remove your bottoms? Put the gown on?”

Time to get the vaginal confirmation that she was tighter than a needle hole. She pushed his hand away. God he sounded patronising, even if he was being merely polite about the events unfolding she took it as a personal attack, an underlying “You’re a weak omega, deal with it!”

No! I’m not an Omega!

Things were escalating to quickly; she barely realised the conclusions she was leaping to and how dramatic she was pushing with these emotions. She sniffed hard and snapped at him, “Can’t I just take my pants off now?”

Doctor Cavill shifted back uncomfortably, he grit his teeth and scrunched up his eyes, “I merely am offering a more comfortable option,” he clapped his hands, “But you may if you wish, have you ever attended a gynaecologist for a papsmear?” he asked as he got his tools ready from another draw.

She leaped off the chair and slammed her foot down.

“Duh!” She yelled, kicking her shoes off, and shoving her pants down, she was furious. Moodswings was a popular symptom of Flips.

“I just want to get this over with. Mum is so pissed off. Can’t wait for some fucking A-pills.” She grumbled, leaning back into the chair and spread her legs apart…normally she did this with a female doctor but right now she was too impatient to request a woman and she needed to know how fucked up her Flip was and how long would she experience it and how powerful would the drugs be. She couldn’t ever stand the look her mother gave her when she held up the positive determine test with horror.

The doctor cleared his throat again, snapping white gloves onto his hand and over his wrist band. He squirted a tube of lube over his hands and over the speculum, lining it up to her vagina and pushed it inside slowly, “Miss Hillard, please relax for me.”

She huffed to herself. I am fucking relaxed! No you’re not, you’re a bad omega, obey him!

The metal was cold inside of her but she was looking forward to the results: Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, I am Alpha.

He took a flashlight and shone the light down her passage, looking down at her inner muscles, “How often do you practise sexual intercourse Miss Hillard?” looking up at her from her pussy.

Shit, the scent was strong, it was so sweet like maple syrup and honey but sweeter…lick me. Oh fuck please alpha please please.

She shook her head and blushed, “N-never, I’ve only masturbated. So….” She swallowed hard, her head felt hot and she swore she could feel cold sweat dripping down, “Am I an Alpha or Beta?”

The doctor dipped two rubber fingers inside of her, patting down and around inside her. And suddenly his eyes widened, he gently slipped out his fingers and the cold speculum out. On his fingers was blood…oh shit…

“You may sit up and dress Miss Hillard, “The doctor set his tools and gloves into a silver tray. She was shaking…what was she?

He was washing his hands in the sink right beside her head when she bit her lips and lifted up her undies and jeans back up. The room was so quiet, the only noise was the sinks running water and the air conditioner. Beth shivered and sniffled.

Doctor Cavill’s shoulders were low, he turned his head and faced her. Twisting his fingers together he shook his head, “Miss Hillard,” he started with a long exhaled breath, “You’re days away from your first Estrus.”

The earth dropped and the moon broke and the stars were dimmed…“What do you mean Estrus!?” she questioned. Tears spurted from her eyes again. Gagged by nature.

No fucking way. Yes way.

“‘Heat’, an Omega will go into Estrus or commonly known as Heat while an Alpha will go into Oestrus commonly known as a ‘Rut’,” Doctor Cavill tried explain only for the angry young woman to scream abuse at him.

“I know what it is! I must be going into Oestrus, n-not an estrus, I can’t be an Omega, doctor! Ch-Check again!”

Sweat trailed down her face onto her neck, her heart was punching her insides, seeking an escape of her ribcage.

When she tried undoing her pants again, her doctor tore her hands away and took her wrists up, he was breathing harshly through his nose, “Miss Hillard I’m going to have to ask you to sit down and take a deep breath. Listen to me.”

She shook her head over and over, she couldn’t believe it! She was finally sobbing hard, choking on her tears.

Wailing, “No, no, no, please doctor, please!”

Out of the depth of the doctor’s chest came a stern growl, “Sit. Down. Now. Or I will have to restrain and sedate you.”

Her body was out of control, she didn’t want to sit but her arse met the chair cushion anyway. Good omega.

The doctor huffed, shaking his head with disappointment, her head flinched down, cowering and humiliated. She felt apologetic, but this wasn’t the real her.

“Good girl,” he praised, handing her a paper cup filled with water from the sink, “Now drink.”

The water was gulped down in a heartbeat, she needed the refreshment even if she didn’t want it, her doctor nodded, “That’s it.”

As she sipped on some more water the nurse from earlier stepped inside and handed the doctor a sheet of paper. The blood results… she shook on the spot, her red face panicking.

“Pl-please.” She choked on the water slightly, clearing her sore throat she sniffled, “What does it say?”

There was still a chance, maybe he was wrong; maybe this was just a intense Oestrus that was causing her to bleed. Maybe it was so strong her vaginal walls were stabbing themselves, seeking out an omega cock to claim.

Cavill looked from her to the parchment a few times, he shook his head. He held out the medical sheet to her and pointed to a positive cross.

The world went silent even as he was talking to her…it was a distant noise.

“Miss Hillard, you are as I had diagnosed, Omega positive,” he scratched his gland gently, “You are days away from your first Estrus I will give you a choice to either battle through it with medical aids or medical suppressants.”

She dropped the paper and the cup, the shock was as cold as ice. She felt weak and her arms numb, her eyes rolled back and her mouth lulled open. Her life was completely over.

Elizabeth Hillard the Omega fainted.

April 16th 2023, 1:25am, Saint Heiler, Jersey, United Kingdom.

When Elizabeth woke up, she was delirious. The world wouldn’t stop twisting and turning. Abover her was a bright light, she cringed away and whimpered. There was a mean bite at her wrist. She felt cold, washed out. Her body was laid out and angled up a slight. Her cheek rubbed into the soft hospital pillow. She smelt blood, so much metallic salt in the air. And her stomach was viciously growling. She peered down and noticed what was pinching her wrist. Handcuffs. She was handcuffed to the railing of her bed!

Clearing her eyes, she found herself surrounded by three blue curtains. One was quick to open, startling her. The nurse from earlier smiled at her eagerly, her Beta tag was super shiny in the light, forcing Elizabeth to blink rapidly, “Oh look, you’re awake. Can you please tell me your full name sweetheart?”

When she sat up slowly and moaned, “Elizabeth Hendrix Hillard.”

Before she could ask the handcuffs to be removed, the nurse smiled and held up a torch.

“Wonderful, now I am gonna need to shine a little light in your eye, can you please look into the corner of the ceiling dear?”

Doing as she was told, it was quick and over as soon as it had begun. The nurse was pleased, “Fabulous, right, I’ll be right back, Doctor Cavill needs to have a chat with you.”

“B-but my hand…”

Ignoring her, the nurse left.

Something was clearly off. Why did they handcuff her!? She started to tug at the chain, feeling her anxiety seep deep and activate a sense of fight or flight. The curtains reopened. And in stepped the doctor.

He grinned and nodded his head to her, “Hello there Elizabeth, how are we?”

She wasn’t amused in the slightest, quick with retort. “Chained to a bed rail.”

He smiled and whipped out a key, uncuffing her from the bed. She cradled her wrist, murmuring ‘thankyou’.

Her stomach loudly purred, extinguishing the level of discomfort she wanted to send the doctor. “…and hungry.”

“I’ll tell the nurse to get you some jello,” he chuckled, rubbing his hands. Just as he was to leave, she launched herself forward and caught his medical coat, “Wh-where’s my mum?”

He softly assured her, “She is just sitting in my room, we were discussing options after I showed her and your father your blood results.” Oh…dad…oh jesus…

She suspected her father to have been incredibly furious. How much furniture did he break?

“You…” she paused, “options…” she gulped and smiled at the doctor, “….I want suppressants...as soon as possible.” They would surely fix everything! She could have some and go have a coffee with her friends tomorrow.

“Not those kind of options…” He sighed and perched himself near her feet at the foot of her bed.

That was a weird answer…what does he mean? Could they change my DNA? Could they turn me into an Alpha. She had heard of some new sciences like that coming in.

“What other types are there?” she laughed hesitantly.

When he didn’t answer her, she felt the air grow heavy again…there’s a reason they kept you chained like a bitch.

There was only one other option….a correctional institution. She felt ill.

“I want to see my mum,” she gulped and moved to slip out of the bed. The medical gown was scratchy against her skin, she started to feel worse, her fingers scrunched up and unravelled. Her body felt dizzy when she stood up to quickly. The doctor attempted to block her way when she peeled back the curtain to many empty bed and a single door with a sign, “Farewell room.”

No, no, fuck, no! where’s mum and dad!

She hurried to the door and shook at the handle, but it was locked, she was locked in with the doctor. She couldn’t escape. The floor cleaner and bright lights were clouding her senses, blinding her eys and stinging her mouth and nose.

She ripped a heavy breath, not thinking it would be so painful after holding it in too long. I won’t cry, no, no crying!

“Elizabeth I’m gonna need you to calm down,” the doctor informed her, setting his hands over her shoulders, she was fast to slap them away. She lowly growled at him and bared her teeth ferally. Don’t you fucking touch me!

When she realised whatg she had done, especially to an alpha, she felt instant regret and guilt, she choke on more tear and buried her head into the doctors chest. His heart was beating fast too, but not like her rabbit pounding blood.

“N-no,” she cried, “I want my mummy!”

She felt the doctor soothingly rub his hand over her head and down her back. He hushed her until she was just a whimpering woman.

The door unlocked, and finally…“Beth…” her mother spoke out to her.

She snapped back around and saw her mother and father beside the door. Her father barely came him, his lips curled in, disappointed, disgusted and silent.

A tiny smile came to Elizabeth’s face, her hands reached out, “Mum!”

But Mrs Hillard stood back from her. Again and again. The closer Elizabeth sought out her mother, the more Mrs. Hillard distanced herself and stood closer to the door.

“M-mum? H-hug me…” she begged, “pl-please mum?”

She sighed and looked away from her, refusing to look her in the eye. Shame. “Doctor Cavill, your father and I believe it is best if you…go away for sometime, “ she clutched her own arms, “…where people can help you.”

Elizabeth did not see it that way at all, and she knew her mother was lying out of her arse.

“I don’t need to be helped,” Elizabeth sniffled and smiled, “I just-just need some suppressants.”

“Elizabeth,” she seethed through her gritted teeth, “Go with the nice nurses.”

“M-mummy, please,” She put her hands together and got to her knees on the cold tiled floor, “Please don’t do this!”

“STOP!” her mother screamed, “You are making a scene!” she rolled her eyes and turned around to leave, “You will go to ‘Saint Selene’s School For Adolescent Omega.’ We may see you during the summer.” And slammed the door closed.

She ran to the door and found it locked, she pounded the window with her fists and screamed out, “D-don’t leave me, please don’t leave me Dad!…M-Mummy!” her father and mother did not look back as they walked away, abandoning their only child. Their backs and bodies continued to  get smaller and smaller the further they walked. The sight broke her heart. The concept of betrayal could not be clearer. Her breath clouded the glass, her tears sliding down and tapped onto the floor, onto her naked feet.

Doctor Cavill’s hand reached out and wrapped around her bicep, trying to tug her back from the door. “Come on,” he said.

She felt her body move and she went into a frenzy of defense, “Let go of me!”

When he did not, she saw a lonely pen on the end of a bed frame with a clip board. She grabbed it and jabbed his forearm. The blue ink spattered across his skin while he yelled in pain.

“Get the fuck off of me!” she squealed again and held up the pen with both hands, take a few steps back from the now pissed off Doctor. The sound of the door opening again had her heart rushing.

Mum!?

To her massive disappointment, it was the nurse who was shocked by the scene unfolded. Now Elizabeth was surrounded.

“Put the weapon down!” the beta demands, holding up her own hands in defence, “Now.”

“Calm,” was the word she heard him say beside her ear, before pressing her back into him, grasping her jaw and finally feeling an incredibly long sting in her neck followed by the unusual flow of liquidised drugs into her body, “calm.” Her last thought was, that’s a lot of fucking morphine.

[themissinggenius]

Part 2/2

Another conversation was coming, but it was avoided for the time being. Clarice showered in the guest bathroom; earlier, she had tried peering around the house—still mad but a bit embarrassed by the outburst. The door had been put back into place since she showered, and the water had been cleaned off of the floor. Hannibal was nowhere to be found. I really did it this time, she thought. Her body relaxed, and her face softened. She didn’t think it was appropriate to laugh, but the thought still surfaced, prompting a sad smile. I pushed around the violent centerpiece of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. And he just cried. Shithouse mouse. The smirk dissipated as she ruminated further... She had hit him. Being a domestic abuser wasn’t just rude; it was boringly common. 

She moved the thoughts about violence to the side and shifted her attention to the cause of the scuffle. I don’t know what he expected. Hannibal knows the depth of my old relationship with Jack, as much as he hated him. He told me to say goodbye to my father, so why not Jack?

Your daddy and Jackie Boy aren’t the same, she reminded herself. At this moment, she was both grateful and resentful that her internal voice of reason was that of her husband. At least it was helping her see his view. Okay, so the relationship isn’t necessarily comparable. But why would he think I wouldn’t come home? Did he really read my intentions so incorrectly?

Clarice laid awake in the guest bedroom for hours.

~~

Hannibal Lecter relies on his intuition; it may just be his most famous attribute. On rare occasion, though, his cunning will fail him. On the day that Jack Crawford died, it most certainly did.

However, he doesn’t know that yet. Instead, he is reclined in repose at the seat of his harpsichord which he does not play. As he is off in one of the ill-visited quarters of the home, Clarice would be unable to hear the notes carrying from her position in the guest room; even so, he does not play. Hannibal gleaned a look of disgust and frustration from her earlier, and thus, he was certain his Starling would take flight by the morning for reasons known but difficult to accept. There is no reason for him to play.

Poised on the bench, he disappeared to his memory palace without struggle. The difficulty came when he walked down the halls, closing each door that had belonged to her. Hannibal contemplated as he walked: There is a certain symmetry to this—an appreciable one. Clarice’s hotheadedness had been a defining feature of hers, whereas he relied on coolness. He chastised himself for his own emotional outburst; it was unlike him to breakdown, and though he had allowed himself to become vulnerable to his wife, with her likely departure, he had to withdraw from all this fragility. He had to shut down. He had to be the ice to meet her violent fire. 

Thus, he closed her doors, sealing the emotional ties within each.

~~

Hannibal emerged at the sound of her voice. He had not heard her approaching in nor had he smelled her. 

A few paces away from the harpsichord, Clarice stood. Hannibal had been contemplating whether to address her as Clarice (Perhaps too informal at this point...), Agent Starling (But even when she goes back, she won’t be an agent...), or Miss Starling (Ummmm, I don’t like this one very much...) when she interrupted.

“Hannibal,” she started. 

“Ah.” He paused but spoke again before she could continue. “I see you’ve finally decided to join me. Had enough tossing and turning up there, or did you come down to use me as your personal punching bag again?”

“No, no. I just think-”

He cut her off again. “You know what I think, Ex-Special Agent Starling?” Oooh. That works, he thought. “Well, actually I wonder. I wonder if that was how Daddy took care o’ Mommy when she wouldn’t shut ‘er yap.” His imitation of her accent—which she had long abandoned—made her flinch. “If Ma didn’t have dinner on the table at five-o-clock, yes siree, she’d be in some kinda trouble. And boy, does Clarice still wanna be like her Daddy! No matter what,” he emphasized with a drawl, “she’s gonna stand by him. It sure do seem that way tuh me!” Hannibal smirked, and his face betrayed no warmth.

The room had felt colder to Clarice when she had walked in. She had expected him to be upset, but she hadn’t expected this. The woman paused and considered the implications: her musings were correct. He really did misread her, and now he was trying to drive her away. Well fuck that. 

In their years of marriage, the couple had picked up on a few of each other’s traits. For one, Clarice was not going to allow a bit of intimidation break her. He came close to doing so in Baltimore, but he would not again. She steeled herself, adopting a bit of his icy demeanor.

“No, Hannibal. My father did not hit my mother. I think I would’ve told you by now, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer right away; rather, he just pursed his lips and smiled. 

Then, he began: “As you know, I don’t try to predict you because it often proves fruitless.” He looked off before setting his gaze squarely on her. “However, considering these... outbursts of yours and the contempt plain on your face, I have bought you a ticket back to Arlington in time for dear Mr. Crawford’s funeral. For my safety, I will also be leaving, but not to Virginia. I know how much you must miss Jackie; please, give him my regards when you go. Maybe if you scream and pound on his grave hard enough, someone will hear and they’ll finally find you... Three years after you were reported as a missing person.” Lecter’s eyebrows shot up, and he shrugged. “Though I doubt you’ll be reinstated, as you haven’t kept your resume up to date. It will be no problem for you, though, Clarice.” He gave her a kind, patronizing look. “You’re a very smart girl. When you rediscover that the FBI has no use for your intelligence, try showing off your trophies from the firing range. Maybe even tell them about your skills in hand-to-hand combat... I could write you a glowing reference!”

Hannibal was perfectly still in his seat with his wife just beyond him. He waited patiently for her to break. He wanted no end to be left untied when she left. Your turn.

“I see you still try and lick tears after you’ve tired of tasting your own.” Clarice took a slow step toward him. She needed to crack his facade quickly. “Fortunately or unfortunately, I have no intention of moving back to the States. I find that I’m quite happy right here.”

Only she could have noticed the slight twitch of the doctor’s right eye upon this admission. And she did.

Starling inched closer. “Now, about this ‘contempt plain on my face’...” She mirrored his voice and flat expression; her imitation was even better than his had been. “Did ya happen to consider that it’s because you just tried to tear me apart—unsuccessfully, I might add? Let me tell you what I know, Doctor.” She hammed up the formality in her tone. “I know you’re not comfortable feeling worried about another person. I know that you felt vulnerable when I was gone, and I know you didn’t like that.” 

She paused, remaining collected. She raised her voice a tad for this last bit. “Lastly, I know that you ASSUMED. And if there is one—just one!—good thing that goddamned Jack Crawford taught me over the years,” she laughed, “it’s that, when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME. Trust me, baby, you did just that. And despite what your intuition told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

She did it. The true stoic’s face had broken, and Hannibal the Cannibal sat, dumbfounded. He opened his mouth and then closed it. She continued.

“I’m sorry that you misread my motivations. I spent yesterday reflecting on how I had gotten to this point, and I had come home feeling glad. I was planning on going upstairs to find you, drawing a bath for the both of us, and then dancing later on in the evening. Your assumption got us a bit sidetracked, though.” Looking down at her watch, it was 2am. Holy crap. She focused back on him and noted that he was still unmoving but appeared less rigid than before. The room felt like it had finally warmed up.

Clarice took a last step towards her husband. Now above him, looking down, she said, “I am sincerely sorry for hitting you, Hannibal.”

Finally, he stirred. “Clarice, I have not once so much as laid a finger on you in anger...”

“I know. Ironic, right?”

“I don’t think so.”

His wife smirked at that, and he returned the favor. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Anyway, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. You know what else won’t happen again?” She held his chin and spoke softly. “You doubting us. I’m with you for the long haul. Where the hell did you even think I was going?”

“Ummmm. To be candid, I’m unsure of what I thought your plan was. I assumeddddd,” he looked up at her teasingly, “that you were leaving because of a change in heart.”

“My, Dr. Lecter, you didn’t have every one of my steps planned out before I could even think of them? What have I done to you?”

“I can now definitively say that you bring out the worst in me.”

Clarice laughed and sat down next to him. “Crying? And worrying?” She was feeling more relaxed, placing her hand on his leg as she started laughing harder. “Why am I not surprised that you consider that to be Hannibal Lecter at his worst?”

Her husband just smiled back at her. She saw his cheeks blush almost imperceptibly, which then prompted a further fit. It wasn’t long before they were both laughing.

“You had better... go back... into that memory palace of yours... and open up my doors ASAP,” Clarice ordered while catching her breath.

“And how did you—?”

“You were sitting on that bench for quite a while before I called out to ya. Try not to forget about me so soon, huh?”

“I wouldn’t even think of it.” Never again, he added silently. “But I must ask... Would I be incorrect in assuming you still want to dance?”

Clarice smiled widely. Hannibal shifted in his seat and began to play.

[intimidating-fettuccine]

For the Sake of Science

I hope you enjoy this, because I am incredibly proud of it and I think it’s my favorite work. Under the cut for length.

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My parents were very interesting people. They had odd quirks and a habit of avoiding social situations, as their beliefs had made them outcasts amongst their community. My parents both claimed to be pursuing science for the sake of advancing society, but that couldn't be further from the truth at the root of it. They just wanted to test the limits of their "science", and I happened to be the perfect guinea pig for them.

My father was a surgeon in his day to day life, and my mother had been a chemist before she was abruptly fired one day for making propositions to her coworkers that were most definitely not in the job description. She had proposed that they begin experimenting on humans with various chemical combinations to try and alter the human species to a more evolved state, a "perfect" state, as she called it. She had threatened them when they called her insane, and she was fired for misconduct. My father seemed to agree with her ideals, and soon they began trying for a child, a child that they would make the perfect human being, and that child was me.

I don't remember much from my early years. It wasn't until about the age of five that things began to take a turn for the worst in my miserable excuse for a life. I remember that I was constantly getting sick, and I didn't know why. My parents never took me to the doctor and tried to nurse me back to health at home, and it wasn't until I had overheard my parents speaking one night that I learned that they had been poisoning my food. When I stopped eating any food they would give me, they began to take different measures to run their tests.

When I was eight, they renovated the basement in our house. What was once an empty bland storage room was now a medical lab that would soon become a living hell for me for many years to come. One day my mother led me down into the basement, telling me she was going to give me a physical checkup, something she told me was normal for every child to go through. I very quickly learned this to be incorrect. Once I was in the basement, she led me over to a medical be and had me hop up onto it, and before I was aware of what was happening, she and my father had held me down and restrained me to the bed.

My mother then proceeded to pull out some chemical blend that she had filled a syringe with, and she injected me with it at small amounts at a time. She claimed she was giving me a medicine that would make me better, but in reality, she was drugging me, and she continued to do so for many years. She would restrain me and test out new concoctions, and if the results proved to be unproductive she would start back at square one and begin all over again, never asking me if I wanted it, or how I felt other than if it was making me feel stronger, or more attractive, or more intelligent, to which I always answered no.

I learned quickly to not cry out when I would protest, when I would cry, scream out for help, yank on my restraints or try to bite them. My mother had a temper, and my father seemed to have no emotional attachments to me, so he would let her do as he pleased. She would get angry with me because perfect people weren't supposed to cry and refuse treatment. She would often beat me when I wouldn't listen to her when she was feeling kind. If she wasn't she would inject particularly painful substances or make me swallow them. Other times she would tie me up and whip me until her arm was tired or she was bored.

I hated my mother, but I would take her chemical injections over my father's specialty any day. My father was a surgeon, studied long and hard for it, but he, like my mother, wanted to take his chosen study further than moral decisions would allow him. He often did vivisections of me, sometimes alone, sometimes with my mother. Maybe I wouldn't have minded him poking around in my body so much if it wasn't for the fact that I was awake and had no numbing agents used on me to prevent pain. I would just have to sit there and bear with it as he stabbed and sliced and poked around inside me while I tried not to cry out or squirm in discomfort.

Sometimes my mother enjoyed injecting her drugs directly into specific organs, which resulted in multiple organs failing in my body, and me growing even weaker and even sicker. Of course, once they crossed the threshold of human experimentation they had no issues dealing in the black market, and they were able to procure me new organs whenever I needed them. After all, they would spare no expense in their delirious pursuit of perfection. Thankfully my father stopped cutting me open eventually, although it was only due to the fact that my skin stopped healing back as fast. I was fragile, and my skin would just peel right off in some places. Whenever I showered, which I was made to do quite often, I could no longer use regular loofas or sponges because they would tear my skin right off. Such is the expected result of being drugged on a daily basis.

These issues caused my skin to not only be sensitive but look and smell bad. Nobody wished to be friends with someone so visibly dying. A few of my teachers were quite concerned and tried to get involved and help me, but they all of a sudden stopped, most likely to my parents stepping in. They would ignore me and pretend I wasn't there unless they were passing back a paper or something else of the sort. The other students I went to school with weren't as forgiving. They would pick on me, some teasing and some spitting out harsh and cruel words about my appearance, my scent, my demeanor.

I didn't complain when they mocked me and called me horrible things. I didn't complain when they swapped out my food for stale, gross replacements. I didn't complain when they soaked me in water, or when one boy decided to piss all over me while I used the bathroom because as he claimed, I already smelled like shit anyways. I didn't say anything when they'd hit me like my mother would because I was already used to the pain. Some of them got bored because I wouldn't react, and some of them continued because they used me as a way for them to vent out their stupid bullshit frustrations. One particularly nasty bitch ended up calling me "Freakshow" one day, and the name quickly spread and stuck. I would be known as Freakshow for the rest of my academic career, and I ended up keeping in the afterlife, because why the fuck not, ya know? Nobody gives a damn anyway.

My mother seemed to become more and more distressed at my horrific state of appearance. Perfect people weren't supposed to be rotting corpses, they were supposed to be angelic and beautiful. Well, let me tell you, I was not nor have I ever been angelic and beautiful, and her worried distress only caused me to go even further from that state as she would pump me full of even more chemicals to try and reverse the effects of her years of misdeeds. When she realized that wasn't working, she stopped. She quit her injections and studies and tests and I thought for once in my life maybe she'd come to her senses. What a horseshit dream that was. Turns out she was trying to have me go through a sort of rehab, to try and get my body back to what a normal human was supposed to look like. When my body got back to a semi-normal state, she plunged right back into her experiments.

Now, I never gave a rat's ass about anything in life. I had nothing to live for, nobody to care about, no interests of any kind. It wasn't until I met Jackson that I seemed to change that thought. You see, Jackson accepted me, made me feel loved, and never judged me for any of my weird qualities. He gave me something to live for, something to hope for, something to smile about. I began dating him in secret behind my parent's backs, and he did a whole lot to increase my mental state. He got me addicted, addicted to living that is. Trying new things, having a fun time, living life. Dopamine and serotonin are two pretty addictive drugs, let me tell ya, and once I was used to feeling them, I couldn't get enough of it. When I was with Jackson I wasn't Freakshow, I wasn't Dexter. I was Dex. I was alive. I was his.

When I was with Jackson, I thought that nothing could go wrong, that maybe I could escape my parent's grasp. I couldn't have been more wrong. My parents ended up somehow finding out about Jackson around the time I'd turned 19, and unbeknownst to me, they kidnapped him and tortured him for several hours when I was out of the house one day. When I returned home, my father who had been waiting for me quickly grabbed me and dragged me downstairs to the basement to show me their handiwork. Jackson was gagged, naked, tied up to the wall, and mutilated beyond repair. He was barely hanging on, and when he saw me he was choking out, trying to say my name, to say anything. Well, my mom ended up killing him right then and there, right before my eyes. She claimed it was for the sake of science, as she howled in laughter. Well, let me tell you I had never felt such emotions raging up inside me as I did at that moment.

I went absolutely batshit crazy, and it's not something I'm proud of. I went apeshit and lost it on them, screaming at the top of my lungs as I went through catharsis, releasing all my pent up emotions over the years. They tried to calm me down with my mother's bullshit excuse of a homemade anesthetic and ended up killing me. So what do they do? Maybe cry, feel bad, repent for their mistakes? Nope. They dump my ass in the backyard and act like nothing ever happened. Of course, by some ungodly happening, I ended up waking back up. Except, I didn't feel like me. I felt goddamn amazing. I couldn't feel absolutely anything. I felt free. Well, almost completely free.

I made my way up through the dirt in our backyard, and then inside the house where I found my parents discussing adoption, of all things, planning on taking in another child for this. Well, I strolled right up to them, and ya know what I did? I bashed them right over the head with the very shovel they buried me with. Let me tell ya, the most fun I've ever had in my life was drugging and torturing them the same way they had done to me. They were crying, weeping, begging me for forgiveness by the time they woke up. Asking me to forgive them, to let them make it up to me. When they realized I wouldn't change my mind they changed their tune, screaming out that I was a disgrace, a zombified monster, a disgusting creature that would never know love. I had lots of fun that night, and I did it all for the sake of science.

[jaefluenza]

Left Behind

“내가 태어나지 않았으면 좋겠다.”

— I wish I was never born.

Genre: Angst/fluff

Pairing: Taeyong x reader x Jaehyun

Word count: 2,901 words

Warning: swear words (from a family member :( please remember that this is only a fictional story 💚)

Summary:  You really hope you can follow your dad along, because you feel like what your mom told you was right, that you are a useless daughter. You tried to fight those thoughts, but everything inside your head is a mess. Everything is falling apart, so why bother living?

You clicked the password lock on your door, entered your house with a loud sigh. It was a bad day, you can say. Your boss yelled at you all day because your team is losing behind the other teams. The only thing you want right now is a good hug from your boyfriend.

He’s in another team in a well-organized division in your office, he’s quite popular between your co-workers because he’s a hardworking and good looking man. He lives together with you, but he merely comes home recently. His team has been organizing so many parties because of their successes, somehow you envy them.

Hearing your phone ringing, you dry your hands after washing it, smiling at the thought of Jaehyun’s voice over the call. You grab your phone on the dining table, and you frown. It’s your mother, and you’re frowning. Well, how could you call her mother when she has been hating you just because of a childhood mistake in the past.

“Hey, mom.”

“Where’s the money I asked you last week?”

You sighed silently. Here we go, again.

“Mom, I told you I’ll receive the money at the end of the month..”

“That’ll be too long! I need the money because your goddamn father is sick! And your pretty little sister needs her pocket money every day. Stop being a useless daughter and bring me money like other children do to their parents!”

“I’m working on it.” You said coldly.

“What a useless fucking prick-”

Beep.

You hang the call and lean onto the table. How are you going to get the money in less than two days? Your father is ill and his illness costs more than your paycheck every month. You didn’t tell Jaehyun about your problem because you think it will be uncomfortable for both of you.

Another call popped up and seeing who’s the caller, you smiled. At least I’m hearing his voice tonight.

“Hey..” you said weakly.

“Hi, y/n.”

“You don’t know how nice it is to hear your voice.”

“I- yeah, I hope you’re well..”

There’s doubt in his voice. What’s wrong?

“What’s wrong, Jae? Are you okay?”

“No, it’s just... I need to tell you something.”

“You want to meet me? Well, I’ll grab my coat in a minute-”

“No. I can’t see you now, I’m not coming home anyway. I’m out of town.”

“Oh, okay. You can talk now that it seems.. very important?”

“I’m so sorry, y/n. I really am, Let’s end all of this.”

“What? Ending what?”

“Us. I’m sorry but we don’t work anymore so..”

“What do you mean?” You sadly laugh, “are you breaking up with me over the phone now?”

“I’m sorry, y/n. I’ll pack my things tomorrow, don’t bother to take care of them. Please, stay well.”

Beep.

You can’t even call it a bad day. It’s the worst one. You wipe your tears, wishing to forget everything at the moment.

“Can you just do it properly? You can’t even do whatever asked by the boss, you’re the reason why the team is failing, y/n.” Your senior, Hyejin, yelled at you for the second time now and you couldn’t care less. “I’m sorry, I’ll do better.” You bowed to her, because she is your senior. “Yeah, keep saying that and fail more, you useless idiot.”

You hold your tears as you looked at the papers stacked on your table, having no idea how can you finish all of them in only 4 hours. It seems like you just have to stay up at the office tonight. You frown, remembering the promise to bring your dad his favorite fruit tonight, guess you have to call him and say sorry.

“Hey, I brought you coffee.”

You look up and find a comforting smile from one of your interning teammates, with a cup of hot coffee in his hand.

“O-oh hey, Taeyong. Thank you,”

“Look at these stacks, y/n. Are you sure you can finish them in like, four hours? Let me help you.”

“No, Taeyong. I believe you have a lot of work on your table now, and it’s okay. I can stay at the office tonight.”

“No way, we both know how dangerous the office at night. Give me a few stack, I’ll finish in about an hour.”

You nod, your eyes can’t leave a new interesting view in your left, your ex-boyfriend who just dumped you last night, holding hands with Chaeyeon, the popular ace in the marketing division, everyone’s favorite. Wow, just wow.

“Is that Jaehyun, your boyfriend-”

You cut Taeyong with a fake smile, “Thank you for helping me, Taeyong. I’ll treat you coffee when you finish those papers.” You look back at your computer and when you feel Taeyong walk back to his table, you sighed.

You remember meeting Jaehyun for the first time.

Your team lost one of a good teammate, and now everyone is working hard to balance the teamwork. You’re in a small division where only interns and failing seniors working as a team. It’s not like you’re failing, but you lost your aim to be in the international marketing division to Chaeyeon whose uncle is the boss. Not only she studied overseas, but also her family is holding many stocks in the company.

Until now, you have been staying in the small division where you work with papers and tables. The paycheck isn’t much but enough for your monthly livings. It’s amazing how you live alone by yourself, with no support of your family, your ill father, that’s how you survived life every day without happiness and meaningful events. That was it until Jung Jaehyun came.

“Please welcome your new interning teammate, a marketing graduate who’ll help you balance the mess in this division. Y/n, please tour him around, and make sure he adjusts well in our company.”

You looked up and meet his eyes, those sharp eyes. He seemed like he had no fears with those eyes.

“Yes, manager Kim.”

“Hi, I’m Jung Jaehyun. I’ll do my best,” he bowed.

It was a great 2 months with Jaehyun as your interning teammate. He helped the team a lot. He has a lot of good ideas and you liked how he managed every problem the team had. The team was working well until, of course until Jaehyun’s interning period was done and he got promoted.

The team congratulated him with sincerity and sadness as the manager pronounced that he will be moving to the international marketing division. Everyone is sad that once again, the ace in their team will be moving to the big popular division.

“Everyone, as a ceremony, I will treat you all beef tonight!”

That night was a blast, everyone congratulated him, blessed him, and also begged him not to forget them. After they left you both to go home, you looked at Jaehyun in the eyes.

“Hey, it was really nice working with you. Everybody knows that you’re a genius and a hardworking one. Once again, congratulations.”

“Y/n. There’s something I want to tell you.”

“Hm?”

“I enjoyed working with you, and hanging out with you. Do you want to go out with me?”

That was how you dated the soon-to-be popular man in the company. No one believed it, but you decided not to care, and chase your happiness for the great 2 years.

“Is this how you play?” You asked Jaehyun with teary eyes. You somehow dragged him to talk at the back of the office. And strangely, he looked disgusted. This is not how Jaehyun used to be.

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb, Jaehyun. You made a deal with her family, am I wrong?”

“I thought we talked about this already, I said we’re over, we’re not the same anymore, okay. I got busy with work you don’t even understand.”

“You know what, Jae, you’re a jerk.”

Without you both knowing, Taeyong was there listening.

You finished all the work with Taeyong’s help, and you’re glad that he waited for you to finish even though the office hours were over long ago. You smiled at Taeyong, about to offer him coffee when suddenly your phone rings.

“Hey mom, I was about to call you and tell dad-”

“Come here quick, you useless idiot! Your dad is passing away.”

You feel the whole world around you stopped.

“W-what?”

“Don’t ask for more and just prepare the funeral money, now.” You heard your mom sobs with all the swearing she has for you and you break down in tears.

Taeyong panicked, “H-hey, what happened? Is everything alright?”

“M-my father.. he’s passing away.”

“Let’s go. I’ll give you a ride.”

You both arrived at the hospital, as soon as you saw your sister in front of the funeral preparation room, you hugged your sister and looked at your mom who ignored your arrival.

“Hey, this is my friend, Taeyong. Can you buy us drinks while I talk to mom?” You looked at Taeyong, once again asking him for help. Taeyong nodded and bring your 10 years old sister to go with him.

“Mom, I’m sorry but this is all I have in my account.” You sob, looking down at your feet.

“None of this would’ve happened if you didn’t let the thief come in like an actual stupid human being, you useless bitch!”

“I’m sorry, mom. I’m really sorry.”

“I lost all of my money, and now I lost my husband... I really wish you were never born in the first place.”

You sob harder, as you nod weakly.

I wish the same too, mom.

You stayed at the funeral home, eyes swelling from tears and regret. You haven’t slept in two days, you eat less than you have before. There you are, in your black hanbok, serving every guest who mourn along with your family. Taeyong actually offered to stay and help, but you insisted that the team needs his help more than you need his help so he goes to the office like usual.

You really hope you can follow your dad along, because you feel like what your mom told you was right, that you are a useless daughter. You tried to fight those thoughts, but everything inside your head is a mess. Everything is falling apart, so why bother living?

And when you thought the world would help, Jung Jaehyun come with her glorious new girlfriend, Chaeyeon. Your mom of course feels happy to see him. But the look in her face changes when she noticed Chaeyeon’s hand locked in Jaehyun’s and she glared at you.

She must be thinking that I’m failing my life by breaking up with Jaehyun, you sigh.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Deep condolences for you and your family.” Jaehyun bowed along with his girlfriend.

“Deep condolences for you maam, I’m Jaehyun’s fiancée.”

Your mother gulps, trying to give a grief smile to the pair, as she offers them to sit. You sigh before going to their table and offer them some drinks.

“Hey, what would you like to drink?”

“H-hey, y/n. Deep condolences for you and your family, and don’t bother serving us anything. Please feel better soon.” Jaehyun smiled with pity.

“I’ll bring you both tea.” You coldly leave for the small drink booth.

After a while, you come back with a tray of tea in your hands, and vaguely you hear,

“If only my first daughter is great, none of this would’ve happened, right? You’re such a good daughter, Chaeyeon. Your parents must be proud.”

You look at Jaehyun. He’s looking at your eyes with pity, and you don’t need that look from him. You feel embarrassed, you want to disappear at the moment, but somehow, you decided to put the cups on the table, until someone pulls you toward the door and make everyone stare.

You look up and meet Taeyong’s soothing eyes, and your walls are broken, just like that. Taeyong sigh and pulls you into his chest, wrapping his hand around you and make sure you feel safe. He has been thinking for a while, how could your own mother hate you as a human being, when all you need is just to be loved.

You sob in Taeyong’s chest, and all you can hear is, “Let it all out, love. I’m here for you.”

That’s all I ever wanted to hear.

“Jaehyun, I think it’s better if we leave,” Chaeyeon whispered.

Jaehyun nodded. He asked to leave awkwardly. After getting the nod from your mother, he holds Chaeyeon’s hand and leaves the funeral home. Passing the next room, his eyes catch you being hugged by Taeyong, and somehow his deepest corner in his heart protested, as if he should be the one comforting her like that at this moment. He sighed, and look away.

2 weeks after your father’s death, you cut every communication with your mother, but you secretly made a promise with your sister to give her a few but enough pocket money every week. You also decided to quit your job and move into a small town near Seoul. You had saved a little money to start a new journey as a florist. The people in town are romantic enough to buy your flowers every day. Everything is doing great, which felt like a blessing to you.

You also grow fond of Taeyong. He helped you a lot. From helping you move into your new small house to helping you build the small flower shop in your front porch. Sometimes he stayed until late so you both ended up cuddling until he left to go to work.

And now, here you both, enjoying coffee in a cafe near your flower shop, smiling at each other. “Hey, Taeyong. Sometimes, I wonder if you are an angel sent for me.”

“Pfft, what are you talking about.. are you possibly flirting with me right now?” He put both his hands on his cheeks, being acting all cute.

You giggle, “No, seriously. If I’m allowed to ask, why are you so kind to me? Even if I can’t repay all of your good deeds.”

Taeyong sigh, “It’s not a good deed, y/n. I have a reason.”

You look up at his eyes, “What is the reason?”

“I like you, y/n. No, I love you. So much. Seeing you cry and broken hurts me in a way that I don’t even understand. I just hate seeing you sad, and I’m happy when you’re happy too.”

You silently hold your cup, your eyelid stutters.

Taeyong notices your silence and he decides that he just got rejected.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to respond to it. I know you don’t feel the same way-”

You cut him off with a teary-eyed smile. “I think I know how to repay you.”

“What?”

“I have something to repay, my feelings for you,”

Taeyong’s eyes grow big and round, his lips stutter, “W-what do you mean? Y-you, feel the same way?”

You stand up and sit on the seat next to Taeyong, smiling while you put your hands on his cheeks, pulling him closer and put your lips on his. Taeyong couldn’t believe this would happen but he closes his eyes anyway, responding to the sweet kiss that he thought only existed in his dreams with you.

You both walked back to your house holding hands, happy as ever.

But your smile vanish as soon as you see someone standing in front of your porch. Jung Jaehyun, why is he here?

You look at Taeyong with a questioned look but Taeyong shakes his shoulders.

“Y/n. H-hi. You might be wondering how did I find your house, well... I-i asked your sister-”

You keep Taeyong’s hand in yours as you raised your eyebrow, “What are you doing here?”

Jaehyun looked at Taeyong as if he invaded their privacy.

You sigh, look at Taeyong, “Baby, can you wait inside?”

Taeyong nods and goes inside the house. You looked at Jaehyun. Strangely, there is no spark when you see his now guilty eyes, like you used to have.

“I tried my best to find your new house. I mean, I have a lot to say to you. But seeing that now, you’re living your best life, I-”

“Make it quick, Jaehyun. What do you have to say?”

“I regret what I’ve done to you. I honestly want to make you happy again, I want to pay back my mistake, I- do I stand a chance?”

You sigh, “I’m sorry, Jaehyun. But the only thing I agreed with you was, we don’t work out anymore. You hurt me so bad that seeing you again now somehow reopens my old wound.”

Jaehyun look down, “I should have known.”

“Where’s Chaeyeon?”

“We broke up, I’m not happy with her. I realized that after going to our apartment, I gathered my old things and I reminisced us, and thought, you are my true happiness.”

“You can’t play with women like that, Jaehyun. I hope you find your true love, like I found one. I hope you live happily, Jaehyun. Find your happiness.”

You go into your house, finding Taeyong who has been listening, and hug him tightly. “I love you.” You murmured against his chest.

Taeyong kissed your head, smiling. “I thought you’re leaving me for him.”

“I would never. Besides, we have to celebrate our first day.”

Hey, I hope you like it! 😊💚