#also sorry bc ik my writings a little rusty

[moonlitwings1]

Pumpkin Patch

“That one’s too small, Billy,” Max huffs, turning her head back to focus on the pumpkin in front of her. “You can’t carve on that.”

“The fuck you know about pumpkin sizes?”

“Ms. Cris said it has to have a large enough surface so it’ll be easy to carve.”

“Then get that one,” Billy says, pointing to a large yellow pumpkin. He was getting impatient, it’s been ten minutes now, just waiting around for Max to choose a fucking pumpkin. They’ve been looking at row after row of pumpkins. Not to mention that he’s freezing his ass off. He’s wearing a button down with most of the buttons popped open, so that’s not helping his case, but if he’s going to freeze to death, might as well look hot while doing so. 

Max turns to look at the pumpkin he’s pointing at, and sighs like she’s tired of his shit, which pisses him off immediately. If anyone’s tired of anyone’s shit, it’s him. “That’s the ugliest color, Billy.” She’s not wrong. It was an pasty yellow color. 

“Don’t care. You’ve got 10 seconds to chose a pumpkin or we’re leaving without,” he says, already starting to push past her. 

“Wait! How about this one?” she asks, pointing at the one she was just examining. Without hesitation, he grabs the pumpkin and holds it under his arm like a football. 

“Great. Let’s go.” 

After paying for it, he takes Max by the arm and leads her to the car, hitting the gas before she even closes the door completely. 

“You’re going to help me carve it out, right?” 

His head snaps over to her. “What the fuck? No.”

“Mom said-”

“I don’t care what your mom said. I’m telling you no.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees her toss her head up in frustration, banging it against the headrest.

“I’m not allowed to carve it without an adult, Billy!”

“You’re 14. I’m sure you can handle a knife fine.” 

“Tell my mom that!”

He doesn’t bother to reply, choosing to focus on the icy roads ahead of him. Dangerous to speed on, but that’s not going to stop him. He hears her let out a high-pitched noise that sounds awfully like a whine. He can’t help the snort that comes out. This is a dumb thing for her to get frustrated about. 

“Please, Billy. I need it for school tomorrow. I promise it’ll be fun. We can decorate it and stuff. I’ll even give you part of the prize if I win.”

“Prize?”

“Yeah! They give a candy basket each year to the winners. I’ll give you all the chocolates if you help me.” She’s talking faster now that she realizes she’s gotten his attention, only a matter of time before he loses interest. 

“You’ll give me all the chocolates and I don’t have to drive you anywhere for a week if you win.” 

She hesitates at that, mulling it over. “Deal. But you actually have to help me, not just sit there.”

He snorts. “We’ll see.”

-----

They started with gutting the pumpkin first. Billy had pulled a large, white sheet over the table so Susan won’t blow a gasket when they inevitably spill pumpkin guts all over it. 

"Go grab a knife, Max,” he says, watching as she rushes to do what she’s told. It’s amusing watching her scramble for it. He’s pretty sure she’s scared that one wrong move will get him to ditch the project. She’s not wrong. 

He grabs the knife from her and starts carving out the top. Max stands there silently while watching, ready to do anything he says. His little apprentice. Ironic since this is supposed to her project. 

“You know what you’re going to carve this into?” 

Max shuffles her feet. “Um, I have a skull stencil we can use. I wanted to make one that looks like your tattoo.”

He grunts at that, too focused on cutting the top open.

“It doesn’t have a cigarette tho,” she presses on. “I was thinking we could stick one of yours in the middle of it.”

“So you want me to help you with this dumb shit and give you one my cigarettes that I paid for with my own goddamn money?” 

“...Yes?” 

“Not a chance in hell,” he smirks, pulling at the stem. 

“But-”

“Got it open,” he says triumphantly, holding the stem out in front of her. “Go get some ice scream scoops.”

She clambers away and comes back with two in hand along with a bowl. He takes the bowl from her and gets to work, nudging her to do the same. In 10 minutes, they’ve gotten the pumpkin pretty scraped down. 

“Ew. Look at all the guts,” she says, poking at the bowl. 

“Save them. Maybe Susan’ll want to make use of it.”

Max nods. “I’ll get the stencils.”

He’ll let Max do the tracing herself. If he’s being honest, his arm hurts from all that scooping. Getting the top off the pumpkin put strain on his arm. It's harder than it looks, ok? 

He hoists himself up from the rickety chair under him and pulls out a cigarette and his lighter. “I’m going out to smoke,” he mumbles as he passes Max in hallway. He doesn’t wait for her reply before pushing the door open and slipping outside. 

---

“Billy!” he hears Max shout from the inside. “I’m finished!”

Ten minutes pass too fast, he thinks. Sighing, he flicks the cigarette butt onto the driveway below him. He’ll probably get shit for that later. He walks back in to see Max focusing with her tongue sticking out from between her teeth, fixing the messy edges with a marker. He reaches out to ruffle her hair, chuckling when she tries to shove his hand off of her. 

“What’s next, shitbird?” 

“We have to carve it now, dumbass. What do you think?” 

He scowls at her for a long moment before flicking her nose. “Lose the attitude.”

“Ow, Billy!” she whines, rubbing her nose with one hand and pushing him with the other. “That hurt.” Whiney bitch. He didn’t even do it that hard. 

“Hand me the knife.” She gives him a glare before shoving the knife into his hand. He has zero experience in pumpkin carving so this won’t turn out well. Especially since Max didn’t want to help him by choosing an easy design. The skull she had drawn on seems simple enough, but it has way too many teeth to carve individually. He’s not too worried about it though; he’ll just make some adjustments. 

Max sits beside him and watches him, her chin resting on the table. "Do we have candles?” 

“Probably. Why? You can’t bring them to school unless you want to start a fire.”

“I know, but I want to put one inside the pumpkin when halloween actually comes,” she says. “It’ll look spooky to trick or treaters.”

Billy looks up at her. “You’re still allowed to go trick or treating?” Max got grounded a couple days ago for sneaking out when Neil was home. For all his talk about respect and responsibility, he can’t even watch his own step-daughter. 

“No,” she sighs. “I wish. That’s why I wanna win this. So I can still have more candy than all my friends without even going trick-or-treating.”

He stares at her for a moment. There’s no way she’s serious. When she just glares at him harder, eyes squinted, he laughs. “That’s why you want to win? So you can have more candy than all your little friends? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard today.” Sometimes he forgets that Max is just a kid that stresses about dumb kid stuff. 

“’s not stupid,” she mumbles, but it sounds weak. “I just want candy.”

“Couldn’t tell,” he chuckles, bringing his focus back to the task at hand. One wrong move, and it’ll turn into shit. 

----

...many wrong moves later...

“Maybe we could put a hat on to cover it up?”

The pumpkin looked horrifying and not in the intended way. The eyes and nose were ok, a little too boxy, but they weren’t terrible. But the teeth. Oh, the teeth. He could say it was  an artistic choice but even that wouldn’t be able to excuse it. 

“Hat’s not going to do shit to cover up the front, dumbass.”

“Well it’ll distract from...all that,” she says, hands motioning towards the pumpkin. 

“You know, this is your fault for making the stencil so detailed.”

She turns to look at him, mouth agape, indignant. He wishes he could take a picture of that face and frame it. “Wha--my fault?! It’s your fault for not being able to follow the stupid stencil!” 

“Who puts teeth on a jack o'lantern, Max? Jack o'lanterns don’t have teeth. They have fucking gaps in their mouth.” 

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to look like a jack o'lantern. It was supposed to be a skull but you botched it,” she huffs, crossing her arms across her body. “Now it looks like a skull that needs braces...or dentures. You made a grandma skull.”

Normally, he’d see red with an ungrateful, bratty attitude like that, but even he has to agree with her. Laughing, he replies, “True. Ya got me there, but why the fuck did you think I’d be able to carve tiny fucking teeth?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs, dropping her arms. “I guess I thought you had potential or whatever.”

“Now why the fuck would you think that?”

She laughs. A genuine one too, and try as he might, he can’t push aside the pride that fills his chest from making her laugh.

She shrugs, “Good question.” 

They sit there in silence for a minute, admiring their monstrosity. Billy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette. 

“Go get a piece of tape. If we’re going to have a grandma skull, might as well make it a badass one.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to give me a cigarette that you paid for with your own ‘goddamn money,’” she snarks, putting words into air quotes. 

He scowls at her. “You better get that tape quickly before I change my mind.”

She rolls her eyes before leaving in search of tape. Ungrateful brat. She comes rushing back with a piece of tape on her finger that he snatches up. He sticks the cigarette on the lower part of the mouth and tapes it down. Still looks shitty. 

“Wait!” Max says, looking like she just had a lightbulb moment. “I could say this is what happens when you smoke.” 

“Maxine, what the fuck.”

“What? It’ll be a lesson to all the students, and my teachers’ll will be impressed. Isn’t teeth rotting a side affect of smoking? That would work for this. Also, just so you know, rotting teeth isn’t the only side affect. There’s also the risk of bad breath, lung damage, yellowing eyes...” she goes on, counting on her fucking fingers for God’s sake. 

“You’re a little shit, you know that?” 

She grins at it him. “What? I’m just saying how it is. You should quit. Maybe that’ll help your bad breath.” 

Billy scoffs. He does not have bad breath. That little bitch is making shit up, and she didn’t look a bit remorseful. That’ll change soon enough. “You gonna apologize for that?” 

She snorts, “No.”

Ok then. “You better start running, Max.”

“What?”

“Five, four...” Max looks at him in horror, eyes wide. 

“Billy, it was just a joke.”

“Three...”

“I’m sorry?” Well, too late for her apology now. 

He stands up, looking down at his watch for dramatic purposes. “Two...” The count down seems to be working because right as he was about to say one, she sprints off towards the direction of her room. He cackles before chasing after her, but it’s just for show. Her reaction made it worth it. Max is squealing like a little kid, reaching for her door and closing it right before letting out a final high-pitched scream. 

“ASSHOLE,” she yells. 

“SHITBIRD,” he yells back, holding back laughter.

---

The next day, he drives Max to school with the pumpkin held securely in her lap. 

“You think you’re gonna win?”

“No,” she laughs. “Have you seen it? It’s too ugly to win.”

“No candy for you then, huh?” 

He sees her shrug from the corner of his eye. “Probably not. But I don’t really care anymore. My friends’ll give me their shitty leftovers.”

“You’re still sharing with me, though. And I don’t have to drive you anywhere today.”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember.”

----

High school ends 30 minutes before the middle school so that leaves Billy sitting in the car, waiting for Max. He looks at his watch. If he leaves now, he’ll be able to make it to the convenience store and back in about 20 minutes. He wants to pick up some candy. Not for Max. No. Halloween’s tonight. It’s best to be prepared. Neil was probably going to go tell him to pick some up anyways. 

Mind set, he starts up the car and heads off to Melvald’s, grabbing two large packs of candy. The labels listed different types of chocolate. He thinks about Max always begging him to pick up a chocolate bar for her when he goes to get gas. Max likes chocolate...but he’s getting chocolate because it’s popular, not because of her. Everyone likes chocolate, right? He’s sure the trick-or-treaters will be incredibly delighted.  

He tosses the two bags of candy into the backseat before heading off to pick up Max. 

---

“Any luck?” he asks, pushing the passenger side door open from where he’s sitting since Max’s hands are full, holding the pumpkin in one hand and her skateboard in the other. 

“No,” she grumbles, getting into the car, and shutting the door. “Some prissy girl won first place for her stupid princess pumpkin.”

“Sounds lame.” He didn’t expect her to win. That grandma pumpkin was mediocre at best. 

“It was.” She lets out a sigh and tosses her skateboard in the back without looking, pausing when she hears the loud crinkle of plastic. Shit. 

“Is that for me?” she gasps, already turning her body around completely, reaching into the backseat. She’s kneeling on the seat, hunching over the shoulder of it.

Billy swipes at her hands and pushes her back into the seat before she can get her dirty hands on the bags. 

“No,” he says, starting up the car, and pulling away. “They’re for the trick or treaters tonight.”

There definitely weren’t going to be enough trick or treaters to actually take all two giant bags of candy. They don’t live in a very popular neighborhood. 

“Oh, but there’re two bags of candy,” she pouts. 

“So? Dad told me to get two.” Lies. 

“How come we didn’t give out candy last year? I thought Neil said it was the devil’s holiday.” 

Billy snorts. He forgot about that. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? Go ask him.” He prays to whatever God out there that she doesn’t actually go and bug Neil about it. That won’t end well. 

“There’s gonna be leftovers,” she muses. He can feel her staring at him with wide eyes. It’s making him uncomfortable, and he squirms in his seat a little before turning to glare at her.

“And? 

She’s pouting obnoxiously now, giving him a puppy dog look. That shit won’t work on him. “Can I have the leftovers? Please?”

“You still owe me candy,” he says. “I should be the one eating them.” 

“We can split it! 

He pretends to mull it over. “Fine.”

“Yes!” she squeals, triumphant, pumping her fist up in the air, but it hits the car ceiling.

“Watch it, you bitch,” he snaps, but he’s not really mad. He’s just trying to cover up the smile that’s tugging at his lips. This is stupid. He can’t believe he’s smiling over this shit. 

“Ooo, can we get dressed up?”

“Hell fucking no, Maxine. Don’t push it.” 

“But it’s Friday! Neil and Mom will be out on dinner and I have an extra eye-patch. We could be pirates!” 

Ok, being a pirate didn’t sound like the worst idea. It could give him an excuse to walk around shirtless. Plus, he could show off to all the mom’s taking their children trick-or-treating. Maybe Steve’ll come with his gaggle of kids...

“Fine, but I’m not driving you for two weeks now.” 

He laughs when Max lets out a dramatic sigh. Tonight’ll be fun. He expects stomach aches and candy wrappers everywhere. Maybe even smashed pumpkin bits, if she’ll let him. They have an axe in the shed. He could put on a horror show for her. The victim? A grandma pumpkin. 

[mikeshanlon]

Will you be continuing ribs? 🥺 it’s my favorite story in the fandom and I miss you and your writing. Pls don’t think I’m pressuring you into like writing or anything!! I’m not really good at expressing my love for things but I just really wanted to let you know that I love it so much

hey, thank you for your kind words! <3

I do intend to finish ribs, it’s a story i hold v close to my heart and want to do it justice, and, even tho it’s sort of unfathomable to me, ik others really enjoy and care about it too. However, i’ve been taking a little hiatus from writing ribs rn. At first it was just bc I was super busy from school, but when I tried to write again after the semester ended, I felt both discouraged bc I was so rusty, and also very disengaged from the characters and stuff, mostly bc of the fandom. i mean y’all kno how the fandom is, I was growing very tired of all the constant hate and fighting and weird shit going on. (also this doesn’t apply to any of the like anons or readers or whatever who interact with me y’all are so sweet!). essentially the only interactions about the fandom or just IT content in general were with my friends, and sometimes after a long break from writing a certain fandom it can be nice to peruse other fan content to get inspired, but the tags were essentially filled with like WILD shit that just made me feel so gross and sad lenlknerg. (im sure there is also good content out there of course, but going through a trove of harmful stuff is just not rlly something I want to do). (this is also sort of the reason i haven’t been online v much lately). so, everything I was writing was not up to the standard of what I wanted, i was going through some mental health stuff, and I felt too disconnected to pull through. Lately, I’ve been working on some other wips to get back into writing and just kinda play around without having the pressure of like adding to an ongoing fic with a story that I want to Get Right, which has actually been working p well for me and I’m enjoying writing again! so when I’m done with that I’ll kind of reassess and see if I wanna delve into ribs again, but it will happen eventually. sorry to all the readers who have been waiting hella long for an update, I do feel bad about pausing it bc of yall but also if I could’ve even finished a chapter it would’ve been half assed and Not Good so I’d rather come back with a clearer mind and better work for y’all. Y’all are already used to my late ass updates anyways erlgnregn. Thank you for sticking around<3

Tldr; yes, I do intend to finish ribs, it’s just on hiatus for a bit! thanks for reading and all the support<3333