#Cass good luck with ~content~

[tapakah0]

[thefoxholecast]

The Original Foxhole Court Extra Content (Archived from Nora Sakavic’s Tumblr)

We copied the following text directly from the pre-2024 version of the Foxhole Court Extra Content page on Nora Sakavic’s Tumblr blog (korakos.tumblr.com/fox). In March 2024, she did “some spring cleaning” by shortening the list of links and deleting/hiding old posts. The links in this copy lead to archived snapshots of the old posts on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Some of the links are broken. If you have copies of these posts, please let us know so we can fill in missing content!

Because Tumblr only allows up to 100 links per post, we're unable to replicate the full list here. View the full list of links on our blog here: thefoxholecast.tumblr.com/FoxArchive

The Foxhole Court

ETA 2023: most of the posts here are from 2013-2015. Some of them overlap with older drafts. Some answers have evolved over time, even if they haven’t been updated here. Most I haven’t changed my mind on, for better or worse. Take ‘em or leave ‘em, and good luck making sense of ‘em around all the drunk rambling and detours. One day if I have the energy I’ll just sort it into a coherent reference.

~~

Two sections here: the questions submitted by tumblr users, and a miscellaneous collection of stories & factoids pulled from the oft-neglected blog. The questions aren’t in any particular order, though I did try to organize them by subject matter. Ish. Once the dust is settled a bit I’ll try to find a better sorting system. Also, the tumblr tag I use for questions is http://korakos.tumblr.com/tagged/foxhole-court-questions-and-spoilers

Lots of spoilers for The Foxhole Court ahead!

Preface: Why are Asks disabled in 2016?

COURTING MADNESS

—Exy Rules & Regulations

—Exy: A History of the Sport

—Palmetto State University

—The original “What Happens After King’s Men” post

—SON NEFES, the cousins’ freshman year through Renee’s eyes

——One . Two . Three . Four . Five

—Nicky Hemmick

—Seth Gordon

—Aaron Minyard

—Matt Boyd

—Kevin & Andrew

—David Wymack & the Monsters

—Wymack & Andrew re: Neil

—Dan Wilds is recruited to the Foxes *

—Allison through Dan & Renee’s eyes *

——pulled from an abandoned, unfinished book about the Foxes’ women

TUMBLR

NEIL

—Neil’s life on the run

—Do they ever celebrate Neil’s birthday?

—What if Neil told the truth earlier?

—Neil through the Foxes’ eyes

—Neil through Ichirou’s eyes

—Neil’s looks post-book and relationship with his reflection

—Does Neil ever talk to Bee?

—Neil’s millions

—Neil’s fight training

—Who’s Neil closest to beside Andrew

—Neil’s fashion style

—Cellphone ringtone

—Christmas/birthday presents for Foxes

—Does Neil ever cry?

—Neil’s lonely fifth year

—When Neil’s overwhelmed

—Does Neil crush on his teammates?

—Neil & Ichirou’s intimidation

ANDREW

—Andrew’s sober look at his teammates & Neil

—How did Andrew react to Cass’s letter?

—Andrew’s medication and the follow-up

—Has Abby seen Andrew’s scars?

—Andrew & Mama Bee

—Andrew & Roland

—How far has Andrew willingly gone?

—What animal figurine did Andrew buy Betsy?

—Andrew’s eye color

—Andrew’s opinion of the cats

—What’d Andrew say to Nicky in TKM?

—Andrew’s honest opinion of Exy

—Andrew’s thoughts on Neil’s binder

—Andrew and his sexuality

—If Andrew had met Neil’s mother

—Andrew’s thoughts on Neil’s sexuality

—Andrew’s fondest memory of Neil

—Andrew’s aforementioned withdrawal

—Do you think Andrew is really really really awesome?

—Proust and Andrew

—What happens to Proust?

—Andrew’s reaction to Neil’s bday blood

—Andrew on Neil eventually changing out

—Does Andrew get grumpy?

—Does Andrew get less dead inside?

—Does Andrew call Neil by his name?

—Why give the Foxes crackers?

—Andrew’s first choices in winning a fight

—Who liked knives?

—What got chopped from Drake’s arc?

—Does Andrew get off thinking about Neil?

—Post Andrew & Bee’s side story?

—When did Andrew start thinking Neil was interesting?

—Any other words he can’t stand?

—What does he think about nicknames?

—Explain Andrew’s fatal disease in the comic version

—Andrew’s canon mental state

—How did Andrew not know about Tilda’s abuse?

—Why punch Neil for “Sorry”, and when Andrew is sick

—What’s with Andrew and promises

—Andrew’s thoughts on Roland’s premature confession

—Andrew’s arrest

—Wanting nothing vs not wanting anything

—Why was Andrew laughing after Drake?

—If Neil had chosen Dan & Matt over Andrew

NEIL & ANDREW

—The other 10%

—Which teammate caught on first?

—Do Andrew & Neil go on dates?

—When did they first hold hands?

—When did Andrew clue in?

—Exites self-censure

—Betsy’s & Aaron’s reactions to the news

—Roland’s opinion of things

—The breaking point

—Who tops?

—On tying people up

—Their domestic life aka Sir Fat Cat

—I love you

—Andrew and the bed issue

—Nightmares

—Do they learn to talk to each other?

—Blaming Neil for Drake

—Andrew comforting Neil?

—Neil’s fondest memory of Andrew

—Neil getting Andrew off for the first time

—Neil seeing Andrew naked

—Neil & the sex how-to

—How was the first time

—Where’d it happen?

—When was their first hug?

—“I won’t let you let me be”

—Their roadtrips

—Neil waking Andrew up

—Andrew’s real smile

—How does Andrew show appreciation for Neil

—Their happiest moments

—Does Neil ever make Andrew laugh?

—Does Andrew take comfort in Neil

—Does Andrew get protective/possessive?

—Doesn’t Neil crave affection?

—Andrew re: Neil’s panic attacks

—Media reaction to Andrew/Neil

—Further reaction to Andrew/Neil

—On “accidentally” sitting in laps

—What if Andrew died?

—What if Neil died?

—Reaction to getting hit on by others

—Do they celebrate anniversaries?

—The first time Neil pushes Andrew down

FOXES

—How tall are the Foxes?

—Why is everyone so short?

—Where did their names come from?

—What were their majors?

—What do the Foxes look like?

—What are their Hogwarts houses?

—Reaction to the kidnapping

—Do Neil & Renee become friends?

—What did Allison do with Seth’s urn?

—Nicky’s evolution over the drafts

—Do the Foxes get their skiing trip?

—Does Andrew know Nicky kissed Neil?

—When did Aaron & Katelyn fall for each other?

—How did Andrew and Wymack end up handcuffed together?

—Kevin’s favorite things

—Kevin and Andrew’s on-court kerfuffle

—Dan’s haircut

—Dan & Matt’s relationship

—Dan & Matt’s first kiss

—Matt bouncing back from Columbia

—Matt rooming with the monsters

—The other what-if OT3 aka D/M/N and the dynamic

—Do Allison and Renee have the hots for each other?

—Matt forgiving his father

—Any mistletoe shenanigans?

—Thanksgiving and the Foxes

—Kevin’s best friend

—Janie Smalls

—How did Kevin and Thea meet?

—Foxes’ favorite ice cream flavors

—Kevin & Andrew’s on-court argument

—Foxes’ taste in music

—Kevin’s middle name & drink of choice

—Do Kevin & Neil want to kiss?

—Which Fox would Kevin kiss, then?

—Kevin’s best non-Exy memory

—Allison’s three bets

—Why is Allison’s middle name Jamaica

—Kevin, Andrew, and Neil staying friends

—“Joan of Exy”?

—Can the Foxes sing?

—Some of the Foxes’ previous bets

—Do Nicky & Allison become friends?

—Are Foxes based on RL people?

—Nicky when Neil asks about friendship

—Dan & the monsters in Columbia

—What if Kevin was killed?

—Renee and her near-death experiences

—More background available on Renee?

—Why doesn’t Aaron let the Foxes in?

—Team’s reaction to Drake, Andrew’s reaction to being outed

—Andrew & Aaron’s time with Tilda

—Does Aaron reconcile with Andrew over Tilda?

—Nicky & his parents after Drake

—Foxes thoughts in Baltimore

FOXES POST-TKM

—The Pro Teams

—The Weddings

—Neil as the Best Man?

—Kevin after TKM —Thea, Jean, Foxes, and Riko

—How does Kevin & Wymack’s relationship evolve?

—Renee after TKM

—Nicky after TKM

—Aaron after TKM

—Allison after TKM

—Dan & Matt after TKM

—Dan and the US Court

—Any pro-period scandals?

—Andrew & Neil’s relationship with their team

—Would Neil hold Matt’s children?

—Neil & babysitting the Foxes’ kids

—Which Fox’s child would curse first

THE FUTURE FOXES

—Who is Robin Cross?

—Neil and Jack

—Andrew’s reaction to Neil punching Jack

—Foxes’ reaction to Neil punching

—Kevin and Jack

—Neil’s new recruit

—Andrew and Jack

RIVALS

—Who is Riko Moriyama?

—Riko & Kevin’s evolving relationship

—More about Riko & Kevin’s past

—How did Riko break Kevin’s hand

—Riko’s brutality toward Jean

—Any draft where Riko wasn’t killed?

—Were Riko, Kevin, and Jean involved sexually?

—Does the Fox-Trojan rematch happen? Also how do the Trojans & Jean get along?

—Do Alvarez & Laila (Trojans) have backstories?

—Thea’s number & thoughts on Raven brutality

THE “ADULTS”

—Kayleigh Day & David Wymack

—Abby Winfield & David Wymack

—Wymack’s parents

—Did Wymack cry during the trilogy?

—Did Kayleigh know about the Moriyamas?

.

.

.

.

Nora & the Foxes

—Fancast and Andrew

—Changing opinion of Foxes over the years

—Bits of the scrapped K/N/A threesome here and here

—The KxAxN AU where Kevin died

—Will there be a sequel?

—What inspired you to develop Exy?

—Fox fanfictions, collected by coldsaturn

—Why a pseudonym?

—What came first, characters or story?

—Were you the artist of the comic version?

—What did the comic-Foxes look like?

—What do you do when you’re not writing?

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Hi! I have a couple questions about your bingo (not sure whether I'll participate but this way I'll have the info if I do) : 1) Do you accept fanart as bingo fills? And direct illustrations of pre-existing fanfics? 2) I'm not certain what ships are or aren't covered by your "no batcest" rule? Some people mean it just for the four main boys and Bruce, others include anyone even remotely bat-related, or anyone bat-related minus canon ships, or link it to adoption status (and I, uhhh… is Dick adopted now? Is Cass? Is Steph? Duke? Canon is a sprawling mess I don't follow close enough to know), or any of a dozen of in-betweens, so I'm not sure which one you mean. 3) "tag your fics": is there something specific you'd like tagged? I assume characters, relationships, and content warnings, but maybe there's more; and do you have a specific tag you'll follow for content created for the bingo? (do you plan on reblogging the fills?) Good luck with the bingo! I'm exited for more crossover Batman fics and art!

Hi! Okay so

1) yes and yes.

2) As far as ships go you can do what you want with the bingo in general, but for the ao3 collection it’d be no bruce x any of his kids (let’s go with any of them who have lived with him, not whoever’s been officially adopted or whatever). And then as far as shipping batkids goes, kinda same rules. People like Steph, Luke, and Babs are fine to ship with whoever. They’re not siblings, they’re not Bruce’s kids, etc. Don’t pair Dick, Cass, Jason, Tim, Duke, or Damian with each other.

3) I don’t have a tag for this but I probably should have haha. All of the rules I put on there were for the ao3 collection. And as a far as “tag your fics,” mostly just content warnings. If it’s explicit, then some kind of indication about what’s in there. If there’s something that’s going to be triggering or a major ick for some people, then tagging lets people avoid it and all that. Tagging relationships is helpful too. And in general tagging can help people find your fic too which is always nice.

[reveseke]

Reader being a bot fighter and Hiro's friend.

PT. reader being a bit fighter and Juri's friend. PT end

Image ID. A medium sized banner made of a picture featuring 5 arcade game machines colored mainly in purple in a tilted position lined up against a wall, there is a small glimpse of mat in the far right corner of a simple 90s star arcade design with varying colors. The first machine has visible text that reads "gauntlet legends", no other text is visible. Image ID end.

Platonic, Teen!enby!reader (they/he ) x Hiro!

Kinda put around the movie . Both of y'all are minors in this & these are simple maybe a bit rouge type platonic headcanons. These really no head or tail to them lol. Ftm friendly, my content is glided towards masc-aligned & men in general.

Cw .. mentions of bot fighting | mentions of death (Tadashi) | hinted mention of depression (Hiro) | the team is declared to adopt reader and bully them out of bot fighting lol/j { tell me if i missed any, please. }

DNI - Fudanashis/fujodashis, women & fem-aligned, profic/proship, anti - LGBTQ+ folk & exclusionists, anti-antis, Necro- Zoo- Pedophiles + (NO)Maps(and other terms), basic DNI criteria, kink/nude/nsfw/sh/vent/pro-ana/ed/18+ blogs

Hiro would be impressed about bot fighter ! Reader's bots and skills. And in general that he's into bit fighting.

Sharing tips and tricks with each other on the topic of building, weapons and fighting. Both being pretty invested in the topic.

Most likely fought against him and got into talking after wards wishing each other a good day/night and luck for next fights.

Hiro would absolutely talk about R to Tadashi, easily talking the poor man's ears off on the topic of bot fighting.

Would invite them to the lab with him and Tadashi. Absolutely living for Gogo's invention.

Aunt Cass would not mind if R just plopped to the café to talk with Hiro, she would absolutely love the fact that his nephew has more friends. Will most likely become a mothering figure. Not inherently mother figure, but something alike.

Hiro will most likely see some similar things to his team's tech graved into R's bots.

R would be there for Hiro when Tadashi goes up in flames, absolutely. And other way around if there is ever something to it.

Sharing things in general, Hiro casually helping Reader with school and in turn Reader can and most likely will help Hiro with something.

Being introduced into the group and basically adopted into it. The others, other than Hiro, worried about R still bot fighting. Hiro kinda defending them and getting disapproving looks from the group lol.

↑ if R is in the same school he's going to be mushed with the topic of bot fighting from time to time and they try to distract him. If not, then there's really no more to do than bully him out of it lol.

Uhh R and Hiro either going to see some bot fights, bit fight in general or Hiro goes to bot fights to cheer R on lol.

[notstinky]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Creamatorium PARTIES: Van (@vanoincidence) & Thea (@notstinky) SUMMARY: Van and Thea get ice cream! A man is there :( CONTENT WARNINGS: Unsanitary tw, Harassment, Body horror

Thea smoothed out the wrinkles in her brown skirt, understanding only at the fifth wipe that it was a pleated skirt and that it wasn’t meant to be smoothed. She’d tried to dress up—not that she really understood what dressing up meant, for her, fashion was a second thought—but all she’d managed to do was a skirt and a sweater. It wasn’t exactly seasonal; what kind of maniac wore a knee-length skirt in the cold parts of autumn? It wasn’t exactly cute; her gray knit sweater was fine and all but it bundled at her stomach, making her look like she had a suspicious bulge. She’d tried to accessorize; all she had was a fake-silver necklace with a crescent moon that made her stomach churn at the sight of. And all this for Van. Van, her friend, who she wanted to look nice for. She smoothed the skirt again, made sure her hat covered her bald head, and cursed under her breath. 

“Hey!” She waved, more aggressive than she’d meant to, when Van popped up over the horizon. It wasn’t that Van was late, it was that Thea had come so early people asked her if she was okay, standing outside of the shop like that. She probably looked like a criminal, nervously bouncing on her heels. Did criminals wear skirts? Well, she was a killer and she wore a skirt; question answered. “Hey, you’re just in time! I just got here,” she lied, palms already coated in a thin layer of sweat. Suddenly it struck her: what did you say to a friend? How are you? You look good? What flavor are you thinking of? Instead, what came out was: “You look flavor, ho.” Thea winced. She gestured at the seasonal flavor—dairy free pumpkin butter chocolate—which was not a flavor combination she thought worked, but was one she was excited to try. “That, um..” She gulped. “You, um, look…” Forget it. She’d already failed. What was the point? 

Van hadn’t really been able to take a lot of things from home before it had gotten all covered in a weird goo, but for some reason, her locker at Sly Slice was stuffed to the brim with a variety of different outfits she didn’t even remember taking from home. It was luck, probably. Probably an action from a few months ago she couldn’t really remember. It didn’t matter, she decided, because at least she had some clothes and didn’t have to wear the same things that Thea had already seen her in. Buying new clothes was certainly on the table, but that was expensive. Maybe borrowing from either Nora or Cass would have worked, too, especially since they’d borrowed enough from her, but it felt wrong– like she was asking too much. Still, as she watched Thea walk up in her pleated skirt and grey sweater, she felt severely underdressed. She wore baggy cargo jeans that had deep pockets, and a baby tee with a pastel frown-y face on it. The hoody she wore had holes in the sleeve, but she figured it’d look like it’d been done on purpose and not because she’d become overly obsessive with picking at the fabric. 

She crossed the distance between them, a nervous smile playing at the corners of her lips as she lifted her own hand in greeting. It was lucky that Dr. Kavanagh had given Thea permission to stay over, but both of them still had things like work and other commitments. Mostly, Van was trying to scrounge up spare PC parts throughout town so that she could start rebuilding the one she’d lost. “Rocky was like, really slow with the delivery trucks this morning, so he asked me for help.” She was weak, and it showed– she could barely lift a box as it was, but somehow had managed to help him anyway. “Sorry I’m uh–” She blinked at Thea’s words before a laugh bubbled in her chest, spilling over between where they stood across from one another. “You look flavor, ho, too.” She wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. She’d need to look it up later, she decided. Her attention was drawn to the sign that Thea motioned towards before she looked out of the corner of her eye to her friend. Her stomach bubbled with anxiety and she tried her best to push it down. She wasn’t sure why it was there– this was just ice cream with a friend, after all. She swallowed thickly and nodded before her gaze wandered over the additional flavors. Van winced slightly at the sight of the Allgood Death Pit flavor. “The pumpkin one, that looks good– you look good, too. I like your sweater.” Van paused before adding, “and your necklace– it’s cute, it looks um, it looks good on you.” She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, so she stuck them into her pockets. “Should we… go inside?” 

“No….” Thea groaned, face burning as her cheeks erupted in red blotches. “Don’t tell me I look flavor, ho.” She tried to sink into her sweater, praying that the floor would suddenly get hungry and eat her specifically. She thought about running; if Van had a long, tiring shift, she wouldn’t be able to catch her. Then, she’d leave Wicked’s Rest, change her name (again) and reinvent herself as someone that didn’t mix up her words. She rolled the idea over in her head but no matter how desperate she was to escape, her legs rooted her in place and her stomach fluttered with excitement just as much as it twisted with anxiety. They hadn’t even tried anything yet and she already felt nauseous. “I like—um, your cargo jeans. They look like they can hold a lot of stuff. Like, spoons.” God, spoons? Why did she say that? Run, run, run, run— “T-the necklace?” Thea touched it, digging the flesh of her thumb into the crescent moon tip, as if she didn’t remember putting it on. “It, um, it was the first thing I bought when I came to America, actually.” When she’d woken up across the border, was lucky enough to meet an elderly couple that took care of her and discovered that silver ought to help her “condition”; turned out to be fake silver, of course. That was the kind of luck Thea had. 

Thea wanted to say more, her mouth moved around imaginary words, but nothing left. “Yeah,” she squeaked. “Let’s go inside!” She reached for Van’s arm, interlocking them as she had that day with the LEGOs—that day had gone well and she needed all possible good luck right now. It was a spell and it would summon the vibes that followed them that day. At the doctor’s apartment, it wasn’t so terrible—mostly they were working and tired—but outside was a whole new place with whole new problems. “Do you mind sharing? I think it might be best to get a couple of flavors? And then we can rank them!” She smiled and then frowned, brows knitting together. “Or is that stupid? Should we just stick to our own stuff?”

“But you do, you do look flavor ho.” Van was used to being on the other end of teasing, but this felt natural. It felt right. If Thea were actually upset about it though, she’d drop it. She made a mental note to ask her friend what the hell that meant later. She looked down at her pockets and nodded, an appreciative smile pulling at the corners of her lips as Thea commented on her pants. “They can hold spoons, forks, knives– well, not knives. I’m not allowed to have knives.” It was something she still adhered to even though nobody was around anymore to tell her she couldn’t have knives. Maybe it was stupid. Van stuck her hands into her pockets and pulled them to the side to show Thea just how much space was in them. She leaned down slightly (though she didn’t have to go very far) and poked her fingers towards the end of the seam. “See? A lot of space in here, especially for um, spoons and stuff.” Maybe Thea really liked spoons. Her attention shifted back to the way Thea pulled at her necklace, fingers feathering over the dainty chain and emblem. “Really? That’s cool. Welcome to the United States, here’s a moon.” She shrugged, “the moon– she’s gay, right? So I mean, that’s a cool thing to get.” They’d discussed it before, but Van still felt heat rise to the back of her neck at the comment. 

She wasn’t really sure what to do with her hands by then, but Thea had made the move first, arm threading through her own. It brought her back to their LEGO adventure, though it had severely lacked any LEGOs at all. Van fell into the familiarity of it, and fell into a natural step beside Thea, too. “We can definitely share. I could probably eat it all myself, but that doesn’t mean I should.” Too much sugar could give her stomach aches, but hopefully if it were dairy-free, they’d be okay. Van looked over at Thea, her own smile still present on her features. The way Thea seemed worried that maybe she wouldn’t like the suggestion made Van wonder if she’d done something to make her friend believe that was the case. “No, we can! I want to, and I want to rank them all.” She looked towards the menu board, then to the middle aged man that was standing behind the counter with a blank expression on his features. He looked bored out of his mind. “Hi– yeah, we’re lactose intolerant. What do you think would be good? For us, since we can’t have, you know, milk.” She bit the inside of her cheek before shooting Thea a glance out of the corner of her eye. 

Van must have been humoring her and yet, Thea found her fraught nerves temporarily parted. She smiled softly, chewing on her bottom lip. She imagined an army of forks, spoons and knives sitting in Van’s pockets and giggled. “Yes,” she agreed, “the moon’s gay and the ocean is her lover. I mean, what are tides if not, like, the ocean telling the moon that she loves her?” Thea wasn’t a poetic person; there was something there about devotion, yearning, being vast and crushingly deep and pulled by some bright rock in the sky. When Thea thought of love, she pictured moons and oceans, suns and planets—gravity. Her mind was lost, soothed by the current of Van’s voice—agreeing with her—and she didn’t notice the man. At once, though, she smelt him; sourness plunged into her nostrils and she recoiled. 

He opened his mouth, revealing a set of yellowing teeth framed by plaque. His bloodshot eyes didn’t focus on them at first, his gaze shifted between spots on the wall before it settled exactly on the point where Thea and Van’s arms met. And that, more than anything, made him smile wider as the rest of his face remained dead around it. “What can I get you two…” His tongue traced the edge of his dry lips, saliva pooled between the cracks. “...lovely ladies?” He held on to the syllables as if he didn’t want the words to go. His gaze remained low. 

Thea stiffened. She pulled forward, setting more distance between Van and the counter as if something--or someone--could leap across and touch her. Her voice rose into a rare, authoritative steadiness. “All of the dairy-free flavors, please. A kid’s scoop of each in cups, please.” With her body clenched into one solid mass, she watched as he ran a hand through his graying, slicked hair before he plunged his arm into the vats of ice cream. 

His eyes finally flicked up to their faces and there was something more amusing there than their arms, his dead smile twitched. “Yeah, good choice.” He licked his lips again. “A lot of you people are lactose intolerant.” 

“Most people are lactose intolerant, yeah,” Thea said, tearing her eyes away from the ice cream stuck to his arm hairs and pulling Van towards the register. “My treat,” she whispered to her friend, forcing a small smile. The presence of the man was overwhelming to her, and even as her gaze trained somewhere else, he loomed as large, white stain in the corner of her eyes. The air felt tight; unpleasant interactions weren’t uncommon, but they always made her stomach settle into a heavy knot. She was determined not to let it ruin their fun and once they were sitting down, he couldn’t bother them anyway. “I think I’m realizing now that that’s a lot of ice cream.” Dairy-free also included sorbets, which wasn’t technically ice cream, but Thea wasn’t going to argue semantics over dessert. 

Thea had given Van a lot to think about. In most fandom spaces, people made personifications of the moon and ocean and how it related back to their favorite form of media, so she knew that Thea was on the right track with that. Silently, she started to build out who she thought was the moon and who was the ocean— then, of course, there was the sun. The sun could’ve been seen as something in opposition to the moon, Van thought. Briefly, Van heard her grandmother’s voice, if you gave as much thought to anything else as you do those video games, I wouldn’t worry so much. Van frowned, but it was only for a brief moment. The man behind the counter who she really hadn’t paid all that much attention to brought her back to the present. 

It was an unfortunate setting, she realized. It took everything in her not to recoil as she finally took him in. Van pressed her arm into Thea’s, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise. The man In front of her incited the same feeling Debbie had, only in place of a knife and threats was an ice cream scoop and thinly veiled insults. She didn’t like the way that he looked at them, and it was obvious that Thea didn’t either. Van wasn’t much for noticing changes in demeanor, but the way Thea went stiff next to her couldn’t have been a good sign. Thea provided the order they had agreed upon, voice steady and even, unlike it had been outside of the shop. Van wondered what changed. She cast a careful glance to the man behind the counter who, if a gust of wind blew in, looked like he might crumple beneath the weight of it. 

Van worked in food service, and she knew it was wrong to touch any part of yourself before distributing the goods, as Rocky put it. Sure, it was his hair, but if she found a single strand in her ice cream, she was going to be pissed. She noticed the lack of gloves, too, which wasn’t the only thing to make her stomach jolt in protest at the thought of eating it. She didn’t want to judge, not based on looks alone, but the next words that came out of his mouth made her bite down on her cheek hard enough to draw blood. 

Before she could say anything, Thea was stealing the words right out of her mouth. Van held onto Thea’s arm as if some kind of lifeline, following her to the register. “Are you sure?” Van asked, barely above a whisper. She looked towards the man as he filled another cup. Van hated that this man was serving them, hated that he was making Thea feel uncomfortable, and even though he was making her feel uncomfortable, too, Thea mattered most here. The topic of it being too much ice cream made Van shake her head. “We can make room in the freezer.” She cleared her throat. “And it’s not my fault I’m lactose intolerant, by the way. I was literally born this way.” 

The man lifted his gaze to them again and Van felt dumb for talking loud enough for him to hear. Almost immediately, he was turning his attention back to the ice cream, filling the cups they had requested. “We can um, go halfsies?” Van bumped Thea lightly, a forced smile curling at the corners of her lips. She wouldn’t let this nasty guy ruin this for her. She and Thea were supposed to be having fun, not be grossed out by some hairy man behind the counter of somewhere they wanted to order from. 

She hadn’t noticed it, but the cups had been slid to the register’s stainless steel countertop and the man cleared his throat. “We don’t do splits here. It’s all or nothing.” The yellow of his teeth was even more apparent up close, especially as he leaned closer to them. She could smell sugar and cigarettes and it made her stomach roll. Van took a small step back, tugging Thea slightly with her. “I’ll pay you back later.” She just wanted out at this point. 

Thea felt like she’d been dealing with strange, uncomfortable men all her life. Some of that was just the experience of living, most of it was the experience of living in her feminine body, with her feminine presenting ways. It was her father that taught her the fear at first: never be alone with a man, never speak to one, her father made her stay on the phone with him when she walked home from school. Everyday, as Toronto’s primary news station CP24 whispered in the background of their crumbling home, he’d shake his head at all the crime, pointing it out to her. See, look, see, this is why I worry, this is why it isn’t safe, listen to me--he never said it out loud, but Thea knew by then how to read his frowns. She learned to fear mundane things: smiles, nights, buses, alleys, parties, malls, homes. 

But as she grew older, that was just the issue. It was hard to explain why this man bothered her; what had he really done so far other than scoop some ice cream? Wasn’t she being ridiculous? Wasn’t she overly sensitive? And if he did something, if--well, didn’t she get a ‘vibe’ from him? Why didn’t she notice sooner? Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t she say something? Thea knew all too well the uphill battle of safety. There was an odd comfort in knowing Van was tense beside her, that she understood and felt the same. She wasn’t being sensitive, sometimes people really were just like this. They’d be okay. They had each other. Thea would make sure they were okay, she’d send him away if she had to; she’d make a scene, she’d kick, she’d scream, she’d throw ice cream back at his unkempt, wrinkly face. 

He placed the cups of ice cream on the counter, licking his lips as he tapped the total into his computer. Thea paid before he could ask her about it. She wanted to cut him off, cancel his presence out, crop him out of their day. “Do you need help with--” He started. “No,” Thea answered back quickly, nudging Van to help with the cups. She could practically hear his thoughts, watching his face crinkle from the corner of her gaze: prickly, I was just trying to help, damn okay, bitch. Her insides burned. “How about the booth in the corner?” She forced a smile, scurrying off before she knew it was okay.

She set the cups down in a rush, hands trembling. She wasn’t scared, actually, Thea noticed she felt strangely hungry. Her teeth itched; she felt like biting into a rare steak. She threw herself into the corner, digging into the chocolate fudge--surprisingly creamy for dairy-free. 

“So, are you two on a date?” The man appeared at their table, sticking his ice cream fingers into his mouth, saliva dripping from his cracked lips. He grinned like something was funny. This time, his attention was focused on Van. 

The transaction was complete and Van nearly let out a sigh of relief. She was used to picking up multiple items– she did it at work all the time. With several of the cups now in her grip, she retreated to the table that Thea had picked out. A part of her wished they could find somewhere else to eat it, but the idea of wandering through the streets with copious amounts of ice cream seemed more of a hazard than anything. Then again, this might turn into a hazard. 

Lost in thought, Van set the cups down and looked over her shoulder. She heard the small tap of Thea’s cups hitting the table in unison, and she pulled her attention back to her company. It didn’t seem like Thea was alright. Van’s stomach rolled again, frustration peeling over her. She wished this was different– that there was a girl their age behind the counter. They’d talk about their favorite flavors, maybe talk about the ones they didn’t like, too, and Van and Thea would laugh and they’d tell her that they’d enjoy even the ones they didn’t like, because that’s what you did to be polite, even if Van had a hard time with that. And then they’d leave, but Van would scrounge some change for the tip jar, and they’d talk about how nice that girl was on their way back to Dr. Kavanagh’s. Instead, they were left with this– a man who spoke without being spoken to, venom seeping through each and every word. 

Van followed Thea’s movements, taking the seat opposite her, but sitting in the middle, just in case he decided to join them. She slouched slightly, kicking one foot onto the other seat. It barely worked, her legs were too short, but maybe it’d still deter him from wandering over. These were made up situations, she realized, but better to be prepared. 

His question wrung out through the silence and Van gripped the mini spoon tightly. She looked from Thea back over to the man who’s smirk made her want to scream. She wasn’t offended by the question– if it had come from anyone else, then maybe it’d even spark excitement. Fear, too, for the sake of being worried of ever being within proximity of someone like that again, but excitement all the same. Instead, it was replaced by a certain kind of anger, the kind you saw in magazines where adults tried to mimic teenage angst. She wasn’t angry at the question, but that it was coming from him. 

Her mouth moved quicker than her mind, “yes, we are, and we’re trying to enjoy it.” Maybe a little too forward. The man’s smirk grew and he raised his hands defensively, “I was just asking, you don’t need to be so…” He didn’t finish his sentence, but she knew what he wanted to say. Van quickly scooped a bite of the strawberry shortcake into her mouth, focusing on the way it was cold on her tongue. If she could ground herself, then it would be okay. If she could focus on this. 

But the man was moving, a mop in one hand, the creaky bucket in the other. He approached them, just a few feet shy of their table. The sound of the mop, wet on the ground, made Van tense. The metal of it scraped against the tile and Van lifted her gaze up to meet Thea’s, silently asking if they should leave. There were other ice cream places, and if they were closed, they could go to the stupid grocery store. Not the one they killed Debbie in, but another one. 

She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. Thea chewed at empty air, full of the fantasy of his flesh under her teeth. The cup was crushed in her tight grip, chocolate fudge spilled over her hand. It wasn’t fair, she told herself. All she wanted was a nice day for them, her brain was eager to remind her. Why did he have to be here? Why did he have to be like this? What if he wasn’t? What if he was gone? Thea’s stomach groaned. Her vision, blackened around the sides, focused only on him. She could smell the sourness of his clothes, the staleness of his breath, the oils in his hair, the sweat pooled in his shoes.

“Yes, we are, and…” Van’s voice cut across the room like one crashing wave; Thea perked up. “We are?” She repeated, blinking rapidly at her friend. In an instant, the man was gone from her senses. Hunger dissolved from her body and instead, it twinkled like a star in the sky, fluttering inside of her. “We—I mean…” Was it a date? Or was that the sort of thing said just to get him off their backs? It was casual; maybe it didn’t mean anything. Did she want it to mean anything? Surely not, her ability to not eat people was a work in progress. But her body had a story of its own: at the idea, she smiled shyly, cheeks flushed with nervous glee. “Not that I—I’m not, like, opposed—I just…” Her brain fired off in every conceivable direction; thoughts tripped over themselves, collided like asteroids, burst open like stars. Thea’s body had, in that instant, relaxed. 

Then she heard it: the soft exhale of breath, the little laugh meant just for him. He chuckled. He chuckled at them. Thea’s attention snapped to him again, hunger roiling in her stomach once more. She dropped the crushed ice cream cup onto the table, leaning over the edge to look at him. Tiny smirk. Head turned to their table. Useless circles with his mop. He was listening in. They were his entertainment for the working day. It was innocent enough—didn’t she do the same during her shifts?—but Thea found herself incapable of generous readings. It happened to her like it always did, inside her abdomen. It felt like a period cramp gone wrong, a strangely common experience twisted with hunger; pain seared across her body. Thea stumbled to her feet. “Washroom,” she blurted, clutching her stomach; though it wasn’t clutching so much as clawing at. She rushed past the man, knocking over his bucket—“Hey!”—and threw herself into the single person washroom, having just enough sense left to lock to the door behind her. 

Her bones snapped and she fell to the tiled floor, drooling through the pain of it. Thea tried to hold herself together; she found that these transformations, the kind that happened outside of full moons, could be stopped. Never mind that she’d never really stopped one before; she only knew that if her thoughts were happy enough, she could feel parts of her body reverting. She held herself around the stomach and forced her thoughts to be of ice cream, Van, opossums, stars, the moon, the ocean at night, Van. But for every thought about her friend, the manna tiny smirk flickered through her head. For every thought about the things she liked, she realized how hungry she was—ravenous. Her skin peeled off her in ribbons, revealing blood soaked white fur. Her jaw vibrated with pain as it grew—broke and rebuilt itself; her new bloody gums itched; her sharp teeth throbbed. Thea stumbled to her feet and ran to the mirror wherein she saw her nose cracked in three places, peeling off her face. Her eyes, bloodshot, changing color, could hardly focus; everything was a blur of white and red. 

“Yes, we are…” She clung to the sound of Van’s voice and the fluttering happiness it had given her. Yes, we are, she repeated in her head. Yes, we are. Date. Date. She placed her hands around the sink and it snapped off the wall, smashing against the tile. Yes, we are. Thea and the wolf stumbled around the bathroom, debating the issue amongst themselves. Yes, we are. Date. But wasn’t she afraid? Wasn’t that her friend? What did she have to be happy about? Yes, we are. The joy of being wanted—romantically or not, it didn’t matter to her—crashed against her anger, shame, fear, hunger; two opposing oceans with two violent currents. She reminded herself that somewhere out there, with a lot of ice cream, was her friend, Van. Yes, we are. 

In another setting, maybe Van caught Thea’s expression. Maybe she saw the look of joy, and maybe Van could smile too, could fill herself in the brightness of it– could feel it bursting from the seams. Instead, she sat in the cold booth with the man and his gap-toothed grin, yellowing and brittle. She stared at him, challenging the next comment out of his mouth. Anxiety spun like a thread through her, tongue coated in iron. She felt her fingers begin to tremble around the spoon she held, thumb denting the fragile plastic. 

The questions that split between them were lost on Van. Her mind couldn’t keep up. Between the anger she felt and the way her stomach was doing somersaults, it was all too much. However, Thea’s sudden movement– a cup dropped, chocolate splattering over the table, made Van realign her gaze. She watched as Thea got out from the booth and she immediately dropped her leg, arching forward as if to follow her. Half of her wanted to catch Thea’s wrist, but she wasn’t sure if it was out of selfish intent or not– don’t leave me here with him. Instead, she watched Thea retreat into the bathroom. She jumped as the door slammed and Van looked back to the table, grabbing a few napkins to begin cleaning up the chocolate-y mess. “Seems your friend really is lactose intolerant.” Van opened her mouth, the snapped it closed again. 

The noises from within the bathroom were animalistic in nature, and all Van wanted to do was cover her ears, at least for the sake of giving Thea minimal privacy. But then it dawned on her– the man had intentionally given them ice cream with dairy. It was their fault for not checking, wasn’t it? Van’s fault for not being eagle-eyed, for not watching his every movement. It sounded like something broke inside of the bathroom, and suddenly there was the sound of running water– or rather, spraying. Glass shattered and Van shot up from the booth. The man with the mop stuck his hand out, “she’s going to have to pay for whatever she breaks.” Van turned her attention back toward him, mouth acidic now. She flexed her fingers through the air. 

“Why did you do that?” Her voice was small, weak. He laughed, and he pressed a hand to his chest. “I wanted to see.” Wasn’t that practically poisoning? Actually, she wasn’t sure if it was classified as such, but it felt like it should. Van stood frozen across from him. He held onto the mop like a lifeline, and from where she stood she could see the way his nails matched the yellow of his teeth. God, how she wanted to scrape her tongue. At least she’d only had a few bites. Thea, on the other hand…

Without thinking, Van took out her phone and pressed play on the last song she’d been listening to. She turned the volume up in an attempt to drown out the sounds coming from the bathroom. She knew that if the roles were reversed, she’d want Thea to do the same for her. Nine Stories by Hazel English started to blast through the small speakers, and really, it didn’t do much to mitigate the noise coming from the other end of the room. 

Van had been so busy with her phone that she hadn’t noticed the man got closer to her, dry and cracked fingers outstretched for her phone. “No loud music allowed. Company policy.” He tried to snatch her phone and she held it away from him, taking a step back. “I can do what I want. She’s–” Wouldn’t it embarrass Thea if Van actually said it? Instead, she cleared her throat. The man shook his head, that same stupid grin he wore earlier peeling over his expression like someone would peel an orange. It made Van’s stomach twist again. 

The wolf wasn’t easily calmed; against Thea’s wishes, it demanded release. Her anger, which she carried quietly and politely, would be better given into. Her shame, which was a constant acidic pool she dipped into, needed relief. Wasn’t she hungry for more? The wolf, her wolf, had been a part of her since birth; existing in the things held back, the things taught to be subdued. No matter what she did, the sense of relief the wolf gave her was undeniable. No matter how much she hated the creature, she loved the feeling of release. She didn’t want to eat Van—and the wolf would, it had a bottomless appetite—but could she pretend like she was strong enough to deny it? Her transforming body crashed into walls, scratched the door, clawed out the plumbing—and it felt good. Anxiety rolled into her anger which fueled her destructive shame which fed her insecurity which hugged her jealousy and kissed her fatigue for the human condition. What remained of Thea slowly disappeared into a bubbling darkness; it was so terrible to be human, full of terrible human emotions and thoughts and worries. The wolf could take everything away. Yes, we are. Yes. Yes.

The noises from the washroom turned from animalistic to horror-movie and the man’s smirk grew. His sloppy gaze trailed slowly onto the girl’s phone, which he snatched up in one fluid motion. “Play some real music at least,” he sneered, navigating her menus, through her playlists, through her music history, on her phone. Katy Perry’s Firework punched through the speakers. “Yeah.” He grinned, throwing the phone back more than handing it back. He tilted his head up to the ceiling, greasy hair flopping across his forehead. “Company policy: play good shit or else.” He closed his eyes and tasted his future on his hangover stained tongue; seeing the fireworks his queen Katy Perry sang about. His cryptocurrency and reddit inspired stock investments was gonna pan out this year, he knew. And he’d be gone—far, far away from shitty Wicked’s Rest. He’d get the life he was owed. He spread his arms wide, letting the music wash over him, mouthing the words. 

Van felt frozen in place. The noises from inside of the bathroom became more volatile. It sounded less and less like a bad trip to the bathroom and more like something else, but before she could peel away to investigate, the man was taking her phone. “Give that back!” Heat rushed to Van’s cheeks as she awkwardly splayed her fingers through the air, reaching for her phone. From the speakers, Nine Stories was disrupted by Katy Perry. Play good shit or else. 

The phone was tossed back to her with the speed in which that was meant for someone who didn’t want you to catch anything, at least somebody as uncoordinated as Van. The phone that Erin had given her bounced from her outstretched hands and onto the floor, directly into the dirty mop water bucket. Firework gargled out its last breath for a few agonizing seconds as Van stared down at the bucket in horror. The man said nothing, but dunked his hand into the bucket, coming away with her now waterlogged device. The screen wasn’t displaying anything, but she could make out a very quiet hum of the line do you ever feel like a plastic bag– 

“‘S your fault it fell.” Van watched in silence as the man wiped the device on the even dirtier rag hanging from the mop bucket. She watched as he looked it over– the sound of Thea’s convulsing, or what Van could only assume as such, acting as a horrific backdrop. 

Before she could properly react, a portal opened between them, and Van’s hair was in her face, whipping against the flat bridge of her nose. There was no wind within the rest of the store, but whatever the portal led to, that was enough to– 

The man screamed and Van watched as he was dragged through, something elongated digging its talons into his leg. She watched in silence, being thrown back into the moments where Diana had slipped and fell into the portal, that much like this one, had sprung open and snapped shut within a moment of recognition. The same happened here, and the only thing left behind was the cellphone that was now broken. Van stood there, stunned by what had just occurred. She could still hear the noise coming from within the bathroom and Van hurriedly ran her hands over herself, checking to make sure that she was okay. She was, but was Thea? 

“Thea? Thea!” Van knew that the other girl might be embarrassed by the urgency, but what else was she supposed to do? She had murdered somebody again, and they needed to get out. “Thea? Please– Um, you can–” She looked over her shoulder to make sure nobody else was coming into the shop. The noises continued, like skin splitting and refracting itself around bone. Van didn’t think Thea was okay, nor did she think this was lactose intolerance. “Thea, please–” The thought that whatever had gotten the man across from her had first gotten to Thea made her panic. She slammed her palm on the door, “Thea, please! We have to go!” The water she had heard earlier was beginning to seep from beneath the door, though it was tinted with rouge. This made Van panic more and she continued slamming her hand against the door, matching the frequency of the noise from the other side. 

Van’s voice sliced across the din of Thea’s mind. Oh god, she wept, her trashing body snapping and twisting. It happened. That pain in Van’s voice—that urgency—meant she’d done it. She was eating her. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t taste or smell; she felt like she was floating in space, staring down at her wolfish body on Earth—too small to make anything out. Oh god. She crumpled, tumbling to the slashed tiles. Her body cracked into place as she sobbed into her bloody palms. She couldn’t have just one friend, just one good day—it had to be this. Thea looked up, surveying the washroom through misty vision. Nothing was where it ought to be: the toilet was shattered on the opposite wall, water springing up from the pipes like a fountain. The walls bore distinct five-finger slashes in every direction, as if she’d tried to claw out through the wall. The door was carved out on her side, dug through with animal desperation. It thumped.

“Van?” Thea sniffled, stumbling to her aching legs. She fell against the door, letting the harsh knocks bounce through her bones. Through the battered wood, she could hear her: her friend, Van, alive, calling her name. Thea closed her eyes, taking in each breath and gasp and shout before she realized that Van didn’t sound okay. She unlocked the door and swung it open, smiling. “Van! Are you--” And then she grabbed it back, swinging it forcibly back to her body. “I’m naked.” She’d felt the breeze immediately. Her embarrassment served as a temporary pain killer. “I can’t—we should go yeah—it um, the toilet exploded…” She looked around. Where did that guy go? She didn’t have time to wonder. “I’m naked,” she repeated. “I can’t—I can’t walk around like this.” Why did the transformation have to take her clothes? The Hulk got to keep his pants at least—that was tasteful. 

Van’s mind raced as she slammed her hand against the door once again. The space behind her was left empty aside from the now broken phone and the mop bucket. Even the mop was gone, swallowed up by whatever had gotten the man. Deep down, she knew she was responsible. She knew that if she didn’t open the door to see Thea in the flesh, that whatever had gotten him had gotten her, too, and it would’ve been all her fault. 

There was a break in the convulsing from the other side of the door, and then Thea’s voice, strangely quiet– shaking. Van’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t killed her– Thea was alive, and whatever had happened hadn’t killed her. The fact that there was bloody water at her feet, however, still made Van uneasy. She didn’t relent slamming on the door until it opened. On the other side was Thea, face bruised– nose broken, blood already dried down her face. She was naked, too. Van looked past Thea before the door could be yanked back, noticing the way that the toilet was shattered. What the hell had happened in there? When Thea spoke, Van realigned her gaze and she stuttered out, “it was just dairy.” Okay, maybe not the best thing to say, especially because Van was almost one hundred percent positive that dairy wasn’t the culprit here, but maybe it was better for both their sakes if she did. Whatever happened on this side of the door, it wasn’t reminiscent of anything she’d seen. Van had her run-ins with dairy, she knew the experience, and this seemed far from it. 

“You’re naked.” Van forgot, only momentarily, about the way the black hole opened up behind her just moments ago, but only because Thea needed help. “No, that’s– it’s only for French people to do that.” She cleared her throat, clearly stressed by the situation. “It’s–” She looked around, noticing that there was some merch hanging on one side of the wall. There was only a t-shirt, but there had to be something else, right? “Hold on.” With her legs wobbling beneath her, Van made her way to the t-shirt and yanked it down. It looked like it might actually fit her. After some searching, she came up empty on a pair of pants and opted for a trash bag. Before returning to Thea, she shakily punched holes through the bottom of the bag for Thea’s legs. It’d look weird, but she didn’t think Thea would mind as long as she didn’t need to run through town naked. “Um, I found…” She extended an even shakier hand out towards Thea, half-afraid that whatever had happened behind the closed door might get her, too. “I’m sorry they aren’t real pants. There are no real pants here.” Her voice wavered slightly and she could feel the pool of tears beginning to sting the corners of her eyes. Couldn’t she just not cry for one second?! She cleared her throat and took a step back. It’d only be a matter of time before Thea realized that the man was gone, or maybe she already had. What excuse could Van give to her friend? Would she even believe it? What excuse would Thea give to her? Van knew it wasn’t lactose intolerance that did this, it couldn’t be. 

“No, it was–it was the toilet.” Thea tried to explain. “I didn’t do that. The toilet…it uh…launched out of the ground like a rocket? And then bounced around the room? And I hadn’t used it yet. It just, um, looked at me and did that. I’m–I’m trying not to take it personally.” She wasn’t sure how believable she sounded, but she hoped her bright smile dispelled any doubts. Surely Van would believe that it was the toilet and not her? 

“Do the French walk around naked? Like outside?” Thea frowned. “Like inside stores? They do that?” The French were weird, she guessed. Although, her sad French education didn’t include anything about nudity. It did, however, include a large number of puppets. Her body thrummed with pain and her mind tried to recall all the French puppets she had been subjected to—there was also the matter of the puppet show of Les Trois Petite Cochons that she performed. Voici le loup. When Van arrived again, Thea took the offerings gleefully. “Thanks! I can definitely wear a shirt and a…is this a trash bag...?” The door swung closed as she released it, muffling the rest of her sentence. But before she was cut off from Van completely, she looked up and caught a glimpse of her wet eyes. 

Slipping into the shirt was easy, pushing her legs through the holes Van so graciously made in the trash bag was a little harder. In the end, she pulled her legs through and tied the bag around her waist to prevent it from falling. In the shattered mirror, she saw that she looked like a giant baby with a trash bag diaper. Normally, this would make her cry. However, somewhere beyond the half-broken washroom door was her friend, who was actually crying. Thea pushed herself out and debuted her trash baby look, smiling softly. Her arms, despite any better judgment, wrapped around her friend. Her legs crinkled. “It’s okay,” she said, unsure of what she was soothing. Over Van’s head, she saw the upturned bucket and shattered phone. Wasn’t there supposed to be a man there? “Where did the…” She swallowed. “Let’s get out of here, okay? But not too fast, the trash bag isn’t very secure.” 

Van didn’t believe Thea, but she wanted to. Wanted to think that maybe Wicked’s Rest had possessed toilets, but there was something else that Thea wasn’t telling her. The busted nose, the way the blood was sticking to her face– the fact that she was naked, it was all too much to ignore in favor of lactose intolerance. A few months ago she might have been able to convince herself that it was in fact lactose intolerance, but now? Now, she knew it was something else. But Thea didn’t want to tell her, and Van wasn’t going to make her. “The toilet is like, really mean for doing that.” She wasn’t sure how that was what she landed on, but she ran with it. 

She wasn’t really sure how to answer Thea’s question about the French. Really, she was just referencing the one man who had streaked at the zoo. She thought it was common knowledge now, but apparently it wasn’t. Van sniffled, wiping away some of the stray tears that were beginning to stick to her cheeks. Thea came out from behind the door and Van recoiled at the sound of the swish the garbage bag made. The door closed, and Thea’s arms were around her. Van thought back to the moments where she thought whatever had gotten the nasty man had gotten her and she found herself winding her arms around the taller girl, squeezing her tightly. She hid her face into the dusty-smelling t-shirt and inhaled, proving to herself that Thea was real. 

Something cracked open in the silence that warped around them and Van was pulling away, looking behind her to where Thea’s eyes were glued. She swallowed thickly and tried her best to steady herself. It was probably better that they just leave. What if there was footage of them? What would happen then? Van nodded in agreement, peeling herself away from Thea. She felt guilty for giving the other girl a trash bag to wear. Maybe she should have taken off her pants and given Thea them and then wore the trash bag herself. “He…” She flexed her fingers through the air again, as if tracing them through the magic that had swallowed him whole. There was no energy, nothing that made Van think it’d be coming back to take them, too. “We should go.” She reiterated Thea’s earlier statement and stooped down to grab her phone. She shoved it into her pocket and looked towards the already melting ice cream in the corner booth. “Come on.” With a shaky hand, she reached out for Thea. The tears still fell, but she felt a little more confident as she pulled Thea out of the ice cream shop. They could check back later and see if any reports were made. If all else failed, maybe the man was severely hated and it’d work out in their favor that he was gone at all. 

Thea stayed close to her friend, walking along the sunlit sidewalk with her crinkly trash bag pants. “This was kind of a bad date–uh–friend date,” she said, staring at the open horizon. “Guess we’ll have to have another.” She shrugged about as well as someone could while holding someone else’s hand. And for a moment, she forgot she looked like a trash baby and that a man was suspiciously missing and that she had committed property damage. Instead, she thought about Van’s voice and her certainty: yes, we are. 

[vanoincidence]

Mare (Not Like the Horse) || Van & Ariadne

TIMING: a few weeks ago. LOCATION: frozen yogurt! not the bad one! PARTIES: @ariadnewhitlock & @vanoincidence SUMMARY: ariadne and van go out for frozen yogurt! the ladle has other plans. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

She hadn’t hung out with Van in forever. Not in as much of a forever as it had been when they hardly talked for years, but a forever nonetheless. So she’d reached out, and she’d ended up just deciding to stop by – except that wasn’t an option because of something that was up with Van’s house and so she’d asked if she wanted to go and get ice cream, and that seemed to work, and so Ariadne was stood outside the ice cream shop, nervously bouncing on the balls of her feet until she spotted Van and gave her friend a wave.

“Hi. Do you want me to pay for the ice cream? I can! I want to – I – it’s nice to see you.” Ariadne offered Van a smile. “How have you been? I – any luck with Cass? I – it’s hard to talk to her.” But she supposed that talking about that wasn’t going to do either of them any sort of good.

“I want to get  like, three flavors, at least.” That was better to talk about, and easier, and it made more sense. Besides, didn’t the two of them deserve to have some sort of good and happy and nice hang out? “I like gummy bears a lot, still. I don’t think there’s a single flavor of ice cream they don’t taste great on.” __

Van was grateful that when Ariadne had reached out about going out for ice cream, it hadn’t been the shop that she and Thea had gone to and ran from. She hadn’t seen any articles about the missing employee or the destroyed bathroom, but maybe it’d been kept under wraps. Van tried not to think about it as she kicked the end of her board, grabbing between the axle as she walked up towards Ariadne. 

“What! No, I can like, totally do that. I’ve got a lot of tip money.” The tip jar had been overflowing, and she wasn’t sure why, but even after splitting with the person on shift with her, there was still a good amount to be had. “I can pay for yours, you can pay for mine. We’ll pay together and it’ll be like we paid for each other, y’know?” She hoped that made sense. It did to her, at least. At Ariadne’s question, Van frowned. “No, I– I haven’t seen or talked to her. I tried to go over to her cave, but I totally chickened out.” She wasn’t sure why. What Cass really needed right now was a friend, not for someone to cowardly recoil. 

Her gaze flickered to the signage on the outside of the shop and Van nodded. “Three flavors is always best, and then we can try whatever else.” She had her lactaid at the ready, and so she followed Ariadne inside. “They get all hard and stuff and they get hard to chew… I think I like mostly cereal toppings, or even the cheesecake bites and stuff best.” She smiled at Ariadne. “I’m glad we’re doing this! It’s been like, forever.” A lot had happened. Her house had blown up, Ariadne had been attacked(?), and Wynne had escaped yet another cult-like existence. Nora was back, and so was Regan. Wicked’s Rest was under the spell of yet another nonsensical wave of issues, but at least she could enjoy ice cream with an old friend. 

__

“Well, okay…” Ariadne hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to argue with Van, and even though she was pretty positive it wouldn’t turn into a big argument, it was best to just fully not risk it. That was the most logical and most sensible thing. She’d had enough not-so-great times recently that she figured she really could use a real good one. It was really nice to fall back into step with her friend – even if it wasn’t exactly like it used to be, it was still good, and maybe she and Chance could both invite Van over sometime. If Ariadne remembered correctly, Van and her cousin had always gotten along well.

“I just don’t know exactly what to do about all of this.” Which felt like some flavor of failure, but not one that she could quite put a name to. At least not yet. Though maybe there was a certain part of her that didn’t want to put a name to it yet. Which was stomach-twisting in its own sort of way. “I just wanted to offer to pay, that’s all. I’m glad you get tipped well. I don’t get people who don’t tip.” Maybe that was a sort of person Ariadne could give nightmares to. It seemed a bit extreme, but so did not tipping. Like, what was up with that? “But okay, we can pay for each other. But you should totally get like, a bajillon toppings. Don’t skimp at all.” She offered Van her best and brightest smile, though said smile wasn’t quite as bright as usual.

She nodded. “It has been too long. Way, way too long.” And it was a relief that Van wanted this. Ariadne couldn’t think of the last time that the two of them had really and truly hung out, just them. “I guess they do get tough to chew. I think that’s why I like them?” She shrugged. “But cheesecake bites? That’s a genius move, Van.” She pushed the door to the shop open. “You should go first. Uh, best hu— people, first. You know?”

__

“I don’t think we’re supposed to.” Van didn’t like that they didn’t know how to approach the situation with Cass, but how were they supposed to know when their friend was shutting them out? Granted, there were probably good reasons that she was doing it, but it still sucked. Van was trying not to take it personally, because nobody liked it when somebody’s hardships were made about something else. Still, Van hoped that Cass would call her up one day like old times, or just appear in front of her like she typically did, snacks in hand. 

But maybe she and Ariadne wouldn’t talk only about Cass today. Maybe this was really a means of catching up. It was a little refreshing, even if Van did want to focus on a way to break Cass out of whatever trance her dad had her under. Still, it was hard to do on an empty stomach. As soon as she smelled the jammy strawberries sitting in their metal container, it was over for any scheming. 

“People who don’t tip like, totally suck.” That was an easy opinion to fall back on, after all. Ariadne had brought it up first. She looked over at the blonde, tongue in cheek as she explained her reasoning for liking gummy worms. “That makes like, no sense, but I totally support you.” Her own jaw ached at the idea of chewing down cold gummy worms, but at least there’d be more for Ariadne! “Cheesecake bites are like, super good. Cookie dough, too.” She grabbed one of the bright paper cups and stalled next to the assortment of machines displaying their flavors of the month. “Um…. fruity or cake-y.” She looked over at Ariadne for confirmation of what she should get, “I really like the tart flavors, but sometimes I mess up and get the 0 sugar cake batter one and it totally ruins everything because it doesn’t taste good, and then I can’t throw it away because I already got it, you know?” 

__

“Yeah – at least I hope so. I’d like to know what to do, but I guess it’s not always possible.” Ariadne didn’t like that train of thought, but she felt strangely comforted by Van thinking at least similar thoughts. She didn’t want to be selfish, didn’t want to make whatever was going on with Cass all about her, but Cass was her best friend and there was something that felt weird and off and she wanted to fix the problem but she didn’t know exactly how she was supposed to. She’d read so many books about how to be a good friend when she was little, and even a few as a refresher when Cass had somehow ended up being her best friend. But maybe she’d messed up, but also maybe Cass would come running back. She couldn’t leave her door unlocked, on account of almost being murdered and not wanting people like Jade to track her down, but the second Cass wanted anything, she’d be there. No matter what.

She also probably owed it to Van to tell her about the whole… well, dead thing. It was weird to keep it a secret still, even though that was the safest route, and even though Van might not get it, but Cass knew, and Wynne knew, and both of them were friends with Van and so it made sense for Ariadne to just suck it up and tell her.

“They do.” She nodded firmly. “I – yeah. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.” But Van wasn’t judging her, so it was fine. “Those also sound super good. Oh yeah, ick! But I get it, I don’t like to waste stuff, and it’s like, I’ve already spent the money… but still. I don’t get zero sugar things. It just doesn’t make sense to me.” Ariadne made her way over to the wall of flavors. “The real question is, which one should we start with?”

__

“Zero sugar is good for some people, I guess, but the aftertaste is totally weird.” There had been a lot of times where she thought she got discounted candy only to find out they were only on discount because nobody wanted them and because there was no sugar attached. She wasn’t proud of the person she’d become then, throwing them out, but at least after getting a job at Sly Slice, she could put them in a communal area and somebody would take them. 

“I always put candy on the bottom so like, when I’m upset that it’s gone, there’s another little thing there, you know?” Her dad was the one who taught her the trick. He would take her out after her mom would tell her no sugar, but he’d keep it between them. Usually, she’d run it off at the park while he played online solitaire. 

“Maybe a layer of the cake one, and then…” Van looked over the flavors, “cookies and cream is new, I think. I kind of want to try that one, and then maybe add some crushed strawberries.” She looked towards Ariadne with a smile, “what about you?” This was all so normal, and she was grateful for it. 

__

“Yeah, some people have to have it, and I get that, I don’t want to be rude or anything about that, so… yeah.” At least it didn’t seem like Van was going to judge her, and if she did, then Ariadne figured that she deserved it. Not in a self-deprecating way, but just something more matter of fact.

“That’s genius!” Ariadne grinned. “I’ll try that out. Or like, layer it. Candy, then ice cream, then candy, then ice cream, and so on…” It was like the coolest sort of sandwich (literally and also just like, awesome). She was glad that her parents had always supported her love of sweets, present even before the whole dying thing.

“Those flavors are so good. I think I might do… bubblegum, and cotton candy, and then like,...chocolate vanilla swirl.” It was a lot of very sweet flavors, but that worked well, and it was fun. “I think I’ll get some blueberries too. In addition to the candy and stuff.” 

__

“The layering makes it way more fun, I think. I like to put the mochi in too, but I’m not sure if they have it.” Van craned her neck to get a better look at the dessert bar that was at the end of the line. There weren’t many other people inside, which meant if they wanted to load their toppings and pay for it, then they could do that. 

“Bubblegum and cotton candy…” Van nodded, trying to imagine what the combination would taste like in an ice cream form. She didn’t think she could form the thought in her head. “Chocolate vanilla swirl sounds good, though! You can’t go wrong with that, I guess.” Van scooped some cookie dough into her cup before moving towards the cookies and cream dispenser. “Blueberries are always sort of a hit or miss, I think. Sometimes they taste like water.” 

__

“Yeah, I get that. I’ve put popping boba in mine before – I like boba in bubble tea the most – got one of my professors to try that – but it can be fun on ice cream. Just anything sweet.” She wanted so badly to just say, yeah, ‘cause I need sweet stuff to live now, sort of. But when would the right moment for that be?

“It’s a weird combo, I know – but it’s super sweet which, like I said, is good… is stuff I like.” Ariadne made a small face. She scooped a few sour patch kids into her cup and turned toward the bubblegum dispenser. “You know, between the two of us, we’ve covered quite the variety of flavors. Not coffee though, but that’s too bitter of an ice cream for me. What do you think about it?”

__

“Strawberry popping boba is good. I like when it’s sour, though.” Her boba order, sans frozen yogurt, was way too convoluted to explain to Ariadne here and now. Chance knew it, she thought. It was weird, thinking about the things that Chance knew about her that Ariadne didn’t because of the time that had split them apart. Well– that and a slew of other things. 

Van had no room to judge Ariadne for liking overly sweet things. After all, she dipped her beef jerky sticks into nacho cheese. “Coffee is way too bitter for ice cream, I think. I don’t know.” She scrunched her nose, thinking about the copious amounts of coffee ice cream her grandma would always get, only because she knew Van wouldn’t want any. “Give me a red bull slushie though and I’d be all over it.” She quickly filled the rest of her cup with the other frozen yogurt she wanted before moving to the small array of fixings. She started to shovel some fruity pebbles onto it, pointing with her pinky finger to the raspberries. “Do you like raspberries, too– oh, be careful– hey, um, sir–” Van rose her voice slightly after noticing that the ladle out for them to use had a sharp edge to it. “Can we get another spoon?” 

__

“That makes sense. Sour stuff is good.” She nodded, double confirming. It was something that Chance knew, because he knew a lot more about Van than she did, even though he wasn’t actually from the town. But that didn’t make her feel too bad – Chance was great, and so was Van, and it was good if they were friends.

She even still had a bag of gummy Life Savers in her bag, just in case. “Yes. I think so. But some people like it. I guess.” Like some boring adults. No offense to them, Ariadne apologized in her head. “That sounds cool! Do they make those in like seven-elevens and stuff?? I know they have cherry and Coke and blue raspberry and stuff like that… not such an expert on energy drinks though.” She nodded. “Yeah, I like most any berry. Raspberries are good, and they make a wicked good jam.” Ariadne sighed, looking over at the ladle, though she reached to touch the ladle, except her hand brushed against the sharp edge and then there was glitter and her hand shot back and against her shirt and she turned on her heels. “I – uh. Gonna go get – uh. Bandaid. Outside.”

__

“I actually don’t know… I don’t think so. The health department probably like, makes sure people can’t make those. I bet I could make it if I got my own slushie machine or something.” It sounded like a nightmare, and she wondered if she’d ever have the energy to clean it out considering every time she went to a fast food joint, the ice cream machine always seemed to be broken, but only because they didn’t feel like cleaning it. Van put the idea away for another day. 

“I like rhubarb jam a lot, but I don’t think you can just… eat it like you can berries.” It’d been awhile since she had any, and her mouth tinged with the promise of some later in the year if she could get her hands on it from one of the farmer’s market stalls that offered it. Her mind wandered to the jam, but faltered as she noticed the glitter practically spill from Ariadne’s hand. Van opened her mouth to speak, but Ariadne was darting towards the door. “What? A bandaid? Wait, I have some– why are yours outside?” Van followed after the blonde, digging into her bag for the kuromi bandaids. “They’re purple!” They were outside now, and Van was trying to look around Ariadne to offer the small packet. 

__

“Yeah, that makes sense. I bet you’d make ones even better than the store.” Which she meant, she wasn’t trying to over compliment her friend. Even though she knew that it could easily sound that way.

“Yeah. I think you can have it in pie and stuff, but I don’t know if you can just munch on rhubarb. But I’m not an expert, and I haven’t had that much rhubarb jam, so…” 

Van followed her outside. “I – yeah. Uh, you know, for like, safety reasons?” There was glitter all over her hand. She wasn’t even bleeding that much but in her anxiety and rush to get out of the store she’d smeared it around. “I do like purple. Mixing red and blue slushies to make them purple is the best.” Ariadne looked down at the ground. “It’s – your ice cream is gonna melt.” She wasn’t sure what else to say, because she very clearly hadn’t spilled glitter paint all over herself – Van was right there. “It’s – I’ll be fine.”

__

Maybe if they were girls from any other town on earth, they could talk about rhubarb jam and pie. They could discuss their favorite frozen yogurt toppings and let their belongings spill over a table as they leaned over their bowls, sharing in the delicacies they created. 

But this was Wicked’s Rest, and it offered no kindness. 

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” Van’s concern was visible on her features as she twisted around to look at the other girl’s hand. There was no red, and instead, it matched the glitter that she had seen on the ladle. “It’s um, inside. It’s totally fine. Are you…” Van stared at her hand, not quite sure how to formulate the question. “Did you….” Was this some raver thing? Was Ariadne a raver? “Are you fae or something?” She kept her voice low with the question, not knowing if fae actually had glittery blood, but the word glamor being a part of their vernacular had her thinking that maybe it went together. Maybe Stephenie Meyer had met fae, and not vampires. Vampires here didn’t glitter. 

__

“Okay.” She sniffed, because she didn’t want to possibly lose Van, not when they’d only recently finally actually reconnected. 

But their town wasn’t always kind. Their town had killed her. If she’d grown up somewhere else she would still be human. Probably. Ariadne really didn’t know much of anything about how things like this worked, and except for visits to her grandparents and to Chance, she hadn’t been out of the town much at all. “Fae? I – no.” She shook her head. Van knew about fae? That at least might make some of this a little easier. “I’m – I – I’m dead. Uh.” She hit her palms against her face. “Sorry. I mean. I am dead. But not? It’s – some people say it’s called undead. I’m not a vampire though. I’m… well, something called a mare. But I promise I won’t hurt you!!” Once she’d started talking everything threatened to spill out. “I have to give nightmares to, uh, eat, but I can eat normal stuff and sugar’s really good, I think, or maybe I just like that, but I don’t ever give you nightmares. I just give them to people who are mean. But yeah. Someone fed on me, and made me this. It’s – I –” she blew a strand of hair from her face. “I get it if I should just go now.” She couldn’t help but think of Jade had looked at her – how, to some, she really was a monster.

__

Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up fae. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to know about fae, and because she mentioned fae, something could happen. Hadn’t that been what kind of happened to Nora in Ireland? Wasn’t that why Regan had to go back? Van bit the inside of her cheek as she waited for Ariadne to clarify. But the answer was no, and her friend seemed confused. “You’re… dead? I mean, me, too. Like, I feel dead.” Okay, maybe the wrong way to put it. 

She knew dead people. She knew Caleb. She had been attacked by dead things. She had run-ins with them in different capacities. She’d been warned against them, and had befriended them. Was that the kind of dead that Ariadne meant? It was strange, realizing just how much she’d grown from the point in her life where she couldn’t even think of the word magic. Now, she was accepting all different forms of… maybe not magic, but oddities. “You… horses aren’t dead.” Horses could die, but that didn’t make much sense. To be a person who looked like a person and not a horse that bled glitter? Van’s head kind of hurt trying to wrap her mind around it. 

Zombies and vampires made sense– those she could understand, mostly because they were so prevalent in media. Horses were too, she guessed. But then Ariadne went on to continue explaining, and mare wasn’t a female horse, but short for something else. “Oh…” Van nodded as if it made all the sense in the world, as if she knew what the word always meant. “So not like, a horse. Okay. That makes a lot more sense, I think.” Ariadne was clearly flailing over the information she was providing, and maybe a few months ago, Van would’ve let her go. 

Instead, Van stuck out the bandaid with an unsure smile. “I’m sorry– Um. That I called you a horse. You’re not a horse. Unless you wanted to be.” How long had Ariadne been dead for? Was she supposed to ask that? Was she the Bella in this situation? “Do… you like, need this? You’re glittery, right? To hide it? Are you hurt?” 

__

Ariadne did a double take for a moment at Van’s comment. There was no way that her friend was dead and she hadn’t noticed, right? Then Van was asking about horses and once again Ariadne found herself unable to explain just why she had the same name as a horse. Except that in her case, it was a shortened version of what she was (a nightmare).

“It’s short for nightmare. I think. Because that’s what I eat.” She made another face. “I – well, I’ve only been this for a couple years…” 

Van wasn’t leaving and that alone made Ariadne want to burst into tears. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve the magnificent friends that she had. “Chance, uh, knows. I told him a bit ago.” She wasn’t too keen to get into all the details right now, but figured it was important that Van knew that Chance knew. “No, I don’t want to be a horse. I like being… uh, a person.” Not human. Because she wasn’t human any longer. “Yes please. I’d like the bandaid, to hide it, yeah. I – it’s just a small cut, it’s not so bad.” She took the bandaid. “I like My Melody. But I like Kuromi too – that’s who this is, right?” She offered a cautious smile to her friend. “You sure you’re okay?”

__

If Van hadn’t known Ariadne for as long as she did, knowing that she was kindness personified, then maybe she would’ve focused on the whole eating nightmares thing, but Ariadne had clarified that she only did that to mean people. Van couldn’t really understand why eating somebody who was cruel’s nightmares wouldn’t be helping them, but there was still room to learn exactly what Ariadne meant, right? 

“A couple of years.” Van frowned. That meant that Ariadne had died right under her nose. Not that she would’ve been able to do anything, obviously. They only recently reconnected, and even then… “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure if that was right, either. Apologizing for somebody’s death that had happened years ago. But she was still standing there, seemingly alive. Now, Van had to wonder if something would try to take her out in a way that spread misinformation of danger. She thought of Jade for a brief moment, but pushed the thought away. She considered giving her a picture of Ariadne and telling her to stay the fuck away, but wouldn’t it be better if Jade had no idea who Ariadne was? 

“Chance knows,” Van echoed, trying to fit the pieces of just what happened to Ariadne together. She didn’t figure she’d get that part of all this right here and now, and for once, she was okay with it. It wasn’t every day that a friend of hers told her they were dead. Then again, it had happened with Caleb. So maybe it was a little more common than she thought. “Yeah, being a person is like… way cooler. Horses kinda still freak me out.” She thought about the horse that Regan had taken her to to cure the whole hay eating thing. Would Ariadne befriend that horse, too? Van handed the bandaid over to Ariadne with a nod. 

“Yeah, kuromi. I– there were My Melody ones, but I used them all like, forever ago.” She liked Kuromi better, and it was why she was trying to save them. “Me? I’m okay! I’m not the one who–” she stopped herself from saying she wasn’t dead, and instead pivoted, “that got cut on that weird ladle thing. That’s like, a total health code violation thing, right?” She scrunched her nose. “I’m taking this like, really well, right?” Ariadne already knew what she was, so it only felt fair. “Like, um, way better than I would have before, I think. I’m not saying give me a gold medal or anything, but it’s growth!” A real, genuine smile pulled at the corners of Van’s lips as she grabbed Ariadne’s hand that’d been cut, inspecting it to make sure the bandaid covered the wound in its entirety. “Um, thank you for telling me. Do you… we can talk more about it later, but I think we should get you your weird bubblegum cotton candy mixture, right?” 

__

“Yeah. A couple of years. So I – I’ll always be like, almost-twenty. In looks. I do age. Just not – yeah.” Ariadne wasn’t sure if she was making even the tiniest bit of sense but she did know that Van was listening and that was enough of a win (more than enough). “You don’t have to be sorry – but thanks.”

She wasn’t sure if she should go into the complicated details about how there were people who tried to murder her. Re-murder. Whatever the term was (she still wasn’t sure). But Ariadne didn’t want to stress Van out any more than she already probably was. If the occasion called for it, or if Van decided to ask, then she’d admit it, but not until then. The two of them were having a nice time and she’d already muddled it talking about her death. She didn’t need to scare Van, tell her about the fact that people out there liked to hunt people who weren’t human just because.

“So I just – I know you’re friends, and I didn’t want you to think you had to keep it a secret from him. He only knows like, recently. Wynne knows too. And – Cass.” She didn’t want to bring up Cass too much right now, what with all the complexities that came hand in hand with all of that, but Cass was Van’s friend too and Ariadne wanted to make sure that Van knew she could be open with other people. “Yeah, horses can be freaky.” Though she would’ve given anything to be able to be near any animal or bug or – not the point, right now.

“That makes sense. Kuromi is more your vibe – which I mean as a compliment, F-Y-I. I figure you’ll take it as that, but I just want to make sure!!” Van had been so understanding, Ariadne really didn’t want to ruin the moment by offending her. “It probably is, yeah. And thank you for taking it so well. It – well, it means everything to me.” She giggled at Van’s next words. “I think you should get a gold medal, if I was judging, I’d give you one, so…” Van grabbed her hand and that made her smile grow. Van wasn’t disgusted by her. Van, who was something exceptional and extraordinary, wasn’t repulsed. “Yeah – we can talk more whenever you want. We should go and get the ice cream, yeah.” She moved toward the door, hand-in-hand with Van. “I’m really glad we’re friends.” 

[themculibrary]

Letters Masterlist

1796 Broadway (ao3) - rainproof, teaberryblue steve/tony, bruce/natasha M, 460k

Summary: Captain America respectfully requests that all complaints be addressed to him in writing. On paper, the nice old-fashioned way, because the computer screen hurts his eyes.

Put your phone down, Tony.

all my love (ao3) - casdoms (moffwithhishead) sam/bucky, steve/bucky M, 4k

Summary: September 7th, 1943

Steve,

Tell me something good. Tell me a story about home, about the neighborhood. Give me something to live for, here, because I’m dying. I’m fucking dying. All these guys, dying, and they’re not even –

How are you? There’s been fewer letters from you. Hope you haven’t gotten yourself into trouble. Becca said in her last letter, that she hasn’t seen you in a while. I hope you didn’t do something stupid, you fucking moron.

I’ll be unreachable for a while. Keep sending letters, if you’re not dead. I want something to read when I get back.

Yours,

B

a whole new world (ao3) - Icylightning pepper/tony T, 18k

Summary: For last six months Tony and Pepper were looking for a child to adopt but luck wasn’t on their side. Until one day, Tony receives a letter from five year old Peter Parker.

better when i’m with you (ao3) - thelilacfield wanda/vision T, 69k

Summary: He’s had a number of firsts. Virginia Reed, his first crush. Wanda Maximoff, his first kiss. Eve Simon, his first heartbreak. Mandy Fournier, the first girl who said yes when he asked her to dance. And he’s becoming increasingly certain that Sam Wilson is his first love.

Vision writes a letter each time he has a crush so consuming he can’t forget it. They are tiny pieces of his heart, written out for his eyes only, a way to say goodbye.

Until the day they’re sent out.

Christmas Letters (ao3) - thesoundofasmile clint/laura T, 6k

Summary: In the lead up to Christmas while waiting for Clint to get home, Laura remembers some instances of Natasha celebrating the holiday with the Barton family, and Nathaniel inadvertently starts a new tradition to continue to include Natasha in their celebrations.

counted days, counted miles (ao3) - CrimsonPetrichor sam/bucky G, 2k

Summary: Separated for months by Captain America duties and missions with the Thunderbolts, Sam and Bucky somehow still manage to keep up their domestic squabbles, browbeat each other into taking care of themselves, and deal with their not-strictly-platonic feelings.

A story told in correspondence.

Dear Sam (ao3) - QuestinWitchFace sam/bucky M, 18k

Summary: Months after the events of TFATWS, Bucky and Sam are work partners and roommates living in a house together in Delacroix. Bucky's therapist suggests that, since Bucky has trouble verbalizing his feelings sometimes, he should try writing them out in letters to the people in his life. Bucky can only think of one person he wants to write to.

Dear Yelena (ao3) - flipflop_diva T, 1k

Summary: While the Avengers wait for word on Steve's quest to return the Soul Stone, Yelena reads a stack of old letters Natasha once wrote to her.

dust off our new love (ao3) - ArabellaAM steve/tony G, 1k

Summary: Tony’s clothes are full of dust when he finds the box.

Letters between Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes: 1942-45 (ao3) - Jakcett steve/bucky T, 4k

Summary: Content Summary:

Historical documents, with annotations.

Letters Never Sent (ao3) - wisteriafic wanda/vision T, 9k

Summary: Dear Family and Friends,

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. I don’t have any friends or family anymore to send it to. The moms on TV would write these holiday letters, and I guess I like the idea of putting the past year down on paper.

letters we never sent (ao3) - MissAmyShay bucky/sarah G, 6k

Summary: Bucky likes Sarah. Sarah likes Bucky.

Cass and AJ think it’s time for their relationship to progress to a new level.

Post Haste (ao3) - roboticonography steve/peggy T, 13k

Summary: Steve, Peggy, their friends and family, and a mad dash to the altar. A story in letters.

Read It and Go From There (ao3) - Write_To_You bruno/kamala G, 1k

Summary: A peek into Kamala’s mind when she reads Bruno’s letter.

Shallow Pockets (ao3) - Chargedlion T, 3k

Summary: Valentina doesn't recruit Yelena. Yelena doesn't dedicate her time to hunting and killing Clint Barton. Instead, she wakes up alone in a world without her sister.

All that was left of Natasha was her legacy and the vest she shared with Yelena. And there's something in one of the pockets.

sincerely, (ao3) - catjeno mj/peter G, 5k

Summary: It's been weeks since The Spell, since Peter Parker was erased from the Earth. And though he loves being Spider-Man full time, his new life is not an easy adjustment.

Peter needs someone to talk to. So he turns to his loved ones, in the only way he can.

The Notebooks (ao3) - Ribbonsflying steve/bucky G, 3k

Summary: To cope with his new reality, Steve wrote notebooks to Bucky long before Bucky was ever found.

to live without a lifeline (ao3) - himynameisv T, 1k

Summary: She allows herself one day to grieve.

She comes out the next day—ready and not ready at the same time—to face the world.

What happened during that time is between Natasha and the dead.

(Or: Nat writes a letter, of all the things left unsaid.)

To make things right (ao3) - missingcrowdsof1000s bruno/kamala T, 3k

Summary: A peek into Kamala’s mind as she finally reads Bruno’s letter (a.k.a. an alternate ending to Episode 6, in a world where the deleted scene “Just Friends” from Episode 3 is actual canon).

waiting on my soldier (ao3) - Areiton, BladeoftheNebula steve/tony, bucky/natasha M, 13k

Summary: Here, it feels like anything is possible, like he could ask for the world and actually get it. 

It’s that, more than anything, that makes him ask, “Can I write to you. When I’m gone? I don’t--I have Bucky and Ma, but I’d sure love to have a pretty omega like you waitin’ on my letters.” 

Tony leans into him a little heavier, and squeezes his hand as the sun begins to rise, and paint the sky purple and pink. “Yes,” he says simply.

[thefloorisbalaclava]

My HONEY MY CASS!! Okay first off your Insta pls I always wanna see your beautiful face 🥹

And two this amount of Pedro content we’ve gotten from SNL? I am LIVING!!! The teacher skit I literally felt my soul leave my body because he just looked so?? good??? and all I could think about was either professor morales who is tried and barely has his slides together but does an amazing lecture series and everyone LOVES HIM or a grumpy professor Peña who is a hard ass grader and known for his intimidating tired scowl but all his students know he would go up to BAT for them and helps with extra credit shit all the time and I just 😵‍💫

What was your favorite look or skit!!?? Also omg I’ve already started replaying the last of the us and I forgot how bad I am especially when it comes to crawling and sneaking up on enemies so I just keep saying “Joel Miller give me strength” under my breathe and my sister dies laughing every time whoops 🧟‍♀️

But wow happy the last of us Sunday and happy February! I hope this month brings you warmth and kindness and so much love 💕 💝 💌

Hey girl!! Please stop it!! I am not beautiful 👎🏾

The teacher skit had me dying! I think it was my favorite one because of the videos. Some of them were so random. The one of him blowing his nose had me crying laughing.

I'm just happy he was able to experience that! He looked like he had so much fun. I'm so proud of him!

Right now, I'm practicing for an interview because I have to actually give a presentation/teach a lesson and I'm freaking out. Wish me luck!

Anyways, I love you and thank you for always dropping in to chat 💙

[casspurrjoybell-17]

HEART'S REDEMPTION - CHAPTER 29

*Warning: Adult Content* 

Maria Walker's chair clatters backward to the floor as she rises abruptly. 

Taking an unsteady step towards the woman in the doorway, she reaches towards her with a shaking hand.

"Inez?"

"Who else?" the other woman replies with a weary grin. "Now who wants to tell me what in hell is going on?"

"Mom!" Jack and Elliot Walker exclaims as one, leaping up and striding to take Inez Walker in a shared embrace. 

Cass and Sofia Walker follow suit, though they hang back a little, giving the brothers room.

"What the Hell, Mom? Where have you been?" Elliot asks, his voice muffled and thick with emotion.

"You know where," Inez replies, patting and rubbing her boys' backs and sounding a little confused. 

"I went to pick up the supplies. I was on my way home and I must'a blacked out or something, had one a' my episodes. Next thing I know I'm standing outside the lodge. I must'a walked the whole way home," she laughs. 

"No wonder I'm so damned tired."

"Mom," Jack says, releasing his hold on her to cup her face in his hands. 

"You've been missing for a week. We found your car. We... We thought you were dead."

His voice breaks and he hugs her again.

"A week?" Inez shakes her head. 

"That can't be..."

"It's true, 'Nez," Maria says, her voice watery and rough with tears. 

"We've been searching for you day and night and then Ian and the boys here found your car, all burnt to Hell and we thought..."

"Ian?" Inez asks sharply, registering my presence fully for the first time. 

"Ian Foley?"

"In the flesh," he says, rising and extending my hand. 

"I'm very pleased to meet you, ma'am. I didn't expect I'd have the privilege, given the look of things."

"They're with me," Ian confirms, stepping back to rest his hand on Sam's shoulder, feeling more possessive and defensive than is probably called for. 

After what happened this afternoon, though, Ian thinks he can be excused if his feelings are a little raw.

Her eyes skip over Carlos Martinez and settle on Sam Asato. 

She studies him for a moment and then blinks as though to clear her vision.

"Y'all aren't just messing with me, huh?" she says. 

"It's really been a week?"

Everyone confirms that it has.

"Well... I'll be..." 

She stumbles a little and Jack and Elliot both move to offer her support.

"Whoa, Mom, let's get you set down," Elliot says, guiding her to a chair. "Have Cass check you over."

Leading her to one of the more comfortable, upholstered leather chairs in one of the sitting areas, the brothers sit her down while Cass runs through a quick check.

"Can't be sure without all the proper instruments," they say after a minute or so, patting Inez on the arm. 

"But as far as I can tell you seem fine."

"'Nez... where have you been?" Maria asks, kneeling beside the chair. 

"I swear we searched every damn inch of ground in a twenty-mile radius and there was no trace of you anywhere. You must remember something."

Inez just shakes her head. 

"I swear, I don't. I picked up the supplies, started on the drive back and then... Now."

"Well, I don't understand it," Maria says, smiling. 

"But it's a goddamned miracle. Second one today, in fact." 

She glances at Sam.

  "It's about time we had some good luck."

Ian’s not sure he believe in miracles and Inez's story leaves a lot to be desired in the way of details. 

He'd like to press her for more but it's not his place. 

He can't help asking one question, though.

"You didn't see anyone else out there, did you? On your way back to the lodge?"

She looks up at me and shakes her head. 

"I came to standing on the porch," she says. 

"Didn't see a thing. Why? More folks ain't missing, are they?"

Maria and the other Walkers exchange looks.

"We'll give you some space," Ian says, gesturing to Carlos and Sam. 

"Let you catch up. I'm glad you're alright, Ms. Walker," he adds, nodding at Inez. 

"Perhaps tomorrow we'll have some time to talk."

"I'd like that." 

Her face crinkles with a smile and then she turns her attention back to her family while the rest of them retreat.

Ian keeps his eyes on Sam as they ascend the stairs to their new room. 

he’s barely looked away all night, even the surprise appearance of Inez hardly interrupting his vigilance.

He almost lost him today. 

He came close enough to know what it would have felt like if he had, and he never wants to feel that way again.

They pause at their door. 

Carlos has a smaller room down the hall and they bid him goodnight.

"Call Toni in the morning," Ian tells Carlos. 

"Inez might be back but somebody died in that car. Maybe it wasn't our business to begin with but I have a feeling it's our business now and I don't want to give the Walkers a chance to change their minds about calling in outside help."

Carlos nods in agreement. 

"I'll call her now," he says. 

"It's late but she'll answer. After what happened today, I think I'm ready to hear her voice."

Ian pats his shoulder awkwardly. 

"Good man."

To Ian’s surprise, Carlos reaches for Sam and draws both of them into a hug. 

"I'm glad you're okay, muchacho," he says and kisses Sam on the side of the head. 

Then he smacks them both lightly on the backsides and winks. 

"Sleep well."

With that, Carlos wanders off down the hall and disappears into his room.

"I think Carlos is lonely," Sam muses, watching him go.

"Hmm," Ian agrees but it's not a problem he’s willing to solve.

In our room, Sam retreats to the bathroom and Ian hears the sink running as he brushes his teeth.

"I wonder what happened to Inez?" he says when he emerges. 

"Maybe she was being held behind another barrier like the one that hid her car. Or maybe she was abducted by aliens. Do you believe in aliens, Ian? I think multiple dimensions is more likely, myself, having spent a lot of time in several demonic realms but..."

Ian pulls Sam to him gently, silencing him with a light kiss, just brushing his lips over his.

Ian looks up at Sam, dark eyes soft and wide.

The memory of how Sam had looked lying in the water comes back to Ian and he shut his own eyes against it, drawing a breath that shudders in his chest.

"Hey," Sam says quietly and Ian feels his hands on either side of his face. 

"I'm okay, Ian. I'm here, thanks to you."

Ian opens his eyes and looks down at Sam again. 

His expression is open and unguarded, that look Sam has seen a few times before, like he's offering him everything and holding nothing back. 

It still scares him. 

Ian feels like a clumsy brute being given something precious and breakable to hold, something he doesn't deserve to have. 

Ian also understand that he can't refuse it anymore.

"You're no good for me, Sam," Ian says shaking his head. 

"You know that right?"

Sam frowns, his pretty mouth dipping down at the corners just the slightest bit. 

Ian smooths his fingers over Sam’s pinched brows and smiles.

"You're like sugar or liquor or some sweet drug and I can't get enough. Even if it kills me, I can't quit."

Ian kisses him again, feeling the press of his soft lips against his and walks him back until his legs hit the bed. 

He starts to push him down but Sam resists and Ian stops.

"Ian, wait. Let's talk a bit." 

Sam sits and matching his unhappy expression with his own, Ian joins him.

"Did I do something wrong?" Ian asks.

Sam shakes his head and smiles but he still looks sad.

"No. I just need you to understand some stuff before we go any further."

"Okay," Ian says slowly, rubbing his thumb across the back of Sam’s hand. 

"What?"

"I made a pact with you, right?" 

Ian Foley nods.

"Well, for an incubus, for an Ainasya like Samasa, a bond like that is... well, it's a serious thing. I thought that being what I am now, it wouldn't be like that. I mean, Karin forced me into more pacts than I can count and it was never like this."

"Like what?" Ian asks, feeling uneasy.

"The longer the pact goes uncompleted, the stronger it gets, the harder it gets to resist. I feel like I'm yours and you're mine, so much so that I think even death couldn't drag me away from you right now and you couldn't go on living if it did. But..."

Sam bites his bottom lip and squeezes Ian’s hand.

"Those feelings are, like you said, almost like a drug. Once the pact is complete, they might vanish. They might not be real."

Sam looks up at Ian and he see the shine of tears in his eyes and realize that, for whatever reason, that possibility really has him scared.

"Sam," Ian sighs, brushing the silky black hair away from his face. 

"I'll tell you a secret, okay? I wanted you before you kissed me the first time, before we made that pact. I'd bet you anything I'll still want you once it's complete."

"Anything?" he asks, somehow managing to sound hopeful, seductive and teary at the same time.

"Anything," Ian promises.

"You know it's not wise to make deals with devils," he smirks, sniffing and scrubbing his sleeve across his nose.

"I've been called a lot of things," Ian says, leaning over to kiss Sam’s temple. "'Wise' is not among them."

Sam looks over at Ian and his eyes go to his mouth. 

"Alright, Ian Foley," he says softly. 

"Tell me what you want."

They undress one another slowly, almost like a ritual, until they stand together naked and bare.

Sam steps forward, taking Ian’s hands in hi, and then pulls him with him to the bed.

Lying back, Sam lets Ian see him, touch him, explore his beautiful body with his eyes and mouth and hands. 

Ian makes Sam moan and sigh and shiver, kiss the tears from his eyes and licks the salt from his skin.

When he’s made Sam spill his essence twice, Isn kisses him once more, thinking to finish himself with a few quick thrusts into his fist but Sam arches against him and makes him stop.

"Ian, wait. I want more," Sam says and Ian realizes the little demon is still half hard.

"More?" Ian asks. 

‘To be honest, I'm getting a little tired from leaning over him.’

"Oh." 

Ian’s mind jams as he realize what Sam means. 

"Now?"

Sam Asato nods.

"I... I'm not sure I have the right... supplies," Ian says. 

‘I'm a safe-sex kind of guy, usually.’

"I don't mind. I've never been with anyone and you..."

"I'm clean but still..."

"Please?"

Ian sits up and brushes his hands through his hair. 

"Okay but... I don't want to hurt you and..."

"I think we have enough, slickness, between us now to make it work," he says.

"Uh..."

Sam rolls over and lifts himself onto his knees, resting forward on his folded arms.

At that sight, the thinking part of Ian’s brain stops working.

Somehow, Sam's right and Ian’s able to enter him, though he takes it as slow as he can.

Apparently a little too slow.

He’s about half-way there when Sam rocks back against Ian with a sudden thrust, taking him as deep as he'll go and utters a soft little cry that gets me  Ian right in the balls. 

After that, it's fast and hard, a little on the rough side, even though Ian’s barely doing half the work.

Finally, Sam gasps and arches with release, Ian’s name on his lips and a moment later Ian does the same, collapsing over Sam and crushing him beneath him into the quilt. 

After a minute of heavy breath-catching, Ian rolls off him and lies at his side.

"Holy fuck," Ian says when he can speak.

"You got that right," Sam grins.

They lie for a moment in silence and Ian studies Sam’s face, his sweet, beautiful features and examines the feelings in his heart.

"You know what?" Ian says, pretending to frown. 

"I don't think that worked. I don't feel any different."

Sam’s brows pinches in a frown.

"But... it was what you wanted, right?" Sam asks, sounding a little hurt.

"Yeah. But I guess there's something else I want even more."

"What?"

Sam half lifts himself on one elbow and Ian hopes he's not thinking that what he wants is another round. 

‘He might be twenty-one but I'm sure not.’ 

"What?" Sam presses. 

"Tell me."

Feeling suddenly shy and a little selfish, Ian is not sure that he dares to say it out loud but he does anyway, like the man he wishes he was.

"I want you to love me," Ian says 

"For as long as you'll let me have you."

For a moment Sam looks shocked and Ian wonders if he’s messed up after all.

Then, he smiles and turns as golden as the sun.

[esonetwork]

The Earth Station DCU Episode 329 – Gotham Knights

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/the-earth-station-dcu-episode-329-gotham-knights/

The Earth Station DCU Episode 329 – Gotham Knights

This Week on Earth Station DCU! Drew Leiter and Cletus Jacobs review the Gotham Knights Premiere. The Manhunter continues to hunt the Green Team, while Starman and Warlord attempt their plan to resurrect Good Lucks. Orion uses his galactic GPS to find Earth in Danger Street #4. A Justice League mission causes Superman to become lost in time taking him twenty years to come home in Superman: Lost #1. Selina completes her mission to break into the Batcave, but Harvey follows her with an army in Catwoman: Lonely City #3. Huntress travels back into the past in search of Dr. Fate to help her stop Degaton from killing her JSA in the future in Justice Society of America #3. Stephanie and Cass take on the Mad Matter when they are invited to a tea party in Batgirls #16. Diana goes to Olympus to make peace with Hera in Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods #1. All this plus, DC News, DC TV, Shout Outs, and much, much more!

————————

Table of Contents

0:00:00 Show Open

0:01:15 DC News

0:20:28 Danger Street #4

0:27:50 Superman: Lost #1

0:33:56 Catwoman: Lonely City #3

0:42:13 Justice Society of America #3

0:47:02 Batgirls #16

0:57:08 Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods #1

1:06:05 The Flash S9 Ep7 – Wildest Dreams

1:17:20 Superman & Lois S3 Ep2 – Uncontrollable Forces

1:29:48 Gotham Knights S1 Ep1 – Pilot

1:47:04 Show Close

Links

Danger Street #4

Superman: Lost #1

Catwoman: Lonely City #3

Justice Society of America #3

Batgirls #16

Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods #1

Batman Family (1975-1978) #6 (Cletus’s Read More Comics Pick)

Earth Station One Tales of the Station

Earth Station One Tales of the Station Vol. 2

The Chameleon Chronicles: Colors of Fate

The Chameleon Chronicles: Sisters of the Thorn

If you would like to leave feedback, comment on the show, or would like us to give you a shout out, please call the ESDCU feedback line at (317) 564-9133 (remember long distance charges may apply) or feel free to email us @ earthstationdcu@gmail.com

[straightred-if]

welcome to thornwell fc. your career starts now.

as a new signing, you’re eager to prove yourself to your new teammates. it might prove to be more difficult than you anticipated, though, since not all of them are comfortable with change...

good luck. you’re going to need it.

straight red is rated 18+ for language and potential sexual content.

fully customizable MC

(hopefully) accurate depictions of soccer

drama on and off the pitch

choose one love interest, more than one, or none at all

slice-of-life style storytelling

BRIGGS MCMILLAN (31, M): the captain of thornwell fc. a powerful presence in the defensive position. a gentle giant with a heart of gold, even if he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. 

6′5″. scottish. broad-chested with ruddy curls, too many freckles to count and neatly trimmed stubble. 

JUDE SCHOFIELD (24, NB): thornwell’s effervescent striker. quick on their feet and even faster with the ball, they’ve emerged as one of the brightest young players in the league. due to their arrogant nature, people either love them... or hate their guts.

5.”7. welsh-filipino. keeps their long dark hair in a bun. right arm is covered in an intricate tattoo sleeve.

DR. CASSANDRA (CASS) WRIGHT (27, F): thornwell’s lead doctor. after completing her medical degree at oxford, she decided to stay in england. a smart and capable woman who never takes herself too seriously.

5′4″. african american. keeps her hair cut close to her scalp. dark brown eyes framed with tortoise-shell glasses.

DEMO TBA

[nerdasaurus1200]

Things/Lyrics of Crossing the Line in various dubs that hit different

French

Rapunzel only saying "Cassandra" instead of Cass the entire time

Rapunzel not saying "wait"

"Cassandra listen." "That's all I do!"

"I know that isn't true" turning into "You might be wrong"

"So today I'm choosing my fate"

"I'm taking my rights back"

"And today I'll change my fate"

Italian

Rapunzel sounding angry and firm when she calls Cassandra's name and Cass stopping

"This story mustn't go any further"

"No! I am saying 'enough'!"

"You thought you were my friend but you don't lack any compliance or hypocrisy"

"I go with the losers. You are beyond."

"Thanks to you I surely won't forget it (the line)"

"But for me there's no place"

"But a line is no longer a limit for me."

Korean

"Don't behave like this"

"Enough now with this idea that we are friends, cuz I'm fed up with that high and mighty manner of yours."

"Now look me in the eye." "Why?"

"Don't you feel it too?" "I don't know..."

"Wait? I don't want to anymore"

"I've bumped against countless walls"

"I'm not going to stay quiet anymore"

"I'll find again the me I lost."

Norwegian

"It's you who has to stop!"

"Stop believing you've been my friend while making me feel small over and over again like you've always done."

"I know you're good" "Am I?"

"So before new walls are raised and everything we've had is lost, just wait"

Cass saying wait as if she's confused and trying to understand the meaning of the word

"Why is there always someone taking the top? What about all those who haven't got any chances?"

"I wanted to be nice and good"

"I go with the lost"

"All I ever wanted was just to be part of the troops, but this you've never let me change

"I've been seeking, and found something right."

"All those years spent unseen"

"After everything that's happened, it's enough! Just you wait, it's my turn!"

"Now I'm fed up."

Swedish

"You think like usual to be my friend while talking to me like some sovereign, just like you've always done."

"This can't be real" "You sure?"

"You feel the same" "It feels familiar."

"And please hold up, and remember your calling" "My calling...? I can hear my calling."

"I can see the line between a king and a soldier"

"I can see the line between the chosen and the outcast."

"And despite everything I've been bearing and suffering, we're still just the way we were born"

"I'm always empty handed, you a lass of luck."

"That line between lady in waiting and a comrade was a line you kept changing to your heart's content"

"The way to get to stand by your side was steep."

"But the choices you had, I never did."

"How ashamed I've been, my life's felt so awkward."

"No I won't be falling back anymore."

"Pave the way, watch out, I can see hope"

"With a burning glow, I can change myself relentlessly, cause I'm burning my bridge"

"I'm burning my bridge" slowly becoming "I'm burning our bridge" by the end

[spookiekewchie]

caffeine kisses ☕️

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Characters: Sam Wilson x woc!reader

Summary: The one where you meet Captain America in a coffee shop

Word Count: 1k+

Warnings: it’s fluff, language, me finding a way to work in Sam being called Daddy (but it’s cute though and not in a kinky way), talk of the reader being pregnant

A/N: So this is my submission for  @syntheticavenger​​‘s How it Started/How it’s Going Challenge. I love the prompt I got, and I hope you enjoy it. 

DO NOT repost or translate my work anywhere. Reblogs are always welcome, and let me know that you enjoy my fics.

☕️ ☕️

Sam Wilson // paying it forward with a coffee

☕️How it started…

“Shit—sorry, I think I left my wallet at home.” The man muttered at the counter, sighing heavily as he pulled his phone out to seemingly text someone, and stepped out of line. You watched him go as you stepped up to the counter, he looked stressed. Like he’d had a long night, and was about to have an even longer day. It likely wasn’t your business but you couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something familiar about him. 

“Put his coffee on my card.” You said, catching his eye before he made it out the door. He looked as if he were about to protest, but you simply turned back to the young man behind the register and rattled off your order. 

“You didn’t have to do that.” The man said when you moved out of the line to wait for your name to be called. “Thank you.” He added, shoving his hands into his pockets as he regarded your features carefully. You simply nodded, eyes narrowed slightly when you couldn’t shake the feeling that you had seen him before. It wasn’t until he offered up a smile that it clicked in your mind and your eyes went a little wide. You’d seen him on your television just last week publicly shaming a group of politicians after the whole Flagsmashers fiasco. It was just your luck that you’d run into the new Captain America while you were dressed down in your workout clothes and he was apparently trying to be incognito. 

“Just pay it forward the next time you get coffee.” You shrugged it off, debating whether or not you should say something more. What could it hurt? You think before opening your mouth again to speak. “Besides, it’s not every day a girl gets to save Captain America.” You whispered just low enough for him to hear. He laughed loud enough to draw a few stares, sobering up just a little when he noticed the stares. “The baseball hat and sunglasses combo was a good try through.” 

He laughed again, quieter this time with a little chuckle that made his shoulders shake. “What gave me away?” He questioned, and suddenly you felt your face heating up at the thought of telling him how you’d recognized him. You heard your name being called as your drink and his were set on the counter. Taking a step towards it he followed, looking at you expectantly as he waited for your answer almost as if he were hoping you’d keep talking to him. 

“It was your smile. I recognized it.” You admitted, making it a point to focus your attention on the steaming cup of coffee in your hands. Not looking at him meant missing the soft smile that your answer had drawn onto his lips. 

“I’m glad you did.” 

☕️How it’s going…

The bed was empty when you woke up, something that made you pout until the smell of coffee wafted into the room. You sighed, sitting up in bed and looking to the window where a bright stream of sunlight was shining into the room. The ring on your finger glittered in it, and you felt what you hoped was an excited swoop in your belly at remembering the night before and how Sam had proposed in the middle of dinner with his family. 

You remembered Sarah hugging you so tight that you thought you might pop. You remembered Sam teasing Bucky about being next when he caught the super soldier staring longingly at Sarah while she gushed over the ring. Both of you shot Sam a look that clearly told him to mind his business, and let Sarah and Bucky take things at their own pace. Then there were the two boys who had already taken to calling you their Aunt months before the engagement. 

It had been Cass, the younger of the two, that had blurted out that he couldn’t wait to have a new cousin. 

You pressed a hand to your stomach at the memory, little did Cass know that you were already pregnant and had yet to tell Sam. You’d been nervous at first, despite knowing that you and he had already talked about what you’d like your shared future to be. But you hadn’t planned for it to happen so soon, but a few days of missed birth control pills had been all that it took for your plans to change drastically. 

You sighed at the thought, pushing yourself out of bed to brush your teeth and grab a quick shower. By the time you came back into your shared bedroom Sam was back, and from what you could tell he’d brought coffee with him. 

“What’s this?” You questioned with a fond smile, padding your way over to him and pressing a kiss to his lips. Carefully he pulled you into the bed beside him, that warm smile of his that you loved so much fixed firmly in place. 

“I figured I’d surprise you with your favorite drink.” He replied playfully, stealing another kiss from your lips as he pressed a cup of coffee into your hands before grabbing the other for himself. You took a sip, watching him with a dopey little smile on your lips as you made the decision to tell Sam the good news. Setting your cup of coffee on the nightstand before straddling the man’s lap. “What’s that look for?” He questioned, lifting his cup to his lips to take a long drink from it before he set it aside next to yours. Big warm hands settled against your ass, squeezing lightly as you just chuckled and let your own fall against Sam’s broad chest.  

You took a breath, chewing on your bottom lip for a moment as you tried to think of the best way to put it into words. “So you know how we talked about kids one day?” You began, and Sam nodded silently. “One day came a little faster than expected.” Again he said nothing, but you could see the cogs of his mind turning as you processed what you were trying to tell him. When it finally clicked the grin on his lips was instant as he surged forward to kiss you happily. You leaned into him, the taste of coffee still on his lips. 

“You serious?” He questioned, pulling back to look up at you in wonder.

You nodded, his happiness making any worry that you might have had evaporate in an instant. “You’re gonna be a daddy.” 

That only seemed to add to his joy, and before you knew it Sam had you pressed into the sheets of your shared bed as his kisses peppered your body. “How far along are you?” He questioned, lips brushing against your stomach. 

“Just a couple weeks.” You wiggled against the bed, a laugh bubbling out of you as his lips tickled against your skin. “Are you happy?” 

Sam sighed, the sound content and utterly pleased with both himself and you. 

“First you say yes to marrying me, now you tell me we’re having a kid? Darlin’ I’m so fucking happy.” 

[fiercestpurpose]

Thinking a LOT of thoughts about a C/W adaptation (I’m thinking about an animated series, a comic, or a novelization. Live action is out of the question, obviously, because it’s an inferior art form.)

Foreshadowing!!! This would be soooo good. For each member of the Chime, there is stuff you can pull on and tease early. Other characters too, like Ibex and Orth and Kobus and Jill, can be written differently when you know what’s coming for them later.

Just slap Austin’s first paragraph of the into onto the first page or screen, as is. We could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us.

The faction game. So for an animated series I was thinking that you could do a news broadcast at the start of each episode. Just a short little thing that says what’s going on in the world, from an obviously biased perspective. This could also be a way to keep Jamil involved in the story. For a comic, I was thinking a few pages at the end of each issue. Like extra content that doesn’t directly impact the story (yet) but is there, definitely. Could maybe be in different forms - think of what the current X-line is doing in terms of medium, where there are memos and graphs and maps and reports included. For a novelization, it would be pretty straightforward. Short interludes between chapters, or, like the comic, they could be in a different form, a memo from the executives or something. Ultimately, I think you would need to cut a lot of what happens in the faction game, to really focus in on what is the most important to shaping the overall story or the most important thematically. Which is a shame because the faction episodes are fun, but I think you could keep enough to keep the spirit of it.

The Kingdom Game. I think this would actually be pretty easy to adapt. For a comic, you get another artist to do those issues, for an animated series, you switch styles pretty drastically (possibly mute colors in both?), for a novel you just write it. I think the key to it is making sure that the audience knows that Addax is really Cass-as-Addax and Orth is really AuDy-as-Orth, like these are our characters being forced to reenact the events of the past. One option would be having the characters wearing masks, like you can see that Mako is wearing a Sokrates mask. For an animated series, you could simply keep the voice actors, so Jace is voiced by Aria’s VA and so on. In a novel, it would be pretty straightforward to occasionally remind the reader, whenever they’ve just about forgotten, that it’s someone else looking out through those eyes.

The music - animated series adaptation can expand the music but it can’t change it! It has to keep it, this is so so important! Other adaptations, well, you’re out of luck. Except maybe the audiobook of the novelization. Also I feel like the audiobook of the novelization has to be read by Austin.

An Animal Out of Context and Visions from the Window - These episodes are undoubtedly important, but it’s hard to know what to do with them. C/W is maybe the most experimental FatT season, so it has kind of a fractured quality that actually is crucial to what makes it good (it’s Modernist in that way). I think a novelization could get away with including them, as long as they don’t both come near the end. I’d be tempted to put the Tower Game in about a quarter or a third of the way through the book - the readers don’t have the context for it yet, but they will, and this gets them used to the fractured, time-skipping quality of the narrative. Maybe in an animated series you could put them both before the finale, as sort of special episodes that are building up to a conclusion (I’m thinking of the end of Naruto lol). For comics, if we take something like WicDiv as our guide, then you end up publishing these as special stand-alone issues, not included in the main narrative. And maybe that’s okay, maybe the Tower Game isn’t critical to the forward progress of the story, but that solution seems unsatisfactory to me.

Apostolosian pronouns are just gonna represent a choice you have to make. Decide what you’re doing with them and then implement it consistently.

The time jump is maybe the most problematic thing for me. It’s easy enough to adapt something with a time jump - you just include the time jump - but I don’t know if it would be satisfying to an audience. In a novel, one solution might be to mess with the whole timeline of the story, so that the action of the pre-time skip takes place over the span of several years (which is not impossible), so that the reader gets used to there being these long stretches of time between each action-packed event. A similar thing might work in comics. Revisiting the question of the faction game, you could have each arc in the game be an arc in the comics, and then the final issue of each trade could be purely faction game - again, it acclimates the reader to moving in and out of the direct events.

It is important in the time skip that you redesign the characters. Aria and Cass in particular should look noticeably different pre and post time skip. New outfits, new lines on their faces, new hairstyles. Post time skip Orth should have deep deep circles under his eyes, on account of how he never sleeps.

Hieron! Okay, this is just a fun point, but Hieron-the-anime has to exist in the world. In the kingdom game we get a glimpse of Orth’s screen and it’s obviously paused on a moment of Ephrim looking cool. Also, I need to see Aria bedecked in Adelaide’s pearls. I need it. This works best in comic and animated series form, of course, but I think if you could be subtle enough in a novelization, you could include it there too. Don’t be obnoxious about it, of course, but a few nods here and there would be fun.

The last scene is perfect. Leave it as it is in every adaptation.

I’m sure there’s things I’m forgetting bc there’s so much going on in C/W, and it’s been a couple years since I listened to it all the way through. Let me know what you think/how you would adapt it/what parts you’d find most difficult/etc.

[dessarious]

What Makes a Family? Pt18

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“And what price are they going to have to pay for your magic?” Marinette couldn’t help but smile at the protective tone in Bruce’s voice as he glared at Plagg. She was beyond relieved that he seemed to be a good person and even her Guardian instincts were calm around him.

“The Miraculous are all about balance. In our case, as true Chosen, they affect us whether we use them or not. That’s why Cass’ life has been so difficult and mine has been relatively calm. Actually being in possession of Plagg’s ring will make things better for her. As for other holders, it varies. The longer you hold a Miraculous the more it pulls out certain traits in you. Good or bad depends on both the person and how in tune with the Miraculous they are.” Chloe’s over protective nature and Adrien’s possessiveness were both likely side effects of being holders but there was no way for her to know for certain.

“So they begin to turn you into a different person?” Marinette was shaking her head before he was even finished. She really wasn’t good at explaining things to other people.

“No. Any traits that the Miraculous bring out were already there. If anything they bring out a person’s true nature so they can’t hide who they really are. My former partner for instance was always showing his best face to the world around him but Plagg’s influence allowed those looking for it the ability to see some of his less desirable qualities. Especially when transformed.” While it made perfect sense that the ring had brought out the things Adrien felt he had to hide from the world, she still felt guilty. She also had to wonder how different his life would have been if she’d found her real Black Cat sooner. Cass burrowed into her side.

“Not your fault.” Marinette just hugged her twin closer. Even if Fu had picked Adrien, as the current Guardian he had still been her responsibility. She’d let her knowledge of his personal life define how she treated him when she should have simply judged his actions as a hero. It had been reckless and irresponsible. She’d put everyone at risk. She felt a vibration at her side and actually laughed when she realized Cass was purring to calm her down.

“Well if I needed any more proof that you are Plagg’s chosen, the fact that you’re picking up cat traits without even having the ring on you would have done it.” Cass stopped abruptly and buried her head into Marinette’s shoulder with an embarrassed whine. Mari just grinned and kissed her temple to try and soothe her. “At least yours is cute. The first trait I picked up was reflex bleeding.” It was a small consolation that Lila had a rash for over a month after grabbing her.

“Do I want to know what that is?” Marinette offered Bruce a commiserating smile. It was a lot to process.

“My skin secretes a toxic substance when I feel threatened. Sadly enough it’s actually helped in battles before. Poor baby August tried to eat me a few times while Akumatized.” Bruce just blinked at her and Marinette could practically hear him thinking ‘what the fuck?’ She grinned at him. “Once you’ve actually been through an Akuma attack, remind me to show you footage of past battles. It will prove educational and quite possibly entertaining.”

“You expect me to be entertained by one of my children almost being eaten?” He sounded insulted at the suggestion but Marinette rolled her eyes.

“No, but the fact that Hawkmoth tends to Akumatize the worst suited people into villains should. The only reason he’s still around is because he’s a coward. If I could find him all of this would be over in a heartbeat. Hopefully with Cass here my luck will keep shifting for the better.”

“I thought you were the one with good luck.” Mari let out a frustrated breath.

“Technically yes. However having the Miraculous active, especially with the ring being held by someone so much less in tune than I am, has been affecting me. It’s gotten better since I added other permanent holders but certain things haven’t improved at all. Also, the Kwami are of the opinion that Cass and I rubbed off some of our luck on each other in the womb. It’s likely the reason she ended up with you around the same time I first became Ladybug. Being together will allow us to buffer each other.” Bruce was still frowning at her but it seemed more contemplative than anything else.

“Cass.” She watched her sister peek at Bruce from her position. “What do you want to do?” Marinette let out an approving hum at the question. She got a strange sense of satisfaction that he treated Cass with such care even though she wasn’t his. He wasn’t as warm as her parents, but it was obvious he did care.

“Stay. Help.” Bruce let out a sigh but nodded. Cass relaxed further and Marinette could feel contentment radiating off her.

“So Selina said you’re a fashion designer?” Marinette rose an eyebrow at the subject change. “Since there’s nothing more to be done at present about what’s going on in Paris and it doesn’t appear to be an urgent issue, I would like to get to know you and I’m sure Cass does too.” She felt Cass nod.

“Yes, I’m a fashion designer. It was always what I wanted to do, but my actual start was one of the first twists of fate after I got my Miraculous. I ended up designing something for Jagged Stone and everything just sort of took off from there.” Cass stiffened slightly and Marinette saw Bruce’s eye twitch.

“You’re the designer he’s always bragging about?” Marinette felt her face flush. It hadn’t really occurred to her that he would be familiar with Jagged. Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “The boys are not going to leave you alone. Dick, Jason, and Tim have a running bet over who can get a commission from you first. I apologize in advance for whatever happens at dinner.” She laughed at his dry tone and caught Cass’ smile out of the corner of her eye.

“I assure you it can’t be worse than Uncle Jagged himself. He introduces me to all my new clients and I swear it gets more embarrassing every time. I’m fairly certain he practices just to annoy me.” Bruce’s mouth twitched into something between a smile and a grimace.

“Do not underestimate the boys’ ability to be annoying or embarrassing. That’s not even counting the fact that Damian is likely to challenge you to a duel in order to prove that he’s meant to be my true heir and I have no idea what weapons he managed to smuggle on the plane.” Marinette rolled her eyes. Why wasn’t she surprised?

“I take it Talia’s teachings are still strong?” He frowned at her. Oh right, he didn’t know she knew. “When she and Ra’s were in Paris she enjoyed bragging about him and his bloodlines. That’s how I figured out you were Batman. But don’t worry, I can handle him.” The skeptical look he shot her just made her grin. “Trust me. Besides, I just have to prove I’m not a threat to him. Given that I have no wish to take over your business and I have my own hero problems to worry about there’s no reason for him to take issue with me.” Bruce still seemed uncertain but Cass signed something at him and he nodded.

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.” While Bruce obviously doubted her, she felt nothing but confidence from her twin. As nervous as she was to meet the others, Damian trying to kill her wasn’t that big a problem. At least with him, she knew what to expect.

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[vanoincidence]

Fish 'em Hold 'em || Van & Cass

TIMING: current. LOCATION: van's house in worm row. PARTIES: @magmahearts & @vanoincidence SUMMARY: cass comes over to find her lost earring. instead, she and van play cards! CONTENT WARNINGS: parental death.

Van had been desperate for a sense of normalcy since… It happened. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Debbie. She saw the others, too. Sometimes they were dead, sometimes they were standing over her. Would they do the same to her, if they’d known what had happened with Diana? It was a stupid question, because of course they wouldn’t, but she was still anxious all the same. Nora came to mind more and more– the shape of her knife, the way it fit inside of Debbie’s mouth. The way it sounded when she had pulled it out. As much as Van didn’t want to think about it anymore, she couldn’t seem to stop. Keeping busy to the point of exhaustion was her only option, but even then, the night terrors kept her awake through the night. The empty cans of nectarine red bulls were already threatening to capsize from the box she’d been throwing them into. None of it mattered, though. Not if her house wasn’t clean, not if she went to work on time. Because all that mattered was the fact that she’d been responsible for Debbie’s death. She hadn’t been the only one, but after watching Diana fall through the supposed black hole, it was getting harder to believe that she hadn’t brought on the bad luck to cause the entire situation to begin with. 

It was getting harder to pull herself from her thoughts. At work, she had even mistakenly handed over a fifty dollar bill instead of a five. It wasn’t until Janice had commented on it from over her shoulder that she was able to fix the mistake before the customer left. Van knew she needed to shape up, or else her entire life would fall apart. She was usually good at pretending, but this was different. She had somebody’s blood on her hands. 

She lay on the couch now, legs kicked up on an old cross-stitched pillow with black bears on it. Van barely registered the sound of somebody knocking on the door, and only after they knocked several more times did she get up. She tossed her phone with her current boss battle on it, to the side, and looked through the window to the side, surprised to see that it was Cass. She checked herself in the mirror, rubbing her index fingers beneath her eyes as a means to rub away the dark circles. Of course it didn't work. Adjusting her oversized t-shirt, she pulled the door open and tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Hey. Um, I didn’t… did you text?” She hadn’t missed a text, had she? That couldn’t be possible, she was holding her phone the entire time. “I might have missed it, I’ve been playing games. Sorry.” She knew the inside of the house didn’t look great. There were takeout boxes (from when she could eat) on the coffee table, as well as a few dozen more empty cans of red bull. “You can come in. Sorry. I– don’t mind… it’s… Yeah.” 

—

It hadn’t felt like this after Kuma died. It was strange to think about, weird to compare the two, but impossible not to at the same time. After Kuma died, it had been so easy to stick the guilt in a box because that was what she’d been taught to do. When a promise bind killed someone, it wasn’t the fault of the person who’d bound them. It was the broken promise that did it, their inability to keep their word. If they were honest when they made the promise, it wouldn’t have killed them. It wasn’t a particularly kind way of thinking of things, but few things about the aos si she’d lived in as a child had been kind. Humans were disposable, they’d claimed, and just because Cass didn’t feel that way didn’t mean she could toss years of hearing it repeated out the window without thinking of it at all. It didn’t mean there was no temptation to cling to it when it suited her, when it eased the guilt aching in her chest.

But Debbie was different.

Debbie hadn’t broken any promises. If anything, her last words — that she’d only been trying to make people proud — seemed to imply that she was trying to keep a promise to someone. And the wound on Cass’s side still hadn’t healed, was so much slower to fix itself than her injuries usually were, but she still wasn’t sure Debbie had deserved what happened to her. She really didn’t think so, and not thinking so hurt. 

So, she figured a distraction was in order. She’d raked her mind with possible things to do, but none seemed good enough to keep her thoughts away from where they so desperately wanted to crawl. She didn’t want to be alone, but she couldn’t stand the thought of being around anyone who didn’t get it, either. So who did that leave? The girls who’d been there with her that night? Nora had left her behind once already, and was probably going to do it again just as soon as she could. Ren didn’t even seem to like her, and the buzzing feeling of being around another fae, especially one who seemed to view her with distaste, would only make the sinking feeling in her chest that much worse. Thea was a good option, but Cass didn’t really know where to find her and didn’t want to text her for fear of rejection. But Van? She knew where Van lived and worked. And Van had said that they should all get together sometime and watch a movie or something, so it was clear that she at least kind of wanted to hang out. 

The thought overtook her before she could consider it much at all, and she was standing in front of Van’s door not long after and realizing only after the other girl opened it that she probably should have texted first. She’d need an excuse, then. Right? Hesitantly, she glanced around. “Oh. No, sorry, I didn’t — I was just in the neighborhood, and I lost my earring the other night?” It wasn’t a lie, technically; she had lost her earring, but she was pretty sure it ended up in the pit she was trying desperately not to think about. “Maybe we can look for it in your house?”

—

“Oh.” Van blinked, then looked from one of Cass’s ears to the other. She was in fact missing an earring. Did she not have others? Then again, she only owned one septum ring. Her industrial bar was changed out every few years, always with vigorous cleaning every few days. “In my.. house.” This was her house. Right. Not her grandma’s house. Not her parents’ house. Her house. “Yeah, come in!” Van stepped to the side to let Cass in before she closed the door behind her. She kicked her own shoes to the side to make room for Cass’s once she took them off and she hurried towards the coffee table. 

She stacked the takeout boxes on top of one another and held them to her chest awkwardly. “Do you remember–” That night was hard not to remember and she knew that, so she cleared her throat. “It looks like the other one?” Van went into the kitchen, crushing the takeout boxes she was holding into the trash can that was already partially overflowing. “She quickly put a few stray cups into the sink and began to pick up the various wrappers she’d left strewn across the countertop. “Do you want anything to drink?” Her house had gotten worse since the girls left. When they were there, it was almost like somebody normal lived there.

“I have… um…” Van pulled the fridge door open and peered inside, noticing that she was low on red bull. “Red bull. Water. That’s it.” She let the fridge door close with a defeated sigh. “We can…” She couldn’t order food. Or really, shouldn’t. The insurance money she’d gotten after she turned 18 from her parents’ passing was running low and she used it to pay the bulk of her bills. Even though the house was paid off, she needed to live scarcely until she could find something better than Sly Slice. Or… find roommates. Which wouldn’t be happening now, especially with everything that had happened. “Look for your earring. Sorry. That’s why you’re here.” 

—

She should have come up with a better excuse. She knew that now, because this one was finite. Eventually, she’d have to admit that her earring wasn’t here and she’d have to leave, and then she’d be just as alone as she had been before. Only it’d be worse, probably, because being alone was always worse when it was a fresh feeling. You could forget, after a while, what it felt like to have someone there with you. The reminder only ever served to sting all the more when it was inevitably snatched away from you.

But she had a little while, at least. Van’s house was one of the biggest Cass had ever seen, though the only house she really had to compare it to was the one bedroom duplex that Kuma had lived in. It could take them a long time to search this whole house. As long as Van didn’t ask her any point blank questions she’d have to lie in response to in order to keep the search going, they could probably stretch it out for a while. 

“Water would be good,” she said with an encouraging smile. She liked Van. Van was nice, and friendly, and didn’t turn Cass away the moment she saw her on the other side of the door. Maybe Van was only going to forget about her like everyone else, but at least for now they could be friends. “No, it —- It’s okay,” she said quickly. “I mean, if you want to do something else while I’m here, I don’t mind. We can always look for the earring later, too. It’s not super important or anything, if you want to just hang out.”

—

Van nodded at Cass’s request for a glass of water and she checked each of the cabinets, hesitating when she saw the mug that had been her dad’s. She had barely touched it since he had passed. One day, her grandma tried to use it and Van had a meltdown in the kitchen. That day, the plastic of the ice trays that sat on the countertop had begun to melt into the vinyl and the glass windows of the hutch that contained photographic memories shattered. That was only a few days after she’d gotten home from her roadtrip– only a few days after she had lost Diana. Her grandmother left a week later. 

She felt statuesque, desperate to feel normal over the stupid fucking mug. It was basic enough, a weird off-tan color with a baseball bat on it. Her dad had loved baseball. Stupid. Van ground her teeth and closed the cabinet a little too hard before turning towards one of the cups in the sink. She grabbed it and began to scrub at it with a sponge after pouring way too much soap onto it.

“Are you sure?” Van looked over her shoulder at Cass as she began to rinse off the cup. She didn’t want Cass to think that she wasn’t up to looking for the earring. Maybe Cass thought that the house was a little too dirty to actually find it. Van needed to clean, but cleaning took energy that she didn’t have. She turned off the water and dried off the cup with a paper towel before filling it with water from the brita filter. She held it out to Cass with a smile and went to grab herself a redbull. “We can, if you want, but we can… I’d hate for you to not have your earring.” Whether or not it was expensive, Van had no clue. She knew fuck all about expensive things. The money her parents made had been posthumous, and even then, it had gone to bills, mostly– to paying off the house, and to whatever dumb purchases Van had started to make after her grandmother left; namely the dumb gacha games in her phone. 

—

Cass watched Van navigate the kitchen, trying not to be curious in spite of the way the curiosity stubbornly tugged at her gut. She hated the way she couldn’t look away, hated the fact that she was observing someone she thought might be her friend in a moment where she was clearly vulnerable. It was the kind of thing that was hard to turn off, though. When you spent all your life trying to be who people wanted you to be in order to convince them you were worth keeping around, watching them became something of a necessity. 

So she watched Van open the cabinet, watched her freeze as if she’d seen a ghost etched into the wooden shelves. Was she thinking about Debbie? It would certainly make sense. Cass wasn’t sure she’d thought of anything else since the night they’d thrown the girl’s body into the pit. Debbie’s face was a thing that she thought might haunt her until the day she joined her in death. Maybe if Van and the others felt the same, the weight would be easier to carry. Or maybe some things didn’t get easier. Maybe they weren’t supposed to. 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” There was no discomfort with the statement because it was true. Cass was sure she wanted to hang out with Van, was sure that she’d stay until Van asked her to leave. She took the cup as Van offered it to her, smiling gratefully but not offering any kind of verbal thanks. She didn’t think Van would hold her to it, but she didn’t want to risk it, either. Cass liked to be the one holding all the cards. It was selfish of her, she knew. “It’s okay, really. I don’t mind wearing just the one for a while. I think it looks kind of, um… punk rock.” She’d steal another pair eventually, but she was fine being unbalanced until then. 

—

“Kind of punk rock?” Van stared at Cass for a moment, gaze shifting from one of her ears the other. It would, if it weren’t for the clothes that Cass wore. They were a lot girlier and flowy than anything she owned, but did that matter? It wasn’t like they were sharing a wardrobe. “Yeah, I guess so.” Even though Cass didn’t smell like it, she looked like she should smell like the beach; like sunscreen and sand, and even the salt from the rolling waves. Van didn’t think that was very punk rock, but she knew that being punk was about rejecting the idea of mainstream. Maybe this was Cass’s idea of doing that. It didn’t matter, anyway. It had just been a throwaway comment. Van wasn’t sure why she was so lost in her head about it. Maybe it was guilt over the lost earring, or guilt over something else. 

“Then um…” She looked around, still frustrated by the state of her home. She wouldn’t ask Cass to help her clean, that was rude, especially because the mess hadn’t been her fault. The fallout of why things had gotten so bad may have had her included, but it wasn’t like Cass had made her help with Debbie’s murder. Cass had been attacked too. Van wanted to ask how her wound was. Her own had been shallow enough that after the deep cleaning and cauterization, it wasn’t all that bad. She hadn’t ever been hurt like that before, and so the phantom pain was worse than anything that was actually wrong with her. “What do you want to do?” She knew she had mentioned to Cass about watching a t.v show or a movie, but she wasn’t sure she had the attention span for that today, but she didn’t want to leave her house, either. 

—

For a moment, she feared she’d said something wrong. Van was looking at her in a strange sort of way, and what if this was the comment that got Cass kicked out of her house for good? What if this was somehow the straw that shattered the camel’s back and made Van realize that Cass really wasn’t someone she wanted around, no matter what terrible secrets they shared? But the fear dissipated when Van spoke again, agreeing even if it didn’t sound like she fully meant it. “Probably not, like, super punk rock,” Cass added quickly, trying to recover. “Just, like, the general vibes.” 

What do you want to do? It was such an open ended question. Cass didn’t know how to answer it. She wanted to do a thousand things, and she wanted to do nothing. She wanted to talk about what they’d gone through, and she wanted to never mention it again. She wanted too much and nothing at all. But she didn’t know how to say any of this, so she only shrugged. “Maybe we could play a board game. Or cards? Do you know any card games? I only know Go Fish.” 

—

So she’d been obvious about her confusion over the statement. She spent way too much time online to have these kinds of conversations in person. “No– I. Sorry.” She let out a sigh and dented the can of red bull lightly with her fingers. “Punk rock isn’t really…” She hesitated, not knowing really what she was trying to say. “It doesn’t matter, you know? Punk rock is punk rock. If you say you’re punk rock, you’re punk rock.” People said that the kind of people who did say they were punk rock were not punk rock, but what the hell did they know about a girl who had saved her own life and the lives of those around her? Of the girl with the red branding iron that was meant to help their injuries. They didn’t know, and even though Van didn’t really know her either, a part of her wanted to get to know her. 

Cass seemed to be working through the possibilities of what they could do and Van paused after her recommendation, eyes darting to the closet of board games she only ever really played with her parents. She hadn’t been in that closet in years, it probably had cobwebs. Or, by the state of her place, a rat or two. No, that was dramatic– her house wasn’t that bad. “Um…” She had a deck of cards in her room, though. That was safer. Less falling into a memory. “I have some cards!” She set her red bull down and hurried down the hall before returning with the deck. “It might be missing two or three, I’ve never been good at keeping track of things, but–” She held them out for Cass to take. “You deal since it was your idea.” She cleared the kitchen table quickly, ignoring the engravings on it of her parents’ names she’d done with a kitchen knife at seven years old. Her own was just below it. She’d gotten into so much trouble that day. “You can sit here.” Far from the engravings, far from the memories. She pulled out a chair and motioned for the girl to take a seat. 

—

It doesn’t matter. Van said it so flippantly, like she had no idea how freeing that statement was. The idea of something being true only because you said it was true, the concept of wanting something being synonymous with having it… It was just about a stupid phrase, just about some weird aesthetic thing that Cass had never really understood anyway, but that didn’t stop her from grinning. “I like that,” she said, the statement clearly true from the expression on her face. She liked Van’s explanation, and she liked Van, too. 

The smile only widened as Van replied that she did, in fact, have a deck of cards. She waited for her to return with them, taking them as they were offered to her. “I’ve never played with a full deck, anyway,” she admitted with a shrug, pulling the cards from the box. “But I knew a guy once who loved cards. He mostly used them to scam people — you know, that street game where you try to find the Queen? — but he did teach me how to…” She paused, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in concentration as she adjusted the cards. The shuffle was clumsy, but she didn’t drop any. She thought that should count for something, and she flashed Van a triumphant grin. “He was way better at it, but I used to be pretty good.” It was one of those things she’d spent hours perfecting in hopes that it might make her easier to swallow. Like most of those things, of course, she’d fallen out of practice as soon as the person who it mattered to left her behind. Skills, for Cass, were only ever worth having if they might trick someone into liking you. She sat down in the chair Van got out for her, glancing to the other side of the table briefly with some curiosity but deciding not to ask. Van looked sad, but Cass was afraid to ask why. She was afraid the answer might have something to do with that pit near her cave and the things they’d thrown into it. “Ten cards to start?”

—

Van sank into the rickety chair, wincing as it wobbled beneath her weight. A screw had gotten loose forever ago and Van hadn’t ever made the time to try and youtube-fix it. Somebody who was a real adult would tell her to simply throw the chairs out, but she couldn’t stomach the idea. They’d been where her parents sat, as well as where her grandmother had sat. They were a part of this family, too, and Van refused to get rid of them. 

As Cass explained her story about some guy who played cards, Van made her best attempt to listen, to not let her memories get the best of her. The chair that Cass sat in had been the one her mom always sat in. It didn’t hurt to see her sitting in it, instead, it made Van feel a little better. Maybe she couldn’t replace the people in her life with others– not that she had ever tried, but maybe she could introduce new ones to sit at her table. It was weird to think about how that night in the grocery store and at the pit had changed so much. She was still traumatized and every time she did think about it, it felt like she was going to evaporate out of fear and anger (mostly at herself), but right now? Having one of the girls from that night across from her, it made her feel like things were marginally better than they had been in the past few days. 

Van watched as Cass worked her magic with the cards and she offered an amused smile. It was genuine, at least, despite how tired she was. “That’s cool. I don’t think I’ve met anyone like that.” She paused. “I met a woman trying to sell makeup once who then tried to get my– me to sell makeup. I guess that’s a scam, too.” She let out a soft laugh before clasping her hands, resting them on the table. “Ten? Yeah! That sounds right.” There should be enough for them to play at least a few deck draws. “I think I know some other card games too, if you get bored of this one.” She would have to probably look it up, but she didn’t think Cass would mind. She waited in silence as Cass dealt the cards, and then she slid her hand across the table collecting and then rearranging them in order of her already existing pairs (she had half of one). She should have a normal conversation with Cass. She knew that. Maybe something without the weight of what they’d done. She didn’t know what to say, so she instead asked the obvious. “You’re not from Wicked’s Rest.” Van would remember her, if she had been. “Where did you move from?” 

—

She didn’t think Van was listening to her, but that was okay, too. Cass talked just to fill the silence sometimes, spoke only to hear herself speak. There was some empty comfort in it, some quiet reassurance. She didn’t like the quiet. The quiet would swallow you up if you let it, would eat you whole without stopping to chew. She’d had so much quiet over the course of her life, had lived in it a little too long. In the mornings when she woke up to find that whoever she’d been with the night before had left without saying goodbye, or at night when she found no one and nothing to occupy her. Silence was bad, was heavy, was wrong. If Van would let her fill it with rambling stories, she’d do so even if she was the only one listening to them. 

Van said the story was cool anyway, even if she’d only been half-listening to it, and Cass offered her a smile and looked down at the cards again, fiddling absently with the corner of the one on top of the pile. “There were always a lot of people like that around.” When you lived on the streets, most people were scamming or stealing to stay alive. Cass had never been good at the former — it often required lies that she wasn’t good at telling — but she’d built up a lot of skill with the latter. Slipping into places unseen, slipping out again without leaving anything behind. She’d always been good at being invisible; the key was to be a thing no one wanted to look at. Homeless children with dirty hair and ragged clothes were something most people turned away from quickly, because if they didn’t they’d feel bad. Guilt was something you could use to your advantage, sometimes. Cass had built a ‘career’ on it. 

Nodding as Van spoke, Cass began dealing out the cards. Ten a piece, and the rest between them. “You’ll have to teach me,” she said, flipping her cards over and rearranging them in her hand. Two tens, but no other matches. She didn’t care much about the game, anyway. She looked back to Van, shaking her head with a hint of hesitancy. “I’m from Hawai’i,” she replied, a little uncertain even though she knew it was true. “I haven’t lived there in a long time, though. I left when I was still a kid.” Left wasn’t the right word for it. Left implied that she’d wanted to, that she’d been given a choice. Her departure from the island hadn’t been that, of course, but… That wasn’t something she wanted to say. If Van knew that the people who were supposed to be wired to love Cass had cast her out anyway, she’d start to wonder why. And wondering was the first step to figuring it out. Cass didn’t want her to figure it out, even if that was selfish of her. “Are you from here?” She thought she might be, but it seemed a weird thing to assume.

—

The idea of whether or not she deserved to find a friendship with the other girls was something that bothered Van. Would they want to be her friend if they knew about Diana? Sure, she hadn’t stabbed her, but she had left, after what happened. Van still couldn’t wrap her mind around what did happen, and every time the memories began to linger, she pushed them out as quickly as possible, occupying her time with other things. The kinds of things that could be a means for distraction for hours on end. She was good at distracting herself, even if it never solved for the ache in her chest. She had to believe that it would work one day. Like now, with Cass in front of her. It was different from her usual distractions, but it was enough to work, to at least remind her that she didn’t need to think about the past, or the people she lost. She could live in the now, if only for a little while. It didn’t matter what she deserved, because didn’t Cass need someone to rely on? If she couldn’t entirely rest her head on Cass’s shoulder, then maybe she could be that for Cass, or something like it. 

“Oh, really?” Van flipped her own two pairs over– “two sevens.” She looked up at Cass. “Do you miss it?” Maybe that wasn’t the right question to ask, but even during the summer when she would visit New York, she often missed Wicked’s Rest, even if it was a little weird. “Do you have an eight?” She shuffled around the cards in her pile again, then nodded at Cass’s question. “I’ve lived here my whole life. My mom was born in New York and my dad was born in Fresno. They met at university in Portland, but moved here after my dad got a job as baseball coach. Wanted to go pro, but those dreams sorta crashed and burned.” She paused, not knowing whether or not she should go into the details about her parents' deaths and how her grandma had been the one to raise her since fifteen years old. 

—

Cass flipped her own pairs onto the table absently, lining them up so that they were across from Van’s sevens. She considered the question, considered her answer. Did she miss the island? Some days, she wasn’t sure. She missed what she’d wanted it to be, missed the idea of a community even if she’d never fit into it. She missed the feeling of the volcano and its close proximity, missed the way her veins used to sing in a harmonious choir with the magma flowing through the rocks. She missed parts of it, but she wasn’t sure she missed being there. You had to belong to a place to miss it, didn’t you? And Cass had never belonged anywhere at all.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, sliding the 8 out of her hand and pushing it across the table towards Van. “Sometimes I think I do. Or I think I miss parts of it. But sometimes I’m not sure. I don’t think I was really happy there.” But then, she wasn’t sure she’d been happy anywhere. Her happiness had always been tied to people instead of places, and that made it so much harder to hold. Places stayed where they were, mostly. Hawai’i was still Hawai’i, still out in the ocean where it had always been, but the people there didn’t want her. New York was still New York, but Nora was gone from it. Wicked’s Rest was still Wicked’s Rest, but Kuma was dead and buried. It would have been easier, she thought, if she loved places instead of people. Happiness would have been so much simpler to hold. “Does he coach at the school? Or somewhere else?” She didn’t know much about Van’s parents. She wondered if they lived here, or if Van had already moved out and was living on her own. The house seemed big for one person, but what did Cass know about houses? Maybe this was normal.

—

Van took Cass’s 8 with a smile and paired it with the one she already had in her hand before setting it down onto the table. As she explained how she felt about Hawai’i, Van tried to understand what it might feel like to be so far away from the very place you were born, but she wasn’t sure she could. Even while in New York, she was only ever about 10 hours away, depending on the traffic. “Well, maybe you can be happy…” Here, Van thought? Where they’d just murdered someone? Where they could be found out at any moment, if one of them broke? “Some day?” She offered with an awkward laugh. 

She knew she opened up the discussion to reveal she even had parents at all, but she silently cursed herself for letting it flow freely. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with discussing them, it was that other people might stay stupid shit like I’m sorry for your loss. She’d heard that too many times to count. Van knew that lying about it would be worse considering the fact she lived alone in a house that an older adult should definitely be in charge of. “He coached at the elementary school for a while.” Van smoothed out the corner of one of the cards that had been bent. “My mom worked as a secretary. They both died when I was fifteen.” She offered Cass an awkward smile. “But it’s okay, I’ve had time to like, process.” She didn’t. “What card do you need? Maybe I have it.” 

—

Maybe you can be happy some day. Cass wanted to protest, wanted to say I’m happy now, but even the thought of it made her stomach ache. It was understandable, though, wasn’t it? Not being happy right now, so soon after they’d killed someone. Being happy now, in the aftermath… It would be a terrible thing. To feel joy, to celebrate, to be content in a world she’d just helped tear someone else away from, that wasn’t something heroes did. And Cass was trying so hard to be a hero. It was the only thing she’d wanted for so long now. People liked heroes. They had to. 

Something shifted in Van’s expression, and Cass realized what she was going to say just a moment before she actually said it. She never knew how to react when people confessed to things like this, never knew what you were supposed to say. She’d never had anything to lose, so how could she begin to understand what it felt like to go through loss? Did time really make it better? She couldn’t imagine that the years that separated Van from her parents’ deaths made it any easier to carry the weight of them. She couldn’t imagine anything did. There was certainly nothing she could say, so she looked back down at her cards instead, smile brief and apologetic. “Got any twos?”

—

It was clear that Van had made Cass uncomfortable with her statement and she flinched inwardly, doing her best to control her expression. Whether or not she was doing any good at it was another thing. She cleared her throat and shuffled through the cards she had and held out the two she had to Cass with her own smile. She didn’t want to have somebody shut down on her because they didn’t know what to say. Van hated when that happened. Hated when she felt othered just because she had lost the people who were supposed to be there for… well, a whole lot longer than they had been. 

“Any sixes?” Van scratched an itch that’d begun to form on her ankle and she shifted in her chair. She didn’t know what else to say other than continue to play the game they had decided on. It was a little quiet now and she reached across the table to grab her phone from where it was laying. She quickly pulled up spotify and began to play Dizzy’s Calico on a lower volume than she would have liked. “If you want to listen to anything specific, just let me know.” 

—

The air in the room had shifted, become thicker than it should have been. It hadn’t exactly been relaxed before — Debbie’s ghost hung between them like a tangible thing, even now — but it hadn’t been quite this tense, either. Cass hated herself a little. For not knowing what to say, for always managing to say the wrong thing with the right one eluded her. A better friend would have known how to comfort Van here. A better friend would have known if they were friends at all or if she was only fooling herself, if she was wanting something so badly that she was making false things true. She did that sometimes. It was suffocating.

Van’s voice pulled her from her thoughts, and she looked back at her cards. “Go fish,” she replied with a small smile. She watched Van fetch her phone, watched her turn on the music. She didn’t listen to music often. Only when someone else wanted to, really, only when she thought it would make her easier to swallow. “Whatever you like is fine. Um… What’s your favorite? I think I’d like to hear that.”

—

Van drew a card and paired it with the additional ten she had, putting them face up just next to the other pair. “My favorite?” Van scrolled down through her playlists with her index finger as she held her cards against the table. She could easily drown out the awkwardness with music. She knew how to do that. She knew how to preoccupy herself so that the bad things didn’t take over. 

“Have you ever listened to Lunar Isles?” Van put Bloomon and let it begin to play. “If you’re not into this, I can change it.” She smiled at Cass, and even though it didn’t reach her eyes, it still felt genuine enough that she didn’t feel guilty for not giving her all the energy in the world. “Your turn.” 

—

Music filled the space like a physical thing, and Cass relaxed into the sound’s embrace. Hearing someone’s favorite song, someone told her once, was like hearing a snapshot of the inside of their head, seeing a hint of what made them who they were. She wasn’t sure she had a favorite song herself; maybe that said a lot about her, hinted at the way she’d change anything about herself if it meant making someone else like her just a little bit more.

“No,” she said quickly when Van offered to change it. “I like this. It’s nice. It’s got a cool vibe. Quiet, easy. It’s great.” She made a note of the band’s name — maybe she could find similar ones, introduce Van to something new, something she’d listen to and think of Cass. That sounded like a dream. “Got any fours?”

—

“Cool.” Van was glad that Cass seemed to like the music. If she didn’t, she was sure that the other girl would say something. There was nothing worse than being in an enclosed space while somebody was playing bad music. Well, there were worse things, but a normal terrible thing to Van would be being stuck at Sly Slice while Janice played Taylor Swift over the speakers. 

“Yup!” She seemed a little too giddy to hand over the four, so she toned it down slightly by slouching in her chair. Even though Cass didn’t seem like she knew what to say about the whole parent thing, at least she didn’t let her continue to get her down. Van looked over her cards, then asked, “do you have a one?” She looked up over them at Cass, slightly hopeful. 

—

Even though things were relatively easy with Van, Cass still felt, on some level, like she was putting on a performance. She always did. Every conversation was a dance she hadn’t known how to rehearse properly, every attempt at friendship a complicated choreographed event with no director. But Van was nice, and Cass wanted to try. She wanted to be her friend. Maybe then they could play Go Fish more often.

She grinned as the other girl handed over the card, placing the pair down with the rest. “Hmm…” She looked over the cards in her hand before shaking her head. “Go Fish again!” She wished she had had a one to give to Van; she worried if she won the game, Van might be upset with her. Deciding to distract from her lead, she jumped back into conversation. “Do you like living here? In the town, I mean. It seems like weird stuff happens sometimes.” She didn’t know how much Van knew about the weird stuff, and maybe that would be a good thing to figure out.

—

“Dammit, seriously?” Van laughed aloud before she plucked a card from the deck. “Oh, never mind. Got it on my own.” She stuck her tongue out playfully at Cass before slapping her pair down. She huddled her cards together in both hands, tapping the first card with her thumb. At Cass’s question, she shrugged. “Weird things have always happened here, that’s just… sorta how it is.” She spread her cards back out and shoved them together again as a means for something to do with her hands. 

“Some people are really weird, you know? Tell you to not say thank you and stuff.” Van rolled her eyes. “My gra– I would…” She paused. “I was taught to be polite. Unless somebody doesn’t deserve it, then screw them.” Van rolled her eyes. “But I don’t really listen to them, usually they aren’t saying things that make any sense and they sorta lose me, makes it hard for me to put any faith into them.” Because if she did, she’d see a lot more than she was willing to, and that scared the hell out of her. “What about you? Do you think it’s really weird here?” 

—

Cass was about to apologize, nonsensically, for not having the card Van needed, but it wasn’t necessary. She got her one anyway, and Cass pretended to be upset by the development, hiding her grin behind her fanned out cards. She listened as Van spoke, making a note of what she said. She was one of those people, then, one of the ones who wrote off the supernatural stuff. It solidified Cass’s earlier assumptions that she should never deglamour in front of the other girl, made the notion a concrete one in her mind. That was what had made Kuma hate her, after all, and she didn’t want a repeat of it.

“I was taught not to say it,” she admitted. It was true, even if she was leaving out the fact that she was also taught why. She wanted to tell Van that she really shouldn’t thank people, because she didn’t want her new friend bound by some malicious fae, but… It was clear that Van would probably do it anyway. And she might not like Cass if Cass told her not to. So she left it alone, focusing on her cards instead. “Any nines?” She rearranged them absently the more Van spoke, making note of each and every word like she was creating a comprehensive guide on how not to make the other girl dislike her. “I’ve lived in weirder places.” Another true statement. The aos si had definitely been weirder than Wicked’s Rest in comparison to the rest of the human world, after all. “I like the kind of weird they have here, anyway. It’s exciting, most of the time.” She didn’t have to say when it wasn’t exciting. Van had been in that supermarket. She already knew.

—

“Really? Was there a reason?” Van was curious. Even if she didn’t believe in the superstitions behind a lot of the weird things Wicked’s Rest’s residents got up to, she wanted to know why they’d started in the first place. “Recently, or when you were in Hawai’i?” She looked over her cards at the girl opposite her curiously. 

“Weirder than here?” Van leaned back in her chair, nodding slightly as if it were possible. Maybe it was. Then again, even out of Wicked’s Rest, somewhere in an abandoned parking lot, Van had watched Diana tumble through a black hole. It hadn’t been there, and then it was. That was weird, and it was heartbreaking, but she didn’t want to focus on that. Couldn’t. “That’s a hard sell, but if you say so.” She flashed a smile at Cass, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It’s alright, but it gets old after you’ve lived here your whole life.” Cass skirted around the topic of Debbie and Van was grateful. “I guess it’d be like that anywhere. Hawai’i for example.” She focused on getting the name to sound right as it came off her tongue. “But I’m glad you like it here. We’re glad to have you.” Even if our first events together had been traumatic, Van nearly added as an afterthought. 

—

Hesitating, Cass debated how to proceed. She didn’t think she could lie; even if she could properly hide the effect it had on her, she didn’t particularly want to lie to Van. But what if she told the truth and Van didn’t like her anymore? She rearranged her cards absently, as if distracted by them. Then, after a pause that may have lasted a beat too long, she shrugged. “I was always told that thanking someone means you owe them,” she said carefully. It was true, because it was what she was told. She just… left a few things out. “That was in Hawai’i. Maybe people do it for a different reason here.” Again, not strictly a lie; people in Wicked’s Rest, for the most part, probably did avoid thanking each other for a reason that was technically different than what Cass had been taught. After all, humans in the know didn’t thank strangers on the off chance that they might be fae. Fae didn’t thank anyone on the plausible chance that they’d be bound to it.

“Sometimes. Or maybe it’s just… a different kind of weird, you know?” She’d thought the world outside of the aos si had been weird when she’d first been thrust into it, so maybe weirdness was relative. “I think every place has its… quirks. Wicked’s Rest just has quirkier quirks than some other places.” The topic of Debbie still hung between them, even unspoken. Cass was happy to leave it a silent thing, and maybe Van was too. Maybe it was better that way, even if it did feel a little like a child hiding under their comforter, convinced that no monster could touch them so long as they couldn’t see it. She looked up from her cards as Van spoke, nearly dropping them onto the table as the words settled. We’re glad to have you. “Really?”

—

“Hmmm… if that’s the way you roll, I can respect it.” Van’s grandmother had always insisted on giving thanks to those who were helpful, so she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. But if that was how somebody else lived, who was she to judge? She wondered how many sneers Cass had gained by the simple act of not saying thank you. Maybe the next time Janice did something for her, Van wouldn’t say thank you either, just to show her that she didn’t owe her. But Van wasn’t sure she could do that with anyone else. She didn’t like being thankless. Rocky never said thank you. Maybe he was from Hawai’i. “Thanks for explaining it though.” Van sighed propped her elbow up on the table, laying her chin in the palm of her hand as she fanned out the cards in her opposite. 

“I guess New York can be pretty weird. The city, and outside of it.” She didn’t want to comment on Maryland or North Carolina. “So maybe it’s not just Wicked’s Rest.” But nothing terrible had ever happened to her in New York, except maybe getting the phone call about her parents from the authorities. That had been terrible. Van poked her tongue against her cheek as she stared absentmindedly at her cards. “Yeah, dude, of course.” She smiled at Cass, and this time it reached her eyes. Whatever anxieties Cass was feeling about whether or not Van actually liked her, Van was totally oblivious. “You’re nice and you’re funny, and you like comic books…” You’re pretty, too, Van decided to leave out. “What’s not to like?” 

—

Van accepted the explanation well enough, and Cass offered her a small smile. “You don’t have to thank me,” she replied, choosing not to hold Van to her gratitude. Making a rare choice, she added, “Actually, um… I would prefer it if you didn’t. Thank me. Just, you know, because of my… experiences.” The temptation to bind someone to their words was always going to be there for Cass, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that with Van. She liked Van. She wanted a real friendship, a true one. Maybe this was how she got it. 

Especially if Van was being honest now. As if liking Cass was easy, as if it was something that came naturally to her. The idea that someone actually felt that way, with no promise or bind driving it… It filled Cass with a warmth she’d never felt before. Van might change her mind eventually, but for now? She meant what she said. And that was incredible. “I think you’re nice and funny, too,” she replied with a bright grin. There was still a ghost in the room; maybe there always would be. What they’d done to Debbie, both in killing her and in getting rid of her body, wasn’t the kind of thing they could ever undo. But they were in it together, weren’t they? That had to mean something. “Now… Got any nines?”