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primatechnosynthpop · 3 years ago

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Wow! Against all odds, I finally got around to actually writing the follow-up to I'm Gonna Be The Anti-Hero that's existed exclusively in my head for months! Well uh here it is :3

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The secret underground room beneath Plymouth rock was dark and silent as always, save for the faint dripping of water through a crack in the ceiling. It figured that, after living there for countless centuries, the structural integrity would finally begin to erode. That dripping sound, although highly irritating when it first started a month or so ago, had now settled into background noise which John Smith paid no attention to. He was a pilgrim, not a witch; it wasn't like the water could hurt him.

Then again, he realized a few moments too late one rainy spring day, perhaps he should have reevaluated that statement. He was minding his own business sitting in his chair and reminiscing about the very old days (that was the only thing he could really do anymore, slowly decaying as his body was) when the soft and steady dripping suddenly escalated at an exponential rate into what sounded like a small waterfall. He turned his head to see a semi-transparent humanoid figure taking shape out of the water pooling in the corner--strangely tinted red, as though the water were mixed with blood. As the old pilgrim watched, jaw agape, the figure strode purposefully toward him, taking on a more solid form as it did so.

"What are you doing here, intruder?" John Smith demanded, one hand tightening around the hilt of his sword while his other hand reached behind his back to fumble for his musket.

"This secret underground room isn't government sanctioned," the stranger hissed. (Although... was he a stranger? John Smith somehow felt that he'd seen this youngster once before, but he couldn't quite place where or when.) "And you have no official identification registering you as a legal citizen. Not to mention, you haven't been paying taxes... disgraceful."

Before John Smith had the chance to concoct a retort or draw either of his weapons, the masked man's hands were around his throat and crushing his windpipe with a force that could only be driven by an inhuman amount of bloodlust. And within seconds, the life of a pilgrim that had been extended for centuries past its expiration date was finally put to an end.

"I can't believe they want us to make a clown movie at a time like this."

"I can believe it," Neil replied without looking up from the shopping list in his hand. "The studio wants a lot from us, remember? They're not going to care how sad we are. Anyway, it's been four months--" The emotions bubbling up within him refused to let his voice stay level, so he gritted his teeth and hissed out the rest of his sentence rather than let himself start crying in the middle of the dollar store. "We should be over it by now."

"Neil..." Kevin began in the way he'd often addressed Neil over the past few months--brow furrowed, voice edged with an obvious and vaguely patronizing concern--only to trail off and shake his head with a sigh. Apparently he'd finally given up on trying to make Neil feel better, which was just fine by him, because things are never gonna go back to the way they were before and it's my fault and I don't deserve to feel good about it.

"Anyway, we've got what we came for," Neil muttered, waving his hand in the general direction of Kevin's shopping basket without looking him in the eyes. "Let's go."

At the checkout counter, the cashier frowned and shook her head when Neil offered her a five-dollar bill. "Sorry," she told them, "But all this is going to cost $29.99."

"What? But we don't have that kind of money!" Neil lamented. "And we got this stuff from the clearance section... plus this is the dollar store, so shouldn't everything just cost a dollar?"

For a visual aid as he spoke, he grabbed one of the items they were ringing up--a bargain pack of multicoloured clown wigs--and shook it in the cashier's face. Apparently unmoved by his bargaining, she pursed her lips and crossed her arms.

"Maybe you should have checked the price tags first, sir."

"Huh? But, but..." Neil trailed off when he looked down at the price tag on the item in his hands. The bright orange tag had the original price, $7.50, crossed out and replaced with $2.35... but then below that, scribbled in tiny and barely legible font, it read "just kidding, it's actually eleven dollars now." "Aw, man," he groaned, tossing the pack down on the conveyor belt and sticking his hands in his pockets. "Just our luck."

Kevin had a thoughtful look in his eyes while he drove them home empty-handed. When he pulled up outside the clubhouse a few minutes later and they climbed out of the truck, he suddenly laid a hand on Neil's shoulder.

"Say, Neil, let's not get discouraged," he said. "I've got another idea for how we could get our hands on some props."

"Really?" Neil asked, perking up despite himself. "How?"

"Well, I think--" Kevin broke off as unexpectedly as he'd started, encouraging smile briefly dipping into a grimace. "...You know what, I'll take care of it myself. You can hold down the fort here, okay? I won't be long."

Neil's brow furrowed. "Okay, but what are you...?"

Without explaining himself any further, Kevin clapped him firmly on the back, hopped back into his truck, and drove off. Neil watched him recede down the road with bewilderment. Being all secretive like that wasn't like Kevin... Unless he's trying to protect me from something, he realized with a twinge of bitterness. That would be just like him, the way things had been recently. Ever since the past winter, and what had happened with Ryan, Kevin's latent big-brother-ish tendencies had escalated; now he watched over Neil like a hawk and freaked out every time he so much as stubbed his toe. Under different circumstances Neil would have relished being fussed over, but now it was more annoying than anything else. The thing was, he didn't deserve it. If anything... his fingers strayed up to absentmindedly fidget with the four-leaf clover pinned to his shirt. I deserve to have bad luck. I deserve to suffer, after what I did to Ryan.

Still, there wasn't much he could do about it now, and he wasn't going to say no to having the clubhouse to himself for a while. With a sigh, he disentangled his fingers from the clover's leaves, ran a hand through his overgrown bangs, and turned to head inside. Maybe he could play cards or something to pass the time.

A thick layer of dust had settled over everything in Ryan's house. That made sense, of course. It had been four months--no, five, since Ryan hadn't come home once while he was being a vigilante--since anyone had set foot there. Even so, Kevin was unprepared for the full-scale assault on his lungs when he opened the door, and promptly broke into a coughing fit.

"Man, good thing Neil stayed home," he thought aloud as he batted thick, swirling clouds of dust and spiderwebs out of his face. "The way things have been going for him lately..."

He'd probably choke to death on all this dust, he thought but didn't say aloud, and then felt bad for thinking it in the first place. Kevin didn't understand what had happened to Neil in the course of the past few days, but ever since picking up that clover, he seemed to be having a run of uncharacteristically bad luck. Whether it was random chance or something more suspicious was afoot, it sure wasn't doing much for his already thoroughly frayed nerves.

"Alright, calm down, James," he muttered to himself, shaking his head to clear his thoughts and ideally dispel the rest of the dust. "Focus. Concentrate. What are you here for? Props for your webisode. Right."

Keeping that objective in mind, he made his way past the front entrance and into the living room. There, a few objects were strewn around that caught his eye: a mannequin bust wearing a colourful wig; an eccentrically patterned jacket draped over a chair; a brush dipped into a rusted metal container filled with what he hoped was red paint. After looking around a little more he found a large cardboard box filled with mutilated stuffed animals, which he mostly emptied out and started filling with the useful items he came across.

All the while, a persistent feeling of unease stirred in his gut, becoming increasingly hard to ignore with each belonging of Ryan's he packed away. This is wrong. I shouldn't steal from him. Kevin paused and looked down at the box in his arms with a frown. One of the items sticking out the top, a blank-faced doll head, seemed to stare accusingly back at him. For a moment he saw it not as a plastic figure, but as a human form encased in ice and then broken apart. He blinked and the illusion quickly vanished, but an unsettling feeling remained in its wake. Neil was right; it had been months already. So why did going through Ryan's things make him feel so dirty? Ryan didn't need any of this stuff anymore. He was gone. Wasn't he?

With a weary sigh that, had anyone been around to ask, he would have accredited to the physical exertion of carrying heavy stuff around, Kevin set the box down and stepped back to survey the room he was in now. If he remembered right, this kind of room was called a study--there was an armchair with a few suspicious stains lurking beneath the dust, a desk strewn with papers all scrawled full of nonsense like the ravings of a mad scientist, and an ornate bookshelf. He wandered over to the latter furniture piece and ran his hands along the spines of the books, letting their leathery texture ground him in the present. He noticed several unusual bibles and other ancient texts, and a stash of calendars, some of which he was pretty sure had originally belonged to him or Neil; the up-to-date calendars and one of the more normal-looking bibles went into the box, while he decided everything else was better left where it was.

There was one other set of books he recognized: a teen fantasy series that Neil had often gushed about. Thinking back to the previous fall and all the events he normally tried not to think about, he experimentally lifted one of the fantasy books off the shelf. At once, just as he remembered from when Neil showed him, the bookshelf rumbled to the side and revealed a narrow staircase descending into the basement.

If anyone asked him, Kevin couldn't really say what compelled him to go down those stairs. The secret chamber was as empty as he remembered, with nothing down there that could possibly be of use for the webisode. And without a lantern, he could barely even see the only things that were there to speak of: the paintings of Ryan's ancestors.

"Ryan..." The name manifested on Kevin's lips unexpectedly as he stared, squinting through the dust and darkness, at the row of portraits grinning lopsidedly back at him. He knew the paintings couldn't hear him--hell, they weren't even paintings of Ryan himself, just his relatives. But their faces were practically identical to him, that face he hadn't seen in person for nearly half a year, and that alone was enough to clog up his throat with unbearable emotions.

The thought of It's a good thing Neil isn't here for this surfaced again, and this time Kevin had to agree with himself. Losing a close friend was... well, there was no way not to take it hard. But Neil seemed to have taken it particularly hard, even blaming himself, to the point where any mention of Ryan would immediately send him straight back into a depressive spiral no matter how happy he'd been a moment earlier. That was why Kevin had kept this idea a secret from his friend in the first place--that, and he wasn't sure if it was going to pan out and didn't want to get Neil's hopes up. He figured that if Neil asked where he got all the stuff he'd found, he'd just say it was from a garage sale.

Now, looking into the achingly familiar manic blue eyes of those portraits mounted on the wall, Kevin thought of those news reports about the mysterious killings that had been going on around town. If that really was Ryan, and he was somehow still alive...

"Why?" he whispered. Without really thinking, he reached out and pressed his hand against the painting as if to cup its cheek. "Why haven't you come home, Ryan? Where are you?"

The target was at home, alone in her bedroom playing video games. Casual, unbothered by any harm her actions may have caused. Shameful. In an icy swirl of perhaps not-so-righteous fury, the vigilante took form in the corner of her room and crept up behind her. With an average build and no weapons at the ready, she would be no trouble to dispose of.

"Playing dead in order to toy with an innocent man's feelings," he growled. "Some people would call it ghosting. I call it a crime punishable by death."

"Jesus christ, what the fuck?!" Wendy yelped as she spun to face the vigilante. "How'd you get in here?"

"You shouldn't worry about that," he told her, gloved hands already flexing in anticipation of tightening around her neck. Or perhaps this time he'd thrust his hand straight through her chest and rip out her heart--an appropriate punishment for her crimes. "You'll have plenty of time to figure it out once I send you to hell."

"Okay, seriously? What is happening here?" Eyes narrowed, Wendy put her game on pause and got to her feet to stare the vigilante down. "You said something about me playing dead..." Her eyes suddenly widened with recognition, and the vigilante waited for the fear to set in along with it, but instead she shook her head and laughed. A pitying laugh. "Wait, you're not friends with that, uh, that filmmaker guy, are you? Geez, I seriously must have dodged a bullet there."

"Filmmaker..." the vigilante murmured as the word echoed in his mind. Yes, that's right. The man she stood up was a filmmaker... of a sort. (How did he know that? How did he even know who this woman was? Those questions weren't worth dwelling on, he decided.) "You may have thought you dodged a bullet back then, but I'm here to see that the bullet circles back around and destroys you like you deserve."

Wendy crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow, any trace of fear on her face outmatched by her sad, pitying smile. "Sure, keep the edgy sayings coming, Mr. Hot Topic. And what's with the getup, anyway?" she added with a nod to the vigilante's predominantly dark outfit. "Must be kinda warm."

Warm? The vigilante snorted derisively. No, of course he wasn't too warm. His blood, as it always had for as far back as he could clearly remember, ran cold like that of a snake. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been warm. And he certainly couldn't remember a time when he'd worn anything other than his current ensemble. Rather than waste time telling this insufferable woman as much, though, he simply took a few purposeful strides to close the distance between them, hands extended and more than ready to kill.

"Ugh, get away from me, creep!"

In a startlingly swift motion, Wendy's leg shot out and connected with the vigilante's ankles, sending him toppling to the floor. He hissed in irration, though not in pain--when his sensations were already perpetually numb, it would take a lot more than that to hurt him--and got to his feet, dusting himself off with a scowl. In the few seconds this took, Wendy grabbed a baseball bat from the corner of the room. Now she stood brandishing it in perfect athletic form with a battle-ready glint in her eye.

"Not another step, you hear me?" When the vigilante didn't dignify her with a response, she gritted her teeth and gave the bat a twirl--attempting to show off, it seemed, but her hands shook slightly and she nearly dropped the bat, only barely managing to regain her grip on it. "My mom is in the other room right now, and... well, she hasn't done anything wrong, so you don't want to punish her, right? And if anything happens to me..."

He stiffened at Wendy's mention of her mother. An innocent citizen? That was the type of person a vigilante was meant to protect at all costs; otherwise vigilante justice was no better than the police. But no one is innocent in this city. Even so, he understood the implicit threat--not that Wendy's mother would bring him down herself, but that either woman could very well call the police. And the last thing he wanted was to get law enforcement involved.

"...Fine," he snarled at last, turning on his heel with a twirl of his vigilante cape. "You can live a while longer. But I'll be back, and then you'll regret your sins."

He heard her gasp but didn't bother sparing her another glance as he let his form dissolve into a splash of red-tinted ice, sinking through her floorboards and off to thwart another criminal.

Slowly and carefully as a technician deactivating a bomb, Neil set the three of spades down across the top of the three other cards he'd lined up on the table. The humble beginnings of a tower stood for a moment, and he held his breath eagerly as he reached for another card to place on top, only for it to suddenly shudder and collapse like an anime girl who'd stood in the rain for too long.

"Dang it!" Neil threw his hands in the air in exasperation. When he did, a droplet of his own blood landed on his glasses, and he realized with a start that his hand was bleeding--just a paper cut, but still, he'd better wash up.

As he ran his hand under cold water, transfixed by the sight of the blood swirling down the drain, a sudden cracking noise rang out just above him. His head snapped up to stare at the spontaneously cracked bathroom mirror. His reflection stared back, stricken and gaunt, as shards of shattered glass rained down into the sink, where they mixed with the water and the blood. Neil shivered, his breath quickening.

Icy water... ice, blood, broken mirrors. All mixed together. Shattered. Blood, guts, ice, mixed together, down the drain. My fault my fault my fault my fault--

"No," he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his nails into his scalp as hard as he could. "No! I didn't do it, I didn't... I didn't mean to..."

Deep breaths, a voice in the back of his head reminded him. It sounded like Kevin's voice, worried to the point of being slightly patronizing. Neil grimaced, annoyed at his own brain for manifesting its self-preservation in such a way, but he complied nonetheless. Keeping his eyes wrenched shut, he took several deep breaths in and out until his heartbeat slowed to normal--he hadn't even noticed it speeding up--and his hands didn't shake when he lowered them away from his head.

"Hey, you know what'd really make me feel better?" he said aloud to nobody in particular, putting on a broad smile and wiping his hands off on a towel. "A nice hot bath! Yep, that'll counteract my blood running cold, alright..."

He ran his hands up and down his arms as he spoke, although he didn't know who he was trying to fool; the chill that had settled into his bones had nothing to do with the temperature. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure who this whole performance of forced cheerfulness was meant for... the studio, maybe. He wouldn't put it past them to hide cameras everywhere. Either way, even if it wouldn't fix his psychological issues, a bath really would be pretty nice. He put the plug in and started running the tub, with the water temperature set just hot enough that it would scald him a little at first.

He wasn't sure exactly what happened when he sat down on the edge of the tub to take his socks off, whether he slipped on something or leaned too far back or what, but suddenly he lost balance. And by the time he realized he was falling backward, he only had a split-second to curse his rotten luck before his head connected with the wall and he blacked out.

In the end, Kevin managed to get a pretty good haul from Ryan's house. In addition to the stuff he and Neil could use for their webisode, he'd retrieved the calendars and a couple other things it looked like Ryan had stolen from them, as well as their old communicator wristwatches. (He wasn't sure if the watches fell into the camp of things Ryan had stolen, or if they'd just brought them over to his place for a sleepover once and forgotten them there. Either way, Kevin figured it could come in handy to start using them again.)

"Hey, Neil," he called as he stepped into the clubhouse with the box in his arms and kicked the door shut behind him. "I'm back."

There was no reply. Frowning, Kevin set the box down with a slight grunt of effort and wandered through the living room and down the hall. There were a few playing cards scattered on the table, suggesting that Neil had been trying to make a house of cards but given up halfway. Kevin couldn't really blame him for that; assembling cards in such a way that they'd actually stay upright was yet another thing that had been more in Ryan's ballpark than in either of theirs. Still, that didn't explain where Neil was now...

"Neil? You there, bud?" Still being met with no answer, Kevin came to a stop outside the bathroom door, which was ajar with water pooling out from inside. "Oh, man, that's not a good sign..."

He gave a tentative knock, and when there was still no response, grabbed the handle and pushed the door open. The sight that met his eyes when he did so immediately made his breath hitch and his blood run cold. The broken mirror over the vanity reflected his slack-jawed expression as he stared at the overflowing bathtub, the pair of still-clothed legs dangling over the rim, and the smudge of blood on the wall leading down to the head of the man those legs belonged to, slumped inside the tub with his head submerged in the water.

"Neil!!"

Kevin sprinted across the room to lift Neil out of the tub. It then took him a few seconds longer to turn off the faucet and pull the plug, as by that point the shock had turned to dread and his hands were shaking. Once the water was slowly starting to drain, he fell to his knees and pulled Neil tight to his chest, one hand clutching at the back of his soaked-through t-shirt while the other fumbled across the back of his head searching for the source of the blood. It didn't take long for him to find the slightly matted patch of damp hair indicating where Neil had banged his head against the wall. Kevin swallowed hard as dread leapt up to claw at his throat. The only question is... how long was he submerged?

"Neil," he whispered, and was almost embarrassed to hear how hoarsely his own voice came out. "Wake up. Please."

No response. Kevin reluctantly pulled back to hold Neil at an arm's length, and shuddered at how limply his friend's body flopped forward. He noticed, with a white-hot jolt of irrational anger, that the four-leaf clover was still in place. Fat lot of good that thing's done for him. He grabbed the clover and crumpled it in his fist, all the while tears pressed against the back of his eyes; he struggled not to let them fall. Damn it... first Ryan, now Neil... What kind of protector was he? What kind of friend?

He slammed his fist, the useless clover still clenched within, against the drenched floor tiles. At that moment, the lightbulb above his head exploded and sent sparking wires raining down around him. As soon as electricity met water, it sent a nasty shock through Kevin's veins; he screamed out of equal parts surprise and pain and scrambled up onto the countertop, which was barely wide enough to support him.

On the floor below, Neil's body convulsed. Then his eyes snapped open and he drew in a gasp that turned into a scream halfway through. Although touching his friend's hand sent the current through his own body for a moment, Kevin was quick to grab him anyway, and he managed to pull Neil safely out of the electrified water and into a fierce embrace. Neil kept shrieking, and he squirmed frantically around, not seeming to recognize his surroundings at first.

"It's alright, Neil," Kevin assured him despite how hard his own heart was pounding. "I've got you."

"Oh..." Neil's body slackened, and he pulled back to blink slowly at Kevin, realization dawning in his eyes. His cheeks coloured with embarrassment and he ducked his head. "Uh, thanks."

Neither of them said anything else, for lack of ability or perhaps willingness to put it into words. After a moment, Kevin realized he was still holding the clover, and he handed it back to Neil, who took it with a dip of his head and a murmur of acknowledgement, and pinned it to his soaking wet t-shirt.

Somehow out of everything in the room, themselves included, that little scrap of plant matter was still intact. And although he wasn't superstitious, that simple fact was what would stick in Kevin's mind for the rest of the day, turning it over until he could only conclude: Yep, there's definitely something weird going on with that thing.

Despite the many months he'd prowled the city, this was the vigilante's first time in the hideout of a proper gang. It looked about the way he expected: dimly lit, no windows, weapons hung up on the wall and cigarette butts littering the floor. The gang members, dressed primarily in leather jackets with a few in denim, lounged in chairs leaning too far back, or on top of tables, or on their motorcycles parked right in the middle of the room. Most of them didn't even notice the vigilante as he approached. They were too caught up chattering and cackling amongst themselves like a nest of overgrown crows. The one gang member who did seem to notice the vigilante from the get-go simply looked up at him with raised eyebrows and addressed him once he got close enough to strike.

"Hey, haven't seen you around before. Looking to join the club?"

"Hardly," he snarled. "This whole place is crawling with criminals."

The whole room broke into laughter at that. The vigilante gritted his teeth, fists clenching at his sides. These people were different from the criminals he'd taken down before; between their numbers and all the weapons they had easy access to, they might just pose a serious threat if he wasn't careful.

"You're the ones, aren't you?" he went on once the laughter had died down and the gang members were all watching him with a mix of bemusement and curiosity. No trace of fear amongst them yet, but that would change... "Throwing bricks at innocent people, even seeking to damage their property. Absolutely detestable."

"Woah, hang on," another of the gang members cut in sharply, reaching for a weapon as they stood. "First off, the whole brick throwing thing was months ago. Second of all, we never did that to innocent people, you know!"

"Yeah!" yet another gang member cut in, pumping her fist in the air. "Only to those losers who blew up our boss!"

...Boss?

The vigilante slowly turned, a deeper chill than normal running down his spine, as a strangely familiar smug cackle echoed from behind him. He came face-to-face with a man in a tank top and baseball cap, sneering at him with his arms crossed. Max. Gulping, the vigilante took a step backward. He's their boss?

(How did he know that name? How had he known Wendy's name either, for that matter? Why, out of all the criminals in the city, did a select few ignite disproportionate resentment within him? He'd dealt with some of these people before, he knew, but when he tried to remember when and how it all just turned to slush in his brain.)

"Yep, those losers got what was coming to 'em," Max said. "Except not really, 'cause they didn't suffer enough. But it's okay, we'll get 'em extra hard next time."

"No..." For reasons he couldn't quite explain, the vigilante's voice shook with equal parts fury and sudden fear. "Don't you dare hurt them."

"Huh?" Max tilted his head, already slightly squinted eyes narrowing further. "Heyyy, wait a minute, aren't you one of--?"

Before he could finish that thought, the vigilante was upon him with a karate chop to the windpipe. It was a more reckless attack than he'd planned, and even as Max stumbled backward coughing, he could hear the rest of the gang grabbing their weapons and running up behind him. But it was fine; the vigilante could take them all on and then some. He could kill any number of people if it was for the sake of defending his friends.

(Friends? Did he have friends? Somehow it felt that he must have, once. But that was strange, because the only thing he could clearly remember himself ever being was a cold-blooded vigilante.)

"Don't you see? Society's the one to blame! It's society's fault that he had no choice but to become this way!"

As Kevin delivered this speech, waving his arms dramatically toward the focus of the scene, Neil spun the video camera around to point it toward himself. Hopefully the studio would think of the disorienting cinematography for this webisode as a bold artistic choice rather than thinking of it as amateurish and embarrassing. He then leapt back, breaking into maniacal laughter with his prop gun raised in the air. Under ideal circumstances, this role might have been better suited to Ryan, but... well, they couldn't stay hung up on him forever; they had a job to do.

"Eh-heh-heh! Thanks to society, I have the urge to kill!" Neil twirled around to show off his clown costume, while just out of frame, Kevin hastily put on a wig and fake mustache. "And now... I'll kill this innocent man, who's different than the guy who was talking a minute ago!"

(It was fascinating--fascinating and dumb--how a broken mirror and a bit of blood could set him off, but something as heavy as a gun in his hand only brought him the faintest twinge of discomfort, easily ignored for the sake of making a webisode. After all, as Kevin had assured him many times over the past few months, it was the gun and its villainous weilder who were to blame for what had happened to Ryan. On an intellectual level Neil knew that was true--and besides, if he hadn't deflected that bullet, all three of them would have died. But knowing that did nothing to redirect when and why the darkness in his brain manifested.)

Now, much to Neil's surprise as he took aim with his prop gun, Kevin shouted "Cut!" and walked across the abandoned lot they were filming in to turn the camera off.

Neil lowered the gun, confused, as his costar removed his costume with that now all-too-familiar look of concern etched across his face. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know... somehow I've just got a bad feeling about this," Kevin muttered. "Maybe try firing into the air a couple times first."

Neil complied, and was met with the expected result from the prop: a couple of clicks indicating an empty chamber. "You worry too much these days, Kev," he said as he fired one more blank into the sky and then lowered the prop again. "It's not a real gun; it can't--"

As he spoke, his finger accidentally pressed the trigger again, and he broke off with a yelp at the sudden burst of pain in his right foot. He dropped the apparently very real gun with a clatter and clutched at his injured appendage, losing his balance in the process. Kevin swore under his breath and rushed forward to catch him. Before his friend could reach him, Neil's other foot came down on a wide crack in the pavement. A chill ran through him, momentarily distracting him from the throbbing pain, but it passed as quickly as it arose without seeming to trigger any effects.

"By god, what's happening to you?" Kevin exclaimed as he grabbed Neil by the shoulders and held him upright. "You've been so unlucky lately, it... it almost seems like a curse."

"A curse?" Neil stiffened, but quickly forced himself to shrug and morphed his grimace into a dismissive eye-roll. "Pfft, what are you talking about? There's no curse! I've just been, y'know, having an off-day..."

"Neil." There was that concerned look again, that almost parental tone of voice, as Kevin stared him down and tightened his grip on Neil's shoulders. "A couple hours ago you almost died, and now... you can tell something weird is going on, right? And, look--" He sighed, gaze darkening. "I don't exactly know how to fix it, but whatever's happening, I can't just sit back and watch you succumb to it. I can't lose you, too, Neil... not after..."

He trailed off with a faint warble in his voice, lowering his head. Neil gulped, a heavy weight surfacing in his chest. It was true; though he hated to admit it, at this point it was hard to deny that he was cursed. And yet, even as his foot throbbed around the spot where the bullet was lodged and his shoe was slowly stained from within by his own blood, it was hard to convince himself that he should accept help. On some level, didn't he deserve this? Wasn't this a fitting comeuppance for getting one of his friends killed?

Yet here was his other friend, clutching at him ever tighter to the point where his grip on Neil's shoulders was nearly as painful as hitting his head or getting mildly electrocuted or shooting himself in the foot. I'm not the only one who lost Ryan, he reminded himself--another thing he knew perfectly well on an intellectual level, but easy to forget in practice. Kevin is hurting too. I shouldn't make him hurt any more.

"Fine, I admit it," he sighed, letting his tensed-up shoulders slump. "I'm unlucky, okay? And if you think it's possible--" He tore the clover off his shirt and glared down at it-- "then we're going to beat this thing."

For as tough as the gang presented themselves, it must have been most of these people's first time in an actual fight. The vigilante swerved to avoid weak punches, clumsy kicks, poor attempts at stabbing. It all blended together after a while, and he stopped thinking of the gang members as individuals; they were just an indistinguishable swarm of insects whose attacks were easily dodged. Unimportant, save for their leader.

The vigilante had Max pinned to the floor now, holding his thrashing form in place with one arm while he brought his other fist down on the ruffian's face, over and over, as hard as he could. Not every blow connected cleanly, and Max had managed to bite him several times already, but that was irrelevant. Criminals must be brought to justice. That was why the vigilante hated these people, wasn't it? Because they were criminals. Yes, what other reason could he have, when this was all he'd ever been?

And then, just as he managed to land a blow to Max's jaw that left him defiantly spitting out blood and a couple of teeth, the vigilante's spine snapped.

It took a moment for him to register what had happened. He just heard a loud crack, and a sharp pain shot through him, and suddenly he couldn't hold his legs in place and collapsed. Max wasted no time taking advantage; he delivered a kick to the vigilante's gut that sent him flying back across the room, where he hit a wall and slumped to the ground, gasping in breathless agony. At once the other gang members closed in on him. Grimacing, the vigilante drew himself up onto his hands and knees, then braced himself against the wall and, with a far greater strain of effort than expected, dragged himself upright. By the time he'd managed to get to his feet, dozens of knives were inches away from him.

Then, to his surprise, Max pushed through to the front of the crowd and held his arms out to hold back his underlings. "Nuh-uh, this one's mine," he told them, sneering as though oblivious to the blood dribbling from between his lips. "I said I'd get him twice tomorrow, and I meant it."

The vigilante flinched as Max took a swipe at him. But rather than a fist connecting with his face, he was met only with the shock of exposure as the bully grabbed his mask and triumphantly yanked it off his face. He was left dumbfounded, blinking, as his vision readjusted to the light.

Wait a minute, I remember--

And then came the punch, square in the nose. Ryan yelped, pressing his gloved hand over his nose to stop the bleeding. When he dodged another punch, his body failed to cooperate and he crashed to the ground again, back aching furiously and heart pounding against his ribcage.

How and why his back had broken, he couldn't say, but one thing was clear: he was horrendously outmatched. Max was saying something now, gloating as he advanced on Ryan with a dagger in his hands, but Ryan couldn't make out the words over the blood rushing in his head. Why on earth had he gotten into a fight like this in the first place? What was he doing? He had to get out of there!

With that thought, yet another thing happened that Ryan didn't entirely understand. (Ryan didn't understand, but the vigilante did. It was one of the few things the vigilante knew: dissolve, reform, enact ruthless vengeance, dissolve again.) His body shuddered, and suddenly he found his solid flesh and bone giving way to a slurry of blood and ice that slipped through the cracks in the floor and disappeared. Then he was formless, freefalling through the dark, or at least that was what it felt like. When he took shape again it felt like dragging himself out of quicksand. Yet when he raised his slowly resolidifying head and looked around, he found himself in the basement of his own home, staring up at the portraits of his ancestors that had started it all.

No. Not started it all. "I had a life before this," he whispered, voice raw with the shock of memory and too many months spent speaking in an inhuman growl. "My name is Ryan, I have a life and a job and friends, I..."

Yes, that's right. Friends. Where were they? He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Each recent memory that took form in his mind was accompanied by a crashing wave of guilt and regret, and soon his body shook and tears pricked at his wrenched-shut eyes. That's right... I became a vigilante, and I teamed up with such a horrible person, let him manipulate me, all because I was too afraid to go back and apologize. And then...

The last thing he remembered, just after the flash of light and shock of paralyzing cold, was the sound of a gunshot, something shattering, and Neil screaming.

"Oh, dear god," Ryan whispered. He raised his head, opening his eyes and lowering his hands from his newly tear-stained face, and sat back on his heels as though worshipping the paintings before him. "What have I become?"

The ropes were just slightly too tight around Neil's limbs to be comfortable; he couldn't resist squirming a little as Kevin laid out the open bible on the end table next to his proton pack and began reading from it.

"Okay, um, let's see... ex-or-ciz-amus te, omnis immunde spiritus..." He squinted at the yellowed, faded pages, biting his lip. "Omni satanica pot-es-tas, omnis incurs--incursio infernalis adversarii... uh..."

"You're doing great," Neil called from his position tied to the bed frame; Kevin gave him a weary smile and thumbs up.

As Kevin continued reciting the verse, occasionally stumbling over a particularly tricky Latin word, the room's temperature eventually dropped a few degrees. Neil shivered, but his heartbeat picked up in excitement. He could feel something stirring in his blood like ripples on a lake, and when the furniture in the room began to quiver, so too did his body in eager anticipation.

"...Crux sacra sit mihi lux! Nunquam draco sit mihi dux..." A chill wind swept through the room; Kevin gritted his teeth, one hand pressing down on the bible to hold its pages in place while he grabbed his proton pack with the other. "Vade retro Satana! Nun-quam-suade mihi vana!"

The furniture rumbled louder. Neil's eyes widened as an entire bookcase lifted off the ground. "Kevin, watch out!"

"Hang on, Neil, I'm almost done. Uh, where was I... sunt mala quae libas..."

"No, Kevin, the--"

"Just one more line, okay? Ipse ven--"

"KEVIN!"

That last terrified yell was what it took for Kevin to finally turn, just in time to see the six-foot block of polished oak fly directly into him. Neil shrieked and thrashed against his bindings with all his might, but even if he weren't tied up, there was nothing he could have done. The bookcase came crashing down, its contents spilling out onto the floor around it in a flurry of paper. And when the dust settled, Kevin was pinned beneath it, unmoving.

"N... no..." Neil whimpered. Dread tightened like a noose around his throat as the horrible thought seeped into his mind: This is because of me. Now I've gotten them both killed.

"Oh, yes, what a tragedy... just your luck, isn't it?"

Neil's blood ran cold. He raised his head to see the translucent, smoke-shrouded figure of a giant clover looming over him. Its four leaves, dark green tipped with crimson and speckled with barnacles, opened down the middle to reveal a row of needle-sharp fangs. For a second, "Where did you come from?" was on the tip of Neil's tongue. But it was just as well that he was too terrified to speak, because no sooner than the question appeared in his mind, he realized the obvious answer. Oh, right. This is the demon that cursed me.

"Don't worry, your friend is alive... for now," the demon jeered. "But that could change. It's so easy for accidents to happen, you know?"

As if to demonstrate, the demon's leaves fluttered and suddenly a fire sprang up dangerously close to the scattered pile of books on the floor. When Neil screamed in protest, the demon laughed, and part of the ceiling gave in, sending down a controlled shower of debris to put out the fire before anything flammable could catch.

"Okay, okay, I get it!" Neil exclaimed with a shake of his head; he'd be almost exasperated if he weren't so terrified. "You're really powerful and want to hurt people, geez, not exactly a challenging concept. So, what do I have to do?"

That question seemed to give the demon pause. "...Do?"

"You know, to appease you or whatever. If you're threatening me with Kevin's life, then there must be something you want from me, right?" An idea occurred to Neil just then, and his already hammering heart beat even harder, to the point where he hoped the demon couldn't hear it and tell how freaked out he was. "Hey, it must suck having to be a clover. What if a lawnmower or forest fire had gotten to you before I did? And if you like hurting people so much..." He paused, smirking as the demon leaned toward him with obvious interest. "Wouldn't it be easier just to possess my whole body instead of wasting time messing with my luck?"

"That's..." The demon hesitated, its leaves curling up in what looked like excitement. "Ah. Ah-ha-ha! You're a clever little mortal, aren't you?"

"But don't get it twisted," he put in, glaring defiantly up at the demon despite hardly being in a position to threaten anyone. "You have to promise not to hurt anyone else. Especially not Kevin."

"It's a deal!"

Before Neil could stop and reconsider whether this was really a good idea, the demon dove toward him, row of fangs wide open as though it were going to bite his head off. He flinched a split-second before something cold and stinging like nettles clamped around him.

When he opened his eyes again, the world was tinted dark green as if viewed through a dingy screen, his head felt hazy... and he couldn't move, at least not of his own volition. Even opening his eyes just then wasn't his decision. He heard himself cackle, felt his arms and legs flex far harder than he'd known he was physically capable of flexing, breaking the ropes that bound him to the bed frame and setting his body free to do whatever the demon wanted.

"Hah..." the demon muttered in his voice as it made him walk over to where Kevin lay, still trapped and unconscious. The demon knelt down and poked experimentally at Kevin's shoulder and forearm. "This one has more muscle. It might have been a better choice for possession, if it wasn't so damaged already..."

For one petrifying moment, the demon grabbed Kevin's head and stared intently at him, stretching Neil's face into a grin so wide it made his whole face ache, and Neil's mind raced with horrible thoughts of things the demon might make his own hands inflict upon his poor helpless friend. But the demon simply laughed and dropped Kevin, who let out a low groan as his head lolled to the side--an indication that at least he really was still alive. But all of a sudden Neil had trouble believing that small mercy was really worth it.

"Ah, well, this body will do," the demon decided. "Let's take it out on the town and see how long it lasts!"

This time when the vigilante materialized in Wendy's room, she did little more than roll her eyes and move to grab her baseball bat. However, rather than try to attack her or even growl out any threats, the vigilante took two shaky steps and then collapsed, catching himself against her dresser. Wendy's eyes widened as she took a closer look at his face. His mask was off now, revealing a pair of striking blue eyes glistening with obvious distress, cheeks flushed with exertion, and a streak of half-dried blood running from his bruised nose. And when he spoke, it wasn't in the gravelly tone she'd heard from him before, but in a quiet higher-pitched voice--almost a whimper.

"Please... tell me..."

Wendy hung back, caught between a sharp tug of sympathy in her heart and a very rational wariness based on their previous encounter. The vigilante tried to walk again, and again nearly fell; his face wrenched up and he let out a pained hiss. At that, sympathy won out over rationality. Wendy edged toward him with her baseball bat in hand, and when she was close enough, held it out to him.

"Hey, uh... here. It's not exactly medically sanctioned, but maybe you could use this like a cane?"

"Oh... good idea, thank you!" He broke into a grin, and Wendy shivered; somehow he was far scarier when his eyes were bright and cheerful. "Terribly sorry for how I treated you last time, by the way. I really wasn't myself."

"Uh-huh?" While the vigilante tested out the makeshift cane, Wendy sat down on her bed, arms crossed. "And who are you, anyway?"

"I'm Ryan... or at least I think I still am." His smile faltered, and he looked away, anxiously running a hand through his hair. It was starting to come unpinned, and his hat was askew; evidently he'd been through a lot in the few hours it had been since their first encounter. "It's been... strange, lately. I don't think I'm entirely human anymore, if I ever was. But I came back here because there's something I want to understand."

"You want to know why I ghosted your friend?" It was just a guess, but Ryan nodded; Wendy smiled privately to herself for having figured it out. "Alright, I can tell you..."

She uncrossed her arms and leaned back on her bed, thinking back to the disastrous date she'd gone on several months prior. It was a story she'd recited many times to friends, relatives, other first dates as sort of a half-joking warning ("So, as long as you don't blow it as much as that guy did, we should be good...") and the more she told it, the more warped and exaggerated it became within her memory. But when she really thought back on it now, it hadn't been so disastrous at all--pretty damn awkward, sure, but not even close to the worst date she'd been on.

"Kevin actually seemed really sweet," she recalled, smiling despite herself at the memory of his big dorky grin. "I would have gone on a second date with him. But then, first thing the next morning, I read in the news that some guy got arrested right outside the restaurant while we were on our date. And the criminal's name? Neil. Same name as the 'friend' Kevin had said was helping him out." She shrugged, lips twisting into a frown. "I just got kinda freaked out, you know? Like, 'oh geez, did I go on a date with a drug dealer or serial killer or something?' Of course it probably wasn't anything that serious, and pretending to be dead was probably an overreaction, but... well, what's done is done."

Wendy was so caught up in her own memories as she explained all this that she wasn't really observing Ryan's reactions. Once she concluded her story, she glanced over to find him sitting on the floor with his legs tucked up awkwardly beneath him, the baseball bat in his lap; he was staring at the floor, expression unreadable. He stayed like that for a long moment, not seeming to notice that Wendy had stopped talking, until she cleared her throat. Then he jumped to attention, eyes flashing like those of a woodland cryptid in headlights.

"Ah! Yes, of course... well, I still don't entirely understand, but I think I resent you less now." Ryan tilted his head and shot her another shiver-inducing grin. (Whether it was supposed to be threatening or not, she had no idea.) "And you're right; I almost forgot--we're all criminals too, Neil and probably even Kevin and especially myself! So how can I be a vigilante?" He answered his own rhetorical question with a shake of his head, manic grin softening into a melancholy smile. "It's ridiculous. I've been so foolish."

With that, his body began to ripple, losing a little of its solidity. But before he could break apart and dissolve through the floorboards like last time, a chirpy little beep-beep-beedle-beep noise rang out. Ryan's eyebrows shot up, and he glanced down at an accessory around his wrist... Wait, is that one of those communicator watches like the one Kevin had?

If it was, Ryan wasn't quick to answer it. He simply stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the beeping device in silence. Although she knew even less about Ryan than she knew about his apparently only slightly more normal friends, and she didn't normally care to get too involved in the personal affairs of strangers, he was still in the middle of Wendy's bedroom. And the longer that little jingle repeated, the more annoying it got. So she cleared her throat again and asked, in as polite a tone as she could manage given the circumstances,

"So, are you gonna answer that, or what?"

It was a stupid, pointless idea. Not an idea at all, really. Just the last scraps of... not even hope, that was pretty much deplenished at the moment, but effort. The effort not to let everything fall apart even further than it already had.

Kevin had woken with a throbbing pain throughout pretty much his whole body. Judging by the crushing weight pressing down on his torso, he was lucky to have woken up at all. The only parts of him not pinned down were his head and right arm, and even those hurt to move, though at least the spinning in his head put some degree of separation between himself and his broken body. Forget about trying to wriggle free when it hurt just to breathe.

So there he was, stuck, the shelf slowly crushing the air out of him, and Neil was gone. Where to, he didn't know. When he craned his neck he could see the empty bed frame, and the ropes broken and discarded at the foot of it. The bible he'd gotten from Ryan's house was facedown beside the tipped-over end table, next to a crushed and twisted lump of metal and plastic that he was horrified to recognize as his beloved proton pack. So wherever Neil was now, he must have still been cursed... or worse. And there was nothing Kevin could do about it.

Unless. Grimacing at the way his joints twinged, he raised his unpinned arm above his head. There on his wrist, perfectly intact despite everything he'd been through, was his communicator wristwatch. In all the hubbub of that day, he'd never gotten around to mentioning them to Neil, so his friend wouldn't be wearing his. But what if...?

It was stupid. It was pointless. There was no way in hell. But it was the only thing he could do. In a display so lacking in dignity that he was grateful nobody was around to see it, Kevin used his teeth and tongue for lack of a free hand to dial in the frequency and send off a signal. The watch's screen flashed in affirmation; he let his head flop against the floor with a weary sigh. Now all he could do was wait.

When he was at Ryan's house going through his things, and he found those communicator wristwatches, he'd only found two of them. And although that could have meant a dozen different things, there was just one wild, far-fetched possibility that any last semblance of hope now rested upon: that the third watch was missing because Ryan was alive, and he was still wearing his.

He didn't expect to get a response. By the time he did, he was struggling to stay awake--funny thing, trying to breathe with fifty pounds of wood pressed directly on your chest really takes it out of you. But he snapped to attention, or the closest he could get when his head was swimming and his body was beginning to go numb from lack of circulation, the moment he heard that voice crackling through the speaker.

"H-hello? Kevin?"

The relief that coursed through his veins was so overwhelming, especially on top of everything else, that he could only laugh--only for it to quickly turn into hacking as his ribs offered a sharp jab of protest. He raised his sleeve to wipe away a streak of blood that dribbled from his lips before speaking into the watch.

"Ryan. Where are you?" He regretted wasting time with that question the moment he asked it; he could tell from the way his organs felt like they were curling in on themselves as he spoke that he didn't have the energy for a full conversation. So before Ryan could stammer out a proper response, Kevin continued: "Neil is in trouble. You've gotta help him."

"What?" The shrill uptick of anxiety in Ryan's voice was palpable, and even just hearing that voice in and of itself stirred up a whole miasma of feelings that there was no time to properly react to. "What's going on? Are you okay? You sound--"

"I'm fine," Kevin lied through gritted teeth. "And... I don't know exactly where Neil is, but I know he's in trouble." A choking mix of emotions and his own blood swelled in his throat as his slowly blurring gaze wandered to the facedown bible. "I've tried to do some stuff today that I couldn't do without you. I-- we need you, Ryan. So, please... help."

With that final plea, something broke within him like a dam that he hadn't even realized was cracking. His arm flopped to the ground, wrist landing near his ear, where the communicator watch kept emitting Ryan's voice as it slowly rose in pitch until he was almost shouting. But even as his friend called frantically out to him, Kevin found it harder to make out the words. He groaned, letting his head loll to the side and his eyes fall shut. The last sensation he was aware of as darkness closed around him was that there was something wet on his face.

"Kevin, are you still there? Hello? Kevin!"

He wasn't responding. Why wouldn't he be responding, if the situation was so urgent? Maybe because he couldn't respond. Because he was--

"What are you going to do?" Wendy's voice cut into the swirl of panic Ryan was rapidly descending into. She hovered over his shoulder, peering down at the watch with wide, anxious eyes. The watch's screen had gone dark. No signal. Yes, indeed, what to do?

"What else? I have to save Neil."

If Kevin didn't know where Neil was, then there was no way that Ryan should have been able to instantly find him. But when he closed his eyes and let his vigilante instincts take over, he found that he didn't have to know where someone was. Whatever dark magic was infused in him now, letting him exist in this not-quite-human state even after what should by all accounts have been his death, it was hardwired for vengeance. And saving Neil meant exacting vigilante justice on whoever or whatever was harming him. With that in mind, the vigilante dissolved in a flurry of blood-tinted ice and reformed seconds later in the place it somehow knew it needed to be.

The first thing Ryan noticed when he appeared on the rooftop was the storm brewing overhead. He raised his eyebrows at that; earlier that day there hadn't been a cloud in the sky--and for that matter, when he looked around, it appeared that most of the sky was still perfectly clear, with the storm clouds being localized around this building. The second thing he noticed, upon peering over the edge of the roof, was that he wasn't on just any rooftop, but a skyscraper that towered above every other building in the vicinity. Lastly, he noticed a flagpole at the far corner of the rooftop, several feet away from him. And that was when his gaze fell upon Neil.

Neil was laughing as he swayed back and forth, clad in a brightly patterned jacket that wasn't his usual style at all, his arms and legs wrapped tight around the tall metal pole. Above him, the dark clouds lit up in a flash, followed almost instantly by a rumble of thunder. Although these particular stormclouds didn't come with rain, Ryan shivered. An incredulous exclamation was on the tip of his tongue (What on earth are you doing, stop it, you'll be killed!) when Neil locked eyes with Ryan, and he realized with a jolt of horror that this wasn't Neil at all--his body, yes, but someone or something else was controlling it. His mouth was stretched into a grin far wider than what a human face could normally achieve, and rather than their usual brown, his eyes glowed a sickly shade of green.

"Why, if it isn't my dear friend Ryan!" Neil--or whatever was piloting him--called, raising one arm off the pole in an exaggerated wave. "Oh boy, the guy I got this body from is sure surprised to see you alive! And as much as I'd love to send you plummeting off the edge of this building, I did promise not to hurt anyone else, so..." He waved his hand in a circle, unnaturally glowing eyes crinkling with amusement. "How about instead I pull you in a little closer so you can get a nice good look when your friend's body fries?"

With that, a sudden gust of wind blew into Ryan from behind, sending him stumbling forward. When he attempted to regain his footing, his broken spine betrayed him once again and he flopped to the ground with an undignified oof just a few feet away from the base of the flagpole. Grimacing, he pushed himself up and crawled the remaining short distance to grab Neil's ankle. As he did so, he noticed there was a bloodstained hole in his friend's shoe, and that his pant leg was slightly damp and already bore a few singe marks. Between that and whatever had happened to Kevin... he shuddered at the thought of what his friends had gone through in his absence.

"Nice try, vigilante," the thing in Neil's body jeered. "But I've gotta say, you don't pose much of a threat since I broke your spine."

He stomped his other foot down on Ryan's hand; Ryan yelped and instinctively released his grip. And at the very instant he let go, in such perfectly unlucky timing that only a supernatural entity could orchestrate, the stormclouds above them opened up with a searing, crackling, blindingly bright lighting strike.

Neil tilted his head back and laughed at the top of his lungs as countless volts of electricity tore through him. That horrendous laughter drowned out Ryan's screams of protest, not that there was anything he could do anyway in his current state, when he couldn't so much as get to his feet. All he could do was lay there and gape in horror as Neil's body shuddered and his flesh began to sizzle and burn.

Though it felt like an eternity of torture, the lightning strike couldn't have lasted for more than a few seconds. When it ended, Neil dropped like a ragdoll into Ryan's arms. Ryan, too stricken to even check for a pulse, simply stared blankly into his friend's glazed-over eyes. Then Neil blinked, and his eyes were glowing green again, and he laughed, the sound rougher now that it was being produced by a charred set of lungs.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha! I wasn't expecting this body to survive that! Can you believe Neil is still kicking in here?" He tapped a finger against his head, then sat up with a playful kick of his legs. "...Or is he? It would be just like a demon to lie, wouldn't it?" He grabbed Ryan's chin with his burnt and blackened fingernails and forcefully tilted his head up so their gazes met. "You can't tell, can you, vigilante? So, how hard are you willing to throw your broken body around to try and save someone who might already be toast? Maybe you should just give up and go on with your day, hmm?"

While the demon taunted him, Ryan's mind raced to concoct a plan. Some miraculous last-minute solution that would fix everything... Neil would be able to think of one. Perhaps he already had. But that wouldn't do them any good when Neil was trapped and helpless within his own mind. If this really was a demon, and a powerful one at that, the only thing that might work was an impromptu exorcism.

"Crux sacra sit mihi lux! Nunquam draco sit mihi dux! Vade retro Satana!" Reciting the passage from memory as rapidly as he could without tripping over his tongue, Ryan grabbed Neil by the wrists and held him tight while he hissed and tried to jerk away. "Nunquamsuade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!"

An ungodly noise somewhere between a shriek and a roar erupted from Neil as he tossed his head back and convulsed. It was far too visually similar for comfort to his electrocution less than a minute prior, and Ryan wondered if the demon was doing it that way on purpose in an attempt to scare him into stopping. If so, it wouldn't work. Even if this process was as painful for Neil as it was for the demon possessing him, it had to be done.

Sure enough, as the final line of the chant echoed across the rooftop, Neil shuddered and slumped to the ground next to Ryan. When their gazes met this time, the demonic glow was gone, but Neil was breathing fast and shallow and his eyes were wide with lingering terror.

"Ryan," he whispered. "You're... alive."

"I think so," he replied with a tentative smile. "It's all a little confusing. But we're going to be okay now, Neil."

However, no sooner had those words left his mouth than Neil stiffened up again, eyes momentarily flashing green. "No," he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head as if to dispel the demon's grasp. "Not yet. Still gotta... get rid of it..." He grabbed Ryan's hands and held them desperately tight, like a scared child clinging to their parent or older sibling. His eyes flashed once more, and this time when the glow faded, his face bore a strained smile. "I've got an idea. Ryan, don't freak out."

And with that, before Ryan could process what was happening and reach out to stop him, Neil sprung to his feet and took a running leap off the edge of the building.

For a while now, Neil had been having unusually vivid dreams. They weren't always nightmares, but they often were. Dreams about different worlds, different realities, different lives. Ones where him and Kevin and Ryan weren't all friends. Or worse, ones where they still were, but that wasn't enough to save them. One of those recent dreams, which began as an exciting fantasy only to devolve into a nightmare, was about some kind of flying vehicle. Ever since having that dream, Neil had made two vows to himself. Firstly, that as soon as he gathered the funds to afford it, he'd go back to school and complete his aeronautical engineering degree. Secondly, to always carry a parachute, just in case.

But the demon possessing him had no way of knowing that, now did it? And it wouldn't want to still be trapped inside a host body that was splattered all over the pavement. That was what Neil was banking on, at least. Otherwise he might really be in trouble.

As he fell, a stinging sensation rippled through his body. He shuddered, yet there was a smile on his face--no longer a grin stretched unnaturally wide, but an expression of his own volition--and his heart pounded not with terror but with exhilaration and boundless relief. Sure enough, the demon leapt forth from him and departed in a swirl of green smoke. And with it gone, he wasted no time in engaging the parachute--just in time to slow his acceleration enough that the fall wouldn't kill him.

Admittedly, he didn't exactly come down gracefully. He landed in a tangle of limbs and fabric that he had to shrug off the borrowed jacket, parachute and all, in order to escape, and the landing was just rough enough to deliver a painful reminder of the electrical burns covering the better part of his body. Still, Neil couldn't stop grinning as he gingerly picked himself up and dusted himself off. He was alive and no longer possessed; that was a win in his book.

When he craned his neck to look up at the roof, he thought he saw Ryan still sitting there. Neil grimaced as he recalled what the demon had said about breaking Ryan's back; hopefully that injury was undone with the demon being vanquished, but since Neil's injuries were still there, maybe that wasn't so. Either way, he couldn't just leave his friend up there alone.

As quickly as he could run with a bullet wound in his foot, he entered the building and took the closest elevator to the rooftop. But by the time the elevator chimed and its doors slid open, the rooftop was abandoned, with no sign of Ryan save for an abandoned hat, cape, and gloves, and a slowly fading dark red stain.

If Kevin hadn't already been surprised to wake up alive the first time, he sure as hell was now. The only reason he knew he was alive at all was the deep, persistent ache that wracked practically his entire body. That, and the warmth of the hand laid atop his own.

Forcing his eyes open with a pained groan, he turned his head to see the man sitting at his bedside. Ryan squeezed his hand and flashed him a sad smile when their eyes met. His vigilante costume was gone, traded for a simple dress shirt and tie, and his hair fell unpinned around his visibly tired face; the chair he sat in, upon closer inspection, was an old-fashioned wheelchair.

With some effort, Kevin pushed himself into a sitting position. Looking around, he found that he was laying on the couch in the living room with his chest bandaged. How Ryan had managed to pull him out from beneath the bookcase, he had no idea, but he sure wasn't going to complain about it.

"Ryan, you... you're hurt?" It was a stupid question--why else would he be in a wheelchair? "Did the demon...?"

"It's gone now," Ryan responded. "But..." His gaze lowered, and he dropped his hands into his lap to fidget with the blanket draped over his legs. "It was a costly victory, I'm afraid. In order to defeat the demon, Neil--"

His tearful speech was interrupted by the distant bang of the front door being thrown open.

"Geez, you could've told me you were going straight home!" Neil's indignant voice rang out down the hall. "I wandered all over town looking for you."

Ryan's head snapped up, and he and Kevin turned in unison to see their friend running toward them with a slightly crooked gait. With a cry of joyous disbelief, Ryan opened his arms, and Neil tackled him in an embrace that nearly sent him toppling over; Kevin had to lean forward to grab the back of Ryan's chair to keep him upright as he and Neil clung to each other.

"Neil, you're alive! I-I thought..."

"It's okay, Ryan," said Neil. Then, pulling back and glancing at Kevin with a melancholy smile: "I think we're all going to be okay."

"So, what do you think?"

As the ending credits rolled on their latest webisode, Neil and Kevin turned to face Ryan with matching expectant grins.

"Well..." Ryan drummed his fingers against the keys of the laptop and tried to think of something positive to say. "The costumes you used were a lot more fashionable than usual--wait, hold on. Weren't those my clothes?"

They were in Kevin's truck parked outside the studio's headquarters, with Neil in the passenger seat and Ryan in the back. It had taken a little over a week for them to recover to the point where they could comfortably climb inside a vehicle, let alone Kevin being able to actually drive, and the studio had already sent them several notes warning them that their pay would be docked for submitting their webisode behind schedule.

"Ah, yeah, sorry about that," Kevin muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

"To be fair, if he hadn't broken into your house and stolen a bunch of stuff from you, he couldn't have called you on your communicator watch," Neil interjected cheerfully. "Or tried to do an exorcism... but I guess that didn't really work out for him anyway."

"Hey, c'mon, it wasn't stealing!" Kevin gave Neil a gentle shove, prompting him to briefly wince but laugh anyway. "If we'd known you were still alive, we wouldn't have taken your stuff, Ryan, honest."

"Ah, I'll have to remember that for next time," Ryan quipped. He closed the laptop and handed it back to Neil, who tucked it away inside an oversized shoulder bag. "Well, that may not have been the best webisode we've made, but I can tell you two did your best."

"Yeah, it'll be way better once we get back to making them as a trio," Neil said.

It was still amazing to Ryan that his friends were so quick to accept him back after all he'd done. If anything, it made him feel worse about his prolonged absence, because he knew now that he could have come back at any point and they would have been glad to have him. It was easy to fall into regret when thinking of all that had gone wrong, and all that could easily have gone even worse. But the fact was, they were together again now--altered by what they'd gone through, and not entirely for the better, but still themselves.

And despite it all, the preceding events and the possibility that another horrible thing could happen to them in the future, he found himself agreeing with Neil's hopeful statement.

"Indeed..." Ryan reached out and took Neil and Kevin's hands in his own. They smiled back at him with the same residual traces of relief in their eyes that Ryan had felt every so often over the past week--relief that they were still there to smile at each other. "Gentlemen, I look forward to working with you again."

¤--END--¤

#epic gamer protip: plot something out and then mentally tweak it for the whole summer and then when autumn rolls around #write the whole thing in the span of like three days. works like a charm #hey did you know that i write stuff sometimes?

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jae-canikeepyou · 4 years ago

Text

| smitten | j.jh

pair: jaehyun x fem!reader

genre: au + fluff + idol!jaehyun & solo artist!yn

a/n: hnngg gosh i loved writing this request ;-; i combined this too!! it might not be well-written but i’m pretty sure my fluttery jeelings hit me so hard haha hope you all enjoy reading loves! ~j.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

aggravating clashes of utensils fell on the wooden floor, the impact squeezed chests and jolted the life out of those who heard it. they were finally having the relaxation they waited for until the corners of their eyes followed the fallen items to the source of noise. jaehyun leaning forward against at the kitchen counter; legs about to give in with his phone in hand.

jungwoo approached him, worried that fatigue might’ve taken over the guy. he picked up the kitchen wares and towels, placing them back where they were meant to be. “hyung, are you alright?” he touched his friend’s forehead since his ears were prominent red, hot to the touch. “you’re not yourself since you woke up. got anything to say?”

jaehyun could only press his lips like he tasted his own blood. no words came out of him and this only heightened everyone’s curiosity. he walked back to where the others were and put his phone on the table. how could he explain this news to them without letting them start to tease? they already teased him last christmas’ performance with naeun. he was sure they’d do the same for this one. and as far as he was concerned, his heart continued to drum heavily that he could feel its pulse against his skin.

should i tell them? he asked himself.

“nothing.” his glanced quickly. what he missed seeing were the sly smirks that began to spread around his friends’ faces.

johnny started to tease, a satisfied smile growing where it showed his pearly whites. “tell me it’s what i think it is.” because of this phrase it made jaehyun’s ears turned more red and gave johnny the impression knowing he hit might’ve the bullseye, right at the center. “no way, so it is!” he exclaimed repeatedly and the younger one hoped he would shut it.

their cheers went from one to another and at that moment he knew they shared the same brain cell. “ha? no. stop assuming, john.” jaehyun gulped from his cup, swallowing it like it was bottom’s up. he kept it by his lips so it wouldn’t reveal his actual feelings.

“stop denying.” yuta propped his chin for a better position. “your ears gave it away.” if it was yuta, everyone knew they were automatically knocked out in the battle. no one could stand a chance against his words or actions.

“damn it! don’t point out my ears!” jaehyun groaned and accepted defeat by slumping on the table. he unlocked his phone then sliding it across the furniture.

they crowded upon the device and scrolled to see what nearly made the dude fall on his knees. it was only one word and that was enough to lit the light bulbs floating on top of the others’ heads. “oh well what’s the tea?” taeil asked, clearly pretending to be innocent since they were all interested now that jaehyun reacted sooner than expected.

mark shoved spoonfuls of cereal before seeing the entire digital conversation with their manager, he grumbled and hit johnny continuously as he reacted with his mouth full. “you‘re doing a duet with y/n?!” he asked that he nearly spat milk everywhere.

jaehyun exhaled, brushing back the strands of his hair and wore his headband. “yeah. the agency told me to collab a cover with her and said we start in two days.”

“you don’t sound excited. you nervous?” taeil opened a bag of granola bars and laid them at the center, soon devouring them like it were the last ones.

“up until now we’ve only collabed with boy groups.” he showed them the rehearsal pictures from that time. his shaky hands were proof that he was probably nervous.

johnny poked the guy’s chest to come back to reality. “shouldn’t you be less worried? she’s from the same label as ours.” his laughs have made all of them giggle.

the dimple boy wasn’t nervous or worried, it was incomparable to a grain of sand nor those two words were in his dictionary. he was perfectly fine with practicing with you. however, have his friends forgotten about what they did to him during pre-debut days?

he recalled the time you both first met, and that became the most-discussed topic within nct. it spread to all like wildfires. how that started was during trainee life. popularity votes were common and each had to choose the first place female trainee votes by male trainees and vice versa. the results came out, you and jaehyun ranked first. they made you both stand next to each other and this was when it got messy.

everyone tends to pair the firsts, so they began by teasing because they believed this was where the “developing” start. jaehyun knew what they did was a natural thing to do, all have experienced the hot seat and the endless snickers. if there was anything jaehyun would like to change in his body, it has to be his ears. they turned red the moment the ooh’s and yeee’s echoed the rehearsal studio. of course he did like you, but it was just like every person in the agency did.

you were a new artist who debuted under the same label as the said group; doing mostly of your orginals, small ost’s and covers. they knew you. in fact during trainee days, they’ve heard your name countless of times as there were praises towards your angelic vocals and coaches would use you as an example. nct 127 never heard anything from you since they debuted, but knew you were still in the label.

“it’s been years, hasn’t it?” jungwoo turned the television on. “from what i know, that was the last voting we ever did.”

wait what? jaehyun stepped out of his dazed mind and couldn’t believe what he was hearing. they didn’t forget? he looked at his friends as they light up in realisation.

taeil popped a snack in his mouth, entertained with today’s topic. “ah! right right! we did vote! y/n was voted as the first once!”

johnny waved his palms and shook in excitement now that the memory from years ago was brought back. “man, i’ll hug whoever came up with this idea. they’re smart. we should make them do a throwback picture too.” he said as he quickly dove into the deeper files of his laptop to look for pictures for proof.

jaehyun rubbed his face in annoyance that they remembered that time. his phone vibrated as it indicated a new message from an unknown number on the lockscreen. he was about to reach it when yuta’s reflexes were faster.. always* faster; swiftly taking it like they were carkeys. yuta loved teasing and scaring the life out of his friends. among them he loved seeing jaehyun fluster the most.

he put the phone in front of jaehyun and made the lad think he was showing the message to him. this was proven false when the screen unlocked from the face i.d., and yuta laughed devilishly, typing away in a jiffy, which jaehyun panicked and tried to take the phone back.

“dude let me just press ‘send’!” yuta screamed, his smooth movements were impossible for the affected boy to catch up to.

“what were you typing?” jaehyun got hold of the phone and stared at the screen, his eyes adjusting to the fonts within the message bubble.

[16:08] from unknown: hyemin, this is y/n. stop changing your phone #! are u even my manager why did you say i agreed? :/

[16:09] from unknown: oh whatever i’m calling you rn >:(

he jogged out of the dorm when it began to vibrate crazily, your digits calling him. his friends’ yells were soon muffled to a silence as the door behind him clicked to a close. he pressed the green button to answer. “hello?” his voice greeted.

a hitched breath followed by a gasp heard from the other line. he let out a low chuckle, making you more nervous than usual because you recognised the owner of the voice and you hadn’t talked with him since his group debuted.

he backed himself into the door, one hands in his pockets whilst he waited for the caller’s response. soft thuds hit the door and he felt it often the more the whispers behind the wooden partition. his friends were indeed listening, actually, they were eavesdropping.

“j-jaehyun?” you closed your eyes, then cursing at yourself for being too careless and straight-forward with your actions.

“hyun. jae.” he chuckled. uh-huh. did he just tease you? “i’m kidding. it’s jaehyun. you thought this number was hyemin’s?” he laughed over the phone.

oh boy, he was just as you remembered him to be. a humble person who caused a positive uproar within the walls of the girls’ rehearsal room. co-trainees of yours always mentioned his name; saying he was kind and a gentleman. you never saw him until you both stood in front of everyone as firsts. “i- uh.. sorry, a phone number was anonymously given to me. manager hyemin’s been playing pranks and..”

“i see, it’s alright y/n. don’t pressure too much because of this. i’ll see you soon though?” his voice pitched higher as if he was interested and looked forward to the duet. maybe a lot more higher when he called you by your name.

“mhm, yeah.” your toes curled from feeling your chest experience a good panic. “see you.”

jaehyun didn’t know why he nodded despite the short conversation being a phone call. he said a gentle goodbye and once you did too, he ended the call, swinging the door open and caused the boys to fall to the floor like dominos. “i’m not helping a pile of idiots. you did this to yourselves.” he singsonged and stuck out his tongue and prepared to take his leave.

the monotonous beeps ringing through the phone somehow calmed the waves of your uncontrollable heart beats. you laid on your bed defeatedly, face down to the pillow. the entire noise of your apartment was nothing but the sound of your drumming heart, pulsing against your flesh and you could feel it in your veins. “so what they (co-trainees) said is true.. jaehyun does make you feel things.”

little did you know, he was on the same boat.

whether or not it was from the results of being the firsts from the trainees’ votes or that he began noticing your presence often in the company building at every recording schedule of nct’s, jaehyun was shocked at himself that he couldn’t concentrate at all. you, a girl super laid back during trainee life blossomed to be a professional artist everyone came to adore. maybe including him too.

the venue you both were told to go was perfect for the duet cover. staff members already prepared two instruments and were placed at one corner with the wall of plants. jaehyun sat at the table, earphones plugged into his ears as his head matched with the rhythms of the song. he then caught sight of you approaching him and removed one of the buds. “hi.” he stood to pull out a chair, a smile creeping on both of your lips. “last listen before we start?”

“sure.” you took one and looked at him; an ethereal person in casual clothes, boyfriend material worthy. it’s no wonder people called him their first love. and this attire of his probably got you under his spell too.

trying not to sing out loud, you lip-synced the lyrics for the final time and swayed to each word. jaehyun took a good look at you, his eyes forming crescent shapes when he saw how embarrassed you felt— because you were caught by him. it hasn’t been a minute, the staff asked to be on cue and you both head to where the instruments were; a piano and an acoustic guitar.

instinctively, your hands reached for the edge of the piano, it was one you could play. however, jaehyun too, had his hands on it and simultaneously you both retracted. “you want to play the keys?” you hear him asked, immediately nodding at his inquiry.

he let out a nervous chuckle which was followed by his cute, jutted lips. “well i could play the guitar but it’s been ages since i last held one. my strums might sound rusty.”

“no problem.” you twirled on your heels and grabbed the guitar and saw an electronic finger drum pad beside the keyboard, pointing at it as well. “i’ll play these two and we’re good to go.” your giggles had him all feeling fluttery inside and he fought so hard to not be exposed.

he wasn’t going to lie. jaehyun’s heart did skip a beat. you were only doing final tunings for a better sound but the way you looked so dedicated with this field of work, he couldn’t take his eyes off of you. sunlight appeared like it was your own emitting aura, almost identical to an angel that was heaven-sent. the light current of wind added to your source of elegance and the plants behind became your world. took him a second or two to fathom out that he was dragged into your beauty.

were you always this gorgeous?

because it has been days since he was told to do a duet with you, sometimes he felt his breaths trying to catch up with his racing beats of his heart. they were lacking behind, so far back that you being there or just sitting.. had him awestruck.

“jaehyun?” you waved small that he twitched in his seat, his thoughts cutting short from your sweet voice. “they’re signalling to test the camera. are you alright with one practice?”

he turned to the staff and said the cue. jaehyun did stretches before placing his hands lightly on the keys. you sat straight to not appear tired as you palm muted the strings, soon harmonising with the sustained chords he played. a duet rendition of say you won’t let go.

the camera panned sideways along its dolly track rail, your eyes followed the lens as you began to set the mood. you took a deep breath before singing.

“i met you in the dark, you lit me up. you made me feel as though, i was enough. we danced the night away, we drank too much. i held your hair back when you were throwing up.”

he was amazed that you quickly brought your hands out for a while to tap the buttons for percussions, each beat matched with the rhythm of his playing.

“then you smiled over your shoulder. for a minute i was stone cold sober..” his baritone followed suit. it was hypnotic that you couldn’t resist to stare at him as dimples subtly reveal themselves on his smooth skin on each word.

jaehyun’s eyes grew at the sweet soulful tone while you sang the verse that he forgot to sing with you at the next sentence. “i pulled you closer to my-” you continued in a harmonised key and later stopped, a giggle bubbling out of you.

his admiration for you was interrupted upon your laugh. the frazzled boy lifted his fingers off the keys, hands clasped together for an apology. “ah, i’m sorry.”

“it’s alright. don’t pressure too much because of this.” you said with assurance. “i get nervous sometimes too.” yeah of course you were. you got to collab with him despite your busy schedules.

the dimples on his cheeks deepened. did you use the same sentence as he did few days ago?

“you looked fine to me.” he licked his lips. “pretty too.” and he mumbled to himself, but you were too occupied with the guitar in your hand that you didn’t hear what he said. “can we start from the top?” clearing his throat, he was glad you didn’t hear it. or else he would be embarrassed.

singing with you was like coffee. jaehyun had this particular, specific impression as he spotted a café prior to coming here. he knew fans loved his voice, a unique baritone that was very prince-like. if he were to reference it, his vocals alone was like americano. people would get addicted to the taste despite it being uncommon in the kpop industry. although they enjoyed it, the staff thought it would be better to include you in the duet.

so you became the sugar to his vocals, a pleasant timbre that was as calming as the rain’s patter. voices perfectly blended together in different ranges, both delicate and careful. you have sung with other artists through covers and orginals, however jaehyun stood out the most in all of those, in which made you think this collab was the one you enjoyed.

[ both harmonising ]

“..and you asked me to stay over i said, i already told you i think that you should get some rest.”

“i knew i loved you then, you'd never know ‘cause i played it cool when i was scared of letting go.”

“i knew i needed you i never showed but i wanna stay with you until we’re grey and old.”

“just say you won't let go, just say you won't let go.”

jaehyun felt giddy inside hearing your voice fit with his. as you both enjoyed each other’s presence during the cover, he could sense that after today, he definitely took a liking for you— but his heart knew him better than he thought.

he fell in love with you on the spot.

—

hours have passed and a total of five takes were recorded, majority of which three of them were slightly messed up because either jaehyun forgot his lines or you needed to be quenched or vice versa. jaehyun fixed his brown outerwear as he observed you from afar, tying a low bun to prevent your hair adding heat from the scorching hot weather. eyes extremely focused on the camera from the second last cover video.

all was finished for the day yet there was half an hour left until you both separate ways. jaehyun decided to buy drinks and got one for you as well.

the table you sat on slightly shook from the impact he did to place the ordered beverages. “i didn’t know what you like, so i got you latte.” he pulled the chair to sit, sliding the cup to you.

“hm, you sure about that?” you raised a brow and appreciated his effort to go out his way for this. “latte’s like my go-to drink. thank you.”

jaehyun kept himself composed, he had to hide his smile behind the cup. it was dying to show. he hoped you didn’t see him. your arms almost meet when he scooted closer to view the video together. the frame was perfectly placed at the center and you couldn’t believe you both sounded well together.

you heard his soft tsk’s, there were small amount of water rolling down his cup from the ice inside. he got up to get extra tissue. as you waited for him, you checked the device and clicked on its previous button. it was a video of him holding a wireless camera lavaliere microphone and with your mind full of curiosity, you played it.

it contained his ending ment and if you listened closely, it was for a vlog you were familiar with, a channel where he documented his daily ‘yuno’ vlogs for his fans. the motion automatically played and he spoke through the wireless mic.

something about this had you rewinding it twice. he was staring off into space as he spoke, his eyes trailing— actually following someone. he gave a little twitch and pout of the lips, that was the same when he forgot to harmonise with you. the wind blew his hair, revealing his dusted pink ears and eyes enlarging the more he followed where you went.

the thought of his reaction caused you to shy around him once he came back and had two desserts in his hands. maybe if the winds answered your prayers to confirm what you saw in the video was true, it could convince you enough.

the said boy handed you the utensils and as you had your first bite, he loved how the café’s lights became your glow, the music became your introduction. heat eventually spread his entire face.

yes, nature heard your calls,

and yes, his heart told him that

he’s so smitten with you.

#nct 127 #jaehyun oneshot #jaehyun scenarios #jung jaehyun #jung yoonoh #nct jaehyun #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun #nct #jaehyun nct #jaehyun x reader #jaehyun au

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solesurvivorpaigeargot · 4 years ago

Text

Sketchy Saturday FAQ : Last Revised on March 11th 2021

Hey there, friends, followers, and fans! This here is an FAQ I'll reblog before events to help keep everyone on the same page. I'll add to this FAQ as new things... well, become Frequently Asked Questions! Click through if you wanna know what this whole Sketchy Saturday thing is about... or, if you're already familiar, skim through anyway for giggles. I won't be mad XD

ONWARDS!

?What IS Sketchy Saturday?

Sketchy Saturday is a weekly event I host for the Fallout fandom, wherein I open my inbox for art requests from the community at large on Thursday Nights, and do as many of those requests as I can on Friday and Saturday. There’s no rules for whom can participate. You don’t have to be following me, I don’t have to know who you are. All you need to do to participate is follow the posted guidelines in the weekly prompt post for sending a valid request.

That’s cool! But won’t you get swamped by everyone?

I appreciate your concern! I actually keep a spreadsheet with a record of everyone who has participated in the event, and have a scoring system to dictate the priority of participants. New participants always get first priority, it is NOT first come, first served. In this way, I’m protected from overwhelm by a mathematical system that sorts everyone into an order, weighting my personal friends and returning requesters to the bottom. Also, I have a hard cut-off time on Saturday night to prevent overworking. I promise, I’m not gonna kill myself trying to get to everyone. You don’t need to worry about the artist. I has a system. :3

I wanna see you draw my OC! Is that okay?

100%! All characters are welcome to be requested. Canon, OC-- so long as it’s Fallout, it’s fair game! THAT SAID! If you send in an OC to be drawn, please send reference material as to what they look like to me via THE TUMBLR IM. NOT. THE. ASKBOX. It makes the asks look messy, and I like to keep my blog tidy <3

I’M HYPE! When’s the next Sketchy Saturday??

WOO! You can always check my pinned post to see when the next Sketchy Saturday is. When the request window is open, I’ll also have the prompt linked there for easier navigation :D

Why do you use prompts instead of just letting people request anything?

Prompts let me keep control of the requests. I'm not a content machine, I'm a human being, and I don't take kindly to other people telling me what to do... so I create a space of possibility with the prompt so requests can be made without anyone pissing me off or making me feel used.

Do you do commissions?

NOPE. But I can recommend a number of artist friends who do at any given time, so if you're hunting for artists in the Fallout sphere, feel free to poke me anyway. I can point you in the right direction of whichever friends have open slots <3

Why don't you do commissions?

I have temper tantrums when people tell me what to draw, even if I volunteered for it, and then I procrastinate out of spite cause I'm already upset. I've tried to play the commission game a few times, but it just doesn't... work for me. I hate it. I hate the idea of selling my time and skills directly, I hate the idea of someone else commanding me to create something that I'm still gonna sign my name so. I just... can't. Full props to people who can, but it's something I find psychologically impossible.

Dunno why, and I don't care to change it.

I donated to your Ko-Fi, can you do my request first next week?

NOPE. Sorry sweeties, that's not how I do this. Newcomers always get served first, and after that the priority scores are dictated by participation, not funds. I'm working on good perks to give people who support me, but these perks will NEVER mess with the order of requests. There is no paying for the front of the line, and there never will be. Period.

What's your name?

Loor, spoken like the lore of a story.

What time zone do you live in?

US Pacific time, I live in the state of Washington.

Why do you use all these colors on your posts?

Helps divergent people, or hell just tired people read them. Colors, bolding, changes in font size and otherwise direct the eyes and help the brain understand what's important and worth remembering.

HOLY HECK YOU'RE MARRIED? HOW OLD ARE YOU?

Yeeeep, coming up on 10 years married this October. I turn 30 this August. Yep, I'm an honest to glob adult. Because life doesn't end at 25. :P

#Sketchy Saturday #Sketchy Saturday FAQ #FAQ

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fanfictionaries · 5 years ago

Note

Giiiiirl, I am CRAVING some baking with Bucky. Like some good old recipe from his mom or sisters, eating half the batter, being all innocent and goofy. Maybe Reader introducing him to the world of cupcakes with a second batch of batter they make. Just a sweeeet baking day ❤️

I made myself happy sad with this one. XD

Might be a little more angsty than you were looking for, but all the sweet fluff is there as well!

Inspired by my own great great grandmother’s recipe.

Orange Rolls

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x female reader

Words: 3k

Warnings: None, just the fluffiest fluff you can imagine; slight angst.

Author’s Note: I loved doing this, so please people. Send me more requests! ALSO this is an actual family recipe of mine. I recommend trying it!

I recommend listening to this song while reading this: https://open.spotify.com/track/7pR7yPgbYcipmTUHT5g68p?si=nQZeCOmoTcm43qOI1YRPNA

***

Step 1. Dissolve 2 yeast cakes in ¼ cup warm water.

The room was alight in the glow of soft warm sun. Nestled in your blankets, you rubbed the sleep from your eyes and yawned widely, stretching and turning to snuggle into the familiar warmth of Bucky. Firm muscle, soft skin, ticklish arm hair – all missing. Instead only cool sheets, drawn back on his side of the bed. You didn’t have to check the time to know it was early, but you rolled over to the bedside table to check your phone anyways. Five AM. Much too early to be up on a Sunday morning, even for your early bird of a super soldier. Rolling onto your back, you stayed quiet, attempting to hear any signs of life in the small apartment. Perhaps he’d only gotten up to use the bathroom. The sound of heavy items falling and a string of curses coming from the kitchen brushed away the thought. Jumping out of bed, you pulled one of Bucky’s large sweatshirts over your head and stepped into your slippers.

When you rounded the corner, the first thing you noticed was the expanse of your pantry laid out onto the floor. The second thing you noticed was Bucky, sat cross-legged in the middle of the array of flours, sugars, and spices, head in his hands. You knew this look. This crumpled, defeated look that so few had the privilege to witness. Everyone saw the stoic, cold Winter Soldier. So little saw Bucky Barnes, a kid from Brooklyn. Tiptoeing around the spilled bags of sugar, flour, and sprinkles, you stood beside him, leaning over and placing a gentle hand to his back, rubbing soft, slow circles.

“Nightmares?” you asked, moving your hand up to thread through his freshly cropped hair, scraping your fingernails against his scalp. Bucky tilted his head back, leaning into your touch like a cat leaving its scent. You could see the telltale signs; red rimmed eyes, pink tipped nose, raw bitten lips.

“No, no nightmares. I uh…I had a dream about my mom,” Bucky answered, the end of his sentence biting off in a short, harsh laugh. You held your breath. It flattered you that Bucky felt comfortable enough with you to share the gory, ugly details of his past – the things that kept him up at night. The things he thought you couldn’t love him for. But never had he talked about his family. The only memories of his past life you ever heard were the ones Steve brought up, the rowdy stories of two young men up to no good in 40’s Brooklyn. Yet on his own, Bucky remained silent about his life before the war. You never pushed him. It would be cruel of you to press a subject that was most likely too painful for him to think about. Now, the waver in his voice and the tears that welled in his eyes told you that that assumption had been correct.

“I was sittin’ in my old kitchen and uh—” he sniffed, taking a moment to clear his throat “—it was Easter. I know it was Easter ‘cause ma made orange rolls. She only ever made them on Easter. And it—it was the best damn orange roll I’ve ever had. I woke up and I remembered Steve brought over some boxes of my family’s old things, stuff Rebecca left behind I guess, and I found this.”

In his hand he held an aged recipe card, stained from years of use. The yellowed card stock was bent and torn, but the writing still held clear, thick and messy in some places as if it had been traced over multiple times. It was well used. Well loved. At the top, clearly labeled in large looped font, were the words ‘Orange Rolls’.

“I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth. I figured I’d try to make them, but I wasn’t much for the kitchen back then, let alone now. And—and you don’t have any yeast cakes. I can’t make them without yeast cakes (Y/N). It’s the first ingredient and I can’t—” The words broke off, catching in the back of his throat. He wrapped his arms around your legs, clinging to them like a broken child. Rolling off of him in waves, the permeating sadness and longing washed over you, breaking your heart with each hit.

“I don’t think they make yeast cakes anymore Bucky—” you spoke slowly, choosing your words carefully. At the statement, you felt his arms tighten in a panic. You were quick to placate him “—but I have some dry active yeast that I think should work. Why don’t we clean this up and then see what we can do, yea?”

Step 2. Warm 1 cup milk, add ½ cup sugar, 3 Tbsp shortening, 2 tsp salt.

Turns out, a single yeast cake is equal to approximately 4 and ½ tsps of dry active yeast. After this joyous announcement and your internal praise to Google’s ever living library of knowledge, Bucky was up on his feet, standing in front of the stove over a saucepan of milk.

“How do you know when it’s warm?” he asked, looking curiously down at the pan of milk in front of him.

“Stick your finger in it, if it feels warm, then it’s probably warm,” you answered sarcastically, reaching into the depths of your pantry for the Crisco. A rarely used, but very important staple for any kitchen.

“What? I’m not sticking my finger in it,” said Bucky, watching with rapt horror as you walked up beside him and dipped the tip of your pointer finger into the warm, white liquid.

“I think it’s warm enough to put the sugar in. What?” you asked him when you saw the look of exasperation on your boyfriend’s face.

“You put your finger in the milk.”

“And? My hands are clean. You watched me wash them. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of catching cooties. Cause I hate to break it to you but, you probably already have them.” Lifting on your toes, you placed a sweet, soft kiss to his lips. Catching you around the waist before you could drop back down, Bucky kissed you back with slow purpose.

“Is that right?” he asked teasingly, breaking away from your lips ever so slightly.

“Afraid so,” you murmured against the soft, heat of his mouth.

Step 3. Beat in 3 eggs, 2 cups flour, and add dissolved yeast. Let rise for 1 hour.

The wet dough sat on the counter; a kitchen towel draped lightly over it. By this time, the sun had fully crested over the city skyline, pouring blinding light into the small space of your kitchen. The two of you sat at the kitchen island, sipping your coffee as you waited for the dough to rise. Your bare feet sat, propped in Bucky’s lap, the thumb of his metal hand absentmindedly rubbing the arch of your right foot as he spoke animatedly.

“You should have seen her. Becca was so mad; I thought her head was going to spin all the way around!” laughed Bucky, the creases at the corners of his eyes making a warm and welcome appearance as he regaled a story that you had never heard before.

“Well that’s what she got for touching your stuff,” you said, taking Bucky’s side in the long forgotten sibling argument.

“Thank you! See, you get it. I wish I could say the same for my parents. My pa gave me such a lickin’ and then ma sent me off to bed with no dinner. All for putting worms in her bed!”

“Did she get in trouble for letting your pet frog loose?” you asked, enraptured by the story.

“No! Do you know how hard it was to find a frog in Brooklyn?”

“Impossible. I don’t even know how you did it.”

“Well, really it was Steve that found him—”

“Him? Did he have a name?” you interrupted him with a cheeky smile.

Bucky scratched the back of his head, a light pinkness appearing on his cheeks, “He might of…”

“Aaaand?” you pressed, wanting to know the name even more at the prospect of it being embarrassing.

“I don’t know if I wanna’ tell you. I think you’re just gonna laugh.”

“I won’t! I promise!” you exclaimed, drawing an invisible cross over you heart.

Bucky looked at you skeptically, a raised eye trained on you before answering, “Fine. It was Mr. Ribbits.”

You tried your hardest, really you did. But a snort escaped your nose before you could stop it and then Bucky was playfully pushing your legs off of his lap and turning away from you, “See! I knew you’d laugh. You’re such a bad liar!”

“I’m sorry!” You reached for him, still attempting to stifle your giggles as you pulled at Bucky’s arm, turning him back towards you. “Really, I am. I think Mr. Ribbits is a respectable name.”

“Thank you. It is.” His tone was resolute, but it didn’t take a trained eye to spot the small smile working its way onto the corner of his lips. “But no, Becca didn’t get in trouble. In fact, my pa said I was too old to be picking up animals off the street anyways.”

“How old were you?”

“I think I was about ten.”

Step 4. Add 3 cups flour and beat in with spoon. Let raise 1 and ½ hours.

“We have to wait again?!”

“Yea, we have to let the dough rise, otherwise the rolls will be tough and there won’t be enough to roll out,” you explained, placing the towel over the bowl once again and reaching for your empty coffee cups.

“But I thought we just did that,” said Bucky in confusion. You tried not to smile at him, but the cute little scrunch of his eyebrows made you a weak and gooey fool.

“Baking is more of an art in patience than skill. Especially any kind of bread, babe. Don’t worry, once they’re done, they’ll be more than worth the wait,” you reassured him, patting his cheek gently.

“Well…can we make something else while we wait? What’s your favorite thing to bake?” Bucky asked, his innocent tone making him sound like a wide-eyed child.

You smiled, big and happy, and walked over to the recipe box that sat atop the fridge. Taking it down and setting in on the counter in front of you, you dug into the baking section and produced a handful of recipe cards.

“Take your pick soldier.”

Step 5. Roll out dough and spread on icing – 2 cups sugar, 1 orange: rind grated and juiced, 6 Tbsp melted butter. Roll, cut, and place in muffin tin. Cover and let raise 20 mins.

“Stop eating all the batter!” you scolded, whacking the back of Bucky’s hand with a spatula. The impact had no effect, the sneaking man having had the forethought to use his metal hand.

“If I wasn’t supposed to eat it this way, then why is it so delicious?” he argued, sneaking another finger into the chocolate concoction and bringing it to his mouth.

“Because it’s five pounds of sugar and fat,” you laughed, grabbing hold of his wrist and bringing the chocolate covered finger to your mouth instead. “Also – how is it gross for me to dip my finger into the milk but you can have these grubby little paws buried deep in my brownie batter?”

The question caught Bucky off guard. Raising his hand up, he wiggled the vibranium fingers in your face, “Metal arm – they’re, uh, sterile.”

You guffawed, absolutely tickled by the lame response, “Sterile. Okay. Well, preheat the oven Mr. Sterile.”

Using the spatula, you scraped the double chocolate chip brownie batter into the greased pan. Strong arms wrapped around your waist and a head came to rest on your shoulder, watching you scrape the sides of the bowl. Nuzzling his face into your neck, he placed a gentle kiss just below your ear.

“You know, you’re getting pretty mouthy these days. I have half a mind to take you over my knee,” Bucky growled playfully.

Before your brain could connect with what your body was doing, the spatula had already lifted away from the bowl and made contact with the side of his face. The wet splat of batter to skin sounded plainly through the kitchen. Releasing you from his hold, Bucky stepped back, his expression vacant and shell-shocked. Dropping the spatula back into the bowl, you covered your face with your hands as you tried not to lose it. He looked positively ridiculous. Chocolate covered the left side of his face, dripping down from his brow bone to his chin. You watched as he brought a hand up slowly, touching his face and bringing it back down to examine it. He stared at the chocolate proof on his fingertips for a few moments as you waited with horrific anticipation.

“Oh, that’s it, doll. You better run.”

The menacing words sent your heart rate soaring. A playful shriek escaped your lungs as you bolted from the kitchen, Bucky on your heel with a growl in the back of his throat.

Step 6. Place in the oven at 375 for 10-15 minutes. Makes around 3 dozen.

The brownies, already baked and cooling on the counter, were long forgotten as Bucky sat in front of the oven. Arms wrapped around his bent legs, he watched as the orange rolls slowly rose in their muffin tins.

“When are they gonna be done?” he asked you, staring into the depths of the oven like a fortune teller stares into their crystal ball. Like if he looked hard enough, he’d find all the answers to the universe.

“About five more minutes.” You sat down beside him, leaning into his side as the two of you watched his long-forgotten memories rise. You were excited to try the rolls. It was a recipe you had never heard of, which was a rare thing. But most importantly you were excited to try a little piece of Bucky’s life. A piece of the man, the boy, that he used to be before life happened. It felt special and intimate.

“What if they’re not as good as I remember?” The words were soft and honest. You could feel the same sadness and apprehension as earlier that morning drift from him to you. Leaning against him firmer, you took his hand into yours. Threading the warm flesh into your own, you continued to stare into the heat of the oven.

“They will be.”

Step 7. Enjoy.

The rolls were a beautiful sight. Small, golden brown swirls in a neat, compact shape. The sugar filling had melted down into the bottom of the pan, creating and thick and chewy caramel layer at the bottom of each one. A delicious detail that Bucky said was supposed to happen, but also made it incredibly difficult to pry them from their tins. Still, with the help of a butter knife and a lot of patience, the two of you were able to get most of them out unscathed. A buttery orange scent swirled through the air, causing your mouth to salivate as they sat atop of the wire cooling rack. The two of you sat at the kitchen island, staring at the rolls in silence – you with a look of anticipation, Bucky with a look of confusion.

“What is it?” you asked, wondering if he still doubted that they would hold up to his dream.

“I’m pretty sure they had frosting.”

While the recipe didn’t call for it, Bucky insisted that they always had a frosting on them. After a few minutes of questioning about what kind of frosting it was, or at least what it looked and tasted like, you came to the conclusion that it was most likely a simple glaze. A few minutes later, you each had a plate in front of you with a single, gooey, glistening orange roll sat pristinely on it.

You were starving. You’d been up for nearly five hours and you hadn’t eaten anything yet. But you didn’t dare dig in until Bucky had his first bite. Reaching out tentatively, he picked up the roll, twisting and turning it, inspecting it with a warry expression. Holding your breath, you watched as he brought the baked good to his lips and took a generous bite. He chewed, and chewed, and chewed – each second leaving you with more consternation than the last. When he finally swallowed, he set the rest of the roll down onto his plate and heaved a heavy sigh. Your heart dropped.

“No good?” you asked, fearing you already knew the answer from the way his shoulders bunched over the counter.

Looking to you, tears once again welling in his eyes, Bucky did something unexpected. He kissed you. A firm, chaste kiss that lasted only a moment but formed butterflies in your stomach before he pulled back.

“They’re even better than I remember.”

The proclamation sent your heart soaring. You let out the breath you’d been holding, feeling your own tears of relief and joy begin to well. Blinking them back, you smiled at him, blinded by the dazzling smile you received in turn.

“Well then, let’s eat them all because I am famished,” you replied, picking up your own orange roll and taking a giant bite. The mix of soft, warm bread, zesty orange, chewy caramel, and sweet frosting set your taste buds alight. As you chewed, you envisioned a ten year old Bucky sitting in his mother’s kitchen on Easter morning. Curly brown hair, all teeth and dimples in his Sunday best and as happy as a kid could be. Why?

Because this was the best damn orange roll you’d ever had.

Marvel Taglist:

@caffiend-queen

@hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall

#requests #fan fiction #fanfic #fluff #bucky x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #memories #baking #angst

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overwhelmedbyskeletons · 3 years ago

Text

When Nothing Moves

I can’t sleep. The sun is too bright.

I started this job cleaning out fruit slicers all night a month ago and I haven’t had a good nights sleep since. Every night filled with tossing and turning, trying to find a way to comfortably shield my eyes from the suns blinding light. Working a graveyard hours job meant I was sleeping all day and working all night. The cruddy curtains in my room were doing fuck-all for blocking out sunlight. Some of the guys at my job that were friendly enough told me to buy some blackout curtains and it will make my room completely dark, even with the sun beating down and hopefully it will help me get some good rest. after my work week ended, in my car I ordered that highest-reviewed blackout curtains I could find online and they were due to arrive at my apartment the next morning, in seven hours.

I woke the next day to a knock on my door and a shine directly into my eyes. I could have rearranged my entire room several times and still wouldn’t be able find a way to not get work on my tan while I sleep. I hurried to the door to get the package and gave a wave to the delivery driver before they made it down the stairs out of view.

Putting up the curtains was smooth, even though they were quite heavy material. My biggest fear was that they would pull the curtain rod from the wall, but that worry didn’t last long as the void that my bedroom had become was a sight for sore and tired eyes. I poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen before sitting down on my bed. Before I could take a sip, the comfort of my sheets began to sing symphonies to my tired muscles and lull me back to sleep.

I slept in, something that was unheard of even before I started my backwards sleep schedule. The clock on the bedside table read 9:23pm in red digital font, illuminating my wallet and phone that I had forgotten to plug in after last nights shift and was now most definitely dead. Still in a sleep state, I reached down to grab the charger and plug it into my phone when I heard a noise come from the other side of the bed. A tapping in a rhythmic matter, which would explain why i hadn’t noticed it sooner, but now it had gotten louder, almost annoyed at me paying it no mind and I froze leaning halfway off the bed. The jolt of fear that swarmed my body woke me up better than any instant java could ever wish. It knows that I know and its playing with me now. The tapping is getting faster and multiplies and I now that it is the sound of fingernails tapping on my wall.

(Did somebody break in am I really going to get murdered in my bed after the first night of decent sleep in my life?)

The tapping stopped suddenly, followed by a bang on the wall knocking out one of the nails holding up the curtains. My fists clenched among other things. I roll off the bed into a stance and with a sorry excuse of a warcry ready to fight whatever it was in my room to the death if need be. Nothing was there; I was sure of that. The curtains had fallen letting in the bright glow from the 7-11 across the street, revealing the only thing out of the ordinary in my room was that I needed to clean.

“Must’ve been a dream.” I said out loud, an attempt to calm myself after what I just experienced or just only imagined.

I flicked the flicked the lights on and fixed the curtains. Hammering in the nails all a little more for good measure before walking out of my room to start my day.

My apartment is in no meaning of the word interesting. I’ll state that I had, two chairs, a couch, some scattered goodwill tables of varying size, and a flatscreen TV on a small Swedish table decorated with a collection of games and movies. It wasn’t much, but I enjoyed what I had.

I prepared myself a bowl of cereal and sat on the couch to watch a show when I noticed movement down the hallway into my room. It wasn’t a natural movement in any sense and even now it is hard to explain. It was as if the world had lost focus of that specific spot in my bedroom doorway and it had grown hazy and distorted. It had the height of a man in a sheet ghost’s clothing and it was raising what I presumed to be its arms when an ad on the TV startled me back to reality. I started up a show and began eating my food quickly, doing my best to forget what might be lurking down the hall and failing as thoughts raced through my head.

(I didn’t check under the bed FUCK no one can fit under there anyways FUCK THE CLOSET FUCK it’s nothing probably just a reflection YOU HAVE NO MIRRORS IN THERE DUMBASS AND YOU CLOSED THE CURTAINS IT’S A GHOST YOU ARE BEING HAUNTED CONGRATULATIONS SHIRLEY FUCKING JACKSON WOULD WRITE A BOOK ABOUT YOU CALLED THE IDIOT’S HAUNTING IF SHE WAS STILL ALIVE)

Frustrated with myself I hopped up and marched down the hall to my room huffing and puffing with each authoritative stomp, making sure that whoever await beyond the door knew I meant the most serious of business, as well as sloshing my breakfast everywhere. As I pushed the door open fully I was rushed by what I can only describe as a shadow, knocking me on my back. spilling cereal and milk all over me and as I looked up I could see the shadow turn left at the end of the hallway into the TV room and out of my sight.

I was terrified. I tried to stand myself up while keeping my sights on where I last saw it. As I got to my knees and began to prop up, the shadow peaked around the corner with a featureless, translucent face starring at me with what I assumed was malicious intent. Frozen in fear, I could only muster up the breath to ask a single question.

“Who?”

To which, to my absolute horror it responded in a echoed whisper.

“Boo.”

And vanished.

With my pants shit and my legs like jello, it took me a moment to breath, let alone move. When Blood returned to my veins I hastily made my way to the bathroom to clean myself of spilled Golden Grahams and milk and to face the realization that what I had just witnessed was anything but normal. I spent a moment arguing with my thoughts, fighting the impulse to sleep in my car. My reflection in the bathroom mirror helped to ground me in reality, to remind me that I am fine and no harm was done. I convinced myself of a resident Casper The Friendly, albeit roughhousing ghost. I soon after left the bathroom.

I poured myself another, bigger bowl of cereal and sat down to watch anything the TV had to offer. I spent the rest of the night on the couch, eating and finding any excuse to not look down the hallway.

At around 2:51am I had had enough of wracking my brain, thinking that at any moment the shadow would reappear and attack me again, this time finishing the job. I bolted down the hallway to my bedroom, grabbed my keys and wallet and headed out my apartment to go across the street to the 7-11 for a early morning slurpee. The cashier knew me and joked about my usual purchase of sugary drinks and snacks. I gave no response, paid my $6.23 and headed out the door.

As I was crossing the street back to my apartment, I looked up to my second floor bedroom window, half hoping to see nothing, other half expecting bloody Mary herself. After what I had been through that night, I’m not sure why I even went back into that apartment. The curtain rod had been torn out of the wall again and standing in my room were two of the shadow figures latched to the windowsill, with the distinct outline of hands pushed against the glass. They watched me as I continued crossing the street; my heart was almost bursting out of my chest. I was running on fear induced auto-pilot and my destination was my apartment door. When I reached my door I finally paused and reflected on what had happened tonight.

(If they wanted me dead, They could have done it already. They were playing games with me, but why?)

I stood in front of my door for a minute before realizing I had never locked it and walked right in ready to confront whatever was inside. I flicked the kitchen light on, set my drink and bag down, and looked down the dark hallway. Spilling out of my room were dozens of shadows piling over each other, all different shapes and heights of darkness, fading in and out as if there was a draft blowing through them. I began nervously pacing in my small kitchen, checking on the hallways inhabitants every few rounds. They never moved. After a while a voice moaned from my bedroom.

“Leave”

“No.” I spat out responded in annoyance.

“Leave or...”

“Or fucking what?” I shouted with such ferocity that my neighbors definitely heard me.

“Die.”

All the blood drained from my face and immediately the shadows in the hall began screaming and moaning, shifting from side to side,all while inching towards me. My legs turned gave out from under me. trying to catch myself from falling I had turned the kitchen light off which seemed to invite the shadows to come closer. As they got closer, their faces appeared mangled and distorted consisting of holes where a human features should be. As their shadows began to overtake my motionless body, I shut my eyes so tight that it hurt. Amidst the moaning I heard one last phrase.

“Sleep again now. We’ll do the rest.”

The next thing I know, i’m laying on the doormat outside of my apartment. I didn’t care how I got there. I quickly got on my feet and down the stairs to my car. I closed my eyes as I backed out of the parking lot. I didn’t want to ever look at that window ever again.

I stayed at my friend Aiden’s place for a week. He lived alone, so he liked the company and he had the room for it, so he didn’t mind. I had told him a lie of how the landlord was spying on me when I showered and once tried to seduce me while fixing the sink. I think he believed it.

I only wanted to go back to the apartment once to get my stuff. After a week of staying with Aiden, the two of us drove to the apartment building and found that where my bedroom window used to be was blown out, stained black with burn marks. Aiden didn’t know what to say and I was beyond confused. We parked the car and I went to the landlord’s door alone and asked what had happened. He told me in detail that four days again my room had exploded from a gas leak and that I was lucky I went on vacation or else i’d be a deadman. There was nothing to be packed up that wasn’t ash. I apologized to him about his building, and said goodbye. I headed back to my friends car who was waiting with a drink for me from across the street. I got into the car without a word.

“What the fuck happened? Did he try to kill you? Tried to burn you alive cuz you weren’t turned on by his wrinkles?” Aiden said as he started the car.

“No, he doesn’t know what happened. Gas leak they think, he told me.” I said. “Let me take one last look.”

“Oh, sure. Of course.” He said, shutting the engine off. I rested my arms on the top of his car looking up to my once bedroom window now black from the fires, but somehow still intact. I thought I saw something and ran across the street to see it closer. There were two marks on the burnt windowsill; marks I could swear were burned in hands.

“You ok, Rick?” Aiden shouted from the driver’s seat.

“Yea, no, I’m good. Just getting a closer look.” I said as I ran back to the car. “Just saying goodbye is all.”

“Well alrighty, you want to grab some burgers?”

I nodded and smiled.

I never asked him if he saw the handprints.

We pulled out of the parking lot, passing my old apartment building one last time. I instinctively waved to the window that used to be my bedroom. Nothing waved back.

#short story #ghosts #horror #short-story

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sageblogsthings · 4 years ago

Photo

[image description: a map, brownish-yellow with age, fills the background. the text over the image reads “Dust, Drams, & Dragonsblades” in white all-caps font. /end id]

Dorian walked through the lower town, passing shop after shop as they closed for the night, until he finally came upon an old, seemingly abandoned shack. A rusty sign dangled by a single chain above the door, the slightest breath of wind threatening to knock it loose. Squinting, Dorian could just make out the lettering on the sign: The Culterus’ Cup. With a smile, he leaned on the door, not so much pushing it open as pushing it aside, its hinges broken long ago. Warm light from the street-lamps outside filtered through the doorway, but was immediately swallowed up by the murky interior. The smell of dust, drams, and desperation seeped through the doorway and settled around Dorian’s boots.

Ah, the smell of alcoholics in the evening, he sighed. Seem’s like nothing’s changed.

He walked into the impossibly dark building, eyes squinting through the dust and cobwebs in search of a familiar face.

“Well my eyes must be failing me in my old age, or my mind is starting to go,” the voice brought an immediate grin to Dorian’s face. He wandered vaguely towards its source, dodging tables and uprooted floorboards by memory alone.

“Matthias,” he grinned. “It’s really me, somehow I’ve managed to not get myself killed.” He finally reached the source of the voice: a stout, rounded man with crinkled grey hair and eyes. His head barely cleared the bar behind which he stood, but he emanated such an aura of authority and confidence that you barely noticed.

“Hmm, small wonder that is,” Matthias grunted. “And not bound to stay that way for long from what I hear,” he peered at Dorian over golden spectacles in a way that was part concern and part disdain.

“Ah, so you heard about that?”

“I think half the town has heard about it at this point, my boy.” Dorian winced slightly.

“I really tried to stop them from making a mess of Tov’s place, damned mercenaries.”

“Is she okay?” the man feigned disinterest, but Dorian could see his brow crease ever-so-slightly in concern.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Apparently she knew the leader from before so he left her alone, he was really just after me anyways.”

“Wait, Tov knew him? That big brute everyone is scared of now?”

“Yeah, he got a room there a few nights back. She said he seemed like he was hiding something, but also that he seemed kind, just quiet, so she didn’t push it.”

“That sounds like Tov alright,” Matthias huffed. “Always seeing the best in people even when they’re hulking mercs.”

Dorian chuckled, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I also don’t want her getting in trouble because of me.”

“Ah, there it is,” Matthias grinned as he polished a glass.

“There what is?” Dorian asked, confused.

“The part where you ask me for something.”

Dorian blinked. “No getting past you is there? I thought you said that your eyes and mind were going.”

“Ha!” A deep laugh shook the bar-top. “You wish, Vispillo.”

“Wow, and just when I thought we were on a first-name basis!” Dorian pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “But yes, I do need your help. Mr. Galba,” he breathed out the last part in a conspiratorial whisper.

Matthias craned his head upwards, piercing Dorian with those inscrutable grey eyes. He stayed like that for several moments, and Dorian was beginning to lose hope. Maybe I should just turn tail and leave before I embarrass myself more.

“Of course I’ll help you, foolish boy. With the tab you still owe here, there’s no way I’m letting a bounty hunter get ahold of you.”

Dorian laughed, swooping an arm over the bar to give Matthias a half-hug. “Thank you!” He beamed. “And I will pay that tab, I promise.”

“Mhm, I’ll believe it when the coin is on this bar-top. Now, what do you need?”

“I’m looking for a man.”

“Ha! Nothing’s changed with you, has it Dorian?”

Dorian groaned. “The man who attacked me, Matthias.”

“Yes, yes I know. I’m just messing with you kid. Though from what I hear the man who’s after you isn’t exactly hard to look at.” Dorian shrugged, not denying it but refusing to say more on the matter.

“Apparently I have something that he believes belongs to him, or whoever employed him I guess, and he means to take it from me by force.”

“Okay, so it seems like a pretty easy solution, yeah? Give him back what you stole.”

“See, there’s the problem. I don’t know what I stole.” Matthias blinked over his glasses, once. Twice. He exhaled slowly, his brow creasing slightly as he did so.

“How—,” he paused, rubbing his forehead. “How do you not know what you stole? Were you that drunk when you stole it?”

“No!” Dorian paused in thought. “I mean, I was likely drunk but I still remember everything I’ve stolen lately. I keep a log and everything!”

“So just show this man the log and ask what’s his, right?”

“Assuming they don’t shoot first and ask questions later that could work. But finding the object isn’t what I need help with.”

“Astralis help me,” Matthias muttered into a calloused hand. “Would you just spit it out boy?”

“I’m trying! Okay, look, the problem is this: I have no idea who this mercenary band works for, where they’re from, who their devilishly handsome leader is, or where I can find them.”

“I knew you thought he was a looker,” Matthias grinned with a wink. “But you realize none of that was a question, right? What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t be humble, Matthias. You know that most people come here for the tracking services, not the drink, right?”

Matthias stepped back from the bar at the affront to his drinks. Glancing around the bar, he saw dilapidated tables strung with cobwebs, small candles nearly burnt out, and scattered patrons meeting in corners in hushed whispers. A figure in a cloak stood near a wooden board with papers plastered across its surface. The top of the board read “Bounties & Warrants.” He turned back to Dorian to find the tiefling smirking at him.

“See? Nothing against your mead, it’s fantastic, but this is the place where criminals and lowlifes come to find out if they’re wanted yet.”

With a deep grumble, Matthias propped his arms on the bar-top. “Fine, you red demon, you’ve made your point,” the slightest glimmer in his eye told Dorian the insult was purely in jest. “So you want me to help you find this brute, then?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Fine. But only because the sooner we get them off your tail the sooner you can pay me all that gold you owe.”

“Oh come now, Matthias, you’re fond of me, just admit it.”

“You wish, devil.”

Dorian chuckled. “Here, this is all the gold I have right now. I’ll give you the rest later, I promise.” Matthias eyed the gold suspiciously, then turned his gaze upwards to the tiefling.

“Keep your gold for now. I don’t want you getting into even more trouble because you’re broke. You can pay me after we find him.”

“Aww, you big softie,” Dorian crooned, giving the top of Matthias’ head a light noogie, which earned him a deeply unsettling glare from the older man.

“Get off of me you damned tiefling. C’mon, we have work to do,” and with a huff he shuffled through a doorway behind the bar. Dorian stooped to clear it, and found himself in what seemed to be Matthias’ office. Despite how many years they had known each other, Dorian had never stepped behind the bar. He wasn’t really sure what he was expecting Matthias’ private quarters to look like, but somehow this fit. Papers scattered across every inch of the room, many of them looking important, candles burnt down to the last bit of wax decorating every available surface, maps and diagrams hanging and overlapping on even the tiniest fragments of wall space. It was chaotic, but somehow also cozy. Like Matthias, Dorian thought. Not that he would ever tell him that, at least not as long as he wanted to live.

Matthias perched behind his desk, eyes scanning back and forth across map so aged Dorian was surprised he could read it at all. Dorian perched on his tiptoes behind him, scanning the map over his shoulder.

“Could you stop that?” Matthias shot a half-hearted glare over his shoulder.

“Ah, sorry. I just — do you need help with anything?”

“No, just let me — wait,” the older man paused, scratching the salt and pepper (though mostly salt) scruff on the side of his head. “The mercenary leader, did he have any kind of crest or uniform or anything?”

Dorian inclined his head, nail pressing lightly into his temple as he tried to recall the encounter.

“No, I don’t think so. He was just wearing normal mercenary clothes I guess? He had a pretty heavy coat on though so I couldn’t see most of what was he was wearing.”

“His weapon didn’t have any embossings of a guild crest?”

“I mean I wasn’t exactly admiring the craftsmanship when he had it pressed to my jugular,” Dorian half-joked, earning a glower from Matthias. “But no—,” he coughed, “I don’t think so. Seemed like a pretty ordinary cutlass to me. And come to think of it, each of the mercs were wearing something different. Seemed like a bit of rag-tag group, didn’t think they were mercs at first honestly.”

“Hmm . . .,” Matthias trailed off in thought, glasses slipping down his nose. “That is odd. Most mercenary bands have to be approved by the Culterus’ Council. If this was just a randomly put together group, I don’t think there would be a way to track who hired them.”

“Well that’s fantastic,” Dorian huffed. “How are we—”

“I wasn’t finished yet,” Matthias waggled a finger to shush him. “If someone hired this mercenary band outside of the Culterus’ Council, they're either operating outside of the law or above it.”

“What are you suggesting, Matthias?”

“Well if they were operating outside the law they would probably be some kind of high-level criminal, a nihilimancer at worst. That seems unlikely though because hiring a mercenary band would just draw more attention to them when they could have attacked you directly.”

“So you think it’s someone operating above the law, then?”

“Likely, yes. A government official of some sort.”

Dorian’s brow furrowed heavily at this. A government official? What could he have done to piss them off?

As if reading his mind, Matthias stared up at Dorian over his glasses, grey eyes boring into golden ones. “Dorian, what the hell did you get yourself into?”

Dorian hunched over the desk, rubbing his face with both hands. “I—,” his voice cracked slightly, as though the full weight of the situation was bearing down on his throat. “I don’t know, Matthias.”

“C’mere, kid,” Matthias waved Dorian over to him and scooped an arm around his shoulder. “Listen, we’ll figure it out okay? And when we do we’re going to give those bastards what’s coming to them.” His voice was stern and gravely, but the twinkle of his eyes belied the slightest hint of compassion.

Dorian smiled lightly. “Thank you, Matthias, but —,” he paused, not wanting to seem ungrateful. “Me. Not we. I need your help finding them but I can’t ask you to come with me.”

The older man grumbled, “Dorian, if you think that you’re going alone to face an entire band of mercenaries—,” he was interrupted by Dorian vigorously shaking his head.

“I’ve handled worse. Besides, someone has to stay here and look after everything. Who’s going to help all the lowlifes and criminals find other lowlifes and criminals if you’re not here?” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Don’t you have any Thieves Guild buddies you could ask?”

“I got kicked out of the Guild, remember? Besides, I don’t want anyone helping me with this. These mercs aren’t likely to forget a face and I’m not putting a target on anyone else’s back.” Dorian’s breath caught and he cast his eyes toward the floor. “I already hate that they know what Tov looks like.”

Matthias folded his arms over his chest. Dorian seemed determined to face this alone, but that didn’t mean he needed to face it entirely without help. “Fine. For the record though, I don’t like this at all.” Dorian seemed ready to cut him off again, but Matthias continued, “If you’re going alone, at least let me give you something that might make things a bit easier. Saved my skin a few times anyways.”

“I’ve already got a hip flask,” Dorian waved a crimson hand dismissively, but the smallest tug at the edge of his lips and the twinkle in his eye did not go unnoticed.

“Ha ha, ever the jokester. No you idiotic devil, it’s something that’s actually helpful.”

“Idiotic devil?” Dorian blinked in surprise, a grin spreading across his features. “I think that’s a new one, congratulations.”

Matthias huffed in response and crossed the room to rummage around one of the bookcases. After moving several papers, candles, and unsettlingly unidentifiable objects out of the way, he pulled a heavy leather chest from the shelf, heaving it onto the desk with a groan. Dorian peered over his shoulder as Matthias opened the chest, startled backwards a few steps when amber light poured out of the box and flooded the room around them.

“What the hell is in there?”

“You’ll see,” Matthias chuckled. He threw the lid back, completely bathing the room in the brilliant light. After muttering a soft incantation, the words of which Dorian couldn’t quite decipher, the glow died down and for the first time Dorian could see the contents of the chest. A dagger.

“That’s it? You’re giving me a tiny dagger when I have two perfectly good rapiers right here, a couple of daggers, and a handful of throwing knives already.” Matthias looked a bit unnerved at how many weapons Dorian could fit in clothing with no discernible pockets.

“Yes, it’s a dagger, but do you really think this is just a normal dagger? It’s enchanted.”

“Okay, and all of my weapons are poisoned. What’s your point?”

Matthias sighed, something he seemed to do a lot more of when Dorian was around. “You really have no knowledge of magical enchantments do you?”

“Nah, poison seems to do the job just fine so far.”

“Exactly. So far.” Matthias paused, hoping Dorian would understand the gravitas of his words. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with now, what you could be walking into. You need a weapon that will give you an edge in every situation.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll use your fancy dagger.” Dorian reached out towards the chest, then paused, curling his fingers into his palm. “Uh, what does it do exactly?”

“It is a Dragonsbane blade. They can only be forged in the dying flame of a High Dragon. The gilding is made from the precious metals found in its heart, set into the hilt by a boiling tear shed in the dragon’s final moments.”

“Ha—,” Dorian crossed his arms over his chest and threw his head back, eyebrows arching up doubtfully. “I call bullshit. You really believe all those dramatic tales, Matthias? I had you pegged for more of a skeptic than that.”

“It’s not a dramatic tale, Dorian.”

“And how, exactly, would you know that?”

“I was the one who forged it.”

“Haha very funny, of course you were,” Dorian cackled, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. When he looked back at Matthias, he saw the older man was staring straight at him, unblinking. “Wait. You’re not joking?”

“Nope. Why would I? I’ve got enough wild tales from running a bar, no point in making more of ‘em up.”

“But why —,” Dorian paused, rubbing his increasingly furrowed brow. “How — ?”

“I have a life outside of this bar, you know,” Matthias paused, then added “well, I used to anyways. But that doesn’t matter right now.”

“You can’t just drop something like that and then not tell me!” Dorian squawked. “Oh, yeah, I used to be a famous adventurer with a fancy dagger,” Dorian continued in a deep, rumbling voice, a rather terrible impersonation of Matthias. “Forged from the last breath and final fart of a dragon, but you don’t get to hear about that now, Dorian,” he scrunched his nose and pushed up an invisible pair of glasses as he finished his speech, giving Matthias the same deflated, exasperated look he often gave Dorian.

“Was that supposed to be me?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Well I don’t know but that was downright terrible. Good thing you don’t make a living doing street performances, you’d be poorer than you are now.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Dorian huffed. “Look, whatever, you can tell me about your grand adventure stories later I suppose. Now, would you please just explain why I need this dagger?”

Matthias huffed again, giving Dorian that look. Dorian had done a pretty good job of impersonating it if he did say so himself. “This dagger is incredibly powerful, I figured that much would be obvious. If —,” he paused “if this dagger tastes your attacker’s blood, its power grows stronger.”

“Okay, but what is its power? Does it suck the souls of men or something like that?”

“Now who’s the one believing dramatic tales?” Matthias smirked. “No, nothing like that. Because the blade was forged with the aid of a dragon, its power is tied to that of the dragons. In a moment of dire need, the spirit of the High Dragon from which this blade was borne will come to your aid. The more battle this dagger has seen, the more powerful of an ally you will have should you need it.”

“So you’re saying I should stab as many mercs as possible that way if I die I’ll at least have a dragon on my side?”

Matthias hung his head, rubbing his temples furiously. “Honestly, Dorian, just take one magic class. Just one.”

“Well, am I wrong?”

“Ye—,” he cut himself off. “I mean, no, not technically. The more blood the dagger collects the stronger the dragon will be. But I’m not saying that you should just stab people indiscriminately. That dagger has seen a fair amount of blood already, so if you do need the dragon to come to your aid, and I pray that it is an if, you do not need to worry about the strength it already possesses. I wouldn’t give it to you if all it would do is summon a weak dragonling spirit.”

“Wait, you’re giving this to me?”

“Lending!” Matthias spluttered, correcting himself. “Definitely lending. Please take care of it.”

“I’m messing with you, old man. But of course I’ll take care of it, thank you Matthias. I know I give you a hard time but I really do appreciate it.” A somber grin plastered itself across Dorian’s face as he spoke. “I hope that I won’t need to use this, but I do feel a bit safer knowing that I have the option.”

“Good, that’s all I wanted,” his eyes crinkled at the corners, imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know him well. “One more thing. I have some health poultices and some poisons, likely stronger than the stuff you’ve got anyways.” Before Dorian could protest, Matthias was shoving bottles, vials, and poultices of every color and size into his hands.

“Umm, Matthias?”

“Umm, Dorian?”

“Forgive me if the drink has gone to my head and I forgot this part of the conversation, but how exactly am I supposed to find this mercenary band? You’ve just given me a whole armful of supplies and nothing to find them with.”

“Oh, well I thought that part was obvioeus.”

“Obvious?” Dorian tried to gesture with his hands despite the delicate arrangement balanced on them. “Well enlighten me then, please.”

“You’re just going to wait for them to attack you again.” Matthias chuckled deeply as Dorian’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline.

“You—?” the words wouldn’t come. “You? Gave me a dagger? To defend myself with, but you want me to be a sitting duck for an entire band of mercenaries? How does that make any sense?”

“Dorian, they’re going to find you one way or another, that’s sort of their job isn’t it? If you go looking for them, you’re likely going to find them on a terrain they’re familiar with. If they come looking for you, there’s the slightest chance you’ll have the upper hand. The slightest chance that you’ll win this idiotic battle you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“Oh,” Dorian breathed. “That — that actually makes sense.”

“I know. You really ought to stop underestimating me, boy.”

“Maybe after you tell me some of your tall tales I’ll take you a bit more seriously,” Dorian said with a wink.

The smallest smile pulled at Matthias’ lips. “When you bring that dagger back to me, how ‘bout that? We’ll have a pint to celebrate you not losing your life, and to commiserate you losing all your gold once you pay me back.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Dorian chuckled. “Thank you, Matthias, I really appreciate it. If I find out who hired them I’ll let you know.” Dorian began to walk out of Matthias’ office, but was stopped by a gravelly voice.

“Wait —,” Matthias fidgeted with a golden ring on his thumb. “Dorian. Please be careful.”

“Starting to sound like Tov, aren’t you?” When Matthias didn’t smile, he added, “I will. I promise.” He turned on his heel before he could change his mind, and strode towards the main entrance of the tavern, stuffing the various potions and poultices into the multitude of pockets hidden in his clothes. When he reached the door, he traced his chipped nails along its surface, hoping this wouldn’t be the last time he saw it. With a final huff, he stepped onto the lamplit street. Time to go get murdered, he thought with a forced smile, and set off across the cobblestones.

Arnora taglist:

#arnora #dorian #dust drams & dragonsblades #kit writes #the chapters in part 2 will probably all be a bit longer than those in part 1!#this is also up on my wattpad (kitwritesthings) if u prefer to read there!#i had so much fun writing this tho Dorian and Matthias' relationship is so wholesome

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rkwon · 4 years ago

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DE:CODE IS LIVE: HAPPY MILO DAY! 🎉 JULY 17TH, 2020 • 43 MINUTES

he isn’t sure what’s worse — the nagging guilt and greed that both a fanmeeting and a vlive for a forgettable recently-debuted idol is far too much, or the small yet persistent voice in the back of his head that tells him no one will show up, that anyone who does is just waiting for him to do something stupid. the little live icon mocks him as he shuffles in his seat, leans in closer to see the details of the livestream. the viewer count jumps from zero, to a hundred and beyond, but what he’s most concerned about is the speed the comments move and how small they are. he retreats, resting his back straight against the back of the chair and pulling the sleeves of his jumper down over his palms before he waves.

“hello,” he greets, quiet and shy. his cheeks are a soft pink and it’s likely the tips of his ears are, too, though conveniently hidden by his overgrowing, curled hair. “I’m de:code’s milo. ah, force of habit. my name is in the live title, right?” his laugh is airy. “it’s my birthday today.” he continues, letting the any and every thought that comes to mind roll off his tongue. “thank you for all the well wishes! I saw some of the comments on social media— well, I saw lots of cake emojis. this is the first year I haven’t gotten to eat mum’s cake on my birthday. ming— magnus’ mum always bakes each of us a cake on our birthdays, but I was so busy today that I couldn’t go home.” he sits forward once more to read what he can of the fast-paced comments. “oh! don’t worry, don’t worry. we’re going home over the weekend to see his parents, so we’ll have cake then! I’ll bring slices home to the dorms for all the members.”

he pauses to read again, clearly struggling even when he moves closer. he’s long-sighted, but the font is so small that it’s hard to see regardless. “did the members get me anything?” he reads with a tilt of the head. growing up, won rarely received presents on his birthdays. sometimes he’d get a little cash from his parents, or a hand-me-down, until he met mingyu and thus began the traditions of spending as much of the day with the kims as possible. though he still doesn’t think too much of material gifts, he cherishes the thought each of them have always put into choosing something for him — either for its sentimental value, love and effort put into creating them, or relevancy to his interests. he chuckles to himself as he remembers the time mingyu bought him two bottles of coca-cola knowing he had been craving it but unable to afford any. “so far, a.c’s gift is top of the ranking. when I woke up for practice this morning, he gave me the biggest hug before I could even make it to the bathroom to start getting ready. I think it’s going to be tough to beat cute cuddles from our youngest.” he teases, concentrating so hard on reading once again that his phone vibrating on the table just out of frame startles him.

he glances down to check, unable to hold back a grin. his eyes trail back to the camera, lips pursed, then to his phone as he picks it up. “magnus just texted me. he’s watching from the dorms; everyone say hi!” he waves. “he’s nagging me. he’s telling me to put my glasses on, but I don’t have them with me...” a pout tugs at his bottom lip. “I’m long-sighted!” he answers when he spots the question before it scrolls off screen. “ah, he text again. he asked me where they are. ah... I think I left them on the bedside table. it’s fine, though! I can manage; I can see! I always take them off to sleep so they don’t get broken— but then I forgot to pick them up before I left earlier. this is my tmi for the day.” he laughs, leaning forward again. a few notes about wanting something more interesting for his tmi catching his eye. honestly, he isn’t really sure what constitutes a tmi in the first place — he’d just heard it around on other idols’ vlives and broadcasts. still reading, he hums to the beat of another buzz of his phone. “ah, he’s good to me. magnus is coming to deliver them!” he sucks in a deep breath, resting his chin against the palm of his hand, his elbow propped on the table.

“oppa, why do you look so good? hyung, what should i eat to look like you?” he reads, chuckling loudly until his nose starts to crinkle. “cheetos.” he answers simply, still eyeing the comments. “they’re my favourite snack. I would always try to save up my allowance and treat myself to a bag when I could.” more messages flood in about which flavours, about other snacks he enjoys and what his favourite food is, but won catches one about his voice that makes his cheeks flush so bright that he instinctively leans back in the hopes that it becomes less noticeable. “to the person who said they loved my voice and that it was one of their favourites, thank you! that’s an honour... just in de:code, we have so many talented vocalists. I’m happy that you enjoy my singing. or is it my talking voice?” he all but giggles. “I’ve been told since my early teens that I have a really deep voice. I might get in trouble with him for telling you this but I always thought it was just in comparison to mingyu — his voice dropped after mine even though he’s a little older. I thought my voice can’t be that deep, but it really was all that time.” he hums, noticing a surprised question. “mhmm! I used to be taller, but now mingyu has a few centimetres on me. a lot of the de:code members are either very tall or very short. even though I’m tall, almost everyone around me my whole life has been taller than me. mingyu’s step dad is taller than me, too. I’m not tall enough! I want a couple more centimetres but I think it’s too late for me now...” he pouts once more, but it doesn’t last long. “did it hurt when you fell from the sky? did it hurt when you did?” his counter is embarrassing but he’d have had that same red tint to his cheeks either way so why not?

i entered for the chance to come to your birthday fanmeeting but i didn't get chosen ): but i am glad you are doing a vlive and that i can still see you on your birthday. i hope that you've had a very enjoyable day, milo, i love you 😭 happy birthday!!

“ah, that comment disappeared before I could read it out loud, but I saw it! thank you! I’m sorry there wasn’t a chance for you to come to the fanmeeting; I’m glad I could do a vlive for anyone who couldn’t make it. I was really surprised, actually. I was... kind of worried no one would come.” he laughs now, but he almost hadn’t slept last night stressing about it. perhaps it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet that he’s really an idol — in one of the top five companies, no less. “you can thank magnus when he gets here for persuading me to do both the fanmeeting and this vlive. I really wanted to do the vlive especially, but I was worried I wouldn’t be very entertaining. are you having fun?” his grin is probably a little too hopeful, but his viewers at least humour him. “you are? that’s a relief. but... should we listen to the music? what songs are everyone listening to lately? I’ve been listening to ‘love is the way’ by red velvet a lot.” he begins to sing a little as he scrolls through the music player on his phone, periodically glancing back up to catch a few comments.

however, he squeaks when the door to the practice room clicks open suddenly.

“ah, my knight in shining armour!” he’s all sparkling eyes and wide grins as he looks at mingyu off camera, arms raising to grabby hands at the glasses case in his boyfriend’s hands. “my glasses! oh, how I’ve missed you.” it takes an embarrassing amount of force to prize open the case as mingyu busies himself taking off his jacket. he pushes the frame up his nose, blinks a few times to adjust to the change. “that’s so much better. gyu, come sit with me.” he pats the chair beside him he’d saved just in case anyone popped in. he suspects seonho will bounce in later ( literally ), though he had hoped mingyu would come to lend him a hand soon after he started, too. said jacket is draped over the back of won’s chair, though he doesn’t realise until he feels the weight of the fabric brush his arms. he barely has chance to turn around before mingyu’s arms hang around his shoulders, pulling him back towards his chest. they sway, left to right to left to right, to the rhythm of mingyu’s gentle “happy birthday to you”, won’s grin growing to crinkle not only the bridge of his nose but the corners of his eyes, too. he’s still in a daze when he gets a birthday kiss to the cheek, mingyu finally taking his seat.

“hello!”

dumbly, won replies, “hi,” then realises, “oh, you weren’t talking to me— that’s embarrassing. a-anyway, what were we talking about? oh! songs. what songs you’re listening to lately. what have you been listening to, gyu? ah, I don’t think all of you have been listening to gorilla twenty-four-seven. you can tell us the truth, you know, we won’t tell anyone! it’ll be our little secret. shh.” once mingyu’s settled, he answers.

"if you have been listening to gorilla twenty-four-seven, though, I would like to personally thank you... but also encourage you to take a break to listen to to you 2020 by teen top and o sole mio by per_se." won hums in agreement, turning back to the comments.

“someone else just said o sole mio, too.” he tries to point it out, but the message is long gone before he can even raise a finger. “you guys are so fast... there’s so many of you here.” there’s wonder in his voice, disbelief at the numbers displayed in the top left. are that many people really watching him sit around? and sending him that many hearts? he almost feels like crying. “I’m really bad with technology.” he admits, trying unsuccessfully to scroll back to some older messages before mingyu gently nudges his hand aside to take over. “our manager had to set up the live for me. he asked me what emojis I wanted in the title and I didn’t even know what to answer. I only know like, five emojis, and the cake one just makes me hungry.” he hums, patting his stomach once, then again for good measure. “what I mean is if I don’t see your comment, it’s probably a combination of bad eyesight and the speed the little feed moves, please don’t feel disheartened! keep sending it if I haven’t answered! w-wait, will they get banned for that? is it spam? word it differently each time!” he advises, though truthfully, he has no idea how it works.

eventually, he spots one he feels he has to address, even if he isn’t too sure how best to answer it. “do I have any tips for someone that wants to be an idol...” he reads. “I know it probably feels a little like a boring answer and a given, but hard work absolutely pays off. also, if you don’t pass an audition, it does not mean you didn’t work hard or aren’t talented; there’s so much more to it than that. the casting agents might be looking for something specific for a group already planned out, for example.” for a moment, he pauses, purses his lips as he tries to piece together the words he’s looking for. “I think you should always be yourself and make yourself proud. your time will come; the agent or company that sees your worth and potential is the one you want to work with, anyway, right? practice as much as you can, but practice healthily and enjoy it. if you’re not having fun, take a break. it’s important to pace yourself and be good to yourself. there were times before I went on the mgas where I didn’t dance for weeks because I wasn’t in the right head space, but when I came back to it, I wanted to put more into it because I enjoyed it again and missed it. don’t build a bad relationship with performing. do it because you love it. a-ah, I think I got a little off topic there. do you have anything to add, gyu?” he smiles at his boyfriend as he begins to speak.

“hm? oh... yeah! don't give up. I know that's probably irritating to hear after a while of trying as hard as you can, but I know how easy it can be to get disheartened. if it's really what you want, you can take a break if it'll help, but get back up and keep fighting for it. sometimes, doubt will make you think that it's pointless and that you should settle for something more ‘realistic’, and other people might urge you to, too, but don't listen to any of that. if you know in your heart that you can do it and it's truly what you want, don't let anyone or anything beat that dream out of you. you can do it!”

for a little while, they continue to answer questions he spots in the comments — ones they realistically can answer, anyway. too many people are asking about a comeback or upcoming plans and he’s almost certain they aren’t allowed to even hint at anything or face their company’s wrath. between telling everyone for the tenth time that he rooms with seonho and mingyu, his curiosity gets the better of him as he eyes the bag mingyu brought with him.

“what else did you bring?” subtlety hasn’t really ever been his forte. “you brought a whole bag with you just for my glasses?” his voice has dropped to a mumble, but it’s likely viewers can still hear him. the stream is the furthest from his mind as mingyu smiles and reaches for said bag, dragging it closer and as his hand delves inside, won’s neck cranes to see.

“stop trying to peek, it's supposed to be a surprise!” won huffs as mingyu laughs fondly. “I brought you a birthday snack, too, in case you were hungry. you're welcome.”

he should be embarrassed by the gasp that parts his lips but at the sight of cheetos ( and other snacks, but cheetos! ), his image is long forgotten. “ah, kim mingyu... once again my knight in shining armour.” he teases, fingers itching to tear open the top of the packet. “I haven’t had cheetos in a long time even though they’re my favourite.” he tells the camera. “I know earlier I said that to look like me you have to eat cheetos and that’s true, but I don’t know if any of you watched us on the mgas in season four but... I was very small. my height hasn’t changed; I’ve long since stopped growing.” he pouts shortly. “but I was very thin. I started working out with mingyu when we signed to royal and eventually some of the other trainees when I got more confident. these days I could bench press mingyu! I’m telling you! I had to stop eating cheetos, though, so you have to let me know if it was worth it; do I look good?” briefly, and embarrassingly, he flexes one arm, losing what little cool he had at mingyu’s over-dramatic ‘woah!’ and amused chuckle. “a-ah, n-no, don’t ask me to prove it. you just have to trust me!” he giggles, finally popping the first cheese puff into his mouth.

“I want to play a game, but I don’t know what we can play with everyone. someone suggested we watch videos of ourselves on youtube, but I don’t think I’m quite used to seeing my own face in public yet.” his laugh is gentle and his cheeks pink. “maybe next time. leave suggestions in the comments and we’ll prepare something next ti—”

his squeak gets caught in his throat when the door flies open, mingyu’s hand patting his back to help him catch his breath again. seonho’s bouncing over in all his glory, a shit-eating grin on his cute face. his arms wrap around his shoulders as mingyu’s had not too long ago and won can’t help but smile. “another very special guest.” the comments explode, ‘maknae on top’ filling the screen and won’s nose wrinkles in another laugh. he pulls mingyu’s chair closer and nudges his boyfriend to the side so that the three of them can fit across two seats, seonho settling in beside him to respond to comments with them. periodically, he offers the two cheetos, watching secretly with a hungry stomach as their hands dip into the bag.

he doesn’t realise quite how long they’ve been live until someone says they have to go to bed to get up early in the morning. his eyes widen at the forty minute timer on the display and with a small content sigh, he turns to each of the boys beside him. “I think it’s about time we rounded this live off, right? it’s getting late and everyone should be getting plenty of rest.” with waves and a chorus of ‘bye!’s and ‘sleep well!’s, mingyu and seonho are out of frame for won to say his final goodbye for the night.

he clears his throat, leaning in a little closer and adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “everyone, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to spend my birthday with me, whether you came for five or forty minutes.” his smile is gentler than it has been the entire stream, his teeth just starting to show. honestly, he never believed today would go so well and he’s relieved that mingyu was able to persuade him to do it at all. he had been stubborn, stuck in his insecurities and worries, but he felt good now — like floating on a cloud high above the sky on a fair, lightly breezy day. “I’m so grateful for every second we spent together. I’ve had some really strange birthdays over the years,” he chuckles, “but this is definitely one I’ll never forget. it’s been an incredibly happy day; I hope you’ve all had just as wonderful of a time whatever it is you’ve been doing. plus, it’s friday! the weekend starts now, huh?” he purses his lips, then hums. “make sure to get lots of rest and stay healthy so we can keep meeting like this, okay? thank you again. goodnight, everyone! thank you for all the birthday wishes! bye bye!” he waves and waves for a good thirty seconds as the comments roll in to say goodnight in return. “a-ah, guys— how do I end it?” with a pair of laughs off camera, the live cuts off.

#tw: weight talk #vlive:de:code #wn.vlive #wn.royal #wn.dcd #wn.sched #wn.solo #( i have too many tags )#rkmg #rkseonho #( thank you for sending in questions!!! )#( the 'edit' is won when mingyu arrived and then again when he gave him cheetos LMAO )#( wc; 3268 )#( Finally done wow this is a Long One )

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darlinrogue · 4 years ago

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His chest aches, his cheekbone throbs with the imminent development of a bruise. (How? He doesn't remember, as faint as he is. Adam had fought, and he fought hard.) But Kenny is the one victorious. Victorious, but all he's able to do is kneel, half collapsed, his hands against the canvas for support. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know why, but he kisses him, lips to the forehead of the man he—. He kisses him. He walks away. He touches the bruise on his cheekbone, and he smiles. It still hurts.

Kenny Fucking Omega

w/ the sad yeehaw man

He didn’t hook the leg.

Adam rolled through the snapdragon and countered with a firm elbow to Kenny’s jaw. He put Kenny on his feet and then lifted the other man by the thighs, over his shoulders. Deadeye, right to the back of the head, a knock-out for a lesser man. Except Kenny Omega was Kenny Fucking Omega, and he kicked-out. The match rolled on, Adam lost, he’d seen the ending twenty-thousand times. The One-Wing Angel was a punctuation point at the end of a statement. Yet, each time he watched through the recording he paused on that one pin after the Deadeye. Adam had Kenny stacked, his full weight on his shoulders. The bell should’ve rung. Except Adam only hooked the left leg. He only hooked the left leg on Kenny Omega. He only hooked the left leg on Kenny Fucking Omega. The best pin he got the whole match. Right after Omega ate: a half-dozen elbows, too many chops to count, a starching power bomb on the ramp, three boots to the face, and got dropped on his head from four feet in the air. The planets aligned, the Scorpio was in Aquarius or whatever, and Adam only hooked one leg.

“It was the-- it was the right leg!”

Tony’s voice shuttered through the phone in Adam’s lap. The screen paused on the collapsed forms of the combatants in the ring. Adam face down in the fore-ground and Kenny clutching his leg not far behind. In that moment he hadn’t thought about the right leg. Kenny had kicked out by some miracle but it wasn’t sheer luck. Kenny exploited Adam’s error. Of course, unbeknownst to Adam the comms were carefully picking-apart Adam’s critical mistake. The legs weren’t neutralized. Kenny could swing his right leg and leverage his weight-out. If Adam had hooked both legs the match would be over, he’d be facing Mox. Instead, he made a stupid mistake so obvious even Tony Schiavone, who would break his hand before he could throw a good punch, pointed it out.

A headache formed behind Adam’s eyes. He tore his gaze from the screen and glanced-out the window. The dark night streaked black, reflecting back his hotel room and his bedraggled body propped-up in bed. A limp hand fluttered out to find his bourbon on the night stand. He lifted the glass to his lips and found no relief for his parched throat. Adam scowled and returned the glass to where he found it. The bottle was empty too. He couldn’t tell if he was buzzed, drunk, or hungover. Just a dullness, settling in with the ache and exhaustion. Adam used the tip of his finger to edge the glass away from him. A final statement that he was done for the night. He slid down from his upright position against the pillows and sprawled out the bed covers The fan swirled in lazy circles above him. After months of blistering heat Florida had cooled to a tolerable temperature but this room was cooking him alive. His hair was still damp from the shower. He glanced at the clock, 1:43. No phone calls, no texts, no twitter updates, he put his phone on airplane mode hours ago. It was just him, the recording of his life’s greatest failure, and an empty bottle of bourbon.

Adam lifted his phone from his side. He turned onto his cheek to glance at it again. He hit the play button and the recording rolled. The two men recovered, Adam was up first. He set-up for the buckshot but Kenny anticipated it and rolled him into a crucifix. He was so fucking predictable. Adam used a boot between the ropes to stuff Kenny’s charge three times that night. No wonder he had his leg well scouted. That twisting move on his knee obliterated his chance in the match. Can’t stand, can’t fight. Oh, Adam had a couple more signs of life in him but two knees to the face, well. He was up on Kenny’s shoulders now. Kenny caught the head and Humpty Dumpty took a great fall. The leg hook was a formality. Adam wasn’t even sure he was conscious for this part. One, two, three, and Adam paused the video again. He haphazardly tossed the phone and it clattered off the edge of the bed. Adam had a life proof case for a reason.

There was no point in watching any further.

For a head-spinning minute, Hangman Adam Page was somebody. He was the tag team champion, alongside Kenny Fucking Omega. He was on top of the world. It was all so good. Training with Kenny, fighting with Kenny, sometimes, fighting with Kenny. Getting distracted by another tag-team-- No, Kenny literally dropping Adam like a sack of potatoes was inevitable. He had held Kenny back, made stupid fucking mistakes, hit his partner on accident, got drunk and wandered around arenas like a moron. Bickering with the bucks and ruining his friendships. Adam was an arsonist, he only burned down bridges and never built them. Now he was alone on his Island, just like he always wanted. And he had a lost tournament to prove how ‘accomplished’ Adam Page truly is. Matt and Nick were right about him. For all his bluster, all his big talk, believing in himself when no one else would. Empty words, Adam could talk the talk, but he couldn’t walk the walk. Because he ran-up against someone like Kenny Fucking Omega.

And he forgot to hook the left leg.

He didn’t need the video for the next part. Kenny’s head and hand lifted high. Kenny, haloed like an angel of death by the Dally Place lights. Kenny, knelt above him like a prayer at the altar. Cheeks blushed in rose, breath spilling from his chapped, pink lips. Curls like spun gold, framing his sculptured features. Like something out of a renaissance art painting. Out of a great tragedy, Lucifer, Achilles, Gabriel. His lips against his forehead in a kiss as delicate as a flower petal. Paul Turner helping Adam limp out of the arena. Fuck Hangman, and then taking the Uber back to his hotel alone, in utter silence with the guy working the graveyard shift. Alcohol, shower, alcohol, video self-pity marathon, alcohol. He wished his dog was here. Wait, what was that last bit?

Adam lunged across the bed. Kicked into action as if bitten by a Hell Hound. Belly against the comforter his hands searched the floor until he found his phone lodged by the head board. Half-his chest off the bed he hit the play button. Adam slammed against the ring mat. The fall-out, the replay, the play-by-play, the comms chattering, (”Kenny came out the better man”), blah, blah, blah. Paul Turner helped Kenny up. Then he was back down, knelt over Adam, and with great reverence, Kenny stooped to kiss Adam’s forehead. The he rolled out of the ring. Adam paused the video. Then he played it back. Then he paused the video and then he played it back. he paused the video, he played it back. Inch-by-inch Adam slid off the mattress until he was slumped against the floor, legs hooked on the bed above him. He watched that little end sequence on loop until it was emblazoned against his memory. It was so quick the comms didn’t even mention it.

A kiss. Kenny kissed him. Kenny Fucking Omega kissed him. Adam laid his hand over his sternum. His heart shuttered in his chest, pounding, tight, and agonizing. Pure pain, looking at the blurred pixels on his phone screen. It wasn’t near enough, the taste of it was like a morsel of food for a starving man. Kenny lingered over Adam in nothing but obscure pixels. What was his expression like? What did he do with his hands? And most important, something the phone could never tell him, why?

Adam and Kenny were out. Now that his obligations to the tag title were done, Kenny returned to the single arena. Tired of dragging dead weight, tired of the noose around his throat. Kenny walked out on the tag team Adam prayed to stay in. Adam screwed over the Bucks. He spitefully entered a tournament to prove he didn’t need Kenny anyway. Adam didn’t even shake his hand at the start of the match. Not just because he was angry --Adam was pissed in that unshakable focused way-- but because he was afraid. Taking Kenny’s hand, never letting go, too tempting a possibility. The longer he stared at the screen the longer this shameless act of devotion eluded him.

For the first time in hours Adam turned his phone off airplane mode. He shuffled through the deluge of notifications by dismissing all of them without reading any. He pulled-up Kenny’s contact, drafted a text message.

“Hey, man, good fight today-- well, yesterday, I guess. I just wanted to ask, out of curiosity, did you kiss me at the end? I mean, it’s no big deal. I was just wondering is all like i thought it was a little odd is all. Are you ok? You know you can always count on me, no matter what. I’m sorry i’ve been such an ass. I need to start drinking less, much less. It’s just that everything, the tournament, the belts, it’s been getting to me, I only wanted to prove to you guys I could keep up. I want you to know, I feel the same.”

Adam paused, his thumb hovering over the send button. The last line stained in black font against his vision. He then selected the entire text, cut it, and pasted it into a note’s app. Adam sighed and turned off his phone. His arm slung over his eyes. Five minutes later he was passed-out cold, still on the floor, snoring, and with the lights on.

#ofgrief #‘The Hangman’ || Adam: IC #‘Deals with God’ || Adam: Verse #if adam was in a better head space or had better coping mechanism #he would rephrase this #such that the only thing standing between him and Kenny Fucking Omega #Kenny Fucking Omega who is easily one of the best in the world and has 8+ more years of experience than him #is a single minor error #if Adam had hooked that leg #he would've won the match #he was that close #instead he's stucking in this negative downspiral thinking about how terrible and awful he is #glass half empty #instead of seeing actually #his glass is 9/10 full and he's bemoaning a quarter inch of emptiness

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taohs · 4 years ago

Note

you're one of my fav blogs on here bc your editing skills are out of this world!!! and if you're still taking ✨ asks, i'd love to find out your opinions on my edits! /tagged/rohall (my anime/manga edits are mixed with everything, sorry about that!)

AAAH WHAT that makes so happy, thank you so much!! you make a lot of beautiful edits so it was a bit difficult for me to narrow it down to 5, but here are some of my favorites <3

Jesper Fahey gfx - This edit seriously makes my jaws dropped, the textures and colors are absolutely stunning! The overall theme of this is also very cool, I feel like I already know a few things about the novel even though I haven’t read it before (something about gambling or shooting? ignore me if it’s not LOL) I love the fonts that you used too!

Oikawa Tooru gfx - This color palette is so beautiful!! I really like the combination of red, black and a little bit of pastel blue. Not to mention the contrast between cute and serious Oikawa <3 I personally have a hard time changing the background of a gif to a different color, so it’s cool that you were able to do it so well!

Tony Stark/Pepper Potts gifset - Just one of many of your beautiful Tony Stark gifsets, but I’m amazed at how you kept these gifs so sharp and crisp at that size (and with real life people too)! Props to you 👏

Soukoku gfx - Everything about this is so creative and cool!! I especially love the middle graphic with their gifs in the background, it adds a really nice aesthetic!

Tony Stark/Pepper Potts gifset - Wowow this must've taken a lot of time and dedication to make, the fandom is blessed to have you! Amazing job with this one <3

#stormbreaker #answered

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musicrunsthroughmysoul · 4 years ago

Text

Bloom From Nowhere

The town that contained them for 21 years had become too small for them. When they'd graduated high school, arms linked in promise, they told everyone they were getting out of this one-story town. They feared, after a few years of working and saving up as much as they could, that maybe they had been lying; really, they were just waiting for the perfect, hurried moment. Nothing was more motivating than procrastination. It was about time they moved on.

Rosenda packed in a flurry, excitement and anxiety beating wildly in her chest as she threw necessities into a positively ancient suitcase she found at the bottom of the hall closet. She carefully folded and packed her favorite shirts: a green and blue striped top that fell from her shoulders toward the center of her chest, a crimson rayon top with ruffles from the neck to the bottom of her bust and a keyhole opening that showed off her modest cleavage, as well as her beloved Lord of the Rings quote t-shirt and a modified tie-dye t-shirt she got from Forever 21 that read “California Dreamin'” in a stitched Coca-Cola-style font. She added her comfiest pairs of jeans (two – light wash and black), a pair of brown capris, and a pair of denim cut-offs. A dress made it in there, too – a flowy turquoise summer dress that she saw on sale last summer and had to resist wearing it every day – and some jewelry, makeup, socks and underwear and a pair of tan-colored flip flops. If she needed anything else, she figured, she'd ask her mother to send it along once she was settled somewhere – after her mother started speaking to her again, of course.

Only a few hours earlier they'd determined that they would leave, so with what little time was left, she drove straight to the bank and withdrew all of her savings. The weight of the cash in her wallet that would only fit in her back pocket seemed heavier than she’d been expecting as she walked to her car, her phone in hand. She seemed to be waiting for a call, but why, she couldn’t tell – her plans with Gal were made already and they agreed to pack separately and meet up later. As she got into her silver 2004 Honda Civic (a car that she inherited from her mother, and besides that felt history, would not miss) and dropped her phone into the empty passenger seat, she felt the semblance of safety fall away. Every familiar red light she met on her way home looked like the call she was inexplicably waiting for, but once she pulled into the driveway, the expectation seemed far away.

Back in her room, she picked through her desk drawers for things she thought she might miss – photobooth strips of her with Gal and a couple of her high school friends, a lucky blue mechanical pencil she lost in high school more times than she could count that always managed to find its way back to her, a few small journals, and a homemade deck of Lord of the Rings themed playing cards that her middle school friend Liza made her one year for Christmas. She packed them, along with electronics and appropriate chargers and wires, into an extra travel bag where she packed the last important pieces of her future: drawing utensils, her most-used box of oil pastels, a newer set of paints, and three pads of drawing paper. Then, sitting on the edge of her bed leaning over her nightstand, she scribbled a note to her mother.

It’s been time for a while, hasn’t it? Even though I know how much you worry about me, I know you just want me to be happy. Bueno, gracias por eso. But take care of yourself, sí? Tú también mereces la felicidad. I'll be with Galia (who else?), so try not to worry about me too much. I know you trust her even though you'd like her to think you don't. We know you do, though. I’ll be okay. I’ll call you when I get somewhere new and beautiful. You understand, ¿a que sí? Te quiero tanto — Rosenda

Once she smoothed down her blankets again, she propped the note up against her pillow and stared at it for a few minutes. The blank edges of the note gave her something to focus on beyond everything that she was leaving behind in her childhood bedroom. When her eyes accidentally flicked upward, her gaze fell upon the yellow and black flag hanging above her bed that she’d rested her post-high school dreams on. She quickly looked away and sighed. 'Perhaps hope only blooms from out of nowhere and doesn’t grow from whatever you hang on the wall,' she deduced as her phone lit up with a text from Gal. I’m outside. That was why she’d never hung any photos of her with Gal on the wall. She wanted the unknown future to stay unknown for as long as possible.

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

As soon as she throws her suitcase and bag into the trunk of the navy 2008 Subaru Outback and hops into the passenger seat, she looks over at Gal in the driver’s seat and finds herself staring.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she finally says.

Gal scoffs.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She picks at the thin threads holding on at the edge of a hole in the left knee of her jeans. “I just thought…like, it’d be a bigger deal or something.”

“Oh, this isn’t a big enough deal for you? Want me to honk the horn as I drive down the street, make people come out and see what all the fuss is about as we wave at them like princesses?”

“No!” she cries, and then immediately laughs. “I just meant…I don’t know. Does it feel like a big deal to you?”

Gal shrugs.

“Sort of.” In Gal-speak, Rose knows that means, Yes, absolutely, and I’m terrified and I’m not going to talk about it.

She glances at the phone in Gal’s hand, the bright screen glowing in the dimming cab as the outside light swiftly grows darker.

“I made a road trip playlist before I left, though.”

“Oooooh,” Rose says with genuine interest.

“Fuck yeah. We’re ready, babe.”

As they pull away from the curb of her childhood home, she chews on her lip. Passing by the quiet houses that line her block, lingering on the illuminated outdoor lights hanging beside front doors, she tries not to think about how they will change, how neighbors will move away and be replaced by new ones that her mother will have to adjust to or try hard to ignore. She looks over at Gal whose pale face is cast in a garish orange glow by the overhead street lights and she wonders, but doesn’t want to know yet, how they will change.

After a few hours of idle chatting – nothing deeper than what they did earlier today – and singing along loudly to their playlist, they pull into a quiet AM-PM gas station. As she watches Gal, standing tall with her eyes forward but her gaze faraway, fill the gas tank, she suddenly realizes what would make this seem more important. She pops the trunk and scrambles out of the car. Gal looks at her with furrowed eyebrows but says nothing, and Rose offers no verbal explanation as she grabs her suitcase and opens it, sifting through the clothes she hastily packed. Finally, she finds what she thought was a random dress she’d stuffed into the slightly emptier side of the suitcase and places it carefully over her left arm. Closing the suitcase and then shutting the trunk door, she gives Gal a smile and tells her that she’s going to the bathroom and will be back in a minute. Gal raises an eyebrow at the garment slung over her arm but nods and goes back to the arduous task of pumping gas and sort-of-not-really paying attention to her surroundings – they’re alone in the station, but who knows for how long.

When she walks into the store, she offers the too-tired-or-too-awake white cashier a smile and asks for the bathroom key. The strawberry blond man who looks to be in his 30s sighs and picks the key up off a tack in the wall at the end of the counter and hands it to her, gesturing toward the back of the store. She marches through the side aisle and then down a small hallway that ends with the plain-looking hefty green bathroom door. Once she opens the door, she wrinkles her nose at the soapy smell that seems to be trying to mask the torrent of years-old scents of bodily functions. The brown tile floor looks clean enough, but the once-white walls seem suspiciously grey, and she tries to ignore anything that looks remotely like a stain smeared on the wall.

Closing the door and placing the key on the edge of the sink, she drapes the dress over her shoulders and slips off a boot to remove her jeans. She’s barefoot, but they should stop into a hotel at some point later so they can shower. Removing her other boot, she then shimmies out of her jeans, conscious of the sound of denim sliding together down her legs and bunching around her ankles. She pulls them off and folds them up, setting them on the edge of the sink. Next, she pulls her shirt off over head and folds it and places it on top of her jeans, then steps into the dress and pulls it up to her chest and shoves her arms into the straps. After adjusting her bra not to poke out so noticeably above the cups of the dress, she finally looks in the mirror and notices the way the bust of the dress seems to stretch and she raises her eyebrows – her boobs have grown since she last wore this dress. She half turns and notices the way the gown’s soft polyester material curves over her rear and cascades down past her calves – at least it seems to fit better than the last time she wore it. When she turns around again and looks at her reflection straight-on, she sighs and suddenly feels shy. She remembers she has to walk back to the front of the store and return the bathroom key to the cashier, and what if there are other customers wandering around, just waiting to judge the other oddballs stopping in at gas stations at 1 o’clock in the morning?

Suddenly, she hears Gal’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Hey Rose, can you hurry it up in there? I wanna get back on the road.”

She pauses, looking at herself anxiously in the mirror and makes sure her mascara hasn’t run to her knees, and then begins to gather up her clothes.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m done.” She grabs the key off the edge of the sink and opens the door quickly to see Gal standing in front of her, waiting. When Gal notices the change in attire, her eyes widen.

“Is this what you meant by ‘a big deal’?” she asks.

Rose blushes.

“I feel silly, actually.” She’s still standing on the ground in her bare feet and she just remembers to grab her boots as well.

“Well…you look-” Gal pauses, apparently searching for some grand adjective to describe the woman before her, of Rose’s tan skin flushing under her stare and limber body draped in a vermilion gown, “-amazing.”

The word isn’t enough, but Rose recognizes the breathless way Gal ends her sentence and knows what she means. She smiles and hands Gal the key and adjusts her clothes in her arms and carefully holds her boots between her fingers on one hand.

They stand there for a minute, Gal admiring her, before Rose clears her throat and shifts her feet.

“Ready?”

Gal shakes her head, as though shaking herself out of a trance, and nods. Before turning around to leave the store, she smiles at Rose who returns the gesture.

As the two walk together through the store, Rose feels all anxiety regarding the trip fall away. Even as she walks barefoot in an evening gown through a random AM-PM store at 1AM clutching her discarded outfit, the presence of Gal beside her makes her feel light. She smiles again at the cashier as Gal drops the key onto the counter and nods goodbye to him and they leave the store, walking across the gas station parking lot to the Subaru on the other side of the gas pumps.

Gal rushes over to the driver’s side of the car so she can unlock the door for them, and as soon as she presses the button on the inside of the door, Rose reaches the passenger side door and pulls it open, a faint smile still present at the corners of her lips. She throws her discarded outfit and boots into the backseat and steps into the car, the material of her dress gathered by hand and tucked under her thighs. Once she closes the door, she looks over at Gal who is staring at her.

“What?” she asks self-consciously.

Gal keeps staring for a few seconds before she looks away into her lap.

“Nothing.” When she looks up again at Rose who is now staring at her, she laughs and shakes her head, grinning.

“You’re just-”

“’Too much’?” Rose asks, quoting her from years of knowing each other.

Gal pauses and her smile slackens a little bit.

“No. You’re beautiful and I just feel too lucky to be here with you right now.”

Rose feels her blood thrum quicker in her veins and she glances at their surroundings for a second.

“In this gas station?”

Gal laughs, and she watches the way Gal’s roomy mouth opens wide at the corners and reveals all the gaps between her straight teeth. She remembers when Gal confided in her that she hated her teeth, though she recognized how privileged she was that her teeth were taken such good care of in the first place. They were too straight, according to Gal – ‘Totally unlike me,’ as she’d put it with a wry smile. Rose meant to bat her on the arm for saying that, but instead she’d grazed her skin with her fingertips and watched the goosebumps rise on Gal’s arm in their wake. She enjoyed that reaction as much as she enjoys Gal’s laugh, so she smiles even as Gal’s laughter fades.

“I love you,” Gal says after a few seconds of silence, wearing a matching smile.

Rose reaches over to tuck Gal’s short dark hair behind her ear.

“That’s why I’m here,” she says. They stare at each other for a minute, Gal blinking in gratitude or awe, and then Rose eventually seems to zone out, away from them as they sit there though her eyes remain glued to a small, unassuming mole resting on Gal’s chin.

Even once Gal finally looks away and turns the key in the ignition, Rose continues to stare, only now at Gal’s cheek where a few more small, inconspicuous brown dots adorn her skin. Perhaps there is nothing more she wants to know then what is already there. Still, as Gal guides the Subaru away from the gas station and back onto the road, they move on.

#my writing #creative writing #original characters #wlw #realistic fiction #short story #y'all might remember this story actually. I'm reuploading it because I got inspired to improve it a little #I think (hope) I improved the Spanglish this time around. LOL #also wanted to reupload it because out of self consciousness I changed Gal's name the first time I posted it #but Gal was always her name to me when I first wrote this so I wanted to retain that instead of change it #anyway I might work on this again and give it more of a purpose some time. who knows. (not me!)

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