#Yeah its cut in half in twitch and also mostly covered

[leftysage]

I had some fun making a banner for my twitch, and I wanted to share the full image! I think it's very cute.

[love-and-monsters]

Cold Sea Monster

M sea monster X GN reader, 2,713 words.

Winter is a rough time for monsters who usually live in the tropics. Luckily, he can rely on you to keep him warm. 

There was a lump in the blankets of your bed. You prodded at it, lips pressed together to hold back a giggle. “You can’t stay in there all day. You know that, right?” The lump wriggled away from your touch. “Come on. I need to make the bed.”

“No, you don’t.” The voice was muffled beneath the cloth. The lump curled into a tighter ball.

 “I do. And you need to get out of bed sometime today.” You tugged at the edges of the blanket, trying to force it up. Claws hooked it from the other side, pulled it back down. You swallowed hard against the tidal wave of giggles.

“I’m hibernating.” The lump shifted and you managed to get the grip you needed to wrench the covers up. Your partner wailed as the cold air touched him. “No! Give me back the blankets!”

 “Get out of bed,” you said, staring firmly down at him. “It’s past noon.”

He slunk slowly out from under the covers, gazing at you with enormous, sorrowful eyes. His dark, fishy eyes gave him a look like a kicked puppy. Luckily, he’d given you the look so many times, you were immune.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you said. “You can go get in the hot tub, if you want.”

Getting a hot tub had been expensive, but absolutely necessary when your partner was amphibious. He was covered in pale blue scales that melted into skin on his belly. Brightly colored fins stood on the top and sides of his head and his long tail ended in an enormous, frilly fin, though it was folded down most of the time. He crouched on his long, digitigrade legs, peering at you with soulful, sad eyes.

“It’s so cold,” he whimpered. You rolled your eyes.

“I turned the thermostat up.” Keeping a tropical boyfriend warm in the winter was a pretty big task- even with the thermostat in the seventies, he still shivered and complained.

He looked sorrowfully at the electric blanket as you tucked it away. His mouth gaped in an enormous yawn. It was quite a change to see him now from the summer- he was usually energetic, but the instant the temperature started to dip into the forties, all his enthusiasm seemed to drain out of him.

“I set up a fire downstairs,” you said. “And a humidifier.” The drying effect of heating a house wasn’t great for an amphibian either. He yawned again, standing to his full height. He was much taller than you, with long limbs that helped him move through the water.

“Okay.” He snagged a quilt from his blanket pile and wrapped it over his shoulders. “Are you done?”

You smoothed down the last of the bedsheets. “Yeah, I’m done. Do you need me for-”

Before you could finish your sentence, he had seized you and pulled you into his arms. You yelped, startled, though not entirely surprised. He had a habit of picking you up and hauling you around. “Where are we going?”

Instead of answering, he simply pulled you into the living room. The fireplace was going, and there was a humidifier humming away in the corner. A heating pad sat tucked in a pile of soft blankets.

He wasted no time burrowing into them, you still in his arms. “Hey,” you said, squirming. “Come on, Morgen, I have to go to work.”

He rolled over, smushing you underneath him. “You work from home!”

“Yeah, on my laptop. Which is in the office. And not here,” you said. Morgen grumbled.

“What I mean is, there’s no way they can tell if you’re in the office on time or not. So…” He squirmed over, trying to give you another sorrowful, big-eyed look. It was a bit diminished by the fact that he was mostly covered in blankets and it was hard to see his face.

 “Look,” you said. “It’s past twelve. I’m technically on a lunch break right now, but I am going to have to go back to work eventually. And you’re going to have to let me go eventually.”

 “That’s what you think,” Morgen said, puffing up his chest. “I could lie here all day. And you’re going to lie here with me!”

You stuck out your tongue at him. “What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“Ugh.” He gave you a playful shove. “Why do you always have to ruin all my perfectly laid plans?”

“If reality has started screwing up your plans, maybe they weren’t perfectly laid in the first place,” you pointed out. Morgen wrapped you in his arms and pulled you further into his enormous nest of blankets.

“Shh,” he said. “Be quiet. Let’s take a nap.”

There was more work to be done and a billion other things you could be taking care of at the moment. But it was so warm under the blankets and Morgen was rubbing at your tense shoulders in a way that felt so nice after hours of bending over a computer, and the idea of crawling back into the cold office and staring into a screen was sort of depression.

You groaned and rolled over, pressing your face into his shoulder. He made a quiet noise of triumph next to your ear, squeezing you even tighter. “Yes. I win!”

“Yeah, sure,” you grumbled. “Hope you like going to bed alone because I’m going to be staying up late finishing all my editing.”

“Noooooo,” Morgen wailed. “I hate going to bed alone! It’s so cold.” Despite that, he didn’t make any attempt to release you. If anything, he clung tighter. You snorted, stroking your fingers along the top of his head. His fins twitched as you ran your fingers along them. They twitched and jerked under your ministrations. His fins were so delicate and sensitive. Apparently, they could pick up subtle changes in the currents when he was underwater. On land, they made him very ticklish if you played your cards just right.

One of his ear fins twitched wildly as you ran a calloused fingertip over it. “Cut that out,” Morgen said sleepily.

“Yeah?” you said, scratching at the thin membrane. “What are you going to do about it?”

Morgen made a noise that could generously be described as a snarl and less generously described as a snore and rolled over onto you. “Gotcha,” he mumbled, wrapping his tail around you. “Now you’re never getting out.” You were completely smushed under him, though he was leaning back so you could still breathe. His tail was twitching, fins slapping against your back. It was rather funny, the way he wagged his tail when he was comfortable.

There was very little you could do to actually get him off you. He was pretty heavy and as he started to relax, the weight only seemed to increase. It was still pleasantly warm under the blankets, though his skin was cool against you. You closed your eyes, running your hand along the top of his head.

You startled awake abruptly. Your head was hazy and confused and your sense of timing was completely lost. It could have been thirty minutes or six hours for all you knew.

Muzzily, you poked your head out from under the pile of blankets. Morgen was still on top of you and he protested sleepily against your movements. After a moment of craning your neck, you caught a glance at the clock.

“Morgen, you need to get up. It’s two thirty.” He groaned, attaching himself even tighter to your side. “I need to work, come on!”

“No! I’m sleepy and you’re so warm.” It was impossible to get up with Morgen attached to you. He was so tall and his gangly limbs meant that he could very easily attach himself to you and he couldn’t be pried off.

“It’s past two! I need to work.” You kicked the blankets away from you and shivered. Even with the fire on, the warm was still pretty chilly. Morgen whined and retreated back into the blankets like a deep-sea creature recoiling from sunlight.

“You’re going to abandon me,” he said. He blinked at you from under the blankets. Somehow, having the blankets tangled around him only served to make him more pathetic. “Your boyfriend… all alone… cold and abandoned.”

“I’m not abandoning you! I’m going to be one room over! You’re going to be asleep, you’re not even going to notice that I’m gone.”

“I’ll notice,” Morgen said sorrowfully. “I always notice.”

You hesitated, then crouched down next to him again. “Okay. I think I have a plan. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

 He looked suspiciously at you, but he let you leave. You trotted to the office and carefully pulled your laptop free from its nest of wires.

Morgen had fully buried himself under the blanket when you returned. He peeked out as you stopped next to him. “You brought your computer,” he said.

“Yeah. Budge over, make some space for me in the blanket.” Morgen was only too happy to do so, rolling over and lifting the blankets so you could shuffle in next to him.

It was sort of hard to write while lying on your stomach. Resting all your weight on your elbows hurt after a bit, and it was awkward to type. Morgen didn’t help in any way. He was half-sprawled over your back, a heavy weight that pressed you into the ground. Despite all the discomfort, though, you didn’t want to change your position. Morgen made little, sleepy noises of contentment as he pressed his face into your shoulders. Occasionally, he would even move to press kisses to the base of your neck. It was utterly delightful.

The afternoon dragged on. It was impressive how much Morgen could sleep, really. And such a change. It was strange to think about how much temperature affected his mood. You looked at him, curled against your side. He wasn’t quite entirely asleep, you thought. It was more like the sleepy hazes your childhood cats had gone into. His eyes were closed, but his fins twitched at the slightest sound and you could see his eyelids twitching every now and then.

You only ended up working for a couple of hours. Not only were you getting stiff from trying to type on the floor, but you were also growing increasingly distracted by Morgen. He had started to stir and was clearly trying to get your attention.

“Do you need something?” you said, finally pushing your laptop away. Morgen beamed, tail wagging so hard it shifted the blankets aside.

“I think I just got it,” he said. He tucked the blankets securely around you. “Want to put on a movie?”

“Are you actually going to stay awake through the whole thing or do you just want something in the background while you go to sleep?” you asked. Morgen tried to look innocent and utterly failed.

“It’s not my fault the cold makes me sleepy,” he said. “You can put on whatever movie you want! I won’t even complain if it’s one of those really boring ones.”

“The Poltergeist is not a boring movie. You just have no appreciation for subtlety,” you said.

 “It’s so subtle that nothing happens,” Morgen said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t get why humans are so scared by it.”

There was no way either of you were going to win the argument, so you just grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Morgen wasted no time in sprawling himself across your lap, still smothered under several blankets. In the end, you put on an animated move you’d both seen several times before. Morgen said the way the water was shown reminded him of home, and you liked the story and bright colors.

Morgen dozed on your lap as you half-watched the movie. In truth, you were more paying attention to him. you worked your fingers over his scalp, scratching against the fins. He made little noises of satisfaction, leaning into your touch. For a water creature, his cat-like behavior was rather funny.

“I can’t believe how much you can sleep,” you said as he started awake and shifted his position on her lap. “You’ve barely been awake for two consecutive hours.”

“It’s the cold,” Morgen said. You ran your hand along his head and he pressed into the touch enthusiastically.

“Does the cold just make you more sluggish or does it actually make you need to sleep more?” you asked. Morgen rolled onto his back, his head still resting on your lap.

“This is just a guess,” he said. “I’m totally speculating here based on some stuff I’ve heard, but I think it’s mostly accurate. So, my species lives in tropical areas, yeah? But it was thought that in the past, we lived somewhere a little more temperate, that sometimes got cold snaps. And when there were cold snaps, in order to conserve energy, we went into a hibernation mode, where we all gathered together and slept until temperatures rose again.” He yawned, showing off his large canines. “Sorry. Anyway, when we moved to more tropical areas, we stopped needing to hibernate, but we still have the genes for it.”

“Which means that spending time in the cold is triggering your need to hibernate,” you said. “That’s why you’re sleeping so much. Your body is trying to hibernate.”

“Mm,” Morgen murmured. “My body wants to find somewhere warm where I can sleep until the temperature rises.”

You stroked your hand over his head again, fingers twitching. There was an abrupt feeling of nervousness coalescing in your stomach. “It must be hard. To fight that.” You played with one of his fins. “Is it uncomfortable?”

“I’m sleepy a lot. And cold a lot,” he said. “It’s a little uncomfortable, I suppose.”

You pursed your lips. “Would it…” There was something choking happening in your throat. Morgen blinked up at you, waiting for you to keep speaking. You cleared your throat a couple of times. “Er. Would it maybe be easier for you if you did hibernate? I mean… If that’s’ what you’re supposed to do in the winter? I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Morgen looked up at you with his big, soulful eyes. “If I’m asleep, then I can’t spend time with you.”

You snorted. “You’re avoiding hibernating because you’re afraid I’m going to miss you?” It was unreasonably sweet and it was also fairly accurate. You pushed your sorrow away, though. It wasn’t fair to him, to force him to stay awake for you. “I mean, I will, but it’s only during the winter. And you’ll be awake sometimes. I’ll manage. You’re not the only person I talk to, you know.”

Morgen’s fins drew close to his face and he gave a small, slightly sheepish smile. “I wasn’t really worried about you missing me, exactly. I was more worried about me missing you.”

You made a noise of surprise. “You’ll be asleep. Are you even going to notice?”

He flicked his fins out and in, his version of a small shrug. “I think so,” he said. “I haven’t just been wanting you around because you’re warm. I love you a lot. I want to be with you.”

“I know,” you said. You couldn’t keep the emotion out of your voice and Morgen smiled, pressing his face into your stomach. “But I don’t want you to make yourself sick or something because you’re not doing what you should during the winter. And I really don’t want you doing that on my behalf.”

“I’m not doing it on your behalf,” Morgen said, his voice muffled. “I’m doing it because I want to.” He turned his head to blink sleepily up at you. “Trust me. I’d much rather spend time with you, even if I’m a little sleepy, than spend all winter asleep.”

Your eyes stung with tears. You sniffed. “That’s the sweetest thing I think anyone’s ever said to me.”

Morgen lifted his head toward yours, smiling. “It’s true.” You bent down and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. He sighed, reaching a hand up and pulling you down to kiss you more firmly.

“See?” he said as you broke apart. “I can’t get that when I’m sleeping.”

[haloud]

things we could burn in one go (eminence) -- chapter 10

also on ao3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Forrest Long/Alex Manes Additional Tags: post-s2, Canon Compliant, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Starts Forlex Ends Malex, Other Characters May Appear, Tags Subject to Update, Mutual Pining, Breaking Up, Getting Together

Chapter Summary: Alex and Forrest struggle to understand each other in the wake of their breakup; Alex makes a shocking discovery at the Long farm.

Excerpt:

The corner of Forrest’s mouth twitched, as did one eyebrow, and his stance softened slightly. “No serenade? No boombox? No diamonds? There goes that fantasy.”

It was true; Alex had come here empty-handed, the way he brought himself to every step of their relationship. All the things he had inside him, all the things he had to give, he’d failed to deliver any of them in a way that Forrest needed. He’d made do with illusions, convincing ones, convincing enough to fool even himself into thinking he was built any other way than this. He was a problem-solver, a provider; it was bitter medicine to learn that brute-forcing himself into the proper shape for someone else only hurt everyone involved.

Alex ducked his head with an infinitesimal smile of his own. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Forrest shook his head. “Honestly, I’m just kind of surprised you’re even here. I thought I’d be waiting until I decided to come to you. And shouldn’t you be at work right now?”

“I took a half day,” Alex replied. He’d taken tomorrow off as well to prepare for their planning session, but Forrest didn’t need to know that. “I didn’t want to make either of us wait. Not for this.”

(Wednesday, 14:00)

The Long family home was leagues from the old barn and the fallen tree, but an odd sort of almost-nostalgia sloshed in Alex’s stomach as he approached the house all the same. He had only been back here a few times since he and Forrest met; it wasn’t a part of their relationship; it was more convenient to spend their time at Alex’s, where there was no one to bother them. When they spent the night together, it was in Alex’s bed, and the sex they had was there too, unless Forrest knew for sure Wyatt was gone and not coming back. That thought only made it stranger, how Alex had never quite gotten used to sharing his space with him, sharing a bed, sharing a life. For the thousandth time he wondered what was wrong with him, but he took a deep breath and cut that feeling loose and let it float away. What good was a question with no answer to him now? It was a search he’d never finish, and he would have to learn to live with it.

It felt wrong to leave something before it was finished. To turn his back on a piece of himself before examining every inch of it under the light, to cut loose a string without following it to its end and seeing where it led. But to force it would only make things worse, and he’d done enough of that already.

By the time Alex parked, shut off his car, and gathered his willpower to approach the house, the door was open, and Forrest was waiting for him on the porch. He looked…great. Normal. He’d touched up his hair; his eyes were well-rested and sharp; his fingers and neck dripped with jewelry, and Alex could recognize the look for the armor it was. His own leather jacket was a solid weight across his shoulders.

“Hey,” he said with an awkward wave.

The corner of Forrest’s mouth twitched, as did one eyebrow, and his stance softened slightly. “No serenade? No boombox? No diamonds? There goes that fantasy.”

It was true; Alex had come here empty-handed, the way he brought himself to every step of their relationship. All the things he had inside him, all the things he had to give, he’d failed to deliver any of them in a way that Forrest needed. He’d made do with illusions, convincing ones, convincing enough to fool even himself into thinking he was built any other way than this. He was a problem-solver, a provider; it was bitter medicine to learn that brute-forcing himself into the proper shape for someone else only hurt everyone involved.

Alex ducked his head with an infinitesimal smile of his own. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Forrest shook his head. “Honestly, I’m just kind of surprised you’re even here. I thought I’d be waiting until I decided to come to you. And shouldn’t you be at work right now?”

“I took a half day,” Alex replied. He’d taken tomorrow off as well to prepare for their planning session, but Forrest didn’t need to know that. “I didn’t want to make either of us wait. Not for this.”

Forrest just snorted and moved aside, sitting in a rocking chair and nudging the one beside it with his foot. “Well, let’s get this over with.”

Sitting, they were silent for a while, the world peaceful around them—birds chirping, sun shining, the whole nine yards. Alex watched a small lizard creep across the dirt below the porch railing until it disappeared beneath the house.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you about Michael. That wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry for how I acted and the things I said.”

He swallowed, grimaced, almost, the words juvenile and inadequate to his own ears.

“About Michael staying with you, or…about Michael,” Forrest replied, guarded.

“The first one. Well—both, as it turns out. I thought…I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. I’m sorry for not telling you that Michael was staying over; that was shitty, I knew the whole time it was shitty, and I did it anyway because I didn’t want to fight. But at the same time, I had no idea you were worried about, well, me cheating on you.”

Sighing, Forrest said, “I told you, man. Unfinished business. It’s kind of visible from space. Before this, I wouldn’t even have thought I was a jealous person, can you believe that? I should have said something to you, but I thought I could just power through it.”

“I guess we both learned things about ourselves,” Alex said wryly. “I didn’t think I had anything to hide, but when it came time to say something about Michael to you, I just clammed up. Would I have felt that way if it was Kyle staying over? Probably not. But I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“Huh.” Forrest paused. He rocked his chair slowly forward and back, hands folded on his stomach.

“Did I act weird? Shifty, like I was hiding something?” Alex asked, awkward and vulnerable, embarrassed at how poorly he knew himself, how poorly he knew how he should have acted to not even know that much.

“No, not really. Well, you were pretty distant, but,” he shrugged, “there’s nothing wrong with needing space. It was just…you know, you sang that song at the Pony when we got together, and I had an inkling it was about Guerin, but for some reason I thought I could handle it. Dating a guy who was in love with someone else, who was trying to move on. But it didn’t work like that, huh.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex repeated weakly. “I really thought I was ready. I didn’t mean to lie to you; mostly I was lying to myself. But I know it doesn’t make it any better.”

“Can I ask you a question? Point blank?”

“Um, sure. Go ahead.”

“Were you cheating on me with Guerin?”

“No.” That, at least, he could say firm and clear.

Forrest took a deep breath, dropped his eyes, then looked out across the desert. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I believe you.”

Briefly, Alex had to push down the urge to lash out defensively like he had during their previous fight. Had he really done so much to deserve that scrutiny while they were together?

“Thank you,” he said, not sure of what else needed to be.

“I appreciate you coming here and being honest. I mean…it still kind of stings for things to end this way, but. I do appreciate it. And, well, I’m sorry too.”

“For what?”

“Showing up and exploding like that without giving you some warning. I mean, I’m kind of not sorry it brought things to a head in the end, but it was still rude.”

“No, I should’ve—”

Forrest held up a hand to stall Alex. “No, seriously, dude. The martyr act is cute, but I’m a big boy. Your house is covered in cameras, and you need like two weeks of warning for a coffee date; I knew better than to think showing up like that would be a cute surprise.”

“Oh. Um.” Alex floundered for a way to respond to that. He felt seen, pinned under the lamp of an insight he hadn’t known Forrest had. It was itchy.

“Um, thanks. For the apology. And I get what you mean, about being sorry it happened but not sorry that…well. I really am sorry it ended this way.” If not that it was ending at all.

“Are you?” Forrest raised an eyebrow. “You’re a free agent now. I half-expect Guerin to send me flowers by Saturday.”

Alex winced. But still, he said, “Okay, that’s fair. We kind of, um…”

Forrest let out an ugly snort. “You know, most people double check after a fight like that. Damn, I’m glad I was already planning on breaking up with you for good if you hadn’t gotten the message.”

“I…I know. The way it happened, it just…” Alex sighed and raked his hand through his hair. “I won’t make excuses. You have every right to be mad.”

“I am mad. And hurt,” Forrest said matter-of-factly. “But maybe not as much as I thought I’d be, once the shock cooled off.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Yeah.” A smile flickered on Forrest’s mouth, and he shrugged. “Looking back on it, it kind of feels like we’d been forcing it for a while, huh.”

Alex matched him hesitant smile for hesitant smile. Between them there were stacks of stilted conversations and unmade plans, awkward mornings and missed connections. From the morning Fields barged into Alex’s life to the moment he thought he saw his brother at the airport, in the past few weeks there were a number of times Alex had found himself unable to reach out across a gap and meet Forrest there. He’d thought it was just something wrong with him; it was an unbelievable relief to find that Forrest felt the same.

“You might be right,” he confessed.

“Yeah, I think I am,” Forrest sighed. “Damn. That’s probably why my head went straight to cheating.”

“You don’t have to find a way to even that scale,” Alex replied, shaking his head. “I was wrong; I won’t back down from that. But Michael aside, I never wanted to hurt you, Forrest. And I’m sorry I did.”

Forrest chewed on his lip, an old nervous habit. He had a pinprick scar just there, a souvenir from a piercing he’d grown out of, and when Alex would kiss him there, he’d smile. Alex was walking away from this with warm memories, sweet new patterns in the weaving of his life, unexpected treasures. And that in itself was something to cherish, no matter how much their relationship faded into history.

“Yeah, well, same here.”

“You didn’t hurt me, now you’re the one trying to even the scale—” Alex protested.

Forrest cut him off. “I like you, Alex, and I liked our jam sessions, and you made my time in Roswell suck so much less than I thought it would. But there’s a universe where we’re sitting on opposite ends of this, because my book is way more almost done than I’d let on to you just yet, so. Thanks for being such an almost-two-timing emotionally constipated jerk so when I tell my friends this story five years from now I can totally get all the sympathy.”

Alex let out a surprised snort that turned into laughter, and Forrest joined him, if a little more subdued than he’d normally be.

When they collected themselves, Forrest wiped some wetness away from his eyes and said, “Seriously, though, Alex, I hope he makes you happy. Because I don’t think we did that for each other, in the long run.”

“I hope that for you, too, Forrest,” Alex replied softly. “You deserve someone way less fucked up than me.”

“Nah, cut that crap out. We’re all a little bit fucked up.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“It is true. You, me, whoever I date next. My old granny,” he said with the first true smile of the afternoon. “And Guerin, too.”

His smile dropped as quickly as it had appeared, and he leaned forward, reaching out and putting his hand on Alex’s knee; Alex almost shied away, but he forced himself to stay still.

“I just want to make sure,” Forrest said, voice gentle—a gentleness Alex didn’t trust. His composure broke, and he drew back, the slight movement causing Forrest to drop his hand. He continued, “Guerin…he’s what you want? Truly, this is what you want?”

“Yes,” Alex snapped, no hesitation.

“Okay. Just, if you’re sure. If this is really your choice.”

Alex’s patience ripped clean in two. “I know the two of you spent some time together at the library,” he said, voice level and deliberate, “but from what I can tell, you don’t know him at all, so spare me this paternalism, okay? I can make my own choices. Whatever assumptions you’re making—”

“Okay! Okay.” Forrest held his hands up in surrender, but it did nothing to cool Alex’s temper. “I just had to ask.”

“Well, there’s your answer.”

“Noted.”

Alex stood stiffly, and Forrest followed just a second behind. They stood and stared at each other for a few seconds, Alex waiting for him to make a move, Forrest waiting for something Alex couldn’t figure.

Then Forrest stuck out his hand. In the same motion, Alex half-turned, made himself sideways, a smaller target, flowing out of the path if that hand continued forward in a blow. But no, it stayed still halfway between them. Forrest didn’t comment on his reaction. Alex reached out and shook his hand.

“I’ll see you around sometime,” Forrest said. His smile crinkled up the corners of his eyes.

“Take care of yourself, Forrest,” Alex replied.

He left the Long farm the same way he came, down the same dirt road, down the same path in his head, with the same almost-nostalgia. Leaving looked a hundred different ways, and he’d been a hundred different times, but this time the scenery was new, and he was ready to be home.

 (15:00)

A lot of work went into making Alex’s house a home.

When he moved from the Valenti cabin closer to town, it was out of necessity, even if it took him a long time to admit it. It was a victory over his own stubbornness and solitude and maladaptive independence, a concession to comfort that surprised even himself. It made his life better. He was closer to work; he was closer to his friends; he had an accessible bathroom, and something he’d considered so small before helped him along a journey he’d barely acknowledged toward accepting and appreciating the body he lived in now. But changing environments wasn’t easy for him. He’d had to put a year’s worth of care into finding the perfect location and fitting the house there to be someplace he could feel secure without complete solitude for miles around him, between the cameras and the vantage point of the patio and the orientation of his bedroom within the house and just everything from top to bottom. He’d fought hard. He won.

And then he came home from breaking up with his ex-boyfriend to find a strange car in his driveway.

Well, not entirely strange. He’d seen it once before. But when he saw it, it was from the vantage point of his own front door, not from the outside.

The car had room to park in the driveway because Michael’s truck was gone, and that was the only mercy Alex knew as he parked in the street and unholstered his gun. Michael wasn’t here; he was safe with Isobel or Max or Sanders or someone—someone who wasn’t Alex, who thought he had a safe space, a space to protect Michael, but in the end had nothing at all. The house hadn’t been empty since Michael’s injury, but now that he was on the mend, it was at times. Michael was alone at times.

Was this the first time Fields had come by? What was stopping her from returning with backup and taking Michael away?

Gun in one hand, phone in the other, there was one defensive maneuver on Alex’s mind before he confronted his enemy.

Michael answered quickly, though every second felt like an eternity as Alex watched Fields watch him, face expressionless, body language placid in her place between him and his own front door.

“Alex—” His voice came through, so light and happy it stole the breath from Alex’s chest. He was okay. He wasn’t shoved in the back of a van, chained and muffled and senseless, his truck abandoned in a ditch somewhere in the desert.

He didn’t let him finish. “Thank God. Where are you, Michael? Are you okay?”

Worry stole the light from Michael’s tone, but Alex could beat himself up for causing that later. “Alex? I’m fine, I’m at the Pony, what’s wrong—”

Alex repeated, “Thank god. Don’t come home, do you hear me? Do not come back to the house until I give you the all clear. Stay with Max and Maria.”

“What? No!”

Alex hung up on him and stowed his phone before leaving the car and crossing the street.

“Captain!” Fields said cheerfully from one of his patio chairs. Her eyes flicked down and clocked Alex’s weapon held at his side, but her demeanor didn’t change.

“What is this about? Get off my property,” Alex almost snarled.

“Sure, Captain. Your call.”

She stood, adjusted her skirt, and pulled her phone from her pocket. It couldn’t have rung more than once before she said, all lightness gone from her tone, “Get me Sgt. Manes.”

Cold clarity broke over Alex’s head and trickled through his veins. His arms snapped up and locked into place, gun pointed directly at Fields, unwavering.

“Hang up,” he ordered.

“You’re in control here,” she replied. “I’ve given you all the time in the world, and now I’m giving you more.” She angled her phone away from her face so he could hear the tinny hold music blaring from the speaker. “If you’re going to keep avoiding me, I’m going to call someone in who has answers and gets results. Or are you prepared to do that for me?”

The music measured the seconds as Alex considered his options, mind apart from motionless body. Project Shepherd, the source of so much pain, so many nightmares. He still didn’t really know what Fields wanted from him, except to continue his father’s work.

But he didn’t have to do that, did he? Put him at the helm of the Project, and he could quietly shut it down from the inside, erase it from existence, reduce it down to nothing. Euthanasia of a legacy.

In a perfect world, if Alex were a perfect man, he would. The path was paved with solid golden intention—but the end of it was hazy. How many times had Alex seen a stranger in the mirror and known he needed to get away from the military to find himself again behind his father’s shadow, and how many times had he made a different decision? How could he be sure this time would be different, that he wouldn’t find reason after reason that Project Shepherd was a necessary evil, that with himself heading it, he was keeping his loved ones safe, working for the greater good, even if they didn’t understand—all in the same uniform of generations, the uniform Michael could barely look at?

So, then, the other choice. Walk away. Let Fields call in Flint or promote some other career man to do what they would, set their traps, work in secret for the eradication of a threat that might never come at the expense of everything Alex held dear. No control, no insight, how many times would he have to fear the ultimate loss, Michael, dead, Maria, dead, their loved ones, dead, their accusing eyes on him.

The uniform laid to rest and packed away, a closed chapter in a life that still had so much living worth in it.

The music looped. Alex’s steady arm began to ache. He was running out of time.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Fields said, voice low and convincing past the jangling notes and Alex’s own pounding heartbeat. “This work isn’t just your legacy, it’s rewarding in its own right. Have you ever wanted to settle down, have a family? This offer comes with total security. No more moving around, way less following orders. I’m sure your lover would appreciate it too—”

That snapped Alex out of his frozen poise, the clanging dissonance making him snort. “My lover? You’re a little late with that one; we just broke up.” He dropped his gun hand. “Hang up the phone. Here’s your answer.”

“Go ahead.”

“The answer’s no.”

Fields’s face turned down, but, true to her word, she pressed end call. Alex reholstered his gun.

“Well, I can’t say I’m not disappointed. I was looking forward to working with you. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so too,” Alex replied, surprising even himself that he’d be that candid. But something about Fields’s demeanor diminished with the threat of Flint on hold, almost like she’d pushed so hard because this was something she wanted, rather than something she was under orders to obtain.

Even with her phone silent, though, it represented the same thing—a direct line to Flint, an accessory to a job offer, putting someone with his track record highly placed to wreak havoc. But if Alex made all his decisions based on that fear, he’d never be free. He’d spend the rest of his life running into airport bathrooms after strangers.

And maybe he would anyway. Refusing to let himself be intimidated this once wouldn’t eradicate the real threat the aliens lived under every day. But allowing himself to live between those moments—he owed himself that much.

Shocking Alex further, Fields stuck out her hand, and he shook it.

“Apologies if I was overzealous, sir. I’ve been told I need to work on my impulsivity.”

“It’s—” Alex let out a weak laugh. “Water under the bridge, Lieutenant. What’s with this change of attitude?”

She shrugged. “Disappointment, I guess. A little embarrassment that I waited so long for no payoff. But I won’t force the issues. My superiors have other options.”

There was a veiled threat in there, too, but Alex was too tired to force the issue either. For the second time today, he resigned himself to walking away from stalemate.

“Goodbye, Lieutenant,” he said, stepping aside to let her get to her car.

“Goodbye, Captain.”

The last Alex saw of her was the back of her head driving away. And when she disappeared into the heat haze, he collapsed back into a chair, muscles weak and vision swimming. He stuck his head between his knees and sucked in deep breaths until he landed back inside his body.

When he could stand again, he did, pointing his body toward the door and marching inside. The door was still locked: no sign of forced entry anywhere, not in the front or the back or any of the windows Alex checked methodically, sash, latch, frame. The safe and medicine cabinet were both untouched; he checked each twice; he opened every closet and cabinet door on autopilot. He got on the floor to check beneath both beds; he pulled back the shower curtains.

And when there were no more places to check, he stood in the center of his house, staring down his own cameras, trying to break through the walls his own brain put down around him, trying to regain control.

So on edge, Alex wheeled around seconds before a car screeched into the driveway, the pounding of feet, the scrape of a key in the lock and the door thrown open, and—

“Alex!” Michael cried.

He bounded around the corner, wild-eyed and frantic, and as soon as he spotted Alex standing there, he rushed to him, arms already outstretched. Alex barely got his own arms up in time to catch him, but he didn’t need to; Michael was enough for both of them, steady and strong and there, solid arms around Alex, almost lifting him an inch off his feet. His hands clutched at Alex’s back with a desperation that registered only dimly.

“Alex,” he breathed again, holding him, if possible, even closer, pressing their foreheads together and sucking in a deep shuddery breath. “You’re okay, fuck, I was so scared—”

“I told you to stay away,” Alex said weakly.

Michael’s answering laugh was just as weak, almost hysterical. “You know I’m a rebel.”

They drifted like that for a minute or two, Michael’s warm, soft-rough palms cradling Alex’s face, grounding the both of them, letting their souls settle. Then, he stepped back, those hands on Alex’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length.

“You’re okay? You’re not hurt? That phone call—you scared the shit out of me, Alex, what the hell happened?”

“When I got home, Fields was waiting for me.”

“What? Fuck!”

“I freaked out, I had to make sure you were safe, that you stayed safe—”

“Are you safe? What did she want? What did she do?”

“I’m fine. Physically, I’m fine,” Alex let his eyes fall shut, wrapping his hands around Michael’s wrists, fragile bones in his grip, and he let Michael hold him, shutting off his senses.

“Okay. Okay, Alex. I’ve got you,” Michael rasped, pressing into him even closer.

“I told her no,” Alex blurted out, pressing right back, starting them swaying back and forth. There was no other way to get close enough but to push and pull, no matter how much they tried to meld themselves into one.

“What?”

“Fields, I—I told her no. No Project Shepherd. No.”

“Alex.”

Michael’s fingers sought across his face, stroking, feeling, calloused finger pads on his brows, his cheekbones, fit so gently against the line of his jaw, tracing his lips and the corners of his eyes, and then Michael’s lips caressed him too, forehead, nose, then mouth, and by the time he was done, Alex’s breath hitched and his body shook.

“I love you,” Michael whispered. “I love you so much. You are—you are so fucking strong, you know that? I know, I know how hard this is, but I’m so proud of you.”

“I love you too,” Alex replied helplessly.

“It’s going to be okay, okay? We’ll figure it out.”

Somehow, Michael spoke with confidence, such a tiny, intimate assurance, no matter how unlikely, no matter how utopian, like a siren it sung to Alex to let go, to give his fear and stress over into Michael’s hands, and he needed somewhere physical for that feeling to go, so he looped his arms loosely around Michael’s neck and rested there.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he admitted. “I don’t know how bad I fucked up—I don’t know how long she was here before I got back—there was no sign of entry, and I checked the house, but I don’t know—I don’t know—”

“Let’s sit down, okay? I’ll get you something to drink, and your meds, if you want, and I’ll, uh, let me tell Max he can go home…” Michael said sheepishly.

“Max?”

“Yeah, he was with me when you called and wasn’t gonna let me rush over here by myself if there was trouble.”

“Good man,” Alex said weakly.

Moving stiff, he sat on the couch. Michael flitted around him for a second, adjusting pillows, giving him a blanket, fingers trailing over him like he wasn’t quite willing to be out of arm’s length. He tore himself away, though, and Alex tracked him from one end of the house to the other, front door, bathroom, kitchen, and when he came back to Alex’s side he was barefoot, glass of water and pill bottle in hand, and he sat on the floor below Alex, leaning back against him, folding himself so his forehead rested against Alex’s hip and Alex could rest his hand in Michael’s hair.

“They’re not going to take you,” Alex promised. “No matter what it takes, whether I told her yes or no, I won’t let them have you.”

“I know,” Michael replied. “But I won’t let you give yourself up, either. We’re together. In everything. No matter what happens.”

“No—”

“That’s why I didn’t listen to you when you told me to stay away,” Michael explained, lifting his head enough to look Alex in the eye. He was as serious as Alex had ever seen him. “You can’t ask that of me. We stand together. That’s…that’s a line in the sand, okay?”

Alex swallowed. “I can’t promise I won’t say something like that again.”

“I know. But just understand—whenever you do, I’m gonna disobey.”

Alex’s eyes slipped shut, lips pressed together, riding out the fear, the straight shot of catastrophe in his brain. Michael’s words, so clear and steady, so different from the people they’d been, the places their relationship languished. Alex had to respect that, even knowing it would likely cause them to fight for the rest of their lives.

“I love you,” he repeated, the best acknowledgment he could give.

Michael smiled, crinkling the corners of his honey-sweet eyes, and Alex twisted a hand in the collar of his shirt, pulling him forward into a deep, sweeping kiss. He moved easy with every move of Alex’s, half-crouched to crawling up onto Alex’s thighs, then onto the couch to straddle his lap, his hot mouth driving deep against Alex’s. Alex’s hands went to his hair, gripping and tugging those soft curls, sliding down his back and back up, they made out on the couch like the teenagers they used to be.

Pulling back to breathe, but not so far Alex couldn’t shift to kissing down his throat and chest, Michael panted, “Bedroom? Do we wanna—should we--?”

“Uh,” Alex stalled out, the light from the window warm where it pooled, Michael’s hardening cock warm where it pressed against Alex’s belly through their clothes. The world was out there, the camera, in the corner, and Alex weighed his options, immediate gratification versus comfort and privacy.

Did they have any privacy, anyway? The image of Fields waiting, alone, at his house, free reign to tamper with whatever she wanted, haunted the edges of Alex’s mind.

“Alex?” Michael asked softly, brushing his fingertips through the overlong ends of his hair.

Their faces were only inches apart, their breaths mingling between lips and lungs, and there wasn’t anything Alex would let keep them from nurturing the happiness finally within their grasp.

“Yes,” Alex said, palming Michael’s hips, “Yes, bedroom.”

Sliding off his lap, Michael reached out a hand, and Alex took it, heat zinging up his arm where they were joined. Michael led the way until they reached the bedroom, where he hesitated beside the bed, watching Alex under his lashes. So Alex sat, pulling him by his belt loops back to straddle his lap like he had on the couch, running his hands up and down Michael’s body as he settled in, his own arms warm and solid around Alex’s neck.

The world held still, then, their eyes locked, electric and hypnotic, Alex’s hands twitching where they rested on Michael’s strong thighs, the scent of rain sharp and sweet in his nose and mouth with every inhale, every breath made tactile in puffs of heat in the space between them. The longer the moment stretched, the higher the temperature climbed, blood filling Alex’s cheeks, blood filling his cock as he waited for Michael’s next move.

That move was to lower his lips to Alex’s once again, slipping his hot, velvet tongue behind Alex’s lips and along his own tongue, flicking it against the roof of his mouth as he opened and relaxed into the languid kiss. As their mouths moved, so did Michael’s hands, cupping his neck then sliding down his shoulders to his chest. He dragged his thumbnails across Alex’s nipples, making him gasp and hiss, and Alex could feel the wicked smirk spread across his mouth even as he didn’t let up, nibbling his lower lip. Hips beginning to sway, Michael’s hands finished their journey at Alex’s waist, under his shirt and tugging it up—it was unthinkable to separate them, but they managed to wrench their mouths apart long enough to pull Alex’s shirt over his head—and then back down, he fumbled with the button on Alex’s jeans, fighting for access to his hardening cock.

Not to be outpaced, Alex did the same, making short work of Michael’s button and zipper even as he was distracted by the heat and velvet and texture of his chest and the sweet line of hair pointing down to his cock. Michael got up on his knees to shimmy his jeans down under his ass, tugging Alex’s off too, and when they were down to just the thin cotton of their underwear Michael let out a soft wavery sound, buzzing right into Alex’s mouth so he could taste the pleasure on it, frotting their cocks together, rubbing the weight of his body down against Alex. With every grind, his ass rolled against Alex’s thighs, a delicious tease, but not tonight, not tonight, it didn’t have to be tonight, taking everything of each other, they had so much time to explore every facet of their intimacy, every way to make each other climax, complete, come up and down all on each other.

“Come on, Michael,” Alex murmured, holding his hips as he ground down again. “C’mon, c’mon.”

“Alex,” Michael whispered back, all reverence.

“You’re so—fucking—” Beautiful, hot, incredible, amazing, all words that Alex didn’t even need to say, saying would cheapen them, and they had a better language, anyway. He tugged at the waistband of Michael’s boxers, and Michael’s dick bobbed free, hard and hot and Alex wrapped a hand around it, luxuriating in the texture and weight of it in his hand. He gave it one easy, loose stroke and Michael shuddered, another little sound falling from his lips.

They got into a rhythm quick—Michael slid his hand into Alex’s underwear to match him stroke for stroke, their hips moving in time, knuckles brushing every time they came together. Alex rolled his thumb over Michael’s slit and dragged the drop of precum collected down his vein, then let out a bitten-off cry when Michael did the same. Even the things Alex could predict were surprising at Michael’s hands.

After minutes of this, after sweat slicked the pace between them, hearts pounding, senses flooded, Michael shifted even closer, chasing Alex’s hand away as it came up his shaft, so he could wrap them both up and jerk them together, fast and rough, both of them fucked Michael’s hand and fucked against each other, Alex’s teeth on Michael’s ear, Michael’s lips against his cheek. Alex dug his nails into the meat of Michael’s shoulders, riding out every wave of pleasure until finally he came in messy, artless spurts over Michael’s hand.

Michael followed shortly behind, a stuttering moan and a pulse of pleasure, and then they both fell back onto the mattress, panting and laughing. They rolled toward each other like magnets, Michael slipping a leg between Alex’s thighs.

“It’s going to be okay,” Michael promised, serenity and certainty in every line of his face, and Alex sighed, pulling his hand to his chest and holding it there.

Michael couldn’t make that promise. Alex couldn’t make that promise. He had, before, and the universe turned it into a cruel joke. Believing it now would be a hard-fought battle.

“As long as we’re together, we’ll get through it,” Michael amended, and it drew a small smile to Alex’s face.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

“I know you will. But you don’t have to do it alone. You aren’t doing it alone.”

Alex answered him with another kiss, sealing it as truth between them.

 (Thursday, 07:00)

Michael watched Alex through one lovely tawny eye as he went through the room double-checking there was no stray shirt of Forrest’s or toy of Buffy’s to collect before he made his last trip to the Long farm, to put paid to his and Forrest’s relationship once and for all.

“It’s early,” he said muzzily, through lips still mashed to the sheets warm with his sleep.

“I don’t want to keep this waiting,” Alex said with a wave of his hand, grabbing the bag of Forrest’s things. “Not while I have the day off. Get this done, then get back with plenty of time to prepare for our meeting.”

“Mmm, so efficient.”

“I do my best,” Alex said, hoping it came off as charming. “What are you up to today?”

Raising himself up on his hands, Michael arched his back in a luxurious stretch, muscles shifting in the early morning sun. He groaned as his muscles clenched and released and a couple joints popped, then said in his sweet early-morning rasp, “I should put in a couple hours at Sanders’s. Do we know everyone is coming today? Should I cut out early and meet you back here, or will you guys just be coming to the junkyard anyway?”

“I’ll touch base with everyone, but we’ll probably come to you.”

“Sounds good.” Michael stretched again, then swung his legs around to sit on the bed. One side of his face was flushed, one side of his curls scrunched. A bubble of light filled up Alex’s chest, and he cradled it so carefully, letting it show on his face, just for Michael.

Smiling back at him and rubbing one eye, Michael gestured at the bag of Forrest’s things and said, “How are you feeling? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alex replied, shifting the strap on his shoulder. Then, jaw working his face into a grimace, he added, “And that’s weird, right? I shouldn’t be fine? We dated for months—I should feel something.”

For weeks after his breakup with Maria, Michael had lurked on the edges of himself, head tucked between his shoulders, hands in his pockets. And now Alex turned his back with one last box on a to-do list, a final chore of separation. What did that make him?

“Hey,” Michael said, beckoning Alex forward and sliding his hands to cup his hips when he came. “Look, I don’t have a lot of experience in this area either, but enough with the should, okay? The only feelings you gotta feel are your own. You deal with breaking up however you need to, and so will Forrest.”

Alex took a measured breath, counting in, counting out. “You’re right. Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary,” Michael said, kissing him softly right on his sternum, above his anxious heart. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Alex left a parting kiss on Michael’s forehead and left him to get dressed and get to work. Making the drive to the Long farm for a second time in as many days was even more alien than the first; had he ever gone to Forrest’s so frequently as now, at the end?

The only feelings you gotta feel are your own, Michael said, with the wisdom of many years of terrible feeling, so as he drove, Alex did just that. One of the last sweet moments of their relationship was in a car just like this, playlist on the speakers half indie, half punk, both of them singing along to Pretty. Odd., where the two intersected, an album neither of them liked all that much in isolation but belted out together. For the rest of their lives, whenever those songs came on, for a moment they’d be back in a car together; wherever Forrest went next, in little three-minute bursts his phone would carry a dark desert road with Alex beside him.

For the rest of the drive, Alex turned on his music and let it play.

When he got to the farm and called Forrest, he came out of the house harried. “Why did I think you were bringing this stuff tomorrow?” he asked, a scowl on his face.

“I’m not sure; I had the day off and I thought—”

“Whatever. Thanks.”

A snappish retort leapt easily to Alex’s mind, but he held back. Forrest had reason enough to be mad, and if this was how he felt his feelings, they were broken up now—Alex abdicated soothing and fixing, and he’d take Forrest’s anger on the chin.

Forrest’s eyes darted toward Wyatt’s truck parked on the dirt drive beside Alex and said, “You should get out of here. Have a good life, Alex. I mean that.”

And just like that, Alex’s mind flipped and he couldn’t help himself. “If Wyatt is—”

“No, no, he’s mostly harmless. To me, anyway. But him seeing you here would be more trouble than it’s worth, so.” Forrest shouldered the bag of his things and half-turned away. “Bye.”

Alex didn’t move until Forrest disappeared back inside, gripping the steering wheel too tight until his fingers went cold and stiff. Fuck, maybe he should have waited to return this stuff, or just ditched it; all the closure from their last conversation soured on the tongue. But it was over now. Alex threw the car in reverse.

Then he threw it back into park a few yards down the lane, just out of sight of the main house. Wyatt was always more trouble than he was worth, but something was wrong in Forrest’s tone, and Alex would find out what. He had time, at least an hour, to sweep Wyatt’s most likely haunts, from the horse barn to his rigged-up shooting range.

Head on a swivel, Alex moved methodically, hot and dusty within minutes. The barn bustled with activity, so Alex gave it a wide berth, abandoning it as an option with no sign of Wyatt’s dulcet tones cutting through the air.

His mental map of the farm was imperfect at best, so Alex headed to the shooting range by way of the old barn, despite the distance out of his way, an acceptable risk when compared to the prospect of getting lost.

There was no time to linger, but the sight of the old building and fallen tree struck Alex with twin nostalgia and grief. Tripp’s dog tags hung body-hot beneath his shirt, and he let them, closing his eyes and focusing on that feeling, the chain around his neck, the weight of decades of inaction. He drifted closer to the barn, like returning Tripp’s tags to this place had some sort of meaning, whether blessing or blasphemy, Alex wasn’t sure.

He was still too far away to smell the rain burnt into the wood. Would it have smelled the same in Tripp’s time, rich and loving?

Alex hoped not.

Just as he turned to leave on that sour thought, a familiar voice drifted from inside the barn, freezing Alex in his tracks.

“I’m asking you again—are you—or not?”

What was Max doing here?

Alex crept closer. The response was clearer and came from Wyatt, loud and protesting.

“How are you even asking that right now? I’ve been doing all the shit you tell me for months, you gotta give me some quid pro quo—”

The last three words were a mocking drawl.

The response came, “Everything I’ve told you will come to pass, Mr. Long. Now’s not the time for doubters.”

That wasn’t Max. Alex’s heart pounded in his throat.

“Tsch. Whatever.”

“You’ve come far, Mr. Long. And, as always, I appreciate your talent for gathering information. Your eyes within the town are indispensable.”

“Oh yeah?”

“And you will be duly rewarded: doubly so for patience. Time is of the essence; I have to move while Manes is away—”

The sound of his name flashed hot and sharp through Alex’s frozen body, every nerve coming to life and screaming one thing: home.

[bobbyshawsupremacy]

‘tis the season

for @thesevenumbrellas birthday!!! you said willex fluff, and willex fluff it is

There was a soft knocking noise, and Alex rolled over, squinting. His room laid cold and dark and empty. Probably just the-

Oh.

Oh, Jesus.

He was out of bed in a moment, scrambling across the room, and yanked his window open, pushing it up. “What the fuck?” he hissed. “What are you doing, oh my God-”

Willie grinned at him, that familiar sharp smile that always tugged Alex into whatever the hell he wanted. “Hey, Al,” he greeted easily, as if it weren’t midnight and he weren’t dangling outside Alex’s window in the snow without a fucking coat on. “How’s it hanging?”

“I hate you,” Alex said flatly. “I hate you. You’re absolutely terrible-” He helped heave Willie in, brushing at his shoulders with a frown. “You’re going to catch your death,” he hissed. He tugged at Willie’s shirt to straighten it out. “You’re an absolute disaster, do you ever use your brain-”

“Alex.” Willie grabbed his face. “Alex. I’m totally okay.” Alex froze, staring at him. The room was still cold and dark and empty, still just another room with boring wooden paneling in another suburban house with a copied floor plan, but something about Willie’s eyes flooded it with light, and suddenly it was warm and bright and full of the both of them, full of the entire world in the few scant inches between them.

Alex’s hands twitched in Willie’s shirt, and he swallowed hard. “Still worried,” he replied, although his voice had lost a bit of its emphasis. Willie hummed, his thumbs rubbing over Alex’s cheeks. His face was soft. Open. Alex could fall into it, if only he leant forward-

Nope. No. No. Definitely not. He tugged himself back and pulled his scowl back on. “You’re an absolute idiot.”

“Mhm.” Willie still looked completely at ease as he reeled an arm around Alex’s waist and reeled him in so that their chests were pressed together. “Don’t let go, I’m cold,” he added, pouting. Alex meant to protest, but Willie was warm and solid and touching him tasted so sweet, so his words turned into a sigh and he wrapped his arms around his friend, holding him tight. Willie’s head laid onto his shoulder, breath ghosting over Alex’s neck. “You feel so nice,” he murmured.

Alex forced out a laugh, even if it was a bit choked. “You’re totally okay, huh?”

“Maybe I just wanted a hug.”

“Well…” he sighed again and tightened his grip. “That’s okay, I guess.”

Willie hummed. His head tilted a bit more, his cold nose pressing into the crook of Alex’s neck. His lips were on Alex’s collarbone as he murmured, “You give the best hugs,” and Alex couldn’t breathe.

They stayed like that for a while- maybe a minute, maybe an eternity, hovering together in the bright dark frigid warmth of Alex’s room, locked together with the wind still open, Willie’s lips sending shocks through Alex’s skin and bones. He let his eyes drift closed, enjoying the feeling of someone in his arms, enjoying the feeling of Willie sagging almost bonelessly into him, giving all his tension away in favour of Alex’s arms. This was a dangerous game, but he’d never felt this safe. He’d held home this close to his heart before.

Eventually, Willie pulled back to look up at him with those sparkling eyes that doomed him in the first place. “I didn’t just come for hugs,” he admitted. “Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

“Now?”

“Yeah!” Willie tugged his hand. “Let’s go!”

“But-” Alex’s head spun slightly. “It’s midnight, and my pajamas, and the snow-”

Willie tightened his grip and fixed Alex with a pout. “But Al,” he whined. “I came all the way here, just to get you, and I want you to come so bad.” His pout deepened. “Please?” Alex lasted for all of two seconds before he caved. He did shove his Vans on first, though. Together, they clambered out the window, making it slowly down to the snowy ground. Alex shivered.

Willie noticed and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “I brought my car. It’s around the corner. Didn’t wanna wake your parents.”

Alex laughed, though the sound was shaking with cold, and leaned heavily into Willie’s side. “My genius,” he joked. Instant regret flooded him, because he’s not yours, dumbass, but Willie just laughed and grinned at him. The stars and the sun were still in his eyes.

The car was warmer, but not by much, and Alex spent several minutes grumbling and trying to wrap himself up into as small a ball as possible before he noticed the route they were taking. “Wait…” he peered out the window suspiciously, and then back at Willie. “Are you…” Willie did not answer, just kept smiling until they pulled to a stop. “You brought me… here?” Alex squinted at him. “So when you said you had something to show me… you meant your house? Dude, I’ve seen your house.”

Willie laughed, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “Hey, I’m more creative than that,” he defended. “I know, uh-” he shrugged. “I know it’s been kinda hard for you, moving here, making new friends and stuff, and I know you miss California, but… you’ll always have me, you know that, right?”

Alex blinked. “I- yeah. I know.” He shifted to face Willie a little more, frowning slightly. “What’s all this about?” he asked, still slightly wary but mostly warm, full of a content that swelled through his bones.

Willie smiled. It was a touch nervous, Alex noticed, which was odd. Willie was rarely nervous. “Well, just-” he fidgeted for just a moment before jerking his head towards the house. “Come on, let’s go.” Alex followed him up to the front door, mind churning. What the hell kind of twist was Willie pulling this time?

The click of the door shutting echoed loudly. “Are your parents asleep?” he asked, keeping his voice soft in case they were.

Willie fidgeted slightly. “Um… no, not exactly,” he admitted. “Just…” he took a deep breath. “Come with me?” He held out his hand hopefully, and- well, it was Willie. What could Alex do but take it? He led him into the living room and pushed him into the armchair- literally pushed, Alex went tumbling into it and had to right himself with a grumble- before assuming a place in front of him with his arms clutched around himself, rubbing at his own arm with his thumb.

“Hey,” Alex said. He reached up to lay a hand over Willie’s. “Don’t be scared. Whatever this is, it’s okay.”

Willie smiled faintly and twined their fingers together. “That’s the thing,” he said softly. “It’s… you know, it’s always okay with you.” Alex blinked. He went to open his mouth, but Willie cut him off. “Don’t say anything. Please. Not until I finish.” He took a deep breath and squeezed Alex’s hand once before dropping it. “I, William Jarah River Covington,” he began, which was an odd enough beginning to have Alex reeling already, “Hereby swear that I am going to give you, Alexander Inez Mercer, the best fuckin’ Christmas of your entire life. But-” he paused. Took another deep breath. “I also swear,” he started again, his voice shaking a little, “That every year, till you don’t want me to anymore, I’m gonna keep trying to make it the best. And I’m gonna keep trying to make it better. Every single time. I’m gonna figure out your favourite foods and how to make them, and I’m gonna figure out your favourite Christmas songs and find the prettiest versions of them to play, and I’m gonna buy you the best gift I can, and-” his fingers locked together tightly, his eyes bright and insistent on Alex’s even as his vice wavered. “And I’m gonna make it all happen,” he promised, “Because I care about you so, so fucking much, and I’m gonna do it all standing right by your side, holding your hand, and making sure you know that you make everything in my life better. Making sure that you know you’re the best gift I could possibly get.”

Alex’s breath had caught in his chest, thick and stuck and keeping him in place, mouth half open, hands trembling slightly on the arms of the armchair. He let out a little squeaking noise, trying to shift forward, trying to reach out to Willie, but his body refused, still stuck processing.

Willie swallowed hard. “I just want you to know that you can always come to me if you want to come home for Christmas,” he finished quietly, and that was what it took to launch Alex up out of the chair, flinging himself into Willie’s arms.

“I don’t know what to say,” he half-gasped into his neck. “I- God, Willie, I don’t even-”

“Please, just-” Willie pushed him back by the shoulders. “I, uh. You do know how gay I sounded, right?” His voice was spiked with worry. “And you gotta know, like, you gotta know that was intentional.”

Alex reached up to cup Willie’s face. “Willie,” he breathed. “I know. I know. I-” he didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Willie was surging forward, and there they were, kissing at midnight, his hands on Willie’s face and Willie’s chest pressed up against his, and it was clumsy but it was sweet and perfect and full of an adoration Alex had never tasted before. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Willie kissed him again. “Don’t thank me,” he whispered. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

And right now, being held like a treasure, staring into the sun and stars and moon that hovered in Willie’s eyes, standing a room that wasn’t cold or dark or empty, where he was coveted and covered and not alone- yeah. Right now, Alex can believe that pretty damn well.

[lethesomething]

The Ghost and the Witch, part 2

This is a continuation of The Ghost and the Witch (which you can read here), a small Ghost of Tsushima fic that I wrote to Deal With Things, but that needed extra fluff. So have that, I guess. There is also technically (?) smut, in the victorian sense where anything that happens is badly hidden in subtext and obvious symbolic imagery.

“You’re new.”

Jin startles at the voice that seems to come out of the air itself. It has been six days since his uncle brought him to Castle Shimura, and it’s the first time he’s ventured this far out into the garden by himself. The grounds are vast and meticulously kept, but this area feels different, a low corner near the outer wall, mostly obscured by a large cherry tree. The small plot of land is utterly covered in white and pink petals, but it looks like someone is also growing a kitchen garden here.

“Are you the Boy?”

The voice calls out again and this time he spots its owner: a young girl up in the tree. She looks about his age, with two braids coming down her shoulders and dressed in a hakama of some quality. She looks out of place, in as much as anyone looks wrong stuck in a tree. 

“What are you doing there?” he asks.

The girl looks down at where she’s perched on a wide branch. “Sitting,” she says.

“Well. Yes, I can see that,” he concedes.

“The view is nice, you should try it sometimes,” she says with a half mocking smile. Then she starts clambering down. “They say lord Shimura has taken in a ward,” she goes on, as Jin takes a few steps forward, unsure of whether he should try to catch her. The girl ignores his panic and hops down in three calculated movements. “So that’s you, yeah?” she says when she drops to the ground.

“Yes,” Jin says, composing himself. “I am Jin.. Lord Sakai.”

The girl does another one of her half-smiles and then finally treats him to a proper bow. “Pleased to meet you, Jin Sakai. I’m ___. My father is the head of the guard.” She points to the nearby tower. “He can see halfway across the island from there.”

“Well it is an important strategic location,” Jin says, parroting his homework from the past few weeks. “Whoever controls the castle, controls the island.”

You tilt your head at him. “Sure,” you say. “It sounds like you’ll fit right in.”

He drifts into your house in the woods like leaves on an autumn wind, a quick slide of the door and suddenly he’s there, a presence that darkens the shadows cast by a late evening. 

“Jin?” You look up from your work. “Are you alright?”

He says nothing, and that is answer enough. There’s something wrong with his posture, a slump, a wobble, and you rush up to meet him and pull him into the light of the fire. 

“Show me.”

“It’s not as bad as it could be,” he mumbles, while you quickly remove his helmet and place it on the ground, antlers glistening a rusty red. 

“What happened?”

“Mongols,” he says, his voice hoarse, “Perhaps a few more than I had anticipated.”

“Were you followed?”

“They’re dead.”

“Alright.” You loosen the straps of his gloves and take them off, before setting to work on his pauldron. The leather is wet, the bands caked in something slick that combines with the shaking of your fingers and makes them difficult to dislodge. 

His hands, rough, scarred but surprisingly stable, fold over yours. “Let me.”

“Right,” you say and you hurry to fill a bowl with warm water by the fire. You open a box by the fire and rifle through it, fingers scurrying over boxes and pouches and pots until you find the clearing salts, which you dump in the bowl. When you turn back, Jin has taken off his pauldrons and untied his armor.

You point to a mat by the fire. “Sit.”

“It’s really not that bad, “ he says when you help him out of his chestpiece. 

“If you have come here for my help, it’s bad enough.”

He does not argue. He sits quietly while you wipe away the blood and assess his wounds. The gash on his arm is shallow if jagged. But there’s a cut in his side that looks deep. The edges of it are laced with a grey, ashy dust that smells of poison and rot.

You clean it off as best as you can. “We’ll have to hope it is not infected,” you say. 

He hums, a low sound that is more of a tremor than a response. You glance up to see his eyes are not looking at you, but through you, glass beads staring into nothingness. You put a palm to his forehead. Fever.

“Stay awake a little longer, Jin,” you find yourself saying, “I need you to hold this.” You smear ointment on his skin and place a piece of silk over it. Then you move his hand there. “Try to push down while I bandage this up.”

He nods absently and you set to work, moving as quickly as you can, trying to ignore the dangerous sway in his form, a mighty tree falling in slow motion. By the time you have bandaged his abdomen and his arm, he has mostly collapsed, barely staying on his knees, his head leaning against your shoulder to remain upright. His eyelids have fallen shut, although you can see his eyes twitch underneath. Perspiration beads on his forehead. “This will have to do,” you whisper.

With effort, you lay him down on the mat and cover him in blankets. His breath is ragged, shallow. You clear away your previous work and prepare a fresh bowl of water and a cloth, which you set by his side.

Outside, the wind howls an angry, desperate roar. You stoke the fire and brew a pot of tea. It will be a long night. 

-----

Jin closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of early autumn. The salt in the air mixes with the earthy scent of leaves and wood fires. After his time away at training camp, it feels comforting to return to his uncle’s castle. He stalks the grounds like a cat, reacquainting himself with its many nooks and crannies, taking stock of the small changes in plants and people. The sound of running feet wakes him from his investigation and he turns, smiling to see you racing towards him. 

You’re improperly fast, bounding down the path like a wild foal that has just discovered the joy of speed. “Jin!”

You abruptly stop just short of him, then take a breath and bow. “Welcome back, milord,” you say, and Jin has to bite back a laugh at the sudden politeness. 

“Thank you,” he manages instead. “What made you so excited?”

You look up with a sparkle in your eye. “The camellia’s started blooming! Come see?”

You turn around and dash off again, your figure a fluttering, billowing sheet tugged off the clothesline by a strong gale, free to whirl and spiral down the path. 

 Jin shakes his head briefly and follows, measuring his pace while he watches you dance up the steps, until you stop and wait for him. 

“You’re slow,” you say when he catches up.

“I’m Deliberate,” he argues.

“Why?”

“A samurai does not rush into things.”

You nod thoughtfully and slow down to match his step. “Did you learn that at camp?”

“I have been learning that for a while,” he says.

“Mmm,” you say, letting your fingers glide through the grass framing the path as you walk beside him. 

“What else did you learn?”

He thinks on it a while, and then something resembling a smirk forms on his lips. “I’ve been learning about women,” he says. 

You raise an eyebrow at him. 

“Ryuzo says I should be careful with them. That some of them are out for my titles and money.”

You do not look convinced. “Who’s Ryuzo?” you ask. 

“My friend.”

“Well he sounds like an idiot,” you say, shrugging.

“He’s not,” Jin starts saying, but when he looks toward you, your face is darkened. “Besides,” he says “I’m sure he didn’t mean, uh, you.”

“What I’m ‘women’,” you say in a mock guffaw. 

“Depends on the definition,” he huffs. 

“Oi!”

Jin chuckles and sets off running toward the cherry tree, now chased by a girl calling him mean. 

When he reaches your small garden, the sight stops him in his tracks. The bushes, once a dull green, have sprouted dozens of small, perfectly formed pink and red flowers. They dot the garden like jewels glistening in the sun.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” you say, coming up behind him.

“They are,” he nods.

He reaches out to touch one, fingers brushing over the small, soft petals. 

“My mother used to love these,” you say, wistfully running your hands over the leaves. “She’d wear them in her hair. She was so pretty.”

“I can imagine that,” Jin says quietly.

“Huh?”

He turns his attention back to the flowers. 

“Why don’t you try one?” he says.

“I sincerely doubt it would suit me, Jin.”

He shakes his head and chooses a perfect red bloom, carefully picking it off the branch. “Here.” 

He hands it to you but you just hold it in your palm, staring at it, and then at him.

“What?” he says. “Just try it. It will be like honoring your mother.”

“Right,” you mutter, and slide it into your braid. 

“There,” he says. “That looks very nice. I bet your mother’s spirit looks down on you with pride.”

You gently touch the bloom, a soft smile on your face as you look around the garden, resplendent in sunlight. “Maybe,” you say.

----

Jin’s body feels heavy, as if he’s dropping to the bottom of a bog, weighed down with stones and pricked with a thousand knives. His skin burns and his veins are filled with lead. 

He’s vaguely aware of movement next to him, of cool cloth soothing his forehead before his spirit sinks down into the muck again.

When he next wakes up, it is to the sound of wind rustling outside. He opens his eyes slowly, and tries to focus on the rafters high above him, laden with drying herbs. The smell of burnt wood hangs in the air and he becomes aware of a dying fire glowing to his side. He turns his head, and the movement feels like hammers pounding on an anvil. 

On the ground next to him is a bowl, a pile of bloodied bandages and, a little further on, you, curled up against a stool. Your hair is tousled, your skirts gathered around you and your face buried in your arms in a way that looks uncomfortable. 

The light of a winter’s morning seeps through a high window, casting long, stark shadows that stretch stalks into trees and bottles into towering columns. In the midst of it all your sleeping form stands out as an island of light, a sprinkle of silver dust in a sea of shadows. 

Jin closes his eyes again and lays back. He’s weary, and the pain sears through his veins, but he no longer feels like he’s drowning. The sack of boulders that sat on his chest has lifted. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Again.”

---

Jin hurries down the steps to the cherry tree and finds you exactly where he expected, sitting amongst the fallen camellia’s. “Hey,” he says when he enters the space. 

You do not move, don’t even shiver against the cold of a winter’s evening. “Hey,” you say. 

The voice only barely sounds like you. A sound that he remembers being clear and melodious as birdsong is now nothing more than a scraping whisper, a tarnished bell filled with ash and sand.

He approaches carefully. “I came to find you,” he says. “People are worried.”

You shrug. 

“I’m sorry,” he adds. “About your father.”

When he hears no response or protest, he takes his scabbard and slowly lays it before him, kneeling on the ground next to you. The two of you sit there, surrounded by the overly sweet, sickly smell of faded flowers. 

“He died a warrior's death,” Jin says. “He was protecting this place. Protecting you.”

You say nothing, but he can hear you breathe. A series of choppy inhales, followed by long drawn out sighs. 

“I understand,” he says. “How hard it can be. How difficult it is to face that loss. If there’s anything i can do-”

You shake your head. “Just sit with me for a bit?”

Jin nods and folds his hands into his lap. He closes his eyes and focuses on the quiet, on the shadows of the trees looming before him like stone monuments, on the cold sea wind carrying crystals of salt and ice to fill the sky above you.

----

“There’s a good horse.” Jin moves his arm to pat Kage’s mane but stops halfway, wincing at the stabbing pain in his side. “Looks like you’ll be resting here for a bit longer,” he says.

The horse nuzzles his shoulder, whinnying softly. Raindrops drizzle through the trees, cascading on an elaborate journey from branch to branch, only to fall to the moss beneath his feet with a dull, muffled plop. 

Moisture fills the air in this small clearing, droplets so thick he can taste them on his tongue. It deepens the shadows and further obscures this place, the house already veiled by layers of green and black like a widow mourning the passing of the summer sun. 

Jin carefully unties the bridle and takes it off. The horse immediately shakes out its head. “Feels nice, huh?” Jin says, and he moves to take off the saddle as well. “I’ll brush you down tomorrow, so enjoy the rain on your back while it lasts.”

His movements are slow and deliberate. The horse stomps its hoof. 

“Alright, alright,” Jin says when he finally loosens the saddle. “Off you go.” The horse takes a few steps, and the saddle slides off, dropping to the rain scattered ground. “This needs cleaning anyway,” Jin sighs.

He watches as Kage wanders over to a basket of straw he put down and starts munching. Then he takes a deep breath and bends over to pick up the saddle, grimacing at the feeling of being sliced open once more. He straightens and blows out a breath. Kage eyes him from a distance. “Don’t you start,” Jin says.

When he enters the house, the scent that greets him is earthy, the herbs and wood he’s gotten used to now laced with something deep and gamey that makes his mouth water. He sniffs. “Hare?”

“It was in one of my traps,” you say, stirring a pot bubbling over the fire. “I figured you could use the strength.”

With that, you get up and take the saddle and bridle from him. “How are you feeling?”

“About the same as the last time you asked,” he says. “I’m… fine.” He walks over to the fire to sit down, and tries his very best not to flinch. He fails.

You give him a weary look. 

“But I could probably use the strength,” he adds. 

You nod and prop up the horse tack to dry. “How is he,” you ask. 

“Stubborn.”

Another weary look. 

“You don’t have to worry about Kage,” Jin says. “He’s not wounded, and he’s fine wandering around the forest for a bit.”

With a nod, you return to your cooking.You throw some chopped burdock root in the pot, and millet to thicken it. The feeling of being watched makes you look up. 

Jin sits, watching you make stew with a soft grin on his face. 

“What?” you say.  

“Nothing,” he chuckles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“But?” you ask, returning to your work. 

“There was a time when I would wonder what it could be like,” he says. “If you were to make something like this for me. Lord Shimura’s cook said you were quite talented, though I don’t think she approved of the random plants you’d bring in.”

You laugh. “One of the teas I brewed for her did end up giving everyone strange dreams,” you say. 

He blinks at you.

“It was an accident,” you add.

“Of course,” he says. “Either way, I used to imagine scenarios like this, embarrassing as that may be.”

“Were you half-dead in those daydreams, Jin?”

“No,” he says. “I was quite healthy, and content, and we were living in Omi.”

You nod, as if you can see the images yourself. “That would have been nice.”

He watches in silence for a while, matching the pictures from his teenage dreams to the vision in front of him. The girl, the woman, the fire and the smell of game. The knicks on your hand and the frayed edges on your garment. “I’m sorry,” he says.

You smile and shake your head. “Life rarely goes how we imagine it as children.” Then you sit back. “Do you regret it?” you ask softly. “Looking back on everything now?”

You’re not the first to ask, and the answer is no different now. “The actions I chose,” he says, voice only slightly hoarse this time. “I would do them all again.”

You nod. “That’s alright then.” And with that you pick up a small bowl and scoop it full of stew, before handing it over. “It’s not the most glorious meal you’ve ever had, but it will do.”

The two of you eat in silence for a while, nothing but the sound of crackling fire and the occasional huff outside, from Kage plodding around in the clearing in front of the house.

“This is good,” he says. 

You nod. “Of course it is.”

“I should have known you’d be confident,” he snorts. “You never did hold back to try and seem more proper.”

“I held back plenty,” you say, and put down your chopsticks. “But also, you barely ate in days. This stew would have to be pretty bad for you not to enjoy it.” You put the bowl to your lips and tip it back, savouring the spiced sauce. 

“Still, it is pretty good,” Jin nods, munching happily. 

“I’m glad I got to taste your cooking after all. It’s close to how I imagined.”

You smile softly. “Good,” you say.

----

The salted air stings your face as you survey the world from the guard tower. You can see halfway across the island from here. Your eyes follow the coastline north to the snowy covered flanks of the mountains, and south all the way to the swamps, with Kaneda Castle rising above them.

Below your feet, waterfalls pour down into the sea, an endless gurgling that was always so familiar to you, but now feels distant and annoying. 

“There you are.” Tetsuo, who used to be one of your father’s men, comes climbing up the ladder. He’s a friendly sort. Broad shouldered and scruffy. “I was sent to find you. The cart is ready.”

“Alright.”

The man watches you for a moment, while you take in the views one last time. He fidgets when your eyes come to rest on the main tower of the castle, its highest floors home to the lord and his nephew. “Do you, uh, need a moment?” he says carefully. 

The tower feels oddly imposing in the light of early morning, its height looming over the grounds and the people below, a stone monument against a lead sky. 

There’s no fires there at this time. There’s barely any movement. Just still halls and the shuffling of servant feet as they try to remain invisible and unheard, mice in their own home. 

You shake your head and turn to Tetsuo. “I’m fine,” you say. “Let’s go.”

---

The muffled tones of a flute come floating out of your house when you return from the forest with a belt of wood and some mushrooms you found. 

The melody is soft and a little nostalgic, a sound both melodious and weary at the same time. 

Jin concentrates on his breathing, a steady, stable pace to produce the right notes, but then you drift into the house like a fluttering bird, carrying the winter wind on its wings. He can smell the promise of snow on the air as you flit by in a whirl of fabric and drop a few logs next to the fire.

“Oof,” you say, and you rub your hands in the soft glow of the hearth. 

Jin puts down his flute. “Are you cold?”

“It’s freezing out,” you reply, shrugging off your coat and shawl.

“I made tea,” he says. “Why don’t you sit for a minute.” He leans forward and pours two cups from a small pot. The wound in his side stabs in protest, but it no longer makes him flinch.

You hang up your coat and kneel beside him, taking the cup in both hands and breathing in the fragrant steam. 

Your eyes flutter closed and Jin watches as your face, flushed from the cold, relaxes into a smile. He carefully takes the blanket that’s draped over his shoulders and extends it to cover yours. 

Then he leaves his hand there, a gentle weight at your back. He can feel you tense for a moment, before you relax again and take a sip. 

“I made room for Kage in the shed,” you say. “Put some animal skins on him too. He should be alright for tonight.”

“Thank you,” Jin whispers.

“You’ll be leaving soon, won’t you.” You hold the cup to your chest, staring at the fire. 

“My wound is better,” he says. “And I still need to liberate this island.”

“And then?” The words hang in the air like a puff of smoke, drifting ever upwards but refusing to dissipate.

Jin quietly sips his tea, the warmth of it welcoming but edged with a hint of bitterness from the burnt leaves. “I don’t know,” he says. 

He moves his hand further to your side and finds that you lean into his warmth. “I care for you,” he finally says. “Always have. But you already knew that.”

You nod mutely.

“I don’t know what could have happened, or what would…”

“We are very different people now,” you say, and your voice sounds oddly far, a faint whisper beneath the crackling of fire.

“True,” Jin says. “But we’re here now.”

You look up at him and your wide eyes hold a sky’s worth of stars. That same spark he saw so long ago, buried but ever burning beneath it all. He gently kisses your forehead. 

And when you don’t pull back, he kisses your temple, and the top of your cheek, right beneath your eye. “Do you want this?” he asks. 

You hesitate for a moment, eyes searching the lines in his face, the scars on his brow. Then you put down the cup and let your fingers smooth back his hair, trace the line of his jaw. “I do,” you say, and you lean in to touch his lips to yours.

Flames lick at the logs in the hearth, a slow, burning heat that consumes everything in its path. It spreads an orange glow that lights up the inside of the hut, growing shadows from teacups and lining the two bodies moving there in a copper gleam. 

The fire simmers slowly, steadily throughout a cold winter’s night. It sparks and sizzles, breathing warmth and life into the darkness. 

And it burns, and burns, through that night, until all that’s left in the cold light of morning is a faint glow drawn from spent wood, and soft breaths under layers of blankets.

[honeytama]

St. Patrick

Spinner (Shuichi Iguchi) X Fem!Reader

A/N: ‘St. Patrick’ by PVRIS goes really well with this fic, enjoy!

Commission for @dittomckiddo

Summary: It’s a miracle that you had been saved from an oncoming car. Plus, it also led to you meeting the guy of your dreams, one you’d never expect. After offering your services as a masseuse to him in return, you both end up growing close and come to realize the purpose in each other’s lives.

Warnings: Smut (18+), cussing, reader has a vibration quirk, meet cute, strangers to lovers, first time, tending wounds, praise kink, body worship, oral (giving/recieving), double penetration

Word Count: 7.5k

The cement of the sidewalk crunched under your work shoes on your way to the luxury spa in the middle of the city. The sun is just about to come over the horizon to break in the morning. Even though it was early, many people in your area usually came to open their stores and restaurants. Every morning you’d pass by the familiar donut shop owner who turns on their Open sign to start their day. Lugging your bag over your shoulder, which contains your spa uniform and toiletries, you walk block after block while half asleep.

You’ve always been in love with your job having the quirk that you do. It has made your life rewarding to be able to help people through your birth given trait. However, walking alone before sunrise to prepare the spa for clients every morning can feel redundant.

You walk along the same trail, the same path… make a right there, make a left here, and cross this street. Nothing ever changes, you think as you step out off the curb—  Honk!

“Ah!”

“Ain’t watching the road, asshole?” the man holding you yells at the trunk of the speeding car escaping down the street.

You push yourself back into his chest into a hug with your arms thrown around his neck. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you. You saved me,” you squeal. “I can’t believe I wasn’t watching.”

Pulling away, you notice the flustered look in his expression as he looks around the rest of the block for something or someone. He mumbles something about “the morning” before trying to walk away.

“Uhm, wait! I feel like I need to repay you somehow.” The zipper of your bag is swiftly opened and you rummage through your belongings while he turns back to you.

He tries to stop you by placing a hand on yours but quickly pulls it away. “No, no, I don’t need your money—,” You pull out a small white slip of card stock from the bag and hold it out for him to take. “What’s this?”

“My business card! My name's Y/N, I’m a masseuse at the spa down there,” you point near the end of the street at the glass doors to your store. “I’d like to give you a free massage in return for helping me out.”

“You want me to call you?”

“Yeah, we can set up a session.”

“Fine.” He slides the card into his back pocket. “Just, don’t get hit by any cars on the rest of the way there. I gotta go.” He pulls his hood further down his face and shoves his fists into the front of his jeans.

“I won’t! Bye!” You watch as he quickly makes his way to a nearby alley.

—

The most gorgeous girl flung herself into my arms… and in front of everyone. I can’t believe I didn’t ask her name myself or give her my number. But, I had to get out of there. Damnit.

He reads off the business card you’d handed to him while laying in bed the same night you had met, F/N L/N, Professional Masseuse for the City Spa. Phone number and email...

Fuck it. It's a free session, she was nice to me, and my body hurts like hell.

You lay watching a movie and mindlessly scrolling through your phone near midnight. Tapping through your different social accounts, your phone vibrates and your screen darkens. The Caller ID ‘Unknown’ is written in white lettering across the top.

You tap on the answer button quickly, silently hoping it would be a call from the interesting man you gave your card to earlier that day.

Bringing your phone up to your ear, you wait for a moment in silence before speaking up yourself. “Uhm, hello?”

“Uh, hi, hey.” A deep, gruff voice comes to your ear. ”It's the guy you gave your business card to earlier today. Sorry, I was kinda nervous to call.” He explains. “Call me Shuichi, by the way.”

“Hey! It’s no problem, Shuichi. How has your night been?”

“Uhm, good?” He questions. “I just wanted to call to let you know I’d like to take you up on your free massage thing? It might be an inconvenience, though, uh I can't really— I mean, I don't really like going out. That’s why I left you so quickly this morning.”

“Oh! Well, it’s fine. I understand. The whole point of my job is to make people feel comfortable, so how about we do the session at your place? I can bring my massage table and everything else!”

Fuck. “No! No, uh, I mean. I have roommates and, uh, I don't know how they would feel about me bringing in a stranger.” Yeah, that's it.

“Hm, well I wouldn't mind you coming over to my place then? If you're fine with that?”

“Yeah! Good, that sounds good. Uhm, do I need to bring anything?” Her place?

“Nope! Just bring yourself on over. How does tomorrow evening sound? I can send you the exact time and place through text.”

“That sounds good then. I'll see you, uh, Y/N.”

“Great! Goodnight, Shuichi. Uhm, thank you… again.”

“That was nothing but, uh, you're welcome. Have a good one.”

The soft crackling ambiance of his location and voice cut out as he hangs up. You sigh before pulling the covers over yourself and getting really to rest up for tomorrow’s venture.

—

You had set up the massage table in the living room that morning. Right now, it’s about fifteen minutes until your new ‘client’ Shuichi would arrive at your door. You scurry around your apartment preparing warm face towels and pulling his robe out of the drier. You’d spent your time creating the right amount of mood lighting in the space you have using lavender-scented candles. You dressed in a clean pair of the usual massage uniform you wear for work. It’s a white top that wraps with a tie in the front and a pair of comfortable white linen pants.

Your stomach turned over on itself several times waiting for him to arrive. You want to make his session as amazing as possible, even though it's for free. He had saved your life.

You roll up the warm towels on the decorative side table in your living space and fold the plush robe to place on the sink in the bathroom. You check your phone seeing you have five minutes until he could show up at your place.

The second you pocket your phone in your pants, you hear three knocks at your front door. “He’s early.” Ok, relax. “Coming!”

You rush to the door from the bathroom and brush down the front of your shirt before opening the door with a smile.

Shuichi stands there with his elbow against the door frame with his head covered with a hoodie. When he notices you standing there, his arm falls from the door nearly knocking him out of balance.

“Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey! Come on in,” you wave him inside to lead him to the small foyer. “You can take off your shoes here.”

“No problem.” He stumbles trying to take off his sneakers and you just watch him in awe. “Uh, wow, you have a great place.” He throws the gray hood off of his hair and light pink, voluminous locks fall to his shoulders. You didn’t get a good look at him the other morning, and now you can already tell this will be a long night.

He catches you staring at him and averts his eyes to admire the living room and its furnishings.

“Well, thanks! I, uh, spent the day setting everything up. The massage table is over there in the corner, and then I have some warm towels and candles set up just for the occasion.”

“Smells good.” His snout twitches a bit as he tries to catch the scent. Again, he catches your eyes looking at him as if you’ve never seen someone like him before. He clears his throat, “Uhm, where do I—?”

“Oh yeah, I left a robe in the bathroom for you to change into. Then you can come back in here and lay on the massage table face down. Just pull the sheet over your back, to uh, cover up. I'll be waiting in my bedroom until you call me back in here. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” he rubs the back of his neck and follows you towards the bathroom past the kitchen.

“I’ll see you soon, then.” You point finger guns at him before walking quickly into the back hallway toward your bedroom.

Pacing around the room, your mind splits to tens of questions and thoughts about the man you’ve brought into your home. How did you not notice how attractive he is? He’s sure different from anyone you’ve met before, but you’re so intrigued? And he’s in your apartment. Getting completely undressed in the room beside you. Being a professional, you’d never thought about having a relationship with a client. But, he’s not a client, right?

You feel slightly embarrassed about your reaction to seeing his full face. You hope he wasn’t offended by the way your eyes trailed along his features.

You hear him walk out of the bathroom in the slippers you had provided him and wait patiently for his call out to you.

“Uh, Y/N, I’m ready!”

You breathe out and leave the bedroom to meet him. Coming out from behind the corner, you see him lying on his stomach with a white sheet laying gracefully on his backside.

You stop at the side table to grab your bottle of massage oil and a moistened towelette you throw over your shoulder. “I was planning to focus mostly on your back, but it looks like you work out a lot, huh?” You smile down at him.

“Oh, yeah, whatever you think is best,” he shimmies his full body making himself more comfortable.

“Of course, I’ll lead through all I'm doing. Please let me know if anything I do makes you feel uncomfortable, alright?”

“Sure, yeah,”

You can’t help but gaze at the deep divots that cause muscles in his back as you warm an amount of oil between your palms. You cock your head slightly at the long and short scars that are sprinkled down the length of his exposed back. The green tint is slightly lighter than the rest of the forest shade of his scales.

“Getting started, now,” you place one hand on either side of his back and massage in small circles. You usually don’t try to talk too much during your professional sessions at the spa, but maybe talking with him will calm your nerves. “So, I see you work out a lot? Is it a part of your job? Or a hobby?”

“Uhm, yeah, I guess you could say that. I practice sword-wielding and, uhm, self-defense?”

“Ohh, that sounds really cool. You’ve definitely got a nice physique.”

“Nah, that's just what everyone looks like in my line of work.”

You hum as his denial of your compliment. He has a body he should be proud of; he needs to care for it a lot better than he has, especially under such stressful work conditions.

You bring your hands to his lower back and decide to finally use your quirk. Energy pushes down your arms to the expands of your palms and fingertips. Your hands start to vibrate at a low speed as you run them back and forth away from your stomach on his back.

“Is that your hands? Doing that?”

“Yeah, it’s my quirk, it got me into the line of work at the spa,” you explain.

“Feels... good,” it almost sounds like he doesn’t know if he should be feeling good.

“I have to say I’ve never met anyone like you before, Shuichi, your scales are so damn cool. You have an awesome quirk.”

“I have to say I’ve never met anyone like you before, Shuichi, your scales are so damn cool. You have an awesome quirk.”

He huffs at your comment. “No need to butter me up.“ Silence floats around the room while he thinks about the unfamiliar kindness you’ve shown to him. “I guess… I’ve learned not to think about myself in that way.”

“How come?” You keep your hands moving along the muscles in his back. The energy from your quirk continues to work at the tights knots underneath his shoulder blades.

“I just want to be seen for all of me, exactly as I am. I don’t admit it to many people but, I sometimes don’t like just being known as the guy who looks like a lizard. I do so much more— I wanna be so much more, than that.”

“Well, I see you. And, I’ve only known you for a day. I'm already intrigued by who you are as a person,” you reassure him softly. “Even if no one else respects you, know that I do.”

“That’s… that’s really nice of you,” he says with breaks in his voice.

“If I pried too much, I—,” you start.

“No...Sorry, I’m just not used to respect. Thanks.”

“Anytime,” you smile.

You spend the rest of his session massaging him in silence after that.

After you finish, he’s directed back to the restroom to get changed while you wait for him in the foyer of your apartment.

You shuffle around near the front door with butterflies in your stomach. It didn’t occur to you that you’d end up feeling such strong things by the end of the night. But, now, you’re pacing in some slippers while trying to find the right words to ask him out.

“I think I should get going,” Shuichi says, startling you.

“Oh, yeah, of course! I hope you enjoyed the massage.”

“I did,” his toothy smile warms you up.

You watch him retrieve his sneakers and sit on the arm of your sofa to put them on. Now’s the time.

You clear your throat. “I was wondering… Would you like to go out sometime?”

He shoots his head up, “A date?”

“Mhm,” you nod while wringing your hands nervously.

“I— Yes. I’d like that, Y/N.” A blush sweeps across his snout and cheeks. Your heart squeezes seeing this for the first time.

“Cool!”

“Cool,” he repeats. He points to the door. “Well, I gotta get home before my roommates suspect somethin’.”

“Oh, yeah!” You open the fort for him to go. Your meeting ends with a nice wave goodbye before he disappears again.

—

Over the past two months, Shuichi and yourself got to know each other through long phone calls, picnics in empty parks, and movie nights in the living room of your apartment.

One week ago, you spent an hour building the most comfortable pillow fort with him before watching his favorite action movie. Shuichi came to your door with your favorite take-out meals, a portable projector, and a pack of fairy lights in hand. You had given him the biggest hug after praising him for remembering you had dreamt of setting up this sort of date before. However, you had the gut feeling to ask where he had gotten those things. The urge to question him about it was stamped out by the immensity of your excitement to share the night with him.

You used all the blankets and sheets you had in the house to create a canopy over the couch and a couple of bar stools. The projector sat on a tower of books and faced one white wall of your living space. The ground was covered by your bed comforter and pillows were propped comfortably against the bottom of the couch.

That was the first time he had the courage to pull you into his chest as you cuddled on the floor. The remnants of your meals were scattered at your feet as you both enjoyed the film. He had watched you caress his chest with your fingertips.

By the third quarter of the movie, you both were all over each other; exploring one another’s bodies for the first time felt like nothing you had ever experienced. You had your first kiss early on, but you could tell he was nervous to get even rougher with you. After you made out and felt each other up for another hour, Shuichi left your apartment in the late of the night with a kiss to your cheek.

Even sitting alone in your apartment tonight, you had regretted not convincing him to stay with you. You sit on your couch watching your favorite show eating a bowl of pasta. You had checked your phone several times today waiting for a call, or even a text, from Shuichi. Your mind wandered to the worst thoughts all day. Was he just using you for your quirk? The massages? To keep you around until you put out for him? Though you know in your heart that something is there between you two.

You stare mindlessly at the television until your phone starts buzzing to your side. You’re pulled from your thoughts and you grab your phone expecting his name to be on your screen. You sign, realizing instead that it’s a message from the city you reside in. You tap to play the automated voice message:

“Citizens, by our information, we are currently aware of the presence of the League of Villains in your residential area. Please, stay inside and stay safe. There are currently heroes handling the situation.” 

“What?” You grab the TV remote and turn the channel to the news. The luminescent screen shows streets burning in blue flame and people run for cover. You watch as heroes search the roofs and alleys for the League’s members; the commotion maybe only ten blocks from where you live. Nothing like this has ever happened this close to you before.

A hard knock at your front door pulls your attention away from the distressed news anchor. Even with this situation, you hope that it’s Shuichi coming to check on you, to see if you’re alright.

You rush to get up and open the door. And to your luck, he’s there leaning against the door frame in the same manner as the first time he came over. But. he falls into your chest the second he realizes you’ve let him in. With his chest against yours and his arms thrown around your waist, you can feel exactly how labored his breathing is.

“Shuichi, oh my god, are you ok?” You rub his back comfortingly.

“Y/N, I—I’m so sorry,” he groans against your neck.

“Look at me,” you pull away to pick up his chin from your shoulder. Facing him head-on now, you see the raw gashes on his forehead and bicep. “Holy shit, did you get caught in all that?” You point to the chaos demonstrated on the TV.

He walks over to the remote sitting on the armrest of the sofa and clicks the TV off. “I’ve got to explain something to, Y/N.

—

“You’re part of all of that… the League of Villains,” you repeat him. “And they call you Spinner? When were you going to tell me?

“I—I tried convincing them not to come to this area,” he laments. He sits in front of you hunched over your knee, distracting himself with the material of your pajama pants as you tend to his wounds. “Ah,” he hisses as you dab his forehead with a rag dampened with hydrogen peroxide. “I understand if you’re mad at me, Y/N. If you never want to see me again—,” he huffs.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me right away,’ you whisper. “From now on, can we promise to tell each other everything, no keeping secrets?”

“From now on?” He looks up to face you. “You want to keep this going?”

“I really like you, Shuichi, I don’t want to let go of you after this,” you kiss his cheek to reassure him.

A deep blush rushes to his cheeks. “I—I really like you, too. I’ve liked you since you said you liked my scales,” he laughs. “So, yeah, no more secrets, I promise you, Y/N.”

“Good,” you smile and take his hand to help him up. “I’m gonna run a bath for you.”

He watches your hips sway as you walk to the bathroom to set up the tub.

—

With the bath filled with a layer of fluffy, lavender bubbles blanketing the surface, you call Shuichi in from the living room.

He peaks into the bathroom before smiling at your kind gesture. “Are you gonna stay in here, while I—uh, ya know?” He stammers while pulling at the edge of his shirt.

“I was thinking I could give you a massage to help you relax. If that’s ok?” You watch as he pulls his top over his head in one fluid motion. His arm muscles ripple with the smooth movement. He drops it to the floor and then combs out his lilac hair with his fingers.

“Yeah, I’d like that. Uhm, could you maybe—?” He cocks his head to the side while rubbing the nape of his neck.

You giggle at his modesty before spinning around toward the wall. You hear him drop his pants and disrobe from his arm wrappings and eye masks. The costume he came to you with today was much more sinister than the cozy ones he usually wore.

The water splashes a bit as Shuichi gets into the tub. He settles himself to the side of it for you to get access to his shoulders. His mind silently thanks you for adding the bubbles prematurely.

You turn and he’s leaned back against the glossy, white porcelain of the tub. You run your fingers along the skin of his shoulders and he shutters as the surprise of your touch. You set both of your hands flat on his swelled shoulders and activate your quirk. He immediately lets out a breathy, relaxed noise. You move your hands back and forth and delve deep into the muscles of his arms and neck in a circular motion.

“Mmm,” Shuichi lets a pleased groan go out of his throat. He lets his head rest against your chest and takes note of the beat of your heart against his scalp. “Thank you, Y/N.”

“Of course,” you say softly. Leaning down, you give him a gentle kiss to the side of his neck. You move your kisses to his jaw and cheek next. You watch as the water moves from under your lashes. Under the water, he rubs the tops of his thighs with his palms.

He clears his throat before stammering out, “Do you wanna, maybe, get in?”

You perk up at his offer. “You sure?”

“Yeah, c’mon in,” he confirms.

You deactivate your vibrating hands and stand up completely to take off your shirt and bottoms quickly. All of your shredded clothes form a puddle on the tile floor of the bathroom. You hook your thumbs to pull off your underwear and let them fall to the floor. It’s not cold in the bathroom at all, but you can feel your limbs shake slightly as you walk towards the edge of the bathtub. Goosebumps coat your bicep and neck as you carefully step into the water while grabbing the edge in order not to slip. Lowering yourself into the water, Shuichi faces away from your exposed body. A blush paints over his cheeks and snout. You sit across from one another, but he’s still so close.

“Hey,” you smile while flowing your arms through the water trying to get used to the temperature.

“Hey,” he responds. Shuichi holds out a hand out for you to take. “C’mere.”

You take his hand and he leads you to sit in front of him against his chest. You settle yourself between his thighs and clench your own legs to your chest.

“Can I tell you something?” His tone feels as warm as the water pooling up the middle of your chest. The soft fragrance of the bath relaxes you the most you've ever been in a long time; you melt into the cushion of Shuichi’s chest.

“Mhmm,” you hum while letting your eyes fall closed.

“I—uhm,” he stammers before taking a deep breath that you could feel against your neck. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me,” he says with a smile. “I didn’t have anyone to protect… to look forward to seeing before you came into my life. I’d be happy if just being here to save you from incoming cars,” he chuckles.

“I said it wouldn’t happen again!” you laugh and throw your hand back to press into his shoulder.

“Mhm,” he smirks, taking your hand and bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

“I’m glad to have met you too, handsome,” you turn and smile up at him. “You’re so sweet to me.” You lift yourself just enough to place a chaste kiss on his cheek.

“Stop,” he shakes his head.

“But, you look so good,” you sing.

“I look good?” he laughs. “You’re the girl of my dreams.” You feel both of his arms wrap around your midsection and his thumbs massage small circles underneath your chest. He leans into your ear to kiss the crest of it before whispering, “I’m sorry to have worried you, baby”

“Are you going to make it up to me?” you softly say.

Shuichi’s eyes widen as you turn your body in full to face him. If he wasn't already involuntarily sporting a hard-on with your body pressed up against him, he definitely is now. He catches a glimpse of your glossed nipples and watches as water cascades down the valley made between your breasts.

“Fuck,” he places his hands on your hips to guide you to straddle his lap. “Look at you.”

You rest your hands on his firm shoulders before leaning into his exposed neck.  

He holds his breath and holds onto your body tightly, his nails starting to dig into your flesh anticipating your soft lips against his scales. His neck is tickled by your tongue giving hesitant kitten licks to the side of his neck. Shuichi feels himself melt into your body further yearning for your lips to close over his muscle.

You both moan as your lips begin to suckle on the prominent segment of his neck stuck out for you to ravage upon. The scales that coat his entire body create overlapped edges that you can feel as you drag your tongue along in small circular motions. You pull at him with the suction of your lips and then give soft kisses to the darken spots you leave along the way. “Just kiss me already,” Shuichi concedes. He takes your chin between two fingers and brings them to his lips. He holds back for a second to admire the clouded, sultry eyes looking at him from under lashes before pushing through the wall of tension to kiss you greedily.

You feel Shuichi’s hand on your hip start to guide you deeper into his lap, but the sudden movement makes you pull away. The shallow sweep of his strong thighs against your aroused center makes you yelp against his mouth. Eager for more, you lift yourself slightly before starting to grind against his thighs his time of your volition. The bathwater moves around both of you in shallow waves. They splash against your back in a similar tempo to your motions.

“Mmm,” he groans against your lips. His hands leave your body before returning in front of your chest in front of him. “Can I?”

You nod and put both of your hands on the side of the tub to the sides of his head. You feel his fingers for the first time on your tits and only a second passes until you're completely comfortable. He explores your skin and nipples as you both kiss passionately; with his eyes shut, he searches for your nubs to roll in between his padded fingertips.

“Y/N,” he pulls away breathless.

“Mhm?” You continue to softly grind on his thighs and he starts to speak.

“I’ve never done this before,” he stammers. You quirk an eyebrow at him with a sly smirk plastered on your lips. “Y/N, not like that.” Shuichi shakes his head with a laugh. “I want to ask you… Would you—will you be my girlfriend?”

You can't help but stop in your tracks to give him the tightest hug possible. “Yes, of course!”

He blushes at your immediate response. His hands caress your back and slowly run down the length of it towards your thigh and ass cheek. “Your skin is so soft,” he squeezes the flesh between his fingers and palm.

“Spinner,” you let his secret alias slip from your lips as a moan while massaging the section between your rear and thigh.

“Shit.” It feels so good to finally let his hidden life be free, but how was he to know you would use his identity against him in this way? He feels himself pulsate underneath the surface of the bathwater.  

While pulling away from his embrace, the hardened tips of his cocks brush against your lower abdomen. You hear his throat catch at the minuscule touch. “You—your, uhm—.”

“Yeah…,” he sighs, covering his face with his palm. “I know it’s weird. You don't have to—.”

“It’s not weird!” You reassure him while pulling his hand away from his face and towards your chest. “I actually,” you run your opposite hand up the top of his ridged thigh. “I think it’s really hot.”

He gulps once he feels your thumb run over the smoothed tip of one of his cocks. “Seriously?”

Looking in his eyes, you bite your lip and nod. “I want you,” you whisper while leaning into his chest until your tits press against his skin.

A guttural groan rumbles in his chest before he grabs your wandering hand lightly to stop you from going further. “C’mon,” he offers in a low voice. His scaled hand rubs the globe of your ass and then squeezes. “Let’s go to your bedroom.”

He helps you up from your sitting position in the tub to standing. The lavender foam sticks to his thighs and abdomen as he steps out onto the bathmat. Your breath catches at your first sight of his perfectly sculpted ass. The speed of your heartbeat quickens as you watch him saunter over to the counter for two fresh towels.

Once he turns around, Shuichi can’t help but permit himself to catch glances at your exposed breasts. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful,” he smirks while handing you the towel. You feel the heat of a blush come to your cheeks while you wrap the towel around yourself. He offers you a strong hand to help you out of the tub. “Careful.”

Unwrapping yourself, you dry your limbs quickly while hoping to get back to being pressed against his strong body again soon. Once dry, you both throw your towels into the hamper.

“Alright, c’mon!” Your waist is pulled into his side and you feel your body being lifted in one fell swoop.

“Ah!”

Shuichi holds you against his chest with an arm hooked underneath your thighs and an arm holding your back. You swoon at his ability to carry you bridal style without breaking a sweat.

Once in your dimly lit bedroom, you're set down to stand on the carpet. Shuichi spins you around and walks against you until you both reach the end of your bed. Your lips lock together and you pull him by the neck to meet you on top of the soft duvet.

He settles himself between your spread legs and kisses you in fervor. You feel one of his hands roam back to your tits and he uses the heel of his hand to knead into you. Another hand grips the curve of your hip and his thumb rubs the skin above the bone there.

“Shuichi,” you moan against his cheek. “Feels good.”

“So… gorgeous…,” he peppers kisses along your collarbone and chest. “I want you so badly, Y/N.” He lets himself slide down your body while giving kisses to every piece of skin available to him. He ends up on his stomach with his head between your thighs. You rest your hands in his hair and watch as his lilac locks get wrapped in your fingers. “You okay with this, Y/N,” he mumbles against the muscle of your inner thigh.

“Mhm, please,” you whine. “You look so good with your face between my thighs.”

He groans at the sight of your already wet cunt spread in front of him. He quickly realizes it might be okay to be rougher with you; taking your physical arousal as a signal that you’re actually into him. You feel a nip at your thigh and it only makes you want him closer to your core even more.

Shuichi lets his tongue lull out of his mouth before licking a thick stripe against your thigh. The feeling sends a shiver down your spine and your pussy clenches in anticipation. “Who would have thought you’d be such a tease— ?” All of a sudden, his tongue explores your soaked folds and then latches onto your puffy clit. “Oh my, God,” you whine.

He groans at your sweet taste on his tongue. The vibrations of this sound travel straight to your sensitive nerve endings. You pull his hand to come back to one of your breasts as he continues his precise movements. You move two of his fingers to pinch your nipple and he obliges by rolling the peaked nub.

“Your tongue feels so good,” you whimper as you begin to grind on his tongue while tugging hard on his hair in your hand. “Shuichi?”

“Mmm?” He hums with his tongue pressed against your clit.

“Have you— ever used both?” you stammer. Your toes curl as you try to focus on his response.

His crimson eyes widen at you from between your legs. “Both?” he mumbles. “I haven’t.”

“I—I want to take all of you,” you feel heat rush to your chest as you admit to him the fantasy you've had since finding out what he’s been packing.

He hums deeply against your clit again before using a finger to pull one of your folds to the side. “I need to prep you real good for me then, baby,” he says proudly.

You nod and brace yourself for him to prod at your tight hole. Since dating you, he started to trim his claws down in fear of accidentally scratching you, and now that fact is even more important in this situation.

The suddenness of one of his thick, ribbed fingers enters your cunt easily with the amount of arousal built up. You gasp at the abrupt fullness of his long digit inside of you. The roof of your cunt is massaged by him slightly hooking his finger and pumping slowly.

“I’m gonna add another, you’re taking this too easy,” he says gruffly before nipping your inner thigh.

Shuichi pulls out and enters back in swiftly with an extra finger and continues to pump your pussy in a more quick pace. The soft padding of his fingertips hit the ridged, spongy section of your cunt repeatedly and it's like nothing you've felt before. You can’t help but bring your other hand down to help get you closer to your release.

He watched you bring two fingers to your hooded clit and turn on your quirk. The vibrating digits sound like a buzz in his ear, but how could he mind when you’re lewdly pleasuring yourself right in front of him. “Holy fuck, yes,” he retracts his tongue back into his mouth to allow you to handle your sensitive nub while his pumps into you vigorously. “Touch yourself for me, beautiful.”

That feels amazing,” you stammer. “Please, right there,” you whine. You rotate your pulsating finger in small circles.

“So fucking hot,” he says roughly. “Keep going, baby,” he attempts to encourage you towards your first orgasm of the night.

“Spinner, I can feel it,” you grind on his thrusting fingers. “You’re gonna make me cum.”

“Shit, baby, cum for me,” he adds another finger effortlessly. “Cum all over my fingers.” The tips of his fingers move together as one to knead the squishy flesh of your cavern.

“Mhmm,” you moan loudly as you feel the build of your climax being reached within you. All of a sudden, you feel it coming. You bite your lip as your legs start to shake; you fight through the intense feeling to pursue rubbing yourself to maximum pleasure. “I’m coming, fuck!”

“There you go!” He watches as your chest rises and falls quickly. The muscles of your cunt clench hard on his fingers. “Such sweet sounds.”

“How many—How many fingers was that, babe?” You breathe out with the air you have left.

He holds up four, glistening digits and pulls them apart to watch your arousal drip onto his palm. “That was super sexy, babygirl.” You watch him take his soaked hand to his cocks and stroke himself languidly. “Could I do down on you?”

“Yes—yeah, sure,” he says enthusiastically. You help him switch to the position you were in on the bed. He lays back against your pillows stacked against the headboard. He relaxes his brawny arms behind his head and spreads his legs slightly for you to settle yourself between.

You sit back on your calves and admire the ripples of his muscular form all laid out for you. The tips of your fingers trace the divots formed by his prominent abs; you drag your fingers tantalizingly down the lines that make a V to his phallus.

You observe him from underneath your lashes as you lean over his leaking cocks. Holding his heavy package as one in your small hand, you pump them in tandem.

“Is this ok, handsome?”

He’s focused so intently on your motions that all he does is a nod in response.

Two clear beads of precum perch on the outside of his cockslits. As your first move, you lick the beads away from his tips and let your tongue move in a circle over the two heads slowly.

“Oooh.”

You smile at his content before widening the O shape of your lips to take his cocks into your ready mouth. Letting saliva drool from your lips, you use your hands to coat his cock while moving your wrist in a twisting motion. You wrap your lips around his combined cockhead and drag your tongue along the sensitive slits.

“Fuck, you’re lips feel so good around my cock,” he whines. His muscles flex involuntarily as you suck hard on his cocks. The stimulation of his nerve endings send mini shocks to all places of his body in response to your movements. To pleasure what you can’t take between your lips, your hands pump him in upward, winding actions. You decide to turn on your quirk in turn for not being able to take his package completely into your mouth. Your tongue buzzes against his heads and your hands jitter while stroking him in full. The intense stimulation makes him create large amounts of precum; it drips and oozes from your lips down his shaft.

You hum against his hot muscles pleasingly, the taste of his sweet precum mixes with your saliva and coats the expanse of your mouth. You watch him as his eyes widen at the lewd use of your quirk, but he thanks the heavens that you could do this at all for him.

“Baby,” he says lowly. “I don’t want to cum just yet, I’m getting too close— too fast,” he groans.

A soft pop of your lips comes when you pull off of him. Proceeding to stroke him in one hand, you lift yourself to place a hand on his firm chest. Leaning down to meet his gaze, you whisper, “Do you want to cum in me?”

His eyes widen at your offer the second the words fall from your lips. “Yes, yeah, baby.”

You giggle and kiss the tip of his snout before straddling his waist

“I promise to make you feel so good, Y/N,” he groans against your neck. “I’m so turned on by your body, you have no fucking clue.” He holds your legs to his waist and rolls with you until your flat on your back against the mattress. You wrap your arms around his neck and let him spread your legs to the side. “Are you ready, Y/N?”

“Mhm, please,” you whine. “Fuck me, Spinner,”

“You got it, baby,” he holds his two, large pricks together in one hand. You hold the creases underneath your things and pull them as close to your chest as possible. He presses a hand into one of your thighs as he hovers over you. He rubs his cockheads over your clit and slit to collect the residual arousal before pressing softly into your tiny entrance. You both moan at the first touch.

“How are you— still so tight?” He questions. “Mmf,” he groans, attempting to push himself further.

“Oh, I’m a virgin,” you explain. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Wha—what?” He exclaims. “I thought you said we weren’t keeping secrets?”

“I thought it was obvious,” you laugh while playing with your breasts innocently.

“And, you wanted to take both of me? First try?” He brushes his hair from his face.

“Yes, Shuichi, I want you as you are,” you say sweetly. “I wanted to at least try.”

“I can’t even believe you wanted to spend your first time with me,” he admits.

“Of course,” you hold his cheek in your palm. “I actually have some lube in the drawer. We can use it,” you smile sweetly up at him.

“Ok, baby,” he kisses your nose and crawls to the night table before returning with a clear bottle. “I said I’d make this amazing for you, but now I promise it.”

You nod and hold his biceps in your hands as he settles by your thighs again. Repeating his process, he rubs the lube from his cock onto your slit and presses down onto your thighs so they go to your chest. He presses into your cunt all too easily this time.

“Oh my, God,” you moan together.

“You ok?” He asks.

You nod and Spinner pushes his hips deeper into yours. His cocks stretch your pussy slowly as he slides all the way in. “Feels—so good,” you squeak out. Your boyfriend starts his thrusts once he feels the back wall of your core.

“Damn,” his hot breathe hits your face. “You’re taking me so well, baby,” he moans.

You bite your lip as tears form in the corner of your eyes from pleasure. His hips rock slowly, but the girth and length of him are able to hit every perfect spot inside of you. “Please, go faster, Spinner,” you plead.

“God, you look so gorgeous under me,” he praises.

“You look so good,” you compliment. “I love your cocks, Spinner, please.” He smirks before grabbing your hips with his strong hands and pistoning into you at a more quick pace. Your breasts bounce as you’re pulled into him continuously. “Fuck, thank you, baby, thank you-,” you whine.

“Take my throbbing dicks, baby, good fucking job,” he encourages. “Your cunt is amazing. Clenching so nicely for me,” he says roughly.

“For you, baby,” you say as a moan. You hold your breasts in your hands and roll your nipples with vibrating fingers.

“Are you gonna cum on my cocks? Just for me?” He groans.

“Yes, yes, yes, please,” you plead loudly. “I wanna cum all over your dicks!”

“Then do it, babygirl,” he foments. “I wanna feel you clench on me all over again. You’ve got it in you, huh?”

Your eyes widen as you realize his words have triggered something inside of you. Electricity rushes to your center and you can’t hold back. “Fuck, I’m— coming!” Ecstasy encases your entire body as your eyes roll back into your head. You try to push your arm down between you both to use your hand as a vibrator for your clit and the base of his cock as he continues to trust into you with fervor.

“Ugh, fuck, me— too,” he grunts. His thrusts come to a slow before he releases his load into the back of your cunt. Ropes of gooey cum spurt into your cavern and coat your walls completely.

Shuichi rolls onto his back beside you and lets an arm fall over his eyes. Your heart beats loud enough for you to hear as you both lay together in silence for a moment.

“Fuck,” he groans.

“Yeah,” your voice is small and your throat feels dry. “Spinner?”

“Hey, don't pull that on me again,” he laughs. He gets up from the bed to go retrieve his clothes from the bathroom.

You giggle at him and crawl to the end of the bed to meet him before he leaves the room. “I was wondering, would you like to spend the night?”

“What?”

“Honestly, we don’t know the current situation out in the city right now, and I’m kind of nervous to let you go. I want to be able to protect you, too.”

“I’d love to stay here with you,” he smiles. “Wanna protect me from my own crimes, huh?”

“Just come back to bed, please,” you whine.

“Ain't gonna get in without my pants, baby,” he taunts. “Unless you want your second time, now?”

“Shuichi,” you cover your face with the sheets. “Can you at least bring me my underwear too?” You plead. He nods and walks out of the room. You lay there alone in the dimly lit room for a minute. All you can do is smile to yourself at how lucky you feel.

Shuichi comes back and the mattress bounces as he hops into bed with you. You put on your undergarments quickly and then snuggle up close to your boyfriend.

“Goodnight, Spinner,” you say into his chest.

You earn a quick kiss to the forehead. “Goodnight, baby.”

Tag List: @knifeewifee @lilli-chae @thedreadthreadanomaly @ivymemnoch @beauty-in-ferality @cannibalchan @bnhabookclub @bakatenshii @gallickingun @hawks-senseis @royal-after-dark @wakaoujisenhime @shinsotired​ @lovelusional​

[plush-rabbit]

Bloody Knuckles

Word Count: 2.3K

A/N: Gets a bit scar-phobic under the cut. If you have scars, you’re super cool and valid!! Plus we get to be scar buddies! Also a bit of blood mention! 

You two walk together, hand in hand, while he talks about upcoming meetings and you listen, offering the occasional hum or nod. If you were to be honest, you had stopped listening some time ago, only half tuning in. You much preferred to hear his voice, he could be reading the back of a cereal box and you’d still find it enjoyable only because it came out of his mouth. 

“You aren’t listening,” he accuses, not even sparing you a glance.

You shrug, a nervous smiling appearing. “Eh. I am hearing your voice though and I think that makes up for it.”

“I could have been planning a date and trying to get your opinions on it.”

You snort. “Cute lie. First of all we literally can’t go anywhere public. Second, you never plan dates. Third, even if you did, you like to surprise me.”

He sighs. “I could still have food brought over and all of that ambiance shit.”

“Wow ambiance shit,” you sigh in a mock lovingly way, “you really know how to woo me.”

“Shut up,” he tells you and you stick your tongue out at him.

You both start to turn the corner, only to be pulled back. You look at him, mouth parted open, ready to question him, when you notice his jaw twitch and his eyes narrow. You turn to the corner, brows furrowed and that’s when you hear the voices. They make no attempt to keep their voices hushed, speaking out loud and brazen.

“Look I know he’s out boss and stuff but-” a gruff voice starts.

“No, no! I get it!” That one sounds a bit more flustered, rushed and shaky. “I mean, he isn’t totally awful looking but all his scars? Geez, get some moisturizer or somethin’,” the voice laughs. “I just feel sorry for his partner.”

“You think they had to fuck their way to the top?” The first voice snorts. “They were there since they were the League of Villains, right?”

“Lots of fucking then,” the second one breathes out. “He’d actually be cute if he had less scars but ugh,” they laugh, “thinking about it gives me the chills.”

“At least he looks scary. I’ll give him that. Intimdatin’ and shit.”

You face scrunches and you release your hand from Tomura’s ready to step in and give those two a piece of your mind when Tomura grabs onto the bottom of your shirt. You turn around and soften your features. 

“Tom-”

“I have to go do something,” his voice is a tad tighter and he leans forward to kiss you, only to pull away and peck your cheek. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

You watch him walk away, shoulders squared and steps rushed. Your shoulders slump and your hand lifts a bit, daring to reach out for him but by the time it’s stretched in front of you, he’s already turned at another corner.

You click your tongue and tighten your jaw. You strain to hear if the voices are still mindlessly talking and when they are, you turn the corner, a dark intent in your eyes.

-

You’re in the shared bedroom, holding a melting ice pack against your chin as you examine your hand. You turn it over and blow cool air on it, wishing away the sting that the fresh wounds bring. You aren’t too badly damaged, just bits of cut on both your knuckles and a dark bruise already forming on your jaw.

The pain has mostly faded, all that remains are a dull throbbing and a slight sting. Your only real worry is when you take a shower and the water will sting your wounds.You lay in bed, already feeling spent after your little brawl with the two shit talkers. You smile at the memory of the fight. You had gotten the jump on them so they were scattered and surprised when you attacked. A nasty trick, they spat but you didn't see it that way. A part of you actually swells in pride, proud at the cracking of bones and rush of blood. Your little attack should shut them both up for the time being.

The door opens to the room, swinging wide and colliding with the door stopper. You wince and rise, raising your brows at Tomura who glowers at you.

“You know if you break the door we won’t have any more privacy.” 

“What the fuck happened?” You open your mouth to speak and he cuts you off. “I get a fcking call about how you and two other people fought in the hallways like a bunch of high schoolers,” the door slams behind and he walks briskly towards the bed.  “What the hell,” he seethes.

You swallow and press the ice pack closer to your face. “I uh- I’m fine by the way,” he rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry?”

“Try again.”

“I’m not sorry.” he gives you a look and you throw your legs over the bed and pat the space next to you. “I didn’t like how they were talking about you so I got into a fight.” His eyes narrow and his hand clenches into a fist. “I won! Aren’t you proud?”

He’s silent for a moment. His eyes glaze over to the ice pack that reddens your skin and stains with water. The bruise is barely visible beneath the bunched up paper towels. His eyes dip to your hands that are marred with cuts and scrapes. They shine a bright red with hints of pinks.

He runs a hand through his hair and gives out an irritated sigh. He plops down next to you, and glances over to you, with a tired look in his eyes. He reaches over and grabs your hand. "Tch. You're a dumbass, you know," he mutters quietly, holding your hand in his. "I have to clean up your mess now."

You scoff and hold the ice pack against your jaw. "That's what I like about you," you speak softly. He looks at you quizzly and you lower your eyes to stare at his hand which holds your tenderly. "You act like things are a bother- connection, relationships and all- but in the end, you really care about those close to you," you shrug and reach over to peck his scar, "it's nice."

His fingers jump in your hand and he can feel his cheeks heat in admiration? Embarrassment? He doesn't know, he's never been one for these types of emotions but you always manage to bring it out in him. He swallows and he suddenly wishes that he had water with him.

"Why? You aren't usually the confrontational type." His fingers brush over the tears in your knuckles. Bright red stained out against your skin and he finds it endearing, a type of admiration where even the most delicate can still bare its claws and fight. But when you flinch and hiss through your teeth, he frowns. You're still injured. A cold ice pack freezing your skin and dripping water onto the bed.

You take a sharp breath through your nose and turn your head away from him. "I don't know."

"Wrong answer," he mutters.

You shift uncomfortably, your palms growing clammy and when you try to pull away, he holds your hand tighter. His eyes stare at you expectantly.

"Tomura," you bounce in your seat, squeezing your eyes shut, refusing to look at him.

"Come on. Out with it. I don't have all day. I'm busy- especially after your little stunt." 

"I already told you-" you puff out yours cheeks- "they were saying mean things about you."

"The comments from earlier?" You nod. "They don't bother me."

"Yes they do!" He startles but you continue on, now wrapping your hand around his and holding it tight. "Its okay if they do Tomura. You're still human and people- it's fine if the words bother you Tomura.” You inch closer to him, placing the ice pack down on the bed, the paper towel that covers it, is translucent and the condensation spreads and starts to stain the bed. “I don’t- You already went through so many things alone Tomura,” you squeeze his hand, “but you don’t have to anymore.” 

He doesn’t know what to make of your words. He knows that you speak the truth, that all your words to him at this moment are genuine. They are soaked in your love and comfort, a desperate plea in your voice to get him to understand, and to listen to you.

He tries to find his own words, to come up with some sentence that will put an end to this discussion, to just let him get off your grasp and go somewhere and hide under the covers like a child. The thought makes him flush in embarrassment. He doesn’t want to feel like a child, to feel so small and hopeless but you make him feel that way. No, that’s not the proper wording for it. You make him crave the sweet words that you tell him, you make him want to curl up and rest his head, you make him covet your warmth- to be protected. Every delicate word that you’ve told him made him believe that he was worth loving, that he was worth something. He understands why heroes say that they have a reason to go to, why families mourn the death or injury of someone. You make him believe that he has something worth fighting for. You make him want to survive and strive for the future. 

He startles when he feels your cold hand on his face. You mumble an apology and he shakes his head. Your hand slides away and it leaves him colder than before. His hand covers yours, ring and pinky finger, tapping against yours gently. “It’s fine.”

“I don’t think it is,” you mumble. Ah, you’re still on the previous topic. He opens his mouth to speak but you press forward. “You’re getting glassy eyed Shiggy.” Your voice cracks and his eyes widen a fraction when he notices your own eyes are glassy. 

“Shiggy, huh?” He hasn’t heard that nickname in forever. After you two started dating, you always referred to him as his first name or a variation of the sorts- even a sweet pet name. 

“I thought you might like some nostalgia,” you sigh, a gentle smile pulling on your lips.

“Feels like forever since I heard that nickname,” he replies.

“You don’t like it?” you smile apologetically. “Should I go back to Tomura? Tomu-kun?” You inch closer to him with every nickname, pressing yourself flush against him. “Love? Dear? Honey? Sweetheart? Cutie-pie?” 

He chuckles softly and shakes his head. “You’re being insufferable.”

“Yeah, but you love it.” You press your lips against his jaw and your hand slides down to his neck, curving around him. Your voice takens on a lower tone and you move to wrap your arms around him, moving one to the back of his head and making him rest on your shoulder. He buries himself into the crook of your neck, his hands pressed next to you, scratching at the plum color duvet. “They’re wrong, you know that right? You aren’t gross because of your scars. Plus, even if you do look intimidating- which you don’t- you’re still cute with that little pout and your very cute smile.” You stroke his hair, parting his snow colored hair through your fingers, ridding of any entanglement while you hold him in your arms. “You’re you and that’s perfect. It’s more than enough for me- it’ll always be more than enough. Your scars are just like marking points where I can kiss you. Your eyes are bright and full of love and filled with passion. Your hands fit into mine perfectly.” He can feel his face begin to heat up and he wonders if you can feel it too. “You can change the world, but for the time being, let me protect you. I’ll kick anyone’s ass if they say something mean. We can both protect each other.”

“You don’t have to protect me,” he whispers against your neck.

“No, I know that. But I want to.” Tears burn in his eyes and he closes them slowly, careful to not let any slip. “You might not believe it Tomura, but I want to protect you. I want to be by your side. And if that means getting bloody knuckles, then so be it.”

He buries himself deeper into your neck, his hands having risen to clutch at the back of your shirt, fabric straining and he swallows tightly, finding the simple task to be harder than usual. He lets out a shaky breath and feels burning tears prick the corner of his eyes.

“I’m always going to be here for you Tomura. You’re- You mean a lot to me. I’m following you because you mean something and I know that whatever happens, we can face it together. I’m not going to leave you Tomura. Not ever.” You tighten your hold on him and he does the same. 

“Okay,” he mutters- it’s broken and inaudible, his lips ghost over your neck, the tingling sensation remaining far after his lips have stopped moving. You hold him tight in your arms, not moving an inch when he scoots closer to you, not daring to make a noise or move a fraction of an inch when you can feel tears meet your neck. You rub his back and you hold tight in your arms. And when he pulls away with a slightly red nose and red rimmed eyes with a hoarse voice and trembling lips, you only press a kiss against him and offer to take a nap. He nods mutely and collapses onto the bed. You follow suit and open your arms. He snuggles into your chest and you brush your fingers through his hair as his breathing slows into an even pace and he eventually drifts into sleep.

[joaquinwhorres]

Boxes (Lee Jordan x OC)

SUMMARY ››››› Nora finds Lee sitting alone out in the snow and goes to check on him.

WORD COUNT ››››› 1,578

A/N ››››› I wrote this in like three different ways, but I’m happy with how it turned out. It gives a little more insight into Nora’s soft side and also is not just Lee cheering up Nora. 

She had never seen Lee Jordan alone before. 

Sure, she'd seen him without his friends, but always walking through a crowded hall or sitting in the Quidditch stands or trailing a professor asking questions. Never so completely and utterly alone. 

The thought caused her stomach to twist, and she slowed to a stop keeping her eyes focused on him. Maybe it wasn't the fact that he was alone. Maybe it was the fact that he was still. 

In the classes they'd had together he'd always been turning in his seat or busying himself with something on his parchment. He was a dynamic announcer, talking with his hands and dodging McGonagall's attempts to grab the megaphone. But here he was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, staring into space.

Something wasn't right.

Nora stepped out from the covered walkway and into the snow, wrapping her arms around herself as if that could protect her from the cold of the little white flakes that settled onto her coat sleeves and tangled themselves in her hair. "Lee?" 

His head swiveled to her, and she was a bit surprised that he'd heard her the first time she'd called his name. 

"Are you alright?" Nora asked, rubbing her mittened hands gently up and down her arms. 

His smile was soft--not the electric grin she was used to. "Perfectly fine," he answered in a voice that was probably  meant to reassure her. And it might have if it weren't for the fact that there was still that little twist in her gut telling her to stay.

"Really?" Nora asked, stepping closer, bits of snow jumping up from under her feet to avoid being packed down in the shape of her shoeprint. "Is that way you're sitting all by yourself out in the snow instead of coming in for dinner?" 

He exhaled what might have been an attempt at a laugh through his nose. "I'll be in soon."

"Ok." The word came out airly, as if she believed him, and Lee must have thought she did because he turned back around to stare out into the middle of the courtyard. But, instead of retreating, she moved forward. "Do you mind if I sit out here with you until then?"

He shook his head but didn't look at her again. 

Nora nodded, mostly for her own benefit, before tucking her coat under her bum and settling down into the snow. She wiggled a bit, smoothing out a nice little divet to sit in before chancing a glance over at Lee who hadn't moved. She turned her attention up to the sky, tipping her head back so that the snowflakes drifted down onto her face and caught in her lashes. For a moment, she felt entirely at peace in the muted world of the courtyard. She could understand why Lee chose to escape out here to avoid the raucousness of the castle. Except… Her eyes drifted back to Lee once more. He didn't seem to be escaping much if the look on his face was any indication.

"It's beautiful out here," Nora mused, leaning back onto her hands and fighting back the urge to shiver without her arms wrapped around herself.

"Yeah," Lee breathed out in agreement. 

Nora bit the inside of her lip, trying to settle back into the moment. She looked back up at the snowflakes and attempted to count them. She tried picking one and following its progress all the way down to the ground. She tried naming the specific colors of everything she saw around her: pearl, cotton, mist, slate, slate-blue. But her fingers twitched in her mitten, itching for her to do something. 

So, she scooted to the left, narrowing the gap between her and Lee. Nora bit off her mitten, digging her hand into her pockets, fingers searching for the familiar smoothness of plastic wrapping. Instead they bumped against a quill tip and then a crumpled piece of parchment and then her small supply of tissues. And then, finally, they found it.

Nora withdrew her hand from her pocket, presenting three pieces of butterscotch to Lee on her open palm. He looked at her with eyebrows raised, and she smiled. "Whatever it is, I've always found a bit of sweets help." 

He exhaled another laugh--this one more real, and his shoulders dropped some. "Thanks, Nora." There was a fondness in his voice that hadn't been there before, and her smile grew just a bit bigger. 

"Take two," she urged, and Lee hesitated for just a second before taking another sweet. 

The two unwrapped their butterscotches in silence, each popping them into their mouth and then pulling mittens and gloves back on. 

It was easier to sit in silence now. Listening to the sweet clack against teeth and sitting just a bit closer together. 

"Can I ask you something?" Lee asked, and she startled a little before turning to face him. 

"Of course." 

"What do you think of me?" 

Her head tilted a bit to the side as she considered him. He was still staring forward as if didn't want to meet her eyes when he asked this. She had the distinct feeling that she could say something very wrong if she wasn't careful.

"How do you mean?" 

Lee's jaw worked as he sat in her question for a moment, and she wondered if he hadn't heard her or if this was the wrong thing to say before he spoke again. 

"I overheard someone in class today…" he shook his head, not wanting to finish the rest of the story. "People here, they just think I'm a laugh. That I don't take anything seriously. I'm just...entertainment." 

Nora frowned. 

"You're not entertainment. Entertaining sometimes, but you're more than that Lee. Much more." 

"I know, it just-- " he cut himself off again with a sigh, resting his chin on top of his knees. "I don't know why it's bothering me this much. I like performing and making people laugh." 

He didn't say anything else after that, staring back out into the snow. Nora adopted his position, drawing her own knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "People like to put other people in boxes," Nora offered, shrugging her shoulders. "You're the entertainment, I'm that happy girl, someone else is the pretty one, and the smart one, and whatnot. I think it helps them feel like they can make sense of everyone--they just need to find the right box to fit them in. But it's absolute shite being put in a box because there isn't a single one big enough to fit every part of you." 

This earned her half a laugh. "'ts a bit of a convoluted metaphor," Lee remarked. 

"I'm doing my best," Nora looked back at him, a smile tugging up at her lips. The two held each other's gaze for a second before Lee looked away. 

"What box did you put me in? Before we were friends?" 

"There wasn't a box really," Nora shook her head. "To me you've always been the boy who wanted to find the Giant Squid with me on our first day of Hogwarts." 

Lee turned back to look at her, his cheerlessness dissipating the way ice did on a frozen pond. His lips parted like a sharp crack in the ice before fissuring out into a smile and dimples and melting away into a look of small wonder. "I'd forgotten about that." 

"I never have," Nora shook her head, giving him a half smile. "I was so nervous on that boat ride. I'd never left my family for more than a week or two, and even though Wren was with me, I didn't think we'd be sorted into the same house. And then you came along chatting about the Giant Squid and trying to make the boat go over to where you were sure you'd seen him, and you let me help--more than that, you actually listened to my ideas…" Nora trailed off, realizing she was rambling. "I thought you were very clever and good fun and truly kind. I thought 'this is someone I could be friends with if Wren leaves me.' But then you went and got sorted into the wrong house too, and I promptly never spoke to you again." 

Lee let out a burst of laughter, and a warming sensation flooded Nora's chest seeing him genuinely smile. "Well," Lee said, his laughter dying down. "At least we're friends now."

Nora nodded. "All this to say, if people want to put you in a box, they're missing out, Lee. Really, truly, we should pity them, missing out." 

His gentle smile returned once more, but unlike the first one he'd given her, this one was as warm as  laughter that shone in his eyes. "Thank you, Nora." 

"Anytime at all," Nora said, returning his smile with one she hoped reflected all that he gave to her.

Lee took in a deep breath before letting it out through his nose. "I guess we should go to dinner then." 

"My stomach would like that very much," Nora agreed. 

Lee chuckled, standing up from the snow and brushing himself off before offering a hand down to Nora. She accepted it, taking hold of his gloved hand and letting him pull her up onto her feet. He squeezed her hand once before letting it go and two walked side by side back into the castle.

[brandyllyn]

In our own image... (01)

Chapter 1

(Poe Dameron x OFC)

Other chapters...  My Masterlist

Word count: 2200. Read it on AO3.

Rating: Teen & Up (PG) language.

Poe Dameron, Commander in the Resistance Army, hands down the best pilot in the fleet, hero of D’Qar, and one sexy guy - although admittedly that one might be just in his own head - was having a shit day.

It started when he fell out of his hammock that morning. He fell out every morning, but this morning was especially bad because he had somehow missed putting his foot down correctly to catch his fall and whacked his head on his table on the way down. Despite having strung up his hammock in a private little stand of trees, canvas tarps providing a roof from the rain and some additional privacy, he still cursed loudly enough to wake up several people nearby. Which on its own wouldn’t have been that bad either except one of them was Snap which meant Poe was never going to hear the end of it.

It had been downhill from there. Breakfast was leftover rations from the night before. There were no flight maneuvers on his schedule today, just endless strategy meetings. No mission in sight to get him out of this jungle either.

And they were running low on caf - so low the pots were being brewed less than half strength, weak and watery. Barely worth drinking even though he savored what little jump he could get from the murky beverage.

By the time lunch came around Poe was ready to throw in the towel. The day was not going to get better and to top it off, BB-8 was mad at him. They’d been arguing for nearly ten minutes while Poe was trying to eat lunch. A few other people had come and tried to make conversation but Poe’s bickering with BB-8 had made most of them quickly move on to other tables.

"Come on buddy," Poe pleaded with his droid. "I’m sorry, I know you don’t like it. But I can’t fix it right now either." BB-8 beeped at him with exasperation, ending on a trilling note that Poe would have called insubordinate if it hadn’t been paired with a sad whistle. "I know, I know. The moment I can get somewhere that sells the tools I need we’ll fix it I promise."

"What’s up with Beebs?" Jessika Pava asked, sitting down at the table next to Poe and clutching a mug of tea. Poe eyed the beverage dubiously. Last he heard they were on their third or fourth use of tea leaves and her drink didn’t look much better than his caf had that morning. But if the Black Squadron pilot wanted to pretend she was holding more than the dregs of what used to be tea he wasn’t going to say anything about it.

"Someone pushed him down a cliff and now he’s got sand in his circuits," Poe replied, eyes carefully avoiding the man sitting across from him.

Finn heard him anyway. Obviously. He was sitting less than two feet away, he couldn’t help but hear Poe. "I’m not the one who got us crashed on the sand dunes."

"I’m not the one who-" Poe started but was cut off by a mournful whistle from BB-8. He sighed, "I know buddy, we’re both really sorry."

"Real sorry Beebs," Finn echoed, rocking the droid affectionately with his foot.

Pava snorted, hiding a smile behind her mug when Poe glared at her. "Why don’t you take him over to the droidsmith," Pava offered.

Poe turned to her in confusion, seeing BB-8 do the same at his feet. "The who?"

Pava tilted her head at him and then blinked, "Oh yeah, you’ve been gone a while. We’ve got a droidsmith. Set up over on the south side next to the Mu."

"When did a Mu shuttle arrive?" he asked.

Pava rolled her eyes, "With the droidsmith."

"Yeah Poe," Finn mocked, "with the droidsmith."

Poe glared at him. "What do you know about the droidsmith?"

"I know he’s over by the Mu shuttle," Finn retorted.

"She," Pava muttered under her breath and Finn gave her a glare before correcting himself.

"She’s over by the Mu shuttle, everyone knows that."

"Mmhmm," Poe grunted, looking down at BB-8 who was blinking up at him hopefully. "Right after lunch, I promise."

Without the constant interruption from BB-8 Poe managed to finish his meal in peace, Pava falling into step beside him after he pushed back from the table. She led him past the Command center and a string of X-Wings, then pointed out where the shuttle was settled next to a large canvas tarp strung between three trees. From where he was standing, it looked like it was covering nothing but crates.

He took a step forward and then frowned when he realized Pava wasn’t with him. "You’re not coming with me?" He asked

Pava shook her head, "It’s probably best if I don’t. She doesn’t like me much."

Poe glanced at the shuttle, then back at the pilot. "Why not?"

"Me? The Great Destroyer? Why do you think a droidsmith might not like me?" She asked sarcastically.

Oh yeah, Poe thought, that. It wasn’t that Pava tried to get her droids shot, exploded, imploded, or short-circuited. It just always seemed to happen to droids that were near her for more than a few minutes. BB-8 flatly refused to fly with her, even when Poe had directly ordered him to once.

BB-8 was ahead of them both, rolling across the ground and investigating the new ship. Poe looked back at Pava, "Do you at least know her name?"

Pava shrugged. "I’m told she doesn’t speak Basic. She’s got a little translator droid you can talk to though. Name’s K-0."

"Great," Poe muttered as he watched her walk away. When he turned back, it was just in time to see BB-8 disappear around a stack of crates. "Just great."

Judging from the size of the roof tarp, the droidsmith’s shop covered several hundred square feet. She had stacked crates around several sides to create the illusion of walls and there was covering on the ground to keep everything out of the inevitable mud after the rainstorms. Poe ducked under the tarp, his boots making a hollow thunking noise on the ground cover.

He waited a minute for his eyes to adjust to the shadows and then raised an eyebrow. In front of him was a table, set fairly low to the ground, with a ramp leading up to it and an R4 unit in two pieces on top of it. The droid whistled at him as he went by and he gave it a nod. From that table there was another ramp to a higher table, this one scattered with a variety of parts. It took a moment before Poe realized the benefits of the arrangement. Different droids would need to be at different heights for repairs. And the ramps made it easy for them to roll where they needed to be.

He walked past the second table and around a corner made of boxes and entered a larger, enclosed area. The ceiling was tall, at least fifteen feet, and he could see various parts hanging from the poles that held the tarp up. Light filtered through the opaque fabric but the interior was mostly lit by a variety of battery operated lanterns and lights strewn around. He idly noted a hammock in the corner, and a stack of crates leading up to it. Falling out of that one could cause serious injury. On a table near to it, at a normal height, Poe got his first look at the droidsmith.

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. He’d met a few droidsmith’s over the years. One had been a burly Snivvian, another an elderly human woman. Enough to know that there was no one kind of person who was drawn to the profession. It required smarts, quick fingers, and mechanical know-how - but once you had those the possibilities were endless.

This droidsmith was… there was no other way to describe her than stunning. Skin a dark golden color, a few shades darker than his. She had large irregular shaped spots framing her face, extending along her hairline behind her ears and down the sides of her neck, underneath the wide leather choker she wore. They continued on, disappearing into her clothes and he wondered briefly how much further they went. She was Chasinian, Pava hadn’t mentioned that. One side of her dark hair was cut shorter than the rest - the rest falling over her shoulder.

Poe felt an instant jolt of attraction. It wasn’t just that she had striking looks, but the entire picture she presented seemed to be tailor-made for him. She was sitting on the table, knees spread wide and feet touching, BB-8 nestled in the gap of her legs like a small child. As he watched, she pulled off the sturdy work gloves she was wearing to reveal long fingers. She immediately began running her hands over the droid, pressing on sensors and caressing the edge of his panels with soft, graceful touches. For just a moment, Poe was irrationally jealous of his friend. He shook the thought off quickly. He heard BB trilling happily, popping open ports to show her the array of gadgets and mechanisms Poe had installed over the years.

As she stroked the droid, Poe could see her muscles moving. The white tank she wore left her arms bare, and she had a streak of grease along the outside of her forearm. She looked like someone who could not only kick his ass in hand to hand combat - but like she’d steal his X-Wing while he was still trying to catch his breath.

Poe had a type. He’d admit it. And that type was "could kick his ass and steal his ship." It had gotten him into trouble too many times to count in the past, and yet here he was. Suddenly lusting over a perfect stranger based on the way she was touching his droid and the mental fantasy he had drawn up based on no more than a twitch of muscle and streak of grease.

Then again, there was also the fact that she didn’t report to him. Or he to her. That was… on a military base that was maybe the sexiest thing of all.

He shifted his feet, his boots making the flooring creak and she looked up at him. Her eyes were deep brown, almost black, and she cocked an eyebrow and then tilted a head down at the droid. He flushed at her perusal and quickly coughed, trying to cover his face with his hand.

"Yeah, he’s a little beat up, someone rolled him down a cliff." Her expression didn’t change and he quickly added, "Not me." He gave BB-8 a hard look, silently begging the droid to not rat him out to this woman. "Is, uh, is K-0 here? To talk to?"

The droidsmith gave him a confused look and made a clicking noise with her tongue.

Poe heard a rustle and a small single-wheeled droid, barely bigger than his two fists, rolled out from under a table. "I am K-0," it intoned, tilting a sensor array back to look up at him. "What need?"

Poe looked between the droid and the droidsmith before nodding. "Okay, well K-0. That’s BB-8," he pointed to the orange droid as though there might be some confusion and then grimaced, abruptly halting the motion and running his hand through his hair instead. "He’s uh, he’s had a rough time and he’s got sand in all his gears. I also think he’s got a sensor loose. I could fix it but I…" he glanced around the workshop. "I don’t have the tools. I was thinking I could borrow-"

As he was talking the little droid beeped and whistled in binary, aiming it at the woman holding BB-8. When Poe got to his last sentence he saw her shake her head vehemently, giving him an annoyed look. Or maybe a skeptical one. Or possibly some mix between the two. Whatever it was it wasn’t a look he had hoped for. Certainly not from her.

"Okay," he continued, listening to the little droid translate, "no tool borrowing. Would you be able to…? I mean, I was told you’re a droidsmith so I was hoping maybe…"

She was nodding, smiling at BB-8 and ignoring him entirely as she pried one of the panels off with her fingernails and set it gently on the table next to her. He heard her make a soft tsking noise and BB hummed contentedly back.

K-0 tilted to look at him. "Will fix. Do good."

"Thanks?" Poe looked between the three of them again. "I’ll be back in-"

"Two day," K-0 intoned solemnly.

Poe nodded and backed out of the workshop, feeling suddenly like he was intruding in a moment he wasn’t meant to see. She looked up at him as he went, those dark eyes meeting his before she leaned back over BB-8 in apparent fascination.

Poe stumbled back out into the light, putting one hand out to catch himself on a crate and turning his head toward the sun.

"Sithspit," he muttered.

He wasn’t an expert, but he was pretty sure that hadn’t gone particularly well.

=

Chpt 2

[rockthingsbymeg]

Party of three

Request: first off just wanna say that i love your writing so much. i also wanted to ask if you could write a smut with steven, duff and reader but its fine if not 🖤x

Pairing: Duff Mckagan x reader; Steven Adler x reader

Info: Smut; 1623 words;

A/N: Hey dears💛 . Sorry I’ve been away lately, life’s been weird. I’m slowly getting my motivation to write again, so hopefully I’ll be able to get all the requests out soon

Y/N walked around the club, drink in her hand, eyes scanning the strange faces around her in hopes of finding the one belonging to her friend Duff.

Okay, friendship might not be the word people would use to describe her relationship with him, but it's not like she cared. Friends were there for the good and the bad times. Duff just happened to be in many, many good times...

As her eyes landed on him and two of his bandmates sitting at a table in a corner of the bar, she made her way to them, smiling once her eyes met Slash's.

"Hey Y/N!" He greeted loudly, mostly because of the music playing, but also because his drinks were already affecting him.

"Hey!" She greeted back, sliding on a seat between Steven and Duff. "Hey, guys." She said to them, taking a sip from her drink.

"Hi, Y/N. How're you doing?" Steven spoke happily, drinking from his glass.

"I'm good, Stevie." She answered, and Steven promptly went back to his previous conversation with Slash.

Duff's eyes were on her as she turned her attention to him. He was looking all over her body, glass near his lips but not touching them, and he fixated his gaze on the skin of her thighs, which were practically fully exposed. His eyes wandered further up and stopped on her chest, taking in the low cut of her dress, and then finally he looked at her face, giving her a small smirk.

"How're you, sweets?" He said, finally taking a sip from his drink and leaning back on his chair.

"Good, Duffles." She smirked back, letting her hand fall on top of his leg, fingers caressing the inside of his thigh.

Duff took a quick look around the table, taking in the amount of alcohol consumed by his friends. It was a good lot, even if they haven't been at the bar for a long time, so he wouldn't have to worry about them making comments about what he and Y/N got up to.

Y/N took a quick look around as well, and as soon as she got the confirmation that no one was paying attention to them, her touch got firmer, and she moved it further up.

"Not wasting any time today, I see..." He smirked, leaning back and spreading his legs slightly, giving Y/N more room to work.

Y/N kept her eyes locked with his as she softly snuggled him. Her hand kept its work, teasing the steadily hardening bulge in his pants. "I've been thinking about you all day..." She said by his ear, sweet voice dripping with lust.

Duff groaned lowly at her words, eyes closing slightly as her hand ventured up to his half-hard cock. "What have you been thinking about?" He asked, taking a hand to cup one side of her face while his lips began to work under her ear on the other side.

"Fuck..." She breathed out, losing focus for a brief moment before she pulled herself together. "I wore those jeans today that you love so much... I kept thinking about you showing up during one of my breaks to fuck me in your car..."

Duff's lips had moved to her sweet spot and he bit down on it at her words. She could feel his cock twitch against her palm as she softly squeezed around it and moved clumsily up and down. "Fuck, Y/N..."

The sound of a conversation starting on their table louder than the previous ones captured their attention. The spell around them broke as they looked to the company that had joined them and that Y/N recognized as the drinking buddies the band had made last week.

As the rest of the band told them to sit with them at the table, Y/N took the liberty to simply move herself to Duff's lap and let Steven take her previous seat, so the others didn't have to get more chairs.

Duff's hands immediately moved to her thighs, calloused fingers stroking her skin. His lips attached to the back of her neck, kissing and leaving light hickeys wherever he could reach.

Y/N could feel her underwear getting wetter as his lips continued to move. She needed to do something to get some relief and to tease Duff at the same time, so she just started to discreetly grind on his lap.

"You're trying to get caught?" He chuckled, moving his hands to her hips, trying to slow her down so they wouldn't get caught.

"Trying to get fucked... C'mon Duff, everyone is drunk..." She pleaded, pressing her ass back against him.

Duff reached between them as discreetly as he could and undid his pants, and Y/N helped out by lifting her hips. He slid her underwear to the side and guided her down on him, biting his lip to stop a moan from coming out as her warm walls enveloped him.

"Shit..." Y/N breathed out, taking a couple of seconds to adjust before riding him as best as she could.

Everyone else was pretty drunk and into the conversation, but Steven was sitting right by their side, so it had become pretty difficult to ignore what they were up to. His bright eyes were dark as his pupils were blown with lust, and he could not choose between looking at her face and watch it twist with pleasure or watch her hips work on Duff's lap.

As time went by, her actions got bolder, and so Steven got harder. She had not noticed his constant stares, but Duff had and he leaned forward to encourage Y/N to help Steven out.

"You got Steven hard, Y/N... look at him, nearly drooling over you..." Duff groaned, adjusting his position so he could thrust his hips up slightly.

Y/N's eyes moved to Steven's, being met with almost fully black eyes. She looked down for a few seconds, and that was all it took to notice how hard he was.

With a sultry look and a teasing bite on her lip, Y/N leaned closer to him. "You need some help there, Stevie?" She chuckled lowly at the shy blush that covered his cheeks, but he nodded none the less. "Take your cock out for me..."

Steven obeyed and tried to be discreet, but if anyone looked for more than five seconds, they would have been able to notice the eagerness and lust in his face.

Y/N licked her hand as soon as Steven was done and reached under the table, wrapping her hand around his cock and slowly jerking him off. She spread his precum around and used it as an extra lube, the action working as a way to tease his tip.

"Fuck..." Steven moaned out lowly, covering his own mouth as Y/N picked up her pace to match the one created by her hips.

"Fuck, Steven... you're so fucking hard... wish you could fuck me just like Duff is doing... bet you'd feel so good." She moaned by his ear, trying to hold her quickly approaching orgasm back.

Steven said nothing, for fear that he'd end up being too loud, but Y/N noticed the way his eyes rolled back into his head. Duff had noticed he was hard, but what Duff didn't notice, was that he had been discreetly jerking off over his clothes, so he was just as close as Y/N and Duff were.

"Shit..." Duff groaned, reaching around Y/N's waist to rub her clit.

Her legs shook for a bit, but she quickly pulled herself together, not losing the pace on both of them.

"You close?" Steven asked her, eyes showing the faint embarrassment he felt from being so close, so fast.

"Fuck... yeah..." Y/N moaned out, holding a much louder moan when Steven leaned over to shamelessly kiss at her neck.

The feeling of Duff fucking her while she had Steven kissing her and his cock in her hand was turning her brain into a puddle. She could feel her insides burning and her orgasm right on the edge, but she needed an extra push.

That extra push ended up coming from both Steven and Duff at once. With a half warning, Duff was pulling her flush against his body and coating her insides in his cum. Steven was also cumming, keeping one hand over his cock to catch as much cum as he could, and his free hand was moving to Y/N's clit, keeping up the stimulation that Duff had been providing.

"Come on Y/N, cum for us..." Duff moaned brokenly by her ear, and Y/N obeyed.

She put a hand over her mouth, stopping any accidental moans from coming out, as her orgasm washed over her in strong waves, knocking the air out of her lungs for brief seconds.

The comedown felt weird with so many people around, but she felt so good that it didn't bother her. Duff was pulling out of her and fixing their clothes while Steven used a few abandoned napkins on their table to clean his own hand and Y/N's.

"That was... really fucking good..." Duff breathed out, and she could tell he was smirking behind her.

Steven leaned over a planted a single kiss under her ear, mumbling a soft thank you before focusing back on the conversation Slash was having with the others.

Y/N rested against Duff, doing her best not to moan at the feeling of Duff's cum leaking out of her and thinking about how weird it was that they hadn't got caught.

A few seconds after Steven had joined the conversation, Slash was looking at her with a smirk on his lips. "Do I get a turn too or...?"

"Fuck off." She rolled her eyes with a small chuckle, picking up her abandoned drink.

------

Thank you so much for reading. Likes, reblogs, comments and any kind of way you show me you liked this are endlessly appreciated💛

Requests are closed.

taglist: @curly-hudson​ @agroupiewhore​

Thanks @dustnbones​ for beta-reading this; check out her fic blog @dustnbonesfics​💛  

[harringtonheartache]

Daybreak | Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen 

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Lab Escapee! Reader?

Summary: Part fifteen of this fic. Slow it down, what is going on here? Hopper needs to know.

Word Count: 2,300 +

Warning(s): Mild cussing

A/N: I’m not entirely fond of how I ended this chapter but I need to decide what direction I want the story to go in... Anyway, I hope you can forgive me and enjoy reading! 

Stacked neatly, Mike’s VHS tapes sat on Steve’s coffee table centered in front of the living room couch. Next to them were Steve’s socked feet, also stacked on top of one another as his legs stretched out before him. The credits for Indiana Jones rolled down the TV screen, and Nine’s eyes trailed across the words. Steve stood from his spot next to her on the couch, and gave her a puzzled look when she shot him one first. “You’re not-” she started, but her eyes traveled back to the screen. “Are you actually reading the credits?” Steve said, amusement in his voice. She looked back to him, giving up on the fast-scrolling text. “I didn’t know what they were,” she told him.

A smile dragged slowly across Steve’s face as he progressed into light laughter. “You don’t have to read those, they aren’t part of the story,” he explained. Nine cracked a smile as well, a breath of air leaving her mouth between her curled lips as if she were relieved. “Oh”. 

Steve crouched by the TV now, removing the tape from the player and finding its respective cover to put it away in. “So, what did you think?” he asked, turning his head to Nine as the tape snapped into place in the plastic case. 

“I liked it, it was nice to focus on other people’s problems for a while,” she said, and he laughed again. “Agreed”. 

About to engage in further discussion of the plot, Nine sat up and parted her lips to speak. Beating her to action, a chime rang through the house as someone outside pressed the doorbell. A recurring situation that had grown less scary and more irritating. Steve sighed as he stood up and looked to Nine with an apologetic expression, as if it were him outside ringing to be let in. 

It was Hopper. Chief of police returned to the Harrington residence as he said he would. The site of an authority at his door was inherently startling to Steve, but he let him inside as he thought over how long ago it was Hopper had been in his home, eyeing the empty space and scolding him to put an ice pack on his face. He realized now that he never did. 

-

Nine sat in the same seat she had occupied before, but this time her posture was stiff. She had first crossed her legs, one on top of the other, but moved to undo this after a minute. Her fingertips squeezed at folds in the fabric of her borrowed sweatpants, and she wished her injured arm hadn’t left her unable to borrow a shirt with long sleeves as well. So she substituted one jittery act for another. Beside Nine to her right, Steve was close; turned towards her slightly and hunched over just a little as if he were going to whisper to her a secret. Maybe he’d give her all the answers to the questions she would be asked. 

Hopper sat across from the two like a marriage counselor for a young couple. He leaned forward, forearms on his knees as if to get down to Nine’s level, to seem less dominating. She still wanted to back up, despite the intention.

“I don’t want to unsettle you, I just have to understand”. He started off with a half-apology after reading her body language, but continued on even when his sentence didn’t seem to make a dent in her demeanor. “I need to know more about where you came from — the lab”. He said the last two words as if he were reading them from a list, although looked straight ahead, trying to steal a moment of eye contact, even if it were accidental on Nine’s part. She only looked down, counting how long she could stand to hold her fingernail sharply against the pad of her thumb before ceasing the pain and taking the pressure away to watch the indent she had made in her skin fade. 

“Do we really have to do this?” Steve interrupted an interview that had hardly begun, opposing it with one question. 

“Yes, Steve, we do”. Hopper’s tone was more harsh when speaking to the boy. “Be grateful that I didn’t make her come into the station. I am going beyond off-road in terms of formalities,” he scolded. “I have a lot on my plate here, I just need to ask a few questions for now and the rest can be sorted out later”. 

Nine looked up, but only to catch a look at Steve’s face. He was sighing through his nose, biting into his lower lip and looking off to his right as he halfway rolled his eyes. His head swiveled back to face forward, then he peaked at Nine with large eyes. 

“How did you first end up there?” Hopper asked. Nine squinted, almost offended he hadn’t caught up on the basics of the story. She looked up to study the sheriff’s face for a moment, seeing only genuine curiosity on his features. She looked him straight in the eye as she responded. “I was born there”. Her tone was blunt, angry words leaving her mouth like weaponry. 

Hopper’s brows twitched, unexpectant of her harsh delivery or the answer itself. He sat back against his chair and opened his mouth to retaliate with another question. “Are there others, then?” he said simply, prettying his tone as if to ask nicely. 

“Other what? Kids?” Nine returned with another question, although she had understood his without the need for specification. He only nodded. “Yeah, there are others. I’m only number nine,” she said. 

Steve’s eyes were stuck on her as she spoke, a look of unease on his face. He appeared more concerned than Nine did at this point, but her twitching fingers reminded her of her anxiety. Another crescent-shaped impression faded slowly from her skin. 

Hopper’s next question was thick. “What did they do to you?”

Now Nine sighed, eyes traveling back to her lap for a moment as if recharging. “A lot. Ran tests — different things that evaluate and challenge our abilities.” She knew her response would set her up for a plethora of further questions, trying to keep it short in an attempt to fend off this inevitability. The look of confusion wasn’t wavering from Hopper’s expression, and she watched him gear up to ask another question. 

“Abilities? What does that mean?” 

Next to Nine, Steve shifted, his own two hands wringing together as if he had been asked the question himself. She glanced at him, then continued. “Specifically? Telekinesis, mostly.” She left out details of her other capabilities, leaving Hopper with a summary she’d hope would satisfy him. 

“Okay, come on… what?” He wasn’t satisfied. 

Nine’s voice was smaller this time, as if to make up for the increased tension in Hopper’s delivery. “I’d show you-” Steve cut her off, finally getting another word in. “No! You passed out at the lab because you over-exerted yourself. You’re still recovering, you can’t use your powers”. He didn’t even look at Hopper, acting as if he weren’t there at all. He searched Nine’s eyes, his own wavering back and forth in his attempt to read her expression. Hopper spoke again and the two broke their intense eye-contact. “Let’s just - calm down”. He sensed that he was losing both of those in front of him to the swelling unease of the room. Sitting up straight in his chair, he exhaled in demonstration. 

He dropped the subject, mentally scribbling the words telekinetic abilities with a question mark after them in his mind. “How did you escape? It’s a pretty secure building from my personal experience,” Hopper huffed, leaning back as cigarette-scented air left his mouth. 

Nine looked up this time, searching for an answer on the ceiling between cracks in the plaster. The sound of the Hawkins' Lab security alarm played in her head, uninvited and accompanied by vibrant visuals of running underneath it’s red light. “Something went wrong that night,” she started. “I-” she altered her speech, abandoning words that painted her responsible. “They reached the upside-down. Something from inside escaped, and I took advantage of the distraction.” 

She watched Hopper’s face as he processed her summary of events, then stole a glance at Steve like a child who was desperate for their parents to believe a poor excuse. Hopper moved along — the specifics of her getaway weren’t important to him right now anyway. What stood taller than Nine’s breakout was the something that escaped from somewhere he didn’t know of. “The upside down? What is that? That a place?” His tone was becoming more ragged, the unconventionality of this interview getting to him. He was used to routine, if anything boring work: a group of teenagers caught stealing candy from Mrs. Alexander’s corner store, a stale argument turned violent between two men at a local bar - things expected from a small town. This past week had introduced Hop to first-ever’s. First ever missing child case. First ever superhuman lab experiment escapee. 

Steve opened his mouth, shut it immediately. This felt invasive. This had been a secret between three, and this fourth member of the club brought doubtful glares and true consequence. He hadn’t known what he had expected, (Nine to spend the rest of her life hiding in his bedroom as his personal little secret?) but with the town’s sheriff sitting across from him in his own home, his reality felt menacing. Something about it seemed punishable. 

“There is a gate, like a passageway. It leads to the upside down, this place that- that’s like another dimension beyond our own,” Nine spoke. “A flip-side.” Hopper looked defeated, and felt his pants pocket to make sure his pack of cigarettes still laid underneath the fabric. It did, but he didn’t take them out. 

“There isn’t much else. We filled you in. Can we be done?” Steve phrased his question as if he were a kid wishing to be excused from dinner with his parents. A bit of expectancy in his voice; confidence he hoped would end the ‘check-in’ turned interview sooner. 

“No, no, no,” Hopper spoke aggressively again as he shifted back to conversation with Steve. “You did not fill me in on anything, she did.” Credit where credit was due. “There is still a lot I don’t know about Hawkins’ lab, and if I have more questions,” he spoke with passive-aggressive simplicity, like letters typed out in bold, “I will ask them”. 

Nine didn’t like his deserving attitude; it was flashy and ugly, although fitting of the uniform. “I’m done,” she spoke with Steve’s confidence. 

Hopper looked back to her, unhidden shock on his face as he had not considered his head-butting with Steve a true threat until now. He looked over the bruised girl in front of him, and sighed into his hands as he reevaluated the situation. Bringing his head back up, he spoke with a more controlled tone. “Okay, look. I am sorry.” His mustache twitched as he tried to find the words. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice, I'm just… confused.”

Silence draped over the room as Nine contemplated forgiveness. “I just have a few more questions, please.” Hopper added. As much as he wanted to butt in, Steve stayed quiet and let Nine decide if she would hear the sheriff’s finalizing questions. She looked at the man with an unchanging look on her face, one close to anger. She only nodded though, signaling him to continue despite her facial expression that had already convinced him the answer was ‘no’. He raised his eyebrows, almost in awe at her permission, then mentally stumbled over what it was he had intended to ask next. “Something escaped. What the hell was it?” 

Now it was Steve with violent visuals flashing in his mind. His ankle stung in remembrance. 

“I don’t know, some kind of creature. It’s big. It stands on two legs and towers over any human it encounters. It has no face, just a huge mouth with sharp teeth. Claws, too,” Nine said. Next to her, Steve wondered how she had such a clean mental picture of the ‘creature’. His own was scribbled and dark, an outcome of that night in the woods. 

“Okay…” Hopper was at a loss, flipping through an index of his personal experiences in his mind to try and find something to compare this to. “A creature with no face...” Hopper breathed out. Nine only nodded in response, and he looked to Steve as if he could verify the information. The teenager nodded his head slowly, his lips pressed together. An ‘I know, but it’s true,’ look. 

Hopper turned a page over in his mental notebook. “Uhm,” he started, his question lodging in his throat. He looked at the floor as he tried to loosen it. “One more thing,” he started. “I was told that you may have information on Will Byers. Is this true?” He regained his confidence, finding the natural groove of his speaking voice. Steve felt a surge of dread, air filling space deep in his chest as he inhaled. He wished that information hadn’t been used to barter for Hopper’s help. The visual of Nine sitting in a room painted a stark white — a setting his mind borrowed from Hawkins’ Lab, he realized — being pricked at and questioned, tested and retested under the idea that she would be useful to the investigation. Authorities from Hawkins’ own police station standing over her as she was returned to a place similar to the one she had escaped; a room filled with people who wanted to use her for her powers. 

Nine answered truthfully, and Steve chewed at his tongue. Hopper stayed silent for a moment, as if he weren’t expecting something he was already told to be true when he repeated it himself. “What do you know?” 

Her voice was softest when answering this question above all asked previously, words spoken slowly like they’d run off it delivered too eagerly. “I know where he is”.

---

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[skia-oura]

Dipper’s Day Around the World

A/N: This is 21k written over the span of like 6 months, so buckle in folks.

ao3

_______________________________________________________________

December 4th, 5:58 AM EST

           Dipper didn’t exactly sleep, anymore, but he was close enough to rest and unconcern with the matters of the rest of the world, sandwiched between Torako and Bentley in their bed, that the sting of the summons—friendly, from a personal circle, not from the standard one that strangers used—startled him into a disgruntled moan. Torako, a lighter sleeper in the morning, the early bird between them, twitched and then hummed an inquiry. “Izza…summons,” Dipper mumbled back before he turned and pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

           “Mmm,” she said. After a while, she asked, “Someone you know?”

           He could hear her voicebox buzzing under the skin at his lips, could feel it vibrating lightly into the cartilage (manifested cartilage, yes, but cartilage as long as he wanted it to be) of his nose. A very dim part of him strengthened by still-waking awareness wanted to open his mouth and bite down into the flesh a little, just to feel it echo more directly into the not-bones of his teeth. The rest of him knew that it was a bad idea and was a sure way to get the heel of her palm slamming into his nose hard enough to break and hurt. It wasn’t even omniscience that told him this, just unfortunate prior experience.

           She still let him close, though, and so he nuzzled in. “Yeah,” he sighed, but he was mostly awake now. “It’s a friends and family circle. Even though it’s at—oh, look, it’s 6 AM,” he said.

           Torako reached over and up and ruffled at his hair. He sat up and smoothed it flat, glowering down at her. The motion dislodged Bentley’s arm from his waist but the Bentley that lived in this house was a deeper sleeper than the Bentley that returned to the apartment he’d been kidnapped from, and so he did nothing but scrunch up his nose (adorable) and sleep-mumble unintelligible noises before relaxing back into deeper sleep. Dipper sighed and relaxed shoulders he hadn’t even realized were tense.

           “Go gettem, Dips,” Torako whispered, eye cracked open in a half-awake smile. “We’re gonna have breakfast bout nine, ok? Ben’n I got busy days planned.”

           “Okay,” Dipper said. He bent down and pressed a kiss to Torako’s forehead. “Let Bentley know where I’ve gone when he wakes up, okay?”

           “Mmmkay,” Torako said, then yawned and snuggled back into the covers. “Later gater.”

           The summons stung him again. Dipper hovered above the bed for a moment, wings spread, then melted from comfortable (but elegant!!) pajamas into a more formal (but somewhat casual) suit before focusing on tracing the summons back to its locus, and slipping from bedroom on the East Coast to elsewhere.

December 4th, 11:01 AM BST

           Elsewhere turned out to be another bedroom, in front of somebody he knew (Soos, no—Olla, her name is Olla) in England. He also knew that her mother would destroy them if she found them together, and it was the middle of the day and wait, what was Olla doing home anyways?

           He blinked down at her. “Why are you even in your dorm? Don’t you have classes?”

           “Alcor,” Olla moaned. Her hair was a mass of messily plaited braids, ribbons bright but askew. “You gotta help me. You’re my only hope of passing this stupid chemistry class I decided to take with my friend but we’re both hopeless—not hopeless, but definitely for sure 100% in over our heads—and for some weird reason most of the people in class aren’t keen on talking to me long enough to do studying or they’re busy or they’re just pain rude, please save me.”

           Dipper sat down on her bed, which was next to the desk she was sitting at. Olla Sussally twisted the chair around in place, leaned forward to heave something up off the floor, then turned back around. In her hands—fingernails painted vivid, somewhat chipped colors that shifted weakly from hue to hue—was a very large tub, and in that tub was the biggest horde of candy Dipper had seen anywhere other than a grocery store. His mouth, despite any efforts to the contrary, began to fill with saliva.

           The memory of Olla’s mother was just terrifying enough to remind him that his skin was actually prickling with discharged magical energy. “Your mom changed the wards again, didn’t she? It’s a shame they didn’t work, but she’ll know you summoned me, she always does, and she’s always so pissed even if I didn’t technically approach you.”

           Olla moaned and tipped her head back for a moment. “I know I know, it’s so dumb and I hate it yet my mum really is the best and I love her n’all, but like, I have got to get this chemistry in the brain space as fast and fully as possible so can we talk about mum later? I have a candy bag per concept and you’re, like, supposed to be super smart, right? You’re supposed to know everything.”

           Dipper cocked his head at her. Olla wasn’t smiling, not even nervously. Well, Dipper thought to himself, Mrs. Sussally couldn’t be too mad if this meant Olla a) was less stressed, and b) passed chemistry.

           “Okay,” he said, sticking his hand out. “Deal.”  

           “Oh gosh oh thank you you’re the best,” Olla breathed out, then reached out and shook his hand vigorously with both of hers. Blue fire bloomed, then sputtered when she whirled around and pulled a textbook towards her—which, considering the fact that Olla was one of the most laid-back and calm people he knew, was concerning. “Okay, so, let’s start with chemical formulas, because hoo my man—my demon? I’ll have to ask you later—but, like, there’s molecular formula, and then there’s empirical formula is sometimes the same but sometimes different, and it has to do with math which is fine but I still don’t get why.”

           Dipper blinked at her, then reached forward and pulled a bag of malted biscuits from Olla’s candy stash. She had swiped several worksheets and class notes up to hover in the air between them. “It’s easier to deal with some chemical equations that way,” he said.　“Look—here, at this problem…”

_______________________________________________________________

           Halfway through explaining the Gillespie-Nyholm theory in regards to double and triple molecular bonds, Olla’s phone rang. Dipper stopped, stared at it. Olla looked down. The display read: ‘Mum <3 <3 <3.’ The hearts twirled in circles and threw off little digital glittery sparks.

           “Aw,” Olla groaned, tipping her head back. “It’s only been, like, an hour. Come on, mum!”

           “Maybe she hasn’t noticed yet?” Dipper ventured. He stuck his fingers in his mouth to lick off the sour sugar particles and eyed the still mostly-full tub of candy. “If she hasn’t, we could definitely get through another few concepts. I’ve only had four bags.” He wanted at least another three. Maybe five. Ten would be best.

           Olla stuck out her tongue at him, took a deep breath, and then answered the phone. “Hey, mum, what’s up, howsit going, what’s on, you at lunch or something, it’s so weird for you to call me now haha you know class just finished!”

           There was a muffled noise, the sound of somebody talking just out of earshot. Dipper tipped his head to the side. Would eavesdropping even be worth it?

           “Woah, that’s weird, the wards are juuuuust fine here!” Olla cast her eyes up at the ceiling. Dipper looked up as well, and winced a little at how almost soggy some of the wards looked, bent out of space from where he’d pushed his way through. Well, their cover was blown. He cast a longing look at the candy bags, and wished for a reality in which he could earn them. “I guess your alert app is just fritzing out again!”

           Silence. Then, several garbled words, Olla’s eyes widening and cutting to him. She laughed a little nervously. “What do you mean, mum? Sure, I wasn’t in Mid-Millenium Literature class, but that’s just because chem is kicking my ass into a sad bit of lumpy dough and I needed to take time—no, no, no tutors, just me and my cute little—wait you’re right outside the building??”

           Dipper froze again. He met Olla’s eyes. As Olla’s mother started talking again, Olla flapped her free hand at him frantically, mouthing go go go!! as she listened.

           If he really wanted to, he could take Olla’s mom. But a) he respected her, b) Olla really loved her, and c) Olla’s mother actually kind of just a little bit intimidated him when he wasn’t hopped up on anxiety and possessiveness and fear for his Mizar’s safety. So Dipper grimaced, lifted a hand in farewell, and blipped out of Olla’s dorm room with the fleeting thought of the next place he could go on such short notice.

 December 4th, 9:29 PM AEST

           It was, perhaps, not the best idea to suddenly appear on the couch right next to Tommy and Filara Hangar—they were a little jumpy—but Dipper wasn’t anything if not dramatic. He slung one leg over the other, slipped into something a little more formal mid-blip, and set his hands on top of his knee so that the fingers were curled a little over the kneecap. “Hello,” he said, pitched just high enough to be heard over the evening news.

           Next to him, Tommy Hangar screeched and nearly scrambled over the back of the couch. Filara Hangar seized a wineglass off the table and flung it at him with incredible accuracy. Taken off-guard, Dipper had only a split second to decide whether to let it land or whether to pluck it out of thin air. He hesitated, and the decision was made for him—the glass smacked into his nose and red wine splashed up and over his face. Blinking, liquid clinging to his eyelashes, Dipper said, “Well, that was rude but I get it, I guess.”

           Tommy wheezed from behind the couch. “What the fuck, you feathering fuckwit,” she said. “Holy shit you can’t do that to us without giving a ring or tapping out a coupla knocks first. I hate it when you do that! It freaks me the fuck out.”

           Filara, on her part, was staring at her outstretched hand, bewilderment blooming all over her aura like morning glories. “I threw a glass of wine at Alcor the Dreambender,” she said, a little faintly.

           “And hit,” Dipper groused. He materialized a stylish handkerchief from out of his vest pocket, snapped it open, and dabbed at his face just to emphasize his point. “You’re lucky that this suit is literally materialized out of the power I possess and isn’t actual fabric, because that would be a bitch to clean.”

           “Die mad about it,” Tommy said. Dipper opened his mouth to respond to that, but Tommy widened her eyes at him and he wisely shut his mouth. She hauled herself back up and over the couch to sit squarely between Dipper and her wife. “We wouldn’t pay for it anyways, it’s your own feckin fault for slipping in here out of thin air at—” she glanced at the news “—9:34 PM, what the hell and why are you even here?”

           Dipper waved the concern aside as though it were a physical thing he could clear the air of. He finished dabbing the wine off his face and snapped the handkerchief again to disperse it from its momentary existence. At the same time, the wine was pulled out of the non-fabric of his clothes and vanished. “My last appointment was cut very abruptly short, and I’d been meaning to check in on you two so I figured that now was as good a time as any. How are you?”

           Filara blinked at him. “I hit Alcor the Dreambender with a half-full glass of wine,” she said, a little glee in her voice and in her eyes.

           “Yes you did, honey,” Tommy said. She patted her wife’s hand and smiled. “It was a hot damn moment of glory and I love you even more than I already did.”

           “Didn’t you throw ice water on him a few months ago?” Filara cocked her head and looked Tommy up and down, lightning bright sparks of realization fading into soft ombre appreciation.

           Dipper frowned. There was no need to rub it in, he totally could have stopped that from happening—both the wine and the water. “Yes she did, and we’ve already covered the wine stuff, how are you?”

           “It’s 9:34 PM,” Tommy drawled, turning her attention away from her wife to glower. “What do you think??”

           “Now, now,” Filara said, rubbing at Tommy’s shoulders from behind. “I know it’s late, but we haven’t seen him in a while and I threw wine on him, so I think that it would only be fair to entertain him with a little conversation, don’t you think? I’m sure he’s a little lonely, aren’t you?”

           Filara smiled at him. She looked nothing like Lionel, but Dipper read him into the quirk at the corner of her mouth that said she was still smugly amused at her unintentional victory over him. The little heartache that came with the thought moved Dipper to look past it and the quite frankly presumptive opinion that he was lonely, he wasn’t lonely. He was fine.

           “No,” he said, “but Bentley and Torako are busy sleeping right now, and I’m awake and out so I wanted to talk to you.” The more he thought about it, though, the more tempting the thought of blipping back home and crawling into bed for snuggles was. He absolutely was not lonely.

           Tommy wrinkled her nose. “That’s right, it is stupid early over there still, isn’t it?”

           “Yeah,” he said, though stupid early was a relative term when it came to individualistic habits and sleep patterns. For some people in the same time zone, it was stupid late.

           Filara leaned over and propped her elbow on Tommy’s shoulder. Her near-invisible lenses flashed a little, and she grinned. “So how are Ms. Gorgeous and Mr. Sigils?”

           “Adjusting.” Dipper leaned back into the arm of the couch and twisted a saccharine drink out of nothing to sip at. “We just finished settling into the new house nine days ago. Torako or Bentley might have sent you pictures?”

           Tommy had been frowning at Dipper ever since he pulled out his drink. “Dude,” she said, slowly, “I know you’re a demon and all, but that’s rude, man, just ask for a drink.”

           “Oh, it’s quite all right,” Filara said, patting Tommy’s arm. “If he brings his own drink, that means that there’s more wine for me. And yes, Torako did send me pictures of the house. Bentley didn’t, but he made up for it by sending me updates on how things were going, and I very much appreciate it.”

           With a sigh, Tommy leaned back into the couch and crossed her arms.

           “Did she send you pictures of the tables?” Dipper drawled, swirling his drink around in its glass. “Mine was the best one.”

           “That’s not what she said.” Filara raised her eyebrows. “In fact, she said that you all voted hers the best, and that’s the solid truth there.”

           Dipper sniffed and took a sip of his not-beverage, mentally pulled together his arguments in favor of not Torako winning their unofficial competition, and launched into them with a passion that Bentley would have described as ‘overkill’ and Torako as ‘desperately in denial.’

_______________________________________________________________

December 4th, 8:39 PM PHT

           Dipper only burned through an hour before Tommy had enough and kicked him out during a lull in conversation, citing that she actually wanted to spend time with her wife, not the dude who came around to pick her wife’s brain and engage in furious debate over the most mundane things before turning around and treating the most abstract concepts with the same fervor. He’d relented and accepted a couple drinks—overly sugary and laden with alcohol that couldn’t affect his non-existent metabolism—and found himself having made off with one of the Hangars’ drinking glasses on accident. He shrugged, sent it off to the Mindscape Shack, and figured it would make a good excuse for another visit.

           In the meantime, it was time to visit somebody very new to their current life.

           Dipper closed his eyes and followed one of the faint bonds inside of himself to a small apartment of Cebu—Grand Courtyard Bldg 5, apartment 607, nursery with the window facing north-east—in the evening, when its sole occupant was sleeping soundly, parents in the other room finishing dinner and relaxing before the baby woke up again. There was a personalized cam-monitor in the corner, anti-tamper sigils that reminded Dipper of Bentley (and when he looked at them for more than a split second, he saw Bentley working on them as part of a senior project for undergrad, and how strange, how incredible to think that they’d gone so far from that point, blooming into existence under his fingertips), and Dipper only spared a single thought to artificially looping the input past the anti-tamper sigils (they were Bentley’s, of course he knew how to get around them) before drifting closer to the crib.

           Lloyd Remnit had not lasted long after their visit, after Dipper tore the information from his mind and Fantino had died as a result. Stan had always given everything for family, and it always hurt when he failed to protect them. (many Stans had summoned him over the years. Some paid the ultimate price for their loved ones. Some paid a different price, but it all fell to pieces around them anyways. Others, ones who hadn’t summoned him, had summoned others instead—one had given away her soul to be consumed. Dipper had torn that demon to pieces).

           This time around, given how his last incarnation had ended up at odds with Alcor, he was determined to have Stan on his side. Which meant—this.

           “Hey,” Dipper said softly, breathily. In her crib, María Elena ‘Inyang’ Dimayuga lay on her back, fingers curled into soft fists. He took a moment to take her in—a little on the large side, for a two-month-old, eyelashes dark and soft against her puffy cheeks, baby hair thin clouds across the crown of her skull. “Hey. I’m going to be your Uncle Dipper. Your parents don’t know yet, but they don’t know a lot of things about you yet either, do they? They’re still calling you Aweng. Don’t worry, they’ll figure it out eventually.”

           Inyang shifted in her sleep and scrunched her nose. Dipper stilled, but her eyes didn’t open, and her barely-there, underdeveloped aura didn’t shift suddenly in that telltale breath between sleep and wake that infants tended towards. After a few moments, he slid from stillness into careful motion, chin propped in the heart of his palm, elbows on the edge of the crib, ankles-crossed mid-air. His wings fluttered once or twice. He sighed a little.

           “It’s been a few years since I’ve interacted with somebody so young,” Dipper confessed. “Not since Lata, at least. Nobody’s been stupid enough to summon me with a newborn sacrifice recently, and the chances to meet babies like you are otherwise pretty slim in my line of work.” He laughed a little. Inyang let out a breathy sigh of an exhale. “But you’re family, you know? I should—I should stick around for you.”

           Inyang’s fingers tightened into fists, then relaxed. He looked at her nails. She probably needed them trimmed, soon. Dipper remembered sharp baby nails, and they were a somewhat discordant experience when the rest of them was so soft, so malleable, so easy to swallow—

           Dipper closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and chased the thought down into the deepest, most terrible part of him. Then he opened his eyes and looked back down at Inyang.

           Inyang looked back, dark eyes large in her small face.

           They stared at each other for a few seconds, Inyang frozen by the uncertainty of an unfamiliar face hovering over her, Dipper by the very human instinct of ‘maybe if I don’t move, this very small child will just go back to sleep instead of crying.’ Despite being a dream demon who didn’t need moist eyeballs, Dipper was the one who blinked first.

           Inyang’s aura twisted. She let out the start of a choking cry. Galvanized by memories of caring for babies over the years, Dipper started shushing her, reaching into her crib on reflex. His sharp talons faded into stubby nubs, his gloves melted away to materialized skin. “Hey, hey, no, it’s all right—”

           Footsteps outside the door. Moments before he managed to pick Inyang up, Dipper frantically twisted himself into the shadows under her crib. Seconds later, the door opened.

           “Oh, that’s odd,” the parent said. Dipper blinked, and there it was—Alisha Dimayuga, journalist, wife to Jolan Dimayuga, owner of a small clothing boutique that custom-sized for all its customers. “The camera didn’t pick up on you waking up—hush, hush, sweet little Aweng, here I am, it’s okay. Why don’t we go see your Zaza, hmm? Zi would love to hold you, love to kiss your precious little nose and all the pain away.”

           Dipper stared up at the bottom of the crib, seeing Alisha pick up Inyang and soothe her without physically seeing it. Alisha rocked from side to side with each step, murmuring about how hard it was to be a baby as she slowly made her way out the room, Inyang still crying pitifully in tired-sleepy-pain-overstimulation. She was going through one of her growth spells, Dipper knew suddenly, though he’d always known it. It hurt, to grow so much all at once and not understand anything, and thankfully it was knowledge that faded quickly. Dipper still remembered his second birth, how things changed and ached and felt like fire melting and reforging and melting his bones all at once. The pain of it, over and over, all at once after stretches of nothing.

           He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

           Dipper considered revealing himself to Alisha and her partner. He thought about introducing himself, but the thought of Alisha’s fear and Jolan’s terror-courage and the rift that would possibly set between him and Inyang made him hesitate, caught between the soft shadows of the nursery and the light spilling in through the open door. He stayed for a few moments, listening to Alisha and Jolan’s soft voices in the other room, hearing Inyang’s cries get quieter and quieter until she was silent.

           Maybe another time, Dipper told himself. He coalesced back into his humanoid form next to the crib, with its whale-patterned sheets and its pale linoliwood bars. He looked out the door, into the sliver of the hall he could see, and remembered other babies over the years that he had raised, or helped raise. Later, he told himself firmly. For sure.

           Dipper closed his eyes, breathed in deep, and blipped—

 December 4th, 8:54 AM EST

           —into his designated seat at the dining table, aka the chair that Torako had snatched for her temporary bedside table and kept falling out of bed for. Dipper might have—in the previous months—maybe on occasion scooted it just far enough out of reach that she would tumble out of the sheets. Just maybe on occasion, though. Not every night. That would just be suspicious.

           “Morning,” he chirped at Torako, who was sipping at a cup of coffee. He eyed it—hazelnut creamer, oof, she was anticipating a Day.

           “Hey,” Torako said. Across the table, Bentley’s forehead was flush against the wood surface. He groaned out something that Dipper interpreted as a greeting.

           “You never jump anymore,” Dipper complained. He crossed his arms and set them on the table, leaning forward. “It’s so disappointing.”

           “Dude, we’ve lived together for, like, eight years, of course I don’t jump anymore,” Torako said. Dipper hummed in absentminded agreement in order to hide the fact that he was as of that moment making plan after plan to startle the snot out of her. “Besides, now I have a Dipper-sensor as long as Bentley’s around—he moaned out something a second before you popped up.”

          Very kind of her to tell him what situation he needed to avoid in order to succeed. Torako really was her own worst enemy, because she should know by know that Dipper wasn’t nearly nice enough to not take advantage of such facts. “I had forgotten about that.” He actually almost had. “Bentley conscious yet?”

           Bentley groaned again. Torako picked up her fork, stabbed a sausage on her plate, and shoved it in her mouth. Dipper squinted his eyes at the remaining sausages and wondered if he could get away with sneaking one off her plate.

           “Kind of. I think he had a rough last hour of sleep; he was really groggy when I finally shook him awake.”

           Half-formed schemes of how he was going to make Torako scream in surprise fell to the back burner as he cast a more appraising eye over Bentley and his aura. Bentley kept saying that he didn’t want them to treat him like something fragile, like those delectable sugar cubes that were 90% air, 9% sugar and 1% flavoring and were so thin they fell apart the moment they touched your tongue, but Bentley was also dealing with PTSD among a host of other problems so Dipper was going to worry. Especially since, you know, exhaustion crept and shifted slow through his aura in a way that Dipper hadn’t seen since last week.

           “Hey, Ben. Looking tired there.”

           Bentley didn’t make a noise. Instead, he lifted his head up just enough to glare at Dipper. Dipper winced, both at the animosity and at the tiredness strung at the corners of his eyes and in the crease of his forehead. Bentley glared even more.

           Torako whistled. “I’m not sure, but it might have actually gotten worse?”

           “Shut up,” Bentley groused. He reached out and nearly knocked his mug of coffee over (and if it weren’t bad enough that he was drinking coffee, it was worse because even all the way across the table, Dipper’s teeth could feel the half-cup of sugar Bentley had poured in) before tugging it close and sipping. It must have tasted awful. Bentley didn’t blink an eye.

           Dipper looked at Torako. Torako glanced at him. They both decided that shuddering was probably not the wisest course of action, with Ben so grumpy. That being said, Torako still opened her mouth. Really, she was her own worst enemy.

           “So you’re…still going to work today?”

           Ben grunted and shifted his gaze to her, narrow-eyed. “I gotta,” he said. “There’s a new sigils company being built here, and there’s a…what’s the word…mandatory, right, there’s a mandatory meeting at 9:30 about it.”

           “What about a teleconference?” Torako speared another sausage. Dipper, momentarily distracted, looked down at her plate and stretched nonchalantly. If his hand was a little closer to her plate than before, well, that was just coincidence.

           Shaking his head, Bentley took another sip of his coffee before saying, “Confidential information. Gotta be in person.”

           Dipper, after a blink and a quick rush of information, thought that it might be more that Bentley was being stubborn about ‘earning his keep’ and less about ‘having to go to the meeting in person.’ Dipper was actually pretty sure that Karl Svinhish would happily come to visit just in order to fill Bentley in on the details. He considered the pros and cons of actually saying that, and decided to keep his mouth shut. Instead, Torako distracted, he set his fingers right at the edge of her plate.

           Torako snorted and pointed her fork at Bentley. “And Karl Svinhish wouldn’t bend over backwards for you, no, no he wouldn’t.”

           Bentley actually hissed at her and bared his teeth. Torako’s face went—not pale, no, but she had the expression of somebody who has just realized that they’re treading right at the edge of too far and should really go back before they’re mauled. She stabbed down for her sausages.

           Dipper, right on the edge of getting himself a tasty salty snack, howled as her fork stabbed right into the back of his hand.

           “Oh fuck,” Torako said, jumping out of her chair. “Oh fuck, how the fuck did your hand get there, what even—”

           Dipper felt torn between cackling and screaming. It really, really hurt in all the best and worst ways. “You stabbed me!”

           Bentley, at some point, had half-pushed himself out of his chair. He lowered himself down into it, lifted his coffee mug, and raised his eyebrows as Torako pulled the fork back out of Dipper’s hand. He sipped.

           “Shut up,” Dipper giggled at him, tears streaming down his face.

           “I’m too tired to be nice,” Bentley muttered. “You were asking for it.”

           Torako blinked. She looked down at her sausages. “Were you—trying to take my breakfast?”

           “No,” Dipper lied. He licked at the puncture holes in the back of his hand, then willed them to go away. His blood tasted almost like copper, today. “Of course not.”

           Torako glowered at him, and pointed the fork. “You were.”

           “Never,” he said. There was a tug somewhere in his gut, and he recognized family—friend—Batoor a split second before he said, “and you can’t prove otherwise, Batoor’s calling, see you guys later bye!”

           Torako threw her fork. He disappeared before it could reach him.

 December 4th, 4:09 PM GMT

             Dipper blipped back into physical space upside-down and in a pretty snazzy pair of electric blue ruffled slacks. He craned his neck back to look Batoor in the eye. “You called?”

           “Someday, I hope you realize how old you sound when you say that,” Batoor complained. He was sitting on his desk, a textbook in his lap and a pencil stuck behind his ear. His curtains were open, the dorm courtyard below empty but for the few students taking advantage of a clear afternoon to get some much-needed sun. Dipper tilted his head and pointed.

           “Is that kid stacking chips on her nose?”

           “Undoubtedly,” Batoor said, not even looking. “It’s a new fad. You wouldn’t understand them, being an old geezer.”

           Sometimes, Dipper regretted introducing Torako to Batoor. He extra regretted that Torako and Batoor had exchanged contact information, and that Batoor was picking up on some bad habits of Torakos, like bullying Dipper with no regard for how impressively powerful he was. No respect these days.

           “I understand fads,” Dipper grumbled.

           Outside, chip-stacking student made it to four chips high. Four chips wouldn’t be nearly so impressive if they weren’t being stacked corner to corner. Dipper was kind of jealous—he wasn’t sure he would be able to do that without taking advantage of his powers.

           “You keep telling yourself that,” Batoor said. “Anyways—I need help with this history paper. You know about history, right?”

           Dipper fancied that, if he’d never become a dream demon caught in the claws of near-eternity (he knew that he wouldn’t last forever, but it may as well be—it basically would be, as far as this universe was concerned, and more than that he couldn’t quite wrap even his demonically-altered brain around), he would have been a scientist, or a mathematician, or an over-qualified pizza store manager (which if it came with free pizza, wouldn’t be a half-bad gig.) At almost-thirteen, he hadn’t been as interested in history beyond conspiracy theories and supernatural stories. Now, though—“My middle name may as well be Historical Record,” Dipper said. He flipped over mid-air. His braid fell over his shoulder as well.

           Batoor blinked at him. “Those pants are…new,” he said, in English. Dipper narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

           “Not really,” he said. “What, you don’t like them?” Mabel had been the one who pestered him into conjuring them for himself in the first place. He’d gotten a whole cheesecake out of that deal, and the mortification of them had barely been enough for his young-demon ego to deal with. Now, though—they were ruffled, and bright, and Mabel’s, and that was enough.

           “And the braid is different,” Batoor said.

           Dipper looked down at it, pulling it further into view with his left hand. He flipped the end of it between his fingers. “ Yeah, I don’t usually go for this style. It’s fun, to change things up.”

           Batoor blinked. The scales around his eyes shimmered. “Yes,” he said, thoughtfully, “I guess so. Anyways, I need help with the history paper. About history. In English. I am older so class is harder? It’s a high-level class.”

           “Okay,” Dipper said, easily enough. It wasn’t like Torako or Bentley would be better company now, and they were going to be busy anyways. “What you got to pay me, then?”

           Grinning, Batoor opened a desk drawer with his foot. Dipper perked up despite himself, shoulders dropping and eyebrows raising. “Candy,” Batoor said, “and snacks. From Kabul.”

           Not as easily obtained as gummy peaches, here in Ireland. “Oh,” Dipper said. “I see what you’re doing. You’ve been talking to Torako.”

           “Of course,” Batoor said, before switching back to Dashto. “She’s the only one that can handle you, other than Bentley, and she’s the one with the Demonology degree. She’s been very helpful in my studies.”

           Dipper stilled. He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were doing a degree in Community-Building and Inter-Species Relations,” he said, slowly.

           “I am,” Batoor said. He reached inside the desk drawer and picked up a couple packages, one carefully-preserved mini gosh-e fil stuck in stasis, powdered sugar and chopped pistachios kept in place through the power of food-regulation preservation spells, and the other an assorted bag of koloocheh. A few of them were broken despite the spells, and Dipper knew they had to be good. Koloocheh were brittle cookies by nature, after all.

           “Oh,” Dipper said. He couldn’t look away from the treats for a second, then made himself because he could get a major deal out of these if by some small chance Batoor didn’t know any better. “They’re pretty good, but for a whole paper?”

           “And proofreading,” Batoor said. He smiled, as sweet as the sacrifice he was offering. “I know exactly how valuable these are. They’re not only delicious, they’re sentimental. My Oware bought them for my Transfer-Day. I haven’t had gosh-e fil since we left Afghanistan.”

           Oh fuck, Dipper thought. He felt a trickle of unease down the back of his neck a second before the realization hit him and he sunk to standing on the floor like a dumbass. “Oh,” he said again. “You’re doing a specialization in community law and advocacy, aren’t you.”

          Batoor grinned. “Demonology overlaps with law-writing classes a lot, you know. Anyways. For help finding relative articles about my history topic in both English and Dashto, assistance refining my arguments, and thorough proofreading of my English composition, I will give you both of these very valuable, sentimental treats, and maybe we can have some video game time together if my roommate doesn’t come back too early.”

           “That’s a big if,” Dipper said. “Do you have the new Red Rider game? The one that’s set in a magicless urban wasteland that you have to carefully scavenge tools and make intelligent allegiances in order to strategically rise to the top of the crime syndicate that’s taken over the city and make the ultimate choice whether to rule over all with an iron fist or transition to a better societal system?”

           Batoor stared for a moment. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You like that game?”

           “Well,” Dipper said. “I suppose I kind of do, yes, but not too much.” Dipper carefully did not mention that the open-story ending that mimicked the rewards and consequences of living a high-stakes human life scratched the same itch he had tried to, over and over and over in human skins that lasted not long enough. He also didn’t mention that the mathematics that went into calculating story paths from individual choices was jaw-droppingly incredible and he needed to see it in play for himself.

           Batoor nodded. Dipper narrowed his eyebrows in suspicion at the sparks of mirth and slowly unfurling anticipation in his aura.

           “Stop being amused,” Dipper said, pointing his lace-gloved finger at Batoor and scowling. “I kind of like it.”

           “Sure,” Batoor said with a perfectly straight face that was very at odds with the emotions that Dipper was reading. He held out his hand. “Anyways, I do have the game and we can play it if there is enough time. If there isn’t, we’ll play at the next opportunity feasible for both parties. Do we have a deal?”

           Dipper looked at the sweets. He tilted his head and thought about the promise of the game—which he was guaranteed to have a chance to play—and then about the difficulty of the task before him. He didn’t mind proofreading either, especially because English had cast off a bunch of the fiddly rules about punctuation that honestly Dipper thought were still needed. He could make sure that Batoor’s teachers weren’t teaching him too much that was wrong.

           Grinning wide, Dipper reached out and took Batoor’s hand. “Deal,” he said. Blue fire licked up from between their palms briefly, and Dipper felt himself get—sharper, smarter, stronger—for a brief flash as the deal lanced through him. Then he let himself slide into that state of mind where he was—not compelled to do a task, no, but it was similar.

           “Great,” Batoor said, grinning lazily. He leaned back against the desk and looked very self-satisfied. “Because my Red Rider game’s multiplayer option hasn’t been used since the time my roommate agreed to try it out with me.”

           Dipper tipped his head. Something niggled at him. “How long ago was that?”

           “Two months ago,” Batoor said. “The day I got the game.”

           Anticipation tingled up and down Dipper’s arms. He felt himself lift back off the ground. “Oh? Why not? It’s an excellent game.”

           “He said I was too intense.” Batoor picked under his fingernails at imaginary dirt, but Dipper could still see the grin on his face.

           “Oh,” Dipper said again. Then, he said, “Well, we should finish that paper as quickly as possible, shouldn’t we? I doubt that you’re more intense than I can be.”

           “We’ll have to see,” Batoor said, eyebrows raised.

 ________________________________________________________________

             They did not, unfortunately, get a chance to see. Writing papers was harder than Dipper remembered, and Batoor had chosen to write about anti-preter sentiment in Ireland two hundred years ago and the impact of the laws enacted during that time had in the centuries following. There weren’t too many papers on the matter in Dashto, and any articles that they could find were harder to understand the further back they were, so Batoor was stuck with English and translated Gaelic sources.

           Halfway into Presumption of Guilt: How Lawmakers Built a Sinister System in the Absence of Politically Powerful Preternatural Citizens that Resulted in the Summer Riots of 3784, Batoor’s dorm buzzed. They froze.

           “Hey, Batoor!” Dipper heard. He swung his head around to look at Batoor, who met his gaze. “Why you lock the door? You got company?”

           Batoor flushed. “No!” he yelled, voice cracking a little as he flapped his hand at Dipper. “I just was studying!”

           Dipper snatched what remained of the delicious snacks that Batoor had traded and stopped just short of blipping out. “When are we going to play Red Rider?” he hissed quietly in Dashto.

           Apparently Batoor’s roommate had very, very good ears. “Batoor?”

           Batoor leveled the nastiest glare that Dipper had been subject to from him. Dipper threw up his hands in frustration and tried to communicate, with his eyes, that he was just asking, no need to get pissy about it! To which Batoor shook a finger at Dipper, waggled his eyebrows in I-told-you-we’d-get-to-it-when-we-get-to-it, and gestured for Dipper to stay quiet for good measure.

“I was only talking to myself!” Batoor yelled back. “Let me get the door for you—”

           Dipper felt a tug in his gut. Thankfully, he let himself follow the summons, twisting out of existence from Batoor’s Irish University dormroom and—

 December 4th, 9:44 PM EAT

           —into a small bedroom with sparsely decorated walls, a pale tile floor worn right to the edge of minor neglect, and a small child sitting on a patterned rug right at the edge of his circle.

           Dipper swallowed back his customary greeting and instead asked, “What’s up, kiddo?”

           They hugged their knees closer to their chest, squashing what looked to be a very sentimental stuffed manticore. “Sshh,” they said, so quiet that Dipper had to readjust his hearing. “Aunty Adi is asleep.”

           “Oh,” Dipper said. He sat cross-legged a half-inch above the wobbly chalk lines. After a moment, he whispered, “I like your scentless candles.”

           The child ducked their face into their knees and the stuffed manticore’s fuzzy mane. “Thanks,” they said, but then said nothing else for a long time. Their aura shifted between embarrassment and hesitation and quick flashing bursts of smothered pride. Dipper made the decision to wait for them to speak, and instead cast out his senses more to assess his new surroundings. There was a small bed in the corner, third-hand but well maintained, a nice new desk bought at a bargain, temperature-regulated sheets, a little bookshelf that was crammed overfull, a tablet for children open to what seemed to be a digital copy of a centuries-old summoning how-to that had never been legally published but had found its way around anyways. Down the hall to one side there were three other signatures—two more children, one adult, each in separate rooms, and to the other seemed to be a living space complete with kitchen and a harmless little snake that curled up in a hole in the wall, sleeping off its latest meal. The night air was cool in such a way that suggested the previous day had been hot.

           “Are you really a demon?” The kid asked.

           “Yeah,” Dipper said, wiggling his claws at them. Their eyes were big and dark in the candlelight from right over their knees. “Alcor the Dreambender, at your service.”

           Another very long pause. Dipper waited.

           “The book said you were nice,” they said. Dipper tilted his head. The book had been distributed during one of his nicer, more mentally present phases. Fortunately for this child, he’d had over a decade of recent socialization with human beings, so he wasn’t super tempted to take advantage of what the kid thought.

           “Right now I am,” he said. “What you want, then, kiddo? People usually don’t summon me unless they have a deal in mind.”

           They looked away and buried themselves further into themselves. The minutes passed. Outside, bugs sang and small lizards rustled in pursuit. The candles flickered, burned wax into vapor that wafted away, slow and lazy but inevitable. Dipper kept himself breathing, steady.

           “…Aunty Adi doesn’t like me,” they said.

           Dipper blinked. “Oh?” he asked, and looked closer. No broken bones, a bruise on their knee (legitimately tripped and fell), short curly hair (useful for the heat), crooked fingers (an accident when they were two years old), missing tooth (their adult teeth were coming in). Whatever it was, it wasn’t overt physical abuse. Dipper narrowed his eyes. “What does she do? Where are your parents?”

           They shifted one foot over the other. “I act funny,” they said instead. “Mom and Dad are busy working in Lilongwe, so they left me with Aunty Adi.”

           There was a lengthy silence. Dipper had started getting that uneasy prickling along the back of his neck, the one he got when kids weren’t safe and happy, and he had to breathe in deep and out slow to stop himself from getting ‘intense,’ as Torako put it.

           “Other kids don’t like me either,” said the kid. “I don’t get it, I laugh when they want me to and follow all the rules, the ones they don’t say but are there anyways, but they still don’t like me.”

           Lonely crept over them like a purple shroud, heavy and dark and bruiselike. Dipper watched it settle and shift for a few moments, and turned the words over in his head. They waited.

           “Do you want a friend?” Dipper asked, finally.

           A heartbeat, two, and then a nod.

           “Do you want me to be your friend, tonight?”

           A double nod.

           “I’ll need something in exchange,” Dipper said, because it was true (though not really, no, he could totally absorb the backlash that came with spending a night playing with a kid but this wasn’t Mabel) and the kid should know that, but also— “maybe some candy? Kids have candy, right?”

           He’d really, really prefer the manticore. He almost asked for it. Then he thought of what Torako would say and do to him if she found out he’d taken a beloved stuffed animal from a lonely, friendless child and figured that stealing candy was a comparably minor offense.

           Their wide dark eyes stared into his, and then they very slowly nodded, and even more slowly pointed in the direction of their desk. “In the drawer,” they said. “Milk drops.”

           Dipper tilted his head over at the desk and blinked. “Okay,” he said and extended his hand. “Is it a deal?”

           After a short moment, they nodded and extended their hand over the shaky, weak chalk lines of their summoning circle. “Deal,” they said, their hand in his, blue fire flaring up between them for a second before dying down.

           Dipper tilted his head, blinked into something a little softer (more comfortable, something that would set the kid at ease) and asked, “So, kiddo, I’m yours to play with for a while. What you wanna do?”

           The kid didn’t smile, but hesitant happiness spread like frail roots through the heavy purple lonely in their aura. “Well,” they said, quietly, “there’s this—card game, that I got to play once…”

_______________________________________________________________

           It took several hours of very quiet playtime for the kid to finally get tired enough to fall asleep. Dipper tucked them—tucked Pili—into their bed, sang a slightly off-key lullaby until their tired eyes finally blinked shut and their chest rose and fell softly and their grip on their Manticore (Nadine) loosened. He thought for a moment, then summoned a Dream to curl up next to them and a Nightmare to stand guard until Pili woke in the morning.

           “You keep an eye on them, alright?” Dipper said. The dream baa’d and snuggled in close to Pili, who relaxed further. Himmwichlint, the Nightmare, blinked its five eyes independently and huffed out a derisive what, you think I wouldn’t at Dipper. Dipper huffed back and rolled his eyes.

           “I’m not saying you can’t or won’t,” Dipper complained, crossing his arms. He was wearing a very soft sweater that Pili had exclaimed quietly over before stroking for a solid five minutes. “I’m just saying what I want you to do.”

           Himmwichlint rolled its eyes back at him. The effect it had was really similar like those plastic googly ones that Belle had once used to bedazzle a pair of sneakers into a constantly-rustling horror show. She had worn them every day for a month to class. Dipper had ended up making a deal with Lionel to have them disappear.

           “No respect,” Dipper complained. “What is it with everybody in my life refusing to show me respect? I am a very powerful dream demon, you would think people would remember that more.”

           The Nightmare chuffed low in its gizzard, and its wool shook in laughter. Then it turned itself around to lay on the ground at the side of the bed, very purposefully looking away from Dipper.

           Dipper threw up his hands. “Unbelievable,” he whispered, turning around himself to leave the room. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

           He very quietly swung the door open and then stepped into the quiet hallway. Another step, and he shifted from the soft sweater and comfortable sweatpants he’d put on for Pili into a sharp black suit, dark and imposing and shadowy. He didn’t need to close his eyes for more than a few seconds to know that he wanted the room at the very end of the hall. He walked forward on the thin air just a hair off the ground, passing by several pictures on the walls and a totem lodged in an inset shelf near the ceiling. It was supposed to protect the inhabitants, but the spirit that was supposed to be there was missing. It had been missing for years at this point.

           Not that it could have done much of anything if it had been there, Dipper thought to himself with a little grin. It could not have stopped him from having a little chat with Auntie Adi. He doubted that it would have even tried.

           In moments, he reached her door. The insects outside had fallen silent. He pushed the door open, soundless, and entered her room.

           It was dark. A thin sliver of slightly-overcast moonlight drifted through the crack between the curtains. In the middle of the room was a wide bed, thin summer blankets draped over a sleeping figure. When he looked around, the room wasn’t overly different from Pili’s—the same well-cared-for furniture, clothing bought at a bargain and a few priceless treasures (gifts, or inheritances, or simply items loved to the point of powerfully tempting)—but there was something about it that cradled the sleeping figure. There had been a lot of love in this room. There was a lot of love, and care, and fondness. Pili’s room seemed so much emptier by comparison.

           Alcor made his way to the edge of the bed. He flicked out his cane, threaded his hair back into a ribbon-tied ponytail, and then sat down.

           Adi didn’t respond for several moments, still deep in sleep. No matter. He knew that the deep part of her responsible for living, for detecting danger and escaping from it was slowly waking up. With every breath, it was pulled closer and closer to the surface, a buoy rising to the surface of a wide dark sea, dragging consciousness up with it. Her brow started to furrow. The soft lines along the edges of her mouth began to deepen. Her eyes tensed. Inhale, exhale, and her eyes fluttered open.

           It took two breathing cycles for her to register that there was a strange person in her room, sitting on her bed and looking down at her. She jerked into motion, opened her mouth, and screamed.

           Alcor smiled into the silence. He had already borrowed—not stolen, he might still give it back—her voice. “Now, now,” he said, softly. “You shouldn’t disturb the children’s sleep. Let’s be quiet, all right?”

           Her eyes are wide. The sclera is bright against the darkness of the room. Her hand feels at her throat, which is bobbing with fruitless effort to speak.

           “I know this is frightening,” Alcor said. His grin widened. The fear shooting up from Adi in sparks set him on the most wonderful edge. It buzzed against him, just enough to turn his teeth a hair past sharp and blow his pupils a clawtip longer. “But really, this is quite important—can I trust you not to scream?”

           She nodded. What a fool—he already knew he couldn’t. He knew she would scream as loud as she could, and then her children would come in, and then Alcor would have to figure out how to deal with them in non-lethal ways. What a mess that would be. Instead, he chuckled before reaching out and tracing a claw against the bottom of her jaw. Adi froze. Her chest barely moved, quick and light.

           “Don’t worry,” he drawled, leaning in a little. Her eyes darted from his teeth to his eyes and then back down again to his teeth. “I already know I can’t. Anyways, this will be a far more productive conversation if you aren’t doing any of the talking.”

           With a sharp inhale, she clenched her fingers in the blanket pooled at her waist. Alcor tapped her chin. She nodded again, this time short and jerky. Her fear really was quite exhilarating, Alcor thought to himself absentmindedly. He’d have to make sure to milk as much out of her without compromising his position, or Pili’s.

           Ah, yes. Pili’s. A no-name soul that he hadn’t had any meaningful prior relationships with. But children were children, and no-name souls could earn names, couldn’t they? Lionel and Torako and Georgi were all excellent examples. He would have to keep an eye out for Pili—make sure that Adi didn’t do anything unfortunate.

           “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,” Alcor said, leaning back a little. Adi exhaled shakily, and nodded again. “Well, it has to do with your nibling. Did you know that they’ve managed to access quite the outdated collection of demonic academia? Their circle was a little wobbly, but it’s supposed to be simple enough for a child to draw with a bit of effort, if they’re desperate enough.”

           Alcor noted the sudden tension in Adi’s shoulders, the sourness of jealousy that rose up among misplaced gangrene anger, the mist-like waft of dark guilt that drifted off as quick as it drifted in.

           “You see,” Alcor said, crossing one leg over the other and wrapping his hands leisurely around his knees, “children have to be desperate enough to draw my circle. That’s not even taking into account the effort many go to in order to get the information needed to draw my circle, and say the incantation, and gather the necessary supplies. Children, you see, don’t often have the resources or freedom an adult does. Please, do me a favor and consider—how desperate must young Pili have been to go to the effort of all that?”

           Adi’s anger flashed and deepened. She lifted her chin, eyes narrowed, and opened her mouth to retort before she tried to speak and remembered exactly who it was she was talking to. Fear drowned out the anger. She curled back in on herself, shifting back on the bedsheets with a near-silent rasp.

           Yes. This was what he deserved. This was the respect he had earned, that he had been deprived of the last few hours. He breathed it in deep.

           “I know you haven’t laid a hand on them,” Alcor drawled. His eyes crinkled in a smile. “Trust me, we would be having a—different conversation at that point. Perhaps off in the desert, where you could scream and I could enjoy it without having to worry about your spawn ruining everything. But that’s also the problem, because—you haven’t laid a hand on them in love, either.”

           Silence. Her aura spoke volumes. He let it balloon up between them, bobbed his foot as she swallowed past a rabbit-quick heartbeat. The pale moonlight coming in through the crack in the curtains glinted off the shiny cap on the toe.

           “Your nibling summoned me because they were desperate for a friend,” Dipper said, very very quietly. “They wanted somebody to play with. To love them, even if that love wasn’t as real as what they really needed. Even just for a night. You, as their guardian, have failed them. You have neglected them, for terrible, petty reasons that have nothing to do with who Pili is, and have everything to do with who somebody else is—one of their parents, I’m assuming.”

           Adi bristled again, shoulders drawing up and back in indignation. Her sleeping cap shifted, exposing some of the kinked hair it was protecting. Alcor reached over. She stilled, heartrate jack-knifing as he pulled the cap back into place.

           “You don’t have to be their friend,” Alcor said. He smiled. “But it would be such a shame if you didn’t learn how to be kind to them and how to be supportive of them. Such a shame indeed. There are always…repercussions, you see, for these kinds of actions.” He leaned over, resting his chin in one palm, fingers curled in a precisely calculated mimicry of danger. Adi trembled, swallowed. Sweat tricked down her brow and along the lines of her slender neck. Dipper watched it drip down, and felt her terror spike.

           “What a shame indeed,” he said. He glanced up, still smiling, and caught her eye. The shallow inhale she was taking hitched. Her pupils shrunk despite the darkness. Alcor tilted his head to make sure the light glinted across his sharp teeth. Then, he drew back.

           “But I suppose it would be better for Pili and your other children if I actually gave you the chance to learn,” he said offhandedly, and looked at his claws. The next exhale broke out of her, ragged and loud in the silence. “I’m trying to be a better person, you see, and I suppose you haven’t done anything egregiously worthy of…such harsh retribution.”

           Alcor stood. He picked imaginary lint off his shoulder, pulled his eight-ball cane back into the physical realm, and leaned on it. “I don’t suppose I have to inform you that if things don’t get better, I will know,” he drawled. Adi’s hands were clutching at the fabric over her heart. “But, for the purpose of all transparency…if they don’t, I will know. I doubt you’ll enjoy what happens afterwards.”

           With a grin that was satisfyingly wide, Alcor bowed and faded out of sight. A moment later, he released his hold on Adi. He watched her place trembling hands over her mouth and hyperventilate for several minutes. She eventually calmed enough to slide out of bed and stand on shaking legs, though it took her a few tries to be steady enough to walk on her own. She checked her eldest son’s room, then her daughter’s, and then finally –with no little hesitation—her nibling’s.

           Alcor grinned as she stifled a gurgling scream at the sight of Himmwichlint curled up in front of Pili’s bed. Himmwichlint lifted its head, blinked its five eyes at Adi, and then yawned on purpose to show off its incomprehensible but terrifying teeth and its two whipcord tongues. Adi whimpered and stumbled back. Alcor, upside-down on the ceiling, hummed and grinned wider.

           Himmwichlint tilted its head up, made eye contact with him, and huffed.

           Alcor rolled his eyes back at Himmwichlint. He did not need to get out of here, not when this woman’s reactions were absolutely hilarious. He hadn’t been front-row seats to a horror show with so little blood in ages.

           Himmwichlint snorted, looked back at the woman, and nestled itself back in. On the bed, Pili sighed and snuggled the dream closer. The dream obliged.

           Aunt Adi dropped her fist, just a little. She stared at her nibling, eyebrows furrowing. Soft surprise echoed out in the spaces between her terror and horror. If he looked closely, he could see the beginnings of wonder peeking out from behind the residual film of jealousy and anger.

           Oh, he thought. Maybe she would learn. What a disappointment, almost to the point he was the slightest bit mad about it. He’d been looking forward to eking out some more terror from her, maybe indulging in snacking on a finger or two, possibly a kidney, nothing life-threatening. Her actually cleaning her act up was going to ruin things for him.

           Oh, he thought after another moment. Maybe—maybe he did need to go somewhere—else. Dipper closed his eyes and as quietly as possible, tessered into the mindscape, lay in the grass among his Nightmares and Dreams, and simply was.

________________________________________________________________

§¢ɷʘϠϰѬ  ҈۝†‡₰  ʯ͚:ͼǂ  Nightmare Realm

             It was nice, for an indeterminable amount of time, to let the manic buzzing energy and self-righteous anger and the hunger for justice (revenge, the kind that benefited him and him alone) seep out of the front of his mind and down into the back. A couple Dreams nestled up to his sides, and one had decided that his chest was the best place to curl up on. It chewed on his lapel absentmindedly. Dipper would have minded more if it a) wasn’t easy to fix, being made of thought, and b) weren’t the case that the Dream was in the top tenth percentile of cute Dreams—which were altogether adorable as it was.

           The Nightmare taking advantage of the situation to snuffle into his hair was another thing entirely.

           “Erschie,” Dipper said, eyes closed but eyebrows furrowed down. “What are you doing.”

           A pause, then Erschie snorted warm sulfuric air directly into Dippers mostly-made-up scalp. Dipper waited a few seconds for something else to happen, then opened his eyes. The moment he did, he felt Erschie’s fangs and sharp front teeth start to scrape at the top of his head.

         “Gross,” Dipper said, even as he felt the skin slice open just a little. “Disgusting.”

           Erschie paused, then withdrew. Dipper blinked. Erschie then licked at Dipper’s hair with all the gross slobber in Erschie’s dumb gross mouth.

           Dipper bolted upright, the Dream on his chest now in his arms and the other two left to flop into the grass and baa irately over the sudden lack of support. “ERSCHIE!” Dipper screeched. His hair stood up on end. He could feel the slobber starting to trickle down the back of his neck. “WHAT THE FUCK.”

           Erschie blinked up at him, closed its eyes, and then let out a wool-rustle throat-croak hoof-stomp that Dipper knew to indicate Erschie’s general amusement at being a nuisance in Dipper’s life. The Dream snuggled into Dipper’s arms. This, unfortunately, limited what response Dipper could take.

           In order to demonstrate to Erschie that he was a dangerous, serious, terrifying dream demon, Dipper opened his mouth, displayed all his rows of teeth, and hissed at Erschie. For some reason, that just made the Nightmare express Amusement more exuberantly.

           “You’ve been conniving with Himmie, haven’t you,” Dipper said. He resisted the urge to stamp his foot. “You’re both out to show me as much disrespect as possible.”

           Erschie clacked its teeth together and flicked its ears.

           “What do you mean it’s not hard?? I am Alcor the Dreambender, Devourer of Souls and Lord of Nightmares, King of Darkness, Destroyer of Light, the Infernal Star! I’m literally the Scourge of All Beings Living and Dead and you say it’s not hard to disrespect me??”

           With an exaggerated snort, Erschie dipped its head down and up twice before flicking its ears in succession.

           “I do not embarrass myself!!” Dipper howled, throwing his arms up in the air. The Dream previously occupying them fell to the grass with a disgruntled bleat, and glared up at him as ferociously as it could manage. Dipper looked down at the Dream and winced.

           Erschie performed its most vigorous Amusement dance yet.

           Dipper pointed at Erschie and glowered. “Shut up,” he said.

           Predictably, but disappointingly, Erschie did not listen. Erschie continued to do its best to convey its Amusement at Dipper, adding insult to injury by throwing in a mirthful head-shake.

           “Can’t get any respect around here,” Dipper grumbled, squatting down and papping the Dream to show his remorse as was only appropriate. “They’re all out to get me. But you won’t be like that if you ever become a Nightmare, will you? You’ll be appropriately respectful, unlike that ungrateful troll over there. Yes, I could eat it, but no, I am merciful and abstain like a good demon. And this is the thanks I get.”

           The dream looked up at him and blinked. It turned its head to take in Erschie, who was now turning around in a circle as it continued to mock Dipper. Then the dream looked back up at Dipper and flicked its ears just like Erschie was.

           Dipper stood and put his hands on his hips. “Wow,” he said. “The rebellion really does start early. I can see I’m not welcome here, in my own Realm.”

           Erschie blew a raspberry. All three Dreams watched Erschie in clear curiosity, then turned around to Dipper and did the same.

           “Rude,” Dipper growled, and pulled himself away into another place chosen on a whim.

________________________________________________________________

December 5th, 1:58 AM, AZT

             Dipper found himself outside a small home with a bright blue door. The outer walls were made of corrugated metal that had also been painted blue, and a birdhouse had been set between two of the windows. It was cold. Dipper breathed out, then in, then suffused heat into his next exhale just to see the condensation rise and dissipate into the air.

           He turned around, looked down the footpath that meandered down the slope the house was set into. There were more houses, roofs illuminated by moonlight, windows largely unlit. It was 2 AM in this small town of Laza, after all. There wasn’t very much to do, unless he really wanted to terrorize the inhabitants by tap-dancing on their ceilings or whispering traumatizing thoughts into their dreams. He thought maybe that might just possibly be a not great thing that Bentley would get quiet and frustrated with him over, though. Instead, maybe he could just eat some of the goats that one of the houses kept down below. Dipper hummed and tapped his finger on his chin.

           Eating goats was probably something he would get in trouble for, on second thought. He could just terrorize the goats. That was still fun, but didn’t hurt any people. Actually, Torako would get a kick out of some selfies, he could do that. Tempt her into another passport-less road trip, for the fun of it. They could take Bentley too, this time. It would be much lower stakes. Yes, a picture would be good. Dipper took a step forward, absentmindedly casting his mind around to count the souls in the vicinity, and then froze.

           He turned back around, looked at the blue house with the blue door and the birdhouse set into the side of it. A gust of wind blew through him, then around him as he made himself just a little more solid. In turn, he stared through the house and at the soul on a couch. The soul had dozed off while watching the news, which had turned off automatically an hour ago. Dipper stared, then—because he really didn’t have anything better to do—blipped from outside to just in the living room.

           She had become an old, old man, this time, Dipper realized. A very well-groomed and well-dressed old man, even in sleep. She didn’t seem rich this time, he thought to himself, taking in the heirloom table and the rugs worn with age and use, but then again, Pacifica tended to bounce up and down the economic scale from life to life.

           Dipper took a seat in the thin air above the table, on which there was a lone, empty cup that had held coffee at some point. He tilted his head at the old man, watched him breathe in (a little raspy) and then out (almost a snore) for several minutes. Dipper closed his eyes, and saw Pacifica’s death—

           Tunar, in a hospital bed, age 146, seven weeks and two days before his birthday. He breathes in, and then out, and then in, slower and shallower each time. The heartbeat monitor chimes weakly, but steadily. His nephew holds his hand, an old man himself, and his great-great-grandniece is smoothing down the sparse hair on Tunar’s head.

           Tunar does not open his eyes. He has already said goodbye, said it in the hour he was awake before he slept, said goodbye the same way he always did before falling asleep—with a soft ‘I love you,’ a kiss on the forehead or on the hand or on the cheek, and a small little sigh as he set his head into the pillows and closed his eyes again. His other grandnibling has gone with the rest of their family to get something to eat and bring food back for the two who stayed behind. This is probably for the best—there are nineteen of them, you see, because Tunar had loved well and was well-loved in turn.

           His death is slow, as easy as death is capable of being. Medicine has brought the human body far, but there will never be immortality. There never is immortality, not for humankind, not for the dayflies who are born at dawn and die at dusk, not for the oldest of vampires or the fairest of dragons or the coldest of yukionna. All things die, eventually. All things pass.

           Tunar takes a slow, slow breath in, lets it out, and does not inhale again.

—and opened them only to see that the old man had woken up, 137, still nine years left to him, and was looking right at Dipper.

           Dipper startled a little, but didn’t move. The old man did not startle, but instead stretched after a moment in the way that old people do to get stiff muscles to cooperate again.

           “Ah, I fell asleep on the couch again,” Tunar muttered. His hands shook a little as he clapped them once. The lights came on, dim. “I really should stop doing that, it’s very bad for my back and for my sleeping schedule. This face isn’t getting any younger, you know.”

           Dipper cocked his head. “Do you want it to?” he asked.

           Tunar scoffed and pushed himself to sit up straight before reaching for an elegant white cane. His hands, wrinkled and adorned with liver spots, wrapped thin fingers around the gently curved top of the cane. “You think you’re so smooth,” he said, narrowing thick eyebrows at Dipper. “I know better than to make a deal with you, Soul-Devourer.”

          After a brief pause that stretched on to the edge between acceptable and too long, Dipper said, “Actually, it was mostly curiosity.”

           “Mostly,” Tunar drawled, leaning back into the cushions and looking down his nose at Dipper. Dipper was reminded almost viciously of Pacifica and how she would stare at him, unimpressed, after whatever shenanigan he’d pulled recently that pissed her off. It froze Dipper for several long seconds, his heart in his throat as he couldn’t stop seeing her face over Tunar’s. Then Tunar sighed, and the spell was broken.

         “I suppose you’re not actually here to reap my soul for whatever reason, though.” Tunar tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “I know you caused a big hullabaloo a few countries over several months ago, but they’re saying that the river is purified and that there were minimal casualties, which really is quite surprising.”

           “Well, old man,” Dipper drawled, leaning over, “what makes you think that would stop me from taking what I want?”

           Tunar blinked, looked closely at Dipper, and said nothing for a long time. His eyes were dark, if a little clouded, but piercing in a way that had Dipper twitching his foot. The light buzzed overhead. The clock in the other room slid nearly-silently to the next minute. Outside, Dipper could hear grass rustling in the wind if he concentrated enough, or too little.

           A hum brought his attention back to the Pacifica in front of him. Tunar had leaned forward, placing his face and throat closer to Dipper, close enough he could reach out or lunge if he really wanted to.

           “Well then,” Tunar said, smiling, his prosthetic teeth shining somewhat brighter than the few natural ones he had left, “seems to me that you don’t want to eat me.”

           That wasn’t completely accurate—it never was—but it was accurate enough that Dipper found himself flushing. He withdrew and hunched his shoulders, looking at the pictures set into the wall as though he’d never seen anything like them before. Fingers wrapped around his knee, he managed to respond, “Says who?”

           Torako would have gleefully needled the truth out of him. Bentley would have stared at him, arched an eyebrow, and said “Says me,” with the slyest little grin on his face. Pacifica would have lifted fingers to her mouth and chuckled, eyes half-lowered in a kind of superiority-fueled amusement.

           Tunar snorted, eyebrows shooting up higher, and leaned back. “Can’t believe I thought you were some kind of suave, smooth-talking master-villain,” he said. “You’re a dumbass.”

           Dipper scowled at Tunar. Tunar grinned unapologetically, sharp at the edges. “You suck,” Dipper said, finally.

           With a cackle, Tunar finally lay his cane across the top of his legs. “I’m thirsty,” he said, finally. “Make me some coffee.”

           “Make—you have a demon in your living room, and you’re telling him to make coffee??” Dipper said, voice momentarily going shrill.

           “That’s right,” Tunar said, eyes creased in a self-satisfied smile.

           “I could—I’ve manufactured deaths for less offense,” Dipper said, even though it wasn’t much of an offense.

           “I’m a hundred and thirty seven years old,” Tunar said, archly. “Even if I thought you would do that, I wouldn’t be frightened. I’ve lived a long time.”

           Dipper stared. “Unbelievable,” he finally said. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been dealing with this kind of disrespect all day. You don’t even know me.”

           “You just have that kind of face.” Tunar reached out with his cane and poked Dipper in the arm. Dipper’s jaw fell open. “Now. Coffee. I like mine with heavy cream and a scant spoonful of cane sugar. Get to it.”

           It took Dipper several moments to get his jaw closed. Then, he stood up, feet firmly on the rug below the coffee table, and walked into the kitchen to do as Tunar said. He was never, he thought to himself, introducing Tunar to Torako or Bentley. Never.

________________________________________________________________

           In the middle of a story about the time that an acquaintance, unaware of the fact that Tunar wasn’t particularly interested in romantic or sexual entanglements, tried to set Tunar up with xir grandchild ten years Tunar’s senior when Tunar was 23, Dipper’s phone rang. The lyrics to Dancing Queen blared in the air between them before Dipper could answer it.

           Tunar tilted his head. “You have a phone?”

           Dipper sent a glower at Tunar, then answered the phone. “Yes?” he asked, in an approximation of what passed for English these days.

           “Oh, thank goodness you answered,” the voice on the other end of the line said. Dipper blinked and took a second to place the voice—Reynash, right. “Listen, Lata’s sitter dropped out on us again, he was supposed to pick him up from school today but we just got the call that he didn’t, could you—”

           “Yeah, yeah, no, give me five, ten minutes,” Dipper said, tipping his head and calculating the closest point to Lata’s new school that he could feasibly tesser to and remain anonymous. “I’d teleport right to him but that might be a bit—”

           Reynash laughed, a little too tight to be completely sincere. “Ahaha, yeah, no, we would appreciate—no, thank you, I’ll let the school know that Lata’s Uncle Tyrone will be coming to get him.”

           “Sounds good,” Dipper said. “I’ll message when I pick him up, okay?”

           “Thank you again,” Reynash said. “I’ll be home after five, maybe five-thirty, so if you could keep him company until then—”

           “Yeah, no problem at all!”

           “You’re a lifesaver,” Reynash said. “Thanks again, see you.”

           “See—” Dipper only managed to get out one word before the dial tone sounded. He looked down at the phone, and then said, “Well then, he really is busy I guess.”

           “Alcor the Dreambender has a mundane social life?” Tunar said, droll. Dipper relaxed, purposefully, then tilted his head at Pacifica’s latest incarnation. He looked at Tunar through half-lidded eyes, Stan held in the back of his mind—Pacifica did like her fame, he remembered absently. She liked being the center of attention, and what better way to be the center of attention than to have a juicy news scoop to sell to the highest bidding news agency?

           Tunar took one look at Dipper, humphed, and then smacked Dipper in the knee with his cane.

           “Hey!” Dipper protested. “What the fuck?”

           “Don’t you get snippy at me,” Tunar said, wagging a finger in Dipper’s face. Dipper was seized by the childish urge to snap his teeth at it. “I could see you getting all paranoid on me. On me! After I’ve spent the last unbelievable amount of time talking to you about my life and all the personal details in it. I even let you slide on reciprocating. The least you could do is let me have this.”

           Dipper narrowed his eyes at Tunar. “You going to tell anybody?”

           Tunar snorted. “Tell people that Alcor the Dreambender came by for coffee and a chat and ended up taking a phone call in my presence? I’d either end up with terrified Demonologists tearing up my house or being prescribed a variety of medication for hallucinations and fits of fantasy. Perhaps I would have been tempted in my youth, but these old bones are done with all that drama.”

           He watched Tunar’s aura, saw it peppered with the lightest of lies—Tunar was plenty tempted now—but it was enough that Dipper leaned back into the couch and took a final sip of his coffee. “Okay,” he said.

         There was a beat of silence. “So,” Tunar said, “you have to leave, I’m supposing.”

           “Yes,” Dipper said. He leaned forward, set the cup in its saucer with a light a clink as he could manage, and stood up. “My apologies for intruding.”

           With rolled eyes, Tunar set his cup on its saucer as well with far less care than Dipper had taken. “Bah, you’re not sorry. I expect to see you here next week—though possibly at a more reasonable hour. My Doctor says that I really need to keep myself on a better sleep pattern.”

           Dipper’s hands stuttered over where they were needlessly straightening out his collar. “Next…week?”

           “Of course,” Tunar said. He stood with the help of his cane and grunted with the effort. “What, you think I started that story with the intention of leaving it unfinished? No, you will be back next week. And—you have a phone. Call me before you come so that I am ready for company.”

           Dipper could only blink. “But I don’t know—”

           “It’s written on the stasis fridge, top left corner. Take a look at it when you bring the cups in to the dishwasher.”

           Spluttering, Dipper said, “I—you expect me to wash the cups?!”

           “And you can let yourself out, I assume,” Tunar said. He turned a genial grin on Dipper, but Dipper was savvy enough to see the slyness in the corners of it. Also, the amusement in his aura helped matters a lot. “Seeing as you let yourself in.”

           “...I am an all powerful demon, and you expect me to wash your cups for—”

           “That just means I am all the more assured you are capable of such a simple task,” Tunar said. He reached out a slightly shaking hand, patted Dipper on the shoulder, and then said, “Well, I am off to bed. Again, I expect you next week. Do try not to show up in the middle of the night again, it’s not good for my heart.”

           With that, Dipper watched Tunar shuffle off around the coffee table and down the hall beyond the other side of the television screen. He blinked a little, completely blindsided—though he probably shouldn’t be. Pacifica also had a tendency of bulldozing through most of her social interactions.

           Sighing, Dipper reached down, gathered up the teacups, gave them a little rinse with the sink tap before setting them in the washer, and entered Tunar’s number into his phone. He looked down at it, displaying up at him with deceptive innocence, and furrowed his eyebrows. Then, he saw the time, said, “Oh, crap,” and blipped out of the darkened kitchen.

December 4th, 4:13 pm, PDT

             Lata screeched with joy as he barreled into Dipper with all the force of an exuberant six year old, face pressed into Dipper’s waist and arms flung around Dipper’s legs. Dipper, dressed up in his nicest, most disarming and charming human persona, grinned down at Lata.

           “Hey buddy,” he said. “How are you doing?”

           “I was so bored,” Lata said, nearly yelling the last two words. “But now you’re here so I’m not! Can we go get ice cream?”

           “Ah,” Dipper said, before deciding fuck it and nodding his head. “Yeah, sure, but I have to sign you out first and let your dad know we got you, okay?”

           Lata appeared to have stopped listening after ‘sure,’ and released Dipper to go have a good old jump-and-punch-the-air-in-victory dance. Dipper re-evaluated the intelligence of giving this already hyper child more sugar, then shrugged because he wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout, would he?

           “Uncle Tyrone, I presume,” the secretary said, grinning a little. At first glance, she looked like an older middle-aged woman, but Dipper saw the fangs and the sunglasses and thought vampire. She tapped a few buttons, and a screen lit up in front of her window for Dipper. “Please verify your identity with this security question chosen by the child’s guardians and then sign.”

           Dipper peered down at the question. What did you suddenly yell at Reynash Pines that one time that had him scream, launch a full package of Choco Piecies into the air, and tumble back over his home office chair which meant he had to go to the hospital and get three stitches behind his right ear?

           He blinked, then toggled the keyboard to input, What U Cravin. The system thought for a moment, then blinked green before showing him the field to write in his signature. Dipper took hold of the stylus it materialized for him, signed, and then said goodbye to the secretary.

           Lata had, in the meantime, decided that he needed to be crawling around on his feet and hands like some kind of humpbacked bear cub. “Are you done?” Lata asked, turning around in a circle, still not standing. There was dirt on his hands. Dipper resolved to get Lata to wash them as soon as they could find a public restroom.

           “Yes, I’m done,” Dipper said. “You wanna ditch this lame joint?”

           “It’s not lame,” Lata said, twisting his head to look at Dipper in such a way that Dipper wondered how he wasn’t snapping his own neck. “School is really really awesome, it’s just that everybody’s already gone home and I could only just wait for people to come pick me up, and waiting is boring.”

           “That tracks,” Dipper said after a pause. Lata looked back down at the ground and then started walking forward, down to where the entryway doors were. “You gonna keep walking like that buddy?”

           “Yeah,” Lata said. “This is the bear walk! We learned it today in Activities. We also learned the frog leap –though I already knew it—and the lizard crawl, and the earthworm, and the kangaroo hop. Nobody believed me when I said I went to Australia to see the kangaroos, though. They said that you can’t just go to Australia, because there are big spiders.”

           Dipper paused a moment to take in that information. He opened the door for Lata, watched him crawl down the front step and onto the rougher—colder—pavement. Lata frowned at the ground, but kept going. “Your…teacher said this?”

           “No,” Lata said in his best are you stupid voice. Dipper felt affronted that he was turning it on Dipper, his most favorite Uncle Tyrone. “You and Mom and Dad all said not to tell any adults, so I didn’t! But kids don’t count, so I told them. And they didn’t even believe me!”

           Letting the door close behind him, Dipper politely ignored the person walking their dog that stopped in their tracks to first stare at Lata, then turn away with their hand over their mouth and their aura splashed all over with viridian amusement. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing,” Dipper said. “You don’t even have a passport yet.”

           “What’s a passport?” Lata asked. His steps forward were far more ginger than they were earlier, inside on the tile flooring of the hallway.

           “It’s, uh,” Dipper said, looking down at Lata’s animal-print backpack. It had shifted over entirely to one side of Lata’s back, unbalancing him a little. He reached down, adjusted it, and continued. “Well, it’s a special document—like a little book, I think, though maybe that’s changed—that they scan at Ports when you go from one country to another country.”

           “Huh,” Lata said. He took another step, stopped, and then stood up. At the sight of his hands, Dipper moved hand-washing even further up the list of priorities. If he’d thought inside was bad, it was nothing compared to the brief jaunt down the path up to the school. “Do you have a passport?”

           “No,” Dipper said.

           Lata looked up at him, tilted his head so that the leaves on his antlers bobbed a little. “But you have to, to go to another country, right?”

           “Most people have to,” Dipper amended. “It’s expected.”

           They passed by a couple arm-in-arm, a single long scarf wrapped across both their necks. Dipper looked down at Lata. “Where’s your scarf?”

           “In my bag,” Lata said, like that was the best place for it on a chilly December afternoon.

           “And your gloves?”

           “In my bag, duh,” Lata said, rolling his eyes.

           “Hey,” Dipper said. “You really want to pull an attitude with somebody who said they’d get you ice cream in such cold weather?”

           Lata hummed, his finger on his chin in thought. A cold breeze had him shivering a little before he answered, “Maybe?”

           Dipper sighed. “Well,” he said, really elongating the word in a way that immediately caught Lata’s attention. “Maybe we don’t need ice cream after all. It’s about 3 degrees Celcius right now, after all.”

           Lata gasped. “No, you can’t take it back! No take-backs! You said we’d go for ice cream!”

           They were now by the public bathroom that Dipper had initially blipped into. “Let’s wash our hands then,” he said, pointing, “in preparation for ice cream.”

           Lata screeched in victory, did a little dance, and then started running towards the bathroom. “First one there gets to eat as much as they want!”

           Reynash would demolish him if Dipper let Lata eat as much ice cream as he wanted. Dipper burst into a very graceless, very hasty run, and didn’t really consider that he wasn’t beholden to any deal he hadn’t verbally agreed to.

________________________________________________________________

           “I cannot believe I let you get all that ice cream,” Dipper said, having blipped them to a nice ice cream place down in New California before bringing Lata and their spoils to the Pines home.

           Lata giggled and stuck his spoon into his Custom Mouse Sundae, complete with five scoops of ice cream molded into the shape of a mouse and topped off with two round waffle cookies that made the mouse’s ears. He dug out the piece of chocolate that made up the eye and stuck it in his mouth, kicking his legs.

           “I would’ve beat you if you hadn’t used your superpowers,” Lata said, trying to pout but failing in the face of the massive, self-satisfied grin that kept breaking through. “You had to be nice to me. It’s only fair.”

           “Your parents would hate it if I had let you eat the Turtle Family Sundae, the Spaghetti Ice Cream Set, and the Mouse Sundae,” Dipper said, pointing his spoon at Lata from across the table. He had gotten a custom ice cream Mega Bowl, and had filled it with a variety of ice creams and toppings. Lata kept glancing at it with unashamed interest.

           Lata leaned back in his seat—Dipper reached across and pulled the chair back onto all four legs with his foot—and groaned. “But it would have been so delicious,” he said. “So worth it. It’s not like they can do anything to you! They can’t ground you, or take away TV privileges, or game privileges, or have you write letters of Recon-ciliation to exchange with each other.”

           Dipper blinked. “Letters of Reconciliation?”

           Lata carefully carved the tip of the mouse’s nose, cherry and all, off from the rest of the ice cream. “Yeah,” he said, before taking a break to stuff his mouth.

             “What’s that?”                

           “It’s when we have a disagreement, and I write a letter saying what I thought and how I felt about the thing, and Mom and Dad write a letter saying what they thought and felt about the thing, and we give them to each other and read them and then talk about it. It’s so boring.”

           Rain tapped against the roof and windows—rain might be a bit of a misnomer for the half-rain, half-ice slush that was falling from the sky, but nevertheless Dipper was glad they hadn’t been caught out in it before heading down to NewCal. That would have been super messy, and cold, and gross. Dipper scooped up a bit of ice cream, swallowed it almost immediately, and then responded. “That doesn’t sound so bad,” he said.

           “Ugh, you’re such an adult,” Lata whined. He leaned down and pulled one of the cookie ears out of the mouse with his mouth. When he bit down, the part of the cookie that wasn’t in his mouth fell onto the ice cream below, which was starting to melt a bit.

           “You’ve gotten sassy since entering Kindergarten,” Dipper said, narrowing his eyes at Lata. “Where’s the little monster that kept saying things like ‘rawr’ and ‘I’m a nibble monster’ and all? Also, I’ll have you know that I am essentially eternally twelve. That’s not an adult.”

           “But it’s still old!” Lata yelled, suddenly. He leaned back on the rear legs of his chair. Dipper reached out with his foot and pulled his chair back down with an ease that was somewhat frightening after so many years of not parenting. “You’re old! I asked Dad how old you were and he said you were thousands of years old! That’s so many years. I watched him write out all the zeros, and then we counted out rice and it was so much rice and took so long.”

           Dipper scowled and crossed his arms. “I bought you ice cream, and this is how you repay me?”

           “I’m just saying the truth,” Lata retorted. “It’s the truth, so you can’t be mad about it.”

           Dipper snorted. “Now that’s not how things work,” he said. “Plenty of people get mad about the truth. They do it all the time.”

           Lata blinked at him. “But why? It’s the truth. You can’t get mad at something that’s true. Hans told me so.”

           As Lata began licking the ice cream, hands fisted on either side of his take-out bowl, Dipper hummed and tapped the flat of his spoon against his own ice cream. He cycled through the examples in his head—everything died, but plenty of people sought immortality—it was true that if you caught a knife to the throat, you would not last long but people got so upset about that—people worshipped or didn’t worship in many ways, and yet there were those who decided that those ways were wrong and got mad—kids grew up, and there were some dumbasses who resented how those children grew up into their own skins with their own experiences and opinions instead of staying malleable, agreeable, naïve—preternatural citizens existed, and yet—governments weren’t perfect, but—and finally hit upon one he thought Lata would understand.

           “Well,” he said, slowly, “have you ever watched something on TV and gotten mad about it?”

           Lata maintained eye-contact while licking across the ice-cream-mouse’s head. Savage. “Mom says that we have to look up stuff that they put on the TV sometimes, because it’s not always right, and when it’s not right then of course I’m allowed to be mad about it. Because it’s not right.”

           Right then, maybe not that. Perhaps he ought to take a different approach here, let Lata provide the basic scenario. “Okay, buddy, how about you tell me all the things that make you mad.”

           With a hum, Lata took a huge bite right out of the scoop of Fudge Mountain Caramel Surprise in front of his mouth. Dipper watched and wondered how effective that technique actually could be. “Um,” he said, completely ignorant of the melted ice cream smeared over his nose and lips and even chin, “well, I guess I get mad whenever Ri-Ri lies to me about the places she goes with her parents. And when Toma writes on my papers when I tell zir not to. Or when the lady on International Animal Discovery Channel is absent and her coworker comes in and covers for her, because he’s stupid and gets stuff wrong all the time. And when I have to go to bed at eight thirty, even though all my friends get to go to bed later. It’s so stupid! Why do I have to go to bed earlier? It can’t just be because it’s good for me because I’m a kid, because if it was my friends would go to bed earlier too! And also when Mom says she can’t come pick me up at school because she has an emergency meeting, like today, because she goes to work before I go to school and I don’t get to see her until I get out of school. And—”  

           Dipper swallowed the entire scoop of classic mint before holding up his hand and waving it. “Okay, okay, I think I have enough to work with there, thank you. Let’s talk about bedtime, okay? You’re mad because you have to go to bed earlier than your friends, right?”

           Lata slumped and poked his ice cream with his index finger. “Yeah,” he mumbled, before sticking his finger in his mouth and sucking the melted ice cream off of it. “I guess.”

           “Right,” Dipper said. He paused, suddenly doubting that he was the right person to tell Lata about this part of life. This seemed like a very—very parent-to-child conversation, not an Uncle-to-nibling conversation. It was kind of heavy.

           He paused too long. “So?” Lata said. Dipper looked up to see that Lata had resorted to grabbing the ice cream with his full hand and was licking it out of his palm. What a mood, Dipper thought, but instead narrowed his eyes at Lata.

           “Hey, use your spoon, not your hands,” he said. “And actually—here, use this napkin to clean your hand off. If you put your hands on something, it’ll get dirty and then we’ll both have to deal with the consequences, aka your parents.”

           “Okay,” Lata said, reaching with his dirty hand to take the napkin Dipper had pulled out from the 100% biodegradable takeout bag he’d gotten at the ice cream shop.

           “Probably should get the ice cream on your nose and chin while you’re at it,” Dipper said absentmindedly, watching Lata scrub at his hand with the paper napkin. Lata was a good kid, Dipper thought to himself. Lata would understand what Dipper was trying to say. This wouldn’t be too hard.

           Lata wrinkled his nose, but got most of the ice cream off his face. Good enough, Dipper thought, and then he launched into his little speech.

            “Right, so, it is true the kids need a lot of sleep, because they’re still developing their brains and bodies. The reason that babies sleep so much is that they’re growing and learning so much, and everything is new, so it’s exhausting. You’re still learning a lot of new stuff, and your brain is,” Dipper squinted at Lata and tilted his head, “currently, it’s learning how to handle complex and somewhat abstract concepts such as time, numbers, is expanding its capacity for vocabulary, and is beginning to develop the pathways needed to understand things such as life and death and your place in the cycle. You already have a very good grasp on concentration and a decent awareness of places existing outside of your home and school, though, that’s pretty impressive at your age.”

           Lata’s eyes went a little unfocused. Dipper dialed it back. “Point is, your brain is working hard, and it needs that sleep to recharge, refresh, and retain—keep—all the information that you’ve been learning. Your friends should probably be going to sleep around the same time you are if they’re waking up when you are, though every kid is different and every family is different.”

           Slowly, Lata tilted his head at Dipper. “What?”

           “Your parents are right,” Dipper said after a short but deep inhale, “that you should go to bed at 8:30. Your friends also need the amount of sleep that you do. It’s the truth. Are you still mad at it?”

           Lata thought for a moment. “Kind of,” he mumbled.

           “Why?”

           Lata grumbled, “This is worse than Reconciliation Letters.”

           “Why thank you,” Dipper said, grinning a little, “So? What’s got you so mad then? It can’t be that your friends are right and your parents are wrong for sending you to bed early, right?”

           “I think you’re like all the wrong people on the TV,” Lata said, frowning, not meeting Dippers’s eyes. “I think if I look it up you’re going to be wrong.”

           “I’m an all-powerful omni—I mean, all-knowing demon,” Dipper drawled, quirking an eyebrow at Lata. “I know things that Ping never would, and I know all the things that Ping is wrong about. Wanna try again?”

           For a long time, Lata stayed quiet. He kicked his legs under the table and glowered at his ice cream. Resentment breathed slow, auburn in his aura, and frustration sparkled at the edges like dew on stinging nettle. Dipper sat on the urge to interject what he wanted Lata to learn, and waited.

           After a whole six minutes, twenty-three seconds and four-hundred ninety-eights of a millisecond, Lata said, “’Cause I wanna watch Seawitch Adventures like Ri-Ri and all the others get to.”

           Dipper had not known about Seawitch Adventures, but it made sense. He translated, “Because you don’t like it. It goes against what you want the world to be like.”

           Lata tilted their head in a shrug and papped at the dining table surface with their hands. There was still a residue of ice cream lingering on the one hand, but Dipper decided that was whatever and Reynash or Kanti could deal with it later. He was doing awesome at this conversation thing.

           “People don’t get mad when things are factually wrong. They get mad when things aren’t the way they want them to be. And that’s okay!” Dipper said, after a length of time. “Everybody does it. The problem is when you choose to take that anger out on other people, people who don’t deserve it.”

           Lata paused, and looked up. “Do you do it? Take it out on other people.”

           Dipper felt his heart stutter in his chest. “…Sometimes.”

           “Is that why Daddy and Mommy were afraid of you?”

           Dipper held a desperate lie against the back of his many teeth before closing his eyes and letting it melt away, unheard. “…yes.”

           “Don’t you know it’s a problem, though?” Lata asked.

         Dipper shies away from that truth. He gives a not-quite-lie. “I forget, sometimes.”

           Rain splashed against the roof, the windows. The stasis fridge hummed in the kitchen. Lata had stopped drumming against the table. Dipper felt almost compelled to pick it up in his stead.

           “…what did you do?”

           “A lot of things,” Dipper said, quietly. He opened his eyes. “A lot of very bad things that I forgot were bad.”

           Lata stared at him. His dik-dik horns, so much smaller than Henry’s, than Paloma’s, seemed to embody all of Dipper’s regrets and failures for a brief moment. Dipper felt the phantom slide of a soul down his throat. He swallowed, met Lata’s gaze and tried to push the feeling away. Lata’s eyes looked right into Dipper’s until Dipper looked away, a little scared of what Lata was reading in them. Scared, maybe, that Lata might just see his own soul between Dipper’s teeth, even though that was impossible. Anyways, the only soul Dipper had between his metaphorical teeth was—

           “Even now?” Lata asked, again.

           “No, no, now is better. I forget…less,” Dipper said after a beat. Thoughts of souls faded to the back of his mind. They never really left, though. The temptation was always there, like the background hum of a generator, or the near silent slide of the second hand of an analogue clock. “Now is—I can control how mad I am. I remember that it’s not right to take my anger out on innocent people. I understand that sometimes I’m mad at the wrong thing. Usually I can pull myself back. I never remember to pull myself back when I’m…when I’m like what your parents learned about.”

           “Oh,” Lata said. They were quiet for a long time, the two of them. The ice cream in their bowls continued to melt. Dipper stared at his, watched the strawzzleberry cheesecake ooze into the peanut butter fudge scoop.

           “I yelled at Mama when she made me go to bed,” Lata said, in a quiet voice. “I said I hated her.”

           Dipper winced. That had always hurt—his children, his sister, his niblings saying they hated him in fits of anger. He’d known they didn’t mean it, usually, but it still hurt. Sometimes it hurt more than others. Sometimes he’d lashed out in response. And sometimes, a very few sometimes, he had hurt them far more than they had.

           He shied away from the thought. “How—what did your Mama think of that?”

           Lata shrugged, poked his ice-cream soup with his spoon. “She frowned at me and said I was going to bed no matter that I hated her.”

           Dipper remembered putting on a strong front. He worried lightly on his bottom lip. “Ah,” he said.

           After a few moments, Lata looked up at him. “Do you think I hurt her?” he asked. He shifted in his seat, but kept looking Dipper right in the eye.

           Dipper opened his mouth to say yes, because he’d always been hurt (even if just a little bit), but Lata looked so small and worried, undertones of dark guilt hovering around his shoulders. He swallowed the yes, then said, “Maybe. Maybe not. You—you have to ask her.”

           “Oh. Okay,” Lata said.

           They sat in silence. Rain hit the window, the roof. Dipper stared at his own ice cream soup for a while, colors having swirled into a muddy mess. He passed his spoon through it once, twice, a few more times, before sticking it in his mouth with a sigh. In his periphery, he saw Lata blink at him. Incredulity lanced over his head. Dipper stifled a grin and set down the spoon on the table with a light clack. Hyperaware of Lata staring at him, he sighed in exaggeration before picking up the ice cream cup and pouring the contents down his throat.

           “Ew, gross,” said Lata.

           Dipper swallowed and licked his lips, glancing up at Lata. “What? It’d be a waste to throw it out. You don’t want your own sugar soup? I’ll drink it for you.”

           Lata screwed up his nose at Dipper, then pushed the cup at him. His guilt was still present, but disgust and also amusement were sliding over it, burying it from the moment. Soon it would be nothing more than an aftertaste, something Dipper would have to concentrate to be able to sense. “All the flavors are mixed now, it’s so gross.”

           “Excellent,” Dipper said, before taking the ice cream and swallowing that, too. There are soggy chunks of cookie in it. It’s not particularly appetizing, but it’s also not a rule breaker, and the mixed flavor is a mystery on his tongue. He closes his eyes and tilts his head, swishing the last of the mixture around in his mouth to try to figure out what was in it.

           “Ewwww, what are you doing,” Lata said, giggling. “It’s not mouthwash!”

           Dipper swallowed. “Definitely Raspberry Crunch and Honeyed Alfalfa,” he said. “You got something chocolaty in there, right? Some kind of—fudge, fudge something, oh! Fudge Mountain Caramel Surprise, right?”

           “You can’t taste everything,” Lata accused.

           “If I work hard enough I can,” Dipper said, opening his eyes and smirking. There’s a tug at his navel that means summons, but honestly this is more important (and probably more fun). “Five scoops, right? And I’ve already figured out three of them.”

           Lata pushed himself to kneel on the seat of his chair, semi-sticky hands flat on the table and eyes wide. “You can’t,” he breathed.

           “Can so.” Dipper hummed and thought to himself. “There was a nutty kind of flavor in there, nutty and a little salty, but it wasn’t cashew, it was a little less fatty, it was—right, I remember you pointing to the Wonderful Salted Walnut.”

           “Noooo!” Lata leaned forward even further. Dipper cast an absentminded eye at the pressure that was placing on the front legs of the chair and whether they were likely to tip and smash Lata’s face into the table. It was pretty low, only 28%, so he let it be. “That’s still not all! There’s still one left!”

           Dipper cackled and spun the empty ice cream carton on one talon. With a nudge from his mind, it balanced perfectly and continued to spin unnaturally fast. The summons tugged again at his stomach, but he smothered it. It wasn’t anybody he knew. It wasn’t important. “I think you mean only one.”

           He closed his eyes to focus on the last flavor, and that can be the only reason that he only realized they weren’t alone when he heard, “And what are—did you have ice cream??”

           “Oh shit,” Dipper said without thinking, eyes flying open.

           Lata said, with the absolute worst timing known only to children under the age of ten, “Oh shit! Welcome home, Papa!”

           Reynash Pines leveled him with the most incredulous glare he’d seen in a while. “Ice cream and swearing?”

           Suddenly, the importance of the summons skyrocketed from rock bottom to very near the top of his priority list. Dipper dropped the carton on the floor. “Oh, hey, Reynash, buddy, how’s it hanging, uh, sorry to skip out but I actually just got a summons, you know how they are haha, can’t help that work life, on call twenty-four-seven, see you later hope you’re not mad byeeeee!”

           Reynash spluttered. Water dripped off his bangs and onto his forehead. “No, you can’t just bail on—Dipper!”

           But Dipper had already clenched the connection to the summons in one metaphorical hand, had tugged, and was gone.

 _______________________________________________________________

December 4th, 9:39 PM BRL

             The first thing Dipper noticed was that the candles were scentless. He billowed up from nothing in the most dramatic smoke he could think of, pulled the reverb in his throat to mild extremes, and said, “Who presumes to call upon Alcor the Dreambender?” into the dark of the blue-lit room.

           The second thing Dipper noticed were the chalk lines—exact angles, minimal differences in stroke width, painstakingly duplicated symbols. Its perfection was mathematically precise, and there were even three layers of binding spells woven into the circle. Dipper casually pulled his cane out of thin air, coalesced his top hat from residual smoke curling into the space above his head, and smiled to himself. Binding spells weren’t much more than a nuisance to deal with.

           The third thing Dipper noticed were the people in the room—elegantly dressed adults in formal suits and skirts, beautifully crafted silver masks over their faces, hair coiffed and pressed and sprayed. Their arms were uplifted, frozen in the moment they’d succeeded in summoning him. There were nine of them. Dipper glanced over them, saw their determination and hard-edged stubbornness and solid righteousness in their auras, the colors subtly different for each person.

           “Lord Alcor,” one of them said. Dipper blinked, and knew they were he. “We come to offer you an exchange: a solution to our troubles for a worthy sacrifice.”

           Dipper hummed, leaned on his cane, and didn’t let them in on the fact that he’d already surreptitiously snapped one of the binding circles. “Oh?” he drawled, a lazy little grin curled into the corners of his lips. “Tell me, what are your troubles?”

           “Our beloved country,” the Speaker said, “is being cast into ruin and shadows by those currently in charge. We seek only to remove the…obstacles facing our country’s future.”

           “I see,” said Dipper, and then he really did. He was in Brazil, in New Fortaleza, and the government was currently making social reforms that benefited those in the lowest economic tier. There were many people pushing for those reforms from places of influence—born into and risen up to alike. He raised his eyebrows. “And…what would your idea of a fair exchange be?”

           The Speaker turned his head and nodded to the woman next to him. She nodded back, then turned around to head away from the circle and towards the stairs at the edge of the wide space they had chosen for his summoning. Dipper watched her go, and did not blink. Absentmindedly, he slid his power around and under the second barrier spell. This one would be a little trickier—raw power would only alert them to its failure, so he would have to play a subtler hand.

           One of the summoning group shifted xir weight almost imperceptibly. Dipper blinked to look xir way. Xi made eye contact through the mask and flinched.

           “Be steady,” the Speaker said. “Lord Alcor, it would not go unappreciated were you to…refrain from any posturing or intimidation tactics.”

           Dipper chuckled, refocused back on the Speaker. “Condolences,” he murmured, pitching the tone so that it echoed off the far walls regardless of the volume. “I cannot control how much terror your…acquaintances feel. I am a demon. Instilling fear in those who look upon us is an unavoidable part and parcel of this existence, you understand.”  

           The Speaker said nothing, but swallowed. Dipper counted that as a victory in and of himself—he was getting the sense that this man enjoyed talking, and enjoyed even more than that the chance to hear himself talk.

           The soft whir-click-swoosh of a door being unlocked and opened echoed through the empty room. It whispered off the walls. Dipper watched the Speaker’s aura twist in uncertainty before determination smoothed it out, hot shmellow oozing over dirty blue-green until it was smothered. He held the Speaker’s gaze until the footsteps started echoing around the room too—the steady tread of the woman’s shoes, followed by a hesitant, uneven, sometimes scraping cacophony of quiet noise. The breath halted in Dipper’s useless lungs. Nobody seemed to notice; his chest had hardly been rising and falling anyways.

           Nine children followed the woman. He could hear their shallow breaths, their hitching hiccups, barely restrained tears. He could smell the acrid-sweet scent of fear, the way it spiked and swelled when he leaned back on thin air. The second barrier snapped, and he was just barely aware enough to stop it from flickering with bright thunder. He wanted this. He hated this.

           The Speaker waited for Alcor’s attention to shift to the children, but when he didn’t comply, he swept an arm out to call attention to the newcomers. “Nine lives, from nine of us, for nine whose lives must be cut short to prevent ruin to our country. We have learned that you…like…children, and their lives would be yours to do what you see fit with.”

           It was strange that these types always learned all the wrong lessons about children, he thought absentmindedly, almost vapidly. It was strange that they always dismissed the possibility of more ethical sacrifices, like candy or sentimental items or factories worth of ice cream. Dipper cast his gaze over the children, his face frozen in that way it was when he felt like he was on the cusp of something terrible. They were cleaned—recently, from the faint hint of chemically-recreated pomegranate on the air—but some of them had clearly had better care than others. He skipped from terrified face to terrified face. The youngest of them was—six, dark curly hair, bought from desperate parents like human lives were commodities, teeth digging into a bottom lip and eyes welling with tears. Then there was—seven and petit, ten and too tall for her age, eleven and barely scared enough the fear drowned out the anger, two eight-year-old twins with vitiligo on their palms (and no, Bentley didn’t have vitiligo, but the splotchy color difference was enough to make him burn colder, right in his chest), nine and born blind, six-and-a-half and missing a finger, and a twelve year old on the cusp of turning thirteen. Tomorrow was xir birthday.

           The Speaker’s voice turned soft. “Jamilla, come.”

           The twelve year old inhaled sharp and quiet, but went. Xir hands twisted in xir gold shift. Blue fingernail polish flashed in the light, like all the other children’s. Dressed up pretty, their individualism smoothed away as best as possible, for the very ends of their lives. “Papa?”

           The Speaker waited for Jamilla to come to him. Alcor kept his eyes on Jamilla every step of the way. He watched how xi quivered, how xi glanced over at him over and over. He thought about thirteenth birthdays and never reaching them, thought about his puffy blue vest and that stupid pine-tree hat that he had loved with all his heart, and how it was hard to even think about wearing things that casual for very long. His power rolled over to the third barrier and began to eat at it.

           “This is my own child,” the Speaker said, setting his hands on Jamilla’s shoulders. “Xi knows how important the future of our country is, and was willing to sacrifice xirself for it. While most of the children here are orphans, or as good as, this is a token of my dedication, of my seriousness.”

           “…I see,” said Dipper. He tilted his head. Jamilla shivered and averted xir gaze, but did not move otherwise. “Dedicated indeed, to sacrifice somebody you love. Very powerful.”

           He cast his eye, slowly and deliberately, over the other children. He tried to catch their gazes where he could. Everything around him felt—slow, almost. He stared into the eyes of the angry-scared eleven year old, whose name was Leilani and whose ambition was to become a child caretaker because children deserved people who protected them and nurtured them and loved them, whose anger had left silvery scars between her knuckles from how many times she’d split them over on somebody else’s face or gut or kidney, whose eyes were dark, furious brown and who could have lived to forty-one, dying young and tragic but not as young and tragic as this.

           “Indeed,” the Speaker said. “Now, do you agree to the terms laid out?”

           Dipper held Leilani’s gaze a moment longer, before breaking away to fix his attention on the Speaker and his child, his poor, youngest child (who had been loved and cherished but raised with the knowledge that this may happen someday, who had been prepared and taught to step into xir own death of xir own fledgling, undeveloped will). Dipper smiled.

           “Nine lives, from the nine of you, for nine whose lives must be cut short to prevent ruin to your beloved country, correct?” Alcor passed a whisper of blue flame between his fingers as he spoke.

           The Speaker waited a moment. His hands tensed over his child’s shoulders as he thought the words over. “The nine lives we offer you, to do with as you please, for the lives of those on this list.”

           Alcor looked down on the list. Two career politicians who had slowly turned over new leaves, a charismatic rabble-rouser, three underpaid and overworked lawyers with a talent for defending their wrongly-accused clients, a university professor whose lectures were widely distributed and widely influential, an old farmer with a penchant for speaking up loud and proud in defense of reforestation and traditional farming methods, and a janitor who had convinced their coworkers to unionize and strike for better wages. Influential in all the ways the Speaker and his cohorts disapproved of.

           As few as twenty years ago, Alcor would have taken advantage of the situation to cause as much carnage as possible while keeping the children safe. He would have gotten 18 souls and probably an additional nine life-debts from the children, to cash in as he pleased, when he pleased. Ten years ago, he would have settled for 9 souls, 9 bodies, and 9 traumatized children placed at the nearest orphanage.

           Today, Alcor remembered being angry, and terrified, and determined in the face of the world ending. He remembered the terror of being watched, the nightmares about rearranged faces and deer teeth. He remembered dying.

           “Like I said,” Alcor drawled, eyebrow raised. “Nine lives, from the nine of you, for nine whose lives must be cut short to prevent ruin to your beloved country. Or, if you want me to be a little more transparent, nine souls in here for nine lives out there and a whole lot of chaos thrown in.”

           The Speaker hesitated. “Chaos?”

           Alcor laughed, leaned on his cane a little more. The third barrier dissolved under his power at last with a flicker that he disguised by flaring his flames just a bit higher. Fury burned colder and deeper in his chest, at the very core of him. “What do you think nine people dying suddenly is going to cause?! Especially nine people as influential and high-profile as the ones on your list, and all at the same time! It’s going to be unbelievably chaotic. You might have a little trouble controlling the investigation that follows, but I’m sure you can squash things like freedom of the press and the people’s right to assemble in a jiffy, what with your very powerful positions. I’m all here for that, props to you!”

           “You’re taking their souls?” One of the other politicians said, a quiver of trepidation in their voice. Hesitation and guilt began to seep through their aura, dark and damp and almost physically heavy. “But I thought…”

          “Young souls are the best,” Alcor said. He had—he shied away from the thought, comforted himself with the many many times that other demons had spouted the same things he was now. “They’re very soft, not nearly as entrenched in their fleshvessels. Absolutely delicious.” He swallowed the drool that had begun to pool at the back corners of his mouth.

           “I…”

           “Enough,” the Speaker snapped, hands tightening on his child’s shoulders again. Xi was beginning to have terrified second thoughts. The only thing keeping xir where xi stood was xir father’s presence behind xir and years of conditioning convincing xir that this was the right thing to do. “Alcor the Dreambender, do we have a deal?”

           Alcor grinned, extended a hand that arched in a graceful, almost indolent line in the air. “I thought you’d never ask,” he purred.

           The Speaker flushed with a victorious, vicious kind of pride, then reached out to shake Alcor’s hand. The flames licked up between their palms, and Alcor grinned even wider.

           “It’s a deal,” Dipper said, before he took a step forward and plunged his hand down the Speaker’s throat and hooked his claws into the soul nestled at the base of the man’s neck, cradled in the hollow of his clavicle. As the others in the room started screaming, as fear saturated the air around them within seconds, Dipper looked into the Speaker’s confused and angry and terrified, determined eyes, lifted the soul up to his lips, and sunk his teeth into it.

           The Speaker screamed, physically, metaphysically, and collapsed as though suddenly boneless. His child screamed and went down with him, panic and terror readily apparent even if Dipper had been unable to see xir aura. The other children stumbled back, one twin tripping and scraping his palms against the ground, the eleven year old stepping in front of the seven year old with an angry snarl on her face. Dipper paid them no mind. He was too busy licking his fingers to catch any residual soul energy that had leaked out when he had bit down. After he had finished cleaning them off, he looked up to see that some of the summoners were making for the opposite door. He cocked his head. Energy thrummed through him. He laughed, high and maybe a little unhinged, before following.

           He had eight more souls to collect here before he could get to work, after all, and they’d gone to all the trouble of summoning him to fix their country in the first place! It would be—disrespectful, he considered as he tore open the ribcage of the closest summoner for no other reason than he could, if he wasn’t as diligent as possible.

________________________________________________________________

December 4th, 11:12 PM EST

           Dipper blipped into bed and shifted into elegant pajamas in one smooth motion, still a little buzzed from all the souls he had eaten and all the life debts he had collected over the past hour and a half. Finding the children suitable homes had been—difficult enough that he had burned off a lot of the energy gained from the deal, but he was still twitchy and half-guilty over how he had acted in the basement. Right after he had lectured Lata about acting out of anger! Lata was never finding out about what happened.

           Next to him, Bentley shifted from half-asleep to half-awake. “Huh? Dipper?”

           Dipper hummed. He wiggled so that he was curled up against Bentley, set a still-clawed hand against Bentley’s sleep sweater (he wore sleep sweaters now, it was terrifying that he kept being so cold even when he should be warm) and curled it so that the fabric was in his loose grasp. He had to fight to keep it loose. Everything was—too bright, too sharp, and he felt like he was balancing on the edge of that precipice again, that if he fell it would be too easy to go back to him half a century ago.

           “Dipper, you okay?”

           He felt an arm reach over him, a hand rub at his back. On Bentley’s other side, Torako snuffled in her sleep, snorted, but didn’t wake up. Dipper pressed his face into Bentley’s chest and nuzzled the fabric without giving a solid answer. The world dulled down to something almost manageable.  

           Bentley’s chest expanded and then contracted with a sigh. He wiggled down just enough that Dipper’s head fit under his chin. Something seemed—off, in that moment, because Dipper could swear that his feet should be below Bentley’s in this position, but when he reached out with his toes they brushed Bentley’s shins.

           “All right,” Bentley said, the sound of his voice reverberating against Dipper’s forehead. “All right, not tonight. It’s—it’s late anyways. You can tell me what happened tomorrow, okay?”

           Several moments passed before Dipper felt relaxed enough to nod. All the while, Bentley’s hand rubbed up and down his back.

           “Okay,” Bentley breathed out. Dipper didn’t want to see the relief in his aura, so he kept his eyes shut and just focused on the warmth surrounding him. Then, Bentley said, “You wanna sleep between me and Torako tonight? I can move you if it’s too much trouble.”

           There was something weird about that statement too, because Bentley was strong but it could be awkward for him to haul something larger over his own body, but Dipper thought about how nice it would be to be sandwiched between two souls he loved (one was his, the other may as well have been but he would never, ever, ever take it, because look at what happened to Henry even though he loved Henry?) and the weirdness of the situation melted away. He nodded again.

           “Right then,” Bentley murmured. Dipper felt him wriggle his left arm under Dipper’s chest to wrap around his back. There was a pressure at the spot right above the space between his wings, and then they were turning over, Dipper’s legs pinned lightly between Bentley’s. Seconds later, Dipper’s back was to Torako’s front, and his face was still smooshed up against Bentley’s chest. Dipper hadn’t even had to open his eyes. He let out a soft breath. His hand unclenched from Bentley’s sweater to curl up against it instead, knuckles brushing wool.

           “There we go,” Bentley said. He pressed a kiss to the top of Dipper’s head. There was a rustle, Bentley’s body shifting against his, and then he heard Torako groan a little before she was flush up against his back, breath fanning the back of his head. She was snoring lightly, and Dipper couldn’t help but smile a little.

           “There we go,” Bentley said again, a little quieter. He rubbed his hand up and down Dipper’s back for a long time before he finally fell asleep.

           Dipper listened to them. He took in a deep breath, let it out, and let himself be home.

[tiliamericana]

Muay Thai: 1.09

Nairi double checked the address Linden had texted her and looked back up at the set of buildings. They were squat and stuck together, looking kind of like a demountable set up someone had made permanent as best they could. The foundation was brickwork that looked more recent than the dirty siding, and about halfway up the wall it was all old windows, half of which were propped open.

The number she was looking for was around the side and about halfway down, and Nairi could smell cleaning supplies and cooking food, and hear discordant music as she walked up the ramp towards the door she was looking for. It was propped open a couple of inches by a worn paint can filled with concrete, a little angry face painted on it in red. She knocked on the window panel in the door. “Linden?”

The door swung all the way open, and Linden poked her head out, smiling at her. “There you are! Found it okay?”

She was completely bare faced for the first time since Nairi had met her, and while the denim cut offs were a familiar part of her wardrobe rotation, the oversize grey t-shirt was new, shapeless and paint spattered. There was also paint all along her forearms, some of which had managed to get onto her legs as well.

“Yeah,” said Nairi, holding up the paper bag. “And I brought lunch, as requested.”

“Oh, I’ll have to keep you around,” said Linden, grinning as she stepped back and opened the door properly to let Nairi in. She took the bag as Nairi stepped past her, digging in to retrieve her enchilada with a pleased noise.

“Having a… productive Tuesday?” asked Nairi as Linden let the door fall back into the paint can with a muffled clang.

Even with all of the windows propped open and the extractor fan wheezing loudly, the room still stunk of turpentine, paint, and something else chemical and sweet that she couldn’t quite identify. There was an unfinished counter running along one side of the room, cluttered with tubs of paint and half-filled bottles of oil, dirty jars and mugs, with an industrial sink at the end with an old microwaved plugged in next to it. One of its hinges was held on with electrical tape. The shelves under the counter had a lot of plastic tubs filling the space, labelled in masking tape and marker.

Linden crossed the room to a section where the floor was covered by an old bedsheet, sitting down on a wheeled office chair with the back broken off in front of an easel holding a canvas that was mostly pale green. She nodded as she picked up a tall ceramic mug with a lid, and she drank deeply from it, gesturing at a ratty couch under the windows on the wall. The mug had a strip of masking tape wrapped around it, ‘NO TURPS >:|’ scrawled on it in thick marker.

“Yeah, I got my wash layer down for the base of this bad boy,” said Linden, setting the mug back down and jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the canvas. “I spent a good chunk of last week fucking around with thumbnails, but your housewarming gift is officially on the way as of now.”

Nairi, sat on the couch. A strut creaked under her, threatening to crack. “You don’t have to—”

Linden waved her off. “I told you, your walls are too bare, and this is literally my area of expertise. How was your morning anyway?”

Nairi shrugged. “Okay, I guess? I really only got out of bed when you texted me.”

“Nice for some,” said Linden, grinning at her. “Layabout! How do you and Aggy get anything scheduled? She’s up by six and in bed by ten sharp.”

Nairi shrugged, unwrapping her own lunch and shifting uncomfortably on the terrible couch. “I guess we’ll find out; I’m having dinner at her apartment tonight.”

“Co-sy,” said Linden sarcastically, setting her enchilada on the folding table next to her ‘not turpentine’ and a clear jar filled with what was presumably turpentine. She picked up a flat paintbrush and dabbed it at her palette, rolling her chair forward and making a couple of light, decisive strokes on the green. “You two are enjoying yourselves, then?”

“I think so,” said Nairi, not entirely certain if she’d messed something up or was missing something. “Have you got plans for the night then? Or are you working?”

“Both,” said Linden promptly. “Got a hot date with a cool hook up, and then a much hotter date with the rest of next month’s rent check. Can I ask you a favour?”

“Sure,” said Nairi, chewing slowly. “For your cool hook up or next month’s rent?”

Linden turned her head and bounced her eyebrows at Nairi. “Next month’s rent check. Si’s kind of a dickhead, but he’s only dangerous if you don’t like T.S. Eliot or are allergic to, like, papercuts, or lignin, or something. I need a safety check in for when I finish my job. I have a couple of people I’d usually ask, but the one I normally go to during the week has a daughter in hospital for her appendix, and Flo takes melatonin to keep her schedule, like, regulated during semester so asking her to wait up on a school night is a no-go.”

“I should be able to do that,” said Nairi, nodding, partially because her only other option was asking what the hell ‘lignin’ was. “What do you need for it?”

“It’s just waiting for me to call when I’m finished with my job, or calling to check in, just to make sure I haven’t been murdered or whatever,” said Linden, leaning back a little to scan the lines she’d marked out on the canvas. “I’m booked for eleven, so I should be done before one. I’ll like, send you the address and the number for my work phone and stuff.”

Nairi nodded again. “Okay, sounds easy. So, if I can’t reach you by one, what do I need to do?”

“I’d tell you to call Nick, but he’d only call the cops so you can probably just cut him out of the equation and go straight to them. I’d like, rather not with them, like at all, ever,” she emphasised this with a slashing motion of her paintbrush, “but if it comes to that, then tell them like, I’m on a first date with a guy my dad thinks is creepy and I promised to check in or something, I don’t know.”

If she had the address, then… well. “Why would Nicholas call the cops if he knows you’d hate it?”

Linden rolled her eyes extravagantly and set her brush down, going for her enchilada again. “Because he believes in the power of the system, doesn’t approve of my job, is convinced that one day cops will magically stop being shitty to me, and also he apparently still thinks I’m sixteen.”

“Right,” said Nairi, slowly balling up the foil and paper of her lunch. “He uh, cares a lot about you, huh?”

“Yeah, he’s an old friend of my dad’s,” said Linden, nodding and swallowing. “Looked out for me when I was a teenager, you know? He’s still convinced that every time he turns around I’m gonna run off and nearly get myself killed again, it’s a real pain in the ass.”

“Again?”

A rueful smile flickered across Linden’s face. “Yeah, I ran away from home when I was about fifteen. Jim’s the one who found me and got me off the streets at first, but Edie and Nick were the ones who really made sure I got on my feet.”

“Right,” said Nairi, and she hesitated. “Jim’s a friend of theirs?”

“Was, yeah,” said Linden, glancing down at her lap to brush off an invisible crumb. “He died when I was about nineteen. Lung cancer, you know. It happens.”

“Damn,” said Nairi, not sure what to say in the face of that. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too, sometimes,” said Linden, her smile a little lopsided as she looked up. “It was a long time ago, though—water under the bridge and all that.”

“Yeah,” said Nairi, glancing at her hands briefly. “So what, Nicholas is worried that you’ll end up in a gutter?”

“Street corner, more like,” said Linden, dryness creeping back into her tone as she popped the last piece of her enchilada into her mouth, shaking her head. “He was pretty pissed off when I got out of college and went straight back to hooking.”

Nairi snorted. “Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d ‘approve’ of that.”

“Real stick up his ass, yeah,” said Linden, nodding again. “Edithwas the fun one when I was a teenager, so you can imagine what a downer life was back then.”

“A little, yeah,” said Nairi, her mouth twitching. “I didn’t know anyone like that as a teenager, maybe it would’ve helped me out some.”

“Oh, I know that feeling,” said Linden with a laugh, giving Nairi a carefully measured side-eye. “He’s very useful to have around sometimes—my taxes get filed on time every year and all that.”

Nairi laughed. “Nothing shows you care like robust budgeting, huh?”

Linden cackled with laughter, a loud, startled noise. “Yes! Exactly—god, you should have seen him when I got my first apartment. He came with me to sign the lease and he interrogated my landlord, did his own goddamn tour, took his own photos of the place when I moved in and hunted the guy down to sign that he’d seen them, made copies of my bond payment, and thenhe was on me every single month to make sure I had a receipt for my rent.”

“Ferocious,” said Nairi, grinning at her.

“And wildly disappointed in me the first time I got evicted,” said Linden, grinning back at her.

Nairi laughed without expecting it, the lines around her eyes creasing. “You’re a menace, then?”

Linden was smiling with bright eyes; head tilted a little. “Damn right I am. Nick’s been putting up with my shit for ten years, I really thought he’d’ve clued in by now.”

“Maybe he thinks you can be better than shit?” suggested Nairi.

Linden’s smile softened a little as she picked up the paintbrush again. “No, he’s a little better at managing his expectations than that. I mean, he sticks up for me with dad, but it’s not like I get away scot free when I fuck up!”

“Your dad’s not a fan of the hooking I take it?”

Linden made a wheezing sort of noise as she went for her paint again. “Oh god, no, my dad doesn’t know about the hooking, he’s an attorney, he’d kill me. That’s part of why Nick fucking hates it, he doesn’t like lying for anything, least of all my sorry ass.”

Nairi nodded again. “Okay, so, your dad’s just kind of a dick, huh?”

Linden paused and turned her head to look at Nairi, giving her an annoyed look. “No, he’s fine. We don’t get along that well, is all. And that whole thing where I was a missing teenager for four years and then came back queer and punk didn’t exactly help things either. We’re fine, I’m going up for dinner with him in a couple of weeks, actually.”

“Right, sorry,” said Nairi, holding up a hand. “I never met my parents, I don’t know what’s like, normal or whatever.”

“It’s fine,” said Linden, shrugging at her. “People get the wrong impression sometimes, is all.”

Somehow Nairi wasn’t shocked by this. “Will I hit another pothole if I ask about your mom?” she said instead.

Linden laughed. “I never knew her. I asked about her a bunch when I was a kid, but my dad was kind of really evasive and I stopped asking—I sort of got the impression she died when I was extra small or something. Edie reckons that whoever she was they were never really, like ‘together’, ‘cause apparently I was a surprise baby for everyone who knew him.”

“Oh, I don’t think kids work well as surprises,” said Nairi with a wince.

“Definitely not,” said Linden, grinning widely. “He did okay, though.”

Nairi shifted uncomfortably on the couch again. “You turned out okay, so he must have.”

Linden snorted.

Nairi’s phone chirped in her back pocket and she tugged it out to check the message. The couch creaked ominously as she shifted again, and she paused, glancing down at it. “Just out of curiosity, how much did you pay for this couch?”

“I didn’t, I nicked it from a guy who was throwing it out,” said Linden, taking a drink of not turps as Nairi’s phone chirped again. “Who’s texting?”

Nairi glanced down at her screen, tapping open the messaging inbox. “Agatha. She’s just checking that we’re still on for tonight.”

“You’re not gonna disappoint her, are you?” teased Linden.

Nairi looked up at her, not sure what to make of the way her tone had dipped. “No?”

Linden hummed, her mouth twitching. “Well, don’t party too hard then,” she said in the same tone again, and she turned her attention back to her canvas.

[spidercakes]

Have that winterironspider high!Peter and soft Dom Tony AU feat. Bucky, the Added Element. The dynamic between them is some kind of something- its new for me writing wise anyway. Its predominantly starker, but Bucky has his role in there too. Also, before we get into it fun fact about prostate orgasms- its possible to have several orgasms in a row without ejaculating, but when you do ejaculate that triggers the refractory period. This becomes relevant later ;)

Warnings: drug use (edibles), D/s dynamic, sensory play, cuffs, breath play/ choking, 

*

Peter frowns. “I’m not really feeling anything. Maybe I should eat another one,” he says, giving the kitchen a glance. Tony curls an arm tighter around his waist and one of Bucky’s hands curls around his ankle.

“No, baby. You’ll feel it soon and trust me, you don’t want to overdo it,” Tony tells him. Peter huffs, pretending you’re be put out by it even though he secretly likes Tony being overprotective.

He pulls his feet from Bucky’s lap anyway, intent on getting a drink but when he stands his head swims for a moment and he sits back down, perching himself in Tony’s lap. He wraps his arms around Peter as Peter adjusts to the way his head is starting to swim. “Oh, I feel it now baby,” he says, leaning back into Tony’s chest. He feels warm and solid and when his hands slip over his skirt to his bare thighs he spreads his legs unconsciously.

“How do you feel?” Tony murmurs in his ear, voice low and sexy.

Peter smiles, the high feeling now coming in waves that seem to match how Tony is touching him. “I feel good,” Peter tells him truthfully. The high feeling feels like it’s come almost out of thin air but it’s good, strong. It makes the way Tony is touching him feel better, more intense, like a little trail of sparks is travelling up and down his inner thighs. Tony’s fingers are soft against his thigh, something that has to be unusual for someone who works with their hands a lot like Tony. But they feel good, trailing further and further up his thighs.

Tony hums, “you still okay with our plans?” he asks and Peter lets out a soft moan.

“Yes,” he says, head tipping back into Tony’s shoulder. Peter’s head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton in a good way and Tony’s solid presence feels nice, grounding.

“Okay, baby,” Tony tells him, “we’re gunna go to the bedroom so you’re gunna have to stand.”

Peter grins and pulls himself up. It feels like his mind and body are moving through water and he can feel the way Tony is half hard underneath him. “What, you like that I’m easy like this?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at Tony. His cock twitches and Peter grins, “I like it too,” he murmurs as he stands. His head swims a little but he adjusts, taking the time to balance himself in his heels before he starts towards the bedroom. He hears Tony and presumably Bucky follow behind him but he pays it no attention.

When he gets to the bedroom he crawls onto the bed immediately, moving to the center before stretching out, hands up at the headboard for Tony to cuff. “Put your blindfold on, baby,” Tony tells him. He picks it up and slips it on before putting his hands back by the cuffs. Tony lets out a small moan as he crawls onto the bed, “good boy,” Tony tells him as he picks up his wrists and slips them into his cuffs before tightening them. Peter wiggles a little in anticipation, biting his lip as Tony moves onto his ankles. “You good?” he asks as he curls a hand around Peter’s ankle.

He nods, “I feel really good right now,” he says. Tony squeezes his ankle and slips the cuff attached to the spreader bar around it. Peter knows what’s coming, this is all planned, and lets out a small moan of anticipation. Tony cuffs his other ankle and squeezes it for a moment before he spreads the bar out, pushing Peter’s legs further apart.

“Ready?” Tony murmurs and he nods. “Good,” Tony says as he pulls Peter’s legs up using the spreader bar, drawing them back and then attaching the bar to the headboard. It leaves Peter on his back, legs in the air almost folded in half with his ass exposed. Tony swears under his breath, “fuck baby, you look incredible,” he murmurs, fingers trailing down Peter’s thighs.

He sighs as Tony touches him, senses feeling like they’ve been dialed up and that fuzzy feeling in his head is making it a lot easier to focus on the stimuli. Tony’s touch sends shivers down his spine and makes him whimper a little as he shifts mostly unsuccessfully thanks to his restraints. Tony continues to run his hands along his body, teasing him softly as he wraps his hand around Peter’s neck. His hand feels heavy and warm and the grip is just enough to hinder his ability to breathe right. It makes Peter gasp as a wave of pleasure crashes over him, cresting with the high feeling in his body.

“Shit,” Tony murmurs, voice low. “Didn’t think you’d react this well but fuck, I’ll take it.”

Peter lets out a soft whine that turns into an outright moan as two slick fingers press into him. “Fuck, yeah,” he says, back arching a little as his mouth drops open with pleasure. He can feel the way he stretches as the fingers move in and out slowly, testing their limits. “Hey Bucky,” Peter murmurs, knowing it wouldn’t be Tony. He already knows all Peter’s limits, doesn’t need to test them much. There’s a slight hesitation before Bucky goes back to fingering him and Peter smiles because obviously he’d know the difference.

Tony laughs softly, “how’d you know the difference, baby?” he asks, fingers around his neck tightening a little.

Peter’s breath hitches and his fingers flex, itching to touch someone he can’t touch. “You’re never this gentle,” Peter says, “you know I like it rough.”

He hears Bucky swear softly, voice barely audible and Peter finds that unexpectedly attractive. Tony laughs, hand moving away from his throat and Peter lets out a soft whine at the loss. “Shh, baby, you know I’ll take care of you,” Tony tells him as Bucky’s fingers move faster. He nods a little frantically, attention more focused on the way Bucky’s fingers are moving, the way he feels stretched out, that he wants more.

“Fuck me faster,” Peter tells him, trying his best to tilt his hips up to pull his fingers in deeper but he doesn’t have much success.

Tony’s hand covers his mouth, “excuse you, who’s in charge here?” he asks, a slight edge to his voice. Bucky pulls his fingers out and Peter whines as Tony pulls his hand away.

“Tony no,” Peter says as soon as he’s free to speak. “Baby I just, it was really- Mr. Stark,” he says, resorting to his go to when he wants Tony to do something for him. It almost always works and he pouts as he realizes this is one of the few times its not going to go his way.

“You know the rules,” Tony tells him, ignoring the heavy sigh Peter lets out in frustration.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter tries again, “just feels really good, and I really want- please,” he says as he pulls a little at his restraints.

“What was that?” Tony asks, “didn’t write hear you.”

“Please,” Peter says again immediately, “please, please, please, please.”

Tony hums a little before pressing his fingers into Peter’s hole and he knows its him because they’re quick and sure, moving exactly the way Peter likes. Peter gasps, back arching as Tony fucks into him good and the pleasure of it melts through the haze of his high to take him higher as he moans. “Fuck Tony, that’s so good, so ah-” his words cut out and he makes no attempt to pick up his abandoned sentence again.

“That’s what I thought,” Tony says and he pulls his fingers out.

“What? No!” Peter says, lifting his head only for Tony to push it back down. “Tony,” Peter whines at him, “Tony, please.”

“Shh,” Tony tells him and Peter huffs, resigning himself to his fate for approximately three seconds before he goes to open his mouth to beg again when he feels himself stretch open again, this time over a cock and he moans.

He knows its Bucky, has to be with the hesitance not that Peter cares. His breath picks up as Bucky moves slowly, dragging himself in and out at a torturous pace. It feels good though, so good, as he gains the confidence to move faster, spurred on by Peter’s enthusiastic little moans. He wants to tell Bucky to move faster, to fuck him like he means it but he knows Tony will make Bucky pull out and he doesn’t want that.

Tony seems to pick up on his thoughts anyway because Bucky picks up his pace and Peter assumes its under Tony’s instruction. He moans loudly as Bucky changes his angle a bit and the next time he fucks into him Peter’s back arches harshly. “Oh my god!” he yells, mouth open as Bucky hits the same spot again, hands curling around Peter’s hips to guide himself in easier. “Oh fuck, holy shit, I- ah!” Peter says, ability to form words dropping as the pleasure builds. “Tony,” he moans out eventually, head thrown back.

A hand pets into his hair, brushing his curls away from his face and he leans into it, panting heavily. “You’re doing so good, baby,” Tony murmurs to him, “sound so pretty making all those little noises for me. Does it feel better this way?” he asks and Peter nods frantically.

“So much better,” he says honestly, “so much more intense. Like my senses are dialed to eleven.”

Bucky lets out a soft moan, barely audible over Peter and he bites his lip hard. “Tony, can i cum?” he asks, voice sounding desperate even to himself.

“Gunna cum already?” Tony asks and Peter nods frantically. “Okay, baby, you can cum,” Tony murmurs, fingers threading through his hair and Peter can’t hold back anymore. His back arches and he cums, doing his best to shift his hips into Bucky’s as he fucks him through it. Bucky keeps fucking into him hard and Peter moans, fingers clenching as his pleasure starts to build again.

“Oh fuck,” he moans, “keep doing that,” he tells Bucky, “‘m gunna cum again, gunna cum its so fucking good.”

Bucky’s breathing hitches up, “shit,” he says, voice sounding as ragged as his breathing.

Tony pets his hand through Peter’s hair again, “can he cum in you?” he asks, leaning in and kissing him softly.

He nods, “mhm,” he says, only half focused on that at all. Bucky’s hips move a little faster and Peter bites his lip, trying to hold back but its impossible. “Oh, fuck!” he says, back arching as his toes try to curl in their heels. “Fuck, I’m cumming again, ‘m cumming, ah!”

He hears Bucky’s breath hitch up again as he fucks into Peter one last time, letting out a small moan as he does. Peter’s head is still swimming though he can’t tell if its from the afterglow or the high or both but he figures its probably both.

“You okay, baby?” Tony murmurs and he nods. “You okay for me to fuck you or are you overstimulated?” he asks.

Peter shakes his head, “‘m good, so good, please fuck me, wanna feel you so bad feels like its been forever,” he says even though he’s sure they slept together the day before yesterday.

“Yeah?” Tony asks and Peter nods again, wiggling his hips as best he can in his current position to entice him. “Fuck, you are good,” Tony murmurs as Peter feels the bed move. He bites his lip, holding back a moan at the thought of Tony fucking him while he waits for Tony to replace Bucky. When he does his movements are quick and decisive, practiced over the last year of their relationship and Peter gasps.

“Baby, I missed you,” he says as Tony grips his hips hard, unworried about going too far and that confidence has Peter hot. “Fuck you’re so good,” he tells Tony, “feel so good.”

“You’re still so fucking tight,” Tony tells him, voice strained a little. “Always feel fucking amazing wrapped around me like this.”

Peter nods, only half paying attention to the words because the noises Tony is making are so good and he loves that Tony’s so loud in bed. He likes knowing he’s good, that Tony feels good and he’s the one doing that to him. “Love you,” Peter says and Tony moans.

“Oh fuck baby, I love you too,” Tony tells him as he fucks into him faster. “Not sure I’m gunna last gorgeous, you’re too fucking good like this,” Tony says.

“Yes, please cum in me,” Peter tells him, “feels so good when you do that, please,” he begs.

Tony swears, grip on his hips tightening just a little as he changes his angle a bit, speeding up. Peter can’t help the moans he lets out, can’t help the way his toes curl and the way he pulls at his restraints as Tony fucks him the way he likes, rough and hard as he chases his own pleasure. “Gunna cum with me?” Tony asks, one hand moving from his hip to Peter’s cock.

“Oh fuck baby, yeah I am oh my god please!” he says, letting out what almost sounds like a sob as Tony touches him.

“That’s right baby, you know who you belong to,” he says. Peter nods fast, moaning loud because he does, he does.

“‘M yours, belong to you,” he says, “love being yours, so good to me,” he murmurs, damn near babbling.

“‘Course I do baby, you’re so good, so beautiful. Oh course I take care of you,” Tony murmurs.

“‘M so close Tony, so close please, please, please Tony- oh-” his words cut out as Tony touches him just right, just the way he likes and- “baby I’m gunna cum now, please cum, please- Fuck,” he says, mewling loudly.

“Shit,” Tony says, voice sounding gone and Peter smiles, so happy that he can make Tony feel like that, can push him to the edge and right over. “Shit baby, now,” he says and Peter cums loud, letting out a string of swear words as his back arches up again.

*

Peter stays still as Bucky cleans him up, movements quick and confident. He drifts in and out, fuzzy feeling in his head still raging and its nice, Bucky’s hands moving softly over his body as he releases him from his restraints and carefully rearranges Peter’s body. He winces a little as Bucky lowers his feet, letting him out of the cuffs around his ankles. Peter smiles as he gently kneads at his legs, softening the muscles there as Peter relaxes more.

He lays there and lets Bucky do his work, waiting for Tony to return. “Hey baby,” Tony murmurs and Peter feels the bed dip as he crawls onto it. “I got you water and some food.”

He’s tired, he doesn’t want to eat or drink but he knows Tony will get upset about it if he doesn’t so he carefully pulls away from Bucky, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. “So good for me,” Tony murmurs as he reaches out and pulls off Peter’s blindfold, smiling when Peter blinks at the light.

“That was really good,” he tells Tony. “Should fuck me high more often.”

Tony’s smile grows wider and he leans in and kisses Peter. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he murmurs. “Now drink this,” he says, handing Peter a bottle of water. He sighs, pretending to be put out but he drinks it anyway, finding he’s thirstier than he thought he was. “There you go,” he murmurs, “knew you’d be thirsty. Bucky, go get another bottle of water,” Tony tells him, acknowledging his presence for the first time that Peter can remember in this entire encounter. He grins and leans into Tony because he’s got to hand it to him, making a threesome all about him is impressive even for him.

[the-entity-down-the-street]

We Have the Moon

Hey guys, sorry I disappeared off the face of the Earth for a while. I’ve been pretty depressed and unmotivated because, well *gestures vaguely to everything.* Here’s the second installment of my human-monster romance stories. We’re going full Gothic Lesbian Vampire Love today. I hope y’all enjoy. I can’t think of any content warnings off the top of my head, this is pretty tame honestly, but if there’s anything I should add let me know! Read under the cut.  

 Plink.

  It was a light tap, subtle as the wind itself. Nobody should’ve woken up. But Alice did. Subtle, tinkling reverberations made her ears perk up.

  Plink.

She lifted her head. Though only the pale moon offered light, she had no trouble seeing. Her eyes were built for picking apart shadows. The room was empty.

 Plink.

“Alice!”

Oh. Oh no. Why was she here? Alice scurried to the window. It was covered in a frosty sheen broken up by a few persistent stones. Cracking it open enough for one eye to peek around, Alice spotted a familiar figure standing outside.

Melody. In a prom dress.

It was silver, sleeveless, and dripping with rhinestones. She’d woven matching ribbons into her box braids. “Alice, come down.”

“Go home, Mel. You know you shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, and?” Melody asked, indignant.

“Please go home. You must be cold.”

“Guess I’ll just be cold till you get your ass down here. And put on something cute.”

  Alice narrowed her eye. “You’re not going away, are you?”

“Negative.”

She sighed. Melody was stubborn enough to freeze until she came down. Might as well keep her from getting frostbite. Alice hurried to slip into a pair of black leggings, a button-up top, and her dad’s leather jacket. Dressed, she opened the window fully and crawled down the side of her house.

Alice wasn’t the beautiful type of vampire. Her skin wasn’t pure white marble; it was pale corpse flesh, showcasing a network of black veins pulsing underneath. Her limbs weren’t perfectly sculpted; they were spidery and knotted and all her joints protruded into bulbs of tendon and bone. And her face did not showcase a haunting beauty, but a ghoulish caricature of something that might’ve been human, once, if you squinted a little. If she were a full vampire, Alice was sure her friend would run home, leaving only a trail of piss and tears behind. But her horror was diluted by the glow of her mom’s humanity, so Melody stayed waiting for her.

“Happy?” Alice asked.

“Yes,” Melody replied, grabbing her arm. “Now come on. I’m freezing.”

Melody’s hand, even kissed by the winter wind, was so warm. Alice’s half-beating heart sped up to a human pace.

The two of them ran through the woods separating Alice’s house from the rest of the town. There was no snow, but a low fog hung over the roots of the trees, whipped up by their legs and soft laughter.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you think?” Melody said.

Oh. Alice would’ve blushed if she’d had the heat for it. The graveyard. Melody always waited for her there, always where the moon was brightest. Never afraid. Ready to play with death. To flirt with it. To dance with it. To go to prom with it.

“I thought your parents said they’d cut off your college fund if you saw me again,” Alice said.

“They did. And if we don’t do this tonight, they will.”

“And what is this, exactly?”

“You’ll see.”

Christ. Always so damn cryptic. As much as Alice was annoyed by it, she had to admit the spark of mystery was welcome. The heartbeat of her life had slowed to a comatose lull since Melody left for college. It had just her and her parents eking out a quiet existence where they wouldn’t be bothered by the townsfolk. The shadows may have been safe, but they weren’t nearly as interesting as humans thought they were.

They arrived at the graveyard. The headstones they grew up around were glistening with ice droplets. In the center was an abandoned, rotting church which towered over the graves. They always sat in its shadow on the hotter nights. The memory of a lingering kiss danced on Alice’s tongue as they made their way up the mossy steps. The front door was held shut by several wood planks haphazardly nailed over it.

“Help me open this, would you, baby?”

Yes, she could, happily. The door, and the boards, caved like paper when Alice kicked them in. No invitation necessary.

Like vampiric beauty, it was also a myth that God held vampires at bay. That implied that vampires weren’t of God. It also implied that the Christian God was the only Holy Spirit around. That was the biggest myth of all.

It was oddly lovely inside. Pews draped in cobwebs decorated the otherwise barren space. The altar at the front was defaced with graffiti, mostly of pentagrams drawn by misinformed teenagers, highlighted by the stained-glass window throwing muted rainbows across the floor.

“Okay, we’re here. Now what are we doing?”

Melody looked towards the altar. A crystalized breath fell from her soft lips. “Getting married.”

“…Huh?” Alice felt her heart speed up even more. It was uncomfortable. How did humans deal with this?

Melody looked to Alice and squeezed her hand. The shifting browns of cats’ eye swam in her irises. “Marry me, Alice.”

“B-but this isn’t… I thought maybe…” she scratched her neck.

“That I’d meet someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would I do that?”

Alice took her other hand. “Because they’re human, Mel. Because you could have a normal life. Because, I don’t know, you could grow old together and stuff.”

Melody made an audible snoring sound.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. That shit’s boring.”

“But your parents—”

“Will have to get the fuck over it. I chose you.”

“That’s a choice I could never understand.”

“But I’m making it anyways,” Melody said. “You in or not?”

Alice bit her lip. Her fang poked into the skin, and a stream of black blood ran down her chin. She had no doubts that Melody was serious. And looking into her eyes, Alice also had no doubts that Melody loved her. Humans couldn’t hide their feelings well even if when they tried. It was kind of cute, really. Their little twitches, jittery hands, hushed curses, even their breathing— it always gave away the truth. Melody’s truth was stark, longing gazes, reaching lips, and a racing heart.

“This isn’t exactly an official ceremony,” Alice said. “We don’t have a priest or a wedding license or anything.”

Melody offered a shrug. “That can come later. Once I’m on my own. For now,” she pointed towards the large circular window above the altar, where the full moon shone, “we have the moon. She’ll be our officiant.”

Alice considered this. The moon. It followed them through their every night. Even when they were apart, even when they couldn’t talk to each other, the moon would know. That was all that mattered. “The moon it is.”

“Great, I already bought rings. Come on.”

           The excited, giggling brides ran to the altar and took places opposite of each other. Melody pulled two rings out of her bra. One had a large red gem and one had a blue gem, both oval, a little like class rings.

“I hope these weren’t too expensive.”

“Nah, got them from Walmart. We can get real ones for the real wedding.”

“Think your parents will suspect?”

Melody waved her hand flippantly. “They know I like a lot of jewelry. One more ring won’t set off their alarms if it doesn’t look like a wedding ring. Stop worrying.”

“You’ve been planning this a while?”

She lowered her head. “Since they forced us to break up.”

Alice held Melody’s cheek and stroked it. They had tried to be sneaky, but people in this town never mind their own business. As soon as they found out Melody was going to prom with the local abomination, all hell broke loose. A lot of screaming. Even more crying. They never even got to go to prom. “I’m sorry, baby.”

Melody looked up to Alice. “Doesn’t matter now. Hold out your hand.”

Alice did. “No vows?”

“I think we both know what I’m agreeing to.” Melody slid the red ring over Alice’s finger. Alice slid the blue ring over Melody’s. “Till the end, love.”

“Till the end.”

Their lips met, hot upon cold, life upon death. The kiss was long and lingering. Alice knew it would be their last for a long time. Maybe months, maybe years. It all depended on how often Melody could sneak visits during her breaks. Alice could wait. Once Melody was on her own, they would get their real wedding. After that they had eternity waiting ahead.

Until then, they had the moon. She would know, and that was all that mattered.

[erintoknow]

leave no room for anything

Spiraling - A Fallen Hero: Rebirth Fan-fiction

You need cover, you need an alibi, and you need a place to plan and work out your next criminal action. What could go wrong from combining all that? [Survival]

[Read on AO3]

Another day, another spike of adrenaline courses through you as you dive feet first through a stack of boxes, sending crates of delicate electronic equipment everywhere. You can hear alarms sound around you as the factory goes into full alert, the clanging of barring gates. You grin under the mirror sheen of your helmet. That suits you fine, keep the small fry penned up and out of the way? You’re too kind.

The wall in front of you collapses into dust thanks to the nanovores and you tear through the office, grabbing at papers at random. What you take doesn’t actually matter at this point, compromising their records is the goal here.

Damage done, you refer to your map, dissolve another wall and follow your thread out, back to the main entrance.

The woman standing in your way gives you pause. You’d been psyching yourself up for a rematch against Chen, but no, its Lady Argent, hands at her sides and poised to rush you. A half-circle of rent-a-cop security goons behind her block you in. “A factory, Puppetmaster? What, they stop inviting you out to parties?” She smirks and hunches down, fingers lengthening into sharpened claws.

Your face twitches under your helmet. “Don’t read the papers, Argent? It’s Ghost.” You hiss. Your voice, filtered through your helmet has a hollow, flat sound. You take a quick count of Lady Argent’s back-up, who’s most pliable to tying up the rest. None of the officers seem to trust Argent. Good. That makes this easier.

The woman of steel looks unimpressed. “Can’t say I care what you call yourself.”

That does it.

One of the rent-a-cop’s guns goes off ‘prematurely’, firing wide to your left, the rest follow in blind panic as you dive to the side. Argent is too focused on you, but with the Rat-King’s help you’re able to pull the rest of the goof troop into your song, pulling their attention in random directions. One of the shots dings Argent in her shoulder, bouncing off to through ground and to her credit she doesn’t look for the culprit, making straight for you.

You run your hand along the ground as you move, leaving a split in the asphalt as the Nanovores chew through material. Lady Argent tries to cut you off so you encourage two of the goons to stumble into her way as you continue your circle around them. You can’t afford to move slow enough for a deep groove, but if this works as planned, all you need is to prime the cut.

If it works.

Argent huffs, shoving one of the men the side, only for another to conveniently take position between the two of you. “Get out of the way!” It doesn’t slow her down for long, but it’s enough for you to finish the circle. Under your helmet you grin, heart pounding.

All that’s left is the magic word. You give the Rat-King the command to pull the strings and yank everyone back in.

You dash forward and slide down, just under the swipe of her claws. She turns to stab down at you as you come to halt. You roll out of the way and kick her arm aside on your way back up.

You check to make sure everyone’s inside the circle you’ve carved through the asphalt. “Heads up.” is all the warning you give before an explosion rocks the ground under everyone’s feet. A furious Argent diving towards you finds only empty space underneath her, and you leap back as the asphalt caves in.

When the dust clears you risk taking a quick check of everyone’s mental state; a lot of fear and alarm, some pain, but the headcount is still the same. You think.

Hopefully.

You shake your head. Focus. Don’t get distracted. Stay in control. You watch Argent and the rest pick themselves up, clear rubble off their buddies. You have to harden your heart against it, remember who they are, what they represent. “Next time,” you call down, “remember my fucking name!”

Admittedly, Argent makes it easier. She’s staring up at you, a single silver middle finger outstretched.

You don’t like the way she’s eyeing one of the support columns. Can she climb her way out? You don’t intend to stick around and see, it’s time to make yourself scarce.

–––

Every super villain needs a secret lair. A base of operations. Somewhere you can plan your next move, keep mission critical materials. If Ariadne is going to be stuck playing retired civilian, it’s even more important to keep her as separated as you can from Ghost’s activities.

Eventually the day will come when you have to cast off that identity completely, but two years isn’t long enough to make you eager to resume a life of being actively on the run from a government agency. You need to gather more influence – and protection – if you’re going to ever unmask without it being an immediate disaster.

To that end… Ariadne needs a cover. She needs a job, co-workers, hobbies. A new wardrobe. You need Ortega to take a breather and ease off on trying worm her way in and fix every little aspect of your life.

So you’ll combine the two.

Technically a ‘Melissa Simone’ owns the computer repair shop you’re standing in front of. Ms. Simone also interviewed and hired yourself and the middle-aged lady with greying hair now manning the front counter.

You put a hand on the front door, hesitating. You keep putting this off but… guess you better ‘officially’ meet your new co-worker.

A bell chimes as you step inside. Old computer advertisements adorn the walls while parts and models are neatly stacked into three aisles across the open front half of the room. The building itself is on the older side. Hopefully a bit more use will get it looking properly run down enough to seem like it’s always been a repair shop here.

The woman at the counter looks up with a smile, a phone pressed to her ear. She holds a finger up as you approach.

You didn’t hire Marcie for her customer service skills. You hired her because she’s a terminally incurious middle-aged woman who fully intends to spend as much of her time talking to friends on the store phone or otherwise shirking her duties as much as possible.

Leaning an arm against the counter you wait for her to finish her current conversation, drumming your fingers against the wooden countertop. Watch the clock on the wall tick the seconds by. Finally she hangs up and turns back to you with a tired expression. “Alright, what do you want?”

You put on a sickly sweet smile. “My name is Ariadne Becker? Y–your um… co-worker?”

Marcie blinks, frowns, then flushes red. “Oh!” She hurries out from behind the counter, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought you were a customer.”

“I could tell.”

She puts her hand out and you give it a quick shake. “Are you really the only repairm–person here?”

“Eh.” You shrug, glancing at the beaded doorway to the back room. “If business ever picked up maybe it’d be worth hiring more.” Glance back to her, smile again. “For now, I’m it yeah. I don’t usually bother with – with um, the front entrance.”

“Well, if you ever need something from me, sweetie, you let old Marcie know, okay?”

You blink, not sure how to respond. She wasn’t this nice to Jane– ahem ‘Melissa Simone.’ “Uh. Y–yeah, sure. Thanks.” You cough. “Um… Ms. Simone gave you the – the rundown about the back right?”

Marcie looks at you, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “To stay the hell out? Yeah.” She leans in, “So… what are we fronting here sweetheart? Drugs? It’s drugs isn’t it.” She straightens her back with a dramatic sigh. “It’s always drugs.”

“I – what???” You stare at her. “W–we’re not – not ‘fronting’ anything!?”

She frowns. Is she… disappointed…!? “Oh? Really? Well. A job’s a job, I guess.”

“I… I just have a… very particular system. Okay?” You shove your hands into your pockets, looking away from her. Stare at the posters on the wall.

“Ah. You’re one of those.” One of those what? You can’t pick it up from her thoughts, just the sliding of her changing expectations. “Well, I’ll keep out of your hair, sweetie.” She steps aside, “It was nice to meet you Ariadne, dear.”

You walk past her in a daze. Push through the bed curtain into your ‘workshop.’ A central table has a pile of half-deconstructed computer cases, their silicon guts scattered haphazardly. A tool kit hangs from the wall alongside a clear plastic cabinet of replacement parts.

Hopefully the facade holds up. You don’t have much intention of actually doing computer repair work here. It’s more than a little concerning that Marcie of all people immediately jumped to the ‘criminal front’ explanation. Was hiring her a mistake? She doesn’t seem to actually care. Maybe you should go out of your way now and then to drum up business. Put some effort into looking legit.

Aside from the bathroom and breakroom, there’s one more room. Your actual workshop. The shop technically is built onto the side of an old warehouse. You’ve walled off most of the space, installed a hidden door, just inside next to the back door out.

You didn’t use up the entire warehouse. Just walled off a decent sized chunk. The rest has been dressed up. Mostly shelves of boxes full of bricks. Something that’ll pass at least cursory inspection.

The door slides open to your touch, keyed to your fingerprint. It springs back into place as you step past. The lights flicker on at low-power. Now here is where you can finally start to get shit done. Your armor is mounted to a secondary hidden compartment recessed into the far wall, next to a bed in case you need to crash or puppeteer Jane for a bit.

You’re particularly proud of the hiding place you’ve created for the Rat-King; an oversized lava lamp sits on the bedside table, a soft blue glow filling the room. Even if anyone breaks in here, anything of value will still be hidden. You’re not completely stupid.

One corner of the room is taken up by a bank of screens and a computer terminal. A system of motion detectors, CCTV, and trip alarms have been carefully set up over the past month in a two block radius around the shop. Nothing is coming near here without you getting some kind of record of it.

And then, last but not least, against one wall a full-length table stretches underneath a pristine corkboard.

Not pristine for long… You reach back into your pocket and pull out a wad of folded up, blood stained papers. The only thing you were able to salvage from the Marconi fiasco. Could have just pinned this while you were setting everything up, you guess.

But this feels more dramatic.

You grab a pin from the cork board and smooth out the creases with your other hand. Jam the paper to the middle of the board. A bill of sale for something called a ‘Regenerator.’ You don’t recognize the name of the buyer, but the listed seller is the personal assistant to Mayor Alvarez.

You pin a scattering of related articles next to the receipt, your prize from today’s factory theft. They’re all related to the sudden government take-over and closure of the regenerator’s parent company, PharmaCore.

What exactly is going on here; you have no idea. But it’s shady as shit, and that means it’s a point of attack. If you’re going to crack the damn city open, this is your starting point. You grab a pen and paper as you sit down at the desk.

You hum a tune under your breath as you work. Time to start planning out your next moves.