#Okay the biting tape recorder isn’t really connected | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ollieofthebeholder · 4 years ago

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leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3.

Chapter 36: Martin

It’s an interesting weekend, to say the least, partly because of the startling news Sasha uncovered that Jonah Magnus isn’t the only avatar to attempt to extend his life (Jon Prime apologizes profusely for not telling them that, but Sasha points out that it wasn’t exactly important at the beginning and they have to discover some things for themselves) and partly because Tim tells them, Saturday night, that he thinks he’s got enough of a handle on his abilities that he can focus on a single person or object and not risk being blinded by anything else around them. He thinks he can control it. Jon is apprehensive, but agrees that if Tim really wants to test it, he’s willing to let him try a controlled test on Sunday.

They call Sasha, who turns up around teatime with the Primes. One by one they sit opposite Tim in the living room while he takes a deep breath, relaxes, and lets his eyes go slightly unfocused. For each one, he describes what he sees to them while Jon Prime jots down the notes for him, then passes the notebook to Martin so he can stand before Tim. They all know Jon Prime has been marked by all fourteen powers; Tim says he’s hoping to just get clarification on one or two colors he isn’t sure about. It’s apparently too much for him, though, especially since he’s done all the others first, and he passes out. He comes around fairly quickly, but he’s still weak and shaky and both Jon and Martin declare the test at an end. Tim doesn’t argue, but he also won’t go lie down on his own, and the Primes and Sasha quietly let themselves out so the other three can go to bed early.

He’s still a little shaky on Monday morning, but seems in good spirits. Jon hesitantly offers him one of the statements they’ve been saving for Jon Prime; Martin lets them argue for a couple minutes about the recordings before interrupting gently to ask, “Do you actually need to record it for it to count?”

“What?” both of them ask, turning to him in surprise.

Martin shrugs. “I mean…the recorders don’t belong to the Eye, right? So it’s not the act of actually recording them that feeds it. It’s just the reading of them. The…consumption, I guess? If you just go back into the shelves or into the Cavern of Secrets or whatever and read it out loud, that ought to be enough, right?”

Jon and Tim look at each other. “That’s…actually a good point,” Tim says finally. He holds out his hand, and Jon gives him the statement. “Be back in a bit. I hope.”

He brushes off their offers of help and half-staggers towards Document Storage. Jon watches him go, then turns to Martin. “How did you think of that?”

“They mentioned once that…” Martin glances upwards. It’s hard sometimes to be precise without actually mentioning the Primes, so he decides to take a risk and hope Elias’ attention is elsewhere. “Your counterpart used to go out and pounce people to get their statements. But he didn’t record them, just…listened to them. And since we really don’t know what’s actually behind the recorders, except that it isn’t what’s feeding us in return, it just makes sense that he doesn’t need to make it ‘official’ for it to count.”

“God, I never thought of it that way, but you’re right. We really do have a…symbiotic relationship with that thing.” Jon sighs heavily and runs a hand through his hair. “I really shouldn’t let you three read any of these statements, but…”

“I don’t think there’s anything to be done about that now, Jon. We’re too tightly connected to it. We could none of us ever deliberately use the abilities it gave us again and I bet there’d be just enough…accidental occurrences to weaken us until we died. Starving ourselves won’t starve it.”

“You might be right, but I don’t have to like it.” Jon brushes his hand against Martin’s and changes the subject. “What are you working on today?”

“Um, we found another statement involving that space station, so I was going to see what I could dig up on that.”

“Good. Just be careful. I’ve got another backlog of recordings to do.” Jon grimaces. “Make Tim take it easy.”

“Easier said than done, but okay.” Martin smiles.

It’s easier than he expects, honestly. Tim is at least pretending to take care of himself, so when Martin tells him that both he and Jon want him to be careful, and Sasha makes it unanimous, he does. Apart from Jan Kilbride’s statement, everything else they’re looking into is something they all know is false, but they have to go through the motions. It’s oddly soothing, in its own way. Most of the morning passes with the three of them simply murmuring to one another when they find something interesting or mocking obviously false statements.

Tim and Sasha have a standing lunch date every Monday, something they’ve apparently done since they were in Research; Martin joined them once or twice, back at the beginning of everything, but bowed out after a while. It’s not that he felt uncomfortable or unwelcome so much as it is he feels like that’s their thing and doesn’t want to intrude. He waves them out absently, a pen clenched between his teeth as he tries to winnow down the list of Jenny Mackintoshes to a reasonable number that might be the one mentioned in the statement, false though it may be—they have to be sure, after all.

Less than five minutes after they leave, Sasha’s desk phone rings. Technically it’s for the Archives as a whole, and it used to be on Jon’s desk, but since that’s where he does his recordings and the relatively infrequent ringing forced him to have to redo a number of them, Tim managed to sweet-talk someone into installing it out on the main floor. Sasha’s desk is just the one closest to the connection. The ringing sounds more like a doorbell than a phone, and Martin’s still not sure it actually connects to the outside. He leans over and snags the receiver. “Archives, Martin Blackwood speaking.”

“Hi, Martin, this is the front desk.” Manal, as always, sounds slightly apologetic for having interrupted him. “There’s a Ms. Melanie King here to see Mr. Sims.”

“Thanks, Manal, I’ll be right up.” Martin hangs up the phone and glances towards Jon’s closed office door, then decides to just go get Melanie and let Jon know when they get back, if it’s important.

The front area of the Institute is a bit hectic, which it usually is this time of day as people pass back and forth on their way to lunch. He dodges around a few people, murmuring an absent response to the greetings of a woman who could almost be Quentin Blake’s drawings of Miss Trunchbull brought to life if she was a nicer-sounding person, and makes his way over to the front desk. Melanie King stands there, coat still on her shoulders and arms folded over her chest, tapping a foot impatiently against the floor, scanning the room as Manal looks up at her in amazement and adoration. Martin bites back a grin and approaches. “Ms. King?”

Melanie turns to him, eyes narrowed, and studies him for a second. “You’re—Martin, right? You used to work in the library?”

“Yep, that’s me.” Martin’s kind of surprised she knows that. “Martin Blackwood. You need to talk to Jon?”

“Yeah. You’d think at this point I wouldn’t need an escort.” Melanie says the last part almost under her breath.

“You’d think, but Elias gets his knickers in a twist about the oddest things sometimes,” Martin says. It elicits a surprised giggle out of Manal, who quickly covers her mouth with one hand and glances at the steps that lead to the first floor, to Rosie’s office and then the Institute Head’s. Sound travels oddly up those stairs from time to time, and now that Martin knows why the Institute was built, that doesn’t surprise him anymore. “Right this way…thanks, Manal.”

To her credit, Melanie waits until they’re halfway down the stairs before she says, “Does her mummy know she’s skipping school?”

“She’s almost twenty,” Martin says, briefly counting back to make sure he’s adding her age up right. “Been working here a couple years. I don’t think she was all that good a student.” He’s also fairly certain she pulled herself out of an abusive home life, or at least a shitty one, but he’s not going to say that out loud.

Melanie looks tired, but also determined. Martin feels like he’s got a mouthful of seltzer and bites his tongue to keep from asking her if she’s okay or what’s wrong; he knows by now what it tastes like when there’s a statement in the offing, and he doesn’t want to accidentally pull it out of her before she’s ready, or before Jon is. Something about her eyes says she’s only going to want to make this official.

Something about the way she looks at her wrist—take that, Tim, I’m NOT the only person under the age of forty who still wears a wristwatch—says she’s in a hurry, so he asks, as neutrally as he can, “Got somewhere to be? We can go faster if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve got a plane to catch, but not for hours yet.” Melanie sighs. “No sense in breaking our necks over this.”

“Sure,” Martin says softly. A plane to catch. Ghost Hunt UK only investigates domestic hauntings—it’s right in their name, for Christ’s sake—and they’re on something of an indefinite hiatus anyway. Either Melanie is getting out of the country for a while, or she’s continuing her research on her own, and he’s not sure which outcome he’s hoping for.

Motioning for Melanie to wait once they reach the Archives, Martin pokes his head into the doorway of Jon’s office and waits until Jon looks up. Jon gives him a short nod, finishes reading the statement aloud, and pauses the recording. “Is everything okay? Tim—”

“Tim’s fine. He and Sasha left for lunch a few minutes ago,” Martin assures him. “It’s Melanie King, she’s back to talk to you. I…think you might need the tape recorder.”

“Ah.” Jon’s face goes through an interesting series of emotions that would make Martin smile in any other circumstances. “I…don’t know if you can sit in on this one, Martin, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m going to finish up what I’m working on and then head out to lunch myself, if that’s all right with you?”

“That should be fine. I’ll run to the canteen when Tim and Sasha get back. Assuming Tim doesn’t try to foist leftovers on me.” Jon smiles. “Send her in.”

Martin ushers Melanie in and shuts the door behind her, then heads back to his desk. Oddly enough—or maybe not so oddly—the break seems to have done some good, because it’s a lot easier for him to winnow down the list, and before long he has five possible matches. He makes note of them, saves his work, and closes his laptop.

He can feel the edges of a migraine starting up, so he shakes out a couple aspirin tablets and swallows them with the last of his tea, wincing at the powdery drag down his throat. Just as he stands up and reaches for his jacket, Jon’s office door opens, and Melanie comes out, all but slamming it behind her. She’s obviously in a bad mood and Martin isn’t sure if it’s something Jon said or just her general irritation. Something in him, though, can’t leave it be. Not that he wants to know what’s causing the mood…just that he doesn’t want it to linger. Not if she’s about to leave the country.

“Melanie,” he calls.

She stops partway across the floor and turns to look at him, arms akimbo. “What?”

Martin holds up his jacket, feeling a little foolish. “I was just going out to grab lunch. Want to come along? There’s a little sandwich place a few minutes away that does some interesting things with turkey, if you like that sort of thing.”

Melanie blinks at him. “You’re asking…me…to go to lunch with you,” she says flatly.

“Yeah?” Martin makes a show of looking around the Archives. “You see anyone else around here I could be asking?”

“Why?”

“Because you look like you could use a friend?”

Melanie’s eyebrows draw together in a frown. Martin is about to elaborate when she says, seemingly apropos of nothing, “I’m a lesbian.”

“Great! I’m gay!” Martin blurts. “See, we have something in common already!”

Melanie actually cracks a smile at that, and her shoulders relax. It’s only then that Martin realizes she thought he was hitting on her and wants to smack himself with embarrassment. Before he can apologize, though, she shrugs. “Yeah, okay, why not?”

Martin manages a smile back, shrugs into his jacket, and leads her out the employee entrance rather than the main steps.

The morning’s haze has burned off, and it’s sunny without being too warm for comfort. Melanie keeps her hands in her pockets as she walks, her shoulders hunched forward. Watching her, Martin is more and more sure he’s making the right call. She was agitated when she got to the Institute and talking to Jon probably didn’t help. It so rarely does.

There’s something off about the sandwich shop when they get there, but Martin doesn’t know what it is until they step inside and see it liberally festooned in paper hearts and glitter-covered cupids. Both of them groan in unison.

“Want to go somewhere else?” Martin asks Melanie.

“God, yeah. Is there anywhere that won’t be doing…” Melanie waves a hand at the decorations. “This?”

“Um…” Martin tries to think. “Curry shop or a pub. Two blocks’ difference in either direction. Take your pick.”

“The pub. I’ll have plenty of chances for curry over the next…however long. And I could use a pint.”

Martin lets the door shut and turns to the right. “Heading to India, then?”

Melanie nods once, but offers nothing further. Martin lets it go for now.

It’s a workingman’s pub, nothing fancy or pretentious. When the team goes out for drinks—more frequently than they used to—this is the one they usually come to, partly because it’s not too expensive compared to some of the others and partly because the barman has a sense of humor as well as a sense of adventure and will make all sorts of weird mixed drinks for Tim. Also, the rest of the Institute prefers going to one of the more ostentatious, upscale places—the sort that cater to the tourists and the businessmen, really. This one’s quieter, which is just the way they like it. The owner, a man about Sasha’s height but closer to Martin’s weight called Pat, nods as they come in; Martin nods in reply, waves two fingers, then gestures at one of the tables. Pat throws him a casual salute in acknowledgment and points at the stack of single-sheet menus on the table by the door. Martin snags two and hands one to Melanie as they drop down in their seats.

Melanie grunts as she studies the list of daily specials. “I can’t think of anything worse than being single on Valentine’s Day.”

“Getting broken up with on Valentine’s Day,” Martin says dryly, also scanning the specials. “Don’t get the stew. It’s basically just last week’s leftovers. The meat pies should be all right, it being Monday and all.”

Melanie looks up at him in evident surprise, but when Pat comes over with their pints, she orders the pie. Once Pat lumbers off, she says, “Jesus, did that actually happen to you, or is that hypothetically speaking?”

“It was a few years ago, but yeah.” Truthfully, he’s always hated the holiday, dating back to when he was a child and lucky to get a generic card from a single classmate whose mother forced them to bring cards for the whole class. It wasn’t much better when he did start dating. By the time his mother waited until he got back from the disastrous date that culminated in his then-boyfriend storming out of the restaurant, leaving Martin with the check and no easy way home, to inform him she had decided to move into a care home effective immediately, he was pretty much over the whole concept.

“You’re well rid of him, then.” Melanie picks up her glass and stared at it. “Dated someone once who broke up with me three days before my birthday. Came back three months later, told me she was so sorry and wanted to give it another chance. I said yes. Like an idiot.”

Martin can’t help the bark of laughter that slips out. “Let me guess. Your birthday’s at the end of November?”

“Third of December. And I didn’t get it!” Melanie slaps her palm against the table. “She pulled the same stunt again that year, but this time I’d already bought her present. It was while I was returning it to the shop that it hit me she was breaking up with me to avoid all the gift-giving…stuff. God. Teenagers are so stupid sometimes.”

Martin raises his glass. “Cheers to that.”

Melanie clinks her glass against his, then takes a sip and relaxes back in her seat. “So…seriously. Why are you doing this?”

“Seriously, you looked like you could use a friend.” Martin takes a sip of his own beer. “And you looked kind of miserable. Didn’t want you going out of town like that.”

“Hmm.” Melanie studies him for a minute, then sets down her glass and holds out her hand across the table. “Melanie.”

“Martin.” Feeling a weird sort of relief, Martin accepts her hand and shakes it. They’re both smirking when they settle back. “How’d you get into doing Ghost Hunt UK, anyway?”

“Started back in uni. One of the buildings on campus was reputed to be haunted,” Melanie explains. “It was one of those stories that get told to first-year students at the beginning of term, you know? Everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d seen a ghost there. Either you believed it and stayed away from the building after dark, or you dismissed it as a story told to frighten gullible firsties.” She shrugs. “Me, I was somewhere in the middle. I was a lot more skeptical back then, you know? But I wasn’t ready to dismiss it altogether. I wanted proof.”

“So, what, you set up a hidden camera?” Martin asks.

Melanie shakes her head. “No, not exactly. I did research. Lots of it. I wanted to know if there’d really been a fire that someone was trapped in, or a student who jumped off the roof during finals week, or a murdered cleaning woman or whatever. And the thing was, there were a couple of events that tallied with some of the stories I’d heard, but, you know…”

“There’s still that question of whether or not it’s just got enough truth to be plausible so people stop looking.”

“Exactly! You get it. Anyway, I was studying Media and Communications, so when the opportunity came up to do our first student film project, I suggested to Andy—we were in the same class and he was my partner—that we do something regarding the alleged haunting. It was….um, actually, it was originally fiction. To be honest, I don’t think either of us really believed it at that point. But…well.”

Martin nods in understanding. “You found something, I take it?”

Melanie’s eyes sparkle. “Boy, did we ever. It turns out there were two ghosts. One of them was pretty harmless—the one that had jumped off the roof. Turned out it was a student who’d been on the verge of failing out and didn’t want to face his family. Mostly he didn’t appear, you’d just hear him crying in odd corners late at night, especially close to finals week. The other one…well, we weren’t quite sure which one she was, but she definitely didn’t die easy, and she wasn’t happy about it. We got some good stuff on camera and beat feet out of there. Our teacher complimented us on our brilliant script and asked how we’d done such good special effects, and…well, we kind of lied to her, but it worked out. After that I think we both knew we were going to make a career out of that. It was just such a thrill.”

She’s genuinely passionate about her work, Martin thinks, and it makes his heart ache for her that she’s not been able to do it for so long. “I talk with students sometimes—more when I worked up in the library, but one or two come down to use the Archives. Had more than a few cite Ghost Hunt UK as the reason they’re studying the paranormal.”

Melanie flushes. “Yeah, well…yeah.”

Pat brings their lunch about then. Martin’s about to prompt Melanie with another question when she throws one at him. “What about you? How’d you end up doing what you do?”

“Do you mean working at the Magnus Institute in general, or winding up in the Archives?”

“Either. Both. How’d you get interested in the paranormal?”

“Honestly? I just needed the job,” Martin admits. “My mum’s been…she’s been sick for a long time, but she suddenly got a lot worse. I was desperate for a job and the Institute was the only place that would hire me.”

“Oh.” Something in Melanie’s face changes. “I’m sorry. What—if it’s not too invasive, what’s…wrong with her?”

Martin shrugs, feeling the familiar prickle of uncertainty crawl up his spine. “Dunno. They’ve never quite been able to figure it out, actually? I’ve been given a big long list of what it isn’t. It’s not MS, it’s not Parkinson’s, it’s not ALS…and so on and so forth. At this point I’m prepared to say she’s got Liliana Blackwood’s Disease.”

Melanie winces. “God. That must be hell on both of you. The whole not-knowing thing.”

“Worse for me, honestly,” Martin says slowly. Something prickles in the back of his mind; he tries to shut out the feeling, but the Eye—he’s sure it’s the Eye—shoves it through his barrier like someone pushing an envelope under a door. “I think she has some idea what it might be, actually. Or why it suddenly got worse a few years ago. But I also kind of think maybe she enjoys it a little. The attention, anyway. Not the actual being…I-I mean, nobody wants their kid to have to take care of them like that.”

“Yeah,” Melanie says softly. “I don’t think my dad would have, either.”

Martin looks up sympathetically. “He was sick?”

“Dementia. Early onset. Mum took care of him until she died, and then—the job, and I just—I couldn’t be his full-time caretaker, and it wasn’t safe to have him at home alone. I had to put him in a home.” Melanie stares into her half-empty pint glass. “Wish I visited him more, before…”

“He stopped remembering you?” Martin asks gently.

Melanie shakes her head. “He remembered me up to the end, but he died a few years ago. I, uh…is your mother still at home or…?”

“No, she asked to go into a home a few years ago.” It’s a polite way of phrasing it. She hadn’t really asked so much as told him she was going.

“Then maybe you know about…not many people really paid attention when it happened. Even the crew at Ghost Hunt UK didn’t really…” Melanie hesitates, crumbling a bit of pie crust in between her thumb and forefinger. “Did you ever hear of a place called Ivy Meadows?”

Martin’s blood runs cold. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah,” Melanie agrees. “Dad was still there when it burned down. The official story was that it had closed down months before and all the patients transferred, but…I never quite got why they did that.” She sighs heavily.

“Corruption,” Martin says under his breath.

Melanie, unfortunately, hears him. “You’re saying the staff was corrupt?”

“No. Well, yes, but…” Martin hesitates. “Look, there’s…let’s just say someone connected to it made a statement to the Institute. It’s—it was a lot.”

“And you believe it?”

“Yeah. See…okay, look.” Martin picks up his glass and downs about half of what’s left in one go. He’s going to need it. “It’s a really long story, and I don’t think either of us have time for it right now, but…all of us who work in the Archives, we’ve got—we’ve developed these kind of…weird abilities. Powers, you might call them even. And one of them is that we can tell when a statement we’re listening to is something that actually happened—I mean, something that actually happened and really does have a supernatural or paranormal explanation—and something that’s fake or the result of a hallucination or anything like that.” He pauses. “It’s stronger for some of us than others, and we all get it in different ways.”

Melanie cocks her head at him. “Really.”

Martin nods. “Yeah, like—when I saw you at the front desk today? I knew you had a statement and I knew it was something that—uh—wouldn’t go on the laptop. You had to use the tape recorders, right? We only use those when it’s a proper spooky statement. Everything else will record digitally.”

Something about Melanie’s posture changes. “So that’s why he believed me.”

“Yep, that’s why,” Martin affirms. “If you want to know what we know about Ivy Meadows…I’ll tell you about it when you get back from India, maybe?”

“I don’t know that I will get back,” Melanie says frankly. She shrugs out of her coat and pulls aside the collar of her Ghost Hunt UK t-shirt, showing him a wicked-looking scar slashing down from her shoulder towards her heart. “These ghosts I’m chasing down are pretty nasty. It’s why I came to gave my statement—in case I get killed by one.” She lets the shirt fall back to its natural position. “I don’t want to die not knowing the truth. Go ahead and tell me.”

So Martin does. He keeps it as bare-bones as possible, but it takes a serious effort; the static gets louder in his mind and the pressure builds behind his eyes as Melanie gets paler and paler. The Eye wants her fear, and while Martin’s role is usually the comforter, the therapist, the let-it-all-out vent switch, in absence of anyone else to give Melanie the information to devastate her, it appears to be settling. Somehow, he manages to get away with telling her no more than the basics.

“Please don’t ask me for more details,” he mutters at last, breaking off a piece of the meat pie. “I won’t be able to not give them to you.”

Melanie visibly struggles to pull herself together, grief and rage mingling in her eyes as Martin tries to cope with the too-big bite he shoved in his mouth. Choking here in Pat’s pub wouldn’t be the most brilliant move in the world, but it was better than laying out someone else’s trauma to give Melanie more. He manages to swallow at last, about the time Melanie takes a deep breath and straightens.

“I want to see that file when I get back,” she says baldly.

“Deal. Anything to get you to actually make the effort,” Martin says pointedly.

Melanie looks slightly embarrassed. “I’m not suicidal.”

“No, but you don’t care if you die or not. I know what that looks like, Melanie. I’ve been there. You think you’ve got nothing left to live for and nothing to lose, so you’re willing to throw your life away on the off-chance it’ll improve things for someone else. The only difference is you’re not going to do it yourself.” Martin waits until she looks him in the eye, then says, “Whatever you’re looking into, Jon’s going to want to hear about it—we all are. I bet you want to know what’s going on at the Institute. And I really would like to actually get to be friends with you instead of—of speed-bonding or whatever we’re doing here.”

Melanie actually laughs at that. “Same, actually. Okay. Deal. I do my best to survive whatever’s waiting for me in India, and when I get back, drinks and I tell you all about it.”

“Sounds like a plan. Wait, here.” Martin grabs a pen out of his pocket—they seem to be almost as ubiquitous as the tape recorders these days—and scribbles his number on a napkin, then pushes it over to Melanie. “In case you need anything. Or just want to chat or whatever.”

“Thanks.” Melanie pulls out her own phone and types busily away at it. A moment later, Martin’s phone pings, and there’s a text from an unknown number: [Here’s mine back. Same deal.]

Martin saves the number and glances at the time to confirm he’s got time. “When does your flight leave?”

“Four. I’ve got to run home and grab my suitcase.” Melanie checks her own phone. “In fact, I should probably finish up eating here and call a cab.”

“Fair. I need to get back to work anyway.” Martin signals to Pat for the bill and hands over his card before Melanie can object. “It’s fine, seriously. I invited you, it’s my treat.”

“Fine, but the drinks are on me when I get back.”

“I accept those terms.”

Outside, Martin holds out his hand; Melanie starts to shake it, pauses, and then bypasses it and goes in for a hug. It startles him, but he hugs her back. In the back of his mind, he wonders when the last time someone touched her in a friendly manner was.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. “You’re right. It feels a lot better heading off with having spent time with—a friend.”

“Good.” Martin hugs her tighter for a second, then lets go as a cab pulls up. “Safe travels. Let me know when you get back.”

“I will. You be careful, too.” Melanie winks at him. “Good luck surviving Valentine’s Day.”

“Enjoy a year without it,” Martin snipes back. She actually laughs and waves before getting in the cab. He waits until it pulls out of sight, then starts the walk back to the Institute, feeling oddly better about a lot of things. It’s nice to have a friend. He just hopes she means what she says about being careful.

#ollie writes fanfic #leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#the magnus archives #tma #time travel fix it au #death mention tw #suicidal ideation tw #medical mention tw

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youarejesting · 4 years ago

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Forever (finale)

Rating: Teen and Up Genre: Mystery, Romance, Drama, Action, Angst, Paranormal. Pairing: Yoongi x Reader Summary: In Bightville there is never any nonsense, the scariest thing one might face is tripping at the roller-disco. But, when you move to the small town, crazy things start to happen. Suddenly people are going missing without any leads. It’s when your neighbor Seokjin goes missing that things get serious because now his friends suspect you!

Announcement: It’s the end and oh my gosh I love it...

[First] [Previous] [Masterlist] [The End]

“It’s been decided Jungkook and Jimin will head out quietly and try to find this opening, they will radio back if they find it, and then we will head out in teams of two” Seokjin sighed the man was looking tired the days in the spirit world was causing him to look more tired and withered.

“Wait so some of us have to wait here alone?” Hoseok said concerned he didn’t want to be one of the last, he would definitely be one of the members of the second team.

“We can’t all go at once there would be a higher chance of us being spotted and I don’t think we are all wanting to fight one of those things” Namjoon explained and they nodded.

The two boys got dressed holding their makeshift weapons and headed out walkie talkie in hand, their instructions to only use it when necessary. They moved quickly and quietly down the hall until they turned down the stairs out of sight. The group waited.

Half an hour passed and you sat in the corner laying your head back against the wall, something about this place sucked the warmth from your form. Yoongi slid down the wall pressing his side against yours to keep you warm.

You all almost ran out of hope when Namjoon spoke up, “there isn’t much we can do, until we hear back from them”

“What if we don’t?”

“Then we send another two out to find them or the exit”

“I hate this plan?” Taehyung muttered scuffing his foot through the dirt

“It’s the only plan we have?” Seokjin offered using his calm voice in an authoritative manner.

“Hey we found it, we are here?” a voice called over static “you need to get around the side of the house and into the cellar the doors are open and you take the stairs down and head through the web.

“Alright” Seokjin said “Namjoon and I will head out next, Namjoon will need to be careful so we will give him as much time as he needs to get through that web. I will wait near the entrance for the next teams to come along until we are all out”

The next too left and it was barely fifteen minutes before Taehung and Hoseok left kind of rushed.

That left you and Yoongi with Johnny who looked down at his leg wrapped firmly around a broken table leg.

“It might be easier to go without me” he scoffed

“Not like anyone really missed me anyway, the hardly even know me”

“You’re Johnny, you play the piano we had the same piano teacher, remember and you can draw really well” Yoongi scoffed “your family is worried and the school has been trying to find out where you went”

“We should get ready to go” Yoongi said helping you up off the ground. He handed you his jacket and you smiled at how his scent lingered in the fabric enjoying the calming effect it had on you. He took the two lapels and slowly zipped them together.

You two grinned helping Johnny to his feet and it was a slow process of traveling through the school and the streets towards your house. It was hard but you were keeping out of sight and traveling. They see the other group moving and Seokjin in the distance signalling for them to wait as Hoseok and Taehyung head through.

In their haste Hoseok tripped over your younger snot nosed brothers bike -the very same you stressed he clean up every day- bumping the web the two boys race through the web.

You knew they were coming and in a split second you three ran across the lawn, racing your best through the web with Seokjin helping Johnny through in front of you. You could hear them coming, the hands of the boys in the real world reaching out to pull you through the burrow between the worlds. When you felt something grab the jacket, your name softly spoken you turned to see Yoongi. He gave you a forlorn look and he pressed his lips to yours. He kissed you hard and pushed you into the arms. Running from the webs and the siren on the walkie talkie blaring as he ran further away.

The hands were pulling you through the portal and you were a mess of tears struggling, unable to see, you finally found the perfect guy, he didn’t expect you to fit the norms as he definitely didn’t fit them either.

You were in the basement of your home unable to see as everything was burned with tears, Yoongi’s voice came over the walkie talkie in a pant, he was running still alive, still fighting, “Y/n, did you get through?”

You sobbed scrambling across the floor to get the walkie talkie “I am okay, where are you, you have to come through. You have to get back here and come through -”

“They are filling the web, I don’t know how long we have ?” Jungkook said keeping this end of the web firmly pressed shut clawed arms busting through

“Shut it down” Yoongi said calmly over the radio “I am surrounded”

“No, I will go back in and fight them off” You hissed, the ache in your chest burning and tight making it hard to breathe “You promised”

“I’m sorry” He whispered

“You promised, we were going to see kingkong, you promised” the words were barely legible but he understood.

“I did promise, but maybe some other time love,” He took a shaky breath, “shut it down kook”

They ripped apart the objects around the crawl space in the wall effectively ripping apart the connection between the two worlds.

You were all found in the basement crying, your parents were confused and the police were called, you were all interrogated and you explained everything as it happened sparing no detail on the abnormal. That night you were inconsolable, crying in your bed, the jacket clutched in your hands the words ‘It’s okay not to be okay’, breaking you more.

The police wrote it off as drugs and judging from the injuries and the extensive amounts of mud and dirt on their clothes they assumed the group had ventured into the woods. For some cult business. It took a week before the investigation was called off, they found Yoongi’s boot on the edge of the river and called it an accidental drug related death.

The funeral for Yoongi was small, his parents weren’t upset rather annoyed, you heard them in the next room blaming him. “If he didn’t die, I wouldn’t be here” His father frowned

“I don’t know how he lasted this long,” his older sister hissed

“Can you believe they want me to pay $1,000 for his funeral, he doesn’t even have a body,” His father sighed

“Be thankful he was dumb enough to die in the river, otherwise you would be paying more” His sister called

“Where is that bastards mother?” He sighed “Why am I paying for him, I haven’t even seen him since we split, and yet here I am the one having to pay”

Biting your lip, you were grabbed by Namjoon who lead you out to Yoongi’s car, “we took some stuff from his house, before his family could throw it away and um, if there is anything you like please feel free to take it.”

You found a few shirts and jackets with some slogans that made you feel like he was still supporting you even when he wasn’t here. But it was when you came across a collection of cassettes that you pause in confusion, Jimin laughed. “Yoongi has a tendency to write songs about everyone he meets,”

You watched him fondly touch the cassette with his name on it, you pulled out one with your name on it. The letters written in such unique handwriting that was very yoongi, laid back but simple. Jimin pulled out another titled ‘a night with her and the boys’. “Try this one too, it might be good”

You took his recording system in hopes you could listen to his work in your home and feel that connection with him. Heading straight up to your room ignoring all distractions. Setting up the machine you began by slipping in the cassette and placing on the headphones.

It was beautiful, the sound was beautiful and the song spoke of your beauty, but when the chorus hit, the drums, guitar and synth came in and he spoke about your personality. You were laughing, he summed you up so well, you felt your heart swell in the last line.

What a bitch.

She’s hot and she knows it.

And I can’t stop thinking about her.

It had you in stitches. You switched the song over to ‘a night with her and the boys’ and you couldn’t help but cry, he told a story about noticing you and the feelings you were trying to hide. He sang about you coming clean of your emotions, said he would protect you even though you didn’t need it, that he wanted to hold you because you looked so cold.

The song ended but there was more space left on the tape, you listened for thirty seconds but their didn’t seem to be anything on it. You took the small microphone and spoke into the machine, “I don’t know um how this works, but I love you” Turning it off you went to the shower, when you came back it was running, the tape had reached the end. Rewinding it you played it through, again while finding something to wear to bed.

When the song reached the end, you had finally found a warm set of pajama pants that you matched with one of yoongi’s shirts. You buried your face in the collar breathing in the scent, you went to turn of the machine which was whirring. “I don’t know um how this works, but I love you”.

You were embarrassed quickly rushing to turn it off, “God I am so embarrassing,”

“It’s so nice to hear your voice, I love you too, are you doing alright?”

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that-one-girl-behind-you · 4 years ago

Text

Illicio 13/?

Part 12

"You look well," Gerry says, leaning against the threshold.

"I'm feeling well. It's-" Martin's brow furrows. "I miss it."

Gerry sighs. It really would be a lot easier to watch Martin waste away if Gerry still disliked him, like an idiot. "Please don't say that."

"It's better this way." Martin gives him a shrug and another smile, softer this time. Sadder somehow, because this is what Martin thinks of himself, even momentarily free of the Lonely's influence.

XIII

"Do you want another one?" Gerry asks, running a hand over Jon's side and smiling when the man shivers lightly at the touch, but doesn't move from where he's laying with his head on Gerry's chest, his fingers playing with a fold in his shirt.

"I'm good, I think." Jon's voice is silky with contentment and it tastes of bliss and peace when Gerry leans up to press a kiss against the crown of his head. The bed is soft below them, and the only light in the semi-penumbra of the bedroom is the green glow of Jon's eyes. "How are you feeling?"

'At home,' Gerry thinks with a smile. It's a thrilling, dangerous thought to have, especially the night before they're supposed to go stop another ritual, but he gets the feeling that there's also no better time to have it.

It's taken a week for Basira to arrange the trip north, and Gerry's elated to see his theory appears to have been correct. Jon has been feeding regularly, but his powers have not grown -or diminished- in the slightest. The Watcher cannot feed where there's no fear to be had, Gerry knows, can't take away from what is essentially an act of love.

"Bit excited," he says in the end, after he remembers Jon is waiting for an answer. "It's never a boring time, stopping rituals."

"Didn't work out too good for us, last time," Jon mutters, and his voice leaves an aftertaste of regret when it pours into Gerry's chest.

"Are you sure?" Gerry holds him a bit tighter. "Everyone made it out alive, in the end."

"Depends on your definition of 'alive', I suppose."

"Alive enough. Besides, you didn't have me last time," Gerry says smugly, and Jon snorts, just like he expected.

"Someone has a high opinion of himself." The suggestion of laughter remains in his voice when Jon speaks; Gerry's almost embarrassed at the feeling of satisfaction it brings him. Almost.

"What can I say, I'm a professional." He almost freezes, when Jon's lips come to rest at the curve of his jaw. His amused smile softens as the lightest trail of kisses is placed along his jawline. "We'll be fine. All of us."

And really, his optimism has bit him in the ass on more occasions than he can count, but Gerry still can't help but to listen to it. It's gotta stick, one of these times.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The door to Martin's office is ajar next morning, when Gerry walks up to it, which probably -hopefully- means Tim just left.

It's- fine, so yes, Martin has been looking much better since he came back, even when Tim seldom visits the institute; Gerry can hardly deny that. It definitely doesn't mean he has to like it.

Tim is an unknown variant if he's ever seen one, and every time Gerry tries to Know about him all he can see is a storm of turbulent thoughts that range anywhere between guilt and rage. This is worrying for many reasons, the biggest of which is that Martin is still human, and any slip on Tim's part while he has his little identity crisis could be catastrophic.

Martin won't hear of it, though, and Gerry knows enough about him by now to recognize a lost battle, so... just one more thing he has to keep Martin safe from.

"I still don't know what Peter's planning." And speaking of Martin, Gerry can see him through the cracked-open door, a round cheek resting on his hand as he absentmindedly runs a finger over the buttons of the tape recorder on his desk like one would pet a dog's belly. "My best guess is it has something to do with whatever it is that's under the Institute, but- who knows?"

The recorder clicks in agreement, and Gerry's mouth twitches in amusement at the soft smile that comes to Martin's plump lips as his gaze softens.

"Okay, yes. Maybe you two could know, but try not to force it? I can't imagine the Eye is too happy with us after we put Jon on a diet, and the last thing we need is Gerry bleeding out like a scared squid."

Oh.

Huh. It's a bit unexpected to hear Martin talk about them like a team. Jon will like that, Gerry thinks as the man taps at the recorder with a worried, thoughtful frown. Unexpected, but- but good.

Martin looks overwhelmingly human, and though Gerry can See the tendrils of the Lonely wrapping around him, what catches his attention the most is the burning thought of Jon at Martin's core, and he feels a fierce rush of protectiveness for this man whose biggest concern is for the well-being of the man they love.

"Hopefully by the time you get back I'll have something more, just... be careful, alright? Both of you, and take care of Basira and-" the door creaks a little when Gerry shifts on his feet, and Martin's face shoots up in alarm. "Oh. Hi, Gerry." His face relaxes into a smile of resigned exasperation, when his bright, thankfully green gaze lands on him, and Gerry feels his stomach flip over itself.

"You look well," Gerry says, leaning against the threshold.

"I'm feeling well. It's-" Martin's brow furrows. "I miss it."

Gerry sighs. It really would be a lot easier to watch Martin waste away if Gerry still disliked him, like an idiot. "Please don't say that."

"It's better this way." Martin gives him a shrug and another smile, softer this time. Sadder somehow, because this is what Martin thinks of himself, even momentarily free of the Lonely's influence.

Guilt churns heavier in Gerry's stomach; he should be pulling Martin out, he should, but if the Extinction is real, then whatever Lukas is planning might be their only shot at stopping it from manifesting, if it's even possible.

What a very Getrude thing to do, Gerry thinks bitterly, making bait out of a brave, good man that only ever wanted to protect his loved ones. Perhaps he did learn a couple things from his old mentor, and the betrayal feels even worse in light of the promise he made Jon.

"Is that for me?" Gerry blurts out, jerking his chin towards the tape recorder, because he can't think of another thing to say that's not an apology at how their lives have turned out.

"It is, actually. I was going to send it with Tim, but you were faster."

Gerry feels a satisfied smirk take over his lips, before the rest of Martin's sentence catches up with him. "Wait. 'Send it' with Tim?"

"Huh... I was-" Martin bites at his bottom lip, clearly uncomfortable, and Gerry, who isn't stupid by any means, feels a void opening at the bottom of his stomach. "I was hoping you could take Tim up north with you. Strength in numbers and all that."

"Martin, that only works when your numbers don't want to kill each other," Gerry tries. Maybe it's a bit selfish, he knows himself enough to know that stopping the ritual will be the last thing in his mind if he has to focus on keeping Jon safe from-

"Tim's not going to hurt Jon." Martin's smile has no business being as knowing as it is. "It would make me feel a lot better to have him there with you all."

"Martin, it really isn't smart to- I don't like Tim, but he can protect you if-"

"Protect me from what?" Martin rolls his eyes. "You're going to be fighting the apocalypse. Again. We'll be fine. In fact, Peter will probably be happy that I'm alone and let me work for a change."

"Martin-" Gerry tries again, then stops, sighing. Martin's mouth twitches, not quite a smile, but almost there. "Fine. But Jon won't like it. And for the record, I don't care much for it, either."

And Martin does smile then, both amused and satisfied. "Duly noted."

Gerry's enough of a man to acknowledge he's been had, but it doesn't mean he has to like it.

--------------------------------------------------------------

It's a fourteen day travel to Ny-alesund, and Tim wants to throw himself overboard by the second morning.

He keeps reminding himself that he's doing this for Martin, because Martin is the only one that really matters anymore, the only friend he has left, the only connection to a time when they were happy, even if none of them is anymore.

Jon, as usual, makes everything worse.

They run into each other a few times, before Tim begins actively avoiding him.

It's just too much, how whenever their gazes meet, whoever- whatever Tim is now roars like a delighted beast, sinking its fangs in the raw loss in Jon's eyes. The burning pain of grieving is a banquet to him, especially when something angry and hot at the back of his mind whispers Jon will drag this delicious pain with him forever, because the Tim that exists now will never be the Tim he grieves for.

It's a troubling thought, almost enough to distract Tim from the mirroring pain that comes from inside his own chest, and that his entity feeds on just as eagerly, or the fact that he does not know if he too is mourning for the man he was before he lost his brother, or for the man he hasn't been able to call a friend in years.

"You watch them a lot," Basira comments somewhere around the four days mark, and Tim lets out a huff of steam before stomping away.

Of course he fucking does. Tim boils with indignation on Martin's behalf every time he sees the git leaning against Keay's side, holding his hand and peacefully watching the water rush by below them like they are on a fucking honeymoon cruise. It's just not fair, not when Martin -when Tim gets him to speak- still talks about Jon like he's some sort of... of reason. Not when he talks about Keay -and he calls him Gerry, but Tim staunchly refuses to do so- with this sort of... resigned exasperation, like he knows the man will be there whether he wants it or not.

It's infuriating, to see that some things don't change, that Martin is still letting Jon -and apparently this new asshole as well- walk all over him, that Jon still doesn't realize how undeserving he is of this devotion.

That Tim is once more going along with this bullshit, and that he can lie to himself all he wants about doing it for someone he loves, but it doesn't erase the fact that Tim was thrusted back into a world he had every intention of leaving, and now he has no place in.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"He says another two days," Jon says consolingly, and Basira refuses the urge to shake him as another, stronger wave of nausea has her bending over the railing to dry heave again. First off, he's trying to be helpful, and second, getting into a fistfight with Gerard will definitely not help her condition. Fucking boats.

Still, she looks up to give Jon a dry glare. "I heard- Jon?" she arches an eyebrow, when she recognizes the look on his face.

He's still like a hound sniffing prey, and his unblinking eyes are fixed on the sailor he just talked to. Behind him, Gerard leans over to give him a questioning look. "Jon? What is-"

And then Basira Sees it.

Every step the sailor takes away from them lighting up with a glowing trail, as well as every single step he's taken in the past twelve days. Basira knows she could follow them back to his cabin, to his preferred seat on the mess hall, to wherever the man tries to hide, and she Knows what that means.

"The- he has a statement," she breathes out, and the nausea is gone so quickly that she wonders if she ever felt it in the first place.

"Jon don't-" out the corner of her eye she sees Gerard call out and reach a hand for Jon as soon as he takes a step forward, but the man's arm cramps and stills before he can touch him, and twin streams of black ink start a slow run down from his nostrils.

Basira knows she should call out herself, try and stop Jon, since Gerard can't.

Would that really be the best idea, though? Jon feels called to this man, and she can hear the whirring of the tape recorder that just clicked on in her satchel, that surely means whatever this man has to say is relevant to stopping the Dark's ritual. It's... still not ideal, but if it keeps the world from ending...

"Excuse me?" Jon asks, and the man turns to him again. There's a slight scowl on his face, confusion shining through in his eyes, and Basira notices the exact moment he realizes Jon is not just a persistent traveler wanting to inquire if they can go any faster.

"I- do you need anything else?" the man asks, his sun-tanned face losing every scrap of color and his entire posture growing tense with anticipation. Across from him, Jon suddenly stiffens too.

There's a long moment of silence, and Basira frowns as she sees Jon's frame begin to tremble like a leaf in the wind.

"Nothing-" Jon says, his voice sounding like it's been punched out of him, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. "I would- you may want to consider staying away." Every word sounds like a battle, and Basira can read the struggle in each pained flinch of Jon's back and shoulders.

The man doesn't respond, turning around instead to fly down the deck and downstairs as soon as he can, without a single look back. It doesn't matter; she can find him, she'll find him for the Archive, for-

"What's going on here?" Tim's voice burns away at the Eye's poisonous whispers, and Basira shakes her head to clear it.

"We- I- there was a man with a statement," she says, her thoughts coming in slowly as though having to wrestle their way to her lips.Tim's face hardens, and he takes a step towards Jon, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder to turn him around.

"What did you- shit!" Tim lets go of his shoulder with a yelp, and Basira gasps when she gets a good look at him.

His eyes are their usual dark brown, but Jon's face is pale and pained, and his lower lip bleeds profusely where he bit himself, if one is to judge on the smear of red on his teeth when he lets out a low, tired whistle.

"The Eye didn't particularly like that I said no," he says conversationally.

Basira closes her eyes with a relieved sigh, when she hears Gerard give a weak snort by her side. She's thinking more clearly now that the man is gone, and though her nausea is back on full force, she feels a sudden, unexpected rush of pride for Jon. "That's- good." It really is. If even he can say no, then maybe she can too, no matter how taken she is. "You should- you both should go get cleaned up."

"That's probably a good idea," Jon agrees. He looks exhausted and ridiculously pleased with himself, and Basira remembers, quite abruptly, that Jon didn't choose this. She remembers the secretive meetings with the desperate man who needed to know because he feared for his life, and the sincere gratitude in his tired eyes whenever she showed up with a new tape. "We'll see you at supper. Feel better, Basira."

He walks away on unsteady feet, leaning on Gerard as soon as he comes up to him, and Basira watches them go in silence.

'Despite my best efforts, you never did bond.' Elias' stupid, infuriating voice echoes in her mind, and she grits her teeth together. They would have, Basira decides, and that is the worst part.

Without the fear, without the lies, without Elias pulling their strings to move them across his little chess board, they would have found at least companionship in each other. Now they're all just too broken and tired, only fit to struggle enough to keep their heads above the water in this storm with no end in sight.

"...You doing alright?" Tim asks, his voice tentative, the gentleness awkward in his tone. Basira wonders if he's as defined by his violence now as he was in the months before his death.

"Seasickness," she says curtly, without looking at him. She still remembers the handsome, roguish smile when he thought she and Jon were having an affair, and she has the sudden thought that she doesn't know which of the two Tims was the real one. "...Did Martin really ask you to come, or did you come just to keep an eye on him and kill him if he slipped?"

She doesn't know if she'd stop him if that were the case, just as she couldn't stop Jon just a few minutes ago. Tim shrugs, and when Basira darts a quick look up at him, he's averted his eyes, clearly uncomfortable.

"You know. Two birds, one stone kinda thing," he responds, but Basira was trained to smell lies even before the Beholding came into her life, and she sees uncertainty in the unhappy curve of his lips, anxiety in the stiff line of his spine. It's comforting to know she's not the only one conflicted by her feelings about Jon. "Want me to get you some Ginger Ale?"

"Sure. And a plastic bag, for when I puke it out." Basira's voice is dry, and Tim snorts as he walks away.

Just two more days.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Martin clicks the file shut, and pushes away from the computer with a satisfied sigh.

Across the desk, Melanie lifts her gaze from her phone's screen. "All done?"

"Won't be running out of pens and notepads anytime soon." Martin nods, rolling his shoulders to get rid of the tension in them. "Thanks for staying."

He means it. Even though Melanie barely spoke a word the whole evening, her sporadic snorts and the subsequent memes shown to him on her phone kept Martin remembering he wasn't alone in the office. He appreciates the quiet company, most of all because a part of him -the part that wants to wither and disappear back into the comfortable numbness- resents it.

Melanie shrugs. "Sure. They sent a text, by the way, did you get it? They'll be on land tomorrow."

"I saw," Martin lies. He received the text last night at his flat, that's gone back to grey and foggy without Tim or Gerry's presence. The thought of opening it had been repulsive. "I wonder why they chose to go by boat?"

"Beats me. I'll ask Helen to pop over and ask if they want to come back through her. It really doesn't make much sense to go the long way when we have her."

Martin smiles. "Not everyone has the Distortion guiding them through her corridors when they want to go for Starbucks."

"Maybe they would, if they were nice to her." Melanie rolls her eyes, a slight smirk on her lips. "Going home for the weekend now?"

"Yes, I think. I'll buy some groceries on the way. Is there anything you or Daisy need? I could bring it on Monday."

"We're good. Come on the weekend if you feel- you know. We'll leave the back door open." She stands up and waves at him before leaving, closing the door behind her.

The whistling, nerve-wracking static begins to rise as soon as her footsteps fade. "Isn't that charming. She's looking particularly calm, for someone picked by the Slaughter."

Martin clenches a fist over his lap, as Peter steps out of the Lonely. "She's doing well. It's nice to know you can push them out if you're not too far gone."

"But you already knew that, didn't you?" Peter's ice-blue eyes are hard and cold when Martin looks up to meet them. "This was not our deal, Martin."

"The situation has changed." Martin doesn't climb to his feet, trying instead to project a calm he doesn't feel.

Peter sneers. "You think because you have Daisy, Tim and that ridiculous reanimated corpse, your little ragtag band doesn't need my protection anymore?"

"I-"

"Because if that's the case then Martin, I beg you to wake up," Peter goes on, steamrolling over Martin's attempt to interject. "Daisy's in no state to keep anyone safe, even with her little stunt with the contract. Tim? That man is a time bomb if I've ever seen one. And let's not fool ourselves, please. Gerard Keay is here for the Archivist only, he couldn't care less about anyone else."

"You don't-"

"But of course, as I said, this must be your own choice. I will be happy to stand back, if you think your little team can take on the flood I've been keeping back." Peter crosses his arms behind his back with a jovial smile, and Martin watches him carefully.

It's difficult to really know how much Peter is guarding them from. But they haven't had another break in since Breekon, so he must be doing something. Besides, Gerry and Jon need him to keep digging into the Extinction, and Peter won't give him any more information unless he has him on his side.

Martin takes a deep sigh that tastes of suffocating, damp loneliness, and nods. "I- fine. I'll keep my end of the deal."

Peter's smile turns pleased, though no less dangerous for it. "Fantastic! I was thinking, since your 'friends' left on their little trip… you look like you could use a holiday too."

"What-" Martin frowns, only to turn around in alarm, when the office around them starts to dissolve into cool, empty fog. "Peter?!"

"Have a nice weekend, Martin." The smile is still audible in Peter's voice, echoing and distorted around Martin as the Lonely closes in on him.

--------------------------------------------------------------

They really don't need the instructions the research team gave them, in the end. With three Eye-aligned people, the warehouse is ridiculously easy to find. It pulls at them like a darkness you can't peer through, like a smudge in your vision that you just can't get rid of.

"So it's empty?" Basira asks when they step inside. Gerry quietly moves to stand before Jon, and her by extension.

"I didn't say that. Just that I couldn't see anyone." Jon's eyes are glowing the bright green of the Archivist, as the Eye tries -and fails, Gerry notes with bitter satisfaction- to fight the darkness back.

"Oh. I thought you meant See see, not just... we need proper terminology." Basira does a sweep of the warehouse, her hands crossed at the wrist, gun on her right, light on her left as she pivots on her heel. The beam from the flashlight only illuminates about a foot and a half ahead of them, pitiful in this all-encompassing darkness that swallows it like quicksand.

"Sure, let's just work a secret code like in primary school. I'll write the key on the back of my notebook," Tim says dryly, his eyes glowing as brightly as Jon's. Gerry has started to understand that a lot of Tim's attempts at being irritating are genuinely just that; the boat would've burned to a crisp a week ago if he was actually as angry as he pretends to be. Gerry's also pretty sure Tim himself doesn't know this, but it's not like he cares enough to tell him.

"Shut up," Basira rolls her eyes, and Gerry cheers for her silently. "I'm going to kill that lying son of a-"

"Elias wasn't lying," Jon interrupts. "It's- the Dark Sun, it's here. I can- it's like a hole in my mind."

"...Huh." Basira frowns, her features almost eerie in the shadows cast by the combined glow of Tim and Jon's eyes. "I... I feel it too."

Jon nods. "I think we just- BEHIND YOU!!

Gerry sees the shadow move just as Jon screams, and has barely enough time to throw himself against the woman coming at Basira's back.

"Get off!" the woman screams, scratching at his face as Gerry tries to wrestle the weapon out of her hands. One of Tim's forearms tries to wrap itself around her neck, and she sinks her teeth down on it.

Tim's screaming then, his entire forearm enveloped in flames, and the woman still won't let go of the wooden bat with the hammered in nails. A gunshot rings out, leaving behind a silence so loud it's deafening, and the woman collapses in a heap at their feet, gasping and grunting in pain.

"Who are you?!" Basira points at the woman with both weapon and flashlight, and she seems to recoil away from the light far more than she does from the muzzle of the gun, which is fairly indicative of what she is, at least.

"Fuck you!" she spits back at Basira's feet. She tries to climb to her feet, but Basira shot her clean through the knee; avatar or not, she's not going anywhere in the next hour or so, at the very least.

Gerry throws the bat away as Jon steps forward, the shadows dancing hypnotically across his face. Out the corner of his eye he sees Tim smoothing the wax of his forearm to get rid of her bite mark.

"Who are you?" he asks in the voice of the Archivist, and the woman flinches.

"M- Manuela," the woman says as if every word is being ripped out of her like an infected tooth. "Manuela Domínguez."

"Are you alone here?" Jon asks again. "Why are your people staking out the Institute?"

"Fu- how are you doing that?!" Manuela groans and spits, clawing at her throat like trying to stop the words from leaving her. Gerry has the brief, worryingly uninterested thought that he has no idea what happens when someone refuses to succumb to compulsion. Maybe he'll find out now. "I am alone. The ones at your precious Institute are the deserters, the traitors whose faith flaked after your Archivist ruined our dark rapture."

"I think you're a bit outdated with news," Basira remarks. "Gertrude is gone."

It really is something to hear people talk about it so dispassionately, Gerry thinks. Jon's eyes hone in on him, but he ignores them, focusing on Manuela instead.

Manuela, for her part, is cackling with delight. "Stopping us took everything she had, then. Is this your new Archivist? He doesn't look like much."

"Did you ever see Gertrude?" Gerry asks then, incredulous. Tim snorts, and both Basira and Jon shoot them unimpressed stares. Gerry shrugs, feeling his mouth twitch at Jon's pursed lips. This is definitely not what he expected when coming here, but he's not complaining. Much easier -and safer- to take down a lone avatar than an entire cult.

"What happened during your ritual?" Basira asks, and Manuela turns to her with a hateful glare.

"Don't play coy. It was her who-"

"Gertrude didn't do anything to stop your ritual. I don't even think she was preparing for it." Jon interrupts, giving Gerry another look to confirm. He shakes his head. The last months with Gertrude were focused on the Unknowing, he can't remember her even mentioning the Dark.

"But- that doesn't make any sense!" Manuela's voice is faint now, an almost hysterical quality to it, like the rug's been pulled under her feet. "She- why did we fail, then?!"

"I don't know," Jon shrugs, and his eyes flare up like searchlights, almost enough to push the darkness away. "But you're going to tell us your story."

Gerry doesn't get to find out what happens when someone refuses the compulsion, which is probably good, in hindsight. However, the tale Manuela tells is perplexing, and Gerry finds himself repeating her question to himself.

Why did they fail?

If Gertrude didn't plan or attempt anything, if they sacrificed their beast, if the eclipse came... why did it not succeed? Jon and Basira's furrowed brows let him know he's not the only one thinking along those lines, but Gerry feels the pressure of the Eye pushing him back from the thought, so he files it for later. Maybe Martin will be able to make heads or tails of it.

"And it's still here?" It's Tim who asks this time, but Manuela doesn't even wait for Jon to repeat the question. Defeat has settled over her shoulders like a cloak, and she nods softly.

"It's my only remaining mission, to guard it. But if you've come to destroy it... then I guess my patron has really abandoned me."

"Sad." Basira turns to Jon. "Ask her how we can destroy it."

"No need. I know how to." Jon looks at the fallen woman, his gaze troubled. "You- go. Just- go away."

Basira frowns. "Jon?"

"She's done," Jon shrugs, but he seems to gain more confidence with each word. "Just leave, and tell your congregation to stay away from us; or we will destroy you, like we did with the Stranger."

Gerry feels his eyebrows climb up his forehead, impressed -and delighted- at the firm, steady threat. Jon is not one to brag about his power, but... confidence is a good look on him, Gerry decides.

Manuela doesn't respond, merely climbing to her feet with a pained groan. Being forced to feed the Eye can't have been good for her healing process, but the knee seems to be solid enough to do its work, as she steps out of the circle of light without a look to any of them.

"How are we going to destroy it then?" Basira gives Jon a questioning look.

"I have to See it," Jon says, and Gerry's mind floods with alarms. Knowing the Dark Sun sounds like a great way to leave a mark.

"No you don't-" Gerry shoots forward, grabbing onto Jon's hand with bruising strength as soon as he takes a step towards the end of the warehouse. "You don't have to."

Jon's tired, sad eyes are apologetic when they focus on him. "Gerry-"

"Fear bingo card," Gerry blurts out the only thing in his mind, and Jon stiffens under his grasp.

"...Oh. That would- yes." Jon's hand shifts until he's squeezing back on Gerry's, the green in his eyes starting to fade. "It's okay. I won't do it, if you don't want me to."

Something hurts in Gerry's chest. It feels like the Beholding, so he can't help but suspect he just ruined something big. Which is great. The feeling also pales in comparison to the fluttering in his stomach.

Jon's lopsided smiles were enthralling to watch before, when they were muted and he tried to hide them. Now he's smiling directly at Gerry, warm and reassuring and soft, and it's doing all sorts of funny things to-

"Safewords and all? Very healthy, kudos to you two." Tim's sardonic voice pours over them like a pail of cold water, and Jon's little smile evaporates like mist under harsh sunlight.

"Wow, you really do have to be an asshole about everything, huh?" Gerry whips around to face Tim where he's standing at the edge of their little island of light. His eyes are glowing like the banked embers of a forgotten campfire, just waiting for a stray breeze to set everything ablaze.

"What can I say, I just like to be part of important moments."

"Not everyone is going to be as tolerant to your bullshit as Jon, St-"

"I'm going to shoot both of you if you don't shut up," Basira interrupts. "Probably won't kill you, but it'll hurt. Test me."

"Don't test her, she'll do it," Jon mumbles somewhere behind Gerry, who has known Basira would have no problem putting a bullet in him since the first day he opened his eyes in the land of the living again. "Gerry," Jon adds, a slightly pleading hint to his voice, and Gerry knows he's lost.

He narrows his eyes at Tim's infuriating smirk, before turning his back to him and returning to Jon's side. The asshole makes a couple kissy noises, but Gerry finds that rearranging Tim's face is much less interesting than the flush on Jon's face as he shakes his head in exasperation.

Gerry grazes a knuckle against Jon's cheekbone, and Jon goes red to the roots of his hair. "We'll just find another way to destroy it."

--------------------------------------------------------------

Tim rolls his eyes at the display.

It's very irritating, to see Jon comply with the request so easily, when Tim remembers with nauseating clarity how stubborn the man can be.

Anything for a pretty face and a cup of good tea, he guesses.

Keay turns to face the back of the warehouse then, and Tim catches the flurry of movement as soon as he takes a couple steps away from Jon.

It's all a bit of a blur.

He can barely see the outline of Manuela's silhouette, the darkness hugging tightly around her, and the wretched-looking bat they wrestled away from her earlier.

The sound of wood against flesh is disturbingly clear in the empty silence of the warehouse, startling in contrast with how Jon collapses without a noise.

He hears Basira's gun go off again, but Tim -or rather, his fire- reaches the woman faster.

She screeches in pain as flames engulf her, and every step she takes leaves behind a flaming trail, but Tim is not looking at her.

Key's screaming at Basira to get out; he's got Jon gathered up in his arms, and Jon's head lolls back like a broken doll, his eyes -or what remains of them- bleeding down his forehead. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck- each and every one of Tim's hurried gasps for breath is like feeding oxygen into a dying fire-

The warehouse burns.

--------------------------------------------------------------

To say Jon wakes up in a dark place would be a bit like saying the sky is big and far away, like trying to describe something that is merely in terms of how humans perceive it, when its existence has little -if anything- to do with the human experience.

This place is dark not in the sense that it lacks light, but rather in the sense that the concept of light has never existed here in the first place.

In any case, even the memory of light is of little use to Jon, because he knows without the slightest shadow of a doubt, that he cannot See.

It's similar to how he felt in the Buried, his senses all heightened at the loss of his Sight, and the thought that in this place at least, he is human. Or at least as much human as there is left of him, after the Beholding sank its teeth so deep into his being.

Jon gets the feeling it's not too much.

He tries to wave his hand before his face, but only succeeds in feeling the slight disturbance of air before his nose. The black around him is almost suffocating and with it comes the knowledge that, without his eyes, Jon will never find the way out. There's no Daisy with him this time, to feed him a statement in equal parts barbed and sweet that will grant him just enough power to climb out.

"Is there anyone there?" Jon calls out, and the Dark seems to swallow his voice as voraciously as everything else. Stupid question, he thinks as he feels the first pangs of dear prickle down the back of his neck.

There is no one there, but there is something there.

He knows it without needing to Know it, the same way humans through their entire existence have always known the night is dangerous, and that the creatures that lurk in the corners where the light cannot reach are waiting, always waiting for the moment they lower their guard just a little too much.

There's a shuffle to his left, and what sounds like claws, like a hiss, like too many skittering feet.

"Stay back!" Jon turns to face the sound, or he thinks he does. It's difficult to know if he moved at all, in this place of absence. The noise repeats, from behind him this time, and Jon whips around again.

He was- he's not alone. He's lost, yes, but he wasn't abandoned, he just has to find the way back.

'Back where?' he thinks, and he flinches with a scream as the thing in the dark brushes against his side.

"C- calm down, Jon," he tries to tell himself. He just needs to go back home, where it's safe, where there's light. Is light only something he imagined? Is home?

No.

Home is... home is a place that exists.

The creature in the Dark snarls angrily, and Jon fights to control his breathing, as he desperately clings to that one thought.

Home smells of lavender. Home is a bed that's just barely big enough, and a sofa that isn't at all. Home is a place to talk of the future, and feel fear that is not fear, because you want to face it. Home is a pair of strong arms, and the scent of freshly brewed coff-

"-aid he remembered what- what his wife told him before he turned off the lights at the living room. She- she reminded him to set the alarm, because they would be having breakfast with-"

The voice echoes all around him like a desperate prayer, and Jon hears the creature growl again. Something prickles at Jon's eyes, like the itch below a scab that'll drive you mad until you tear it out. He rubs at them, and spots of color explode behind his closed eyelids.

"-rents next morning, and- and he said he remembered the way then, Jon, because he wanted- you were right, alright? It was the fucking quiche, he just-" Gerry's voice grows more and more desperate as Jon keeps blinking and rubbing, and the colors get brighter, and his eyes hurt, but the pressure on them releases. "He walked out, just like that. And he was at the top floor, with- with his wife, and he could see the light of his clock, and he knew she'd already set the alarm for him because she knew he'd forget- Jon, open your eyes please-"

And Jon does.

Everything is blurry at first, as his healing continues to fix the damage Manuela caused. It's still dark, but not Dark, and off to his side Jon can see the sky is tinted an angry orange hue. His nose registers not the scent of lavender, but the smell of burnt wood, and he realizes Gerry's silhouette is backlit by a roaring fire enveloping the last home of the Dark Sun.

"What-" Jon goes to ask. "Where's Manuela?"

"Tim dealt with her," Basira says, sitting on Jon's other side. "And the Sun as well."

The wounds on his face itch as they heal, the remaining scars just slightly raised dots that will flatten out soon enough, but that he Knows will leave a mark. Jon takes a hand up to his face, to feel at the bumps fanning from his eyes like stars.

"Is Tim-"

"In there," Gerry responds before he can even ask the question. "He'll be alright, it's- fire can't hurt him."

"I heard your voice," Jon says, because it feels important, to let Gerry know. He stiffens, and Jon lifts a hand to push a long lock of hair behind a pierced ear. "I followed it out. Like quiche." He smirks.

Gerry's face crumbles, and he gives an aborted, hysterical laugh of relief, before roughly pulling Jon into a sitting position, and wrapping his arms around him.

"I- I'm back. I came back." Jon mumbles awkwardly. This is not at all what he expected, but... but it's not bad, he decides as Gerry gives a weak nod, his face buried in Jon's neck and his hands clenched tight in the back of Jon's shirt. "I'm home."

"You really are." With the roaring of the fire behind them, Gerry's strained voice is barely audible against Jon's skin, but there's no mistaking the way his arms tighten around him. "You are, Jon."

It's a strange thought, but home can be a lot of things, he guesses.

Even him, apparently.

#jongerrymartin #jongerry #gerrymartin #vit writes #illicio

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just-absolutely-super · 5 years ago

Text

Can You Hear Me I’m Expressing My Love

@soulxmakaweek

My contribution for Day 2: Flowers.

Summary: Maka receives a gift from a secret admirer.

Grab your nachos, guys. It’s a cheesy kind of story.

FF.net // AO3

Maka blinked.

Taped to the front of her locker was a single rose.

She didn’t know what to make of it, wasn’t really sure what to do with it. She had never been gifted with anything like this before. Sure, she had the occasional partnership request or fanmail, but this was something more…intimate maybe?

Beside her Soul snorted. “A rose, huh? How cliché.”

Maka nodded, “Yeah, but it is a sweet gesture. And at least it’s not red.”

The color surprised Maka. Instead of a typical rose color like red or pink, the flower was yellow with red tips.

Maka examined the flower, “There’s no card though… I wonder who sent it?”

Soul gave a noncommittal noise, “Probably some coward not cool enough to give it to you in person.”

Maka frowned at her weapon, “That’s a little harsh. Maybe they’re just shy.”

Soul shrugged, “Whatever. C’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

The two walked to class, Maka admiring her flower and giving it a sniff occasionally. Around her, she heard various whispers from some of the other girls in the hallway.

“Maka’s so lucky!”

“I know! I wish someone gave me a rose!”

“Who do you think gave it to her?”

“Who knows… Could be this guy who’s in my class. He likes to talk about how pretty Maka is.”

“Geez, all this fuss over some dumb flower,” Soul muttered.

“It’s considered romantic, Soul,” Maka defended. “Everyone wants to feel admired every once in a while.”

“I guess.” He simply said.

Maka scoffed. Boys just didn’t get it. Smiling at her rose, she proclaimed, “Well, I like it. It’s pretty.”

Soul nodded. He barely gave her a glance but she saw a tiny smile adorning his face. In his usual nonchalant tone he said, “If you like it, that’s all that matters.”

They made it to Stein’s classroom and sat down at their seats. Once Maka got settled in, Tsubaki leaned over to speak to her.

“Oh, Maka, that rose is lovely! Where did you get it?”

Maka smiled at her friend, “It was just taped to my locker. I guess someone put it there during last period.”

Tsubaki cooed, “How nice! Do you know who sent it?”

Maka shook her head, “No, they didn’t leave a card. It doesn’t matter though, it’s the thought that counts.”

Patty giggled from the row above as she began to sing, “Maka’s got a boyfriend! Maka’s got a boyfriend!”

Maka flushed, “No I don’t! I don’t even know who it’s from! I-It could just be from someone who’s a fan of my skills.”

Liz snorted, “As if. You, my friend, have a secret admirer.”

Maka scoffed, “Just because it’s a rose doesn’t mean anything. It’s not even pink or red.”

Liz leaned down to poke at the flower, “Think again, Maka. The tips of the rose are red. Everyone knows a yellow rose with red tips symbolizes falling in love. Therefore…”

“Maka’s got a boyfriend! Maka’s got a boyfriend!” Patty was practically squealing at this point, trying and failing to hold in her laughter.

Maka blushed, setting the rose down to hold her hands to her burning cheeks. Tsubaki gave her a sympathetic pat on the back.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Maka. It’s nice to know that someone loves you.”

Maka nodded, staring at the rose some more, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

She felt someone’s eyes on her and turned around to face her weapon. He had a strange look on his face, almost as if he were in deep thought about something. Maka tilted her head to the side.

“Is something wrong, Soul?”

Soul must not have realized he was staring because he jolted a little in his seat before turning around to face the blackboard. “No. Just spaced out a little is all.”

Maka frowned at him but decided to brush it off when Stein's lecture began.

---------------

Back at the apartment, Maka was sitting at her desk as she stared at her rose—which was now in one of their (few) crystal vases.

She hummed in thought. Was Liz right? Was this secret admirer of the romantic kind? Were they really too shy to confess in person and thus decided to profess their feelings via a beautiful flower?

It seemed like something out of her cheesy romance novels. While a sweet gesture, she couldn’t help but feel incredulous that someone would actually tell her they were falling in love with her through flower symbolism.

What’s more is she wasn’t sure who would actually like her enough to go through with the gesture. She didn’t know a lot of people, and everyone she did know didn’t give her any indication it was from them. If it was from one of her few fans, she wasn’t sure she could accept them. For one thing, they really didn’t know her that well, how could they assume they loved her?

And another thing…she knew for a fact she didn’t love them because there was someone else in her life who held her heart.

“Hey, I’m feeling Chinese takeout tonight. That okay with you?”

Maka jumped at the voice of her weapon. She swiveled around in her chair to reply, “Uh, yeah. That’s fine with me.”

Soul raised an eyebrow at her before flicking his eyes to the rose. Slowly, he walked over to where she sat at her desk.

“Ever since Liz told you about that rose you’ve done nothing but space out and stare at it. What’s up? Thinking hard about the poor sap who couldn’t tell you they like you in person?”

He said it in his usual teasing manner, yet Maka noticed his tense body language. She didn’t know why Soul was so wound up. It was making her worry a little…

Deciding to come back to his behavior later, she answered his earlier question, “Kind of. It’s just strange…”

“What’s strange?” Soul asked, making himself comfortable on her bed.

Maka hummed, turning her gaze back to the rose. “That there’s someone at school who’s so infatuated with me that they’re under the impression that it’s love. They don’t know me at all, yet they’ve decided they’ve fallen in love with me.”

“What makes you think they don’t know you?”

Maka looked to him, “There’s only so many people who actually know me. Whoever sent this has to be someone from another class. Someone who probably only knows me through my reputation as one of the better meisters of the DWMA. Who else could it be?”

It looked as if Soul was contemplating what to say before he shrugged, “You never know, maybe it is somebody who actually knows you.”

Maka snorted, “As if. I only have a small circle of friends. It can’t be any of you guys. Any one of you would have told me to my face, right?”

She expected Soul to agree with her, to laugh along with her and make a crude joke or two. Instead she was met with silence. She chanced a glance at her partner and saw that he had a frown on his face, a far-off look in his eyes. She wished he would tell her what his deal was already.

Finally he said, “Have you considered that maybe they couldn’t?”

Maka tilted her head to the side, confused, “What do you mean?”

Soul sighed, as if explaining to Maka why this would be was such a drag!

“I mean, maybe they don’t have the courage to tell you in person how they feel. Maybe all they could do was find some fancy flower that had some cheesy meaning and hope you would like it.”

“But why not sign it? Wouldn’t they want me to know it was from them?”

Soul turned his red eyes to her green ones and Maka was almost taken aback when she saw pure, raw emotion in them.

“Being rejected isn’t cool, Maka.”

It was such a cryptic phrase. She knew her weapon was trying to tell her something; she just needed to piece together the clues to figure it out. Before she could question him further, he suddenly stood up.

It was as if a flip was switched. Gone was that ounce of vulnerability he allowed her to see, and in its place was his usual no-care attitude. Soul stretched his arms over his head as he said, “Alright, I’m gonna call in the Chinese. You want the usual?”

Maka blinked at him. He was purposely avoiding looking at her now. She fought off a scowl. She had to think his previous words over before she started tackling this.

“Yeah, the usual is good.” She said.

“Cool.” With that he left.

Maka sighed as she watch him leave. She leaned back in her chair.

Should she be reading too much into their conversation? Were Soul’s words implying what she thought it was?

She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but it was hard to when he had looked at her like that. Like he was trying to tell her something but refused to outright say it. It was like he was practically pleading for her to figure him out.

And that slightly frustrated her because she had been trying to figure out Soul Eater Evans for years now and no matter how many times she broke down his carefully built walls, the boy managed to build more up in an attempt to keep her at arm’s length.

It was exasperating. More so if her wild thoughts were right about him and his possible connection to her secret admirer…

She must have been sitting there lost in her thoughts for longer than she realized because soon she heard a knock on her door.

“Hey, takeout’s here.”

Maka nodded in reply, “Coming.”

She walked out of her room, stopping in the doorway of the kitchen to stare at her weapon who was munching on a spring roll. He must have felt her eyes on him because he stopped mid-bite to acknowledge her.

“What?” he scowled, as if ready for her to reprimand him for something or another.

“You’re being messy.” She told him, not wanting him to figure out what she had been pondering on the last few minutes.

The Death Scythe snorted, continuing to attack his food with his teeth, “Who cares? I got nobody to impress.”

Maka rolled her eyes and giggled a little. Sitting down in the chair, she took her portion of the food and began to dig in.

After a few minutes she ventured to speak, “For the record…”

Soul stopped his eating, raising a quizzical brow at her. Maka continued, carefully choosing her words.

“If my secret admirer were to come to me in person and suddenly confess to me, I probably wouldn’t turn them down completely.” She then gave him a pointed look. If her theory proved right, he would understand the message she was trying to convey to him. Hopefully she wasn’t making an awkward fool of herself, “I mean, they went through all the trouble to show me how much they liked me. It’d be awful to reject them so cruelly, wouldn’t you say?”

For the longest time Soul didn’t say anything, just stared at her, his red eyes searching her own. She saw that same trace of emotion from before and it gave her confidence that she wasn’t making a mistake in her assumptions. Maka hoped he could see her emotions in her eyes as well. She hoped he saw what she wanted him to see. That she saw him and that she would never refuse him, ever.

Finally, her weapon broke their gaze and went back to playing with his food, “Alright. Do whatever you want, Maka. But if he turns out to be a lame creep don’t come crying to me.”

Maka giggled. “Nah. I’m sure he’s cool.”

---------------

Her secret admirer didn’t leave another rose for her, nor did he confront her.

Her girl friends were somewhat disappointed in the lack of development, but Maka didn’t mind. She knew her secret admirer wasn’t so secret to her anymore, and she was content to wait for him.

Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months. Even still, she didn’t complain. She knew he was waiting as well. Either for the perfect moment or to actually gain his courage, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that neither one of them were going anywhere.

It wouldn’t be until six months later that Maka would wake up bright and early one day and come face to face with a large bouquet of roses. All yellow with red tips.

And the holder of this bouquet was the one she was waiting for.

“H-Here…” Soul said, face a lovely shade of red and his gaze bashfully turned away.

Maka gently took the flowers, pressing her face to them to smell their lovely aroma. Afterwards, she looked to the boy who held her heart and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“I love them.”

I love you.

#soma #soul x maka #somaweek2020 #somaweek #soulxmakaweek #soul eater evans #maka albarn #soul eater #my writing

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desiraypark · 4 years ago

Text

Let’s take a tour...

A Tour of Clyde and Sherri’s Home Close your eyes and imagine. Well, don’t close your eyes because you have to read this.

Clyde bought the cozy two-bedroom house after the last great Cauliflower scheme. Sherri moved in a few weeks before their wedding. I imagine the exterior looking something like this...

LIVING ROOM

Alright. Now, we’re in the livin’ room. Very simple: Cream walls, butterscotch oak floorin’. Navy blue sofa against the wall, matchin’ recliner beside it. Dark wood coffee table. Flat screen TV mounted on the wall. Sherri’s additions: She picked out the table under the TV. Its color matches the coffee table almost perfectly. She put framed photos on top of it (we’ll talk about those photos in a few). At one point, she’d bought a coral rug to put up under the coffee table. Right now, she’s got a white vase in the middle of the table with some artificial peonies up in it.

Oh, she also bought a shoe rack that’s by the front door (please use that next time). And a floor lamp. Just a regular ol’ floor lamp with a silver body and white shade. Before they got engaged, Sherri strongly recommended that Clyde get some real blinds and toss those temporary shades (he did). KITCHEN/DINING Alright, now we’re gonna walk through the living room and into the kitchen and dining area. As you can see, the kitchen has maintained a...”classic” look—the wood panelin’, wooden cupboards and shelves.This yellowed linoleum that needs to come on up. The oven and refrigerator are both black--kinda new. Sherri’s mom once asked her when those two would get the kitchen remodeled, It reminded Clyde of his Grandma and PawPaw’s kitchen. The previous owners didn’t make any changes to it, so neither would Clyde. Now--step on inside, y’all, I don’t bite--now, as you can see, when you walk all the way into the kitchen, the fridge is pushed to the wall on your right, sitting beside a half-counter that connects to the oven. You see the counter wrapping all the way around to the door--giving Clyde and Sherri some good cookin’ space. They do other things on this counter, but that ain’t my business to tell. They love lookin’ out this window over the sink to look at the birds and butterflies in the backyard. Of course, that door leads to the back yard, but this door is right here to my right is the pantry slash laundry room. Sherri’s additions: So, Sherri got her grandma to make these cute lil’ embroidered curtains for the window and the door. Sherri keeps sayin’ that she’s gonna learn how to sew, but that ain’t girl ain’t gonna start no time soon. Anyway, she just bought this big blender--she said it’s for smoothies, but she really wants Clyde to make her some frozen margaritas this summer. She also bought them a 12-piece Pyrex set. Now, I don’t like to stereotype men, but both me and Sherri were shocked that Clyde had so much cookware, and silverware, and a good set of dishes. I mean, the man had all kinds of nice pots and pans--even a cast iron skillet! But the thing is, the stuff was barely used. Of course, he’s always busy at Duck Tape, but one day, he told Sherri that he’d bought it all during his “Food Network phase”. Okay, to your left is their dining table. Nothin’ fancy. Let’s move right along... MASTER BEDROOM So, if y’all turn around and step outside of the kitchen and look to your left--that door right there leads to Clyde and Sherri’s bedroom. It has the same design as the living room: cream walls, butterscotch flooring. Y’all follow me inside. So, as you can see, the bedroom set is a dark wood, I guess that’s ebony or somethin’. It came with a queen-size sleigh bed, a vertical dresser, and a nightstand. Clyde could have gotten a horizontal dresser with the mirror attached to it, but he didn’t think he’d need it. He just put a floor length mirror on the back of the door. Clyde also keeps sayin’ that he wants a king-size one day--he’s a big man, you know? But he didn’t wanna overcrowd the room. To your left is the closet, where Clyde and Sherri keep their shoes; their coats; their nice clothes--you know, dresses, suits, and all that. Now, as we look past the closet, our eyes will land on the nightstand, and beside that, the bed. Clyde put the bed there so he could look up at the sunshine in the morning. Then, on the other side of the bed is the horizontal dresser with its attached mirror. Then, directly to your right you’ll see a vertical dresser. That’s a case for Clyde’s prosthetic arm on top of it. Sherri’s additions: Sherri hasn’t added much to the bedroom. Of course, she was definitely gonna need some space for her clothes, so she and Clyde went on and picked out a horizontal dresser. Sherri kinda hates it, though--because it doesn’t match the rest of the set. Clyde bought the landscape painting over his dresser. But other than that, Sherri’s only additions are her personal items, a few candles, and some extra bedding sets that she keeps in the linen closet. BATHROOM Okay, now let’s step out of the master bedroom and walk across the living room and into that tiny, little hallway. In front of us is the linen closet. To your right is another room and to your left is the bathroom. Let’s step into the bathroom, it’ll be quick. Matter of fact, don’t even step inside--just peek in. The wall is a pale yellow, the floor white tile. The sink is to your left. That’s a medicine chest on top of it--I don’t think they put those in too many new houses, these days. Of course, that’s the toilet beside the sink, and beside the toilet is the tub. That’s Clyde’s shower curtain. The mother duck leading her ducklings across a pond. He picked out these green rugs, too. Sherri’s additions: Again, all Sherri really bought to the bathroom are her personal items...and her desire to set the shower curtain on fire. SPARE ROOM

*closes bathroom door* Now, let’s turn around. We have what’s my favorite room in Clyde and Sherri’s home. The “spare” room. I love it and they love it because it’s a space they built together. When Clyde and Sherri were dating, it was an empty room, minus a few boxes and a random lamp with a bird on it.

Come in, come in. So, when they were engaged, Sherri helped him sort through his boxes. Just a few boxes--three or four, I suppose. They had books; photos; stuff from his time in the military, and some of his mom’s belongings--some jewelry and a few little accessories. Clyde told Sherri that he just never got around to unpacking the boxes, but she knew that he really meant, “I wasn’t ready to unpack these boxes”. So, she didn’t push him with this one. Instead, they just put a lot of thought into what they’d turn the room into--then the stuff in the boxes would find their places. So, finally, they decided they just turn this into an “unwind” room. Not an entertainment room, but a place to just relax, or take a nap. But as you can see, they kept the furnishing minimal--because who knows? The unwind room might have to be transformed into the Lil’ Shlyde or the lil’ Clerri room, one day. Don’t tell them I came up with those names, they’re liable to take me serious. So, I know, the first thing y’all probably noticed was the console record player right in front of you. Somethin’ about the scritch and scratch of some vinyl just puts you in a different kind of mood, don’t you think? Up against this back wall is a modular sectional. Clyde and Sherri take many a nap on this thing. Doesn’t it look cozy? I wonder what they’ll do with it if they move out...

But anyway, to your left--is a modular bookcase that houses the lovebirds’ combined book collections. Over here, under the window is a mini fridge and a tub of snacks. The unwind room turns into the “PMS” and “eat your feelings out” room, real quick! Okay, that wasn’t my business to tell. I’d show you the backyard, but it isn’t much. It’s fenced in--that I will mention. But other than that, the yard is patchy. They have a couple of reclining lawn chairs. They don’t have a grill because Jimmy is the designated Logan Grill King, so why bother? But it’s a pretty empty backyard--nothin’ special.

So, that brings me to the end of this tour. I hope y’all enjoyed it. Please pay Clyde and Sherri a visit. They’re a lovely couple. Ask Clyde to fix you up a drink he calls the “Sherri”. I don’t know what’s in it, but I know that thang had me in their living room doin’ The Wobble one night. The Wobble wasn’t even playin’ and I was doin’ it by myself. Needless to say, he doesn’t make it for me anymore. But anyway. Bye y’all!

#the world of clyde x sherri

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yayneloveart · 5 years ago

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Good Omens/Lucifer 2

(wow, this thing blew the fuck up. i know this isnt the only Good Omens/Lucifer fantic (Ive made my way around AO3) so I have no idea why this is going nuts. @hairdryertrash even asked me to tag them so they would see the next part asap)

‘Lucifer, you can’t just tie up our witness,’ Chloe sighed.

‘If I hadn’t, he’d still be running,’ Lucifer justified himself.

‘Look, what is this all about?’ Crowley asked from where he sat on the floor. ‘Is this about Adam? What I did to Ligur? What happened at the airfield?’

‘I’m over all that,' Lucifer said dismissively. ‘All in the past.’

'Who told you where I was? Was it Hastur? Beelzebub? Zozo? It was Gabriel, wasn't it?'

'I haven't talked to Gabriel in millennia, I left that up to Beelzebub.’

‘Then why are you here on earth coming after me?’

‘I told you, I’m living here on earth and consulting the LAPD.’

Crowley leaned over to see around Lucifer to the officers standing behind him. He gave Decker an inquisitive look and she nodded at him. He looked at the other officers and they all gave their own affirmatives.

‘I can’t fucking believe this,’ Crowley slowly stood up and the ropes suddenly slid off him.

‘I guess it was a bad idea to tie up a snake. You are a wily one.’

‘And you’re not my boss anymore, so once I’m done here, you can stuff it.’

Lucifer just looked at him in utter awe as he walked past him back to the detectives. Dan did a very bad job of hiding his glee as he told Crowley to come with him to the station to record an official statement.

‘So... another brother?’ Chloe asked.

‘Yes, one of the younger ones, and the least predictable. And a little shit.’

‘You two can catch up after we get started on this case, right now we need to find a killer.’

‘Did you hear him? He told me to stuff it! That little brat!’

With Chloe driving, they arrived back at the precinct after Dan and Crowley and they were already recording a statement when they walked in. Lucifer settled with bitching about his family at Chloe as they watched from the two way mirror.

‘Out of all my siblings, I would think the one who followed me into Hell would have more respect,’ he huffed. ‘He’s even one of my most decorated followers, but no, he had to go and stab me in the back and now hes telling me to stuff it!’

‘Look, I don’t know what you two have been through, but we need him and his statement right now to find this killer,’ Chloe carefully explained.

‘What could he have seen, anyways? He has horrible eyesight!’

‘Wait, you didn’t actually see the killer?’ they heard Dan say to Crowley.

‘No, I got terrible eyes. That’s the reason why I need the glasses, they’re all screwed up. I do have a sharp sense of smell, though.’

Dan sighed audibly, ‘Okay, what did he smell like?’

‘Hes half lying,’ Lucifer commented. ‘He does have bad eyesight, but the glasses aren’t for that. When he fell, dear old dad decided to curse him by turning him into a snake. He can take a human-like form now, but his senses stay the same, and his eyes stay... snaky.’

‘So wait, you were being literal when you called him a snake before?’ Chloe tried to clarify.

‘Yes. Specifically, the snake that convinced Eve to eat the apple.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be you?’

‘Not really, I just told him to go cause some trouble, maybe screw around with that stupid ‘Tree of Knowledge’ dad planted in that stupid garden.’

They turned back to the interview with Dan having a hard time taking Crowley seriously.

‘Look, a meth lab has a very distinctive smell, and lets say I’ve spent time in areas that housed a few,’ Crowley explained. ‘Phosphorus, hydriodic acid, cough syrup, basic ingredients and the man reeked of them. Now unless he was just an amateur alchemist with a head cold, your victim was caught up in some serious drugs.’

‘Alright, so you picked up on the smell of meth making ingredients,’ Dan reiterated. ‘Anything else?’

Crowley thought for a minute. ‘I could smell a bit of cologne. It was too faint for him to be wearing it, so he must have spent an extended amount of time with someone else wearing it.’

‘Would you be able to recognize it out of a line of other similar colognes?’

‘Yeah, it smelled bloody awful. Whoever was wearing it cared more about the name on the bottle than the smell.’

‘Wow, if Crowley is being honest, then he’s giving us a lot of great details,’ Chloe said.

‘Hes still a little shit,’ Lucifer mumbled.

After the interview Crowley tried to sneak out of the precinct without Lucifer seeing, but at the last second Lucifer grabbed him from behind and dragged him back inside.

‘You’re not getting away that easy!’ Lucifer yelled as he put his arm around his neck and held him in place.

‘Lucifer, just leave him alone, we have work to do!’ Chloe tried to break up the fight.

‘Let me go! I don’t serve you anymore!’ Crowley struggled to groan out.

‘But I want to catch up, brother, especially after our last meeting!’

‘Let me go you giant twat!’

‘They remind me of my brothers,’ Ella sighed as she joined the other officers watching them fight.

‘For once I’m happy I’m an only child,’ Chloe commented as she backed off, waiting for the dust to settle before chewing Lucifer out.

‘Oooh, whats that?’ Lucifer caught a glint of something gold on Crowley’s finger. He let go of his neck and slipped the ring from his finger while he was caught off guard.

‘Give that back!’ Crowley shouted as he lunged at Lucifer, but Lucifer gripped Crowley’s hair and kept him at arms length.

‘This is a wedding ring, isn’t it? Did you get married?’

‘No! I bought it at a shop in Rome, I just like it!’

‘My ancient language skills aren’t the strongest, but I think I see the phrase ‘I Love You’ written in several of them. Is that Sanskrit?’

‘Give it back!’

‘If its just a random ring, then why are you freaking out over it-’ and Lucifer yelled in pain as Crowley freed himself from Lucifer’s grip and bit down on his hand, hard. ‘You bit me! You bloody bit me!’

‘You had it coming,’ Crowley picked up the ring from where Lucifer dropped it and replaced it on his hand.

‘I have a first aid kit in my lab,’ Ella announced as she took Lucifer by his injured hand and led him into her workspace, Chloe, Dan, and even Crowley following behind. ‘Wow, that is some gnarly bite you got there, Crowley. I would hate to be your dentist.’

Ella looked over the bite, most of which was two large holes where she guessed his unusually large canines sunk in. If she didn’t know better, it looked like a very large snake had bitten him. She looked up at Crowley and saw a look of satisfaction.

‘Do we have anymore information on our vic, Ella?’ Decker asked as she watched her clean the wound and disinfect it.

‘Oh, yeah, an officer talked to his wife and we got more basic information. Turns out, Weisser was working as an intern for a political campaign, and as far as we know has no history of causing trouble. Not even a parking ticket.’

‘Maybe his killer was part of the campaign,’ Dan suggested. ‘If Crowley is right about the killer smelling like a meth lab, then maybe the killer worked for the campaign and used it to launder drug money.’

‘And Weisser could have found out about it and was taken out before he could talk to the police.

‘Well, who is the campaign for?’ Lucifer asked as Ella finished taping the gaze in place over his wound. ‘We can see if any of the higher staff have any connection to drugs in the city.’

‘He was working for Thaddeus Dowling’s campaign for California Governor.’

#good omens #lucifer #lucifer morningstar #anthony j crowley #crowley #chloe decker #Dan espinoza #ella lopez

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falseroar · 5 years ago

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Silver and Peppermint (Part 1)

((Back in August I had the idea of trying to do AU August, only to get totally wrapped up in a different project. As a part of that, I wrote this Monster Hunter!Abe AU, a murder mystery which kind of turned out way longer than the one shot I meant it to be at about 7/8 parts in all. Might be related to a certain Goretober prompt I wrote last week, if you don’t mind probably obvious spoilers.

I’m using the same tag list as from Can You Wake Up?, although I know this is a very different thing. If you’d rather not be tagged in this or future parts I totally understand, just let me know.

Warnings for series as a whole: References to blood, death, murder, poison, and werewolves.

Links to Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and the Epilogue.))

“A monster hunter? Really, Damien?”

Abe paused outside of the Mayor’s office with one hand outstretched to knock and glanced behind him, but the receptionist was already almost back to her desk after showing him where to go. He should knock and let them know he was out here, but as a professional he knew the importance of getting the lay of the land before jumping straight into a new case.

Plus, he was nosy.

“I had to do something,” came the rich voice that Abe recognized as belonging to the mayor, the same voice he heard over the phone just yesterday. “The police are stumped and the press is having a field day. The last thing we want is a mob with pitchforks and torches looking for someone to blame.”

“I have leads, the police are just too scared to move. They’re not used to handling this kind of thing, not with the risk it involves.”

“Which is why I called in a professional.”

It was as good an introduction as he could hope for, so Abe knocked on the office door and walked in at the mayor’s invitation.

“Ah, you must be Abe,” the man said as he rose from behind his desk and leaned over to shake Abe’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about your previous work.”

“And I’ve heard a lot about your current problem, Mr. Mayor,” Abe said, narrowing his eyes as he sized the man up. Well-dressed, slicked black hair, and a genuine smile that looked out of place on a politician. And a cane beside his desk, black with a silver top. Did he need assistance getting around? “You made the right call, bringing me in before this got any worse.”

“Please, call me Damien.” The mayor paused, his eyes flickering toward the other person in the room as though in response to a sound they made, and said, “And this is the District Attorney, Y/N. They will be working with you to find the culprit behind these vicious attacks.”

“What?” Their disbelief at those words almost matched Abe’s own. “Damien, please. Now isn’t the time for jokes.”

“I wasn’t joking, my friend,” Damien said as he sank back into his chair. “Abe is highly qualified and comes with the best of recommendations, but he doesn’t know this city like you do, and at this point you know the case better than anyone. It only makes sense that you would serve as the city’s liaison during this investigation.”

Abe cleared his throat and said, “I think some of those recommendations might have mentioned that I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to partners.”

He tried hard not to look at the District Attorney, but he had noticed the way they looked him up and down when he walked in, the distaste in their eyes as if even his very presence bothered them on a deeply personal level. They couldn’t have been any more the kind of partner he would have chosen for himself if given the chance.

“While you do have a…worrying tendency to lose partners, I believe Y/N can handle it. There isn’t anyone in this city that I would trust more,” Damien said, smiling at the District Attorney who appeared to bite back a word at that even as they began to crack.

“…What do you know of the situation?” they asked, turning to face Abe.

“Three victims already, all attacked at night as if by a wild animal. Except wild animals don’t walk into a person’s home and lock the door behind them when they’re done,” Abe answered. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, of course.”

“It’s four now,” the DA said with a sigh. “That’s why I stopped by here. They found another one in the park this morning, less than an hour ago.”

“Sounds like the scene should still be fresh then,” Abe said, and realized he may have sounded a little too enthusiastic judging by the Mayor and his DA’s reactions. “The faster we get there, the faster we can catch the beast responsible. Think you can handle it, Partner?”

“I am not your partner,” the District Attorney said, flashing the Mayor a look when he made a sound at that.

“You two will be reporting directly to me,” Damien said. “I want you to keep me updated on everything, and I’ve already received assurance from the Chief of Police that he will provide all the manpower you need once you find the person or creature responsible. I’m counting on you.”

He had heard that tune plenty of times before. No one called him in unless the situation was truly desperate, because everyone thought they could handle it on their own until people started getting angry and looking for someone to blame. That Mayoral seat was probably starting to look unsteady if they’d already lost four people in less than a month.

But the District Attorney looked deadly serious as they nodded to the Mayor and led the way out, leaving Abe to follow in their quick, brisk steps out of the building and down the marble steps to the street below.

“How long have you known our dear Mayor?” Abe asked once he caught up and fell into step alongside them.

“…Since university,” they answered. “He is one of the few friends I have from back then.”

Probably one of the few friends they had in general, Abe thought to himself. As if sensing his thought, they gave him a frown and asked, “And how long have you been roaming around playing monster hunter?”

“Playing? This isn’t some kind of game, I save people’s lives,” Abe said. “I’ve slain vampires and werewolves, caught witches and rooted out a ghoul running a pie shop. Vicious monsters, every last one of them.”

The District Attorney stiffened and he could feel the anger rolling off of them as they crossed the street and led the way to the trees in the distance that marked the park in the center of the city. They took so long responding that he had almost give up on getting another word out of them.

“A pie shop?”

“Yeah, that one was…” He winced, putting a hand to his mouth. “Still can’t look at meat-based pies the same way. Lost a good partner in there too. Blueberry pie to the face.”

The District Attorney did a double take at that one but failed to ask any follow up questions before they arrived at the police tape blocking off the entrance to the park. There an officer recognized the District Attorney and led them both farther into the cover of the trees, off the path to where a sheet covered the body.

“We’ve already been over everything,” he said. “A pair of joggers noticed the new marks on the trees and the crows hanging around this area so they came over to investigate. Victim is a male, maybe in his thirties, same injuries as the others. We’re still looking to identify him, so we don’t know if there’s any connection yet.”

“Out in the open this time,” the District Attorney said as they strayed around the area. Abe noticed that they kept their distance from the corpse, their eyes instead focused on the claw marks on the trees, in the soft ground that wasn’t soaked in blood.

“Nowhere’s safe,” the officer muttered.

“What was that?” Abe asked.

“Nothing. Look, I should get back to guarding the perimeter. You two can find me if you have any more questions, okay?”

And with that he was gone, leaving Abe with the District Attorney and the body. Without waiting for an invitation, Abe pulled back the sheet to get a better look at what was left of the victim.

“What are you doing?” the District Attorney snapped a few seconds later.

“Getting a read on the corpse,” Abe answered without looking up. “It’s my expert opinion that he died at three-thirty last night. Strange time to be out in the park.”

“He may have been chased here,” the District Attorney said. They knelt and Abe saw they were examining something in one of the bushes.

“Nice find, Partner!” They jumped when Abe was suddenly at their side to get a better look at the clump of light hair caught in the branches of the bush. “Is this fur?”

“Don’t do that,” they protested, scrambling away as he pried off a few hairs and sniffed them. “And don’t—Did you just lick that?!”

“Wolf hair,” Abe muttered.

“How do you know that?!”

“Like I said, I’m a professional,” Abe said as he straightened up and began taking a closer look at the ground all around. “And I’ve worked with enough of these beasts to spot the signs from a mile away. Look at this, Partner.”

“Stop calling me that,” they said, but followed his stare.

And then swore softly as they knelt, one hand hovering over the massive paw print left in the soft ground for reference. Not only was the paw print nearly twice the size of their hand, the depth suggested the weight and size of the beast that left it behind.

“Werewolf,” Abe said with absolute certainty and the District Attorney’s shoulders tightened, their hand curling into a fist. “I’d know one anywhere.”

“This isn’t right,” they said softly. “Last night wasn’t a full moon, if whoever this was changed then they had to have been…They were in full control.”

“And they knew exactly what they were doing when they attacked this poor schmuck and all the others,” Abe said, privately impressed. Most people weren’t aware that werewolves had the ability to change at any time, and usually didn’t live long enough to learn from their mistake. He lost a partner once that way, and never intended to make that mistake again. “See any sign of where it went?”

They spent a few minutes trying to follow the trail in either direction, but aside from a few furrows in the ground farther into the park it was no good. Even there they could not be certain if the marks suggested the werewolf had been chasing its victim out of the park or fleeing further in. A sweep of the park proved that whoever it was, they were long gone now.

“Well, guess there’s nothing for it but to tell your mayor friend what we’re dealing with,” Abe said, brushing some dirt off of his knees after spending several minutes examining some droppings that turned out to have come from a rabbit. “Full moon’s only a few nights away. If this sicko is like this when they’re in control, I don’t want to see them the rest of the time.”

The District Attorney nodded in mute agreement, and remained silent all the way out of the park with barely an acknowledgement of the officer outside. Abe thought that was probably for the best; better to let the news come from the top than spread out from the bottom and cause a panic in the city. But he didn’t think that was the reason for the attorney’s silence, judging by their furrowed brow and shaking hands.

Just as he was about to say something that would probably make them hate him even more, the District Attorney said, “I need some coffee. Do you want anything?”

“…Sure,” Abe answered. He wasn’t about to say no to a good cup of coffee, especially if the caffeine might help calm the attorney’s nerves. Poor kid must not be used to this kind of thing here in the city, he mused as he followed them into a small shop on the corner.

One where they must be a regular customer, judging by the way the barista called, “Y/N! We were starting to wonder when we’d see you again. Your usual?”

“Please,” they said, already reaching for their wallet.

Abe ordered the darkest cup of tar he could find and winced when he smelled the cup that was placed on the counter, the scent of peppermint overpowering even from a distance.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

“Mine,” the District Attorney said, scooping the cup up and breathing heavily from the warm fumes. Almost immediately they began to relax, or at least as much as they seemed capable of.

“You gonna drink that or just inhale it?” Abe asked as he picked up his own cup and left a tip in the jar.

“Jury’s still out,” the District Attorney replied. They held the door open for him and followed him back to the mayor’s office.

“A werewolf?” Damien asked once they had finished explaining what they found to him. Or once Abe finished; the attorney still seemed less than ready to talk about it, but Abe was familiar enough with filling the silence left by less than talkative partners. “Are you sure?”

“Not a doubt in my mind,” Abe said, noting how Damien glanced at the attorney for confirmation, who gave a single nod in response. “Look, we need to get ahead of this before it gets any worse. One survivor with a bite and we’ve got an outbreak on our hands. I suggest a curfew and a kill on sight for any wolves spotted within ten miles. Do your police have access to silver bullets?”

“Yes, because we want them using the highest-quality of bullets when they put down the neighbor’s lost dog,” the District Attorney said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “Don’t you think we need to put some effort into finding the culprit instead of shooting anything in the right shape?”

“Maybe they should have put a collar on it if they cared,” Abe muttered, not wanting to admit that they had a point. Even if properly armed, the cops would be jumpy if this was really their first time dealing with a were.

“Damien!” The District Attorney’s expression said they realized how much they sounded like a kid calling for the teacher, but they continued, “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

They both glanced at Abe and he shrugged. “Sure, I’ll just wait outside like I have nothing better to do with my time.”

“And we can do without the eavesdropping this time,” the District Attorney said just before the door shut behind him, causing Abe to consider that he maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t been as smooth listening in as he thought.

He sighed and grumbled to himself, making sure it was loud enough for them to hear in the office before he made his way to the foyer, where he took up a seat and focused his attention on his coffee, which was probably feeling neglected by this point.

It was a good cup of coffee. Abe made a mental note to go back to that place again just as the District Attorney walked out, their expression suggesting they lost that particular battle with the mayor.

“He’s talking to the chief of police now,” they said once they stopped in front of his chair. They crossed their arms in front of their chest and looked away as they added, “The chief will probably want to talk to you about proper procedure, which I can only think means he’s never seen you in action on a crime scene before.”

“Please, I know my way around a dead body. I’ll remind you that it wasn’t until I stepped on the scene that this investigation started going somewhere.” Abe stood and tossed his empty cup in the trash can. “I’m just saying, it didn’t take me four bodies to figure out what’s going on here.”

“This crime scene was different from the last three,” the District Attorney admitted, choosing not to rise to his bait. “The others were all inside the victims’ homes, with no sign of forced entry.”

“And werewolves aren’t exactly known for knocking on doors,” Abe said.

“But if the victims opened the door, recognized their murderer and let them in, the werewolf could have changed right there in the room, killed them, and changed back to walk out again like nothing happened.”

They looked at him and Abe quickly nodded like he hadn’t been staring, watching as their eyes narrowed and then lit up at the realization. “Yeah, yeah, makes sense. One way to find out for sure, and that’s to put heels to the pavement and go to the other crime scenes and ask some hard questions. You up for it?”

“You were right about one thing back there in Damien’s office,” they said, a fire in their eyes as they opened the door. “We need to get ahead of this before it gets any worse. After you, hunter.”

((Thank you for reading!

Link to Part 2.

Tagging: @silver-owl413 @skyewardlight @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @purpstraw @weirdfoxalley @95fangirl @lilalovesinternet-l @thepoolofthedead @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @geekymushroom @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-anxiety-blog @shyinspiredartist @avispate ))

#markiplier #fanfiction #wkm au #werewolf au #monster hunter au #wkm detective #wkm district attorney #wkm mayor #mystery

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kimmyiewrites · 4 years ago

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Case Closed ~ Chpt 10

Previous Story Catch Up Masterlist

AN: So let's just say I'll never actually be on a schedule because clearly no matter my intentions, it doesn't work out that way. I've got two more chapters written after this one and a third possibly halfway through. We'll see cause we are truly into following along with the Braindead episodes now. So without further ado, enjoy this next chapter!

Bex traipsed down her stairs, making her way to her car so she could head into work. She had lunch plans with Rochelle to get the evidence later and the morning was hers besides the quick briefing with the team working the case on the inside of the bureau. Dinner with Mike had been amazing. Just reminiscing about it had put her in a good mood once she woke up.

They had decided on something a little more casual which meant they both left their blazers in the car. Mike also ditched the tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt before rolling up the sleeves. Bex honestly could have just dragged him home right then. Instead, she placed a kiss to his cheek before looping her arm with his as they walked into the restaurant.

It was one of the places he frequented before he went back to Graceland. According to Mike, it was the best pizza in the DC area. The moment Bex took a bite, she wholeheartedly agreed. "How did I not know of this place before?" She asked in the middle of her second bite.

Mike chuckled. "Clearly I'm more of a pizza connoisseur than you are." He teased her.

She smiled at the memory and at how before they went their separate ways, he gave her a kiss goodbye that left her both breathless and wanting more. She didn't mind taking things at a slow pace. She enjoyed truly getting to know Mike. Sure the kissing was nice and she'd be more than happy to share a bed with him but her past relationships had been solely for work or purely physical. She hadn't explored a relationship where she had more than that type of connection in a long time and it thrilled her.

Just as she unlocked her car door, her phone began to ring. Seeing that it was Mike, a smile lit up her face before she answered it. "Good morning."

"Good morning." He replied. "I know we just had dinner last night and if we lived lives outside of the Bureau my friends would tell me it's far too soon to call and ask you on a coffee date and your friends would call me a clinger but I would call you anyway like I'm doing now and I'm hoping that you'll still say yes."

Bex giggled. "I still say yes. Where do you want to meet? I'm about to head in, now."

"Well, here's the thing, I'm turning on your street now and I've already picked up the coffee." He sounded sheepish.

That caused her to laugh as she locked her car. "You know, this is getting into stalker territory." She teased him.

"Would you accept that I'm trying to look out for you?" He asked as he pulled into her apartment complex parking lot.

"I would but I thought we had covered how I'm quite capable of taking care of myself." She waved when she saw his car before hanging up.

Once she was situated in the passenger seat, Mike drove off and continued their conversation. "I know. It's just I've heard some chatter and if Onofrio talked to his people about your involvement, I'm just worried about some measures they could potentially take since they can get pretty extreme."

Bex had picked up the coffee cup and took a sip, smiling at how it was her regular order. "Then I guess I can allow it." She reached over and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. "Thanks for the mocha, by the way."

"You're welcome." He smiled over at her. "So, what do you have planned for today?"

"Briefing this morning and then lunch with Rochelle then my afternoon is open. How about you?"

"I will probably be dealing with the aftermath of yesterday. If you feel compelled to come save me after your lunch I would greatly appreciate it." He chuckled.

She laughed as well, nodding her agreement. "You got it."

Once they reached the Bureau's office building, Bex leaned over and gave him a quick kiss goodbye. "Thanks for the ride."

Mike smiled. "Don't mention it. I'll see ya later."

"Bye." She gave him another kiss before making her way into the office.

She headed to her desk first, putting all of her things down. She then grabbed what she would need for the briefing and her coffee cup before making her way to Marchant's office. "Morning, Director." She greeted as she stepped inside, taking a seat from across his desk.

"Morning, Morris. Let's talk about yesterday, shall we?" He asked, leaning back in his seat, hands folded over his stomach.

"Which part, sir? The one where we nearly used torture on an innocent woman or the fact that high frequency signals can cause senators to run into walls or raise both of their arms?" She raised an eyebrow in a 'don't think I forgot' fashion.

Marchant let out a sigh. "You say innocent but she's been linked to so many incidents."

"Important to the investigation, does not mean guilty and you know it. Miss Healy has some rotten luck but she's further along in the investigation you first sent Warren to look into."

"So what happened at the hearing? And how does that prove our Area 51 case?"

"I honestly think you should just call in one of their agents, director. I'm going to meet with Rochelle at lunch to get all of their evidence. I also need to speak with the doctor they contacted at the CDC. Because what happened yesterday was practically the icing on the cake. They recorded some of the infected persons communication and played it back in parts which caused the running into walls and hand raising. The creatures inside the infected communicate via high frequencies that human ears can't normally detect."

The director pinched the bridge of his nose. "The guys out in Nevada are going to have a field day. So what she said about bug people..." He trailed off, not really wanting to believe it.

"Bugs have eaten people's brains, yeah, and they're causing the head explosions. The bugs were in the meteor and they're infecting people but no one's really sure as to why."

"That's your new objective then. Find out why they're doing this and then I'll reach out to my contact out in Nevada. Keep me updated, Morris. That'll be all."

Bex stood with a nod and made her way to her desk. She didn't want to focus on the craziness that Mike's case was at the moment. She had a few things she knew she needed to wrap up with the case involving her sister's killer. Mostly paperwork so she put on a coffee shop playlist and started typing things up in her report while sipping on the rest of her mocha.

Just as she was about to go to her next page, her phone started ringing. She briefly looked over to see that it was a name on the caller id instead of a random number so she answered it. "This is Bex."

"Hey Bex! Can we reschedule lunch?" Rochelle asked.

"Yeah, sure. Is everything alright?"

"Laurel stopped by and told us that Senator Wheatus saw us leaving the hearing yesterday and Gareth isn't sure what he's going to do."

Bex saved her report and started packing up. Sure, she could probably easily take Onofrio but she would rather not have to deal with HR. "What if I came to you instead? Strength in numbers and all that."

"I'd like that. I'll send you my address. See you soon."

With that they both hung up and Bex closed everything down. As she waited for her Uber ride, she called Mike. "Is my cover blown? Do I need to be on alert too?"

"I would just in case. Oh, I gotta go, mom. I'll talk to you later." Mike hung up practically as soon as Red stepped back into his office.

It didn't exactly put Bex at ease but she was a trained professional. She knew how to defend herself and how to fight. When the Uber arrived, she slid into the backseat, confirming the address and was soon being let out at the First District Apartments.

She went to knock on Rochelle's door when she noticed that it was open a crack. Bex pulled her gun and slipped inside. When she came to the spot where the floor plan opened up, she looked over to the kitchen where she saw Rochelle give the ending blow with a frozen turkey leg to some guy.

The other woman looked up, seeing Bex just as she was lowering her gun. "Call the others and I'll help you get everything sorted. Nice moves by the way." The agent said with a smile, going back to lock the door.

"I don't know if Laurel will be available." Rochelle said as she dragged the intruder over to one of the support poles in her apartment.

"Why not?" Bex hurried over and helped stand the man up and prop him against the pole.

There was a knock on the door then and Rochelle answered as she went to open it. "Because there's a possibility her dad is infected."

Bex shook her head, her heart heavy for the woman. She really was having the worst luck when it came to this whole situation.

The trio soon had the intruder taped to the pole. Gustav placed a helmet on top of the intruder's head to keep him from sending out any communication. Bex was in the kitchen with Rochelle, helping her clean up and tend to the box cutter wound that had been left on her arm. It luckily wasn't deep enough to warrant stitches but with the help of Rochelle's direction things would turn out okay and hopefully not scar.

When Gustav started questioning him and Rochelle checked his ears, Bex stayed back and watched, looking for any signs that he could be lying. Then again she was unsure if the intruder would have any of the same tells if it was true that half his brain was gone. Either way, he was very convincing.

"What do you think?" Rochelle asked as the trio huddled together.

"He's really convincing. I can't say for sure but I can call in my police contact if you'd like to press charges." Bex said. "That's the one thing he's been right about, they probably should get involved. This is starting to go against everything I signed up for when I joined the Bureau."

"Can we try a couple more things?" Gustav asked. "If we let him go and he is a bug person then we might be in more trouble than before."

Rochelle looked at Bex with a look that said what harm could be done. Bex let out a sigh and agreed. Soon "You Might Think" was playing but they put it on backwards. A knock was heard and Rochelle called out that the door was open. Laurel walked in, confused about what was happening.

"What are you doing?" She finally asked.

"It's "You Might Think" played backwards." Rochelle answered.

The intruder looked to Laurel, hoping that she would be sensible enough to help him. "Gustav is seeing what will work on him." She continued to explain.

Laurel looked to Bex. "You seriously can't be okay with this?"

"It's not one of my best decisions, but honestly I think we should call this thing off. It's clearly not working."

Gustav shook his head at Bex's answer, disagreeing completely. "No, we need to figure out what the bug people want!"

"And I agree, it's what I've been tasked to do but this isn't the way to do it." Bex argued.

Laurel sighed and turned to Gustav. "He's denying he's infected, right?"

"Yes, but he would." Gustav answered.

"So how are you gonna get him to talk?" Laurel asked.

"Can we put on some better music?" The intruder spoke up which caused Gustav to jump into action with the box cutter the intruder used before.

All three women raced over to pull Gustav away as he threatened to cut the intruder's fingers off if he didn't give them the answers they wanted. Rochelle and Laurel were on either side of him and Bex came around to get the box cutter out of his hand.

"We need to call this now. I'm going to let him go." She said, stepping back towards the intruder.

"Bex, no, he's not gonna talk to us unless we threaten him." Gustav argued.

"I think you should listen to your friend." The intruder commented.

Bex turned to look at him with a pointed look. "We don't need comments from the peanut gallery."

"Why don't we just find out who this guy is instead? You would need that for a report, right?" Laurel turned to Bex.

"Yeah and there's nothing wrong with doing a little extra research."

"So, see, there we go. Now, about my dad." Laurel said, informing the group what she had witnessed. When Rochelle mentioned him stopping sex, Laurel gathered her things and set out to find her dad's mistress.

Gustav set to digging around in the bag that he had brought over and pulled out a small bottle of three year old whiskey. "Bex, you might want to go somewhere else for this next bit."

"You know I can get you arrested also, don't do it."

"Listen to her please. I'm in AA. I'm two years sober." The intruder pleaded.

"Where's your chip?" Rochelle asked.

"Oh, my sobriety chip, I must have left it in my other clothes." He quipped.

Bex just shook her head. How stupid could he be to answer in such a way? The moment Bex wasn't watching Gustav and Rochelle poured the whiskey down the intruder's throat. Her phone began to ring then. Seeing that it was Mike, she stepped away and answered it.

"Please tell me you're having a better day than I am." He said as soon as she picked up.

"I actually don't know if I can properly answer that question." Bex replied. "What's going on?"

Mike let out a small sigh. "I think Red is up to something. His latest witness for this committee meeting is lying. And I'm beginning to really hate that this is taking so long."

"Have we entered into an alien bug version of Independence Day?" She asked with a small laugh.

Her question got the reaction she was looking for and she smiled when she heard Mike laugh as well. "It certainly seems that way. What have you got going on?"

"A not so legal questioning. I don't know if I'm aiding in it or stopping it because no one seems to be listening to me."

Mike took a deep breath. He had done plenty of not so legal things while out in California but to hear Bex admit it he wasn't sure if he was relieved someone was finally telling him the truth or be worried.

"The person did attack Rochelle and is possibly infected so, I'm not really sure if that helps or hurts my case." She had continued until she realized that Mike was silent on the other end. "Mike? You okay? Should I have not told you?"

That pulled him out of his thoughts. "No, no. I'm glad you told me. I would rather you tell me than keep it hidden honestly." His thoughts drifted to Paige and Briggs. "Should I come over?"

Bex shook her head even if he couldn't see her. "No. Gareth can't really help because he doesn't know yet. Why don't I come see you instead? You should also probably contact Laurel so she can let her brother know about the witness."

"Yeah, I'd like that. See you soon then?"

"See you soon." Bex promised before hanging up.

#mike warren fic #mike warren imagine #gareth ritter fic #gareth ritter imagine #braindead fic #graceland fic #criminal minds fic #crossover fic #mike warren #gareth ritter #case closed #moving on series #mike x bex #kim writes things

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douxreviews · 5 years ago

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The Handmaid's Tale - ‘Unknown Caller’ Review

Serena Joy Waterford. What a character.

Seriously, though. What a complicated character, and what a continuing, exceptional performance by Yvonne Strahovski. I have absolutely no idea what is going on in Serena's head, and yet, everything she does is completely in character. I desperately want Serena to be the one to lead the nationwide Resistance in Gilead because she would be the perfect one to do it. At the same time, I have no idea if she will ever shake off the hold that Gilead has on her psyche.

The vibe between Serena and Fred has changed; he seems to have taken June's marital advice to heart. He included Serena in the commanders' meeting about baby Nicole, and actually asked her what she really wanted. I completely believe that Serena loves baby Nichole to distraction; her emotional state during the airport scene said it all. Does Serena want Nichole to grow up a free woman or not? Is she so selfish that she'd bring her back to Gilead to be raised in slavery? Or are we being misdirected here? The fact that she saw Tuello's gift of a satellite phone ("If you need me") and didn't say anything about it to the Guardian suggested that she might have some Machiavellian plot in mind. I hope.

One major topic that this series hadn't yet addressed in depth is June's marriage and how her strange love affair with Nick might affect it. I think this was the first time June even addressed how much she missed Luke. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe." Their communication in this episode was just heart wrenching, both times. Gold acting stars for Elisabeth Moss, as well as O-T Fagbenle, who did an incredible job as Luke in the phone scene, at the airport with Serena, and on the bridge, listening to June's voice on the cassette tape.

The phone call was particularly jarring because of the contrast. Luke stood in the rain crying, overwhelmed with emotion, while June kept her face a mask and her voice a monotone, her eyes focused in the distance so that she wouldn't cry, swallowing to keep control of her tears, or her anger, or both. In her room afterward, she stood with her head bowed and body slumped as if she had been physically beaten. In contrast to the phone call, June cried as she recorded the message for Luke, where she told him that she was still in Gilead to find a way to rescue their daughter Hannah. That Nick was the father of her baby and that Nichole/Holly had been conceived in love. That June wasn't the woman Luke remembered. How could she be, after what has happened to her?

All through this episode, I expected the Gilead people to find a way to kidnap Nichole, but no. Tuello was there to welcome Serena, and to give her a change of clothes so that she wouldn't stand out at the airport. (I live in an area of the United States with a good-sized Amish population, and I always think of them when the Gilead uniforms are a part of the story. Most of the locals don't stare at the Amish, but the tourists certainly do. Serena would most certainly have been noticed.)

Everything seemed to go so well, and Serena was so sympathetic that she even wore down Luke's understandable anger and hostility to the point where he let her hold the baby. That seemed to be the last straw for Serena; she lost it in the waiting room where she was supposed to change back into her Gilead uniform.

And now, the case of baby Nichole is becoming an international incident. (What a clever way to connect the Waterfords to our refugee characters in Canada, by the way.) How could this possibly turn into a win for Serena? Would the Canadian government take the baby away and return her to an oppressive theocracy like Gilead that has enslaved her mother? Again, is Luke legally her father if his wife gave birth to her while they were still married? Luke knows now that Fred isn't the baby's father – Nick is. Will the baby's paternity make a difference at some point? Will Nick become involved in this situation?

What was June expecting after the Guardians picked her up at Loaves and Fishes and tossed her into a van? How cruel to have June think that maybe she would be punished or executed when all they were planning to do was dress her up and put her on television. June's fury was totally visible, threatened punishment or no. She obediently kept her head down, but she was making fists. And then she looked up at the camera. I kept thinking "hostage video." That video was so strangely set up, too, with the Waterfords on the couch and June far off to one side.

This series always uses jarring musical cues, and there were quite a few this time. How adorable that Joseph Lawrence romanced his future wife Eleanor with mix tapes, and that Eleanor missed the man that made them for her. How clever of June to realize that she could use one of those tapes to send a message to Luke. The flip side, so to speak, of the forced phone call where she couldn't say anything personal to him.

Joseph and Eleanor Lawrence playing "Cruel to be Kind" in his study made me think that that song title was all about him and his role in helping to create Gilead. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" started with "I can't believe the news today," and no kidding. And of course, "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" at the beginning of that taped message made me think of that brief flashback scene of June and Luke dancing on the night they conceived Hannah. That felt like a personal message to Luke that only the two of them would know.

Bits:

— Clearly, Luke should never have taken baby Nichole anywhere that she could be photographed, but how could he know? He's angry about his wife being held against her will in Gilead, after all. Of course he would go to a protest.

— Ofmatthew continues to be fascinating. That scene where she confided the news of her pregnancy to June as they were standing in Loaves and Fishes in front of a row of jars of pigs' feet (or something else equally grotesque) was jarring. Pun intended. Four babies for the State. OMG.

— Serena told Tuello that she hoped he'd get back to Atlanta someday. I'm sure they brought Tuello back for a reason. I hope it was a good reason.

— The packages confused me. I thought Serena brought photographs from home with her to Canada because she planned to defect. The paper bag with the cassette tape was still in Serena's bag when she left Luke and Nichole, but it got to Luke somehow.

— More exceptional photography. Many of the scenes featured light in the center, or bits of striking symmetry.

— The cassette tapes were a callback to the book. Offred had used them to tape her story.

— Did Elisabeth Moss look different in this episode, or is it just me? Her eyes looked bigger, her face thinner and paler; she looked more striking somehow. Did they change whatever subtle makeup they're putting on her?

— Luke said that Nichole wasn't a fan of the peas. In the beautifully photographed opening scene at Loaves and Fishes, June chose dried peas. It's little details like this that add to the quality of this series. It's fascinating.

Quotes:

June: "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from."

Ofmatthew: "Under His eye." June: "Bite me."

June: "Do you think he's in danger?" Lawrence: "We're all in danger." What an interesting thing for the father of Gilead's economy to say. He doesn't even believe himself to be safe.

June: (to Eleanor) "It's okay to take a sliver of someone, and hold on to that. Especially if it's all you have."

Serena: "God bless you." Luke: "Fuck you."

This was my type of episode. It was emotional and thoughtful and beautifully acted, and there was no horrendous violence. Would that make it four out of four packages?

---

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

#The Handmaid's Tale #June Osborne #Serena Joy Waterford #Fred Waterford #The Handmaid's Tale Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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heartsandmuses · 6 years ago

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game two

a/n: the sequel to this ficlet that I wrote a few days ago!

(also, I watched the 1977 movie Slap Shot yesterday, and of course I had to write something inspired by this scene -- so, here you go!)

— — —

“Can I open my eyes now?”

Tony shuffles around the room — and Steve’s still not exactly sure what he’s doing, but by the sounds of it, it’s something involving a box-cutter, the TV set, and a costume change — and afterwards there’s a long, assessing moment of silence before he finally says, “Wait, let me just... Okay, there we go. Alright, yeah, you can open them.”

So Steve does, removing his hand from his face and blinking his eyes open, gaze immediately falling on... Tony, standing in the middle of the living room in a red and white hockey jersey, MIT written across the front and his name and number across the back. He grins, stretching his arms out and doing a slow little spin, and this isn’t exactly what Steve had in mind when Tony said he had a surprise for him, but he’s definitely not complaining.

Tony looks like he’d fit in with any of the big league players, cocky confidence amped up to eleven, hair mussed and eyes bright, shoulders nearly as broad as Steve’s now, under all that padding.

“I... Hi,” Steve says intelligently. He can’t stop staring. “Wow. That’s...”

“Hot?” Tony supplies, clearly enjoying every second of this. “Rugged?”

“Unexpected,” he eventually decides.

Tony laughs, gesturing to the cardboard box sitting on the coffee table. It’s open, the contents half-poking out, though some of it is laid out on the table haphazardly: gloves, socks, loose pucks. “Well, you did say you needed to see it to believe it, so, I dug all of this out of storage. Oh! And, the pièce de résistance...” Tony plucks the remote off the table, aiming it at the TV. “My highlight reel. On tape.”

It takes Steve a while to notice, but there’s a VHS player connected to the TV, an old, clunky, dusty thing that even Steve can tell is pretty primitive tech.

“Which, for the record, is a true testament to how much I love you, the fact that I’m using this old hunk of junk. Imagine if the press caught wind of this. Stock would plummet.”

Steve just smiles and shakes his head, and when Tony drops onto the couch beside him, presses a kiss to his cheek. “Well, I’m honored that you’d risk your hard-earned reputation to impress little ol’ me.”

“Am I? Impressing you?”

“Jury’s still out,” Steve teases. “You’ve gotta let me see you play first.”

As if on cue, the TV flickers to life, the grainy picture coming up.

On screen, MIT wins the face-off, and the puck is quickly passed around; it takes half a minute, but it eventually reaches Tony, who glides through the opposing team and, with an effortless flick of his wrist, shoots it right over the goalie’s shoulder. Grinning widely, he pulls his helmet off, and god, he looks so young there, clean-shaven and baby-faced, his hair grown out a little and starting to curl at the ends. He looks so happy, too, and when Steve sneaks a glance at the Tony sitting beside him, he’s wearing the exact same expression, though it’s a little softer, a little more nostalgic.

As the tape plays on, showcasing all his greatest goals and assists, with the odd fight thrown into the mix, Tony provides his own running commentary: he tells Steve who they were playing against, where, who won. He recounts which moves landed him in the penalty box, or suspended, or with a black eye.

But when they finally get to the last clip, he just pauses for a moment, blinking in disbelief, and then, suddenly, bursts out laughing. “So, full disclosure, I’ve never actually watched this tape before,” Tony admits, biting his lip, even though it does nothing to conceal his smile. “And I really didn’t think they’d include this on here.”

Steve just raises a brow. “Why? What happens?”

“This was the last game I played before I graduated, and, uh. Let’s just say I wanted to go out with a bang.” A beat of silence, before he adds: “Have you ever seen the movie Slap Shot?”

“Can’t say I have, no.”

“Ah. Well, then, you’re in for a real treat.”

But before Steve can ask what that has to do with anything, his attention is drawn back to the TV by the crowd counting down the last ten seconds of what seems to be one of the most intense games yet. The tension’s almost palpable, most of the audience on the edge of their seats, and it doesn’t take more than a glance at the corner of the screen to see why: it’s a tie game, already in the third period.

The center runs the puck down to the blue line, passes it off to the left winger, back to center, and then there’s Tony, waiting by the net, and as soon as the puck reaches him, he slips it into the space between the post and the goalie’s pad, just as the horn goes off to mark the end of the period. The game ends 5-4, and as the audience starts throwing their hats onto the ice, MIT’s goal song — Shoot to Thrill, because of course it is — starts blasting over the speakers. Tony does a lap around the rink, taking a bow and blowing kisses to the cheering crowd, with the same kind of showmanship that nowadays he reserves mostly for Stark Expos and various press events. He takes off his helmet, setting it down on top of MIT’s net as he passes by; the gloves are next, Tony shaking them off and tossing them to the side; and then—

Steve blinks. “Are you—”

“Doing exactly what you think I’m doing?” Tony grins, carefree and self-assured, not even a lick of shame as he watches his younger self start to strip out of his jersey in front of the entire arena. “Oh yeah.”

Back on screen, the shoulder pads come off next, and he chucks them at one of his laughing teammates as he skates past. Everyone on the ice, including the linesmen, stop and stare as Tony, with exaggerated but practiced motions, pulls his suspenders off his shoulders and shimmies out of his pants, hips swaying from side to side. The cheers of the audience turn into whistles and playful goading, and Tony’s smirking as he hoists himself up to take a seat on the opposing team’s net, rolling his socks down and removing his knee pads; he does a couple kicks while he’s at it, reminiscent of the USO girls’ choreography, and when Tony hops back down onto the ice, he tugs off his t-shirt, slow and seductive, and flings it up into the stands.

By the end of it, Tony’s left in his socks, skates, and jock strap, and he manages to circle the rink one last time, giving everyone a spectacular view of his ass, before a ref finally escorts him off the ice.

The tape cuts off after his standing ovation.

Steve’s pretty tempted to give him a standing ovation himself, but all he can really do at this point is try to will his blush away and formulate at least one coherent thought. “Holy shit,” is what he finally settles on.

Tony laughs. “So, what’d you think?” he asks, lightly bumping his shoulder against Steve’s.

“Of the hockey or the striptease?”

“Both?”

There’s a fond smile curling at Steve’s lips when he turns to Tony. “When you said you could play, I didn’t think you meant like that,” he admits, still a little awestruck. “Watching you skate, it’s like seeing you fly around in the armor. You make it look so easy.” He couldn’t help but add, “Same goes for the strip show.”

It takes half a second for Tony’s grin to turn into an amused smirk. “Oh, you liked that, huh?”

“Maybe. A little.”

Tony leans in to steal a kiss, hand coming up to settle at the nape of Steve’s neck. When he pulls back after a moment, it’s to offer a wink and murmur, “Play your cards right and you might get a repeat performance.”

#steve rogers #tony stark #stony #otp: put on the suit #ficlets #fics #my fics #my writing #mine #amy talks

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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a language that i never knew existed before - Day 23

Here’s a modern AU paranormal investigators piece for anyone who might’ve been (or still is) a The Black Tapes Podcast fan, because it'll always hold a special place in my heart.

Only two ficlets left! Coming up tomorrow: the last canon-verse ficlet for this collection. See you guys then!

25 Days of Reylo Also available on AO3

THE RADDUS PODCAST NETWORK IS PROUD TO PRESENT: A TALE ABOUT GHOSTS, LOSS, AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT HAUNT US.

A long, long time ago, in a desert wasteland far away, a young orphan stumbled upon a set of case files chronicling the world’s most intriguing paranormal phenomena. Even more intriguing was the fact that they were all signed by one Sir Benjamin Kenobi, the celebrated historian who mysteriously disappeared from the public eye in his later years and was never heard from again.

Twelve years have passed, and that young orphan is now RPN’s very own Rey Durand. Join one of the nation’s most promising investigative journalists as she partners up with noted paranormal skeptic Dr. Kylo Ren to get to the bottom of THE KENOBI FILES.

S02E11: The Mother

A seemingly typical trip to Naboo takes an unexpected turn when Rey finds out that Dr. Ren is connected to the case in a very personal way.

Genre: non-fiction; paranormal; supernatural; true crime; history; romance

“Good morning, Dr. Grumpy!” Rey chirps as Kylo folds his tall frame into her tiny car with a grimace. He opens his mouth to let loose a teasing reply, then takes one look at the recorder on her dashboard and reconsiders his words.

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?” Kylo asks with a sigh for the audience’s benefit as he leans over the console to press a silent kiss to her temple.

“Are you ever going to stop being grumpy?” Rey retorts with a smile that’s far too soft for her tone as she pulls away from the curb of Kylo’s apartment building. They drive in comfortable silence until Rey gets on the highway, at which point she informs him that today’s case file is in the backseat.

“Just fill me in on the basics,” Kylo instructs her without missing a beat, ignoring the file as usual. He hasn’t bothered with them since halfway through their first season, claiming that anything more than just the facts will prevent him from approaching their cases as objectively as possible.

“Well, as I told you yesterday, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Four hours, to be precise, because today’s case is all the way in Naboo. Have you ever been?” Rey asks, sparing Kylo a quick glance.

“Once or twice,” he shrugs as Rey motions for him to open the glove box and retrieve a few pages’ worth of printed tweets. The papers crinkle as Kylo smooths them out, muffling his groan of realization. “Rey…”

She flashes him a bright grin. “Oh come on, it’s tradition! Time for another round of how many tweets can we make Dr. Ren read before he loses it!” she announces to their listeners. “You ready?”

“I never am,” Kylo mutters, utterly resigned to his fate.

“That’s the spirit. Now go!”

Rey can feel his glare on her, but she keeps her eyes on the road and resolutely ignores him until he starts reading. “@MrsDrRen–” and here Kylo clears his throat uncomfortably, takes a moment before he gets back to it with a hint of wariness in his voice. “@MrsDrRen tweeted: Look, it’s not like I need a picture of Kylo Ren to know that he’s hot… AF?” he asks, turning to Rey questioningly.

“As fuck,” she clarifies, and has to bite back a laugh at the way Kylo ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck even at the tamest of the bunch. She can’t wait to see him react to the others. “Go on, what else did MrsDrRen write?”

“It’s not like I need a picture of Kylo Ren to know that he’s hot AF,” he repeats, “but I’d appreciate one anyway @ReyDurand @CoruscantU. How can she even be sure?” Kylo asks with an adorable little furrow between his brows. “All she has to go by is my voice and your generic descriptions.”

“Oh, trust me,” Rey smirks, “the voice is enough. And my descriptions aren’t generic, thank you very much. It’s not my fault that you actually have hair straight out of a Pantene commercial. Next one,” she orders before they can get sidetracked.

“This is from @KenobiFiles… 5Evah?” He waits for a nod from Rey before going on. “@KenobiFiles5Evah tweeted: Honestly, if Rey wants Kylo to lose it, all she has to do is lean over and suck– Oh.”

She can’t help but burst into laughter then, sneaking a glance at her scandalized boyfriend. “How would that even… that is very reckless,” he finally says, scowling at the paper before he balls it up and tosses it into the backseat. “Is this from another one of those people who think that you and I…?” Kylo asks, and his voice carries the exact same hint of confusion and disapproval as always, as if things haven’t completely changed since they first discovered that they’d gained a few shippers along with their viewers. He really is a better actor than anyone gives him credit for, especially her production team.

“Yup!” she says brightly, pretending to be as unaffected by the idea as always. “Okay, last one. If you read this one in its entirety, you win.”

“And what do I get if I win?” As far as their audience can discern, it’s an entirely innocent-sounding question. But the pointed way Kylo slowly drags his eyes up her body makes her wish they didn’t have a four-hour drive followed by a night in a haunted house ahead of them. Maybe she should’ve stayed over last night after all.

Rey shrugs the moment off. “I’ll buy you one of those sugary Starbucks monstrosities you like so much.”

“That’s slander and you know it,” he huffs, but there’s no way their dedicated listeners won’t pick up on the fact that he didn’t reject the offer. Rey can already picture them cooing over the fact that serious, grumpy Kylo Ren has a sugar tooth.

“All right, last one,” Kylo announces with a sigh. “@Carla666 tweeted: Dr. Ren could shit all over my beliefs and insult me to my face and I’d still ask him to… to…”

“To?” Rey goads, knowing he won’t back down.

“To fist me,” he forces out in a strangled whisper, and Rey laughs until there are tears in her eyes and she has to pull over.

Kylo’s sleeping when they finally arrive in Lake Country, and Rey wishes she could wake him up without the recorder on; he’s always so dazed and sweet after a nap. But she likes to think their show is pretty damn authentic, and that means capturing genuine first reactions whenever she can.

“Dr. Ren,” she whispers, wrapping a hand around his arm. “Dr. Ren, we’re here.”

He’s always been a light sleeper; something to do with a childhood incident, which Rey understands all too well. “Hmm? Where… Oh, we’re…”

She’s in the midst of watching him with a soft smile on her face, a flood of affection washing over her at the way he rubs his eyes, when Kylo suddenly tenses.

“Rey,” he says evenly, turning to her with the kind of blank look he gives her interns when he’s this close to snapping at them. It’s a look she’s never been on the receiving end of, and it’s just as unsettling as the unlucky interns claimed. “Rey, why are we here?”

“Um, the case?” she reminds him with a frown. “I told you it’s in Naboo, remember?”

“You said it’s in Lake Country. This is not Lake Country.”

“Yes, it is,” Rey insists, pointing out the big, fancy sign they drove past just minutes ago, while he was still dozing. “Kylo, what’s wro–”

“I don’t know what the hell they’re calling this area these days, but that–” he points up at the house ahead of them, the one they’re supposed to spend the night in, “is Varykino Manor, and this whole area is Varykino.”

Rey twists around and reaches into the backseat for the file. “Yeah, the house is still called Varykino, but that’s the only original structure left. The rest of it was turned into a luxury development years ago, almost a decade now. Wait,” she comes to a realization as she hands him the file. “You know this place?”

Kylo is silent for a beat, a struggle playing out on his face while she watches.

Finally, he turns to her as he opens the file. “This is my grandmother’s house,” he whispers, and when he turns to the file he squeezes his eyes shut as if he’s in physical pain.

“And that,” he points at the grainy photo attached to the first page, the specter circled in red marker, “is my grandmother.”

Miraculously, Kylo doesn’t call the investigation off.

“I’m sick and tired of this bullshit,” he growls after recounting the numerous alleged sightings of his grandmother over the years, the hushed rumors and unkind whispers about his family. “I’m going to prove once and for all that my grandmother isn’t a ghost because ghosts aren’t real.”

And with that, he slams the car door behind him and hikes up to the house with both their bags.

Rey scrambles to get the recorder and lock the car, and catches up to him in front of the grand, imposing double doors. This place certainly has all the makings of a haunted house, but it’s so beautiful that she can’t bring herself to be scared of it – of any of it, really. The house isn’t abandoned or in disrepair, just rarely inhabited. Locals have reported seeing lights on when they know for a fact no one’s around, but unlike most of their cases, there are no horror stories here, nothing even remotely malicious. There’s just the lights, and then the rare sighting of a woman – Kylo’s grandmother – on the balcony, looking out at the lake as if she’s waiting for something. The handful of eye witnesses who claim to have seen her report that upon making eye contact, she simply gave them a sad smile as she faded away, leaving them shaken by melancholy more than fear.

“Keys?”

“Oh, right,” Rey mumbles as Kylo pulls her away from her wandering thoughts, and reaches into the pockets of her coat to dig around for the keys.

“I’m assuming you got this from my mother?” he asks, taking the jumble of keys from her and easily identifying the two needed for the front door. God, this really is his grandmother’s house. And– mother. She’s spoken to Kylo’s mother.

“Oh my god, everything makes so much sense now,” she realizes out loud. “I kept asking myself why the hell a senator would let us investigate her mother’s house for some random paranormal investigation podcast, but this isn’t just a random podcast, it’s her son’s podcast.”

Kylo turns back to frown at her. “No, it’s not. It’s your podcast. I’m just the party pooper, remember?”

Rey rolls her eyes and takes his hand as they walk past the threshold. “You’re not just the party pooper. You’re our overqualified, stubborn ghost-mythbuster.”

His lips quirk at that, and it almost feels like they’re just walking into one of their homes after a long day, especially when Kylo casually drops his bag to the ground and kicks off his shoes.

“You’re… comfortable here,” Rey says, taking in her surroundings. Pictures don’t do this place justice; Kylo has mentioned once or twice that his estranged family comes from money, but she’d never imagined something on this scale.

“Used to come here as a kid,” Kylo reveals with a shrug, and leads her into the living room. It’s funny, the fact that she’s learned more about his past in the last ten minutes than she has in the last ten months. “And I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he adds over his shoulder, and Rey laughs at the reference.

“Can’t be afraid of what you haven’t seen yet,” she retorts as they go around turning on lights and exploring the first floor.

“Can’t be afraid of what doesn’t exist,” he amends, a familiar back and forth between them at this point. Rey’s pretty sure Finn once showed her a fan-made compilation of all the times they’ve had this exchange.

“We’ll see,” Rey hums, and leaves it at that.

To his credit, Kylo doesn’t really rub it in her face when the night passes without incident.

“I’m just saying,” he shrugs as they pack up their belongings, having spent the night in the room he’d claimed as his back when he was a child, “if her spirit really is here, don’t you think she would’ve revealed herself to either me or my mother by now? Her family?”

“But you’re not the reason she’s here,” Rey reminds him, holding up the file. It contains more personal information than most of the others, but Rey has to believe that Sir Kenobi didn’t just pull a tragic love story out of thin air.

“If she’s waiting for him, she’s going to be stuck here for a very, very long time,” Kylo mutters darkly as he zips up his bag. “Ready to go?”

“I guess,” she sighs reluctantly, casting her eyes out the window one last time. The balcony is somewhere above them, but even a trip there last night hadn’t yielded anything. Time to call it, then. At least they’ll have plenty of material for the episode thanks to Kylo’s revelation. “My stuff’s already downstairs,” Rey adds for the audience’s sake as she slings her bag over one shoulder.

Kylo smirks at her. “Good. Let’s go, then.”

They make one last round of the house, checking that all the doors are shut and lights are off. A caretaker comes by once every two weeks, according to Leia, but other than that the house has been empty for years. It seems like such a waste, a sentiment she’d expressed to Kylo late last night, when they – she – finally gave up for the night.

You know, my grandparents were married here, he’d informed her. Maybe someday…

And they’d left it at that.

Now, she watches as Kylo locks up behind them and finds herself smiling at him.

“What?” he asks, giving her a smile of his own.

“Nothing,” Rey shrugs, already planning to leave this part on the cutting room floor. “Just thinking about someday.”

He takes her hand, brings it to his lips. “Sounds like a good idea,” Kylo murmurs, and Rey leans in for a quick kiss before they head back down to her car.

“So,” he asks as they get into the car, easily slipping back into his Dr. Ren persona. “Now will you admit that ghosts aren’t real?”

“I’ll admit that I haven’t captured evidence of one yet,” Rey sniffs, “but that doesn’t mean anything. The ancient Greeks couldn’t fully prove that the Earth is round, but that didn’t make them wrong.”

“That’s not… Rey, that’s not even the same–” He gives up with a sign, pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “One day, you’ll see.”

“One day you’ll see,” she parrots back at him with a grin as she begins to back out of the driveway. “Really, Kylo, if something can’t be proven either way then shouldn’t you keep an open mind about it? Isn’t that just good, impartial science? How can you be so sure–”

A sudden death grip around her wrist shuts her up, and Rey steps on the brake as she turns to Kylo. “What is it?” she asks, slightly worried at the look on his face but not enough to bite back a teasing comment. “You look like you’ve just seen a–”

“Rey,” he whispers without turning to look at her. He raises his free hand to point at something, and Rey notes with growing concern that he’s shaking. “Rey, look.”

She follows his hand, looks out over the lake and up, up, up at–

“Oh.”

There, on the balcony, is his grandmother.

And they watch on as a man who can only be her husband materializes behind her, pulls her into his arms and swings her around in unmistakable, infectious joy.

When she turns back to Kylo and Rey, the smile on her face is anything but sad.

Gods above and below, what have I done?

This is 2700 words. That's nearly three ficlets. THREE. Someone send help, because clearly I need an intervention or something.

I'm beginning to think I should've saved this idea for a proper one-shot or maybe even a three-parter, but oh well. Here it is. I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading as always, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

#reylo #reyben #kylo ren/rey #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #ficlet: language that i never knew #my fics

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sunbrights · 7 years ago

Text

fic: somewhere surely lived (2/14)

fandom: danganronpa characters/pairings: fuyuhiko & peko as main POV characters + a "relationship of the day" character + some side characters. kuzupeko + 6 secondary ships. rating: e (not all chapters have smut, but a fair number of them do) summary: Hope's Peak is not just a dating program; it's a guarantee. With the right compatible partner, the benefits are endless: boosted life expectancy, improved self-esteem, increased productivity, new opportunities, better overall work and life satisfaction. For society's elite, Hope's Peak makes finding that partner straightforward, if not easy.

It provides an Ultimate Match-- provided the participants are willing to go through its paces.

(AU based on the Black Mirror episode, "Hang the DJ.")

read on AO3

1 YEAR

Her partner slams her hand on the table. It makes both wine glasses rattle, enough that a dark-haired woman one booth over shoots a pointed glare across the divider.

“... Is that bad?” Peko asks.

“What?!” There are more heads turning in their direction. Her partner doesn’t seem to notice. “Of course not! It’s just the opposite: we hit the jackpot!” She shows Peko the face of her device, even though Peko is already looking at her own. “The system is built on data points, and we just got a whole year of them right out of the gate! Our profiles are going to have an unbeatable foundation. Isn’t that right, Usami?”

“The system considers all relationships to be valuable experiences,” her device responds, “and they are all weighted appropriately when selecting a participant’s Ultimate Match.”

“Right, but a year! That’s so much time! No matter what happens, it can’t not be useful.”

“That’s right!”

She seems satisfied with that. She sets the device aside, and leans forward on both elbows. “Please,” she says seriously, “tell me everything! I want to know everything there is to know about you. Leave no detail out!”

She smiles, eager and open. Everything about her is like that: she has warm, expressive eyes and animated body language. There’s a bright yellow headband with a flower decoration in her hair, and delicate ruffles on her blouse. Tenko, she said her name was.

Peko tries to think of a detail to share.

She draws a blank.

“Maybe,” she tries instead, “we could start with you?”

Tenko enthuses over everything: the food (both the herb-stuffed eggplant for her and the steamed sea bass for Peko), the automated transportation system, the spaciousness of their living quarters. She darts straight into the kitchen when they arrive, and checks through each and every one of the cabinets.

“It’s incredible! Look at this attention to detail! We have everything we could ever possibly need!”

“That’s right!” her device responds from her pocket, to her squealing delight.

Peko sets her purse on the kitchen island, and watches Tenko close all the cabinets again. “The system is comprehensive,” she says.

“Of course!” Tenko rises up on her toes to reach the tallest shelf. “A 99.8 success rate doesn’t come from nowhere. This way, we have so much more time to really connect with each other!”

She is a budding martial artist, trained in Aikido. Her favorite color is green. She loves hot pot and live performances of all kinds, and she doesn’t know how to swim. She is energetic in the extreme, and Peko is already exhausted.

But all the introductory materials had assured her that the system works if you let it. A 99.8 success rate doesn’t come from nowhere. Everything happens for a reason.

“I was thinking about going for a run in the morning,” Peko says. Tenko whirls around, so suddenly and so eagerly that it catches Peko off-guard. “... Would you... like to join me?”

Tenko is enthused about that, too.

Their living quarters are far enough west that they can see the towering outer wall around the grounds from their front windows. That had been in the introductory materials, too: an isolated environment reduces the impact of any external confounding variables. Participants are only reintroduced to the outside world after their match has been made.

The wall is tall enough that it throws wide, sprawling shadows across the grounds in the morning. Here, winter and spring are mild at worst, but the early morning chill is universal; she reminds Tenko to bring her ear warmers once while they’re getting dressed, and then again just before they walk out the door.

They run together, side-by-side. Tenko’s energy doesn’t diminish at all, even this early, before the sun has fully risen; Peko has to encourage her down from a breakneck pace to a moderate one.

She’d thought it would be a distraction, running with a partner. She’d thought it would be especially distracting to run with a partner like Tenko, all enthusiasm and little restraint. Instead, Peko finds it improves her focus, having someone matching her step-for-step.

“A record time!” Tenko announces, when they’re finished. “That was amazing!”

“It was our first run,” Peko says.

“Of course! And now we have a time to beat for our second!” Tenko scribbles the time on a scrap of paper, and stretches to tape it above the doorframe. “And I won’t rest until we have. Are you ready?”

Peko looks up at it. 09:23:05 in round, bubbly characters.

“Yes,” she answers. “I think I am.”

10 MONTHS

The weather warms. A stand in the park hands out cold drinks during the afternoon, so they go together; Tenko orders a lemonade, and Peko an iced tea. They sit on a bench and watch the half-grown ducklings chase each other on the water.

“You know,” Tenko says, fidgeting with the lid of her drink, “I didn’t forget.”

Peko has a plastic baggie of flaxseed in her purse; the ducklings hesitate when she tosses it out, but the draw of a free treat eventually bullies out their fear. They toddle toward her, scoop the seed up in their beaks, and then dash back to the waterline.

“Forget what?” she asks.

“Do you remember the night we met?”

Peko does. It’s enough for her to know where the conversation is headed, and her stomach twists.

“I said I wanted to know everything about you.” Tenko waits, but not for long. She snaps her nail against the lid. “It’s been almost two months and I still feel like I don’t know anything about you at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Peko says, and means it.

“No, no! I understand. It always feels like you’re so…” She grasps Peko’s hand and squeezes, once, in lieu of finding a word. Her fingers are damp with condensation from her cup. “Maybe we could… try again?”

In theory, there’s nothing to be concerned over. They’re simple enough questions about basic enough information. It’s just that none of those details feel important enough to tell, when it comes time to think of them.

“... I don’t mind,” she ventures, carefully. “But I don’t…”

“It’s okay! I’ll help you!” Tenko twists to face her, and pulls both legs up so that she’s kneeling on the bench, one elbow propped on the backrest. “What if I asked specific questions, would that make it easier?”

Peko isn’t sure it will, but Tenko’s face is undeniably earnest, so she says, “... Maybe?”

“Okay! First question.” It takes her a second to think of it, but only a second. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Black,” Peko decides.

“Favorite food?”

That one is harder. There isn’t even a range of possibilities that jumps to mind. She flounders, and Tenko notices.

“Okay, okay, wait, how about… what do you like about the food the system picks for you?”

She thinks. “It’s… savory, I suppose,” she answers. It feels silly to say, but Tenko’s smile stays encouraging. “Rich in flavor. Sometimes spicy, but not too much.”

“Do you have a favorite animal?”

Peko looks at the ducklings, who have finished all of the flaxseed she tossed out for them. They waddle closer in nervous, eager circles.

“... do I have to choose?”

“You can say ‘all of them,’ if you want,” Tenko decides. Her smile broadens. “Do you like animals?”

“Well…” She hesitates. “Yes. I enjoy seeing them, and petting them, when I can. I…” Tenko is staring at her, her expression strange. “... What?”

Tenko says, “Um. Just, um, I…” and then she kisses her.

It’s startling, but not because of the kiss. It’s startling because Tenko’s kiss is nothing like her at all: hesitant and fluttering, there one moment and gone the next. Peko barely has a chance to react before Tenko has jerked her chin away, pink straight up to her hairline.

“Sorry,” she whispers in a rush. “I got excited, and- and you were so cute, and—”

Peko squeezes her hand. “It’s fine.”

Tenko’s smile splits her face. She’s still pink when she kisses Peko again, unrestrained and slightly clumsy— but this time there’s all of her behind it.

They navigate the menus together. Main, Activity, Consent. There is a Consent All option and a Consent Specific option. Tenko insists on navigating through Consent Specific and marking only the activities that label her the giving partner. “I- I don’t need anything like that,” she says. “I’m fine! This… This is for you!”

It seems like an uneven trade, and Peko tells her so. Tenko doesn’t budge. “Don’t think of it like a trade,” she says. “Think of it like a gift.”

They sit on the bed together, on top of the sheets, with the pillows piled up to support Peko’s shoulders. Tenko kneels in front of her, close enough to touch, her face flushed like she’s been running for hours and only just stopped.

She unties the silk bow at the front of Peko’s pajama bottoms. She bites her lip when she slides her hand inside the elastic. Her fingers are cold, through the thin cotton of Peko’s panties.

“Peko?” she whispers against her temple. Peko touches the back of her head to acknowledge it. She doesn’t trust her voice. “You’re not breathing.”

She’s right. Peko manually pulls a single breath in, and then manually pushes it back out. “I’m sorry.”

“R-Remember your breathing!” Tenko’s fingers are trembling, now. “It’s important! For- for…” Her voice wobbles into a whisper. “Um, for... s-sensation. And so you don’t pass out!”

Peko turns her face down into her shoulder. “I won’t pass out,” she promises.

Tenko swallows. When she whispers, “Well… good!” it’s almost a squeak. She shifts herself into a better position on the bed, up on her knees, her other arm slid around Peko’s back.

Tenko touches her. It’s hesitant, at first, but not slow. The angle is strange to start, and not quite right, but the longer she goes, the more Tenko relaxes. She flexes her wrist, and her fingers trip a spot that pulls sensation back like a hook from Peko’s bellybutton.

She thinks about her breathing. She thinks about keeping it steady. She thinks about keeping it in. She clenches her teeth and swallows each time it feels like it might spill out, for no reason she can think of other than she must.

Tenko’s kisses get clumsier. The rhythm of her fingers gets less distinct, if not slower. The twisting key at the base of Peko’s spine winds, and winds, and winds…

And stops.

There’s somewhere more to go, she can feel it, like water crashing against a pane of glass or wind straining the edges of a tarp. Reaching for it is like straining to pull herself over a ledge, tipping at the top, seeing the other side, and slipping back down the face.

For once, Tenko is steady. For once, she’s calm. “It’s okay,” she whispers into Peko’s neck, beneath her ear. “You can let go. Just feel.”

Peko tries. She focuses on that thrumming coil of tension, and tries to imagine it snapping, letting all that energy out to vibrate through her, toe to tip. She tries to make herself feel it, only that, and nothing else.

Her fingers clench against Tenko’s hip. She thinks she must make a sound, a gasp or groan of frustration, because her throat suddenly feels rough, and Tenko suddenly lifts her head. She doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed or ashamed; in the next moment, Tenko’s mouth is on hers, deep and messy and desperate. She swirls her thumb in a quick, rough circle.

Finally, finally— it snaps.

6 MONTHS

Summer slides into fall. The grounds are picturesque, transitioning from lush greens to vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows over the course of a few weeks.

The system invites them to a pairing day. She’s never met the couple before, and neither has Tenko, but knowing them personally isn’t a prerequisite to be invited, as she understands it. “The pairing day is a celebration of the work the entire community has put in to helping participants find their Ultimate Match,” the device tells her. “It’s a party for everyone!”

They go. Tenko wears a pretty yellow dress that flares out from her hips like flower petals; Peko opts for something less eye-catching, a pencil dress in dark blue. The venue is a lodge deep in the woods on the northern side of the grounds, with roaring fireplaces to keep the cold out and wide bay windows to let the autumn colors in. There is a grand piano at the back of the ballroom, where a young woman plays a slow, delicate waltz.

It’s beautiful.

It’s also overwhelming.

Peko had known that the system's participant pool was large by design, but she's never seen so many people outside the central hub before now. There's food and drinks and dancing. The hum of idle conversation rises to a dull roar in her ears, too significant to tune out.

Even Tenko is intimidated. The piano transitions into a speedier, cheerful rhythm, and she hovers at the edge of the dance floor, fingers twisted in her skirt. Other guests twirl by her, hands intertwined, and she rolls back on her heels.

“Would you like to dance?” Peko asks.

Tenko balks, with both hands up. “N-No! No, it’s fine. I’m... not graceful like you.” She bites her lip, and looks back out across the dance floor. “... But you definitely should! You would be amazing.”

“Even if that were true,” Peko says, and she suspects it isn’t, having seen the way Tenko runs, “why does it matter?”

“What’re you talking about? Why doesn’t it matter?” Tenko splays her feet out and hikes her skirt to her knees, like forcing Peko to look at her legs will change her mind. “Me and my monster feet would just drag you down!”

“I don’t think so,” Peko says. “But even if you did… it would be fun anyway. Wouldn’t it?”

Tenko’s eyes are round. She looks at the dance floor again, and back. Out, and back. “R-Really?”

Peko holds out her hand, and Tenko steps into her chest, the plume of her skirt swirling around her calves.

The reception spills into the evening, and then into the night. The crowd never thins, at least not as far as Peko can ever tell. If anything, the room gets more crowded as the night wears on and guests retreat inside from the cold.

Tenko is riding the high of the evening. She gushes about the music and the decorations the entire ride back, and Peko’s head is throbbing.

“That was amazing!” Tenko hoists herself out of the cart one-handed when they arrive, and twirls on the pavement. “Ooh, I hope my pairing day is half as cute as that was!” Peko slides down the seat to pull herself out of the cart, too, and Tenko bounces toward her. “Here, let me help!”

She reaches for Peko’s hand, where it’s braced against the backrest of the seat.

Peko twists her wrist away.

Tenko’s expression flickers. She steps back to give Peko room to step out of the cart herself. “Is something wrong?”

Peko answers, “No,” and it’s true; objectively, the night has been fine. It’s been wonderful, even, as picturesque as anything inside Hope’s Peak.

“It’s alright if you’re upset!” Tenko says, reaching again for her elbow. “It’s okay to be frustrated after a long day. I understand! You just need to let it out. If you want, I can—”

“I would like space,” Peko says, sharper than she means.

“Oh.” Tenko looks down at her hands. She snaps them back to her side, and tucks them into the folds of her skirt. “Okay,” she says, only now her smile is strained. “Yeah! I- I can do that, too.”

The timer on the cart clicks over. Its electric motor revs and whirrs as it drives away.

“I’m sorry,” Peko says. “... I should go to bed.”

Tenko’s eyes soften. She nods. “It’s okay. I’ll be right behind you.”

It’s another hour or so before Tenko comes to bed. Peko feels her slide under the blanket, and then feels her stretching moment of hesitation before she nips close, one arm curled around her waist.

4 MONTHS

Peko mentions that she’s never had a crepe before.

There is a cart that sells them in the park, even during the winter. Tenko likes the craftsmanship that goes into them, with delicate whipped-cream flowers and swirls of chocolate syrup. They’ve always looked too sweet for Peko’s tastes.

“But they aren’t all sweet!” Tenko insists. “There are savory ones, too. You’d really like those, I bet!” She slams her hands on the table, and both their devices jump. “I’ll go and get one for you right now! Wait right here!”

“No, that’s not—”

It’s too late. Tenko springs up from her chair and takes off down the hill. She nearly clips another girl on the way, and it throws a splash of dark purple smoothie down the girl’s shirt and into the grass.

“Hey!” The girl’s voice carries up the hill. “Watch where you’re going, bitch!”

Peko makes to stand up, but the situation doesn’t escalate beyond that. The girl moves on with her companion, and Tenko races back from the crepe stand.

“Here!” She presses it into Peko’s hands. It’s cheese, mushroom, and spinach. “I have to go,” she says. “I need to apologize! Wait here, I’ll be right back!”

The girl with the spilled smoothie is gone, as far as Peko can tell, but Tenko skids down the hill again regardless. Peko stands to follow; the park is not small, and it would be worse to leave her to search alone.

Her device lights up when she picks it up off the table. The time remaining blinks up at her: four months.

It’s more a passing thought than a revelation: she thinks she’ll be relieved, once this is over.

She doesn’t crush it fast enough. Even when Tenko turns back to find her (“Did you see where she went?” she calls “Blonde hair, cute face, but like, cute-mean?”), the guilt that spills in doesn’t drown it. It wedges itself behind her sternum, deep and painful, and stays there.

2 MONTHS

“There’s not much time left,” Tenko says one night, while they’re curled together on the porch swing. It’s too cold, almost, winter tendrils creeping back in, but not so much to drive them inside, just yet. She has her device balanced on her knees.

“Two months,” Peko answers.

“Less than that,” Tenko says. She taps her device, and it lights up: fifty-seven days. “But it’s okay. A whole year of data points! We’ll be right on our way to our Ultimate Matches!” She drags her thumb over the bottom curve of the 5. “But… It- It’ll be sad, a little. Right?”

It will be. Peko’s chest constricts, thinking about it. It throws her relief over the expiration into sharper focus: once it’s over, she’ll be able to move on.

“Peko?”

It was always going to end. They’ve been expecting it, from the very first night they met. But it would be cruel to say so, so she doesn’t say anything.

“It’s okay for you to let your feelings out,” Tenko murmurs eventually. “Especially with- with me.” She wipes the corner of her eye with her thumb. “... I hope you know that.”

She gets up from the swing. Peko watches her retreat inside.

She thinks Tenko must be tired, too.

6 WEEKS

The days go faster at the end than they did at the beginning.

17 DAYS

It can’t be fixed. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be fixed.

“Everything happens for a reason,” the device tells her.

1 DAY

Tenko has always been a restless sleeper. She fidgets and sighs and tosses all night, not counting the time it takes for her to fall asleep in the first place.

Peko has slept under more trying conditions than that. She’d adjusted.

They both sleep poorly, that final night.

They spend their last few minutes out on the porch swing. It’s almost too cold, the last bit of winter fading out from early spring mornings, but together, it’s warm enough. Tenko has her device cupped in her hands. She watches the blinking timer count down.

“Peko,” she blurts. Her voice is trembling and too loud; she overcorrects, and cuts her volume to a whisper. “Could- Could I hold your hand? Just until the end. … If it’s alright with you?”

Their devices begin to beep steadily. Less than a minute remaining.

Peko picks off her gloves, and laces their fingers together.

END

#peko pekoyama #tenko chabashira #danganronpa #onwards!!#this fic is super challenging but really fun #tenko's voice was tough to nail down #i hope i did her justice she is a blessing #fic: somewhere surely lived #sunwrites

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meer-katnip · 7 years ago

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Title: There Are Dangerous Friends Summary: Nic Silver- Canadian cinnamon roll journalist extraordinaire- falls down a hole and nearly gets himself killed. These two facts, oddly enough, are not as closely connected as you might think.

more of this ridiculous Undertale AU

Read on AO3, or:

In Nic's defence, he hadn't seen the hole coming. It just kind of- well, loomed out of nowhere. Okay, yeah, sure, it was a really large hole and therefore pretty easy to spot, but he had been preoccupied- mainly with talking into a microphone. The golden flowers growing around the mountainside in sprawling patterns are very interesting, and he's sure that the producers at Pacific North West Stories will be fascinated with the story behind them- whatever it is.

"The patterns around here are very weird," he notes, swivelling on his heel to examine the rest of the mountain. From here- at the top of Mt Ebott- he can see for miles into the Pacific North West. He's almost high enough to be able to touch the faint wisps of clouds, hanging lazily above him. "It's almost like some sort of magic." He takes a step back. "If you squint, you can almost see some sort of message hidden in the flowers." Another step. "-I'm probably just being fanciful."

Big hole in the middle of the ground, hapless reporter wandering around with his eyes focused on the device in his hands and the scenery around him.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce what comes next.

Nic teeters at the edge of the hole, hands pinwheeling wildly (but still managing to keep a death grip on his recorder). For a second, he almost steadies himself, but then his foot slips out from underneath him- a casualty of a loose slab of rock.

He falls.

Into black.

∵

Nic wakes slowly, consciousness ebbing at him like a particularly teasing tide. His head is surrounded by golden flowers, he notes- exactly like the ones on the cliffs of Mt Ebbot. They're bobbing in a breeze that he can't quite discern, but it's coming from somewhere next to him.

He looks up, and sees rocky cliffs- steep and sloping upwards towards a faint spot of light.

A faint spot of light that he probably fell from-

-oh shit.

Nic sits up abruptly, causing his pounding headache to worsen. He winces, and stares down at the flowers- soft and bouncy and they must have somehow broken his fall.

He's never appreciated nature more, honestly.

After checking in his pockets for his recorder- which is very empathetically Not There- he goes hunting around in between the flowers, and finds it smashed across the ground; fractured into tiny pieces.

"I paid thirty bucks for that," Nic whispers in horror, before realizing after a moment that his life is probably worth more than a recorder, no matter how much sentimental value it has to him. Besides, he can just buy another one as soon as he can get back up.

If he can get back up.

He gathers the pieces up, and shoves them into his pocket, hoping they won't weigh him down too much.

Then he goes looking for an exit.

He finds one almost immediately- a large archway, carved out of the dark, almost purple rock that's abundant down here. There's no source of light that way, but it looks like the only way out of the clearing, so he decides to take it.

The archway leads to a long corridor that definitely looks like it's been carved intentionally, rather than formed by some natural phenomena. Which definitely increases the chances of there being some sort of human population down here. That's promising.

The light gradually dwindles away into nothing as he continues, going from grey to darker grey to black, until he can't see anything at all, and the only sound he can hear are his own footsteps. He reaches out to feel at the walls, but somehow they've dropped away from him without him noticing.

He's blind and alone, and he doesn't know what to do.

"Hello," says a voice in the black.

Nic turns; does an entire three hundred sixty swivel, but can't make out the source of the voice, which is probably due to the overwhelming amount of darkness around him. His eyes are slowly adjusting to the lighting, but not fast enough.

"Hi?" he says cautiously, thinking, oh good, human being. "Is somebody there?"

"Hello," the voice repeats, and a girl steps out of the shadows.

Actually, no- on second thoughts, it's not a girl. Not entirely, anyway. Her arms have a faint tinge of green to them that he can barely make out, and her hair is bright yellow- not a natural color- and cascading over her shoulders in a messy wave. For some reason, she strikes Nic as almost flower-like. And- for some reason- Nic isn't immediately terrified of her presence. He's more curious about her, than anything.

She stares at him with bright, intelligent eyes. "You're new around here, aren't you?"

Nic freezes for a second, and then nods, slowly. "Yeah. I guess I am."

She studies him for a second, and then breaks out into a bright, beaming smile. "Awesome! I'm Tara. Tara Reynolds."

"I'm Nic," Nic says, and almost offers her a hand to shake before he realizes that he doesn't know what sort of customs strange green girls living under mountains have and this might all actually be just a hallucination caused by bumping his head on a rock on the way down.

"Hello, Nic," she says. "Did you know that this place is bigger on the inside?"

It's so strange, such a non-sequitur, that he almost laughs out loud. Sure. There's a crazy plant girl telling him the hole beneath the mountain is bigger on the inside- this day has been weird enough already, so why not?

"It is?" he asks non-committally. Tara edges out slowly into the dim light that's spilling in from the hole above them.

"Inside the cabin," she says abruptly.

"The cabin?" Nic suddenly wishes his recorder was working- as terrifying as this experience is, it sounds like exactly the sort of thing he'd want to catch on tape.

"Yes." She nods, although her eyes aren't exactly focusing on him- more like somewhere just a few inches above his head. "The air is… cool, and feels thicker or maybe just different, or maybe it’s just me, but there’s a slight metallic smell in the air." She starts suddenly, jumping like a skittish cat, and practically screams. "Sam! I think I can hear them outside, I’m gonna have to- oh!"

Nic steps forward cautiously. "Um- Tara? Are you-"

"I'm great!" she howls. "Amazing- wonderful- dangerous- magical-"

Holy shit, Nic thinks, but doesn't say it out loud because he feels like he's used up his swearing quota for the day.

Tara shoots forwards, and claw-like hands grab at Nic's shoulders, digging into his flesh. Her skin feels like dry leaves, and he could swear it's actually crunching against him.

"Nic," she whispers, face close to his so he can actually smell the sap on her breath- dear god is that disturbing- and feel the dry crackle of her hair as it shifts, "there are dangerous things."

He's frozen, staring at her. He notices that there's faint traces of dark stains above her lips and trailing down her arm, and he really doesn't want to think about what that could be.

"There are magical things," she continues. "There are dangerous things."

"I don't-"

"We get what we deserve," she says, and grins at him. Her teeth are stained red.

Nic struggles against her, attempting to twist out of her grip. It's completely ineffectual.

It figures, he reflects bitterly, that he'd be killed by a psychopathic flower girl only minutes after miraculously surviving a fifty-foot drop.

He's just about resigned himself to his fate when he hears footsteps.

∵

"Out!" screams a heavily-accented voice from somewhere within the tunnel running alongside the cavern he and Tara are in, and suddenly there's another woman with long, tangly hair getting right into Tara's face- and holy shit, her hands are literally flaming with actual proper fire, is that magic? "Get out, you monstrous creature!"

Tara hisses- almost like a cat, really- and retreats into the shadows, and before Nic can even react or ask her wait, what did you mean, she's gone- literally melting into the walls until nothing's left.

Nic realizes, quite abruptly, that at some point during the proceedings, he had fallen onto his backside and was still lying there, stunned.

"Well," says the woman, and turns reagally to face him. She has copper eyes, narrow and striking, and- most shocking of all, he can't say why he hadn't noticed before- long, curling horns, spiralling up from the tangle of her hair. "What a terrible creature, tormenting such an innocent… human…"

There's something about the way she says 'human' that doesn't really settle right with Nic, but he chooses to ignore it. "Um, thank you, I think. But… she wasn't bothering me. Really."

The woman- monster?- shakes her head, and mutters, "that's what they all think," under her breath before extending a hand towards him, which he takes. She helps him to his feet. "My name is Amalia. I am the keeper of the Ruins."

It strikes him, quite suddenly ,that she has a rather strong Russian accent for somebody who literally lives underneath the ground. He wonders where she got it from "I'm Nic. Nicodemus," he says, almost automatically, and curses himself for revealing his dreaded full name to a complete stranger- one with demonic horns, for god's sake. It must have been something about her nature, he thinks, that reminds him partly of his mother and partly of that girlfriend he had for an entire week in college. Something disarming.

"You fell down here," says Amalia, and it's not a question. "How?"

Nic bites his lip. "I- er, tripped."

"Tripped." Amalia's copper stare is deadpan and entirely unbelieving.

"I was preoccupied," Nic defends himself. "The flowers-"

"Yes, they are rather fascinating, aren't they?" Amalia turns towards the tunnel she emerged from, and begins to walk- trusting, perhaps, that he'll follow her. "Come with me. You cannot stay out here all day, Nicodemus."

Nic hurries after her. "Uh, it's just Nic. Please. Call me Nic."

"Hm."

The 'hm' is not encouraging.

#tanis #pnws #tbtp #kitty.doc #nic #amalia #tara #tanistale #welcome to my RIDICULOUS AU #god i've been planning this out for months

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wellmeaningshutin · 8 years ago

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Short Story #104: Vampire.

Written: 4/25/2017 Monster Week

My favorite thing about Gladys, besides her collection of Rina Ketty records, was probably her name, which felt like a proper name for somebody who lived in an old folk’s home. Its a name that was probably a symbol of youth during her generation, and it’s weird for me to think that one day, if I still have a job by then, if this place still exists, I may be in the care of elders named Skyler of Christyn. Another thing that was great about Gladys was the fact that her dementia was pretty advanced, and since I apparently resembled her sister, back in the postwar days, she was docile towards me, and would listen to every command that I gave her, so, naturally, she was always in my care, and was a breeze to take care of. Sure, there may have been a couple incidents where I risked her being taken away from me, but those were just due to my own paranoia, because her dementia usually allowed for her to hardly even notice when I would produce that trusty razor blade, that I kept in my purse, and make an incision somewhere along her back, legs, thighs, neck, really anywhere that would be covered up by heir long, elegant hair or the dresses that she loved to wear. And, if she was lucid, all I would have to do was tape her mouth shut, and slice away anyways, because she was bound to forget about it when the fog would creep back into her brain, but this only happened on rare occasions, since playing ‘Printemps et Baeux Jours’ was enough to get her lost inside of the fog of her aging mind, scraping at some memory that was connected to the song. She would just smile her vacant smile, and I would cut her real quick, watch the blood drain out of her, and wait until there was a decent amount until I buried my face in it, lapping it up and enjoying it, making sure to not open the wound any larger then it already was, especially after the incident where one of my canines had caught, and some skin had ripped away just to get it out. Sure, the old broad may be covered in scars, but I am the only one who washes her, so nobody else is suspicious of the ‘abuse’, if you can even call it that.

This all changed when one my coworkers was caught taking advantage of some of the patients, was swiftly arrested and dealt with, and the nursing home not only decided to keep an eye on the rest of us, who weren’t even doing anything nearly as bad as what that sick fuck was doing, but also decided to hire his replacement, who had never worked in the field before, and was assigned to shadow me for a while so that I could show him the ropes. Goodbye Rina, goodbye Gladys. The only time alone I’ve had with the broad has been when I give her sponge baths, since male orderlies are banned from washing female patients, for obvious legal reasons, and even though its enough to save my ass, and not let anyone see her scarred body, which looks somewhat like no man’s land, but its not enough for me to be able to continue the cutting, because if I take too long to wash her, a female orderly will eventually come and check on me. So, I have to starve. ———————————————————————————————————

Okay, so you may be wondering, why is this girl talking about cutting up old people and drinking their blood? Is she a vampire? But if she was a vampire, wouldn’t she just bite into them with her teeth and suck it out of them that way, couldn’t she just stare people in the eyes to hypnotize them, so that she wouldn’t have to prey on the elderly, couldn’t she just drink the blood of wild animals, and just skip all of the trouble that comes from preying on humans? Well, yeah, I am a vampire, but not in the sense that people seem to think they exist. And let me tell you that I hate that title so much, but I don’t really know of any title that is more accurate, so it is one I have to bear.

Also, I have to say that most of the stuff you may know about vampires is total bullshit, because a lot of that is just made up to sell books or young adult movies. So, forget most of what you know.

One important thing to know is that the main thing that all sources get right is the fact that we need blood survive. However, we can’t get it from anything other than people, and we don’t actually have to drink it, we just need to get it into our bodies some way. There is no way for us to bite into people and suck all of their blood out, and I’m pretty sure that rumor was spread around from a guy who was hungry, desperate, and just bit another person because of those feelings. Hell, I think its pretty common for some of us to just get blood through transfusions, but problems arise from finding steady, safe, and reliable targets, especially since some newer vampires decide that strung out addicts would be easy prey, then end up with drug addictions, or try to rob blood banks, without being used to stealing, and either get away with it and learn that the place improved security, or they get arrested for it, with the possibility of getting sent to a mental institution. There’s also the issue of being a Jehovah’s Witness, but that’s not a common problem. Some of us who avoid transfusions just get blood through our own special ways, sometimes through violence, and the rest are just disgusted and horrified by the idea of having to steal and consume blood, and end up killing themselves to avoid the dreadful life ahead of them. I assume that the suicide rate is pretty high, but there are no statistics that I could rely on for this. I only have anecdotal evidence about all of the others that I’ve met (and I haven’t met that much, since we don’t have any groups or communities or whatever, since our disease isn’t really something to bond over in the first place), and all of those people were already fucked up to begin with, which probably is the reason that we all seem so evil, because its only the bad ones who are able to live with the disease. Natural selection.

Also, this isn’t relevant, but I once heard about a priest who was seduced and contracted the disease. He realized what he was, but then he knew that it was evil and he had to be stopped before he hurt anyone, yet this also troubled him because he knew that suicide was a sin, and he was at risk of going to hell for it. In the end, he drowned himself in a bowl of holy water.

You may be wondering why I mentioned that the priest was seduced, and that would take me to my next point, which is to mention that the disease I have is only sexually transmitted. The only reason it hasn’t spread out of control, like AIDS, is because it also causes people to have a ridiculously low sex drive, mainly due to our lack of natural blood, which is needed to function sexually in the first place. The only time we can actually have, or can actually be in the mood for sex is within an hour after we’ve ingested blood, and that doesn’t lead to very many opportunities. And, yes, that was how it happened to me, but I’m not sure if you would want to hear that story, since it wasn’t exactly consensual. That son of a bitch was probably able to have lived for a long time with the disease, he was rotten enough, but don’t worry, he’s not around any more, he didn’t live very long after he got off of me, but maybe he thought that I was just going to be another suicide.

We don’t really have many problems with sunlight other than problems that fair skinned people already have, so its not like if I walked outside, during the day, I would catch on fire, or turn into ash, or whatever. I would probably, worst case, just get a really bad sunburn. Its really just annoying, and for some reason sun block doesn’t seem to help at all. I guess there has to be some sort of downside. Also, drugs have very little effects on us, but I don’t think that’s a downside unless you’re heavily depressed, or an addict, but those people usually don’t last long anyways. ———————————————————————————————————

Other than the fact that he was making me starve, making me have to get creative with meal planning, the rookie really wasn’t that bad of a guy. He didn’t say much, and whenever he did talk it never felt like it was wasted. Some people thought that it meant that he was really smart, but its pretty clear, at least it is to me, that he is just shy. I think he may have picked up this job because he wanted to help people, and the people here either weren’t the conversational type, or would want to jabber at you without any input, so he mainly just had to speak to give commands. He was also the sort of guy who was always blending into the background, even if he was the only other person in the room, you could always forget that he was there. That quality made him like my shadow, and I always made sure to assume that he was right behind me, which made it even more frustrating to find a way to eat. For three days I had been starving, and I was starting to get the hunger, which is something I’ll bring up later, or not at all if possible.

When we would take our breaks, he would usually follow me to the parking lot where I would light up a cigarette, just because I liked the way I looked when I smoked, since they had no effects on me, and it was just kind of a small task that could fill that idle time. We never spoke much to each other, and after the third day I finally told him, in a tone that didn’t do much to mask my irritation, “You know you don’t have to stick by me for the break, right?”

“Yeah,” said the rookie, looking up at the overcast sky, “I know. I just like your company.” The way he said it made him sound like he didn’t care one way or the other, but it had a practiced quality to it that was grating.

“So you’re not even going to say anything, you’re just fine with hovering around me all of the time?”

“I’m talking now.”

“Barely. You’re mostly just responding anyways, just giving me answers. Cause and effect.”

“What’s wrong with that? If you have anything to say I can listen, if you have anything to ask I can answer. What’s the issue?”

“Its creepy, that’s what. Look, its one thing to wordlessly hover around me during the job, but during our free time, its just straight up creepy. There’s nothing for me to instruct you on. You’re just standing there watching me smoke away, an its worse that you can’t understand how strange that is. And you’re whole idea of this is pretty selfish, because you’re expecting me to do all of the work, but you’re the one who wants to be around me in the first place. You’re the one who keeps following me to the parking lot like a child who got lost at a supermarket. I shouldn’t have to talk to get rid of my discomfort, that shouldn’t be my job, you should just not make me uncomfortable in the first place! And you said that you enjoy my company, but why should you be the only one who gets to have the presence of another person? With the way you just wordlessly follow me around, its like I’m being followed by a ghost, not a person. So either try to talk to me, or fuck off and let me smoke alone.”

“Oh.” That’s all he responded with, ‘oh’, and then he just looked at his feet for a while. I couldn’t tell if I had hurt his feelings, or if he had gotten the message, and a minute passed with me blowing smoke into a direction that kept him out of my line of sight, and he probably kept staring at his feet. I checked my watch, four minutes left on the break, and then he spoke up again, “It looks like its going to rain.”

“Yeah,” exhaling a cloud of smoke, still looking away from him, “it might.”

“Good thing that we work inside.”

“Yeah, then we wont get wet.”

“I don’t like being wet, unless I’m going swimming, or am in the shower, or when I take a bath, I guess. I think I mainly don’t like being wet when I have clothes on, so I may actually enjoy being wet all of the time, but I tend to wear clothes most of the time, and if something gets me wet my clothes will also get wet, and then it is not enjoyable.” He talked in a slow pace, his words just seemed to lazily wonder out of him. “It seems like most of the times I get wet are when I don’t want to, like when it rains, and that is probably why I first said that I don’t like to be wet. What’s your opinion on this?”

I really wanted to rail into him for that lousy attempt at conversing, I wanted to turn to him and put my cigarette out onto one of his eyes, but instead I told him, “Breaks over, lets go inside”, and flicked my cigarette onto the asphalt, stepped on it, then walked back to the nursing home without checking if he was following, because he most likely was. Only two minutes were actually left in the break, but I don’t think he checked the time himself.

Until the next break, he had been completely silent, had reverted to his role as an extra, and I was glad for that. It was the one good thing that I had going for me, especially since I had been so hungry that I considered, after going to the bathroom, stealing a maxi pad out of the trash and eating away at it, but another female orderly walked in, and I decided I wasn’t hungry enough to do that anyways. If only I could’ve run into a patient with a nosebleed, or some other sort of injury, that would have allowed me to instruct that background character, the human scenery, to run and get me something to plug it up, and then I could have at least had a little bit of it while he was gone, just enough to tide my hunger over for a little moment, but I wasn’t lucky enough for that. There were only a lot of soiled diapers and jealous women, due to the fact that there were much more women than men in the home, which led to more hookups and drama than youths were even capable of. At one point I checked on Gladys, and she had me put on ‘Printemps et Baeux Jours’ for her. That make me hungrier than anything, and I was almost hypnotized by it, in the same way that she always was, which lead me to forget about my shadow until he had asked me why I was patting myself down. I wanted to answer that I was looking for my purse, which I had stopped keeping on my person since he started following me, but I knew that that answer would only have lead to more questions, and I hated him, like, deeply and purely hated him, for reminding me of how difficult he was making my life. I ended up just saying something about looking for my phone, feeling that I had a text or something, and he didn’t press it any further.

During the next break I was the one who stared at my feet, smoking away, while he stood only a couple feet away and jabbered on about, “If you think about it, aren’t bugs just like animals, like dogs and cats, because they were created by nature, but the only reason that we are so disgusted by them is because we evolved in different directions than them. They are only gross because they aren’t like us, and dogs and cats are enough like us, being mammals, that we don’t try to kill them whenever we see them. The same goes for snakes too, which are just lizards without legs. Lizards are something that we are okay with, maybe its because of the legs and their bodies that are similar to dogs and cats, but you take those away and you have a snake, which are suddenly not okay with anyone.” And he continued that train of thought in his monotone voice, which fed me impulses of thrusting his head through a car window, or hitting him with enough force to break those glasses of his, and I probably would have done one of those things if I didn’t accept the hunger. No, I don’t mean the hunger I had been feeling for blood, I’m talking about the Hunger. The feeling that most of us try to ignore, try to forget about, but is just a natural occurrence for those of us who choose to drink blood, to taste it. The feeling that is another reason that some of us tend to commit suicide.

I just had to have the perfect moment, I had to be very careful, and I decided that during the next day, I would answer that hunger.

But when I arrived at work, I was informed that he called in that day, saying that he wasn’t going to make it to work, and I was happy to be without his presence. Sure, I didn’t notice it when he was there, but it was good to have peace of mind. So, all I had to do was wait until two hours into my shift, ignoring everyone who asked if I was alright, waving off their concern, faintly explaining that I just didn’t get much sleep the other night, and that I hadn’t done my makeup, until I was finally in the room with Gladys, all alone. After I made sure everything was in order, I had dropped the needle down onto ‘Printemps et Baeux Jours’, and I haggardly watched as the life went away from her eyes, her mind going wherever it went to wander when she heard that song. I only waited about ten seconds after she became vacant, I couldn’t wait too long, until I rolled up the bottom of her dress, pulled the razor out of my purse, and struggled for a bit, hands shaking, to make an incision along her inner right thigh. Okay, so it was more of a gash than an incision, but I wasn’t in the mood to care about that. Normally I have to work to be able to actually care about others, its as if everyone else’s empathy is naturally on, but mine is naturally off, so I was too hungry to even pretend to care about harm that came to her, and I was just glad to feel that warm, thick, copper tasting liquid against my lips. And that’s when I heard something drop.

Apparently the rookie had been standing there with me the whole time, watching, speechless, horrified. I pushed the catatonic woman away from me, her wheelchair rolled back and banged into the bed behind her, she slouched slightly forward, blood continued to pour out of her. Eye contact was unbroken between the rookie and I as I rose to my feet, and I could feel the blood on my face, and partially on my uniform, so I must have been a ghastly sight. Calmly, and quietly, I asked, “How long have you been here?” The answer wouldn’t change anything, because even if he came in at the end he still would have seen the injured woman, and my blood stained face.

“I-I’ve been,” when he spoke it was like I was hearing his real voice for the first time, the calmness was gone, his words were wavering, and I could tell that he wanted to look away, but was terrified that something would happen if he did, “with you for the whole time. Since you got your uniform on, and, and started everything.”

“I thought you called in, I thought you weren’t here.”

“No, no I told you that Norman had, uh, called in. We are supposed to take over some of his work.”

“You aren’t Norman?”

“No, no my name is-” he looked at his feet, the fucker finally broke eye contact, and I knew that I would have to take the opportunity that was presented. In the background the record hand finished, but it kept revolving, the needle was still down. I knew that there was no way I could get myself out of this scenario, and I was still starved, since I hadn’t gotten very much blood down, so I thought ‘fuck it’, and reached for a nearby lamp, which I brought down and shattered against his head. It was shameful how easy he had gone down, and he hardly said a word before I started stomping down on his face, repeatedly, making sure that he wouldn’t be able to call out for help. By the time I had stopped, mainly because I was getting dizzy, it was hard to make out any resemblance of a human face. His head had more in common with a raspberry pie that had been dropped on the ground. I couldn’t resist, I had to crouch down and grab a bit of his brain between my index finger and thumb, and I brought it to my mouth. When I chewed on it, I wondered why I had avoided the hunger, why it had seemed like such a problem.

Gladys had started to stir, she started faintly saying something about being in pain, and my first instinct was to throw her chair over, in anger from the distraction that she served to be, but I decided that it would be better to just replay the song, figuring that if I looped it enough she would die without attracting any outside attention. When Rina began to sing again, I turned to the rookie, and almost burst into laughter when I realized that his crumpled figure, that had sprayed blood over the walls, and soaked the carpet, stood out way more than he ever did when he was alive. Wasting no time, since somebody could come looking for me if the other patients started to become ornery, I crouched by his body and used the razor to cut away the top of his uniform. Then, when his torso was exposed, I sliced his belly horizontally, making a line straight across his belly button, then reached my fingers into that slit, and pulled back the skin on one side, ripping it, which allowed for his glistening intestines to spill to the floor. Sure, they looked appetizing, but I knew that one wrong bite could leave me with a mouth full of shit, so I decided to make a vertical slice, realizing that other organs would be equally unappealing if I bit into them. When I had worked the cut open, I had pulled more skin back, and now a majority of his insides were sliding out of him, except for everything that was protected by the ribcage. At that point I knew that the heart was probably my best bet, it wouldn’t contain stomach acid or urine, but the way to it was obstructed. Grabbing a handful of brain to snack on, I started to walk towards the record player to replay the song, but I got one good glance at Gladys and knew that knew that she was permanently catatonic. However, I still played it because I enjoyed the noise. After finishing that damp, squishing snack of mine, I wiped my bloody hands off on her face, since I was well past the point of caring about any sort of politeness, and I looked around for something to break the ribcage open. Then, I got an idea, unplugged the record player, lugged it over towards the rookie’s remains, and threw it down on top of him, hearing a satisfying crunch when it landed. Problem was, I had to sort out the remains of the record player from all of his crushed organs, and by the time I had found his heart, somebody had opened the door to Gladys’s room. I locked eyes with the nurse who was coming to check on me, who looked as if she had woken up from a terrible nightmare, as I bit into his heart.

Apparently, answering to the hunger, in a way, had been suicide for me. Some people think that people like me have some special requirements to get killed, but let me tell you that all that was needed to take me down was a 9mm bullet, nothing fancy. I didn’t even have to hit me in the heart, it tore right through my stomach and I died hours later. However, I guess in a way, it did have to pierce a heart to kill me.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writers on Tumblr #Vampire #Hungry

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