#I might just have t write a straight up horror chapter where he dies

[theknightmarket]

It is 02:03 for me right now, I'm scripting the second part to 'Mirror, Mirror', and I have lovely, conflicting emotions. 1) I am Tired. 2) I am so appreciate of the support I received and the want for a sequel. 3) I hate Actor. I hate him so much. He's just sooooooo, just, ugh. I hate him. I need to talk about this, but I don't want to spoil it, so just understand that he is so, he's a bitch.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

[goldeneyedgirl]

mcu xover: jar of hearts 3/?

Oh yes, my MCU x Twilight crossover is still happening.

And this chapter may even reference the MCU directly. SHOCKING. 

Seriously, I’m so sorry this took so long. I’ve been writing a lot, across a lot of different fics and this one slid to the back of the queue. Also, I wrote myself into a corner and needed to get out again. 

And yes, we’re inching closer to joining up the MCU. These things take time, but it’ll happen. 

part two here

roadtrip.

They’re almost in Arizona when Charlie calls to find out where the fuck Seth Clearwater is, because apparently he’s been tangling up his story all over town - he’s told anyone on the Res who asks that he’s staying with Charlie. He’s told Charlie that he’s staying with Colin or Brady.

Alice scowls at Seth through the rearview mirror and begins to weave a tale of being told Seth had permission to join them to go see their cousins - in between lecturing Seth about setting them up for a kidnapping charge across state lines.

By the end of the conversation, Charlie’s trying not to snigger at Alice’s increasingly indignant rant at Seth, at law breaking in general, and at fucking  son-of-a-bitch moron drivers, sweet Jesus. Emmett and Seth are howling at Alice’s cussing and even Charlie is a little bit shocked at her language (later, when the boys are picking on her about it, she rolls her eyes, looks over the top of her heart-shaped sunglasses, and reminds them both - quite primly - that she married a goddamned soldier.)

Seth’s favourite part of the whole ordeal is that Alice isn’t even driving.

But Charlie clears Seth accompanying them, so that’s one less problem. Of course, it means his Jeep stinks of human food, and that they have to stop, but they still make good time up to Alaska.

It’s a hard drive to make - closer to the cities and urban, abandoned cars have been moved off the road. But in the rural areas, cars are still scattered, seemingly abandoned or crashed. Most of the bodies have been removed, thankfully. But still, only most. And it’s been weeks - months - since it happened, so those bodies aren’t in good condition.

And not all of them are adults.

They start out burying the people they find (well, Emmett and Alice do - they both insist Seth stay in the damn car), but then only the children.

Then they just stop because they are both tired of handling rotting bodies who never should have died, let alone forgotten on the side of a long, empty stretch of highway. The graves they’ve already dug haven’t got markers or anything. Just a hole on the side of the road.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

The house in Denali feels wrong before they even get out of the car. The house has always had a sense of otherness, thanks to the fact that it’s the permanent residence of immortals. But right now, it feels more forgotten, lesser in a way.

Tanya’s walking out the front door the second the car pulls up, and she looks old. Tired and strained, and she walks straight into the hug Alice offers.

Seth gapes at the house - the enormous glass-and-wood lodge, tucked carefully in the wilderness where it is mostly forgotten. It might be on a map somewhere, might be noted down in some database, but it is mostly overlooked, a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere.

There’s not really much for them to say or do in Alaska, Emmett realises; Carmen and Tanya are more than capable enough to manage on their own.

Except… Carmen looks like a ghost. She looks disorientated and disinterested, and there’s a part of Emmett that is cold and dead that is perversely fascinated with all the different ways there are to fall apart after the loss of a mate. He’s walking around like a hollowed-out old man, Alice is… not quite there, a little unbalanced.

Sometimes he wonders if Rosalie should have stayed, should have taken his place instead. He would have given it to her, without question. Rose only deserved good things, easy things.

But then he wonders. If living through it all really was easy or good. It doesn’t feel like it, most days. It’s a heavy weight in his chest and a constant feeling of leaving something behind (he’s got one of her hair ties around his wrist; it’s dumb but he always had one on him just in case - at school, when they went hunting, everywhere; he’s also got one of her shirts in his bag. It won’t smell right, being crammed in with his stuff, but he brought it anyway).

Rose wouldn’t have been happy in this world. She wouldn’t have known what to do with Alice or Seth. She would have been angry at the disruption to her life. She would have been afraid and lonely and lashed out at everyone.

No, not good and easy at all.

Then he wonders how Jasper would have faired, without Alice, and that is a grim, grizzly train of thought. Thanos would have begged for death, if Alice had been taken and Jasper left behind. He’s only ever seen a glimpse of the monster behind the man over the decades since Jasper and Alice joined the family, and it’s enough to think that perhaps nature intervened and tried to protect everyone from what Jasper would become without Alice.

They stay in Alaska for two days; Tanya and Carmen are ill-at-ease with Seth, even after they explain who he is.

“But,” Tanya had frowned, “why is he with you?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

Because Seth was… he was Other, like the Cullens. He understood what it was like to be special and expect to be strong enough to survive and to save; to be beyond the reach of petty mortal shit. He was a fucking kid, who’d lost his family, his friends, and most of his community. Fuck, at this rate, he’d lost his childhood too. He was the natural leader of what remained of the pack, and he’d done something fairly smart - looked for adult guidance.

A shame that the only thing he could find in its place was him and Alice. If someone had ranked his family by ‘best choice to care for a teenage boy’ he, Alice, and Jasper would have been dead last. Edward would have ranked higher.

(It still feels weird to think or talk about Alice without adding ‘and Jasper’. Like he’s mispronouncing a word.)

But it is what it is, and Seth’s still clocking more hours doing online school than online games on the laptop Alice gave him, plus there’s a bunch of food in the back of the Jeep, so they aren’t failing too badly.

Seth turns red when Tanya smiles at him, and Alice banishes him to a guest room, loudly forbidding any imprinting for the next decade, and that just means Emmett has to explain imprinting to Carmen and Tanya, and Alice has to read the riot act to Tanya about not flirting with the fourteen-year-old boy upstairs and it almost feels like old times.

They go hunting whilst Seth is asleep, and it’s obvious that nothing is the same. So much of the forest surrounding the house is just… gone. Empty, as if there was never trees looming over them, underbrush to push through. There are less animals to track and hunt, no excuse to be picky.

It was probably the same around Forks, truthfully, except there was that cloud of grief and horror surrounding him and Alice when they hunted - that was where Edward stumbled and fell. That was where Jasper couldn’t run any longer.

That was where he heard Alice scream when Rosie disintegrated.

In the harsh light of day, the situation feels much bleaker, much bigger outside of the insular forests of the Olympic Peninsula.  

They don’t see a single bear.

He’s not entirely sure why they’ve come to Alaska, except he sees Carmen and Alice go off together, finds them sitting quietly together talking. On one hand, he wishes that he could sit with them; that he lost Rose just like they lost Jasper and Eleazer, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to be a part of that particular club. Doesn’t have words left to comfort Carmen. Most of his platitudes have started sounding hollow.

Alice vanishes one morning, and leaves him to help Seth with school work, and he grimly realises they have nearly four more years of this until Seth graduates. But things will be different before then; they’ll be back in Forks and Seth can ask paid professionals to explain algebra to him.

When Alice returns, it’s time to go - she’s been off in the wilderness, trying to See around Seth, and deciding to go off on her own is, apparently, the best way.

“Call us if you need anything,” Tanya says, pulling all three of them into crushing hugs, and if Seth turns red and tries to look down Tanya’s top, Alice pretends not to notice.

“Where are you headed next?” Carmen asks, as Seth climbs in the back, clutching an energy drink they’re all going to regret.

Alice smiles. But it’s the wrong kind of smile; it’s sharp and sinister and looks wrong on her face. A Cheshire Cat smile, a Joker smile, and Emmett wonders if after all these years together, if Jasper’s reactive violence hasn’t bled into his wife a little.

“We’re going to Mexico.”

—

The trip to Mexico can be described as long.

If the Jeep wasn’t Rosalie’s last gift to him, then they probably could have run there faster, even with Seth in tow. But there won’t be anymore perfectly modified cars ever again, so he’s staying with the Jeep.

Alice gives up the passenger seat once they make it through to Alberta, apologetic that Seth’s been crammed in the backseat. But then Alice starts muttering to herself, tapping away on her phone, and seems distracted and irritated when Emmett tries to get her attention.

He can’t make out what she’s saying at all, it’s just an irregular hum, and he wonders if she’s having more of her one-sided conversations with Jasper.

The trip takes a week, winding through landlocked states. It shouldn’t take so long except everything is in chaos; they lose an entire afternoon carefully shifting some abandoned cars off the road to get the Jeep through in the middle of backwoods Montana. They spend hours waiting for gas every time they stop. And Seth might be a mystical shapeshifter, but he needs a proper bed, and hot food, and human moments; they have varying success at finding all three, but they try, and Seth is nothing if not agreeable and grateful for even the smallest attempt at making him comfortable.

They find an abandoned farm in Wyoming and they let Seth transform and run for a few hours at dusk, sitting on the front of the Jeep in silence until it’s dark enough for them to hunt, as well.

It feels like the world has ended, some days, and they are the only ones left - to him, at least. Maybe that’s why Alice is talking to herself - it’s the only sensible answer she’ll get.

Some towns are empty; no one for miles. The information that filters through the internet mentions people heading to the cities, to the larger towns, because the population is too small to keep so many different settlements functioning. There’s no money or survival if you’ve lost your entire farm, if the hospital or the school is unmanned.

And Emmett wonders if he’s been cured of human blood for good now he’s seen so much of it spilt, stale and rotting, on the backroads of the country. It feels like everything smells just a little bit like decomposition right now. He’s not sure if that’s him or if that’s everything.

And they get closer to Mexico.

—

They arrive just as the day turns to night, and he expects… he’s not sure what he expects, honestly. Maybe setting up in the motel they’ve found, that Alice has declared a safe distance from any of Maria’s plotting, and getting Seth some fresh food - he hasn’t complained, but even Emmett’s tired of the pre-packaged, long-life crap.

Instead, Alice slips from the car, clad in jeans and a leather jacket, tucking her phone in her back pocket.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she says, like she’s going alone.

“What?” Seth looks suspiciously at the pair of them, and it’s only later that he realises the kid is terrified of being left behind. That he’ll cling to their belt loops with his dying breath. His mom left, his sister left, his friends and pack left, and he took a chance on leaving everything else that was left to stick with them.

That makes Emmett feel guilty for no reason he can name.

“I can’t see with you around me,” Alice says gently. “It’s a simple clean-up job, it won’t take long.”

Seth frowns and looks at Emmett.

“You aren’t doing this alone, Alice. Even if we wait in the car,” he says with finality. This isn’t going to be an argument, because there’s nothing to argue about. He’s not letting Alice roam around in a city full of uncontrolled newborns, no matter how talented she is.

Alice scowls. “I know what I’m doing, Emmett,” her voice is sharp, and she never likes reminding them of how long she was alone before she found Jasper; what the family knows about those years is quite vague and patchwork - as far as Alice is concerned, nothing important happened before she met Jasper, as if she popped into being on a diner stool just in time.

Rose always suspected Alice’s real story was very lonely, very frightening, but no one asks when she so obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. He knows what it costs for her to bring it up now.

“I know. But that doesn’t mean I’m letting my only sister go newborn hunting alone,” Emmett says, and Alice sighs and nods - her visions have gone dark, obviously this is not a battle she can win.

Emmett ends up wishing that he and Seth had stayed behind.

Alice is like a laser, zeroing on her targets with a single-minded intensity. He hears that hum faintly, of her talking to herself and he wants to ask her what she’s saying, what thoughts are so important she needs to say them almost out loud but he doesn’t get a chance.

The first one of Maria’s abandoned acolytes is a girl around seventeen with matted black hair and a dress that Emmett mistakes for some kind of lace at first, except it’s the remnants of dozens of meals dried across the front of her, ripples of dried, stale blood that have solidified into a repulsive black and red mass.

She snarls at them, her face bloody, and the pale form of a man beneath her. Alice just walks up to her and backhands her with a crack that makes Seth jump; Emmett flinches but he’d never admit it.

The newborn snaps at Alice, and in one movement, the girl is pinned to the brick wall behind them, cracks spiralling up her neck from Alice’s tight grip.

“Who the hell are you?” the girl snaps in Spanish and Alice says nothing, just rips her head off by her neck, the screech sounding deafening so close. Moments later, her body is in pieces in a dumpster, along with her victim, and Alice has set the entire thing alight, her face blank.

Emmett makes a decision then, to leave Seth in a brightly lit burger place with a promise he’ll be back in one hour because this is nothing a kid should see.

And he’s so, so glad that he made that choice. Alice’s hunt is something that will be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.

The next newborn is a middle-aged male who reminds Emmett of his English lit teacher back at Forks, right down to the salt and pepper streaks in his hair and the slightly off-centre nose. He’s the worst of the night, Emmett silently decides, as he guards his hunt - a family of five that he’s only half-finished. The father is extremely, viscerally dead and there’s no putting him back together; the mother is choking and struggling for a breath that her torn throat will never give her as she bleeds out; the baby in her arms is long dead with its head taken up by a gaping wound. There are two young girls, clinging to each other in terror, and there is no way this ends well.

The newborn obviously thinks Emmett is more of a threat than petite little Alice, practically frothing at the mouth as Emmett approaches him, and grabs at one of the children. It all happens in seconds - the girls scream, there is a crunch of bone and more screaming, the rich scent of fresh blood, another crunch of bone and muscle, and then the newborn’s head is half-torn away before Alice can get better leverage and finish the job. The dead child dangles from his grip, bent the wrong way; her sister has her head half caved in, and the mother still chokes on her own blood. It all happens so fast.

He should have stayed with Seth.

He lets Alice handle the rest of them - she’s located six of Maria’s surviving nine, and after the family, she takes them down swiftly and wordlessly, just a diminutive blur and the sound of tearing metal.

The sweet smoke clings to them as they make their way back to Seth, Alice’s head down.

“I thought,” she began and just shook her head. And he reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

She thought it would be closure, would feel like an ending or an achievement. That there would be some peace in ending Maria’s life’s work. Instead, she’s just the same, but with blood on her boots and a tear in her jeans. The newborns barely got an opportunity to fight back, to give her the pound of flesh she was looking for.

Seth is waiting for them in the window of the store, a broad grin on his face when he spots them. Back to the motel for the night, now. And then tomorrow…

“So,” he says finally. “What now?”

[knybits]

A Murder of One

Chapter: 

11.5

Summary: 

“Have a nice sleep~ Forget how to breathe~ So the demons will reap~ Your bellies from underneath~ It’s fun, isn’t it? They began having happy dreams. They’re sleeping deeply and can’t wake up anymore.”

Previous Chapter | Origin | Next Chapter

Tanjirou doesn’t smell blood. 

He stands before his house, cold winter air hurting his nose and mist puffing out of his mouth. 

Hanako and Shigure turn their attention from the basket of yams, and they smile. 

“Nii-chan, welcome back!” Shigeru cries out. 

Hanako smiles, “Did you sell the charcoal? Wait, more importantly, guess who came!” 

Akiko steps out of the house, her hair straight and long and the eye bags gone from her face. Her hands look soft and she’s wearing a light green western dress, all frilly and puffy. She brightens up the second she sees Tanjirou, and she wildly waves her arms to greet him like always. 

Tears gather in Tanjirou’s eyes, and he barrels towards his siblings, holding them close as he cries his eyes out. He’s wailing and he feels relieved, and Akiko tilts her head in confusion before she walks over to the three. 

“Tanjirou, love? What’s wrong?” When he looks up at her, he pulls her into the group hug too, and she laughs as she holds his face into her hands. Her hands are wet with his tears now, but she doesn’t mind. 

She kisses him, and all is well between the two. 

Later, Akiko is looking him over for any injuries. Cleaning his face with a wet cloth with an ever present smile on her face. He blushes at her touch, and Takeo teases him for it. 

“We were surprised when nii-chan suddenly started crying,” Hanako says, folding a blanket. 

Takeo laughs, eating some of the candy Akiko brought from Tokyo, “He’s weird, haha!” 

Akiko pouts, cupping his face in her hands once again to which he flushes even more. 

“You might just be tired, Tanjirou.” She says in concern, and Kie nods her head, adding on with, “Just rest today, and don’t push yourself too hard.” 

Tanjirou holds Akiko’s hands in his own, kissing them before smiling, “You’re exaggerating. I’m fine!” 

“Are you sure?” She asks, taking a hand back to brush a lock of hair from his face. 

He continues to blush, much to his younger sibling’s disgust, before he nods his head, “Yeah. It felt like I was having some sorta bad dream.” 

Akiko offers him a smile before she holds him close, “Well, I’m back for a long time now, so we can share a futon! That way, you won’t have any more nightmares!” 

Shigeru jumps onto the two, covering them with a blanket and they both yelp in surprise. 

“H- Hey! What’re you-?!” 

“Stop it! I just washed that!”

Akiko can’t help but laugh under the covers, and Tanjirou joins in. It’s a bit dark, but he can still see her amber eyes shine brightly. So he leans in close, and they share a kiss from prying eyes. 

All is well between the two. 

---

“Huh? Where’s Nezuko?” 

Akiko helps Hanako categorize the yams, laughing with the girl and tickling her sides. Tanjirou watches her fondly, smiling, before Takeo answers. 

“Onee-chan went out to get some plants.” 

Tanjirou yelling, “Huh? In the afternoon?!” startles her, and she yelps. Takeo, Hanako and Shigeru look at their bother in confusion. 

“You scared me!” She holds a hand to her chest, and he quickly apologizes. She looks at him before sighing, beckoning him closer. He does as he’s told, and she rests her forehead on his. 

“Ah, Akiko? Don’t worry! I’m fine!” 

“I gotta make sure. Who’ll protect me if you’re bedridden?” She laughs, and Tanjirou looks at her in confusion. He’s about to say something, but his mother interrupts. 

“Tanjirou, could you prepare the bath? This might take some time,” she says, and Akiko gets back to work with Hanako. They laugh together again, and Shigeru complains that he’s the only one working hard. 

Akiko then goes to tickle the boy, but he evades her attack. Hanako cheers Akiko on as she chases Shigeru around Tanjirou, who grabs his brother and tickles him himself. Shigeru cries in protest, but everyone’s laughing too hard to try and stop Tanjirou. 

Once Shigeru is released, Tanjirou goes outside to start preparing the bath. But once he steps outside, he sees a peculiar box. 

A heavy weight falls upon him, and his heart stops for a moment, before he runs into a bucket. And when he looks up again, the box is gone. 

He makes the walk through the mountain to the river, carefully setting the wooden buckets down before looking over the tiny pier. 

One look over the edge, and his pupils dilate. 

Tanjirou is looking at himself. 

Or, another version of himself. 

He’s wearing a strange outfit and his scar looks deeper. His hair is shorter and this other version of Tanjirou seems to be yelling at him, pounding the water’s surface from underneath. 

Tanjirou is then tugged into the water, and the other version of himself yells, “Get up! They’re attacking! A dream! This is a dream!!” 

“...Tanjirou? Are you awake?” 

His eyes snap open, and Tanjirou sees Akiko’s amber eyes reflect the moonlight shining in. 

It’s night now, and everyone else is asleep. Takeo snores loudly as always, and Hanako’s body is sideways on her futon. 

The engaged teens stare at each other, a soft smile on Akiko face as she brushes some hair from Tanjirou’s face. It’s long and graces his shoulders, and Tanjirou relaxes under her touch. 

“Good. You’re awake,” she laughs under her breath, scooting closer to him. He looks down to see that he has an arm wrapped around her waist, and his haori is resting on top of the covers. 

“Sorry Akiko, but I don’t think I’m awake.” 

She blinks at him owlishly before smiling brightly, “Are you trying to tell me that you dream of me? Because if so, consider my heart stolen.” 

He kisses her forehead and she smiles wider, if possible. His heart is at ease, but there’s a nagging at the back of his mind. 

“I love you, Tanjirou. I hope you know that,” Akiko snuggles closer into his chest, and it throbs with pain. 

Tanjirou looks down at his fiance, a face full of sorrow as he strokes her hair. Her breathing becomes soft, and he can see her eyelashes brush her cheeks. 

It’s just the two of them in this world, and Tanjirou is so happy being with her. 

He’s living on the top of a cloud being with such a carefree Akiko. She hasn’t experienced any pain because of him, and she holds no hate in her heart. There are no eye bags, no tensed shoulders, no smell of blood and disinfectant. 

Tanjirou wants to share this futon with her forever, and he wants to wake up next to her. 

He wants to hold her and kiss her, and he wants to escape this dream. 

Tanjirou wants to escape this dream and hold the real Akiko. 

“Nii-chan, gimme the pickled radish.” 

Hanako’s hand shoots out, stopping Takeo, and she yells, “You can’t! Stop it!” 

Panic fills back up in Tanjirou. Akiko is seated close to him, but that doesn’t matter because he needs to wake up now. He can’t bask in the warmth of her eyes here, and he has a job to get done. 

“Takeo, you can have mine if you want,” Akiko offers with a smile, and Takeo blushes. Akiko coos at him, and Hanako starts to ask Akiko for her pickled radish too. 

Hanako and Takeo are happily munching on Akiko’s pickled radish when Akiko notices the look of panic in Tanjirou’s eyes. 

She tilts her head in concern, “Do I need to check your temperature again? Tanjirou, I’m really worried about you-” 

He bursts into flames. 

The fire dances in Akiko’s eyes, and he can smell the absolute horror fall out of her. She gathers his siblings into her arms to shield them, and she watches as his hair shortens and his kimono burns away to a black uniform. 

The fire finally dies out, and Akiko releases the children to rush to Tanjirou. She checks him over quickly before letting  out a sigh of relief. When she kisses him, Tanjirou almost falls back into his dream, but he wills himself to push Akiko off of him. 

“T- Tanjirou?” Akiko moves to bring his battered hands to her lips, but he resists again. Any more love from Akiko and he might just allow himself to stay dreaming. 

“Onii-chan, are you okay?” Hanako asks with teary eyes. 

He looks so distraught, and Akiko wants to soothe his unease. She grasps at the hems of his haori, silently begging him to just stay with her, but he stands anyway. 

“Sorry… I have to go. I have to go back now. I’m sorry.” 

And he bolts out of the house. 

Takeo cries out for Tanjirou, and Akiko yells at the kids to stay in the house. She slips her shoes on, running after Tanjirou, but he’s abnormally fast.

“Where are you going, onii-chan?” 

Tanjirou stops. 

It’s Nezuko behind him, but he doesn’t turn back to look at her. 

“I got a lot of vegetables today! Oh, mom, Rokuta! Ah, Akiko too? Is everyone okay at home?” 

Akiko looks over at Nezuko, a concerned look on her face before she turns back to her fiance. 

“Tanjirou? Let’s go back home, yeah? You can change out of those silly clothes and we can eat together! You’re scaring me, but if we go back together I’ll feed you!” 

Akiko can see his fists tighten. She just has to try a little harder and- 

Tanjirou runs off, and her eyes block up with tears. 

He can hear her cry, and he can hear Rokuta start to cry too as the small boy shouts, “Onii-chan, don’t leave us behind!” 

But he can’t look back. 

He’s crying now, and his heart feels like it’s ripping itself apart, but he can’t look back. 

He has to wake up, kill the demon, and go back home to his Akiko now. 

ngl i cry every time i read his dream in the manga. rokuta crying for his big brother is like a stab to the heart for me,,, 

the scene changes were weird with this chapter bc like,,, every time he had the feeling of “this isnt real” enmu would change the setting to try and drag tanjirou back in :/ 

i thought this would be cute to write!! but now im just sad!!!!! FUCK 

anyway, this was a special chapter. so its a lot shorter! its mainly here to drive tanjirou and his relationship(?) with akiko, and im sorry im dragging their struggles out ;-; i hope you guys understand,,,, its for plot,,,,, (maybe,,,,)

hope this hurt you guys to read as much as it did for me to write!!! uwu i love you guys, and thanks for supporting me! 

[weartirondad]

And You Would Smile (And That Would Be Enough) 5/6

5 times Tony helps pull Peter away from an anxiety built cliff and the 1 time Peter is on his own. (part i, part ii part iii, part iv, part vi)

FF.net I ao3

Peter’s vision was swimming.

He blinked once, twice, three times before the world shifted again and came back into focus.

The teenager was standing in a dark corridor with coppery walls. Or where was the taste in his mouth coming from? His left hand reached out to touch his mouth only to find his skin hitting the cool fabric of his Spider-Man suit. He must be wearing the mask, he realized, and let his hands drop to his side at his find.

If he was in the suit then he must be on a mission. There must be something more important going on than finding out where the coppery taste was coming from.

Peter narrowed his eyes, frantically beating heart settling when his suit complied with the movement. There was always a scarcely audible whirring to be heard when the suit’s eyes moved. It was familiar. Calming. His suit was working so he had to be relatively safe. He was Spider-Man after all and he had a suit with the latest Stark technology.

Some of the fear that had taken up residence in his stomach left his body with his next exhale.

“Hello?” he called out and flinched when his voice echoed through the empty hallway, bouncing off the walls until eventually fading into silence once more. “Someone home?”

His feet started moving, hesitantly at first and then more decisively when nothing bad seemed to happen. The sound of his footsteps lingered in the air, making a weirdly uncomfortable melody that trailed behind him and raced him to go faster, to reach the end of the hall.

Peter knew that he had to reach the end of the hall. There was a soft blue light coming from the door this corridor led to and that light felt important. It was his mission to reach the light that was pulsating at a steady frequency. Somehow, he felt that the light needed his protection.

He had almost reached the door with the light when his enhanced hearing picked up on a painful huff. With the scream the light pulses became more erratic, too, urging him on. The sound sent chills through his entire body and, when his brain registered just why the voice sounded so familiar, it ripped straight through his heart, leaving him feeling raw and helpless.

“Tony?” he called, his wobbly voice echoing from the walls, mocking him in tiny whispers from a million different directions. He strained his ears to pick up on a reply but there was nothing.

He had almost convinced himself that his senses were playing a trick on him when the sound came back, a lot closer and sounding a lot more in pain. The light stuttered slightly before returning to a steady but faster pace.

Without a second thought he ran the last distance until his hand was on the door knob, his last obstacle before reaching the blue light and his mentor. He thrusted the door open with all his might, not caring when the wood splintered and the force took it off its hinges.

There, separated from him through a glass pane, sat Tony. The light of the arc reactor in his chest filling the room with an absurd calm considering how weakly it fluttered just then.

For an unbearable second Peter was afraid it would fade completely.

But Tony was still breathing, although the rales that he picked up on through the pane didn’t sound very encouraging. He ran forward, willing the blue light to keep pulsating and his mentor to look up.

“Tony!” he screamed, fists hitting the glass pane over and over again, yet it wouldn’t budge. Not even a crack in the smooth surface. The refraction of light through the glass looked mockingly beautiful. As if it was any condolence for Peter as long as Tony was still barely breathing. As long as he still looked mostly dead.

“Please, Tony! Look at me,” he cried again, not caring about the tears that slipped out and ran down his cheeks. His hands were busy trying to make it through to his mentor.

Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please –

A shudder went through the billionaire’s entire body then and there was nothing he could do but pray for the light to keep glowing and – oh god, his limbs were flailing uncontrollably and his head kept hitting the hard cot until the spasm died done.

Peter screamed. Tony looked up. Their eyes met.

“Tony!” he tried again to get through to the pane, not knowing how much the older man could pick up. His eyes widened and at first Peter was so sure it was in recognition but then he tried to scramble away from him in fear, rattling at the metallic cuffs constraining him to the cot and Peter had to watch in horror when he struggled enough to turn the cot on its side. Tony fell but he didn’t seem to care, fearful eyes still looking up at Peter.

“No! I- It’s me, Tony!” he cried out, pulling off the mask in a swift motion but before his mentor could see his face, his attention was otherwise occupied

Captain America had entered the room, lips curling up in a humorless snarl that made a shiver run down Peter’s spine. He looked positively evil when he turned to look at Peter for the fraction of a second before squatting down next Tony to all but throw the cot back up again.

Tony’s fear was replaced by anger. His eyes were flashing with unadulterated rage in a way Peter had never ever seen and his fists were curling at his sides, struggling to fight free once more.

“I trusted you,” he spit out but Captain America only laughed when Tony coughed up blood and gunk.

Before Captain America could get a word out, Peter was yelling again, doubling the forces of his punches against the glass until – finally – a crack.

“Don’t hurt him,” he kept screaming, “Don’t you fucking touch him. Don’t- Tony!”

Without batting an eye Cap slammed down his shield onto the weakly fluttering light and Peter, still on the other side of the pane, could do nothing but watch and scream and riot when it flickered before going black.

The American superhero was towering over the lifeless form of the man that had become his family and, without so much as looking at Peter, he turned and left Tony behind.

Peter was frozen.

Then he crumbled.

“No!” He cried out over and over again, to no avail. “No, Tony! Tony! Don’t! Noo-“

Suddenly there was a strong grip on his shoulders but he was too far gone. He didn’t want anyone to comfort him. He wanted Tony to be alive. He wanted-

With all his might he struggled against the other person’s hands until he heard a curse.

“Dammit, kid.”

��Tony.”

“Right here, buddy. Go on, open your eyes. Admire the shiner you gave your old man.”

The teenager came back to himself slowly, blinking warily against the bright lights until he could get his eyes to focus on the person in front of him. The air left his lungs in a painful gasp. “Tony.” Before he could grab at the man, he was already sitting down beside him, inviting Peter to curl around his upper body. Which he did without hesitation.

He was still shaking and the image – it had seemed so real, so final.

Tony held him while he cried, his heartbeat steady and not connected to any sort of blueish light. It still had time. So much time.

Tony was really here. He could feel the calloused fingers against the soft skin of his neck and smell the motor oil and his cologne. He could hear his even breathing and the very real taste of his salty tears. And when he blinked, Tony was looking at him with the softest expression he had ever seen, only marred by the deep lines of worry on his face.

“Better?” he asked after a moment and Peter nodded but didn’t make a move to uncurl from the billionaire.

“You wanna talk about it?” The voice didn’t really leave room for him to actually deny. Postpone maybe but not completely deny.

He shrugged instead and settled his cheek more firmly against his mentor’s chest, letting his eyes drop close to the feeling of being secure and both of them being away from harm.

“Saw Cap hurt you,” he mumbled into the soft fabric of Tony’s t-shirt, half hoping the man hadn’t heard him, half hoping for reassurance that the guy clad in the American flag hadn’t really done any harm.

“Oh buddy, you’re having nightmares about that now?” Tony’s voice was soft but sad as his fingers skillfully rubbed the nape of his neck, “I told you it’s going to be fine. I thought me allowing you to tag along would help you relax a little. Maybe it was a bad ide-“

“No,” Peter interrupted him, arms coming up to hold onto his mentor back more tightly, “No, it’s not a bad idea, I promise.”

“Okay,” Tony said reluctantly but didn’t further comment on it, opting to distract him from the lingering horror of his nightmare instead. “You wanna go in there as New York’s favorite vigilante in spandex or like a normal human being?”

Despite himself Peter cracked a smile. It faded the second he remembered the fear in Tony’s eyes in his nightmare. He shuddered. “N-not in the suit,” he said quietly, “If that’s okay?”

The older man paused the massage on his scalp, clearly trying to figure out what was wrong with the suit, but eventually shrugged and resumed what he was doing. “Sure thing, kiddo. I’ll introduce you as my genius intern who’s freaking out about meeting the Avengers for the first time. We might be able to score you an autograph.”

“You suck.” Peter slapped Tony’s chest lightly, his words holding no force. “I’d like going in as Peter Parker,” he yawned, making himself more comfortable in Tony’s hold. He smiled when the other man adjusted his position, clearly not intending to leave Peter alone for now.

“Sleep, kid. Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day for both of us.”

---

I'm sorry! Peter was supposed to meet the rest of the Avengers in this chapter but I couldn't physically bring myself to write the words. I tried like three times but it just wouldn't work. I'm really sorry because I know people were looking forward to that but I would've messed it up and I kind of actually liked the dream sequence so I'm leaving you with this. x

[lovelylogans]

marionette: chapter one

virgil

all on ao3 | next chapter | all on tumblr

warnings: deceit, so lying and manipulation, swearing, mentions of blood, strangulation, restraints

words: 3,601

notes: i have like 7 drafts but the last line popped into my head and i had to write it okay

read: 

on ao3 | on tumblr, in order

Anxiety, Logan has told Virgil once, twice, a hundred times, as they sat back-to-back, is often fueled by epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline. Your brain thinks that you are under threat, and your body responds accordingly, even if there is no physical danger present.

At the time, Virgil had thought distantly of mothers lifting cars off of their children, of people leaping off cliffs to feel that rush, and could not compare it to himself. It seemed stupid, like some kind of broken button in his brain; press here for dopamine, sike, you get a pounding heart and sweating and chest pain instead, deal with it. Adrenaline hadn’t made him feel strong, or brave, or full of life; it made him shaky, and uncertain, and terrified.

Logan’s ramblings could do a lot to help ease Virgil if he started to feel tightly wound; Logan could talk and talk about anything that he was thinking about that day and the familiar drone of his voice would set something at ease inside of Virgil, give him something to focus on, something else to listen to.

Patton always checked to see if Virgil needed someone or if he needed to be alone, and had gotten so much better at seeing through Virgil’s lies that Virgil didn’t even bother anymore. Patton was full of warm hugs, and warm smiles, and horrible puns, and encouragement about self care, and cookies if he wanted them. 

Roman, as complex as Virgil’s relationship was with him, could help too; spin an elaborate tale about his trials and quests, sing at the top of his lungs, draw attention away from Virgil in a way so casual and subtle that Virgil couldn’t always catch it until after it was done.

He was getting better, sort of. There were still bad days, but now he had them; he had Logan to sit on his bed and ramble, he had Patton to lean up against, he had Roman to glitter and shine so brightly it was easy for Virgil to slip a bit more into the comforting shadows. 

It was easy to lean on them, and they let him, encouraged him to, even. He wasn’t sure if there would ever be a time he wasn’t awed by that, not that he’d ever tell them so. Even after years of shutting them out, and them turning away, they had still been able to repair it, find the single unbroken thread between them all and weave around it, make it stronger.

Virgil was busy absently running his fingers along the uneven stitching on his hoodie with one hand and scrolling through tumblr with the other, sitting perched on the windowsill, as Roman had his feet in Patton’s lap, bemoaning the latest fault in his latest quest, Logan reading quietly in an armchair. Night had dropped its consuming black sheet over the sky, and the room was lit only by the warm light of Roman’s fairy lights, a lamp glowing soft amber beside Logan.

“Mm,” Patton said, patting Roman’s ankle sympathetically. “Then what did you do?”

“Well, what I had to, I suppose,” Roman sighed. “I cut the villain free, of course.”

“And he got away,” Patton guessed.

“And he got away.” Roman said, scowling.

“Well,” Patton said, rubbing his thumb along Roman’s shin. “I, for one, am very proud of you. You’ll catch him again, some time. If you hadn’t cut him loose, he’d have died. And that’s no small thing.”

Roman paused, and said, “I saved his life?”

“Well, it sounds like it,” Patton said, edged in a laugh. “Saving him from dangling over a spike pit sounds pretty life-save-y to me, kiddo. Besides, if you saved his life... maybe that’ll weigh on him, a little.”

“Dramatic tension,” Roman said, understanding dawning in his voice. “I suppose I can get behind that.”

Logan paused, slid a bookmark into his book, and stood, cradling his book against his chest. “I believe it’s time for me to get to sleep. You all should too.”

“In a little while, Specs,” Roman said, waving him off, and Patton squeaked out a little “Love you Lo!” as Virgil muttered “night,” attention mostly on his screen.

There was the sound of footsteps softly plodding away, the consistent rhythm of Logan stepping lightly up the stairs, and the sound of his door opening.

And then a loud bump.

Virgil shot a glance to the stairwell, and Patton and Roman ceased their conversation, glancing towards the stairs.

“Logan?” Virgil called cautiously. “You okay?”

A long pause. Virgil felt his shoulders climbing to his ears. Fuck. Fuck, Logan fell, and he hit his head, and he’s unconscious and bleeding and he’ll have a concussion and he’ll hate it and we’ll be out logical decision making and what will that do to—

“Logan?” Patton called, concern laced through his voice, and Virgil is ready to storm up the stairs himself, Logan’s privacy be damned.

“Fine,” Logan’s voice finally floated down the stairs, and Virgil felt his shoulders relax. “Just dropped a book.”

“Don’t stay up to late reading, all right?” Patton said loudly, directing a firm fatherly glance towards the stairs, and there was no response. Patton let out a good-natured sigh.

“That boy. Smart as he is, sometimes I think he never learns,” Patton tutted. 

“Tells us all about the importance of sleep and turns around and stays up till four because he has to find out the migratory pattern of starlings,” Roman agreed with a huff.

Virgil considered going to claim Logan’s vacated armchair, but decided against it. He’s comfy on the windowsill. Mostly.

Patton and Roman resumed talking in low voices about the dramas of Roman’s realm, which Virgil let slide in one ear and out the other; he’s mostly just trying to figure out if there’s a specific tag he’s going to lose himself in tonight or if he’ll swap social media platforms to get some more #relatable content.

Virgil shuddered, and was immensely grateful he did not say that sentence aloud.

Eventually, Patton tapped at Roman’s ankle again, and said, “Well. I think I’m gonna head in, you two, don’t stay up too late, all right?”

“I might go with you, actually,” Roman said musingly. “I want to look over a script idea—“

“I said don’t stay up too late,” Patton said, mockingly threatening, and reached out to tousle Virgil’s hair. “You too, kiddo, I don’t want you falling asleep here and getting a crick in your neck.”

Virgil allowed the hair tousling with minimal grimacing, and made a vague, inarticulate mumble, waving Patton off, who sighed but started walking with Roman anyways, their footsteps softly plodding away.

Virgil had just leaned against the window when he heard a thud, and a startled cry, and Virgil leapt to his feet, heart pounding in his chest.

“Pat?” He called, trying not to sound too desperate. Is it a prank? Patton wouldn’t make a joke like this but what else could be— “Roman?”

Another thud, and then—unmistakably, Roman, loud and sharp and clear and —afraid—”VIRGIL, IT’S—”

Silence.

“Roman,” Virgil called, and louder, “Patton.” He jerked towards the hallway, a hand on the frame, swinging to look down the hall.

The lights were off, the only distant lights from the cracks under the doors. Virgil swallowed, there are no monsters in the dark, and said, “You guys? You there?”

He carefully flicked on the lights, and tried to avoid grimacing at the sight of the stark contrast between the soft glow of the living room and the plain, harsh lighting of the hallway.

“If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” Virgil cautioned, walking down the hallway. “I mean it, Roman, it’s—“

Virgil dreamt of light. Footsteps echoing. A shadow swooping in the hallway he didn’t notice too late, like a shadow puppet show along a wall, except shadow puppets were Patton’s thing that happened safely under blankets with giggles and bunnies and crocodiles, not strange sweeping figures that were straight out of horror films. A prick, a needle, something against his neck and a hand over his mouth and the way Virgil had panicked, fingernails digging sharp into cloth and clawing and the world had tilted and fuzzed and—

Virgil woke, panting desperately, a hand clutching at his neck, sitting up, feeling dizzy as he looked around.

The couch. He was on the couch, in the living room. The fairy lights were still on, but someone must have turned out the lamp. Virgil tried taking a deep, even breath.

Dream. It was just a dream. You fell asleep out here and Patton moved you to the couch so you wouldn’t get a crick in your neck.

Except.

Except Patton would have put a blanket over him. All of the other sides had put blankets over him and nudged pillows under his head if he fell asleep in some place inconvenient. He had just been dumped on the couch, and—

and his hoodie was gone.

Virgil gulped, fingernails scratching along the downy hairs of his bare forearms. His hoodie. His hoodie. Where was it? None of the sides would take it off of him without his permission. None of them would, even with the sweaters they’d at least replaced it with something similar in weight and comfort.

Virgil was left in his threadbare purple t-shirt and a pair of jeans. There was no comforting weight on his shoulders, or fleece he could feel against his skin to help him ground himself, or a hood to draw up over his head if the light got too intense, or sweater paws he could worry between his fingers instead of picking at his nails—

Virgil forced himself to take a breath in, out, and thought right. okay. I need to find someone else, I need to ask if they know where the hoodie is.

The next, well, logical step is to go find Logan. He doesn’t grasp emotions very well; he might have brought it to Virgil’s room and folded it, that might be all, because Logan likes things to be organized and neat and in their place. That might be all this is.

He tried to convince himself of that as he slowly climbed up the stairs, but the absence of his hoodie has thrown him all kinds of off-kilter. No blanket, no hoodie. Virgil ran cold or warm consistently and even if he was sweating in the midst of an adrenaline response, he always, always wanted his hoodie. Now, he can see the goosebumps raising the hair on his arms, the odd little bumps on his skin. He roughly ran his palms up and down his arms, trying to give himself some kind of physical sensation to focus on.

He knocked at Logan’s door, starting with “Lo—” that cut off as the door swung open as soon as his fist made contact.

Logan always makes sure his door is either fully open or shut, he hates having it just cracked open, something whispered in the back of his head, and Virgil tried his best not to shudder, walking into Logan’s darkened room.

“Logan?” Virgil asked, soft, conscious that Logan might be asleep. He glanced towards his desk (empty) and reached, flicking on the lights.

As soon as the light flooded on, a loud, horrible screeching did too, deafening, and Virgil yelled out of surprise, stumbling back so his back thudded against the wall hard enough to dislodge a picture frame, hands flying to his ears.

He knew this noise—it was dial-up internet, the unerring whine, the claxon alarm, and Virgil fumbled, shutting the lights off again.

Swamped by blackness, the sudden silence was jarring, and Virgil let out a shaky breath, removing his hands from his ears cautiously.

“Logan,” he said, firm, because if Logan had been asleep he certainly wasn’t now. 

Logan would never booby-trap his own lights. He only ever works without them on to fool Patton into thinking he’s sleeping.

“Logan,” he repeated, a desperate edge in his voice. “C’mon, dude, are you in here?”

He fumbled forwards, even, to press against Logan’s unmade sheets, just to be really sure. His hand met nothing but Logan’s pillows, and he pressed on the other side, where Logan usually slept, and—

Virgil frowned. 

Logan doesn’t sleep with things in his bed. That’s what bedside tables are for. He wouldn’t put a—a book, or a... what is this?

Smooth, he could feel it. Wooden.

Virgil picked it up, and squinted at it in the dark, and very nearly dropped it, or he would have, if it wasn’t for the string tangled around his wrist that made it jerk, stopping just short of the floor.

Virgil inhaled shakily, and lifted it to eye level again.

It looked like it had been made almost... lovingly, a long time ago, but it was so battered and worn now that it just made it look rather sad. The head was flopping back because Virgil was holding it by the wrist, and Virgil shuddered at the sight of blank black glued-on button eyes, a strip of shiny metallic duct tape over where the mouth would be.

“Okay,” Virgil whispered, and wished desperately for his hoodie pocket to tuck the stupid puppet into, to protect it, somehow, or perhaps somewhere safe to put it so it could be far out of Virgil’s eyesight. “What the fuck.”

Marionette. That was the word. The puppets that you could make dance. Virgil carefully untangled the string from his wrist, bile rising in his throat, before he carefully laid it down into Logan’s bed again, hands shaking just slightly. 

Patton. Patton might have taken the hoodie, and yes, Virgil was clinging to the hoodie excuse, because the loud wailing of the dial-up and the fact that he’d been alone and the fucking puppet and the brief dream-memories from before were pointing to something that Virgil frankly refused to contemplate, to allow himself to lean into that kind of fatalistic thinking, because it would be fatalistic and he had been doing better and Patton would help him.

Virgil took a deep breath, and refused the urge to take the Logan puppet with him. Even though bringing along a creepy facsimile of Logan sounded better than going out alone. He hesitated, before he reached forwards to hesitantly touch at the duct tape at puppet-Logan’s mouth.

He needed to go to Patton’s room. Right now. 

He walked alone, in the dark, and had no desire to turn on the lights.

Virgil opened Patton’s door without knocking, because Patton had drilled that into him if he ever needed help he never ever needed to knock not even once, to just walk in and whatever Patton was doing would be able to wait unless he had an emergency. 

His lights were off, but he had the floaty little fairy lights on in his room, painting it in that sleepy glowing haze, and Virgil could already see that Patton was not at his desk, or in his bed, or at his bookshelf, but something else was hanging by its wrists from the cabinet Patton kept all his photo albums in.

Another puppet. Blue shirt. Gray fabric slung lazily around the shoulders, in danger of slipping off, and Virgil walked forwards, swallowing more and more.

The strings were so horribly tangled that Virgil had no hope of untangling the knots if he stood here for thirty minutes. The horrible bright painted-on smile, the cartoonishly innocent pink circles of a blush on the puppet’s cheeks, seemed so incongruent to the way the puppet was all tangled up in its own string, a childish game of hangman painted dark and foreboding. Its head was flopping sadly downwards, tilted to the side, and Virgil shuddered.

This wasn’t fatalistic, anymore. This was not fatalistic. Someone had made creepy fucking puppets and laid them purposefully in each of their rooms for Virgil to find and laid Virgil out on the couch and taken Virgil’s hoodie. Someone had put duct tape over puppet-Logan’s mouth and someone had tangled up puppet-Patton so he looked like a fucking prisoner dangling in a dungeon.

Something was horribly, desperately wrong, and Virgil was the only up and around to investigate, to fix it, unless—

Unless.

Roman’s room, then. Virgil swallowed as he turned to enter the hallway, remembering the memory—because it had to be a memory now, didn’t it—

Virgil felt something crack under his foot. He closed his eyes, and clenched his shaking fists, because he could tell without even looking what it was.

Virgil opened his eyes, and looked down, even though he desperately didn’t want to.

The button eyes and lopsided smirk of the Roman puppet stared accusingly up at him from where his chest was crushed under Virgil’s foot. Virgil knelt and picked it up, swallowing, and attempted to dust off the outfit—white shirt, red sash around his chest. There was a crown on his hair, and Virgil shook to reach and touch it, straighten it on his hair, because even a puppet version of Roman would hate to look undignified.

“Sorry,” he told it, and winced as he saw where his shoe left a mark on the white shirt. “M’sorry.”

“Oh, he can absolutely hear you, Virgil,” a familiar voice said behind him, and Virgil’s grip tightened on the puppet, nails digging into it. He did not get up from where he knelt, and he did not look back.

“You fucking bastard,” Virgil told the blank button eyes of Roman, grip tightening. “You piece of fucking shit.”

“It’s not at all stupid of you to be talking to a puppet, of all things,” Deceit continued. “Is it too subtle a detail? It was between this or some voodoo dolls. I know how much you love needles.”

Virgil thought of needles stuck through eyes, pinning puppet-Patton against a wall or puppet-Logan to his bed, and he thought his fingernails might break from how tightly he was digging them into puppet-Roman’s shirt, meeting the unforgiving wood underneath. 

“It’s a very scintillating conversation to just speak to your back, Virgil,” Deceit said, and Virgil could not help but think of what must have happened the last time he had his back to Deceit, and he had failed, he hadn’t protected them, he’d been knocked out and—

“Logan didn’t drop a book.”

Deceit hummed, and Virgil gritted his teeth, because this was the piece of Deceit that was the most difficult to decipher; the half-truths, the almost-lies, the noncommittal gestures and tones. To lie was fairly black and white; to deceive held all kinds of shades of gray.

“Where are they,” Virgil growled, at last turning to look over his shoulder, and Deceit was a bizarre figure in the doorway, face shaded and clouded by his hat, yellow gloves catching the light bright and obnoxious, and Deceit spread his arms.

“Maybe they’re safe and sound, and you’re the I’ve decided to play with,” Deceit said. “Maybe Patton’s all tied up and strangling himself trying to reach the sword that’s only a foot away to save Roman, the poor stupid thing.” 

There was a loud crack and Virgil started, head spinning back to his hands, because the Roman had puppet had cracked and split into two and dropped aside and Virgil was holding the something that had been inside it, something wrapping its way tight around his wrists. Virgil dropped the thing and attempted forcing his wrists apart, attempting to break free, scrambling away from the strings advancing on him, inadvertently going towards Deceit as he continued.

“Maybe they’re trying to run from a monster, but they have to keep slowing down because Logan got himself bit on the leg. Blood leaves a horrible trail for monsters, you know.”  

The dark black strings had twined their way up his bare arms, over his chest, around his neck, making him strain for air, mouth opening wide and sucking in as much air as he possibly could get, even as he tried to squirm free.

“Get it off,” Virgil choked, pride gone, because he couldn’t move his legs he couldn’t move away from it he couldn’t break free he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t. “Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff—“

“Maybe,” Deceit continued over Virgil’s panicked demands, “I’ll just take this—” and with a twist of his fingers Virgil started straining towards Deceit even more, because that was his hoodie, his hoodie, hanging from Deceit’s fingers like it disgusted him, like it was dirtybadwrong—

“—and I’ll stand and sulk in the corner, because that just must be so hard for you, Anxiety, I don’t know how I’d ever do that.”

“Don’t call me that,” Virgil spat out, even as he tried jerking his whole body out of the restraints, trying to kick free—

“Maybe I’ll even set this on fire just in time for the others to come down the stairs and see it crumbling to ash! Goodness, that would be just so sad, wouldn’t it, seeing that big lump’s face just crumple up, I don’t know if I could stand it—”

The strings had managed to come up over his mouth, now, and Virgil could only snarl wordless threats at Deceit as he struggled, and Deceit cackled, yellow eye glinting in the light, and he dropped the hoodie into nothing at all, making it vanish. 

“Goodness, Virgil, I must say, you’ll do such a good job protecting them from here.”

Deceit stepped back, into the dark, and Virgil could see the smirking sneer as he prepared to close the door, about to leave Virgil to struggle useless and alone in the bright lights of the hallway.

“Don’t worry, Virgil,” Deceit purred. “I won’t hurt them.”

taglist: @somewhatsanders @tommysandypantsisasolarnymph @erlenmeyertrash @lindesensate @lakesandquarries @lacandra @midnightcandy @jughead-is-canonically-aroace @analogicalisreal @stay-in--place @pinkeasteregg @kanejandkruge @livenarrator

[imagine-loki]

Winter's Hearts

TITLE: Winter’s Hearts CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 31/? AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine being Loki’s old friend/Lover in Asgard, but you left for Earth a long time ago. For all he knows, you might be dead, but you’re still alive and you’ve been working with SHIELD and/or the Avengers. RATING: T NOTES/WARNINGS:  Also on AO3: Click here

    You spread your wings as you walked through the gates into Valkyria proper. Besides the servants, everyone here was a Valkyrie or a Valkyrie in training and they all wore their wings all the time.

    “This way, we need to tell the Matron we’re here before anything else,” you told Loki. He nodded and let you take the lead. Of course you were taking the lead. You had spent a year of your life here and it had been a year of hell.

    You remembered the first time you were here, the day after you turned 100. You were nervous at being here, nervous at the start of the trial, and nervous at being away from your family at court for the first time ever. Your mother was there for the year, but she couldn’t aid you during the trials. You had to face them alone.

    You shook off the memory of being a teen in this place and strode confidently in the front doors. “Lady Valkyrie,” the servants at the doors greeted you as you passed. You nodded to them in reply. They looked at Loki, who followed a step behind you and looked like they wanted to argue with him being here, but they knew, the entire kingdom knew you were married. “Lord Consort,” they finally greeted him, admitting him past them without you having to kick their asses for it. Loki had a right to be here.

    You turned and smirked at his indignant expression once you were inside the castle and away from those particular servants. “They called me ‘lord consort’,” he spluttered, whining indignantly.

    You laughed. “What’d you expect, Lohk?” you teased.

    He glared at your teasing. “My usual title?” he suggested. “My name perhaps? It’s not like they don’t know who I am,” he grumbled, just making you laugh harder.

    “Loki, it’s tradition,” you told him. He huffed, but waited for you to continue. “The Valkyrie rule Valkyria, even your father has no power here. He’s not even allowed to step foot through the gates and he rules the entire realm. You’re only allowed because you’re married to me,” you reminded him.

    “So it’s tradition that I lose my title?” he grumbled.

    You laughed. “No, it’s tradition that your only status here is as my husband. That’s why your title here is Lord Consort. They’re actually being respectful calling you ‘lord’, the only other husbands I’ve seen here have only been addressed as ‘husband’ or ‘consort’,” you explained to him.

    He sighed. “Your people are strange,” he finally told you, but seemed to have gotten over being upset at his lack of station here. “I dislike you outranking me,” he teased.

    You laughed and took his hand. “Now you know how I’ve felt my entire life, husband,” you teased him. He kissed your cheek with a grin.

    “Mmm, ‘husband’, I do so enjoy hearing that,” he told you with a warm purr and stole a kiss. You smiled warmly at him and kissed him back.

    You smiled and squeezed his hand. “C’mon, Lohk, let me show you the castle,” you told him and led him through the stone halls of the giant castle. It reminded you of Hogwarts in a way, at least every time you read Harry Potter you imagined the castle of Valkyria as Hogwarts.

    “I’ve been wanting to see this place since I learned about the trials and how you would have to face them alone,” Loki confessed. You nodded.

    “I know. I researched with you while we were children to find out what the trials entailed,” you reminded him. Neither of you could find out any more than that the trials were a year, and you would have to leave your best friend for an entire year with little chance to communicate with him. “You can know about them now,” you reminded him with a grin. You could see how much the additional delay was killing him, but he wanted to see this place too.

    You led him through the ancient halls, his hand in yours. The women in the corridors gave him strange looks, surprised to see a man in their midst. There weren’t many husbands who came here, even though they were allowed. You nodded to the servants, Valkyrie-in-training, and the lower ranking Valkyrie who bowed to you as you passed.

    “Why are they all bowing to you?” Loki asked you softly as you walked.

    You smiled at him. “The same reason everyone at the palace bows to you, silly prince. I outrank them all. You know that there are ranks among the Valkyrie, based on how we do during the trials, and our assignments after we pass the grand trial,” you reminded him. “I rank high among the Valkyrie,” you add with a smirk. You were one of the highest ranked Valkyrie and not just because of your assignment to Loki.

    You led Loki straight to the Matron’s office first. You had to let her know there was a guest in her castle. You were always welcome and always had rooms here, every Valkyrie did; every Valkyrie had a home here, as did any woman in the realm who needed sanctuary. Men however, were treated warily at best. You knocked on the Matron’s door. “Enter,” she called.

    You opened the door and stepped in, pulling Loki with you. “Matron,” you greeted her politely. “I have come home to visit and brought my husband with me,” you told her politely. You technically outranked her, but everything that went on here was her domain. She looked up from her desk and gestured you into the room.

    “Welcome home, Sister,” she greeted you warmly. She looked at Loki with a nod and a smirk. “Your highness, welcome to Valkyria. You are welcome here as Y/N’s husband, as is any spouse of a Valkyrie. I must warn you, however, that your station outside of Valkyria does not grant you any additional privileges inside our walls,” she warned him again. He would be kicked out if he broke their rules. That was the only privilege his rank got him. Others would be killed for breaking the rules.

    “I understand,” Loki replied graciously, especially considering that he was basically being threatened.

    The matron nodded. “Then I bid you enjoy your stay with us,” she told him kindly. She turned her attention back to you. “Your rooms are as you left them, the servants cleaned them and aired them out. I expected you would be bringing your husband here,” she added with a smirk. “He was always so curious about our ways,”

    You and Loki both laughed in reply. You took Loki’s hand and gave him a tour of the general castle, the great hall where the meals were served, training yards, classrooms, stables, and finally the sleeping quarters. You showed him to your rooms, where you’d be staying while you were here. The rooms were simple, not much more than the bed and desk. “Not the fanciest place for our honeymoon,” you teased.

    He chuckled and pulled you into his arms to kiss you. “Yes, this is part of our honeymoon, but we’re not here for riches and comfort,” he reminded you.

    You nodded. “We’re here so you can find out about the trials,” you told him. You went to your desk and pulled an ancient journal out of the drawer. “I had a feeling you would be here someday. I wasn’t allowed to let this leave the castle, but, I was allowed to keep it here,” you handed the journal over to him.

    His eyes lit up. “This is-?” he opened it to see your careful writing filling the pages.

    “Every day of the year I was here taking the trials. Ok, I couldn’t write every day due to the nature of some of the trials, but that is an accounting of everything I went through to earn my position,” you told him. Your predictable Loki sat on your bed and began to read. You laughed and settled next to him on the bed.

    He looked up at you, concerned by something that kept getting said, but he hadn’t quite appreciated. “The Valkyrie are born Valkyrie,” he commented. You nodded. That’s why there were little toddlers running through the halls with wings, and only the Valkyrie had wings. “But you have to pass the trials to become a full Valkyrie…” he continued. You nodded again, wondering where he was going with this. “All those little girls have to take the trials?”

    You nodded a third time. “Every girl who is born a Valkyrie has to be trained and take the trials whether she wants to or not,” you told him softly, finally figuring out where this was going. You would still make him ask on this one.

    “And those who fail?” he asked softly.

    You looked away. “Every trial goer makes it to the grand trial, no matter how they do on the smaller trials. Those who don’t so well on the smaller trials do not tend to pass the grand trial,” you told him softly. It was every trainee’s nightmare for a very good reason.

    “And what happens if they fail the grand trial?” he pressed. He needed to know what the stakes had been.

    “They die,” you told him, looking into his eyes. You saw his horror when he realized just how high the stakes had been the year you were gone. Just what you had risked. If you had failed you wouldn’t have returned to court to be a court lady like he’d always thought.

    You would have died during the grand trial.

    His arms wrapped around you and he held you too tightly, his grip tightening even more when he realized that he may have lost you forever. “You told me goodbye,” he said softly, his voice pained. “The night before the grand trial started. You-”

    You’d met Loki through illusions throughout your year of trials and they were almost, almost finally over. “One more trial left,” you told him when you met him at the halfway point between the palace and Valkyria’s castle. Your illusions both sat by a little pond where you could talk and catch up. You’d been talking for awhile already that night, catching up on events at the palace and what you could tell him of your time in Valkyria.

    “It’s still a month before our birthday,” Loki told you, wondering how this could be the last trial. You couldn’t tell him what the trials consisted of, but you could tell him there was just one left.

    “This one’s the grand trial. It lasts a whole month,” you explained. You’d very carefully found out what exactly you could tell him. You sighed heavily. “Everything hinges on this trial,” you couldn’t tell him that your life was part of ‘everything’. “My whole future,”

    He smiled reassuringly at you. “Kyrie-love, you’ve been training for this since you could walk. You’ll do just fine and then you can come home and get your assignment,” he flushed a little. “Technically the assignment should go to Thor, but… he’s already agreed to step aside, to give me the honor,”

    “Of course he did, Lohk. He couldn’t stand having me shadow him for the rest of his life. He’d get annoying with me in five minutes,” you teased. Your body heard the belltower chime. “I have to get going,” you told him sadly. Neither of your illusions were strong enough yet to be corporeal. “I won’t be able to contact you again,” you told him softly.

    “I understand. This is important, little Valkyrie,” he told you warmly, so full of joy and excitement that you were almost done. He didn’t know, didn’t understand what was at stake.

    So you told him the only way you could.

    “Goodbye, my prince. No matter what happens through this trial, I will love you for all of my days,” you told him with tears in your eyes. Before he could answer, before he could demand information that you couldn’t give him, you let the illusion vanish.

    You nodded. “I told you goodbye. It was the best I could do,” you told him softly and held him tightly as well.

    “I didn’t - I didn’t know,” he told you horrified. “You could have died?” he asked, still disbelieving that that was the possible outcome.

    You nodded. “If a Valkyrie doesn’t pass the grand trial she dies. There are no exceptions,”

    “I could have lost you and I didn’t even know!”

[whalefairyfandom12]

Your Love’s a Fucking Drag (But I Need It So Bad)

Summary: Dan likes black and leather jackets, Phil likes reading in solitude and playing video games. But they have one thing in common as new roommates at uni: They are both completely straight. Just because they like to get each other off every once in a while doesn’t make it any different. 

A/N: So I just checked the masterpost and apparently it’s almost been a year since my last chapter. Open apology to Rachel and anyone that still reads this for the massive delay--hopefully I won’t take another year next time haha. Also the Halloween parts are because I was going to post this in October/November until I lost power so enjoy some seasonally appropriate spooks.

Word Count: 3383

tw; language, smoking, smut

co-written with botanistlester

Masterpost

Chapter Ten

There were certain facts in life that were indisputable. Beyonce was queen, Jar Jar Binks was a stain on humanity, water was wet, and Dan Howell was hot. And because it was indisputable acknowledgment of the latter was normal, healthy even. It didn’t mean Phil was gay or anything, just that he had eyes and appreciated aesthetically pleasing things.

So noticing the strangely attractive combination of sexy and adorable that was Dan’s still damp hair was a perfectly heterosexual thing to do. Phil was just confident enough in his masculinity to notice.

Dan was surveying himself in the mirror, arms crossed. A black and white plaid shirt tapered around his waist over a pair of black skinny jeans. “How do I look?” he asked, turning to pose dramatically. It should’ve looked ridiculous--and it did, but Dan broke character, smiling widely enough for his dimple to show and fuck if he didn’t look good.

“Yeah. Really good.” Phil cleared his throat, mouth dry. “You’re leaving your hair curly?”

“I was thinking about embracing the hobbit hair on a more permanent basis.”

“Why?” The word emerged more incredulous than Phil had intended, but the unrelenting curliness of his roommate’s hair had always been one of his favorite subjects of complaint.

Dan made a contemplative sound, reaching for his jacket. “It never stays straight for one. I step outside and if there’s any humidity I look like a deformed hedgehog. And…” he trailed off, shrugging. “I guess it doesn’t look that bad when it’s shorter.” He slung his coat over his arm, popping open the door. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

Phil shook his head. “I don’t want to crash your date,” he said, supportive smile strained.

“What?” Dan blinked at him uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about?”

“Your romantic evening with Cheryl?”

“We’re just going as friends,” Dan clarified. “We talked a few days ago and realized there was no point in letting something like what happened ruin a perfectly good friendship.” Personally, Phil wasn’t sure how cheating could be summed up as casually as ‘something like this,’ but he nodded anyway. “So you wouldn’t be crashing. I think Jo and Avery are coming too.”

Phil choked on his own spit, book tumbling to the floor. Dan was there in a flash, dusting the cover off and handing it over. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I was just surprised.” Surprised was putting it lightly, considering one of the last times he’d seen Dan and Avery together they looked like they were going to punch each other. He sighed, making a face as his gaze returned to his English. He did have the whole weekend, and part of him wanted to be there in case anything happened. “Okay,” he said finally. “If you’re sure.”

Dan’s expression lit up. “Positive.”

Phil rolled off the sofa, shoving his feet into his trainers. He wasn’t anywhere as dressed up as Dan, but he figured Illuminati t-shirts were always in style. “One condition, you have to share your popcorn.”

Dan rolled his eyes, lips pressing together in a smile. “And here I thought you actually wanted to spend time with me.”

“I do, but it’s mostly about the food.” Phil ducked through the door, Dan following and locking it behind them. “Did you grab the key?”

Dan jangled the keys in his pocket. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“One that usually does.”

The boy elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up, spork.”

Phil elbowed him back, smiling. Dan’s nicknames devolved on the daily, and he’d be lying if he said they weren’t at least a little endearing. “What movie are we watching?”

“It. I’m excited to see it, but in terms of movies coming out at the end of this year I think I’m more hyped for Star Wars,” Dan said. “I really hope they don’t show the trailer because I’ve been trying not to watch it. I want it to be full immersion.”

“For it to be a ‘star war’ does it have to involve multiple planets or does it just have to happen on a planet far far away?” Phil mused. “Like if someone on Tatooine was learning about World War II would that be a star war or an earth war?”

“I think it has to involve other planets?” Dan said, frowning. “So earth war? I still don’t understand why Kylo Ren built what was basically a clone of the first death star. I get he had a thing for Vadar but that was stupid even for him.”

“I think that’s just called bad writing,” Phil said wryly.

Dan laughed. “I think you’re right. There’s a special place in hell for plot holes. They’re not even a pet peeve anymore--they’re ruining my life.” He pulled out his phone, turning it on to reveal a picture they’d taken at Marzia’s last month. Dan’s arm was slung over his shoulder, free hand making his signature peace sign. Phil had pulled a face at the last minute, crossing his eyes and making a fish mouth. “We’re running a few minutes late,” he said.

“I don’t mind missing the previews.” Phil gave him a wary look. “Are you going to fall off your chair when there’s a jumpscare?”

Dan’s eyes widened in horror. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Jesus.”

“I’ll pretend to spill my Pepsi so no one sees.”

“Thank you Phil. What a true friend.”

“I try.”

“Seriously though,” Dan said, with another glance at his phone. “We were supposed to be there ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll race you there,” Phil offered. “And by race I mean run three meters before collapsing on the ground from lack of exercise.”

Dan was grinning, already getting into position. “It’s on Lester.”

-

“Are you going to make me sleep with all the lights on again?” Phil asked.

Dan nodded. “Protect me dad. And also move over.”

Phil rolled his eyes, sliding further into the booth nonetheless. They were grabbing dinner post movie before heading back to campus, and he was crammed in between Jo and Dan in the middle of the bench. Cheryl and Avery were draped over each other across the table, and the rest of them had come to a mutual agreement not to disrupt them for the sake of everyone’s innocence.

“I didn’t think it was that scary,” Jo said, winding one of the straw wrappers around her finger. “More suspense than horror.”

“I might have some clown related nightmares,” Phil said. “But only for tonight, not the whole week unlike someone I know.” He turned towards Dan, nudging him with his foot. “I could always tie a red balloon to your bed when you’re least expecting it.”

Dan narrowed his eyes. “Only if you want to me to put knives in the cereal.”

“What? Why?”

“Because then,” he said empathetically, face centimeters away from Phil’s. “Maybe you’d learn your lesson Lester.”

“Save the domestic shit for the bedroom,” Avery interrupted loudly. He and Cheryl had finally remembered they were two separate entities and dismounted, though Phil noted with some amusement that their knees were still pressed together under the table.

“Only if you do,” Dan retorted.

Avery huffed amusedly. “Fair point.” Surprisingly, he and Dan had gotten along fine so far. He and Cheryl spent most of the evening off in their own world, and the few interactions had been civil enough.

“Hey Phil.”

Phil looked up at the sound of Cheryl’s voice, chewing on the end of his straw absentmindedly. “Yeah?”

“You’re coming to my party this weekend, right?”

He spat his water onto the placemat, Dan patting him on the back helpfully. “Sorry?”

“Dan already said he was coming,” Cheryl continued.

“I did?”

“--And you can be his plus one! It’ll be so much fun.”

Phil couldn’t help but remember what had happened the last time he’d attended a party Cheryl had promised would be fun. “I’m not really a party kind of person.”

“Please?”

He met Dan’s eyes, raising a questioning eyebrow. Dan inclined his head, shrugging as if to say if you’re in. Resigned, he looked back to Cheryl. Hopefully the alcohol would be stronger this time. “Okay.”

-

Thursday afternoon Phil came home to two boxes of flying saucers, enough Cadbury eggs, Aero bars, and Galaxy chocolate to feed his entire English class, and another box of what he was pretty sure were Maltesers sitting on the floor. Dan was sprawled across the carpet, phone in one hand and a Mars bar in the other.

“I’m glad you remembered to buy food for game night,” Phil said. “But I think you might’ve overdone it a little.”

Dan smiled innocently, holding aloft a bursting bag. Phil didn’t even want to know where he’d been hiding it. “Actually, that’s mine. This is for tonight.”

“I don’t understand how you we haven’t died from a heart attack yet.”

“Says the one who ate all the marshmallows last time we tried to bake.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“Or the chocolate chips last time I wanted to bake cookies?”

Phil shook his head disapprovingly. “We really need to take care of the mouse problem. They keep eating all of our hard earned ingredients.”

“Yes, because I’m sure the mice have developed opposable thumbs advanced enough to open packaging.”

“It’s possible. Can I at least have a Cadbury egg?” Dan tossed him one wordlessly. “Thanks.” He settled next to the other boy, back resting against the sofa. “Do you want to watch the episode of Riverdale we missed?”

Dan held up a finger in the universal wait for it symbol, pulling his laptop out of his bag and opening it. The page was already queued to the episode, and the cursor hovered over play. “I thought you’d never ask.”

-

Phil adjusted his grip on Susan’s arms, eyes widening in amusement at his reflection. Because he wasn’t already broke enough, he had a slightly unhealthy hobby of investing in strangely wonderful crap that had very little actual use. The stress mushroom had been bad enough, but he thought maybe the inflatable gargoyle could be considered slightly worse. Or better, depending on your point of view.

“What the hell is that?”

Phil patted Susan’s head, beaming. He spun to face Dan, throwing his arms out in a dramatic pose. His inflatable Halloween costume had arrived this morning, but he was only just getting a chance to try it out. “What do you think? It’s for Cheryl’s party.”

“I think it should go back to Hell where it belongs,” Dan said. He reached out and poked Susan’s head, making a face. “Do I even want to know where you found this?”

“Her name is Susan, and you know how Amazon suggests things for you?” Phil shrugged, an impressive feat given his current position.

Dan shook his head. “I’m not even surprised anymore.”

“I think they had a pink version if you’re interested.”

“You know, I think I’m good.”

Phil bent over, giving him a headbutt from Susan. “Try laying on it. It’s really comfortable, actually.”

Dan gave him a look. “No thanks.”

Susan gave him another headbutt. “Come on.” His roommate gave a long suffering sigh, resting his head against the gargoyle’s shoulder. “Weirdly comfy, right?”

Dan sighed, pressing a hand against his forehead. “Yes Phil, I love having an air pump bore a hole into my pocket.”

“It’s okay Susan,” Phil said. He leaned further back and patted one of her horns reassuringly. “I still love you.” He jumped as something vibrated in his pocket, locating his phone. A picture of he and Maria at their senior prom flashed across his screen as he swiped to answer. “Hello?”

“Hey Phil! Are you still coming up this weekend?” Susan knocked into the refrigerator. Shit. Maria correctly took his silence as an answer. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

Phil wondered if it would be too much to ask the floor to swallow him whole. “Maria I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot.”

“So you’re not coming?”

He collapsed on his bed, cradling the phone against his ear. “I was invited to a party this weekend and I said I would go.”

She made a disbelieving sound. “You hate parties. Can’t you just cancel?”

“I would, it’s just…” he glanced towards Dan, who was graciously studying through his phone like it held the basecode of the universe. “I promised Dan I would go.”

There was a pause. Maria’s voice was icy when she spoke again. “Dan, huh? Well you promised me you would visit a month ago and I’m the one you’re dating. Or have you changed your mind?”

“Of course I haven’t changed my mind,” Phil said defensively. Okay, so maybe he’d been bad at remembering to call and he’d almost forgotten to wish her luck on her last exam but he’d been spending a lot of time with Dan lately, and maybe it wasn’t so strange Maria was questioning his feelings.“I love you, Maria. You’re the only person I want to be with.”

Her tone softened fractionally. “I love you too. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten upset. I really am glad you’re making friends. I guess I just miss you.”

Phil winced, shrinking under the guilt. He was really losing points in the boyfriend department. “I miss you too,” he said. “But next weekend I’m all yours. I promise.”

He could hear Maria’s smile through the phone. “I’m holding you to that. Have a good time at your party.”

“Thanks. Happy Halloween.”

“You too. Class is starting, but I’ll talk to you later.”

Phil ended the call and returned his phone to his pocket, waving a hand in front of Dan’s face. “You can stop pretending to play Angry Birds.”

“I never pretend about Angry Birds.” He held up his phone. “I almost beat my high score too.”

“Sorry to kill the streak.”

“Is everything okay? It sounded like it was getting pretty intense.”

Phil sighed, starting to roll over before remembering Susan and thinking better of it. “I completely forgot I was supposed to visit her this weekend.”

“I don’t mind if you’d rather do that,” Dan said. “She is your girlfriend, after all.”

“It’s okay, we rescheduled for next weekend.”

Dan stared at him for a moment, expression uncharacteristically unreadable. “If you’re sure.”

“Positive.” Phil reached for the Susan’s kill switch, watching it the gargoyle deflate. “Remember? It’s going to be the most fun I’ve ever had.”

-

Phil was not having the fun he’d ever had. At least there hadn’t been any crying so in that aspect it was already better than last time, but he supposed that was a pretty low bar. In the end he’d left Susan at home, but he wasn’t sure if he stuck out more being the only person not in costume. He’d worn a Halloween themed jumper at least, and Dan was similarly dressed, but even Avery had made a lame attempt at a zombie costume.

“I feel slightly underdressed,” Dan said, echoing his thoughts. “Maybe we should’ve looked harder for the cat ears.”

“I don’t know,” Phil said. “I think my costume as ‘internet introvert that finally left the house’ is pretty scary.”

Dan laughed before screwing his features into a mask of terror, pressing a hand to his heart and backing against the wall. “Get it away from me! It’s hideous!”

Dan’s laugh was infectious, and for a moment Phil was able to forget the stares from everyone around him and the way his shoulder was plastered uncomfortably to the arm of the person beside him. “You should’ve gone as a rat to embrace your true self.”

“I take back everything I said earlier. You’re a terrible friend.”

Phil shot him a look of pure betrayal, or as close a one as he could muster anyway. “How fickle of you Daniel.”

Dan opened his mouth to respond when a third year shoved him into Phil as she pushed past. Her breath smelled like beer, laugh loud and intoxicated. Phil staggered under her and Dan’s combined weight, bracing himself against the wall and knocking into the man behind him. Dan managed to regain his balance, mouthing an apology. The music swelled as the song switched to an electronic remix of Call Your Girlfriend that was a little too loud to be comfortable. Phil wondered how bad it was that he’d only been here for half an hour and he was ready to leave.

Dan wrinkled his nose, plugging his ears. His lips were moving again, the sound inaudible. Phil made an ‘x’ and pointed to the door, inclining his head in question. Dan frowned, shaking his head. Phil sighed, leaning in. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asked, raising his voice.

Dan looked relieved. “I thought you’d never ask!” he shouted. It was all the warning Phil had before he turned and plunged headfirst into the crowd.

Despite his roommate’s height Phil lost track of him after a few seconds, and quickly found himself pathetically and hopelessly lost. Sweat was starting to gather at the base of his neck, and he stumbled to a halt, standing on his tiptoes and scanning the crowd. Still no Dan--not that he could see or hear him anyway over the blood rushing in his ears that was almost as loud as the music and infinitely more headache inducing, He took a step and tripped over the couple beside him, the boy’s elbow catching him in the throat and knocking the air out of his lungs.

Phil had gotten lost the first and only time he’d ever gone to America. He and his family had taken an afternoon trip to the mall, but he’d gotten distracted by the Pikachu plushies and when he looked again everyone had disappeared. He’d been seven then, but the feeling of abandoned terror was the same.

He forced in a shuddering gasp of air, pulse thudding under his fingertips. The room felt like it was getting hotter, or maybe it’s just him because he can’t breathe and he doesn’t know where the door is or even a bathroom and he can’t find Dan and everything is so loud and he thinks he might die here and--

“Phil!” Dan shoved through the crowd, coming to a halt with visible relief that quickly turned to concern. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head, forcing himself to speak past the tightening of his throat. “Outside.” Dan’s expression softened in understanding, and he reached for his hand. The pressure was familiar, grounding and reassuring as Dan led him along the edges of the room to the door. The exit had never looked better, and Phil fumbled for the handle with his free hand, sweat slicked fingers slipping over the brass. Dan nudged him out of the way and pushed it open, ushering him outside.

He relaxed at the first breath of fresh air, sinking against the wall. He exhaled shakily, head resting against the brick to face the stars. From out here he could tune out the music, and he dropped Dan’s hand to wipe his palms against his jeans. “I’m sorry for making you leave,” he said. “I don’t mind if you want to stay.”

Dan smiled, something in the gesture subdued. Guilt twisted at the knowledge that it was probably because of him--because he couldn’t walk the fifteen meters to the door like a normal person without almost having a panic attack. “Trust me, I’m more than happy to leave. Do you feel any better?”

Phil nodded. “A little. Thanks for not leaving.”

“I would only consider it if you actually did put a red balloon in my room. I think we still have Chinese in the fridge,” Dan suggested lightly. “And there’s season two of Stranger Things to finish.”

Phil managed a weak smile. “That sounds great,” he said, conveying as much gratitude in those three words as he could. He wondered what he could’ve possibly done to deserve someone like Dan as his roommate, but whatever it was he was thankful. Somehow he always knew he what he needed, even if Phil himself hadn’t figured it out yet.

Without thinking he reached for Dan’s hand again, falling into step beside him as they headed home.