#I think this metaphor got off track

[whumpninja]

Being an OC whump writer feels like reverse demon possession. You have little people in your head and you do terrible things to them. And instead of you summoning them, they go “poof!” and summon themselves and then you beat them up for it. And maybe when you make them suffer enough you give them a happy ending, but also they have to go through The Horrors first because that’s the price of living rent free in your brain.

[tea-cat-arts]

LETS GO- Kevin reference!!!

[rachiller]

At this point if she’s reaching out & I’m now the one not replying bc I’m mad about her ignoring me for two days does that make me the immature one? Like. Have I become the monster

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

I am in Such A Healthy Mood right now 😃😃😃

[cryptidghostgirl]

hii i read your fic with the humanalastor! x reader where they become like partners in crime (i loved it sm)

and got an idea based off of it

what if Alastor dies first and a few years later Alastor and the reader reunite after she goes to the hotel? thought it would be kinda cute :)

A/N ngl I was thinking of doing something like this so I am very happy it is desired by the people as well. Also, we're gonna pretend that the timeline I created wouldn't make her like over a hundred years old when she died, okay? Okay.

Cover Up Pt. 2 (Alastor x Reader)

Pairing: Alastor x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of murder and blood, nothing graphic. Alastor being a depressed little bitch. Also a lot of dead bird metaphors for lost hope. Please let me know if I forgot anything.

Word Count: 1,971

Part One: Cover Up (Human!Alastor x Human!Reader)

Master Lists:

Master Lists 

Hazbin Hotel Master List

When Alastor had died, Y/n had shattered. Their years of holding one another's bloodstained hands had finally drawn to a close. They had a good run, nearly a decade before anyone caught on. His death also came with the added downside of throwing suspicion on Y/n. To say the event changed her life would be an understatement.

When Alastor had first woken up in Hell, he had mourned his loss as if she was the one who had died and not him. The allowance of such a foolish thing was short lived. He quickly realized there was no way Y/n wouldn't end up in Hell as well eventually, with her track record. He refocused his pain, his anguish into making sure he had the perfect world to serve up to her on a platter as soon as she arrived.

As the years ticked on, the little bird fluttering away in his ribcage became more and more despondent. He tried to distract himself by continuing his work, continuing his plans for her. Always for her. It worked to a certain extent but, soon it had been sixty years and she still hadn't made her arrival. It didn't matter how many overlords he killed, how many worthless souls he tortured. There was nothing that could take his mind off that.

Alastor wondered what sort of life Y/n had made for herself after his death. He wondered if she had found love again, held out hope that she hadn't. It was a selfish wish, he knew it. Alastor had always been selfish. It wasn't that he wished for her to be unhappy, just that he knew she was the only person, living or dead, out there for him. There was no hope for Alastor that wasn't Y/n and he wanted her to feel the same way about him. He didn't want to lose, to have been an idiot, to have been the one that loved more. At the same time, he didn't want her to feel that way either. It was complicated and confusing, the twists of his own logic.

Another decade and he began wondering if somehow his beloved wife had gotten into Heaven instead. He knew it was a long shot, after everything she had done but, she had also never killed anyone who didn't deserve it. Maybe there was some exception for women who killed their pursuers, when the pursuers were coming on too intensely or had ulterior motives. He wondered if she'd remarried, if she had kids. If she was still on earth, there would have to be something that was keeping her there and that was the only thing that made sense.

Eighty years, as it turned out, had been all he could take. The bird had died and its corpse had rotted, festering into anger. Not anger at Y/n no, never anger at Y/n but anger at the world, at the system of the afterlife. He became bolder, brasher, more foolish. He got caught in a bad deal.

Coming to the hotel had been a command, yes, but it had also ended up being something of a salvation for the man. In the seven years of his disappearance from the rings of Hell, there had been little to distract him from the growing hole of Y/n's absence. It was a hungry thing, a deep seated want, a controlling desire. The hotel served to fill it. Not completely, but a little. It was better than nothing. Besides, for all her violence, Y/n had always had a way of seeing the best in others, in the world around her. He was certain she would have liked Charlie if she ever got to meet her, certain the hotel would shine in his wife's eyes.

Husk and Nifty were the only two who knew. They had both met him when Alastor's focus had been the creation of a world for Y/n, it was impossible for them not to. They had both noticed how as the years had passed, he had said her name less, how he had become crueler. Not even Charlie had in inkling of an idea that Alastor might be missing something, might be unshakable heartbroken. He hid it well.

Even now as he entered the lobby intent on finding Charlie in order to discuss some of the decor on the upper floors, he made sure his smile was firmly fixed in place. A smile was the strongest weapon a person or demon could have, the strongest disguise. He made sure he was never without one.

"So you just arrived today?" he heard Charlie saying as he began to make his way down the stairs.

He could see her by the door, talking to a demon whom her position obscured from his vision. A new guest. Internally, Alastor sighed. This was throwing a wrench into his plans for the day.

"Yeah I... it's all so confusing here. Wonderful in a way, don't get me wrong but... when I heard about your hotel, it seemed safe."

The unknown demon's voice was soft, it pulled at his heart strings. The corpse of the bird was a puppet at its familiarity. It was a sickening feeling, the dead body of his hope being pulled up and twitched around for another's unknowing amusement. Alastor nearly faltered, hesitating on the last step.

"So are you actually interested in redemption?" Charlie asked, sounding downcast.

"Well, I'm not really sure yet. Is that okay? I mean, I just got here today and... either way, I love the idea of your hotel and I want to help. I could work as a maid? Or I'm a pretty good cook? My husband always said so anyways. I'm sort of trying to find someone too so... What I'm trying to say is that I could work until I've figured it out, if that is alright with you?"

Charlie hummed in thought as Alastor began to cross the room, heading straight for the pair.

"It's a bit unorthodox but, I suppose. We could always use another helping hand."

"Really!?" the stranger exclaimed, "Oh thank you!"

Alastor was over Charlie's shoulder practically now. She shifted on her feet, allowing Alastor to at last see the person she was talking to.

"So, what's your name?"

The demon opened her mouth to speak but, before a word could leave her lips, she was interrupted by a static filled voice. It brought back memories, hurt her heart to hear.

"Y/n."

There was no doubt about it. Even in her new demon form, Alastor knew. It was the curl of her hair, it was the brightness of her eyes, the way she held herself. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"When did you get here?" Charlie asked in confusion as she turned to the side, turning the pair into a group of three all facing one another, "Also, you know her? Oh my gosh, wait. Are you okay? I don't think I've ever seen you not smiling before."

Neither payed the princess any mind, each absorbed in one another's eyes. Y/n took a sutering half step forwards, her mouth slightly open.

"Alastor?"

It was barley more than a whisper. She took another step towards him, then yet another. Lifting her hand, she gently cupped it around his cheek. Instinctively, the Radio Demon leaned into the touch.

"It really is you... isn't it."

Alastor pulled Y/n into his arms, wrapping her in his frame and resting his chin on the top of her head. Y/n was frozen in shock for a moment before she returned the gesture, balling her fists in to the back of his coat.

"Wow. You guys really know each other." Charlie mumbled to herself, eyes wide.

The pair pulled apart, Alastor still holding Y/n's waist as Y/n held his coat. She looked up at him, disbelief etched into her features, her sentiments reflected back to her in Alastor's own face.

"I thought..." he mumbled, raising a hand and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, "I thought I'd never see you again."

Y/n laughed tearfully.

"Me too."

"Where have you been? What happened? What... what took you so long?"

"If I had known I was coming to you, I would have died way sooner. I lived, Al. That's what happened. I only just got here today."

"I know, I heard, but what... what kept you?"

Y/n heard the tremor in his voice, the fear. She looked up at him, eyes narrowed.

"Are you jealous?"

Alastor's eyes flicked to the side momentarily. One of his ears twitched. It might have been nearly ninety years since they had last seen one another, they might've looked completely different and had whole lives the other wasn't in, but it felt like they had just seen one another yesterday.

"Oh, you so are!" Y/n teased brightly.

"Y/n."

"Yeah, yeah. It's just dumb is all, especially now I know you've been here all along."

"So tell me."

Y/n had always loved his insistence. It was what kept Alastor to his code, kept him to her, kept him him. She smiled once again.

"Soooo..." Charlie stepped in, her hands behind her back, "Either of you want to explain?"

Both Alastor and Y/n at last turned to look at her. He was smiling again, Charlie noticed. Not the normal ear to ear grin, teeth bared, she was used to. Something smaller, something softer. They released one another, only for Alastor to immediately drape an arm over Y/n's shoulders. It almost seemed like each feared the other would vanish into thin air if they weren't physically touching. She reached a hand up, gently holding his hand where it hung off her shoulder, keeping him to her.

"Charlie, this is my darling, lovely wife."

Y/n shoved him playfully and he smiled down at her.

"You're married!?"

"Yes." Y/n nodded, "We are. Have been for what, like one hundred years now?"

"So what kept you?" Alastor asked again and Y/n sighed.

"You really aren't going to let this go, are you?"

He shook his head. Y/n slipped out from under Alastor's arm, taking both his hands in hers. Her fingers traced his knuckles, the lines of his bones beneath the surface of his skin. Her eyes watched their hands, she sighed.

"After... well, Al, you died burying a body. It was hard for people not to know. I..."

"You got caught? You went to jail?" Alastor interrupted, his smile having fallen once again.

Y/n laughed slightly under her breath.

"No, heart. I stopped my own work but, the whole world knew of yours. I thought that... it was so dumb! I thought that... if I was alive, then so was the real version of you in some way. Not the true crime, vandalized version, but the person I knew."

Alastor lifted her face to his, his hand lingering under her chin.

"You were always secretly quite the romantic, weren't you."

"Oh hush you."

"Make me."

Y/n cheeks suddenly flushed bright red.

"Okay!" Charlie interrupted, laughing nervously, "Okay, well, I'm happy for... this, um, Alastor! Why don't you show Y/n around?"

"With pleasure."

Alastor leaned down, kissing Y/n gently. Her hand was half raised to burry itself in his hair when he pulled away, smirking in response to Y/n's irritated glare. Linking arms with her, he began leading Y/n to the staircase.

"I must say, I rather like this new look of yours." he hummed placidly.

"You're not half bad yourself deer boy, if a little cocky."

"I was always cocky. That's what you liked about me."

"Wrong. It's only one of the things I love about you."

----

Next Part -> Cover Up pt. 3

[vampirenicotine]

analyzing the lyrics for “long face” feat. lestat de lioncourt and realizing it’s a louis diss track (with love) is making me more unhinged by the second.

so we open with the gorgeous oooh oooh wah ahhh hypnotizing portion of this song that will stay in your head and where samuel thyne reid is also showing off his *cough* vocal talent.

next….

“why the long face? my pretty baby” — cause you know louis is a sad girlie but also so fucking beautiful and irresistible to lestat when they met he couldn’t possibly understand what louis would be sad about but also… he’s ready to comfort him ALWAYS.

“i got long fangs come appraise me” —lestat is talking about how he’s a vampire so come asess my value and also … fangs could be a metaphor for his pink pony so!

“bring your long stakes that doesn’t phase me” — lestat is saying you can talk shit about me louis and drive a stake through my heart but i still love you teehe.

“i’m an actor in my make up” — he’s saying i can play games too, louis.

“i’ll get fatter when we break up” —so he’s acknowledging the confidence issues he had over the 77 year break up and the break ups before which…. i don’t have the words to speak on otherwise i’ll die.

“why does it matter who i take up?” —he’s saying why does it matter who i sleep with in regardless to antoinette and it’s like love you king… but you’re crazy.

NEXT!

“another face, another year, another place, another tear, pick up the pace, rack up the fears, now we’re having fun.” — this is a little love letter to his cult (us) telling us to get amplified bitch it’s only the beginning

the instrumental break/oohing and ahhing just so immaculate tough cookie alex & larry really did that!

“i’m piano and you’re forte.” — so this lyric right here is what drove me feral because it has so many possible meanings and a few naughty innuendos. what im going to land on however is the fact that lestat is saying im piano because he can be used in whatever way louis wants to use him and he’s saying louis you’re forte (which means my strength) so he’s like idc what you say about me because you hold me together 🥹

“you’re allegro, i’m andante.” —THIS RIGHT HERE HAD ME ON MY KNEES. this is exposing their sex life in the best way because lestat is saying oh i’m your black tar heroin? ok noted and lemme match that because you’re allegro (which means energetic, fast, super active, loud) so basically he says i know you’re addicted to me because i was there. you’re wild in bed and you’re a screamer. he then says he’s andante (slow) because he likes to take his time and worship louis and really make love to him. BYE.

“we’re boléro, prostitué.” —and then he’s like just because i said we go slow sometimes first and foremost we’re freaks. we’re nasty and we’re unspeakable and well… thank you so much for those visuals queen de lioncourt.

“another taste, another year, another place, another tear, another chase, another sneer, without a trace, you disappear, pick up the pace, pack up the gear, gimme some face, a souvenir, here come the gays, here comes the fear, now we’re having fun.” — these bars are what’s going to give miss lioncourt her first grammy nominations because she is summarizing her relationship with louis and hopes for the future.

he’s also telling louis he’s giving him exactly what he wants. he’s chasing him. he knows louis is gonna sneer at him and be annoyed but come anyway. he’s saying you ghosted me after our reunion but im going on tour and you WILL be my rockstar girlfriend. you’ll kiss me (or the pink pony) before my shows as good luck. he’s saying we’re gonna be gay and proud, we’ll take over the world, cause the vampire apocalypse, scare bitches, and have fun. we own the night.

and finally for the song to end with lestat losing himself and moaning into the mic (coming, smirks) as he thinks about his chaotic plan to get louis back well… it’s just music to my ears. and i will listen to it again. and again. and again. and again.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating for you lestat

signed,

your loving groupie.

[merakiui]

RABU.

yandere!jade leech x (female) reader cw: yandere, brief nsfw, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, implied murder/death, implied cannibalism, pregnancy, obsession note - i chatted with @heyyy11 and we discussed noodle shop owner jade!! :D this fic is the result of our thoughts. additionally, it's inspired by maretu's "binomi" and lyrics featured are from mitski's "me and my husband."

i. i steal a few breaths from the world for a minute. and then i’ll be nothing forever. and all of my memories and all of the things i have seen will be gone. with my eyes, with my body, with me.

There’s a pot of perpetual stew sitting on the stove.

It fills the small shop with savory scents, enthralling all who catch its delicious aroma on the air. Your husband of twenty years tends to it every now and then, lifting the lid to stir through its contents with a large wooden spoon. Regulars stop by for a fix of his food and comment much the same thing each time: “That husband of yours sure loves his stew.”

“Oh, he can’t get enough,” you would always reply, giggling at their observations.

You would then scrawl their usual orders in your notepad and they’d give you a knowing look. Still so infatuated even though two decades have passed—aren’t you the sweetest? But you can’t help it. Your husband is everything: affectionate, attentive, a masterful chef…

His forever single twin brother often groused that Jade got all the good fortune. “Y’know, if you’re ever tired of Jade, I’m here for ya,” he’d say, leaning over the counter with a sleazy smirk. “Shrimpy’s free to visit whenever she wants. My arms are always open.”

And Jade would smile tightly at him, brush him away with his broom, all while saying, “I’m afraid the shop’s closed now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow, Floyd.”

He acts in jest. Mostly.

Shortly after your wedding, on your first night as newlyweds, the two of you made a compromise. Jade wanted a family; you weren’t ready to start one. And so, in order to work through this dispute, you came to an agreement: He would be in charge of the prep work for the noodle shop he intended to open—a metaphorical child more than anything. In return, you would take orders and chat with customers. A fair deal, one you thought was attractive in its own right. Jade, ever so patient and understanding, lounged beside you in bed, gesturing towards the ceiling as if attempting to spell out the vision before your very eyes. He spoke so eagerly of his dreams. It warmed your heart.

Naturally, just as passionately, you would support him in his every endeavor.

“What do you think of this name? Rabu Rabu Ramen.”

You rolled over on your side, snuggling closer. You couldn’t snuff the overwhelming elation and tenderness that wrapped itself around you whenever you looked at him. And he was all yours—your husband to love forever, to grow old with, to experience life’s highs and lows together. Your wedding night was just the beginning of what would surely be a riveting romance.

“It’s silly.”

“It’s lovey-dovey.”

“If you like it, I like it.”

“Truly?”

You pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Absolutely.”

It wasn’t long before fantasy bled into reality. The both of you found a quaint spot in a quiet neighborhood. It was more hole-in-the-wall than you would’ve liked, but Jade didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes tourists stumbled in, commenting that they would’ve missed it had they not ventured down the narrow path. Jade liked that aspect. It was secretive, peaceful, off the beaten track…

By the end of your first year running the shop, plenty of praise had spread throughout the neighborhood. You learned the locals’ names and faces quickly, committing each to your memory as if there might be an exam later on. They thought you were the cutest, the way you’d take charge of the front while your husband worked diligently in the back. Grandmothers adored you, and they made sure to point out the obvious at every opportunity. 

“Omago-san, it’s too quiet in here! You’re still so young. Plenty of time for a family. Tell that husband of yours to get busy!”

You could only offer an awkward smile. “Maybe one day.”

When that ‘one day’ would be, you couldn’t say.

It’s become something of a widely-held belief that Jade can’t make a single bad dish. Everything on the menu is scrumptious. From the homemade noodles to the variety of broths to the additional ingredients, each prepared by Jade’s adroit hand, it’s a feast for the ravenous. 

Sometimes customers ask for recommendations, and if you aren’t careful you’ll end up fawning over every dish.

“It’s all so amazing, but I like my ramen with bone broth. My husband makes it better than I do.”

It was true. You couldn’t possibly replicate Jade’s skill in the kitchen. At the very least, when it comes to tea, you’re on an even playing field.

“Just what’s his secret anyway?”

To that question, you could only offer a shrug. “Maybe it’s love?”

Jade told you it was a family recipe—a cherished secret passed through the generations. You thought he’d confess at some point now that you’ve been part of the family for so long, but he’s yet to do so. It hurt at first. You’re married! Family! Jade is smooth about the entire thing, promising to tell you one day, easing all of your worries with sugared sentiments. You’re impatient and oh-so-curious, but you force yourself to wait for his sake.

It must be a special secret.

The pot on the stove is an heirloom. It’s old, yet reliable and sturdy. Jade’s mother gifted it to him in the wake of your engagement. Sometimes you think he treasures it more than anything. He’s always hovering near it, having forbidden you from lifting the lid, lest you unintentionally tamper with whatever it is he’s cooking. It smells hearty like meat stew most days, and according to Jade the process is long.

You linger near the stove. A tiny taste wouldn’t hurt, right? After all, Jade cooks things in excess to cure what appears to be an interminable hunger.

But then someone pokes their head inside the shop, calling out a greeting. You move to the front just as Jade returns from the storage room, carrying a crate of vegetables. That taste will have to wait.

Detective Azul Ashengrotto lowers onto a stool at the counter and heaves an exhausted sigh.

“If it isn’t Azul! What brings you here? Tired of the big city?”

Weary hues flick over your face. He manages a smile. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, (Name). You’re still as energetic as ever.”

“You know it. Every day’s sunny over here.” You rest your elbows on the counter and hum. “Although it’s been awfully slow today.”

“I envy you.” He lifts his hat off of his head to card a hand through tousled hair. Now that you’re looking at him, he seems to have lost some weight. His face is thinner. His eye sockets appear hollow, heavy with shadows. “They’re running me ragged over there. Too many cases. Not enough answers.”

“You ought to take better care of your health.”

“I am—will. I plan to as soon as I wrap up this current case.”

“What’s it about? If you can tell me, that is.”

“A young man went missing near the port. They think he might’ve fallen in and drowned. His wallet was brought up from the seabed, but they haven’t recovered his body yet.”

“How unfortunate… I’m sure his family’s distraught.”

Azul drags a hand down his face and sighs again. “A mess.”

“My, my. It’s been some time since I’ve heard that familiar sigh.”

Lowering his arm, Azul fixes him with a sardonic grin. “How kind of you to join us. I was starting to wonder where you were hiding.”

Jade hums and adjusts his bandana. “Forever confined to the kitchen. My wife is eating for two now.”

A minute ticks by before the realization flashes on Azul’s face. He looks between the both of you, stunned.

“Oh, you’ve—wow. I wasn’t expecting… Ahem. Congratulations.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s talking about his stomach. I’m not pregnant.”

Azul’s countenance shifts through a catalogue of emotions before landing on a scowl. “To think I actually believed you for a moment. I rescind my congratulations.”

“My poor hara, endlessly empty without your sweet sentiments to fill it.”

“And my hara is telling me that you’re going to starve our guest if you keep being silly.” Clicking your tongue at him, you turn your much softer stare on Azul. “The usual, right?”

“Oh, thank you, but I ate before I came. I only intended to stop in and say hello since I was in the area. I really should be leaving now that—”

“Nonsense! You’re already here and Jade has nothing better to do. You should go back on a full stomach.”

“Indeed. A delicious bowl of tonkotsu ramen has your name on it,” Jade adds from his place in the kitchen. “And I do so love busying these idle hands of mine. Should they remain idle, I fear the devil may just find work for them…”

“I really shouldn’t…”

“You look so withered, Zuzu. You’ll feel better after a hot meal. I promise!”

The platonic affection twined through the nickname catches him by surprise. Huffing, his cheeks colored pink, he stuffs his hat on his head to veil the darkening blush. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt…”

“Yay!” You clap your hands together. “I’ll get started on tea.”

You weren’t going to give him much of a choice. Azul probably knows this by now, well-acquainted with your proclivity to play caretaker.

“This winter is particularly brutal,” he comments after you’ve fetched him a cup. It’s more of a change in subject than an observation. He shudders and burrows further into the warmth provided by his coat. “The worst time to die.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Winter is full of mistakes. Drunken mishaps at night, in which the victim slips on ice and falls into the sea… Sometimes we miss them, and so they aren’t found or retrieved until they start to float to the surface after everything thaws. I can’t begin to imagine how painful that must be—to not know where your loved one has disappeared to, only to find them just as the winter frost melts away to usher in spring.”

“Oh, that’s horrible!” You set the kettle down, and Azul watches steamy tendrils curl up towards the ceiling. “Does it ever scare you—the things you find?”

“I’ve seen so much it’s difficult to know what real fear even is.”

“Ah.” You glance over your shoulder at Jade as he opens the lid on the pot of stew. Your eyes drift over towards Azul once more. “You work hard. You deserve a break after your next case.”

“I could sleep forever when that day comes.”

“Retirement isn’t too far, is it, Ojiisan?”

Azul chokes around his breath. “Do I really look so old? Oh, my heart… If these sleepless nights don’t kill me, that assumption certainly will.”

You giggle. “Sorry, sorry. I meant to say you look as spry as ever.”

“You’re too happy to hammer nails into my coffin.”

“I do it with love. It’s our secret ingredient, you know!”

“So I’ve heard.”

The rest of your conversation stalls out. You wipe the counter with a fresh rag in hopes of giving yourself something to do while Azul reads through the newspaper and sips at his tea. You watch him in your peripheral vision. Is he taking care of himself? It doesn’t look like it, but you’ve known Azul long enough to be familiar with his level of responsible efficiency. Maybe this particular case has him in the trenches.

Just how hard are they working him over there?

As his friend you worry. In fact, you worry yourself sick. Every time he visits he’s in poor shape. Though he masks it with confidence, you can see the toll life is taking on him.

“Have you ever wanted to get married, Azul?”

“If I find the right person, sure.”

“But?”

“But, seeing as that has yet to happen, I have no interest in pursuing something that might waste my time and money. Emotions are exhausting, even more so when invested in something like romance. It’s better to put them towards something that will yield solid results. Like work, for example.”

“That outlook is so frigid! Don’t you wanna fall in love?”

“Love isn’t going to crack these cases,” he grumbles at the paper.

Jade appears at the little window cut into the wall. “Someone sounds like a love killer.”

“I’m only being realistic.” Azul scoffs. “Besides, you have no right to speak as a married man.”

“Envy is a wicked vice. I’ll gladly help you overcome it.”

You take the bowl of tonkotsu ramen from Jade and set it in front of Azul. “Okay, enough of that. Let him enjoy his meal in peace.”

“But I haven’t yet had my fill of fun.”

You reach through the horizontal window to gently tug on Jade’s ear. He rumbles with laughter. “Don’t bully the guests.”

“Why, I would never, my dearest.”

Azul watches this back-and-forth with a forlorn longing in his pale blues. Wordlessly, he sinks his soup spoon into the broth and lifts the noodles between his chopsticks. He eats with such zest it makes you wonder if this is his first meal of the day. Sensing your stare, he attempts to pace himself.

You smile sadly. He looks like he needs this.

“As always, it’s delicious,” he says once he’s made a sizable dent in the portion.

Jade basks in the praise. “I’m pleased you enjoy it.”

“But… Well.” The ghost of a frown settles on his weathered features. “The broth tastes different. You must’ve used a new seasoning. Or perhaps this is an expensive cut of pork? Whatever it is, it’s different. Not bad, mind you. I’m sure if it were anyone else it would’ve been difficult to catch.”

“Is this the impressive power of Detective Ashengrotto’s taste buds at work?” you joke, to which Azul flashes you a proud grin that’s more teeth than lip.

“Well, I have been using ingredients with better qualities as of late… I’m not very fond of serving cheap products to honored guests.”

“Isn’t my Jade so considerate? He’s too cute.” You stand up on your toes to kiss his cheek. “He even grows some of the vegetables himself. Green onions and mushrooms and the like.”

“Ah, of course. How could I forget that dubious green thumb of yours?” Azul muses, recalling the time in which Jade served him a new dish in exchange for valid critique. He had conveniently neglected to inform Azul that it contained mushrooms, something he has eaten plenty of in the time that he’s known you and Jade. So many that all varieties have been spoiled for him. “In any case, what’s the secret ingredient? Imported pork? Some sort of flavor that’s seeped in when left to simmer? No, not that… It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t place it!”

Jade chuckles. “There is no secret. It’s just love.”

Azul pokes around the bowl with his chopsticks, his eyes narrowed with an intense scrutiny. “I can recognize every other flavor. The meat, the green onions, the egg, the noodles… And I can parse the broth well enough. There’s just something else—a hint of something I’ve never tasted before. This profile is missing from my gastronomic lexicon.”

You tilt your head, puzzled. “Well, it’s the same broth, isn’t it?”

The both of you turn to Jade for his input. He nods. “My recipe and method haven’t changed.”

“So it’s still the same as before?” Azul’s nose wrinkles. “Strange. I was certain there was a taste of something more…”

Before he can dwell on it any longer, the radio at his hip crackles to life: “Sir, you’re needed at the port. We’ve got something you should see. Over.”

Azul detaches it from his belt and lifts it to his mouth. “I’ll be there soon. Don’t touch anything if you can help it. Out.” Releasing the button, he deflates briefly and then addresses you and Jade next. “It was wonderful seeing you again, but I’m afraid I must cut my visit short.”

“Then we won’t keep you.”

He moves to pull money from his wallet, but you stop him.

“On the house. You deserve it.”

Despite your generous offer, he still places the exact amount on the counter. “You won’t make profit if you’re giving food away for free.”

“Wha—but you’re a friend!”

“That makes it even worse. It’s not very fair to favor me to this extent.”

“Azuuul, don’t be so stubborn! You did this last time, too.”

“I surmise it will be much the same next time he graces us with his presence,” Jade says, eyeing you sympathetically.

“Ugh. Really… If you won’t let us treat you, at least promise you’ll take better care of yourself. No more skipping meals. Get a full eight hours. Prioritize yourself, too, okay?”

Azul starts for the door, so you miss the way he flusters up to his ears. They’re all very valid concerns, of course, but then he’s never been able to swallow the embarrassment that accompanies being unduly fussed over.

“I’ll do what I can,” he says instead and steps outside into the snowy afternoon.

You fold your arms over your chest and huff noisily. “What are we going to do with him? He’s in bad health and he still insists on being difficult. Must he faint before he realizes it?”

Jade emerges from the kitchen, sliding easily behind the counter where you stand. An amused glint shimmers in two-toned eyes. “I suppose we can only hope he’ll fix his bad habits sooner rather than later.”

“If only there were two of me… That way one could tend to the shop alongside you and the other could help him with his work.”

Jade embraces you firmly. With a giggle, you crane your neck to look at him.

“Two is much too troublesome.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because then I wouldn’t have you all to myself.” His lips curve into a practiced pout. “What if (Name) Number Two finds Detective Ashengrotto more desirable than her own husband?”

You reach up to pinch his cheek in light scolding. “You know that would never happen.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I would never. If I did, that wouldn’t be the real me. I love you too much.” You twirl out of his arms to collect the dirty dishes. “Hey, since he’s no longer here, what was really in Azul’s ramen?”

“I haven’t the faintest inkling, my dear. I used the same ingredients I always do. Perhaps he was tasting something that wasn’t actually there?”

“Maybe… He looked pretty tired, Jade.” You peer at your reflection in the broth. “I wonder if he’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure he will.” Jade follows you into the tiny, compact kitchen. “You do know his penchant for smoking has worsened. I fear his sense of taste may be compromised from so many cigarettes. That, and age. Oh, but these are merely my own theories. He might have caught flavors of a love he’s never known before on those ruined taste buds of his.”

“Ah, right. Because everything you make is filled with love.”

“Not everything. There’s still something I’ve yet to fill with my love.”

He presses himself against you, his hands settling on your waist. You roll your eyes at his very obvious flirting.

“I’m assuming that something is actually a someone?”

“Indeed. And she’s standing right in front of me.”

His arms snake around your front so that you’re effectively trapped between him and the countertop. His hands close around your breasts to grope you through your shirt. You shiver against him when his fingers brush against the precise area of where your nipples are. It’s when he pinches both between his thumb and index that you finally shut the faucet off, surrendering to his touch instead of the dishes piled in the basin.

“At least close the front. What if someone walks in?”

“Unlikely,” he murmurs, his lips hot on your neck. His fingers slip under your shirt to undo the clasp of your bra. “It’s slow today. We can manage.”

You brace yourself at the sink and gasp when he grinds against your ass. “T-Ten minutes.”

“Only ten?”

“Would you prefer five? Your mouth is so smart today.”

“My love, I need only seconds to unravel you. You’re quite easy.”

You bark out a sharp laugh. “I’m not the one with the hard-on, my darling.”

“You’re too alluring, even in uniform. So beautiful, always and forever, my sweet wife.”

“Flattery isn’t going to get you out of dirty dish duty.”

“How cold… You rival the snow outside.”

You shift slightly to face him, offering him an impish grin. “I’d hate for my Jade to freeze. Let’s warm up together, all right?”

You don’t have to tell him twice.

And all the while, your voices filling the kitchen in unison, bodies pressed close, the pot continues to simmer on the stove.

ii. and i am the idiot with the painted face. in the corner, taking up space. but when he walks in, i am loved, i am loved.

“Can I ask you something, Floyd?”

“What’s up?” he answers around a mouthful of udon. A few strands hang out from between his lips, and he slurps them up in a motion so fluid it leaves you impressed. As for the mess he makes… Not so much.

“What’s the secret thing that’s been passed through your family?”

Floyd blinks at you, lost. “The secret thing?”

“It’s some ingredient or flavor or…whatever that Jade says is a family secret. I have no idea what it is. He won’t tell me no matter how many times I ask.”

“Ohhh, you’re talkin’ about Mama’s pot, right? That thing’s been in our family forever. She gave it to Jade cuz I didn’t want it.” Floyd points with his chopsticks, playfully accusatory. “What? You into cookware now? I can getcha somethin’ if ya want.”

“What’s this about cookware?” Jade asks, poking his head inside. He looks warm and comfortable in his nagagi and haori, a pleasant sight for your eyes, but the broom clutched in his hands tells a threatening tale. 

Ignoring the fact that he so clearly eavesdropped, you wave him forwards so that you can straighten his scarf. Jade props the broom against the doorway before striding closer. He leans into your touch with a smug smile, which is shamelessly directed at his brother.

“Oh, you’re freezing! Let me fix you a cup of tea. You’ll catch your death if you spend any longer sweeping out there.”

“Thank you, my dear. I fear the chill is rather paralyzing…”

Floyd rolls his eyes. “He’s fine. Nothin’ he can’t handle.”

“I might just die.”

His dramatics don’t faze Floyd, but they do draw a chuckle from you. “We can’t have that.” You duck into the kitchen and return minutes later with a warm cup of chai. “Floyd was just telling me about your mother’s pot.”

“Was he now?”

“Only cuz Shrimpy asked.”

Jade blows at the steamy beverage to cool it before bringing it to his lips for a sampling. He hums his approval. “It’s quite special.”

Floyd slumps against the counter. “Whatever. It’s boring!”

“I suppose there isn’t much to discuss regarding an old pot.”

“Nothing we haven’t already mentioned.”

“Speaking of that… You thinkin’ about closin’ up the shop for the holidays? Pops’s been on my ass. He and Mama want you to visit.”

Jade gazes at you, but you’re already looking at him. “Should we?” you ask. “I’m not opposed. I just know you like running things here.”

“Not like you’re gonna get crazy business on Christmas.”

“No, but there are a fair amount of regulars who might stop by.”

“We should visit your parents, Jade. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, listen to Shrimpy. Mama’s been missin’ ya.” Floyd shovels more noodles in his mouth. “And afterwards we can all do somethin’ fun on New Year’s Eve.”

“That sounds great! Let’s do it!”

“S’no fun spendin’ the holidays workin’ yourself into the ground.”

“Exactly. Your brother makes a good point. What do you say, Jade? We’ll make the trip to see your parents and then come back in time for New Year’s Eve.”

Jade smiles, approving of the idea. “In that case, I should call Mother so she knows when to expect us.” Taking a final sip from his tea, he rises from his seat and disappears into the kitchen. Seconds later, you hear soft footfalls on the floor above.

“You really don’t know?”

Floyd shrugs. “No idea. The only thing that kinda fits the whole secret ingredient vibe is Mama’s pot. That’s been passed through the family. Other than that? I’ve got nothing.”

“Well… Yeah, that’s true. Maybe it really is nothing.”

Floyd laughs. “This sure means a lot to ya.”

“Of course it does! We’ve been married for two decades and I still don’t know what this ‘family secret’ is. Decades, Floyd! Surely he would’ve told me by now.”

“Is it really that important?”

“It is to me.” You gaze sidelong at the broom and inhale a steadying breath. “It feels like I’m not a part of the family if he won’t tell me something as simple as this. You’d think twenty years qualifies you as—”

“Hey, you’re always gonna be family to me.” Floyd’s hand reaches to cover yours. He hesitates and instead grabs another napkin. “Jade’s just bein’ a hard-ass. Gets it from our old man.”

“Do you think this ‘family secret’ is real?”

“Who knows? I’m sure he’ll fess up once he gets tired of playing this game.”

“Yeah, that sounds like my Jade. He’s really too much sometimes.” You shake your head and sigh. “Thanks for saying that, though. That part about me being family. It… It means a lot.”

“It’s the truth.” Floyd sets his chopsticks and chirirenge down, lifting the bowl to drink what’s left of the broth. He whistles, supremely satisfied, and slouches on the stool. “You ever need anything—doesn’t matter what it is or how much trouble you think it might be—just gimme a call. I’ll be there to help.”

“Thanks. A-Again. Truly.”

Floyd flashes you a toothy smile. “Don’t mention it.”

You collect his bowl, intending to bring it to the sink, but Floyd’s next words stop you in your tracks.

“Hey, Jade’s got that pot on, yeah?”

“The pot? Oh, yes, the pot! What about it?”

“Has it been stirred lately? You gotta do that once in a while, right?”

Your nerves, which had previously been pulled taut, smooth out. He’s referring to cooking. Nothing else. Just cooking.

“I’ll do that. Thanks for the reminder.”

“Mhm! Smells yummy, by the way.”

“Doesn’t it? Jade’s food is amazing.”

“Mine’s pretty killer, too. You gotta come over and try some.”

“If you’re cooking for me, you’ll have to cook for Jade as well.” You giggle to yourself as you cross into the kitchen, only for the laughter to stick in your throat.

Jade stands at the stove. He lowers the lid onto the pot and sets the wooden spoon aside. He was so quiet you hardly noticed him. How long has he been there? When did he return from upstairs?

“Oh, good timing! Floyd and I were just saying the pot needed to be stirred.”

Jade smiles and takes Floyd’s empty bowl from you. “Did we all have a collective thought just now?”

“Ooh, like telepathy?”

“Wouldn’t that be shocking? Three-way telepathy.”

You watch Jade set the bowl beside the others in need of washing. “That would be so noisy! Three times as many thoughts… I wouldn’t be able to hear myself think.”

“It’d be like watchin’ a show about the two of you,” Floyd pipes up from the front.

“Thankfully, that will never happen.” Jade guides you back out. You peer over your shoulder at the pot. “What a relief our minds aren’t connected. I don’t think I’d enjoy a stray listening in on our private affairs.”

You slap his arm gently. “Floyd’s not a stray!”

“Might as well be since it feels like he’s kickin’ me to the curb. So mean.”

“Not at all. I’m just making a distinction clear.” Jade’s smile is razored, his words catty. “You’re always welcome to visit so long as you keep your hands to yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hands off the Shrimpy. I gotcha.” Floyd pops up from his seat and stretches. It seems as if all of Jade’s remarks, each born from petty possessiveness, roll off his shoulders. “I’m not gonna steal her from you if that’s what’s got you so worked up.”

“You couldn’t even if you tried.”

Floyd’s once easygoing expression sours. “You’re beggin’ for cement shoes, ain’tcha?”

Jade feigns offense, placing his hands over your ears even though it’s a pointless gesture. “For my own blood to threaten me in front of my sweet pearl… It brings tears to my eyes.”

“All right, all right! I’m goin.’ Geez.” Floyd struts out the door, not wanting to be manually shooed out by Jade and his beloved broom. “And don’t forget about New Year’s Eve!”

You wave farewell until he’s vanished out of sight. Only then do you turn to address your husband. “You ought to be nicer to him. He’s your brother.”

“I was. Very nice, in fact.”

“Really? How?”

“I didn’t charge him for the meal.”

iii. me and my husband, we’re doing better. it’s always been just him and me together. so i bet all i have on that furrowed brow. and at least in this lifetime we’re sticking together. me and my husband, we’re sticking together.

Everyone thought the odds were significantly slimmer than that of younger women—impossible by your standards—but somehow you’re pregnant at forty-four. You suspected it when you missed your period and then, just days prior, woke up with a terrible bout of morning sickness.

Standing in the bathroom, staring at the positive test like it’s a relic from Atlantis, you pinch yourself. Hard. It stings, and with this your disbelief mellows into something astonished.

Pregnant. You’re pregnant.

And this time you’re ready for a family. You’re ready to raise a child. Somewhat. Amidst every positive emotion there's anxiety and fear, and they reign so tyrannical that you almost forget you’re meant to be excited. Tamping down insecurity, you turn the test over in your hands.

I’ve got to tell Jade.

But before that you think back on the timeline in an effort to pinpoint the fateful day. After mapping it out for a brief while, you arrive at what’s possibly the least romantic way to conceive a child. Going at it raw and reckless in the kitchen, bent over a sink filled with dirty dishes and pressed against the wall… At least it was in a place both of you treasure.

Not the worst place, you think. I guess it doesn’t have to be a typical rose-petals-on-the-floor situation.

You’re practically vibrating out of your skin when you tiptoe out of the bathroom. Jade’s already downstairs. You can hear him humming as he works to open the shop. Hastily, you change into your work clothes and stuff the test in your pocket.

Jade’s notorious for his surprises, but it’s never been easy to return the favor. You mull over this facet of his character as you skip down the stairs. How can you shock him with this good news when he makes it so difficult? It’s as if he’s always two steps ahead, expecting the unexpected before it can even happen.

Jade brightens when you walk into the kitchen. He meets you halfway, lifting your hand to his lips. “Good morning. How did you sleep, my pearl?”

You squeeze his hand. “Like the dead.”

He chuckles. “I’m pleased it was so restful.”

You glance at the pot then and an idea sprouts. “Is there anything else that needs to get done? Is the front opened?”

“Just about. I need to prep a few more things here and then—”

“I can do it! It’s just stocking up on what’s low, right? That’s not very hard.”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” You claim the spot he had once been standing in. He was in the process of filling a container with chopped green onions before you came down. “Go on and open the front. I’ve got things handled here.”

“I do so adore you.”

“I adore you more.”

“I adore you most.” He beams and stalks off through the doorway. 

Now left to your own devices, you move to the sink and turn on the water to wash your hands. If all goes according to plan, you’ll open the lid, pretend something’s wrong with its contents, and when Jade comes over to investigate you’ll act as if you’ve pulled the positive test from the pot. It’s a harmless surprise. You’re sure he won’t be expecting it, especially since he’s the one who does all of the cooking.

After confirming Jade’s still busy with the front, you creep over to the stove. That infamous pot awaits. You slide your hand into an oven mitt and grab hold of the lid, lifting it slowly. You’re immediately hit with the delicious scent of bone broth, so fragrant it almost has you salivating.

Focus! I can eat after the big reveal.

You open your mouth to call Jade over and then pause.

Has he stirred it yet? It looks a little… No, it’s definitely murky. Is bone broth supposed to be this dark? Maybe I just need to stir it.

You lower the wooden spoon into the broth and, scraping along the sides and bottom, mix expertly. The bones knock into each other from the disturbance, and you inhale deeply. It reminds you of the tonkotsu ramen Azul fancies so much. You could go for a bowl right now.

You’re about to take the spoon out and cover the pot when something floats to the surface. Without meaning to, you recall Azul’s words from last month: Sometimes we miss them, and so they aren’t found or retrieved until they start to float to the surface after everything thaws. Curiously, you scoop the object up onto the spoon. Broth spills over into the pot and then you see it.

A finger.

A human finger.

What the fuck is a finger doing in Jade’s pot?

The nail has been plucked off and the skin is sagging away, turned to pliable mush from sitting in the pot for so long, but it is undoubtedly a finger.

A very real, very human finger.

Bile slithers up your throat with thick, acidic fingers.

Fingers.

There’s another one and then another. Three fingers. You poke around in the broth, dreading what else you might see. You don’t want to find a full set of ten. Anything but that. You count five and that’s all you can stomach before you’re shakily covering the pot with the lid. You set the spoon and oven mitt down next, your mind reeling.

You want to vomit.

You’re about to vomit.

You’re going to—

“(Name)?”

You whirl to look at him. Your husband. He stands in the doorway, a dark look on his face. You can’t describe the emotion, or lack thereof. It’s more of a shadow. An oppressive shadow. An intimidating shadow. A shadow that seems to say: You’ve seen too much.

“J-Jade!” How long has he been standing there? How much does he know? “Sorry. I… I felt sick just now. I think I should…rest a bit more.”

The gloom fades away into perfect placidity. “My, my. That’s not good.” He takes a step towards you and pauses when you jerk away. “Is everything all right?”

“Y-Yes, of course! I’m just…not feeling it today…or something.”

“I suppose it can’t be helped.” His eyes slide towards the stovetop. “I do so dislike getting into disagreements with you. So to avoid that I’ll ask once and only once. What did you see in the pot?”

Your spine stiffens, straight and still as a board, and you hang your head guiltily. “I… I’m sorry. I saw… W-Well, I don’t want to believe it. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding or a mistake of some kind. It’s just that—um… I… I saw…”

Fingers. Human fingers!

“I saw what I think is y-your secret ingredient. The thing—” your voice cracks, and you swallow thickly to push rising bile back— “Azul tasted that day…” “And that secret ingredient is…”

Tears brim and spill over in silent, horror-struck waterfalls. You risk a glance at your husband, and a wobbly smile pulls your lips apart.

“Love.”

[liketheinferno2]

These aren't full ref sheets but I was trying to take some clear pictures of Hephaistos for later art reasons and then got side tracked doing all of the Pandaemonium bosses so here they are in order. Also for anyone following who doesn't play FFXIV and knows it as the catgirl game, enjoy this instead? VISUAL SPOILERS obviously.

Asphodelos

Warder of the Condemned: Erichthonios

Mythic Creation: The Hippokampos

Mythic Creation: The Phoinix

(+ familiars)

Hemitheos: Hesperos

(+ sexy fanfic redesign by Nemjiji)

To be brutally honest I never really liked either of these designs compared to every other Hemitheos we get, I think the really brutal black and red of the Phoinix is weakened by gold accents, but I still am always down for gay vampire surf rock. The Savage version kind of looks like Ultimalius as well if you've played XVI.

Abyssos

Mythic Creation: Proto-Carbuncle

Hrgrhhgrhrgrh

Hemitheos: Hegemone

^ My favourite detail on this is you can see the parasite's outlines in her robes and in her legs, then right through the eye holes on the mask to wrap around the torso. I'm convinced this version of Hegemone is functionally an ant being piloted by a cordyceps infection.

Hemitheos: Agdistis

She's very big

Perfect Imperfection: Hephaistos

I'm probably biased by Abyssos being the first raid I was there for day of release but these really are all fantastic. It's also when the story abandons all pretense of not being (at least partly) about family abuse and is loudly using the body horror and shackle motifs to talk about that. It's great. Hephaistos specifically is constantly bulging and twisting in and out of different forms like a highly unstable chimera and the more I look at these the more I notice parts that just should not be there. He's giving everything.

As for the Savage design It's a hard thing to rate as such but my favourite part is the veins that grow down from the eyeholes in his mask like bloody tears.

Thanks Abyssos I love you

Anabaseios

Mythic Creation: Kokytos

Dæmoniac Dungeon: Pandæmonium

It's really hard to communicate how huge this nasty tumor crab I zoomed out as far as physically possible in the game engine and subsequently ended up at a goofy angle staring up his nose.

Ephemeral Justice: Themis

Best boy. The double ended lance and second pair of arms are fantastic for this character.

Theos: Athena

In.. almost every final fantasy adventure you're fighting the real villain not at the very end but a little beforehand, the big iconic end boss is often more a metaphorical figure representing everything wrong with that first person's ideals. Athena cut out the middle man and became her own JENOVA.

I do like the moth angel, especially the hollow body full of dubious orbs, but with her eyes closed all the time it gives off the impression of this not even being the true body but some kind of anglerfish lure in the shape of a fairy... which might be true because this exists:

I really really love her twitchy anemone feelers and how the moth body ends up grafted to the rest of it waist down.

Anyway there's the gang I did not specifically intend for this to be design reviews I just wanted to have clear photos because when you actually see them in game there's other things to focus on. In hindsight I can appreciate more the theming of each tier and then the series as a whole, but my only (extremely obvious) observation for now is that every character Athena had a personal hold over is decorated in chains somehow and so I should have seen the Hegemone thing coming lmao. Heph and Aggy are still my favourites I don't think that's changing any time soon. I'm also noticing that Anabaseios is now just old enough for random DF parties to fuck up severely and I find that fun so I'm going to go fight the crab mansion now.

[tswwwit]

Cipher's Personal Portable Portal

'How they meet' won the poll!

So just to make things fully contextualized, as far as they're gonna be - here's the full first chunk of this stupidly long fic I'm writing.

I hope you enjoy!

Standing in the wreckage of the burnt-out building, Dipper wishes he didn’t know who did it.

Anyone else would have left some trace sign. A scrape of blood, a hint of burnt hair. A friggin’ decent eyewitness report, even.

But here, like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that - there's absolutely zero traces. No video footage, nobody around at the time of the crime. Not even footprints.

Dipper kicks one of the remaining supports, sending a puff of charcoal up from the impact. 

If he knew the bastard’s name, he’d curse it all to hell.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Dipper sits on a chunk of scorched foundation. He pulls his shoe off to tip the ashes out of it; there’s enough that the resulting cloud leaves him coughing. 

Around him, the scoured west wing of the museum is silent, still, and empty. A grey-black skeleton of its former self, filled with dust and charcoal.

This arson is yet another one in a very, very long line of crimes. They’re not just ‘unrelated incidents’, or ‘bizarre coincidences’. Dipper’s not ‘being paranoid’ or ‘coming up with some pretty weird conspiracy theories’. 

There’s only one person who could manage this. The same guy who turned a bank upside down - literally -  and the same one who impaled a mob boss on an oversized silly straw and gave tails to half of a household last week.

It’s all connected.

Each crime is marked with the same style, mostly by how remarkably weird they are. Along with a thread of magic, distinct in its composition. One so distinctive that it's almost a flavor. Though admittedly, without certain magical analysis, it’s pretty hard to detect. 

And if other freelance magicians would take the time and look at Dipper’s notes, maybe one of them would help find this asshole.

Dipper stalks through the burned building, fists balled in his pockets. He stumbles over a fallen support column, and nearly trips before he makes a hopping retreat back. 

Though the culprit has been at his game - whatever ‘game’ that is - for a good half a year now, this is the most destructive ‘incident’ so far. Nobody was hurt, since it happened in the middle of the night. The one relief from a terrible crime, that only objects were obliterated in the process - 

But the ashes speak for themselves.

Here, there’s nothing left.

He breathes in slowly. Then regrets the attempt at calming himself as he coughs again.

Whatever the culprit’s initial motive was, it hasn’t lasted. He’s grown not only in ambition, but also in his abilities. Things are escalating at a rate Dipper doesn’t like to think about.

Someone has to get to the bottom of this. Before it’s too late. Dipper’s got his number, metaphorically speaking, so. Well, might as well be him. 

And when he proves that all of this chaos was created by the same person - 

Well. A little boost to his meager reputation couldn’t hurt. Maybe a few medals and accolades. There isn’t a trophy for best monster hunter, but he can imagine standing on a podium and -

Dipper waves that thought off, swearing under his breath. Stupid. He has better things to focus on.

He’s the only freelancer on the case. Definitely the only one taking this seriously, the only one who thinks it’s the same person to begin with -  and even he’s starting to have some doubts about ever finding the bastard. 

Six months of tracking this guy down, and what does he have to show for it? A ramshackle compilation of incidents, a vague feeling of magic, and a description that could fit any bottle-blond actor with bad fashion sense. Scraps. He might as well pin them up and connect them with red string for all the good it does him.

Another kick sends Dipper hopping back, clutching his foot with a swear. He winces at the hole in the tip, he nearly punctured his foot on a nail.

Just his luck. Wrong place, wrong time, always just barely avoiding disaster. Dipper shows up whenever there’s an event, he’s got the means to follow the guy - but he’s always just a little too late.

Even worse, lately the guy’s been picking places… not at random, exactly. More like he causes trouble wherever it’d be the most annoying to follow.

The culprit must know someone is on his trail. But he’s not making it impossible to keep up, or even majorly difficult for a determined pursuer. Just really, really irritating, like making moves at three in the morning, or pausing just long enough for someone to catch up, then heading right back where he came from. At one point Dipper had to trudge through a literal swamp, only to find that bastard had sauntered in by baking himself a neat little trail right through the damn thing. There wasn’t even footprints to follow.

It’s a repeated point in Dipper’s notes. Whoever this is, they’re a total, absolute dick.

With a sigh, Dipper runs his fingers through the ash on the museum’s floor. Not a single thing is left beyond the shattered glass of some display cases, and the charred remains of the building. Even the enchanted metal tools have been melted into slag. 

The day before yesterday, he could tell something was up. Building energy, something that felt like it was made by the culprit. Something with the twinge of a powerful curse, coiled and being wound up like a spring. 

Dipper spent that evening convincing - okay, maybe also bribing, thank you Stan for the idea - the museum to let him borrow materials. The day after that, he spent all night, morning, and most of the afternoon running around slapping up anti-curse emblems. The entire south of the city warded, in a fine careful net of spellcraft. The work was exhausting. Both in running around, and in the amount of magic he’d needed to use.

But it was worth it. That evening, in the quiet and very uncursed city, all the emblems activated. Dipper would have sworn he sensed someone in the distance, cursing his own name. That night he went to bed with a smug sense of satisfaction, floating on a cloud of triumph.

Which is probably why the bastard burned down the museum next.

With another sigh, Dipper tucks his notebook back into his knapsack. He’s gleaned all he’s going to for today; in the fading evening light, searching more is pointless.

So much for all the magical artifacts. Most of those had come in really useful in messing with the guy. 

…How the hell did the culprit know where they came from, though? He’d need a near encyclopedic knowledge of artifacts to know which ones Dipper used, then track them back to their origin. 

Or maybe he just searched on the internet. It’s hard to tell.

Dipper just wishes there were more clues. But just like every other incident, the guy up and freakin’ vanished.

No human can disappear like that without some very irresponsible use of power. That hope is one Dipper’s hanging his hat on. After six months? He has to be reaching his limits. He’ll burn himself out before he can manage too many more incidents. Maybe Dipper will find him by stumbling on his withered, dissolving corpse.

Whoever this is is pretty strong, but no power is infinite. He can’t hide forever.

It can’t be too much longer. Won’t be. Dipper has a plan, he’s gotten really close, and - He’s good at his job, damn it. He knows he is. 

Taking a deep, slow breath, Dipper lets it out. Patience is the name of the game here. He’s just gotta keep moving.

One day, he’s going to catch up with that bastard. He’ll see the guy in the flesh. Then he’ll grab that stupid dick before he can escape, again, and wipe that presumably smug look off his probably ugly face.

Turning around one last time, Dipper surveys the destruction, stuffs his hands in his pockets - and pauses. 

A speck of light glints in the pile of ash. The last bit of evening sun, shining off a metallic surface.

Alert with surprise, Dipper scrambles over to the pile. Kneeling down, he brushes the dust carefully aside, careful not to disturb anything fragile that might shatter if handled wrong. 

One thing did survive. Thank fuck, it’s not an absolute total loss. Just, uh… Ninety-nine percent of it.

He scuffles through the still-warm ashes, cupping his palms underneath the lump and lifting it from its bed. The motion sends white puff rising up as ash slips away from the artifact.

A small black, squarish thing rests on the pile, a bit larger than both his palms put together. The material is faintly warm from residual heat, insulated by the ash it laid in - and there’s not a mark on it. Not even a scratch. 

Dipper turns the artifact over in his hands with a frown. The shining black surface reveals no obvious buttons or secrets. Just a kind of phone-ish shape, though more square and squat. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say a guest dropped it on the rush to escape. 

The fact that it’s still intact though. Nearly glowing with magic, a tremulous feeling under his palms - this is not dropped by some clumsy tourist. Not even Ford could put this together.

 Wiping at the object with his sleeve, Dipper manages to clean off most of the smooth surface. On one of the sides, dust clings to the thinnest of engravings. The very faint outline of an equilateral triangle. No runes or other magical scribing, just… a shape.

Dipper thinks back but - no, he doesn’t remember seeing this in the collection. A quick check online reveals…

Basically nothing. There are - were - a bunch of stone and metal slabs in the archives, all described so poorly as to be useless. Some are even bunched up in groups. ‘Magical slab 1-24’ and ‘Metal artifact 1-78’, no description involved.

Not surprising. Probably dug up in some mass excavation site, transported here, then never really looked at again. The bulk nature of the shipment means it was overlooked, its magical properties never discovered.

After today, he’s just glad that even one item escaped this onslaught. 

The other artifacts must not have had much to them. But some magical property in this artifact’s making must have saved it from the blaze. Fireproofing, perhaps? Against weird fire? That’s unusual. Maybe even unique.

As the only survivor, it really needs investigating. 

Dipper glances over his shoulder, then around. With everyone evacuated, it’s quiet in the rubble. Nobody here would notice if, say… a clue wandered off.

The artifact slips easily into his pocket. The shape conveniently looks just like a phone, even if the shape’s a bit off. Not something that would attract any attention.

Whistling nonchalantly, ducking out of the way of local law enforcement and any onlookers - Dipper makes his escape. 

Another day of pursuit. Another scene of disaster, the culprit there and gone in the blink of an eye. 

He’ll be up to something new, next. Never the same thing twice, never in the same place. 

Dipper will follow in his evil tracks, of course. But for tonight - his fate is another crappy hotel room. 

He ditches his backpack by the door, slumping against the wall and its chipped paint. He could start going through his notes, and the pictures of the arson. Put in more work, find further connections - 

But it’s been a long day, and he’s tired. He might be magical, but he’s only got so much to work with. A reasonable night’s sleep, if he can manage, will make the task loom less horribly over his tired brain.

With a sigh, he drops back on the mattress. There’s some bounce to it, springs squeaking like they’re full of mice. Hell, maybe they are. The type of room he can afford isn’t exactly decadent.

That, though, should be temporary. Dipper’s career is only just starting; freelancers in the ‘solving magical problems’ scene don’t get great rates. Especially as a beginner. Definitely without a partner; it makes him look super young. Like he’s just starting out, fresh-faced and not having any inroads.

Because this field is really stupid, and doesn’t pay attention to results. Dipper’s been fine on his own for years, and he’s done really cool things without that ‘networking’ crap. 

All by himself. Totally cool with that, because Dipper’s a cool guy, sometimes. If Mabel hypes him up enough on one of their phone calls, he almost believes it too.

Though it would be nice to have some backup, it’s hard to find someone who really gets the job. Or does it in the way that Dipper goes about it. The number of people who are willing to take long treks in hyper-magical territory to search for an obscure clue, or set up really complicated traps for  dangerous monsters, or talk over high-level magical theory while sitting in the rain all night just to get one body-snatcher are…

Well, besides Ford, who recently retired, there aren’t any. Only Dipper himself.

One day, things are going to change for him. All his effort will pay off. If he keeps solving mysteries, and fighting monsters, he’ll forge a reputation as someone who always gets the job done. No matter how hard it is, he can handle it. The work is picking up, too. The last six months have shown the biggest series of magical incidents in decades. 

And he’s gonna be the one to get to the bottom of it.

Dipper Pines, the guy who proved it’s all connected. He’ll have it laid out in facts and math, all the evidence. They’re all gonna see that he was totally right.

Once he finally gets this guy, everything’s going to start looking up. 

The sheets rustle as Dipper settles back, holding the artifact up over himself. He stares into the black surface, and a slightly distorted reflection narrows its eyes back at him. 

A good mystery always intrigues him. This one should take his mind off the other, irritating one for a while.

The only remaining object from the fire is clean and smooth. A mysterious creation, of unknown purpose. Clearly riddled with magic, too; Dipper feels it running just under the surface like a rapid current. It gives the artifact a weight that has nothing to do with mass. 

Power.

Did the criminal see this artifact, still intact after all the other magical objects were gone? Did he try to destroy it too, and fail? Or simply not notice he’d missed one out of thousands?

Whatever it is, it’s got a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Dipper casts a quick identifier, which comes back with nothing. He’s not surprised. That’s the first thing anyone would try. If it was that simple, he’d already have the full description off the site. 

With a shrug, he traces another set of runes, his own version, adding a little more oomph behind it - 

And the magic leaps back instantly, with the bizarre sensation of a bouncy ball hitting concrete.

“Huh,” Dipper says, thoughtfully. He sits up, hunching over the slab in his hands. “Now that’s new.”

A more subtle approach, then. Tracing the lines of energy with the barest brush of magic upon magic reveals something deeply complex. Thin layers twist together deep under the surface, building an entire circulatory system. Dipper has to put it down for a moment, suddenly worried that it is organic. 

When a cautious prod doesn’t get a response, he relaxes. Not fleshy, just complicated. Which also proves he was right earlier - the artifact’s just as powerful as he’d thought. The spellcraft is unlike anything he’s ever seen. 

Dipper rubs his hands together, starting to smile. 

Even if he doesn’t find the guy he’s after, figuring this out could be a heck of a win.

Several attempts later, he’s beginning to get why this bastard brick got tossed in with all the other junk. 

Nothing here is working. It simply deflects. Standard spells poing off of it like rubber, while giving his magical senses an odd, back-of-the brain afterimage of a circle with a slash through it; a firm ‘nah’. 

Dipper nearly chucks the thing across the room in frustration, before shutting his eyes and taking several, calming breaths. 

Okay, weird thing, weird enchantment. The ordinary stuff won’t work. The magical logic is… twisted in a way that leaves it incompatible with most everything. He’ll have to find a different approach. 

“What are you?” Dipper says, low and frustrated. He gives the artifact a shake, as if he can knock the secrets out like a rock from a shoe. “What secrets are you hiding in there?” 

No response, not that he expected one. With a wry smile, he taps the sleek surface with a finger, twice. “C’mon, man. Talk to me.” 

Huge yellow letters flash onto the black surface. 

HEY

Dipper throws the artifact, a bit awkwardly since he’s lying on his back. It sails in the air in a high thin arc, landing with a thump between his legs. He scoots rapidly backward, sheets pulling up behind him. 

The artifact lies where it landed, an unmoving brick.  There’s magic in the air now, but no sense of any spell building, ready to unleash power to blow his face off. The latent spellcraft of the artifact has just been activated.

More text displays on the surface, bare except for the glowing letters. 

To the jerk that’s swiped my private stuff: You got some nerve! I expect this back by interdimensional mail in a week, or trust me - there will be consequences.

Dipper waits a full minute before he lets go of the headboard. Tentatively, he kneels near the…

 Is this a phone? 

Clearly it’s a communication device of some sort, with the freaking text messages. A phone is the obvious equivalent, only - he thought it looked far older than that, something way before mobile phones. Possible ancient. Is that a coincidence, maybe, or is it secretly modern?

Dipper taps the ‘screen’, just below the glowing words. To his surprise, there’s actually a keyboard, what the hell. This thing keeps getting weirder.

Since it hasn’t already thrown a horrible curse at him, or burst into flames - it’s reasonably safe to assume that it’s simply ‘on’. Not ‘explosive’. 

With hands that are definitely not shaking, he picks it up, and types,

Who is this? 

His own text pops up in blue. A strange contrast to the yellow, but he’s guessing it’s for convenience - there’s no bubbles to tell who’s said what otherwise.

A few seconds of nervous waiting later, there’s a response. 

Oh hey, you answered! Well, human - You’re talking to the one and only Bill Cipher, Dream Demon, all-powerful master of the Mindscape! I’d say it’s nice to meet ya but you’re not supposed to have a direct line to me!

Dipper raises an eyebrow. 

Now that’s one hell of an introduction. It might even have been interesting, if it didn’t smell of complete bullshit. 

Complicated spellwork, sure. Incomprehensible architecture? Maybe. Dipper can admit it; he’s never seen anything with a web of spells on it this complex, in such small of a package.

But the idea that Dipper just stumbled onto a demonic artifact of all things. One that wasn’t instantly detected, recorded, then ritually destroyed is…

Someone’s fucking with him. 

Dipper rolls his eyes as he types back,

Really? Demon? You can’t expect me to believe that. 

What, you calling me a liar? ‘Cause I am, but not about this! I got better things to mislead mortals about. This is my property, not something for your grubby mortal mitts.

Dipper snorts. Guess this person’s sticking with the bit. Obviously whoever created this would want it back - but too bad. Whether they’re delusional, stupid, or just a flat-out liar, they’re really good at enchanting. It’d be a waste not to study their work. 

He lies back on the bed as he replies.

Sure, have fun roleplaying, or whatever, it doesn’t make a difference. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

ARE YOU CALLING ME A LOSER. MORTAL.

Hmm, I’m detecting a certain amount of ‘crying about it’, so. Yeah. Suck it, loser.

Smirking, Dipper settles back - then his half-smile drops, as he holds the ‘phone’ a little further away from himself. 

Though the blue fire building up in the screen looks like a bad sticker effect, the artifact’s also getting a alarmingly warm. It vibrates in his hands - then suddenly stops, cooling down. 

Ha! Alright, alright, I admit - you got some balls.

Maybe you’ll change your tune once you REALLY know what you’re dealing with! Might wanna check the connection, if you’re even capable of it! Mortal magic doesn’t reach across dimensions!

With a grimace, Dipper taps his fingers on the phone. It’s slightly cooler now, but still worryingly reactive to… whatever happened on the other end. 

Damn. Whoever this is, they’re not only really really good at enchanting, they’re also pretty confident that tracking them down won’t spoil their game. The confidence exuding from this ‘Bill’s’ words feels genuine.

Honestly, though, the suggestion is a good one. Dipper should have tried to trace the call the second he knew someone else was on the line. 

Maybe ‘Bill’ thinks he won’t manage to find him. Joke’s on him, though; Dipper’s amazing at finding stuff. He’s the best tracker of magical anything in years. Maybe decades. With a solid, stable connection right in front of him? Hell, he could do this one in his sleep. 

Time to call the bluff.

He casts the tracing spell, though it takes longer than usual. A few gestures and muttered ritual aren’t gonna cut it; he has to improvise around the strange construction of the enchantment. Even trailing along the magic seems harder than usual, like it resists mixing with his own, and it takes him a few attempts to match the signal. 

Once he finds the right way to tune it… the lead snaps along the already-existing connection, and zips away to find its source.

The line extends out from the shabby hotel room, a plucked string in Dipper’s senses. It twists around the phone, rising slowly. Invisibly passing through the walls and the - 

Ceiling? Dipper looks up on instinct, even though nothing is visible.

From there it swirls around in the air like a silly straw on steroids, and then - out, very far, in a way that isn’t up or down or left or right, just  

Away.

Dipper has to cut off the tracing spell before vertigo has him reeling. The swirling sense of standing on top of a skyscraper is followed by a flip in his stomach. That he’s using a device he barely understands that reaches out into something even more incomprehensible.

He drops the phone-artifact, trying to clear his head by shaking it rapidly. 

That’s not nearby. Not on this planet. Possibly, genuinely, not even in this dimension. 

Shit. Bill wasn’t bluffing.

Dipper wipes sweating palms on the sheets. To pick up the phone again takes an effort, willing himself to grasp it in unsteady hands.

A demon. 

All the monsters he’s fought, curses he’s broken, years of work tucked into his belt, and he’s never seen one of those. 

Demons are dangerous, evil, and very, very powerful. Consorting with them is by all accounts a terrible idea. He should never have picked this up. He should hang up, and throw the damn artifact out the window, hoping that nobody else makes as dumb a mistake as he just did. 

On the screen, there’s a long long scroll of yellow letters, filling the entire surface. ‘HA HA HA HA’ over and over and over again. 

Before he can think better of it, Dipper starts a response. He’s halfway through a sentence - what the fuck, that’s not funny- before he pauses.

Terrible evil monster. Stupid powerful. Probably Bill sensed the tracing of the connection, like he did with Dipper’s other testing. Bill wanted the result startle him. Because he thinks it’s funny.

Dipper grits his teeth, and glares at the screen. 

Actually, screw this guy. Dipper’s keeping the stupid phone. If for no other reason than spite. This ‘Bill’ guy seems pretty full of himself, like he’s totally above some human. He’s in for a bad time, then, because Dipper’s not going to let one little surprise scare him off.

Besides.  The average guy would get into horrible, even deadly trouble, whereas Dipper… sort of knows what he’s doing.  No, he is good at his job. Finding secrets, solving mysteries, thwarting evil jerks who think they’re oh-so-hilarious, the whole shebang. He does it all.

Taking another breath, hissing through clenched teeth - Dipper lets it out. Losing his temper isn’t going to help deal with an extradimensional being. He has to be careful.

He thinks for a long moment before he responds. 

Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Maybe. Then you should know I didn’t steal your… whatever this is. I found it lying around, and I just. Got kind of curious. 

HA HA HA! Of course you were! Careful with that impulse, kid, it kills more than just cats!

A jerk who definitely thinks he’s hilarious. Dipper rolls his eyes, then, rather pettily, decides to ignore that statement. 

More pressing questions take the lead. Like what the fuck he’s holding right now, and if there are any other nasty tricks in store. A little bit of him, bubbling under the surface, wonders what being a demon is like. What they get up to, common habits. Ways they could be tracked down and, y’know, defeated, maybe. 

Theoretically, he’s got a line to a bunch of innocent, totally not-thwarting-related information that could be super useful to someone trying to, maybe, be a super cool monster-fighter.

Dipper backspaces a bunch over some poorly thought out questions. First things first. Like what the hell he’s holding right now.

So. What is this?

Good question! The gadget you’re poking at with your sweaty meat-paws is paired to the one I have here at my place. A little one-on-one communication assistant, if you will. Once you started groping around with your magic, it wasn’t hard to tell someone had picked it up!

Dipper raises an eyebrow. Though he already has an idea… a little confirmation never hurts. 

Like, you got a notification? Or literally felt?

The latter! Kinda like smell, but by touching things with your eyeballs. And with all your prodding around you might as well have been stinking up the place! Your spells aren’t real subtle!

Hey, they’re subtle! Having weird extra senses is just cheating.

Sucks to be human, then! In that you suck at everything! What’s a LOSER like you gonna do about it?

Dipper nearly throws the stupid artifact again - but he holds back, gripping it tight. Instead he sits up, leaning down and hauling his backpack up from the side of the bed. 

Maybe Bill thinks he can’t do anything. That he’s some ignorant nobody, who doesn’t have any real skills or talent or doesn’t have any friends - but he’s got that wrong. Dipper’s not a loser. Bill’s not getting away with that bullshit.

One quick unzip and a bit of rifling around later, he finds what he was looking for. Carefully, Dipper bounces the heft of a flashlight battery in his hand. Shutting his eyes, he focuses on crafting a quick working.

Magic is all about energy, and its direction. Focusing power, conveying it from one place to another. Pushing anything across dimensions would take impossible amounts of energy, stuff Dipper doesn’t have. If it weren’t for a very convenient connection, already in his hand.

Dipper has nothing on hand to actually exorcise the guy - he’s not sure that’s even possible when Bill’s where he should be - but retribution is in order.

More text lines appear on the artifact. He ignores them. Changing this up to work with the demon device is a challenge, but after figuring out how to alter the tracking spell changing this one up isn’t hard. He adjusts the flow of magic this way, into the tangle of not-veins in the device that way, finishes the chant-

Then touches his tongue to the battery.

The jolt passes through him painlessly, following the spell. It zips along his nerves, down into his hand and from there - into the artifact itself. 

Where it should, theoretically end up right at that bastard.

Dipper tosses the battery back into his backpack. Picking up the ‘phone’, hunching over to stare at the screen. 

That worked. He felt the energy move… unless he got the math wrong. Or a detail of his spell. Or maybe demons are immune to electricity, and he just did something totally pointless. 

God. It might even prove Bill right, and wouldn’t that be the worst - 

The next line of text comes in. 

What the hell? A joy buzzer? That’s some real petty prank stuff! You seriously pulled that bullshit? And across dimensions?

A tense pause. Dipper taps the phone, checking for it heating up again - but another line pops up after a few seconds.

Y’know what, kid? I think I might actually like you! You’re FEISTY.

Dipper nearly does a double-take. 

But no, that - what? Aren’t demons supposed to be vengeful? He was half-sure he’d have to chuck the phone out the window before it exploded in his hands. 

In fact, you’re in luck! ‘Cause I’m pretty bored, and I can totally show you how to improve that jinx of yours! If you can keep up with a little theory, that is.

Because that’s not suspicious or anything. Conversation with a demon can only lead to ruin and disaster. He should absolutely, definitely stop this right in its tracks.

Still, Dipper shrugs, and types, 

Try me.

[gallaghersgal]

frat boy lip finding out that some new cocky, asshole freshman are being mean to other girls, let alone you oh it’s so over for them lip’s already got his foot on their neck (metaphorically or literally—depends on the situation tbh…)

obsessed w/ lip being so so protective over his little clingy crybaby gf ugh I need him to [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] no warnings, just some crying and a little bit of angry lip at the end!

when you step into lip's room with tearful eyes and mascara tracking down your rosy cheeks, he doesn't waste a second in scooping you up into bed with him. between situating you in his lap and kissing your wet cheeks he whispers; "who." not a question, a demand. "who the fuck made y'cry, baby? 'cause they're gonna regret it."

you inhale in a pitiful little sniffle and press your face against the firm muscle of his chest, shaking your head. "jus' some dick i-in the student center. h-he called my dress ugly!" you exclaim.

"the dress i bought ya? this gorgeous dress?" he asks, playing with the soft fabric of the skirt. he ruches it up past your thighs, letting it fall gently back over the swell of your ass. one firm hand rests there, the other cupping your jaw. "you think i would spend my hard earned money on an ugly dress? hm? dry the tears, sweet girl."

a wet laugh escapes your lips and an indescribable swell rushes over your poor, tormented heart. "no, y'wouldn't," you admit in a mumble as you wipe the remaining tears from under your eyes.

"good girl," he praises, scattering kisses all over your face in an attempt to hear that precious laugh of yours again. "so fuckin' sexy, this 's'ya color. he's jus' jealous, mad that y'so far outta his league. lemme show you, yeah?"

the worries slip from your mind in tandem with his hand slipping under your dress, and by that night you've forgotten all about it.

you don't remember the interaction until a few days later. you're seated on the half wall outside lip's frat house, a grin on your lips as you play bouncer alongside him. a loud, rude voice catches your attention and you shudder, pointing with the cig in your hand to a group of guys approaching the party. "lip, there! the one in the middle, that's the asshole from the student center."

lip gets a shit eating grin on his face and plucks the cig from your fingers, pushing off his spot on the wall. "y'want me to kick his ass, baby?" he kisses your cheek, not even waiting for a response before he marches up to the boy. "hey! who the fuck do y'think you are, huh?"

you hear the boy slur out some drunken excuse, his friends scattering towards another party nearby. it doesn't take long for him to swing at lip, at which you hear a hearty laugh rise from your boyfriend's chest. he catches the punch, twisting the boy's arm behind his back before leaning in towards his ear. you can't make out what lip says to him, but whatever it is does the trick because he ends up nodding solemnly. the pained grimace on his face is a laughable contrast against lip's cocky smirk as he walks the boy up towards you.

"what d'ya fuckin' say t'her, hm?" lip demands, stopping right in front of you. the boy is silent until lip twists his arm harder, drawing out a pained yelp. "i said, what the fuck d'ya say to her? or do i need to remind you."

"no, no! jesus, fine" the boy slurs, directing his gaze to you. "y'very pretty."

lip kicks his heel, not hard enough to knock it from under him, but just enough to hinder his balance. he pulls his cigarette from his lips, exhaling the smoke before demanding, "what did i say about respect."

"you are very pretty, ma'am," he repeats, pursing his lips before the next statement. "an' i'm a little bitch, w-with a littler dick."

you turn your gaze to lip, refusing to address the boy. "you can let him go, i guess," you tell him with a smile, and laugh when the boy stumbles.

"i don' wanna see you around here again, y'hear me?" lip calls out, flicking the ashes of his cigarette at the boy's retreating form.

[overtake]

“a sexual awakening so intense it registered on the richter scale” is the single best and most accurate description I have ever heard.

pov: you're 16 years old and doing the final test for your super license ahead of joining f1 as the youngest ever driver. you expect the doubt and hate, and you know you can prove on track why you deserve to be there once you actually get in a car, but until then, you just have to be the subject of everyone's headlines and criticism for a factor you can't control.

then this guy comes along.

race winner who got himself to a top team and is beating his world champion teammate, a cool older handsome charismatic guy with a giant smile and big brown eyes, beloved and kind while still being fiercely talented, competitive, and hungry? the guy who you met in 2011 and who gave you the time of day before you were old enough to sniff at the f1 grid. he's not even going to be your actual teammate (yet), but he still takes the time to tell you he's looking forward to seeing you on the grid when so much of what you've heard is nonstop criticism.

he tells you good luck for your super license with a big grin meant just for you

and this is how it makes you feel.

this is live footage of daniel ricciardo becoming a permanent fixture in max's spank bank. it's one of those foundational crushes you have at a young age that sticks with you for life and unconsciously affects "your type" forever and never truly goes away.

also, i just think everyone should hear the way max very softly says "he's a really nice guy, yeah" with so much affection packed into every word.

how are you not to psychosexually imprint on him? one look at that video and max was ready to risk it all. he's been metaphorically tucking his hair, kicking his feet, and giggling since day one. he found a guy who he could race hard, who would challenge him on track, but who would still make the miserable pr days better for them, who was always laughing at max's jokes every time he did his little glance over to ensure it landed. max is so fiercely loyal to his people, and daniel has clearly earned that trust.

tldr: max verstappen is number one dirlie and if he were on f1blr, he would be writing long posts with onboards, data, and that ☝️🤓 attitude of his explaining in detail why everyone is wrong about daniel, and i hope it haunts all the max fans who get their rocks off to calling daniel a washed asshole loser that max's porn folder is daniel late braking compilations.

[luveline]

𝐢𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

part one | part two | part three 

You don’t mean to make an enemy of Eddie Munson �� he’s handsome and talented, but he’s the biggest jerk you’ve ever met. Eddie thinks you’re infuriatingly pretty, emphasis on the infuriating. Eddie goes home, you’re on tour, and the lines between you both continue to blur.

fem!reader, enemies-to-lovers, rival rockstars, mutual pining, kisses! tender neck kisses <3, past miscommunication, angst, hurt-comfort, sexual tension, TW mentioned recreational drug use, drinking, smoking, swearing 

𓆩❤︎𓆪

Hawkins, Indiana, December 1990

Eddie listens to his walkman until it runs out of juice. Through the flight from California to Indianapolis, the hours-long bus ride that stops just short of Hawkins, and the final connecting bus on the outskirts. Some metalheads listen to strictly metal, but Eddie likes variety occasionally. Plus, he doesn’t think it’s possible to have ears and not love The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls. 

He has one girl on his mind the entire journey home. He tries not to think about you. He makes himself sick shoving you down into a crevice of his heart, so he admits defeat. His fingers twitch, eager to write about you. He has some lyrics in mind. Evil wretched girl with wicked sweet hands. Heart eater. Soft around the edges. 

He wants to write about your stupid chubby thighs and how they look in skirts. He wants to write about your wrists, your knees and their ever-present bruises. Metaphors for your sickly sweetness won’t stick; cruel becomes kind. Taunting turns teasing. 

It feels like it’s eating him alive, spine first. You’re gnawing on his ribs as he hikes the half a mile from the bus stop into Forest Hills trailer park. He can feel your thumb rubbing makeup off of his cheek as he drags his suitcase up the metal steps to Wayne’s —Eddie’s— front door. 

“Wayne?” he calls. It’s pitch fucking dark. He’s surprised he got all the way here without falling in some ditch. “Could you let me in? It’s freezing.”

He hears stirring from inside. He calls out again in case his uncle changes his mind. “Wayne, it’s me. I’m sorry it’s late. Please don’t leave me out here.”

He’s joking. Wayne would sooner shoot Eddie dead than put him in harm's way. He’s always been that kind of parent, hiding his deep rooted worry underneath a feigned reluctance. Footsteps shuffle and floorboards creak. The door opens between them, and Eddie shoves his suitcase and backpack inside without properly looking at his old man. 

“Eddie, what the fuck, kid?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says, looking up. Wayne’s squinting at him. He’s wearing jeans with deep creases. He must’ve been sleeping in them. “I timed it all wrong. Started coming home and I didn’t think about it. I walked here, you know that?”

Wayne hugs him. Eddie isn’t expecting it. It’s not like Wayne isn’t affectionate, he doles out shoulder claps and hair ruffles like candy, but their hugs are usually one-armed back-slapping affairs. This is a loose encircling with a scratchy cheek against Eddie’s forehead. 

“I’ve been worrying about you.”

Guilt sinks like a stone to the bottom of his stomach. Eddie kind of feels like he might puke. He wraps his arms around his uncle and breathes in his smell. Diesel and grease, sure, but so much louder than that is his mint and rosemary soap. 

The weight of Wayne’s arms over Eddie’s shoulders is one of his favourite feelings. He hadn’t realised how much he missed it, but then… maybe he had. 

He wants to tell Wayne there’s no need to worry, but he’s never been good at lying to him. “Think I might have fallen off the wagon, Wayne.”

“Well. Happens to all of us.” He pats Eddie’s back and steps away. He doesn’t look any older than the last time Eddie saw him. In fact, he looks good. Puffy-eyed but healthy. “I thought for sure I’d have to come track you down and drag you back for Christmas myself.”

Eddie locks the door and Wayne shuffles into the kitchen promising coffee and cake. He should protest, tell Wayne he can go back to bed and they’ll catch up in the morning, but he missed the small stuff like this, when he’d get home late from band practice or a midnight premiere of a sci-fi flick and his uncle would be sitting up waiting. 

Eddie loves being home. There’s something to be said about living like the rich —he loves all the high ceilings and endless cushy carpeting— but nothing feels as good as coming home. His room is exactly how he left it minus a few ashtrays and his super unsecret pot stash. The poster wallpaper and the cheap paint. His raggedy bedspread and the corners tucked in haphazardly by tired hands. Eddie resists the want to dive under the covers and slide into the dip in his mattress. He knows every box spring in that fucker, and he missed it. 

Eddie drops his bags at the end of the bed. All the clothes in his suitcase smell like Coors Light, so he changes into rags he left behind, a too-big pair of plaid pyjamas that slip down his hips and a sleeveless Motörhead shirt. Maybe. The emblem is worn to nothing but black lines. 

He follows the smell of coffee through the hallway and into the Munson kitchen, tightening the drawstrings of his pants as he goes, chin tucked to his chest. “I’m losing weight, Wayne, I’m like a fucking twig.”

“Don’t tell me that shit. God knows I taught you how to take care of yourself.”

“I’m stupid. I’m really stupid, actually.”

Wayne whacks the coffee maker. It whirs. “Pick a mug, son.”

“You been cleaning? I don’t wanna look down and see a spider in my cup.”

“Have you been cleaning?” Wayne asks. 

“It’s insane how much I haven’t been cleaning.”

“Some things don’t change.”

“You fucker,” Eddie says, laughing up a storm as he picks out his favourite mug, the Garfield one with a big scratch down the left side. 

“You fucker,” Wayne snaps back. “I should send you packing for the bad language alone.”

“They don’t make you clean your hotel rooms, Wayne, that’s the point of them.”

“I raised you better than that.”

“You did. I keep it classy, I swear, I just,” —Eddie sits down in his chair, watching Wayne stir in milk and sugar just the way he likes it, and feels more than sees as a familiar contentedness like a Gaussian film settles over their easy conversation— “don’t clean up after Gareth. He’s a monster.”

“Do me a favour, Eds. Try and be the best you can be, alright?”

He swallows. He purses his lips. A peculiar lump grows in his throat, but he bites it back and squares himself up. “Yeah. I will.” He thinks about all the parties and powders and girls. He’s never done any cruel shit to anybody and he’s a sweetheart with the ladies, but  there are times when he’d known he was lying before he even said he’d call. He thinks about some of the shit he’s said to you and has to wipe his sweaty palms off on his shirt. 

“I know we didn’t have shit when you were growing up,” Wayne says, not tearful or resentful, just honest as he passes Eddie his mug of coffee and sits down. “And all that money must feel good–”

“It’s not like that,” Eddie says.

“When I see my nephew on TV smashing up equipment worth more than his house–”

“I already told you on the phone it was an accident. And it wouldn’t be worth more than this if you actually cashed the cheques I send you. I know they aren’t bouncing.”

“I don’t want your money, Eddie,” Wayne says gently. It’s odd but not uncommon to hear him speak in such dulcet tones. “That’s not what I raised you for.”

“I know, you–” He cuts his insult off at the stem and scratches his head instead.

Eddie isn’t hankering for a tongue lashing tonight and his scalp is too itchy to focus. He hasn’t washed his hair in a week. It’s obvious just looking at him, curls weighed down and straightened out from the sheer grossness of it. “Shit, I’m disgusting,” he says. 

“You’re gross,” Wayne agrees. “I’ll cash a cheque when the bank opens and get you a bottle of degreaser.”

Eddie hides his smile with a long sip of coffee. It’s hot and awful, ‘cause no matter how much love Wayne puts into it, dollar store coffee tastes like burnt grounds from the get go. Eddie missed it more than anything. Sometimes he’s in the back of the queasy tour bus or lying on the floor in his hotel room coming down off of something risky and all he can think about is Wayne’s coffee.

Wayne has a hard and fast rule about drugs: if it isn’t green, I don’t want you touching it. Eddie still remembers the gasket he blew when he found that little baggy of red and white pills shoved inside an altoids tin. He can’t imagine telling his uncle what he really meant when he said he fell off the wagon. 

Hey, Uncle Wayne, I have this weird love-hate relationship with a girl I don’t really know, and I got caught up doing party drugs (unrelated to our relationship) until I got so high I blacked out, and when I woke up she was there and she was looking at me like you look at a bird with a broken wing, you know? Anyway, the memory of her face won’t leave me alone. It makes me feel like crying. So I haven’t touched anything in two weeks and I thought coming home for Christmas would make up for all the secrets I’m keeping, but now—

Now Eddie doesn’t know what he was thinking. He can’t tell Wayne any of that shit. He wouldn’t even know where to start. 

Wayne would ask something like, It took a girl for you to realise drugs are bad news? And Eddie would say back, No, that’s not it, it wasn’t just her. 

“I’m sooooo fucked,” Eddie says slowly, mildly, scrubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He drags his hands down his face and blinks against the burning he’s left in his wake. 

“You’re not fucked, kid. Lemme cut you a slice of cake.”

Wayne cuts him a slice of cranberry coffee cake and Eddie eats it in two bites. Wayne makes him a burger after that. He doesn’t know what time it is, if it’s closer to night or morning, but Wayne doesn’t mention it until the burger’s gone and an alarm clock is ringing. Eddie watches his uncle truck into the living room and feels crestfallen though he doesn’t deserve to. Eddie hasn’t been home in months. He imagines Wayne alone at the kitchen table with an empty greasy plate waiting on him and wants to cry again. 

Wayne returns in coveralls. He gets a good look at Eddie’s face and sighs, dropping a heavy hand into Eddie’s dark hair. 

“It’ll be fine,” Wayne says. 

I’m sorry, Eddie thinks. For being a bad kid. 

He’d said that once. Wayne was sweeping up a smashed plate after a long shift and Eddie, thirteen and defeated with an ache where his mom should’ve been, had been trying to apologise. It had felt so crushing, that broken plate. The last straw. He’d had tears running down his pale cheeks, his hands in his hoodie pocket desperately grabbing at one another. 

And when he’d said it, Wayne had just looked at him. On his knees with a brush, glass shards shining on the linoleum between them. 

You think you’re a bad kid?

Wayne isn’t old and he definitely hadn’t been back then. Thirty something with a crying teenager and what felt like all the world's self-loathing crammed into a tiny kitchen. Eddie’s older now, and he knows how much Wayne gave up for him. Not just his bedroom, which had been relinquished with little more than a shoulder squeeze and five dollars for posters, but a life. Wayne could’ve done anything. Could’ve been a rockstar. 

I ruin everything, he’d said. Teenage angst, maybe, but Eddie felt it in his bones. 

You ain’t ruined anything. 

He hadn’t known what to say so he’d cried, waiting for that nice heavy hand that tussles his hair and pats his back to finally strike out. 

Eds, you’re not a bad kid. Said so quietly. With a steadiness that meant truth. You’re my kid. Could I make a bad kid?

And yeah, there had been a threshold of sincerity and they were passing it. It was the late 70’s. Boys really didn’t cry. At least, not in public. So Eddie wiped his snotty nose in his sleeve and laughed, and then he got on his knees to clean up. 

“Try and sleep,” Wayne says now, older but unchanged otherwise. Still ridiculously forgiving of his not-so-young sprog. He looks at Eddie with his lips pressed together. Eddie wonders if he’s going to hug him again, but Wayne shakes his head. “Shower, you animal. I’ll be back early.”

Eddie sleeps. He showers. He washes his hair three times and doesn’t use conditioner so his curls don’t really curl but it’s fine. It doesn’t matter. He had a moment in the shower where he swore he remembered something you said to him when he was blackout on sniff cut with procaine and booze. Your voice tentative, the heat of your hand on his cheek. “Are you okay?”

He moans into his damp hands, limp hair hanging either side of his head and dripping into his pyjama pants. He can’t forgive his younger self for all the sleeveless shirts, not when Hawkins feels colder than the arctic circle and the window seal in the kitchen has been leaky for the last five years.

He thinks about going shopping, because no matter what Wayne says about degreaser, Eddie’s starting to realise that his uncle won’t be cashing any of the cheques he sent home, and if he wants Wayne taken care of he’s gonna have to do this shit himself, but he doesn’t know where his key is. 

“I’m a fuck up,” he says, catching his eye in the mirror as he straightens out. 

His reflection frowns at him. 

He did manage to get Wayne some shit from California before he came home; a real brown leather jacket from the 60s with minimal wear, though if Wayne wears it is another thing entirely; a Roy Orbinson record that’s miraculously unwarped despite Eddie’s poor packing; more sweatshirts than his uncle could ever wear through. Eddie knows he’ll try. 

There’s some other stuff. CD’s and a nice edition of War of the World’s. Whatever he could stuff in his backpack. 

“Are you going home for Christmas?” you’d asked him. 

He sat on the bottom step of a huge staircase and you the one above him. People walked around you without notice. Two rocks in a stream bed.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? You aren’t sure?”

He’d got stuck looking at your cheek, the soft curve of it and the highest point, where light like a small star had kissed you and turned his stomach, that’s how sick with envy he was. 

“I get it,” you’d said, “things at home aren’t always easy.”

“Not that. My Uncle Wayne is my hero.”

“And you still don’t wanna go home?” you’d asked gently. 

“It’s not about what I want.” He remembers this part in detail. He’d stopped looking at you, laying back against the stairs, each step digging into his back. The ceiling had been far away. 

You’d inched into his frame of view, looking down at him with an expression unreadable to his mixed up head. You weren't quite smiling. He still isn’t sure what it meant. 

“It is. That’s the whole point,” you’d said. 

Eddie’s all memory this morning. The ones with Wayne had felt less memory and more story, because memory is unfaithful, and over time we start to break down on the details, putting want in place of fact. But your face hovering above his as the soft strands of your hair ghost against his jaw, all your glitters and the shiny pink sheen on your lips, that’s closer. He remembers how you smelled, and how your tongue peeked out to wet your lips uselessly between words. 

Jet lag and the general feeling of you keeps him lethargic, but he cleans the house (and he’s always said house, even if some people don’t agree, it houses him, fuck you Jenny P from eighth grade grade) and makes dinner ready for Wayne when he gets home. He puts the radio on and tunes into Roller FM. When one of Godless’ songs comes on, he’s not surprised. He listens with his head lolled against the kitchen wall, eyes closed, and tries not to think about your fingers choking the neck of your bass guitar. 

—

Indy Rock Centre, Indianapolis, January 1991

Whoever arranged the tour is a sadist. You can’t believe that a team of professionals sat around a long glossy table with their coffee cups and finger foods and thought, yeah, that will work. You feel like you’re being fucking yo-yo’d between states. 

When you’d joined godless as a stand in for Millyanna, your dates had been plentiful but never as disorganised. Nothing compares to this shit. You wonder if going crazy is a sign of making it big, or if maybe you’re not cut out for all of this after all. 

Jan 22, Kalamazoo, Missouri. Jan 23, Toledo, Ohio. Jan 25, Los Angeles, California. Jan 26, Philadelphia; Jan 28, Indiana, Jan 29, Wisconsin. February? Back in Missouri, back in Ohio, a couple more state dates and then bam — Canada. Don’t worry though, after a week in Canada, you’ll never guess where you’re playing. 

Fucking Florida. 

At least you aren’t alone in your torture. For starters, there’s Morgan, your singer, and Ananya, your drummer, who will also endure and suffer. Then there’s the roadies, the techies and the groupies. The opening acts. The managers, the assistants, the personal assistants, the boyfriends and girlfriends and wives and mistresses. 

And what’s more, you're one of the hundreds of bands touring in North America this year. Maybe thousands. You certainly aren’t the first musician to have to suck it up and tough it out. 

Still, you like to complain. 

It’s your right, for dealing with Morgan. And also— you aren’t getting paid for the tour until after the tour is over, so really complaining is the wealth of the soul. You do get a weekly allowance, which is awesome and not something you were getting beforehand, working instead on an invoice. You’d play a show, you’d get paid for the show. This time you’re getting a flat rate at the end of the tour that’s been contractually agreed upon. It’s more money than you’ll ever know what to do with. One of the more shameful ways you waste time in your little bus bunk is trying to figure out where to put it.

I want a house, you think. A mortgage on a small, pretty house where the weather isn't too hot or too cold. And a puppy. Probably. Maybe a fish tank. I want a bed that spans from one wall to another and… 

You wince. For a moment, you’d seen something stupid, a pale face hidden in the pillow across the way. 

Two puppies, you think forcefully. 

You’ve played four shows already this week. You have one tonight in Indy Rock Centre, and another tomorrow in Wisconsin. You got to stay in the warm, non-vibrating luxury of a hotel room last night, but tonight you have to play the show and get straight back on the bus. 

“You’re gonna glare holes in her. What did she do?”

You stop your mindless staring and come back down to earth. Ananya’s smiling at you, thick eyebrows lifted in wait for your answering gossip. You’d been staring at Morgan where she’s sitting across the room in a plush armchair, cucumbers over her eyes and swarmed by makeup artists and hairstylists with a pedicurist at her feet. 

Ananya does all her make up herself. You want to ask her to do yours, but you worry her messy sweetness won’t suit you. She overlines her already big lips with a sticky red-pink, giving her an effect of having just been kissed (a lot), and rings brown eyes with a slick black kohl. 

“She hasn’t done anything. Yet. Today.”

“She has been a monster, hasn’t she?” she asks, sinking down into the couch with a sigh. She flicks her hair over her shoulder. Her curls are so healthy they bounce.

You hum your agreement and slide down with her. Touring again, Ananya has remembered how much it sucks to be alone without allies. Morgan gets especially volatile from the stress and close quarters. She’s nicer when you’re alone. 

She’ll still ditch you at a moment's notice, but you get it. It’s like high school. 

You miss Dornie. 

It’s cruel to make a friend and suddenly lose them. You can’t help thinking he won’t want to be your friend again the next time you see him. It had been so nice… so peaceful, to know there was someone in your corner. Dornie doesn’t care how famous you are or how much money you’re making. He just wanted to make sure you got home safe and talk about old movies. 

“I’m gonna go find something to drink,” you say. 

Ananya nods. “Bring me back a coke?”

“Yeah.”

Morgan stops you on your way out with a foot in front of your legs. “Hey, killer, I gave one of your passes to a fan earlier. Is that cool?”

“Morgan, when have you ever cared about my opinion?”

“Ooh, meow,” she croons, taking a cucumber from her eye to squint at you. “What’s the matter, baby? I figured you weren’t using them.”

You smile at her. You can’t help yourself. She stopped hurting your feelings a long time ago. “You want a drink from the machine?”

“Sparkling water, serf.”

If you smudge her nail polish on the way past it isn’t your fault. It isn’t cool with you that she’s given away one of your passes, even though you ask your general manager Angel to give them out at the beginning of the show every night. It’s presumptuous! Normal people don’t do stuff like that without asking.

Serf…

Your nose wrinkles. The dressing room door closes at your back and you take a moment to recall where you’d seen the bank of vending machines in the maze of white hallways. Indy Rock Centre is one of the biggest venues in Indianapolis, and you’ve been here before countless times on the other side to see Black Sabbath, Metallica, The Stacey’s, Doorway to Cooperstown. It’s where all the biggest and best get to play. You wish they’d given you a map. 

You can still walk around without getting recognised. You’re not a superstar, just a guitarist. You smile at people who smile at you and avoid the rest, dodging past black polo shorts wheeling equipment and busybody higher ups barking orders. Someone stands in a corner talking on a brick of a handheld phone. You stare at him for a bit. You’ll never get used to it, phones without wires. Next there’ll be TVs without satellites and electric guitars without amps. 

The vending machine shines like a red beacon at the end of the hallway. You hurry to it, feeding the machine your crumpled per diem one dollar at a time. You get a coke for Ananya, sparkling water for Morgan. When it gets to your own drink, the machine starts to revolt. It spits your dollar out unsympathetically. You pull it from the mouth and flatten it against your thigh.

It doesn’t work again. You nibble your bottom lip. Dollar pulled taut between your two hands, you lift your knee and rub it against your stockings. 

“Fucking fuck,” you whisper, watching in mild horror as the machine accepts and then rejects your dollar for a third time. 

You tuck it back into your purse, a pretty leather thing that clasps shut and fits perfectly in the small pocket of your jacket. It’s your luck, but whatever. They’ll probably bring a couple of bottles of water to the dressing room in a bit. Maybe even a cocktail bar. 

“Hey.”

Your internal monologue chokes. You question your senses for the split second it takes you to meet his eyes — baby browns, soft and flush with gorgeously long lashes. If there’s one thing about Eddie Munson, it’s that he has very sweet eyes. Not the kind you can replicate in daydreams. 

He’s dressed like a bitch. You’re so sick of him. He has his jacket tied around his waist and his shirt has no sleeves, the alarmingly shapely stretch of his arms on full display. Black ink climbs the hills and ridges of his stark veins, his herd of bats jumping as he offers you a dollar. 

You take it. You aren’t sure what to say, so you bask in the almost-silence, every nerve aflame as you feed the vending machine and click the button for your drink. Equipment cages rattle. Radios chirp. Your drink thinks from behind the red Coca Cola panel down into the bottom of the machine for collection. 

“What’re you doing here?” you ask finally, squatting to grab your drink. 

You stand, train your eyes on the floor, shove your drink under your arm, and crack open your purse to give him your defective dollar in exchange. He takes it without fanfare. 

“Are you busy?” he asks. 

Regrettably, no. The majority of soundcheck is done, and the show doesn’t start for hours. He gestures to the left and you follow, stupidly, with no idea where he’s leading you to and not a clue what he wants, leaving Morgan and Ananya’s drinks for whoever finds them. Eddie’s jeans aren’t as loose on his hips as they were the last time you saw him. His distracting arms are bigger, biceps like a taunt as he holds a door open for you. You take a breath as you pass him, but he doesn’t smell like anything. No sweat or cologne, no cigarette smoke. 

“Is it mean if I say you look good with clean hair?” you ask, squinting in the sudden brightness. 

He’s led you outside to the back of the venue. Your tour bus stands imposing at the end of the lot, surrounded by Godless branded vans and fancy cars. A truck beeps as it loads into the receiving area backward. 

“Probably.”

“You do, though. Look good.”

“So people tell me.”

Fuck, you think. Fuck it. If he’s gonna be weird about it then you’re pulling the olive branch back in and snapping it in half. 

The sky is white as snow. It hurts to look at, the sun like a steaming egg yolk covered in its own whites, thick clouds shielding her warmth. You pull the sides of your jacket together and button up, uninterested in catching a cold when the next six months of your life are planned down to the hour. Eddie puts his jacket on and zips it tight. 

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asks. 

“Why?”

He pushes his hands into his pockets. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he felt self conscious. “Why not?” he asks. 

You nod. You and Eddie aren’t friends, but you aren’t not friends, either. You’re being cold because you’re seized with embarrassment, not because he deserves it. You have memories of his hand on your cheek, and a cherry stem between his teeth, and you don’t know what you said exactly but you know it hadn’t been amicable small talk. You hate him for knowing stuff about you that you’d wanted to keep secret, and you hate yourself more for telling him in the first place. 

“I came home for Christmas. I’m back in Los Angeles tomorrow night.”

“That’s convenient,” you say. 

“Just had to see you before I went,” he agrees. Deadpan humour is terrifying on him. 

He ducks under a low tree branch and holds it away from your face. Together, you begin to walk down the street and into the city, over patched sidewalks and past brand new stores. The mom and pop shops of your childhood are mostly gone. 

Conversations between you two have this odd oscillation between over familiarity and stilted nothings. You like over familiarity better, when you’re both prone to misunderstandings. You’d take snipping at one another over this strange quiet.  

“Is it nice? Being home?” he asks finally. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? You’ve been here for what, a month now? I just got here, and it wasn’t to see the ‘rents.”

Eddie lifts his chin to the sky a touch. Molasses of sunlight seep through the clouds now, racing to caress his waved hair and high cheekbones. “It’s been awesome,” he says, his eyes closed. His voice like tree bark, uneven but tough. “Makes me wonder what I liked about L.A. so much.”

“All the free stuff,” you offer. “And free girls.”

“The girls aren’t free,” he protests.

“You aren’t getting free girls?” you ask. 

“Are you?”

“Would that bother you?”

Close-lipped, his tongue pokes the skin under his bottom lip.

“You think stuff like that bothers me?” he asks. 

“It bothers some people.”

Eddie isn’t meeting your eyes consistently, but you don’t think he’s lying when he says, “No, it wouldn’t bother me. But my Uncle Wayne would fucking kill me if he heard me agree that the women are free.”

“How progressive.”

He visually bites back a laugh. He looks up from his shoes and sees you smiling and it breaks him, his laugh sputtering out in bits and pieces. “Shit, I’m just trying to be an okay person.”

You concede, “Fine, the girls aren’t free. They’re just very happy to sleep with you for very little reward.”

“Some might say the reward was, you know, pleasure–”

“Ew–”

“Don’t be childish. What did you want me to say? The reward is a long night of rough and tumble fucking–”

“I liked pleasure better,” you interject. You dance around a huge crack in the sidewalk and pause as you and Eddie reach a crossing. “All night? Really?”

“Want me to prove it?”

“I don’t think you could, Munson.”

“I could…” He rests his hand between your shoulder blades. “But I don’t think we’re there yet.”

He encourages you to cross the street, weaving and winding between parked cars, moving cyclists, and a small family bulldozing passers-bys with a twin stroller. When you’ve crossed to the other side uninjured, his hand falls away. The heat of his palm lingers.

“Good observation.”

“You’re sarcastic today. Or is being on the road making you cranky?”

“Being on the road is definitely making me cranky. It fucking sucks, I forgot how badly it sucks, and I don’t get paid day to day like I used to.”

“Oh, you’re getting a flat rate now? Go you, superstar.” Your walk is more of a crawl, the two of you turned to the left side of the street where children shriek and giggle in the outdoor seating of a restaurant. Eddie stops. “How’s the allowance?”

“You get one of those too?”

Eddie bumps his elbow into yours. “We’re kids. They know it. It’s pretty shitty considering how much money they make off of us in the end, but that’s an asshole thing to say, right? We’re lucky.”

You roll your shoulders. He’s more than right. Coming from nothing, a small town, with no college degree and no rich parents to float you, Eddie’s right. You might have talent and you might work hard but so do a lot of other people, and you’re here, and they’re working for minimum wage back home still hoping. 

You wish every kid like you could get to where you are, but they won’t. You’re more than lucky. You should buy a scratcher. 

“We’re fucking lucky,” Eddie says slowly. “And it’s awful anyways.” He grins. “Come to dinner with me?”

You blink. “What?”

“Dinner? I’ve been there before,” —he points to the restaurant you’d stopped across from— “and it’s nice.”

You’re insane and you agree. It’s not too fancy to feel like you’re on a date from the outside, and once you’re indoors you feel relaxed. With a glass of cider in your hands you feel positively giddy.

Eddie slouches back into a velvet booth seat that might’ve once been red. He keeps the jacket on and you’re grateful for it, lest you see his stupid nice arms and turn ditzy. His nose twitches as looks out over the restaurant floor toward the kitchen visible through a long window. It’s warm but not stuffy in here, the air fragrant with browning butter and minced garlic. 

The menus are sticky. You pretend to pour over one, not knowing what to say to break the silence. 

“I know I said you were being sarcastic,” Eddie says, “but I think I meant quiet. Even when you sound annoyed, I can barely hear you.”

“That’s dramatic,” you murmur, proving his point. 

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Well, in what way?”

“What way feels wrong to you?” he asks. 

Trapped. You sip your cold cider. He raps his knuckles against the table. “Come on, what have you got to lose? What did you say to me before?” His eyes soften. “Nobody would believe me if I told them.”

You tap your glass with your thumbnail. 

“I’m okay,” you say honestly. “Most of the time, I feel fine. Or, I forget what’s wrong.”

Eddie flicks his own glass. “Is this about feeling like nothing?”

“I don’t know why I told you that.”

“I have one of those faces.”

“And you were feeding me booze.”

“Don’t say that. You make it sound so shitty.”

“It wasn’t shitty,” you say. “Free drinks, right? What’s shitty about letting a pretty guy pay for you?”

“You think I’m pretty?” he asks.

You kick him under the table. You don’t know what comes over you, shy at your own honesty and irritated with his ridiculousness. I let you kiss me, you want to say. I’d let you do worse. Of course I think you’re pretty. You aren’t cruel — it’s more of a shove with the toe of your shoe. Eddie laughs through a gasp and kicks you back, heel of his converse flat to your calf. 

“You fucking–”

“Sweetheart?” he finishes. 

“No, fuck you. You string me around with your hot and cold act and now you’re coming to my shows taking me to dinner,” —your voice stiffens, thickens, as you glare at him from across the table— “asking me how I’m doing? And I’m the one who has to explain themselves? You tell me, Munson. Do I think that you’re pretty?”

Eddie’s sort of frozen, like a laugh got stuck in his throat and he really is surprised by your sudden anger. You might feel surprised yourself if you had the wherewithal. As it stands, your irritation and your want for an answer is too much.

He hits the toe of his shoe into yours. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry. I’m not… trying to string you around.” 

He doesn’t say anything else. You deflate, ashamed of your sudden outburst. Tired of all the games. 

“I think you’re pretty,” he says. 

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

The food arrives and saves him. You want him to explain —you want him to expand, needily, on what he means and how much he means it— and he clearly doesn’t. He grabs his fork and starts shovelling pasta into his mouth like it’ll magically turn the conversation to something more palatable for him. 

“I’d like to change my answer,” you say.

Eddie swallows harshly. “Can’t. All compliments have been locked in. Maybe at our next cat fight.”

—

Eddie’s heart isn’t pounding like he worried it might when he asked you to follow him into the bathroom. He pictured sweaty, shaking palms, his hands hesitant, a reminiscent picture of a past self who didn’t know how to make girls make noise. He thought the next time he was alone with you, it would be the tragic scene from the movies where the boy bears his heart and the girl can’t accept it. He’s not expecting you to understand. It’s getting to the point where the mean shit he said to you isn’t made up of words anymore but the image of you in the Prover Theatre with your sparkling dress and your dull eyes. He hates that he made you feel that way, and he should say sorry. He feels fucking sorry. 

“Don’t cut me,” you say, quiet so you won’t be caught together. 

“I won’t.”

“When was the last time you did this?” 

“It’s like riding a bike,” he insists. “I haven’t forgotten.”

You simper. Propped up on the sink’s counter, your skirt hiking up your thighs (imagine him covering his face with his hands, rocking his head from side to side, you’re wearing garters) and your jacket falling into the basin. You’ve turned one arm toward him trustingly, but apprehension plays clear as day over your mouth. He wants to remark that your mouth is pretty, but it’s not the right word. Perfect feels closer, but again, it’s not what he wants. He has a fascination with how you talk and when you don’t, how your lips have a mind of their own sometimes, nibbled and popped and pouting. 

“It’s easier if you take your shirt off.”

“How many girls believed that one?” you ask happily. He’s ecstatic. Dinner perked you up and now you’re all smiles and warm laughs. He doesn’t know why you’d been angry with him (he does) because you started it (not really), but you got something off your chest at least. 

“None,” he says. “I’m serious that it’s easier. But you really don’t have to take it off for me to make it look good.”

Eddie wields his small pen knife toward your arm. 

“I like my sleeves,” you say as he takes the hem of one such sleeve into his free hand. 

“Don’t be a baby.” He pulls it taut from your skin. You’re both smiling. Carbs are good like that.

“I have fat arms,” you try. 

He’s out of his mind. Eddie leans down and kisses the top of your arm quickly. “Shut up,” he says.

He doesn’t have time to think about what he’s done. It’ll torture him tonight when all he has for distraction are hotel sheets, and then tomorrow on the red eye back to L.A. He honestly doesn’t wanna look at you because if your nose is even slightly wrinkled he’ll have to turn to the gross toilet in the corner and chuck up, but he also doesn't want to freak you out. He looks up at you from under his lashes. 

You look flustered. 

Not disgusted. 

“I’m doing it,” he warns. 

“Yeah,” you say, nearly normal. “Fine. Make me look cool.”

“You admit that I look cool.”

“No.”

Eddie digs the tip of his pen knife into your sleeve and starts pulling. The fabric tears away in a jagged-lined but even circle around your arm, broadening a tantalising stretch. His stomach hurts a bit. To reach your second arm, the one furthest from him, he has to take up station between your spread legs. Or maybe he doesn’t have to, but he does, your thighs like two warm spots either side of him as he leans in close. 

“And this is what’s gonna make them all like me, right? This is the cement of my street cred?”

“Your street cred? No. And I don’t think anything you do could make them like you.” You lean back at his words. He pulls you back in, fingers braceleting your arm as he fakes taking a measurement. “If they don’t like you already, they won’t. Not your fault, not your problem. Who says you even like them?”

“I do, though. That’s my problem. I even like Little Miss Fleetwood,” you grumble. 

He raises his eyebrows to show he’s listening, stabbing at your sleeve and tearing slow. “She still tripping you up?”

“No. I’m just trying to make you laugh.”

He laughs under his breath. “Mission accomplished, baby,” he murmurs. 

Both sleeves sliced, Eddie steps away from you, ignoring the heat in his stomach to take you in. People who don’t know where they stand shouldn’t be so close to one another, he decides, ‘cause wishful thinking has him marking your hands as wanting. Your fingers move slowly as if through water, tip of your index on the left hand stroking down the back of your right marriage. Eddie pins salaciousness on everybody he meets —coke is falling out of fashion fast but sex is always in— but he can’t get a faithful read on you now. He wants you to want to be kissed. Doesn’t trust that you do. 

“You look edgy.”

“In a good way or a bad way?” you ask.

“An awful way.”

You go quiet, your hands go still. You raise your head until it’s too much, and he realises he’s been moving back in. He drops the penknife in the sink on top of your jacket, putting his hand on your freshly bared arm and bunching the sleeve up as much as he can without it pulling at you. He’s greedy and he wants to palm at your skin like an asshole, that’s not your problem. 

“That bad?” you ask. 

He angles his face over yours. He needs two inches maybe three, and you’d be kissing. His hand falls down your arm to your elbow, clasping weakly over your skin. 

“No,” he says. He can barely hear himself. 

Greedy. His second hand comes up to your face, waiting, and when you lift your jaw just so he slots his hand under it and holds you. 

“What are we doing?” you whisper. 

What are ‘we’ doing? 

“Nothing you don’t want to do.” He widens the gap between you. 

“I know– I know that.” Your arm ventured forward, fingers twisting around the hem of his shirt. You tug it gently, pulling him forward again. “I just don’t understand it. You. I don’t get what’s happening, Eddie.”

“Well… I was going to kiss you.” Eddie fights to sound the way he feels, out of his element but so earnest his chest aches. “I really, really… want to kiss you.”

It doesn’t feel like admitting defeat, as he’d initially thought it might. Neither does it feel confessional. You can’t confess to a secret already known. 

He kisses you just once. A light brush of his lips against yours. Anymore than that and he knows he’ll start making promises like someone who has room for them. His eyes scrunch closed hard and he struggles not to squeeze your poor cheek as the pressure of your lips builds, as they part, as he pulls back and you chase him. He can’t kiss your mouth anymore than that, but your hands are grabbing at him, pleading and twitching and cold against the searing skin of his abdomen as they search underneath his shirt. Eddie feels the soft curve of your hip under his hand, knowing he can’t fuck you here, and undecided on whether that’ll be his ruin or his saviour. 

You shudder as he kisses down. His hands are hungry but his mouth is sweet, gentle like you deserve as he noses down the column of your throat. 

“I don’t get you,” you say, your fingertips sewn into his hair, scratching over his scalp lightly. Your breath catches as he parts his lips. His teeth scratch over the damp crescents of previous kisses. 

He loses himself in the ticklish feeling of your hand and the heat of your skin. “Hm?” he hums. 

“I understood you better when I thought you didn’t like me.”

He kisses up to the soft crook of your jaw before edging you away, just enough to see the sad set of your eyes. 

“Hey,” he says, utters, like you’re trading secrets. His thumb rubs your cheek, a rough touch. He’s never been much good at aligning his words with actions; his heart and his hands. 

He doesn’t know what to do to fix your sad frown. He kisses you again in case that’s what you wanted but couldn’t say, and it works for a handful of blessed, wretched seconds. You kiss back hard. Eddie has to break it to take a breath. 

You rest your forehead against his. It slides slowly to his nose, and eventually you’ve bowed your head, your hands slipping down to his elbows. 

“I feel sick all the time,” you say. Your hands flex against his skin. “The only time I feel alright is when I’m playing– when I’m making something.” You press your head to his chest. “Or when I’m with you.”

Eddie thinks of all the shitty decisions he’s made. His restlessness, his bad attitude. His propensity to assume the worst. How he’d taken your thumb rubbing a smudge off of his cheek in the Prover Theatre as a jab, rather than a helping hand. 

He wraps his arms around you. 

Your head fits under his rather well. 

“I know what you mean,” he says. And out of everything he’s told you today, that’s the hardest to say aloud. 

Eddie hugs you in the dim light of that dingy bathroom knowing he’s running on borrowed time. All too soon, you’re pulling apart and he’s helping you off of the counter unnecessarily. You don’t hold hands on the way back to Wings Stadium. He thought you might. You’re quiet. He tries to cheer you up, feeling more and more like he’s done something wrong the closer you get to the venue.

He doesn’t have anything to offer. You’re both on tour now. He doesn’t have a clue when he’ll see you next, or what he’ll say when he does. 

Miraculously, he gets you back to your dressing room. He gives your cheek a quick squeeze. 

“Play well tonight,” he says. 

“I always play well.”

You do. He watches you from the VIP section a couple of hours later, impressed. Mildly nauseous. His thumb worries the edge of the pass until it splits in his hand, paper coming apart from cardboard. Your singer might be a handful, but she knows when to be discreet. He slinks out before your set finishes through a side entrance, and his head races with your image. If it weren’t for your cut sleeves and the flank of your upper arm glowing under the stage lights, he’d put his kisses down to surreal delusion. 

Eddie doesn’t notice the lone photographer hiding in the eaves. 

The photographer notices him. 

𓆩❤︎𓆪

!!! thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed! if you did, please consider reblogging, it helps so much! Let me know what you thought, what bits you liked and what you want to see next

can you feel another spat coming along 0.0 I honestly had so much fun writing this one especially the scene with Wayne and then the end scene in the bathroom <3 it’s always crazy to see hours and hours condensed into chapters like this but idc I’m having the time of my life and hope u guys r too! the word count is now at a solid 26k I believe though so it does feel rewarding in that way

[scatterbrainedbot]

I AM SPINNING I AM PACING I AM FULL ON FROLICKING IM SO EXCITED

@d1sc0rd1a THANK U FOR THESE TAGS

okayokayokayokay so pretty much all of these questions will be Officially Answered properly in the character design/intro pages im working on but also i am physically vibrating with excitement about the fact that you noticed all these details and i have very little self control so! lore dump time!!!

(minor tw for mentions of leos self-harm/self-destructive anxious behaviors and unhealthy coping skills)

- mikey does indeed have curly fur! i believe he would be considered a 'rex' rat (pictured on the left) for this trait? though the curls can be more easily seen on mice (pictured on the right). or, at least it seems that way. have not delved too deeply into the details of rodent genes and husbandry, but id assume its the same sort of mutation considering curly haired mice are also referred to as rex sometimes? either way hes a extra floofy bby 🧡

-as for raphie, unfortunately being more fluff and less shell than the average rapheal comes with its downsides. especially if you and your brothers occasionally encounter things like territorial dogs, hungry cats, or sewer crocodiles while exploring places ur dad said not supposed to go. (most of his scars will have more ninja related stories, but his ear i think got messed up from something very animal. probably around age 11 ish? old enough to sneak out from dads protection but young enough to not fully know how to handle himself alone against real danger. thankfully his ear injury looks worse than it actually is for the most part, as the damage was largely to the outer ear. his hearing wasnt super affected, except that he now has a bit of a harder time being able to track/pinpoint noises origins if its on his right side.)

-also yep! dons got some glasses that just clip/rest on the bridge of his nose! theyre mostly just for home use, as they do fall off if hes knocked around. in the field he has some goggles he tends to use (theyre helpful as they have multiple additional functions like heat-imaging, extra zoom/telescoping, and recording capabilities. but also theyll give him headaches if he wears them for too long without breaks). contacts are theoretically also an option but he absolutely hates the sensation of putting them in. so sometimes when hes tired he'll just not bother with either clips or goggles and just squint and struggle. leo hates when he does that lol.

-speaking of leo, he is def an anxious baby :) he has a few patches of fur missing on his hand cos he has the tendency to tug on it while hes thinking. he yanked and chewed on his own tail a lot when he was younger too, which is why when hes older he usually wears some wraps to cover the scars left from that behavior. he finds those scars specifically to be kinda embarrassing and shameful because they werent from any battle or life-lesson, just his own 'inability to control himself'. all of his brothers have repeatedly called him out on the fact that that is not a healthy way to think about his anxiety or mental health, but leo insists hes fine. hes kinda convinced himself that a proper warrior always has control over his own body* and his own thoughts, thus he should be able to just like willpower-brute-force his way into 'being better'. (this line of thinking pisses raph off so much he has to leave and go hit something)

Splinter also tries to talk him through some of that internalized guilt/shame/everything, but splinters very metaphorical, poetic, and indirect when it comes to talking about Big Things, which combined with how much leo gets caught in his own head, makes it kinda hard to gauge how much these talks actually help

*this is made extra fun considering leos also ftm trans, so he is faced with a body that fundamentally disobeys him perhaps more than the average rat-man.

-and im still going back and forth between a few species for splinter, but im leaning mostly towards an African Spurred Tortoise! they have these beautiful if kinda subtle geometric shell patterns and are the third largest species of tortoise in the world. the only thing that doesnt fit perfectly with Splints is that (allegedly) their lifespan in captivity is around 50ish years, whereas im p sure Tortoise Splinter is well over 75, probably closer to 90 when the boys are born and hes mutated into Old Man Papa.

but maybe hes just a particularly long lasting African Spurred Tortoise.

the Hamato family has taken very good care of him for many decades after all. :)

(well. until everything all fell apart, that is.....)

[tonight-i-may-see]

He loves me not (Aaron Hotchner x GN!Reader)

(Note: Here's a little explanation of hanahaki disease for those who haven't heard of it: x)

cw: hanahaki disease, slightly gorey and gross descriptions, unrequited love, gender neutral reader, ANGST, death.

word count: 1.5k

dividers: x

tag list: @ralvezfanatic @softhairedhotch @samsgoddess @pisceslovrr

Guilt.

That's the last thing you should have felt staring down at the palm of your hand after the agony and panic you'd just experienced, but as the air made it back to your lungs, you were overwhelmed by it.

All he'd done was smile at you. That's it, just a quick, reassuring smile as he went past you to his office. Yet here you are in an empty hallway coming back from hacking up a lung. It had been going on for a while now, only recently it seemed to have worsened from once a month to almost every day. Even now it felt like every time he looked at you there was a rattle in your throat that needed clearing. 

The outcome itself had worsened too with time, they started off no bigger than baby's breath, but now they had grown to roses, thick and blood soaked that make you gag as you pull them from the back of your mouth. ‘Well, at least it's only the petals…’ you think to yourself as you go to the bathroom to wash your hands and dispose of what had been expelled from you. You shudder to think what it would be like if stems got involved…especially roses…

“Y/n?” Shit. Emily. 

You scrub your hands quickly after tossing the petal in the trash, glancing over at her and smiling as she looks up from her phone.

“You okay? You just walked off in the middle of your paperwork…”

“I'm fine,” You assure her, hoping there's no blood on your teeth. 

It’s convincing enough that she leaves you be, giving you time to wash the taste of copper and soil from your tongue. This couldn’t keep happening, it was only a matter of time before someone found out and tried to take you to a treatment centre, and then they’d all know. Aaron is married, you could never do that to him or Haley, so you’d resigned yourself to at home solutions and managing your symptoms by…well…hiding them.

Eventually you make it back out and are immediately called to the table, keeping your eyes fixed on JJ as she gives you the case information. Hotch sat in the same seat every time, so it was easy to ignore him and avoid another disaster. Most paperwork days went like this, 50% done and then you’re off again, giving you even more paperwork for when you get back. It was one of those things that made you whisper how you loved your job as you resisted the urge to actually bite a chunk out of your desk. You feel someone reach towards you as you stand, but you move out of the way before they can stop you in case it’s him. Fortunately it’s Emily, and she follows you down the hall, hand on your arm and a look of concern guiding her brows together. “Hey, what’s going on with you? You stood up like you got electrocuted.” 

A shaky sigh slips from your mouth, and you shrug, faking a tight-lipped smile. “Just a little tired, I guess I’m jumpy.” 

You weren’t. Not like this, anyway. You knew that, and so did Emily, but she also knew you were stubborn as all hell and if you didn’t want people to know something- you’d take it to your metaphorical grave.

Two and a half hours later, everyone stood in a small but relatively functional sheriff’s office. The case was pretty cut and dry, a local killer targeting public areas by a town she felt wronged her as a child. Most of the case was spent on different errands with JJ and Rossi, anything to avoid being left in a room with Aaron, you knew with this small of a workstation you’d have to speak to him and an episode would be close to unavoidable.

It doesn’t take long to track the unsub down, finding her at the scene of her first childhood crime. You approach her carefully with everyone else’s guns trained on her as you try to convince her to turn herself in, she’s hesitant at first, but with a few minutes of talking between you it finally seems like she’s calming down-

Then she lunges at you.

Everything happens in slow motion, Morgan runs to pull her back while someone else pulls you too, turning you to bury your face in their chest. Everything is a blur of panic and adrenaline, any noise muffled by your pounding heartbeat while you catch your breath…which is when you smell it.

His cologne.

You are wrapped in Aaron’s arms, one of his hands on your back and the other stroking your hair as he tries to get you back from your startled state. Little does he know, he’s making everything else worse.

The burn is slow at first, like a scraping on your throat that you might be able to wash away with some water, but as you walk to the car with his arm around your shoulders it grows into a firm pressure- then a blockage. You can only clear your throat so many times before it moves enough that you have to cough it out, and you do at first. Until there’s another, and another, and soon enough you’ve fallen to your knees, trying desperately to catch your breath as petals clog your trachea. It’s too much- you can’t even tell what the others are doing through your dizzy head and frantic attempts to inhale through the blood and flowers. 

Aaron, as anyone would, panics. He tries his best to smack your back to help your coughing, but when your breathing goes from strained to nearly non-existent, he knows he has to act. “What’s wrong with them?” He shouts, looking at the others for answers he wouldn’t be getting, but Emily still tries.

“Are those petals?” Horror laces her tone as she’s struck by a realisation. The avoidance, the way you’d been so jumpy earlier and had gone to her with questions the past few weeks instead of Aaron…

“Hanahaki…” Spencer says it as the word springs to mind for her. “Hotch…you’re the only one that touched them.” They’re outside, but the temperature drops when they all realise what you’d been hiding. You were in love with him, with your boss- a married man. It didn’t take a genius to realise why it had gotten so bad, the stigma the disease held in the first place was enough to make those that caught it wary of getting help.

It occurred to Aaron at that same time that you had been acting strangely, he had been so caught up with Jack and Haley that he hadn’t had time to notice you. You had been one of his closest friends, once upon a time, but when Haley got pregnant…that’s when it started. Frequent dinners with the two of them became monthly, then special occasions with others, then…nothing. Hell- you’d even declined his invitation to the dumb superbowl party the two of you crashed at Sean’s every year…and he hadn’t noticed. Maybe if you’d said something, or if he’d seen the signs earlier he could’ve let you move past it- he could’ve let you down easy and had his best friend back just as fast. He frantically thinks that maybe there’s still time, and cradles you in his arms, his breathing shallow as he sees your eyes start to roll back.

“No. No, no no-” Hotch jams his fingers in your mouth, almost down your throat, frantic to save you as the petals and blood cling to his fingers. “Please-” He whispers, trying to keep your mouth angled down so anything in it will drop out. You stopped breathing over a minute ago, but he still holds your body close to his chest, desperately crying over it.

“I love you, I love you so much, please don't die- I love you- why isn't it working!?-” 

It wouldn't. Of course it wouldn't. Aaron Hotchner loved you…but he wasn't in love with you. Yes, you were his best friend, but you were just that…his friend. His friend who brought wine to every dinner, his friend who was the first to meet his baby boy after Jack's grandparents and at the same time as Haley's sister, His friend who sat through every late night phone call where he stressed over Sean’s future…And now you’re gone.

Blood had been dripping from your mouth…Aaron didn't notice till Rossi took you from his arms and helped the paramedics bag you up- who had called them? He didn't know, he was too distraught just seeing you lifeless. Even after you were gone, your blood and those petals coated his hands and shirt.

He wanted to grab you by the shoulders and scream at you, how could you just sit back and let yourself suffer? How could you be that selfish?- No. No, it wasn’t selfish. You were anything but. You had chosen to let yourself die to something entirely curable so that Aaron could’ve lived his life none the wiser to how you felt…so that he could be happy with his wife and their new baby. His life was supposed to be perfect…but instead he was left with a disease you’d passed onto him…one entirely incurable.

Guilt.

[gatheringbones]

[“Later in the day, while Heather and I were making the bed and talking about the chores we needed to get through the next morning, she used a male pronoun in regard to me. “Well that’s gonna be weird, huh?” I said. “Not saying ‘he’ for me anymore.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “I mean I want to transition. I want to become a woman… fully.” She paused and fell silent. I think the revelation that I was a transsexual truly hit her in this moment. She slowly started to comprehend that this didn’t mean I’d simply be cross-dressing around the house. It started to hit me, too. I wanted to transition genders, and there was a lot more to that than just hormones and surgery. Neither of us fully understood what it meant yet, or where to start.

The next day Andrew and James met me at the studio to talk about plans around the album and the future of the band. Jordan came, too, as he was again filling in as our manager. Until then, I’d been telling them that I was writing a concept album about a transsexual prostitute—the metaphor behind the feeling of having whored myself out to a record label was thinly transparent since James, Andrew, and I were all processing our own post-traumatic stress disorder from the past couple years of music industry hell. Previously, I’d been able to sneak a few subtle metaphors about my dysphoria in here and there. But an album focused entirely on it? I didn’t know how to explain that, and the new songs were not sticking with the guys.

James could make out a few lyrics to the title track through his in-ear monitors: “You want them to see you like they see every other girl / But they just see a faggot.” “Hey, man,” he said between takes. “Are you saying ‘faggot’ on this song? It sounds like you’re saying it a lot. Are people gonna be cool with that?”

I realized that the reason the words weren’t connecting with them was that they didn’t have the context. So I came out with it. I didn’t mean to, I just wanted them to understand. I couldn’t hold back the momentum of the day before. Once the truth was spoken, it could be contained no longer.

“It’s about me, and how I’m a transsexual. This is something I’ve been dealing with for a long time,” I told them. Once I started explaining it, I couldn’t stop. It was like an out-of-body experience where I saw myself, but was powerless to hold back the flood of words. “I want to start living as a woman, and to be referred to as Laura. This is something I’ve thought about a lot and isn’t going away, so I might as well embrace it.”

No one knew what to say once I finally stopped rambling. The three of them just sat there in the studio control room, looking down at their feet or at whatever lit-up piece of audio equipment their eyes could find, focusing anywhere but on me. We’d had some heavy conversations over the years—emotional moments where we’d told each other off or outright quit the band—but nothing compared to this. Andrew’s usually warm smile was locked in since I started talking, and it looked like it was going to melt off his face. His skin flushed red, trying not to flinch. There was nothing any of them could say. I broke the silence by asking them to come smoke a joint with me. We got high standing in a circle in the open back doorway. “OK, well,” I said. “I guess that’s all we’ll do today. How about we try again tomorrow?”

We shared the most comically awkward group hug, a horrible mess of pats on the back and overly extended stiff arms. They left, and I locked the door behind them. Oh fuck, I thought. I called Heather and told her that I had just come out to them. It felt unreal to speak these secrets aloud, hearing myself verbalize thoughts that had only ever existed in my head.

The guys had an hour and a half back to Gainesville to think about all that had just been unloaded on them. James has since told me that as he sat there stoned on that long drive home, a lot of memories over the past 15 years suddenly started to make sense for him. My lyrics, my behavior on tour; one by one, he had tiny flashes of realization about me in this new light.”]

laura jane grace, from tranny: confessions of punk rock’s most infamous anarchist sellout, 2016

[reallyhatethiswebsite]

cat and mouse with Raphael and Tav for cutie anon (this got way too long im sorry)

Read on AO3

-

Making wagers with a devil were never a good idea, but Tav’s sense of self-preservation had dissolved long before a cosmic tadpole was put in her head. Besides, she had it on good authority (her own) that this particular devil (usually kind of sort of maybe) played fair, and since she was already warming his bed and wetting his cock whenever he wanted, she felt she had little to lose. Still, she’d waited until he was in a good enough mood before she proposed her idea, just in case.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” said Raphael, one fine eyebrow raised, “you want to…play. Yes?”

“Yes,” said Tav, trying not to squirm at the flat, juvenile way he phrased it. He sat squinting behind his desk in his study as she made her sales pitch, as if to say: make me understand why you’re wasting my time. “A cat-and-mouse kind of game, since you’re so fond of that metaphor. I’ll hide somewhere in the house, and you have to find me within a certain amount of time or you lose.”

“And why,” he drawled, though Tav knew him well enough to see he was considering it, had already mentally abandoned whatever he’d been doing, “would I agree to this?”

“Let’s make it a wager. If I win, I get to keep those gauntlets of hill giant strength.”

“Ah, the ones you’ve already put your pilfering hands on several times…” Tav blinked innocently. Raphael tsked. “What do I get when I win?”

She shrugged, ignoring his ‘when’ not ‘if’. “That’s up to you. What do you want?”

The devil smiled at her then, a slow, smouldering thing that lit simmering flames in her belly. Excitement raced through her blood. Therein lay the secret, the thing she truly desired from this game: to be hunted by Raphael, the cambion, the devil she’d chosen as her lover. On some level Tav was certain he knew, and she was also certain it appealed to him just as much. “Hmm…I think I’ll decide my prize when the time comes,” he said, eyes half-lidded. He rose to his full height. Tav experienced a sharp thrill. “Alright, little mouse. You have yourself a wager. Shall we begin?”

“Rules first. I get a five minute head start. If you don’t find me in, let’s say, twenty minutes, I win. And you can’t cheat, either. No using your debtors or tracking and location spells or anything like that. Fair and square.”

“I don’t need to cheat to catch you,” Raphael purred, amused. “I’ll play by your rules, as long as you keep playing by mine and stay out of the places little mice aren’t meant to be. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can.”

“Good girl. Well, then…” He slunk around his desk, gently dragging one claw along its wooden surface, staring at her the entire time. He leaned against it, crossed his arms. Tilted his head. His tail swayed, hypnotic. He was ready to play. Tav’s heart began to thunder. “Time’s ticking, pet. Better start running.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. Tav spun on her heel and took off. A nervous, girlish giggle escaped her. She considered if, perhaps, she’d bitten off more than she could chew, but in for a penny in for a pound. She didn’t have a particular hiding spot in mind, aware of her lover’s penchant for reading her mind (no matter how many times she told him not to) and how that technically wasn’t a violation of their rules. Instead she’d be his antithesis right now: chaos.

Her shoes were too loud and slowed her down so she ditched them, the marble warm beneath her bare soles. She thought of him waiting in that study, a panther coiled and eager to prowl; a silhouette in the dark, clever eyes glowing as he counted down the seconds. Her stomach tightened. Anticipation set her teeth on edge. She knew the House of Hope well, but couldn’t match the knowledge of the man who’d designed it. The likelihood of her winning was low, but she’d overcome such dire odds before – and in truth, she didn’t really want to win.

Tav hadn’t been counting, was unsure how long she had left before he began the hunt, but she got as far from Raphael’s study as she could manage, finding a nook behind one of his huge, garish statues to tuck herself into. She knew better than to hunker down. She wouldn’t be staying in one spot. She crouched, sat on her haunches, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At first, the wait was fun. She was a little breathless, giddy, tense. Every small sound startled her. She expected it to be him, yet he never appeared. She didn’t even hear the distant jingle of his stupid boots, a sign she should move. As time dragged on, Tav’s calves aching, she began to wonder: had she beaten him? Surely not. Maybe he’d juked her, pretended to indulge in her silly game and then left her to squat in a corner like an idiot. That sounded like something he’d do. She frowned, chewing the inside of her cheek, considering her options. She couldn’t tell if twenty minutes had passed.

A cold shiver went up her spine. The tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose. Tav stiffened, suddenly aware she wasn’t alone. Slowly she turned her head to peer over her shoulder and there he was, perched like a gargoyle in the space behind her, so close she’d touch him if she leaned back just a few inches. His manic grin was all teeth. All fangs. Black and yellow eyes glittered with satisfaction. How long had he been there?

“Meow.”

“Shit!” Tav shrieked. She tumbled onto her ass in shock. The devil cackled, rich and mean. Tav didn’t think; forced herself up on her feet and fled.

“That’s it, little mouse,” Raphael crowed, “run run run, as fast as you can…”

He’d found a way to trigger her fight or flight instinct. Of course he had. Tav’s blood roared in her ears, her heart smashing against her ribs. The devil was in hot pursuit now, his stride quick and powerful, footsteps thumping on the stone.

“Your fear smells delicious, my pet,” he called out. “I can’t wait to taste it.”

Doors closed on their own in front of her, corridors sealed off with magic barriers. The devil was herding her, Tav realised, back to his study where all this began. Where there was nowhere else to run. She came to an abrupt stop, heaving for air. She turned, arousal, exhilaration and dread warring in her mind. Her cunt was wet, nipples hard, knees shaking. This was exactly what she wanted. Her devil loomed in the doorway, savouring his prey. His feast. That hypnotic waving of his tail returned. It meant something in devil body language, Tav knew, but her thoughts were too scattered to recall.

“I guess you win, huh,” she managed. Swallowed a lump in her throat. Raphael didn’t answer immediately; she couldn’t break his intense gaze, couldn’t escape, couldn’t completely place the way he was looking at her. Tav watched him scent the air, realised he was scenting her, the smell of her sex, her excitement. He released a rumble of approval, his cock already hard and tenting his trousers.

“Yes,” he finally said, his voice deep and thick. “And what a delightful little prize I’ve won indeed…”

He approached her with the finesse of a stalking predator, burning with sexual intent.

“Down comes the claw, right?” Tav breathed. The devil smirked. With that claw he effortlessly opened her blouse, a single swipe scattering buttons all over the ground. She gasped. Raphael leered at her breasts, her flush chubby nipples, before he pushed her blouse over her shoulder so he could lick the sweat from her pulse point. Without ceremony he yanked her trousers and her smalls down to her ankles, growling when he felt her slickness and heat on his fingers. Tav sighed when he touched her pussy, but it didn’t last. She was his prize and he would do as he wanted with her.

Raphael splayed her out on his desk, spreading her thighs apart to fit his bulk between them, forcing her to free her feet from her trousers – naked from the waist down while he remained fully dressed. He kissed her deeply, hard, forked tongue licking behind her teeth. One of his hands entwined with hers, their fingers linked, his other unbuckled his belt enough to free his erection. He didn't tease, just guided his cock – nudged her sloppy clit with his leaking glans – and pushed into her. They groaned in unison when he bottomed out. She felt so full. He stayed still for a moment, savouring the hot grip of her cunt. His tail kept swinging to and fro. Tav wrapped her legs around his waist, crossed her ankles at the small of his back. The new angle slid him in deeper, the fat head of his cock nudging the entrance of her cervix.

“So wet,” the devil crooned, “so warm, so tight…”

Then he began to move. Lazy, languid thrusts, if they could be called such when all he did was flex his hips to drag his fat cock in and out the way he liked. Every slick sound of his dick working inside her harmonised with her soft gasps and his rhythmic grunts. He pinned her free hand to the desk, linked those fingers too. Pressed himself flat against her, kissing and biting her damp mouth as they fucked, slow and indulgent. There was something so intimate about it. They'd never had sex this way before. He engulfed her completely. Tav wished they were naked so their skins could touch, the closest they could truly be; the closest she would ever allow him to her soul. Fleshy ridges and soft barbs on his dick snagged and rubbed in every right place. Her nerves were ablaze. He was barely doing anything – this was obviously for his pleasure, not hers – and yet she mewled and gasped into his mouth like a wanton whore each time he re-sheathed himself. She’d already been so wired from their game, and now… She couldn't catch her breath. A first in their relationship, Tav climaxed before Raphael did. Not with a bang, but a scorching whisper; humid and electric, pulsing through her veins, settling in her guts. Her moan was broken, quiet. Her devil swallowed it all.

“Yes,” he hissed, greedy, delighted, “give it to me…”

Her cunt squeezed and contracted, milking his cock for something he was almost ready to offer. Tav trembled, grasping his hands so tightly it would be bone-crushing for a normal man. Raphael seemed to relish it instead, snarling softly, kissing her again and again, sticky lingering brushes of their mouths. He sucked on her tongue, bit it, and she whimpered.

“Such a good girl. Such a sweet little mouse. So pliant. Ripe for the taking. For me to take.” The more he babbled, the closer to orgasm he was. The roll of his hips sped up, hard enough to bounce her breasts if the broad expanse of his chest had given them space. He chased his end almost mindlessly. “You played well, my treasure, but, ah, I always win…mmmm…”

The devil pressed his forehead to hers when he came. Tav got lost in the inky abyss of his eyes, framed by his spreading wings. He stared into her soul, his expression twisted in possessive lust, as he pumped her womb full with spurts of hot cum. You are mine, he declared with every movement, every single thing he did. You are mine. He was beautiful and terrible. She was his. He didn’t pull out, choosing to keep them sealed together, cock-in-cunt, as he softened. He rested in her arms, nuzzled her neck – mindful of his horns. His panting eventually melted into strange raspy purrs, and as she freed their hands to stroke his hair, Tav realized with gentle dawning horror that she loved him.